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| Donnah and Mark (photo source: CBS News) |
When Donnah Brown married Mark Winger in 1989, it seemed the beginning of a fairy tale. Mark was a nuclear engineer for the state of Illinois making $72,000 a year (over $150,000 in 2020 coin) and Donnah worked as an operating room technician. The only thing that appeared to be missing was a fam
ily. When Donnah discovered she could not have children, the couple adopted a baby girl named Bailey in June of 1995.
Donnah took their new daughter to visit her mother and stepfather in Florida in August and upon returning to the St. Louis airport she took a shuttle to the Wingers' home in Springfield, which was an hour and a half away. The shuttle was driven by a young man named Roger Harrington.
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| Roger (photo source: True Crime XL) |
Twenty-seven year old Roger had been working for the company for only six months. During the ride with Donnah, she reported that he was speeding and related having an out of body experience while he was driving. He made Donnah nervous and she immediately informed Mark of what had transpired during the drive. Mark called the company and made a complaint to Roger's boss while Donnah, at Mark's insistence, wrote a letter detailing the incident. The company responded by suspending Roger.
On August 29, police and paramedics were called to the Wingers' home on Westview Drive. Donna, 31 years old, lay on the dining room floor on her stomach. A pool of blood spread out beneath her and blood spatter marks colored the furniture, a nearby wall and the ceiling about her. She had been beaten about the back of her head.
A few feet away from Donnah lay Roger Harrington, bleeding profusely from bullet wounds to the head.
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| The Wingers' kitchen table (photo source: True Crime XL) |
Mark told police that he had been in the basement, working out on exercise equipment, when he heard strange noises and a thump coming from upstairs. He grabbed his gun, a 45-caliber pistol, as he went to investigate and found Donnah on her knees and a man standing over her and striking her with a hammer. It was then the man looked toward him and Mark shot him in the head to prevent him from striking Donnah again. According to Mark, the man fell away from Donnah after being shot.
The hammer, according to Mark, was his; Donnah had left it out to remind him to hang a hat rack. He asked the police officers the identity of the man that had attacked his wife and was told it was Roger Harrington. Mark seemed surprised and informed the officers that Harrington was the man that had driven Donnah and the baby back from the St. Louis airport, had acted unusual and had since been making harassing phone calls to the Winger residence.
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| The hammer (photo source: True Crime XL) |
Ambulances arrived to transport both Donnah and Roger to the hospital. Roger died soon after arriving and Donnah died only minutes later.
Although Mark said he expected to be taken into custody, as he had killed a man, the police declined to do so, feeling he was a victim rather than a killer. Springfield Police Detective Charlie Cox was familiar with Roger, as he owned the trailer park where Roger and his then-wife had lived. Cox had broken up a physical fight between the two.
Detectives were also aware of Roger's history of psychiatric care and delusions.
Mark Winger quickly became a hero not only with the Springfield police but within the Springfield community. The Sangamon County District Attorney agreed, saying he would not file charges against Mark as he acted in self-defense.
Donnah's family, although grief-stricken on losing her, rallied behind Mark and supported him. They believed her chance encounter with Roger Harrington led to her tragic death. Roger's family, however, disputed that he was a murderer and asked the police to look at the case closer, to no avail.
With the death of his wife, Mark hired a nanny by the name of Rebecca Simic to care for three-month old Bailey. He collected a $150,000 life insurance policy on Donnah, as well as $25,000 from a crime victims' fund. The Chicago Tribune wrote an article on the crime; Mark wrote a letter to the paper thanking them for their support during his ordeal.
Several months after hiring Simic, Mark began dating her. Fifteen months after Donnah's murder, he married her. He left his Jewish roots behind to convert to Christianity and be baptized. He and his new wife became active in their church, with Mark doing construction work as a volunteer. Their family eventually expanded from Bailey, whom Simic adopted, to three more children: two girls and a boy. Throughout, Donnah's mother and stepfather, Sara Jane and Ira Drescher, continued to be involved in Bailey's life and the lives of Mark and Rebecca Simic.
Greed
Mark, however, made sporadic visits to the Springfield police to look into the case, which had been considered closed. His visits caused lead detective Doug Williamson to become suspicious of him. He decided to sue Bootheel Area Rapid Transportation, the former employer of Roger Harrington, for millions of dollars over Donnah's death. The shuttle company, refusing to easily pay out Mark Winger, began its own investigation. Worse for Mark, the Springfield Police reopened the case in 1999.
As part of their reinvestigation, police spoke to a woman named DeAnn Schultz. DeAnn had been Donnah's best friend. She also had been having an affair with Mark at the time of Donnah's death. She said the affair started in July of 1995, only a month before Donnah was killed, and it had continued for several months after the murder. She said that Mark had confided to her that he wanted out of the marriage and he wished to marry her so that he and DeAnn could raise Bailey together. Further, he wanted Donnah out of the picture permanently and mentioned killing her, with DeAnn participating in the murder. He also spoke to DeAnn about Roger Harrington.
Mark himself admitted the affair with DeAnn but denied the rest of the story.
The police began examining the physical evidence, especially the photographs of the crime scene that had been taken before Donnah and Roger were taken by ambulance to the hospital - some of which had not been seen by investigators originally. They noted that Roger was lying in the opposite direction from which Mark Winger said he had fallen after being shot in the head.
They also noted that when Roger came in the Winger home, he brought with him a can of soda and a pack of cigarettes, which were found on the kitchen table. It seemed odd that someone who was planning a murder would bring such items with him into the house, but not a murder weapon. It was also unusual that Roger chose to park his car in front of the Wingers' home, with no efforts to conceal it. On the front seat, a single piece of paper had Mark Winger's name written on it, along with the Wingers' address and a notation of 4:30.
Donnah had been frightened of Roger, so it made no sense that she would open the door to him. And yet there was no sign of a break-in. Additionally, she had been upstairs with Bailey and apparently left the baby girl alone in her bed to go downstairs and admit Roger.
Investigators spoke to Roger's former roommates and all three of them claimed that Roger had received a call from Mark Winger, after which Roger told them he was going to the Winger home.
Investigators spoke to the Wingers' next door neighbor, who recalled hearing the gunshots on that August afternoon Donnah and Roger died. Despite Mark saying that he had shot Roger twice in succession, the neighbor recalled hearing the gunshots a few minutes apart. Listening to Mark's 911 call, detectives overheard the sound of someone moaning in pain before Mark disconnected the call, telling the 911 operator that his baby daughter was crying and he needed to attend to her. Taking this into account, along with the neighbor's recollection, detectives determined that it was Roger Harrington moaning in pain. The first shot had not killed him and Mark, worried that he might possibly survive, had hung up the phone and shot Roger again.
It started to become apparent that Mark had called Roger to lure him to the Winger home to kill him and frame him for Donnah's murder.
Arrest and Trial
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| Winger in custody (photo source: True Crime XL) |
Police arrested Mark Winger in 2001 on two counts of murder and held him on a $10 million bond. Mark contacted a friend by the name of Jeffrey Gelman, a successful Florida real estate developer, to put up his bond but Gelman refused.
During the trial, the owner of Bootheel Area Rapid Transportation, Raymond Duffy, testified that Mark had called to complain about Roger Harrington and he asked to talk directly to Roger. Duffy checked with Roger first, who gave him the okay to providing Mark with Harrington's phone number.
Prosecutors alleged that Mark called Roger around 9 a.m. on the morning of the murders from his office at the Illinois Department of Nuclear Safety. During the call, the two men agreed to meet at the Winger home later that day to discuss the incident with Donnah and baby Bailey. Roger left his home in rural Mechanicsburg around 3:30, an hour before his prearranged meeting with Winger.
DeAnn Schultz, Donnah's best friend and the woman with whom Mark was having an affair with at the time of the murders, was given immunity in exchange for her testimony. She testified about the affair and Mark's assertions that he wanted Donnah gone so that he and DeAnn could marry and raise baby Bailey. The defense argued that DeAnn was an unreliable witness due to having undergone electroshock therapy following suicide attempts in the years since Donnah's murder.
The defense also called a blood spatter expert who testified that the blood pattern at the crime scene supported Mark's story.
The jury deliberated 13 hours before finding Mark Winger guilty of murder. The jurors found Roger's drink and cigarettes on the kitchen table telling, as well as the note left behind in his car and the fact that he did not bring a weapon with him.
During sentencing, Mark continued to protest his innocence, even giving a lengthy speech to the judge where he asserted that Roger Harrington had killed Donnah.
Mark Winger was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole and sent to the Pontiac Correctional Center in Pontiac, Illinois.
Rebecca Simic, who had stood by her husband and supported him throughout the trial, filed for divorce after his sentencing. She left the area and changed her children's last names in an attempt to protect them.
The Story Continues
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| Terry Hubbell (photo source: Forensic Files) |
Mark Winger's story wasn't over though. Shortly after arriving in Pontiac in August of 2002, he struck up a friendship with a fellow inmate named Terry Hubbell. Like Winger, Hubbell was imprisoned for beating a woman to death. Winger apparently thought he was the perfect partner in a murder-for-hire plot to eliminate a witness in his case - DeAnn Schultz, the woman he had promised to marry once Donnah was out of the picture. Hubbell didn't think much of Winger's solicitation, since "everybody that is in prison pretty well says they would like to get rid of a witness in their case." Winger was not to be deterred and eventually provided Hubbell with a 19-page handwritten note outlining his plans, which now included kidnapping Jeff Gelman, the man who had declined to bail out Winger in 2001. Winger's plan was to extort huge sums of money in exchange for not hurting Gelman's family. (A promise that would not be kept as Winger's plan was to not only kill Gelman but his family as well.) The money received from Gelman would then pay a hitman to kidnap DeAnn Schultz, who would then be forced to record and write statements that she had committed perjury during the trial and that Mark Winger was innocent. Once that had been completed, Schultz would be killed but her death should be made to look like a suicide. In true engineer style, Winger ordered that fingerprints to be found on Schultz' suicide note and the cassette tape in which she would state she had committed perjury be hers and her DNA was to be found on both the envelope and stamp that would contain the so-called suicide note.
Should any money be left over after these schemes, Winger wanted an additional hit - that of his former father-in-law, Ira Drescher because "he's a song-of-a-gun father-in-law that I dislike." For all his planning, however, Winger apparently didn't consider that he would be the common link in the deaths of the Gelman family, DeAnn Schultz and Ira Drescher.
In 2006, Winger, then 48 years old, was indicted for solicitation. He claimed that his murder plot were pure fantasy spurned on by his anger over his conviction, which he believed was politically motivated. He also blamed his revenge fantasies on the "dehumanizing" conditions at maximum security prisons, which Winger described as "warehouses of men but . . . also insane asylums." Hubbell, the man he had solicited, he said was "a sly fox" that was scamming him and he claimed to fear Hubbell.
The jury didn't believe him and after only three hours of deliberation, he was convicted in June of 2007 and was gifted with two 35-year sentences that were tacked on to his life without parole sentence.
The Winger case was fictionalized in an episode of CSI: NY and featured on 48 Hours.
The Last Chapter
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| Sara Jane and Ira Drescher (photo source: Forensic Files) |
Following Donnah's murder, Sara Jane and Ira Drescher raised over $40,000 to build Donnah's Playroom in Joe DiMaggio's Children's Hospital in Hollywood, Florida in 1998. After their former son-in-law was exposed as Donnah's killer, they established Donnah's Fund in Broward County, Florida's Women in Distress Shelter. The fund helped domestic violence victims to pay security deposits, furnishings and childcare after they exited the shelter and began new lives. The Dreschers continue to speak on the subject of domestic violence and reside in Florida.
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| Rebecca Simic and her children; Bailey is at top left (photo source: Forensic Files) |
Although Rebecca Simic said her marriage to Mark Winger was a happy one, surrounded by their children and church family, she took the children and moved to Louisville, Kentucky following the 2002 trial. Winger responded by threatening her life. The two were divorced and Simic has remained private. In a rare 2016 interview, she said she wanted to provide support to other single mothers and that family members of convicted murderers were living victims. She also claimed that the entire experience with Winger only strengthened her religious faith.
Roger Harrington's parents, Ralph and Helen, lived to see their son's name cleared and Mark Winger convicted of the murders of Donnah and Roger. Ralph died in 2010 at the age of 73.
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| Donnah (photo source: imdb) |
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| Roger (photo source: CBS) |
Mark Winger remains incarcerated at Menard Correctional Center in Illinois. The formerly slender engineer has now reportedly beefed up to 215 pounds and added an eagle tattoo to his leg. Very litigious, he mounted numerous lawsuits beginning in 2006 concerning where he can exercise. He claimed he suffered from depression, panic attacks and physical illness caused by his exclusion from the prison's exercise yard. As the exclusion forced him to remain within his cell, he argued that constituted cruel and unusual punishment and a violation of his Eighth Amendment rights. Winger's arguments would drag on until 2013, when the Court of Appeals reaffirmed a lower court's ruling and effectively closed that chapter.
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| Mark Winger, convicted killer (photo source: Forensic Files) |
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