[Batpuff]

SELMER, Tenn. — Authorities said the wife of a Tennessee minister found slain in his parsonage was a suspect in his death, shortly after she and the couple's three daughters were found by police in Alabama Thursday night.

Mary Winkler, 32, was picked up with the couple's three children — Breanna, 1; Mary Alice, 6; and Patricia, 8 — after Orange Beach police spotted the family minivan on the side of the road.

"I would say she is a suspect at this time," Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Agent John Mehr said, adding that investigators were on their way to question her.

Matthew Winkler was found shot to death in his parsonage by church members searching for him after he failed to show up for a Wednesday evening service at the Church of Christ.

The news of the 31-year-old minister's death and the search for his family shocked those who knew him in Selmer, a town of about 4,600 in western Tennessee.

Winkler was hired at the Fourth Street Church in February 2005, said Wilburn Ash, an elder at the church. The congregation quickly came to love his straight-by-the-Bible sermons. Church members also took to his wife, who they described as a quiet, unassuming woman who was a substitute teacher at the elementary school.