Man pleads guilty to manslaughter in girlfriend's strangling death

JACKSON -- The boyfriend of an Arkansas woman pleaded guilty Monday afternoon to a manslaughter charge in connection with her strangulation death at a downtown Poplar Bluff apartment building.

Jeremy Allen Winkle, 29, pleaded guilty to an amended information filed with the court by Butler County Prosecuting Attorney Kevin Barbour.

The amended information charged Winkle, who has addresses in Paragould, Arkansas, and Senath, Missouri, with involuntary manslaughter and abandonment of a corpse.

It alleged Winkle recklessly caused the death of Tiffani Noles on May 19 by strangling her, and he "knowingly disposed of the corpse of Tiffani Noles without properly reporting the location of the body to the proper law enforcement officials in Butler County."

Barbour said until Monday he knew the cause of Noles' death -- strangulation -- but "I didn't know the manner, how it happened."

Noles' death occurred while the couple "were involved in intimacy," Barbour said. "He had a belt around her neck, and she ended up being strangled."

Winkle, he said, also admitted to abandoning Noles' body.

Authorities learned of the 28-year-old Paragould woman's death at about 9:30 p.m. May 19, when the Poplar Bluff Police Department received a 911 call from a man living in the 400 block of South Broadway. The caller, later identified as Winkle's father, reported a woman was dead inside his apartment.

The Butler County/Poplar Bluff Major Case Squad subsequently was activated to investigate Noles' death. Winkle was arrested May 20 in Jonesboro, Arkansas.

Charged as a prior and persistent offender on the manslaughter charge, Barbour said, Winkle faces an enhanced punishment at his sentencing Feb. 17.

Winkle previously had pleaded guilty to felony domestic assault Nov. 14, 2007, in Dunklin County and felony possession of paraphernalia to manufacture methamphetamine Nov. 29, 2012, in Randolph County, Arkansas.

With the enhancement, Barbour said, the punishment range is the equivalent of a Class B felony, which carries the maximum of 15 years.

The sentencing terms of what Barbour described as a negotiated plea include Winkle being sentenced to 15 years on the manslaughter charge and four years on the abandonment charge. Both would be served consecutively.