james and katelynn set up house together here in the foothills of the sierra nevada mountains, coincidentally, just a few miles from rachel and todd winkler s airpark. james started a handyman business and again, pure coincidence, got some jobs at the airpark. he also started a website called ammosmith.com. not so much about guns as about the craft of creating custom ammunition. we have an automatic pistol that shoots a rimmed revolver cartridge. and that was his life in the spring of 2010, a nicely varied little business. a second marriage, that was not going terribly well, oh, and he had a secret mad crush on the beautiful young woman who managed the airpark. rachell winkler. and then one day she called me into her office. this is in june, beginning of june of 2010. she said, have a seat. and i said, okay. i thought i was in trouble.
fourteen years this went on. rachel wanted to get married and have kids. and i haven t asked her to marry me yet. and did you wanna have kids? i did. i did. i did, but i just wasn t there yet, you know what i m saying? well. it s an old story, isn t it? tim was blindsided by what happened next. rachel met another man, someone who was everything tim was not. todd winkler. focused, disciplined. a former f-16 fighter pilot, who was on track to be a corporate leader. tim scrambled. and i went and bought a ring real quick to propose to her. and i did. it was too late by then, of course. rachel turned him down, and announced her engagement to todd. it was really hard, you know, because the love of my life was leaving me for some guy that had a good job and a house and a boat and a nice car. tim, to me, was rachel s soul
said, was fakery. todd winkler may have had, or feigned, some disorder that got him out of the air force, she said, but he killed rachel. and it was murder, deliberate and planned, she said, committed by a man practiced at getting away with things. good morning, ladies and gentlemen. this is the case about a master mind, a manipulator. a murderer. this is a case about todd winkler and how he brutally murdered rachel marie winkler, his wife, mother of his three small children. todd winkler did not have to fend off a scissor-wielding wife, said prosecutor suder, so it wasn t self-defense. and rachel s death could not be blamed on any mental condition either, any more than the death of another mrs. winkler in those dark woods so long ago. but as she began to tell that part of the story, watch what happened. she s found burned to death
be like. i just can t. yeah. its hard. to be the guy who gets dumped is bad. it s bad. i quit painting, you know, as soon as i found out she married todd. and i just had no energy. i had no oomph. i no inspiration. i had given up. so, what does this broken-hearted love story have to do with a fiery mountain crash? more than you could possibly imagine. in my mind, this was not an accident. our friend was was murdered. i i truly believe that. coming up, a married woman s complicated love life. one of rachel s lovers is gone, but not forgotten. i thought maybe you know later on down the road, we can,
children. and here began atoning for the sins of his youth by devoting his life to three little kids, eva, ariel and alex. that s the baby brother. it was after all that that they held the trial. prosecutor lisette suder intended to portray todd as a manipulative and devious man who murdered not one wife, but two. that is if she could persuade a california judge to allow an old georgia case to be dusted off and brought back to life. i felt confident that i had the law behind me on that. and i submitted my brief, and i submitted the legal arguments that supported that. and? she won. and so, in september of 2014, when todd winkler went on trial charged with first-degree murder of second wife rachel, lisette suder could use the georgia story about first wife cathy s death 15 years earlier