Prosecutors argued Matthew Lewinski’s actions showed control, intent and concealment after Courtney “Jerri” Winters died.
MOUNT CLEMENS, Mich. — Jurors rejected Matthew Lewinski’s claim that he snapped during a violent relationship and convicted him of murdering his ex-girlfriend after a December 2020 argument inside a Clinton Township condo.
The verdict turned on two sharply different pictures of the same relationship. Lewinski’s defense team said Courtney “Jerri” Winters threatened him, abused him and triggered a sudden breakdown when she told him she had an abortion. Prosecutors said Lewinski was the one in control and that strangling Winters, moving her body and keeping her remains in the basement showed intent and concealment. The jury found Lewinski guilty of first-degree murder, mutilation of a body and concealing a body. He faces life in prison at sentencing July 14.
Defense lawyers placed the former couple’s history at the center of the trial. They argued that Lewinski, 42, had been a victim of intimate partner violence and that Winters regularly threatened him. They told jurors he snapped after learning about the abortion during Winters’ visit to the condo they once shared at Crosswinds Condominiums. The defense also presented evidence about Winters’ prior arrests and strained family relationships. That approach sought to make the killing appear less planned and more like the outcome of a volatile confrontation between former partners whose relationship had already broken apart about a month earlier.
Prosecutors pushed back by broadening the lens. They said Winters was not the person controlling the situation and presented witnesses who described Lewinski as controlling. They also pointed to his own difficult family relationships, including testimony from his sister, Debra Federico, who said she had not spoken to him since 2019 and that he would not let her inside the condo when she previously tried to enter. Prosecutors used that family testimony to challenge the defense claim that Winters alone explained the violence. The state’s case framed the killing as an intentional act followed by months of concealment.
The argument inside the condo began after Winters arrived in December 2020, according to prosecutors. She sat in an armchair while Lewinski made tea in the kitchen. Prosecutors said she told him she had an abortion, and the two began arguing. The exchange became physical, and testimony said Winters bit Lewinski. Prosecutors said Lewinski then strangled her until she went limp. In court, the prosecution emphasized that strangulation requires sustained force. A prosecutor said it involved “five minutes of conscious thought to squeeze the life out of someone,” a statement meant to show jurors that the killing was deliberate rather than accidental.
After Winters died, prosecutors said, Lewinski moved her body from the living area to the basement. That alleged act became critical because it separated the killing from the later crimes of mutilation and concealment. Investigators later found Winters’ decomposing remains nude and lying face down in the basement. Some skin appeared to have been removed. A detective testified that blood, bottles of bleach, a knife and rubber gloves were found nearby. Prosecutors did not publicly explain a motive for the mutilation, but the condition of the body and the items in the basement supported the separate charges tied to what happened after death.
The remains were discovered only after Lewinski was hospitalized in July 2021. He had been found wandering around the condominium grounds in his underwear, and the condo association later contacted Federico because lights were on in the unit while no one was home. Federico testified that she and relatives went inside to look for a ceramic Christmas decoration. Instead, they found human remains in the basement and called police. The timing mattered at trial because it showed that Winters’ death had remained hidden through winter, spring and much of summer. Prosecutors said Lewinski had lived with the remains for about seven months.
Police interviewed Lewinski at the hospital after the remains were found. He confessed to the killing, according to testimony, and said Winters had “egged” him on. That statement became part of the evidence but also drew legal scrutiny. At a 2022 preliminary hearing, Clinton Township District Court Judge Sebastian Lucido suggested that police may have needed to read Lewinski his Miranda rights before questioning him in a hospital bed. Still, the judge ruled there was enough probable cause to send the case to trial, even without relying on those admissions. The question of using the statement was left for the trial court.
The prosecution’s theory of premeditation did not depend on a complex plan before Winters arrived. It rested on the nature of strangulation, the movement of the body, the length of concealment and the evidence found in the basement. Prosecutors told jurors that a person can form intent during the act itself, especially when the act takes time. That framing gave the state a direct answer to the defense claim that Lewinski snapped. The jury’s first-degree murder verdict showed it accepted the state’s view that Winters’ death was intentional and premeditated under Michigan law.
The defense faced another problem in the months after the killing. Even if jurors believed the December argument was chaotic, they also had to consider what happened afterward. Winters was not reported dead from the condo. Her body was not immediately turned over to authorities. Instead, prosecutors said, her remains stayed in the basement until Lewinski’s hospitalization allowed relatives to enter. The mutilation and concealment counts gave jurors a separate basis to judge Lewinski’s conduct after Winters died. Those counts also supported the prosecution’s larger claim that Lewinski was trying to hide what happened.
Earlier court records show Lewinski was charged in 2021 after the body was found and remained held without bond. In 2022, he was bound over to Macomb County Circuit Court on charges of first-degree murder, mutilation of a corpse and concealment of a corpse. His defense attorney at that stage declined public comment after the bind-over ruling. The case then moved toward trial, where jurors heard about the armchair, the tea, the bite, the strangulation, the basement and the family member who discovered the remains. Those details formed the backbone of a case that was both intimate and forensic.
The verdict does not answer every question raised by the evidence. Public reports did not identify a clear reason for the removal of skin from Winters’ body, and prosecutors did not publicly give one. The record also leaves unknown what Winters expected to happen when she went to the condo that December. What is now settled in court is that Lewinski is criminally responsible for her death and for the treatment and concealment of her body afterward. His July 14 sentencing will be the next formal step.
Lewinski remains convicted as he waits for sentencing. The jury’s decision leaves the defense theory rejected and the prosecution’s account of control, strangulation and concealment accepted by the court.
Author note: Last updated June 20, 2026.