"I just remember everyone just trying to remain calm and kind of, at the time, being like 'Dad's just going away for a while and that he'll be back soon, '" she said. "I thought it was... crazy talk, " she said during her cross-examination. She and the four youngsters stuffed their effects, got in a vehicle with her brother, and went to Louisville, Kentucky, after the 2002 preliminary, and never thought back. "It was about a two-hour drive and there was a lot of time to talk, " Levin said. According to our findings, Rebecca will have reached the age of 49 by 2022. After police examined the scene and listened to Winger's story, detectives concluded that he had acted in self-defense. Rebecca Simic Age In 2022 At the point when Rebecca Simic was 23 years of age and looking for a caretaker work in Springfield, Illinois, in January 1996, she met Mark Winger. LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Imagine marrying a man you thought was perfect, raising four kids together and later discovering he killed his previous wife and another person. Today, Simic's four children are thriving young adults who have spanned out across different states to pursue careers and higher education. They also noticed that Harrington's car had been parked against traffic, facing the wrong direction. On August 29, 1995, when Mark Winger murdered his wife, Donnah, and the supposed intruder, Roger Harrington, he thought he would get away with it. In reality, the Polaroids photographs show the exact opposite. In the 911 call, Harrington can be heard moaning in the background when Winger tells the operator he can hear his baby crying and hangs up. "Roger Harrington was not an intruder but rather he was lured into that home by Mark Winger, " Weinhoeft said.
"That guilty verdict solidified that, 'Hey, your life's over. February 1999: DeAnn Schultz comes forward to police. "I felt that I owed it to him and to my kids to just stand by him, " she said. The family changed their surname from Winger to Simic. "You don't know what they look like. Greed and Arrogance Ultimately Led To His Downfall. He then had three more children with her in the following years. It also made her a member of an enormous club that often remains hidden, of families left behind when a parent goes to prison. December 1996: Mark Winger and his growing family drift apart from Donnah's relatives. It's a dark chapter of a Louisville woman's story who is breaking her silence for the first time more than two decades after the crime was committed. The images did not fit the story Winger told.
That spouse is alive but dead to the family. "[Winger] was called a hero and I was just like what an opportunity to make a difference in this little girl's life, " Simic said referring to babysitting Bailey. Police quickly concluded the 1995 killing of Donnah Winger was a tragic incident, committed at the hands of a seemingly mentally unwell driver who'd once driven her home from the airport. In 1995 police concluded that Bailey's mother Donnah, Winger's wife, was killed by a driver who took her home from the airport. Yet, over the last few years, she has been attempting to open up about her history to support other single mothers or those who have found themselves in similar situations. Rebecca Simic has kept a low profile since the events of 2002.
Mark had previously hitched and was living serenely in Springfield, Illinois at that point. Like, my whole body just kind of went numb, and I just couldn't believe it.... Winger's defense argued that Schultz was emotionally unstable and just a woman who'd been scorned. Katie is 27 younger than Mark Labbett, 55. Rebecca said that Mark had written letters to her in which he threatened both her life and her health. "We were there and I got a phone call. Rebecca Simic and her children will share their story on ABC's 20/20 special on Friday, April 16 at 9 p. m. Simic sat down with her brother Steve and talked to WHAS11's Senait Gebregiorgis about how she has turned her pain into purpose.
"She lost two mothers by the time she was 3 months old, and she was so smiley, " Simic said. "She looked at me with tears and she said, 'Michelle, I knew it the minute they put that baby into my arms, she has always been mine, '" Donnah's sister Michelle Hansen told "20/20. Mark Labbett, a Chase Star, has broken up with their marriage with Katie. They were active in their church and participated in community projects. "But, I also wanted to hate Rebecca, because Rebecca took my sister's husband, married him, adopted her child, and then had three more children that my sister wasn't able to do. The couple did have a good relationship in the start, and while Katie is beautiful, she was referred to as "Beauty" and her ex-husband nickname, "The Beast. Simic legally adopted Bailey, whom she had already grown to love as her own daughter. Although they now lived in a new city and were freed of Mark Winger's name, Simic found it much harder to shed the stain left from his crimes. That new information revealed a starkly different picture of the tragedy inside the Winger home on that day in 1995. "I wanted to get in there and say, 'I'm gonna help and I'm gonna make this little girl's life better. With her own kids safely past the hurdles of childhood and adolescence, she has now focused her maternal energy on supporting other children growing up with incarcerated parents. "It just felt like Bailey was the one that really needed me the most like she had been through so much already at the age of three months, " Simic said. Donnah and Mark Winger fall in love. He had told the operator there was "a bullet in [Harrison's] head, " but when police arrived, Harrington had been shot twice.
Over the next four years, Simic and Winger had three more children together and moved to a farmhouse outside the city to accommodate their quickly growing family. Mark Labbett married Katie back at the Arundel Cathedral in West Sussex in October 2014. Police accepted Winger's horrifying story of a home invasion by an unhinged man and quickly closed the case. "I knew him as a very volatile-type subject.... Rebecca and her children have since joined the Southeast Christian Church, where their faith continues to strengthen and grow.
He was way too young to know anything that was going on, '" he said. The killing of Donnah Brown Winger is chronicled in an episode of ABC's 20/20's season 44. Trying to find a job after seven years as a stay-at-home mom and her home in foreclosure, she found herself making the painful decision to go on welfare. Harrington's car had also been conspicuously parked the wrong way, appearing to indicate Harrington did not try to hide that he was at the Winger's home. After a trial that lasted three weeks, the jury found Winger guilty of two counts of first-degree murder. Cox said the photos showed that Harrington and Donnah Winger were laying in the same direction. Harrington's family insisted from the beginning that their son was harmless. The allegations were based on a blood spatter expert hired by BART Transportation in the case. She requested a separation when he was viewed as blameworthy and condemned to life in jail without any opportunity of parole. We have a funeral, " Simic said. The evidence they'd once held from Harrington and Donnah Winger's case had been released to Winger's attorney, who was working on a civil lawsuit against BART Transportation. Winger and Simic's relationship soon became romantic and within a year, they were married.