because she soon believed he had done it before. the more we read, the more we realized that this was not an accident. reporter: todd s behavior up here on the mountain, said prosecutor suder, was deeply suspect. for one thing, his stories just kept changing with each telling, like the one about where he was sitting in the truck as it headed down the mountain trail, in the passenger seat, holding cathy s hand, as he told the police, or back in the bed of the truck, as the campers insisted he told them. and when the truck went off the road? did he describe being thrown out of the vehicle? not to us, but there was another interview that was done earlier, where i think he described to someone as a twisting and turning motion. but in our interview, what i recall him sayin is that when he came to himself, he was layin on the ground, outside the vehicle. there was a huge fire. and he didn t know where his wife was. so from reporter: so that he didn t remember the accident at all,
they both had it. anyway, todd loved cathy. why else would he keep her ashes all these years. cathy s death, said the defense, had nothing whatever to do with the event for which todd was on trial, the death of rachel winkler, and he wasn t guilty in this case either. this is not a murder case, ladies and gentlemen. it s a self-defense case, or at most it s a voluntary manslaughter case. there were two good reasons to believe that, said the defense. reason one, self defense. as todd told the police that very first day it was probably a kill or be killed kind of situation. he was a good guy in a bad situation, said his attorney. he worked hard and long hours to support rachel. he wanted to make her happy, and he was a good dad. and for that she cheated on him, threatened him and then attacked with those scissors.
the cliff, the fire, but i m still hopeful, okay? i got to do something. yeah. but there was no getting near the truck and no sign of a survivor. and then the firefighters came and the emts and, of course, the cops. they too heard the husband s bizarre tale. and they also learned his name was todd winkler. in their report they wrote that when they encountered todd, he was calling out for his wife cathy over and over. cathy, cathy, as if he was hoping she d come walking out of that burning forest. the patrol deputies called in the investigators, which is how gerald johnson, a brand new detective at the time, found himself deep in the georgia woods early that autumn morning. what happened up there on the hill was well, you you can describe to me as best you understood at the time what had happened. sometime during the night, he had gotten up, according to his statement, to go outside to use the restroom.
suder, was deeply suspect. for one thing, his stories just kept changing with each telling, like the one about where he was sitting in the truck as it headed down the mountain trail, in the passenger seat, holding cathy s hand, as he told the police, or back in the bed of the truck, as the campers insisted he told them. and when the truck went off the road? did he describe being thrown out of the vehicle? not to us, but there was another interview that was done earlier, where i think he described to someone as a twisting and turning motion. but in our interview, what i recall him sayin is that when he came to himself, he was layin on the ground, outside the vehicle. there was a huge fire. and he didn t know where his wife was. so from so that he didn t remember the accident at all, in your interview? right, right. but apparently he did in some other interview. and that s correct. there were differing stories about what sort of bug supposedly bit him. supposedly causing an
rachel attacked him. his ability to understand what he was doing was diminished. why should the jury believe that? well, as you ll remember, rachel herself described todd as unstable at times. and now the defense presented evidence of what they said was his history of psychotic episodes. the first one happened in asia, something like 20 years earlier when todd was married to cathy and was flying with the fighting samurai squadron. he was caught shoplifting from a base px. he claimed amnesia. so the air force sent him off for psychiatric tests. but then it got even more bizarre, and cathy called her friend tanya. she telephoned me saying, i m in hawaii. todd had a mental breakdown, and so he s in a psychiatric facility. she had said to me that he escaped and was in the wooded area in hawaii.