Conviction in '95 double murder case still leaves many stunned

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. -- Seven years later, Ira and Sara Drescher still have a hard time believing their former son-in-law murdered their daughter.

They say Donnah Winger was happily married to Mark Winger, an engineer with the Illinois Department of Nuclear Safety. The couple had just adopted a baby and seemed the picture of happiness.

But one August day in 1995, she was pummeled to death with a hammer and an airport shuttle driver was blamed for the murder.

A jury of nine women and three men decided Wednesday that Mark Winger, 39, was guilty of two counts of first-degree murder. After 13 hours of deliberation and three weeks of testimony, jurors agreed with prosecutors that Winger lured Roger Harrington to his home, shot him twice in the head and then drove a hammer into his wife's skull at least seven times.

Harrington was a driver for Bootheel Area Rapid Transportation (BART) at the time of his death.

"I can't believe that Mark hit her seven times," Ira Drescher said. "I still can't believe it. To this moment, I have a lot of trouble believing that he could have ever done anything like this."

Winger stared straight ahead as the verdict was read. He slowly turned to his current wife and mouthed, "I love you."

Members of the victims' families sobbed for 10 minutes and embraced one another after the verdict.

Sentencing date set

Winger will be sentenced Aug. 1. He faces life in prison without parole.

Police at first believed Winger's story. He said Harrington entered his home on Aug. 29, 1995, and beat his wife with a hammer.

Winger said he was running on a basement treadmill, heard a noise, went upstairs, got a gun and shot Harrington when he saw him leaning over his wife.

Donnah Winger had met Harrington when he gave her and her 3-month-old daughter a ride home on a shuttle from the St. Louis airport six days earlier. Winger said Harrington stalked his wife after frightening her on the van ride by driving fast and talking about a "spirit guide" named Dahm and nude sex parties he attended.

But police reopened the case in 1999, and a blood-spatter expert concluded that Winger staged the double murder, luring Harrington to the house under the guise of wanting to settle the van-ride problems.

"We've always known from the very beginning that he was innocent. For seven years this has laid on us," Barbara Howell, Harrington's sister, said later.

"The fact that we can now lay him to rest without a bad name -- it is great."

Donnah's parents carried mementos of their daughter throughout the trial. Her father, Cash Brown, had a picture of the young woman. His shaking hands clasped it as he talked to reporters.

And her mother, Sara Drescher, wore a gold charm of a young girl with curls in her hair that had Donnah's name and birth date engraved on the back of it. She described her daughter as an innocent young woman who believed in the goodness of people.

"Our family has learned to go on, but life is never the same and never will be," Sara Drescher said. "The part of our heart that was ripped out ... will never heal and that's just the way it is."