Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
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17 and a half years, we have always talked about Mike Williams being missing. Not ever finding his body, not ever having resolution was very difficult. He was going to wake up early and go duck hunting. He was a big duck hunter. And so he went off to the lake and then he never came back. Mike Williams was a straight shooter. He loved his family. He loved his wife. He put her on a pedestal.
Mike did everything that she wanted done. Denise said, "Jump." Mike wanted to know how high. They were going to be celebrating their wedding anniversary. And so when he did not come home about noon when he was supposed to, Denise started getting worried and started calling around. This search was the most intensive I've ever seen. Law enforcement and friends and family combing the lake, looking for him. They found the boat, his truck, the trailer. That was all there.
I got up in the helicopter, flew around and looked for his body. And one of the things that I noticed, there were no less than 15 to 20 very large alligators swimming all around this area. Lake Seminole is known for having a lot of alligators. We're in North Florida. There are a lot of alligators. When we went back out there, you know, there was more evidence that there was, there had been alligator activity around there. That's what you believed happened to Mike?
Yes, I firmly believe that. I guess you're sort of hoping you find something and sort of hoping you don't. Well, we was hoping if he was here, we would find him and get closure. But no, it didn't happen. People are attacked by alligators. Little dogs are eaten by alligators. But you never hear of someone who's just banished, eaten whole by an alligator. It is totally impossible for a 185-pound man to be consumed by an alligator without a trace.
I think that's when we started going, "Oh my gosh, this is not what we thought it was." Many people felt like there was foul play involved.
Cheryl Williams, Mike's mom, comes along. I pray every day that Mike will come home. Cheryl begins her crusade, if you will, trying to get answers. She'd make picket signs and stand in front of the church. There were billboards. You know, have you seen my son? She wrote the governor a letter every day for nine years. Until God tells me in my heart that that child is dead, I cannot give up looking so far. She wasn't going to quit until she had a body.
Alive or dead. He didn't just fall out of the boat. This wasn't just a hunting accident. This man was murdered and they blamed it on alligators for 17 years. You've got to really love duck hunting to love Lake Seminole. It's shallow, it's swampy, and it's popular with the local alligators.
Mike Williams really did love duck hunting and people say that's why he came here well before dawn on December 16th, 2000 alone. His wife said the plan was that Mike would be back home in time to celebrate his wedding anniversary.
But 12 hours later, after his wife reported him missing, Lake Seminole would be swarming with rescuers, searching for Mike Williams on the land, on the water, and in the air. Can you show me the area that you guys searched in? Basically, this area from here.
to there, about five acres. Alton Raynew and David Arnett were among the first law enforcement officers to get a call about a missing duck hunter. What we thought had happened is that he possibly fell out of the boat or capsized. Is it unusual for people to fall out of boats while they're hunting for ducks? It's not unusual. It happens quite often out here as far as they might hit a stump and throw them out. Early the next morning, there was a break.
Mike's boat was found. On board were some decoys and his shotgun, but no sign of Mike himself. We'd done a grid search, very slow, meticulous grid search, back and forth over the search area. And what began as a search and rescue soon turned into a search for a body. We stayed with that grid until we covered this whole area.
Cadaver dogs were brought in while teams scoured the murky bottom of Lake Seminole in a gruesome search for Mike's body that was high intensity and low tech. This is the tool of your trade, right? That was actually one of the poles. And all you do is put it in the water and see if you feel anything. If it's a log, it's kind of a thump, kind of a hard thump.
If it would have been a body, you hit it, it's kind of like a pillow. Did you feel something ever on the bottom that felt like a body? Never, never. Williams vanished one day before his sixth wedding anniversary. He met his wife Denise at North Florida Christian High School. He was a football player. She was a cheerleader. He was president of the student council. She was the secretary. How'd they seem together? Great couple.
Scott Dungy met Mike in high school. He and his wife Anessa were among Mike's best friends. If you knew Mike, he's the kind of person that is going to do anything and everything for you. So Denise, you know, found a gem. They both graduated from Florida State University. Denise became an accountant for the state. Mike became a real estate appraiser working for Clay Ketchum. This kid was straight as an arrow. He really truly was.
Clay and his wife Patty got to know Mike well. He was an unbelievable worker. It was not uncommon for him to do 15-hour days. I mean, he would be in there early, work until 1 or 2 in the morning, and then be right back. He had incredible energy. Before long, Mike's career took off, and that's when he married Denise. He loved his wife.
He even would leave the office and go pump her gas. I'm sorry, go pump her gas? Yes. She would call him and say, "Mike, I need gas." And Mike would run over there, pump her gas, and run back. We all said we wanted to be married to Mike. Just before Mother's Day in 1999, Denise gave birth to the couple's daughter. And by chance, a local Tallahassee TV station was at the hospital.
We're just totally overwhelmed. She was due Tuesday, and she would have made me wait a whole other year for Mother's Day. She tipped the scales. It was unbelievable. I have a whole new respect for my wife and women in general and what they go through to bring a new child, new life into the world. Nineteen months after he became a father, Mike was missing. And the longer the search lasted on Lake Seminole, the harder it was on the searchers, afraid of what they might find.
One of Mike's oldest friends, Brian Winchester, was out there looking for him from the start. And it was Brian who discovered Mike's empty boat. Brian decided that we didn't want to be there when Mike's body was pulled up. Brett Ketchum was with Brian during the search. So we would get in a car and drive to a gas station and go get a Coke. And it was very emotional trips. I mean, it was, you know, crying.
And it was tough. The search was called off after 44 days. Rescuers could find no trace of Mike Williams. He was listed officially as still missing. And some people wondered if he had just run off. We knew Mike had not run off. I mean, he loved his family and he adored his daughter, adored her. So Mike did not run off. This was not some elaborate ruse.
Soon there was another explanation offered for why Mike's body could not be found. That he had been snatched by an alligator. Alligators, they don't eat you right then. This is morbid to talk about, but they go stuff you somewhere for six months and
and then come back later. One of the rescue teams agreed, writing, "The alligators have dismembered and have stored the remains in a location that we would not be able to find." But there was at least one person who had serious doubts about that theory. Mike's mother, Cheryl. She, pretty early on, believed that there was more to this and that he was not and likes them at all.
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And then, what could be a break bubbled up from the muck of Lake Seminole. That pole is marking a spot where the waders have popped up. A local fisherman found a pair of waders like these, which were believed to have belonged to Williams. Did it make sense to you that they popped up here? I mean, you would search that area, right? We had searched it many times. Well? Very well.
Then, two days after that, Mike's fishing jacket and his hunting license were found at the same spot, along with a flashlight. But Williams was still missing. His wife, Denise, was raising their two-year-old daughter alone. Denise was a doting mother, the pride and joy of her life.
But Scott Dungy says now that Denise was a single mom, money was getting tight. I was helping her with some of the items that needed to be sold and to generate some cash until the insurance money came.
And there was a lot of insurance money involved. Williams had three policies worth more than $1.75 million. Mike wanted to make sure his family was taken care of because Mike hunted and fished and did some pretty high-risk activity. And Clay really encouraged him to load up. With her expenses reportedly mounting, Denise went after the insurance money quickly.
While the search itself is still going on, while he is still actively missing, they're still actively searching for him, she is going and filing a claim against his life insurance? Jennifer Portman covered this case for the Tallahassee Democrat. She was a consultant for 48 hours. She was really ready to accept the fact that he was missing and presumed dead very early on. But the state of Florida was not.
According to Florida law, since there was no proof Williams had died, he would not be declared dead for five years. Denise did not want to wait that long to collect on Mike's life insurance. How much time did it take in this case? It took six months. It was very fast, abnormally fast.
That's because Denise's attorney argued to a judge that the waders, the vest, and the hunting license were proof enough that Williams was dead. The judge agreed and issued a death certificate. Cause of death? Accidental drowning while duck hunting on Lake Seminole. Body has not yet been recovered.
based on that and that alone was what got him declared dead. A pair of waders and a fishing license and some other stuff. Yeah, exactly. The case of the missing hunter seemed closed and was soon forgotten by almost everyone, but not by Mike's mother, Cheryl. Did she believe that her son drowned in Lake Seminole? She never, ever believed that her son was in the lake. And she was...
absolutely committed to finding out what happened to him. It's never out of my head. Where is this child? Cheryl caught the attention of the local news. He may be dead, but he's not in that lake. And if somebody did hurt my child...
I want them found and I want them punished. Cheryl started keeping notes of everything, copious notes of all of the, you know, strange things that were going on. She eventually filled 27 single-spaced pages with lots of unanswered questions like, what made the waders float after six and a half months underwater? Her notes ended with a plea to anyone who would listen. Please help me find my son.
She was trying to basically compile all of these evidence that she could find and trying to get it in front of someone who would listen to her. Well, did Denise help her? Oh, no. Denise completely cut her off. Denise was adamant, no investigation. She threatened to withhold Cheryl's granddaughter from her? Correct. She said, if you continue to press for this investigation, you will never see your granddaughter again.
So what did she do? She took the energy she would have spent loving on that child and tried to find her daddy. Cheryl pressed on and started poking holes in the official version of what happened to her son. For years after Mike Williams disappeared, there was a theory that the reason his body was never found was that he had been eaten by alligators. Turns out there's a problem with that theory.
Cheryl contacted Matthew Oresko, an alligator expert. Florida has a few of them. In his response, he explained that alligators do not feed in the cold winter months. Cold weather causes the water temperature to drop, so alligators don't feed in the wintertime. What's more, Oresko said that when alligators kill, there is always forensic evidence left behind.
And he said attributing Mike's disappearance to an alligator attack may be a convenient explanation for the authorities, but was virtually impossible. We're in North Florida. There are a lot of alligators. I will give you that. But it is winter. Alligators do not eat human beings without leaving a trace in the middle of December when it's cold. It just doesn't happen. If not for Cheryl Williams...
There's no way that we would know where Mike Williams was or anything that ever happened to him. She was the driving force. Cheryl Williams knew because an expert told her that her son was not eaten by an alligator. But she did not know much else about how he vanished. One of the things that has been so difficult about this case is that there was an absolute lack of physical evidence. You didn't have a body. You didn't have any of these things that maybe could point you towards something.
But Cheryl had something, those 27 pages of detailed notes. In 2004, four years after Mike disappeared, Cheryl's campaign finally caught the attention of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Investigators met with her and then launched a multi-agency investigation.
When did you first begin thinking this was a crime? The first night we talked to Ms. Cheryl. At the time, Derek Wester was with the Jackson County Sheriff's Office. He was part of the investigation. She had it all broke down. And then as she relayed this story, all these inconsistencies start adding up. Do you remember what some of those inconsistencies were? The insurance. It was Mike's three life insurance policies that caught their attention.
particularly the last one he bought, not long before he disappeared, worth $1 million. How did Mike Williams end up with that million-dollar life insurance policy? Who sold it to him? Brian Winchester sold him the million-dollar life insurance policy about six months before he went missing. Brian Winchester was an insurance agent.
He'd been Mike's best friend since high school, where, like Mike, he met his future wife, Kathy Aldrich. And from then on, the two couples were inseparable.
You know, they did literally everything together. They went out to dinner together. They bought houses at the same time. They got married at the same time. Had babies at the same time. You know, they were very close. Brian Winchester was in the insurance business. He was. So it's not that odd that he would sell his friend an insurance policy? No, it's not. I mean, just the timing of it, in retrospect, looks a little weird.
That wasn't the only thing that started to look weird. Those waiters that popped up in Lake Seminole surfaced just as Denise Williams needed proof that her husband was dead in order to get the insurance money.
How many days before the court hearing these waders popped up? Less than a month. I mean, it was really close. They had supposedly been submerged in the lake for six months. These waders was in very good shape. They were also not slimy. And what did that mean? They had not been in the water very long. So you looked at that stuff and you thought to yourself, what? Planet. It was planet.
No one could say for sure who planted it, but as time passed, Denise Williams and Brian Winchester started attracting attention and some suspicion because years after Mike disappeared, Winchester divorced his wife, Kathy. He began dating Denise, and then he married her. We went to the wedding. Was she a suspect in your mind at that point? I think in mine, I was, yes.
The minister at some point said, "I've counseled with this couple and they have no secrets I don't know." And Clay and I both went. We kind of nudged each other like, "Well, there might be just one little secret you don't know." All these things start becoming clear that now we've got the insurance. Now we've got the waiters. We've got the alligator theory being busted by the experts.
So as they're building their case, you know, they talk to people, they start getting somewhere. One of the first people investigators talked to was Denise Williams. There's no emotion. There's no softening up. There's nothing. I mean, she's just, matter of fact, and cold.
But Brian Winchester had much more to say. He offered detectives an alibi for the morning Mike Williams went missing. He said he was 60 miles away from the lake in bed. Brian tells us that he was going hunting with his father-in-law and overslept. You know for a fact that Brian was not telling you the truth then? Mm-hmm.
Winchester could not have known it, but detectives already had a witness who said he saw Winchester that morning at Lake Seminole. I know the man personally. I mean, I've known him all my life. And I composed a lineup and I took it to him. Joel says, well, he wasn't smiling like that, but that's him. And he pointed to Brian Winchester. And he had seen that same man, he said, when? That morning.
There was one more thing Winchester didn't know. Police were talking to his ex-wife, and she told them Denise and Brian might have been having an affair for years before Mike disappeared. There was definitely a suspicion that him and her
were having an affair well before that December. While Denise was still married to Mike? Yes. The plot was sure thickening, but investigators still weren't sure what the full story was. After two years, the FDLE hit a wall. But Cheryl Williams, who had been fighting since the day her son disappeared, was not giving up.
She was very, very, very frustrated with FDLE and felt that they were not doing their job, they weren't trying. So she picketed. You know, she would have signs made and walk up and down in front of the church.
Every year she would have billboards put up around town. It showed a picture of Mike and missing, and if you have any information, who's to contact. And she went after the governor. She wrote the governor a letter every day for nine years. In fact, the governor received 1,472 letters that we know of. Her suspicion was always with Brian and Denise. More so with Denise.
The two people who were considered most likely suspects were together. And unless one of them turned on the other, you were never going to find out what happened here. Did you think this case would get broken? Not until I found out that they were having marital problems. They turned on each other like rats in a sack. Ryan Reynolds here from Intmobile. With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down.
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If Brian and Denise knew anything about Mike's disappearance, they weren't talking and no one could make them. By Florida law, as long as they stayed married, neither could be forced to testify against the other. With Brian and Denise being married, how were you ever going to get the truth? Because one is not going to turn on the other.
But behind the scenes, Denise and Brian's marriage was disintegrating. And after seven years, in 2012, they decided to separate. He is, you know, self-describes as being a sex addict. He's trying to please her by going to therapy, by getting counseling. Like, he's jumping through all these hoops, trying to do all these things to get her back, and she's not kind of accepting them.
After four more years of trying to patch things up, Brian snapped. One morning, Denise gets in her car. She's driving to work, and she senses something in the back, and Brian Winchester has hidden in the back of her car and is coming over the seat and has got a gun. He's got a gun? He's got a gun. He had a gun. He had a tarp. The idea was that he was going to kill her.
Denise reported her kidnapping to the Leon County Sheriff's Office. I was like, are you planning on ending both of our lives today? Well, mine. I'm planning on mine. And then he would say, I want to kill myself. He must have said a million times, I want to kill myself.
Brian Winchester was soon arrested and charged with the kidnapping and aggravated assault of his wife. I was just kind of agreeing with whatever he was saying. And I was like, I know that you love me. Police quickly realized that the rift in Denise and Brian's marriage presented an opportunity.
A tag team of detectives arrived to see what they could get out of Denise, to see if she would now flip on her estranged husband and talk about his involvement in Mike Williams' disappearance. I know, Denise. He did it. And you know exactly what I'm talking about. And he was gonna do what he can. Tallahassee detective David McCraney tried. He wasn't gonna kill himself, Denise. He was gonna kill you so that you didn't talk about him later.
McCraney turned up the heat. But Denise did not budge.
So Special Agent Mike Devaney came in. He'd been working the Williams case for years. She wasn't giving up anything? She was giving up absolutely nothing. What do you think Mike's buried in?
That left Brian as the only possible source of information in the Williams case.
He was facing a long stretch in prison for the kidnapping, but there was no word about what, if anything, he would say about Mike's disappearance.
We're here in the state of Florida versus Brian Winchester 2000. 16 months later, Brian pled guilty to kidnapping and assaulting Denise and appeared in court for his sentencing. We had a plea and we weren't sure what the government was going to ask for. He was crying at times. He apologized. Tim Jansen is Brian Winchester's lawyer. We had indicated we want 15. The state gets up and asks for 15.
My client wouldn't like to address the court. Never, ever did I have any intentions of harming Denise, nor would I. Nonetheless, I do know that she was hurt by my actions, and again, I am truly sorry.
Start by stating your name, please. Denise Williams. Denise showed up at the sentencing. What was she like there? What did she want? She wanted him to go to prison for the rest of his life. I start each day with the memory of him jumping out of the back, and I end each day...
Feeling the gun shoved in my ribs when I turn on my right side trying to sleep. She was scared. She was compelling. He will finish what he has started no matter what age he is when he's released. Most people in the courtroom were pretty stunned by it. It was pretty powerful. I'm asking you to sentence him to life in prison for the crimes he has committed. It comes down to my life or his, and I'm asking you, please, to choose mine. Thank you.
Come on up with your client, Mr. Jansen. For kidnapping Denise, Brian was sentenced to 20 years behind bars. He was shackled at the waist and the ankles. And when they shuffled him off to prison, we felt so defeated because we said there'll never be an answer to our friend Mike. Never an answer. We won't know. Well, you were wrong. We were wrong. They had found Mike's body.
Wow. Nice. Yeah.
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Just one day after Brian Winchester was sentenced for kidnapping Denise Williams, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement held a news conference. And the news really was huge. Standing here now, I can tell you that we know what happened to Mike Williams. He was murdered.
They know that because sometime before he was sentenced for kidnapping, Brian Winchester cracked and confessed in these audio recordings. I went and met Mike at a gas station. I followed him to the lake. We launched the boat. It was just like a hunting trip was supposed to be.
Winchester had cut a deal with prosecutors. In exchange for his confession, he would not be charged with murder, even though he admitted killing his best friend. I got him to stand up, and I pushed him into the water, and he was in a panic, obviously. I was in a panic. I didn't know what to do, and I ended up shooting him. The agreement that we drafted up
said that anything he said that day could not be used against him. Winchester gave prosecutors what they wanted most, the location of Mike Williams' body. I backed my Suburban down to the edge of the lake and put his body in the back and
pushed his boat back out into the water. Brian says he left Mike's truck and trailer at Lake Seminole to make Mike's disappearance look like an accident. But actually, Mike's body was nowhere near Lake Seminole. He was 60 miles away at Carr Lake, a remote marshy area just 10 minutes from Winchester's home. Brian led investigators here to the spot he buried Mike back in 2000.
And they commenced what FDLE told me is the most extensive search they have ever undertaken in the history of the agency. The search uncovered Mike's skeletal remains and his wedding ring, among other things. And there was horrifying evidence of what happened to him.
And what they were able to show very clearly was that he had been shot basically at point-blank range in the face with a shotgun. This was up close, personal, deadly. Yeah. And gruesome. Yeah. And Winchester provided one final piece of the puzzle. He said it was all Denise's idea.
She would not get divorced. And so she basically said there's only one solution. As he tells it, she was not willing to endure the public shame of a divorce. So she thought murder was a better answer. I guess it was better to be known as a widow than a divorcee. Wow, that is incredibly cold. And wouldn't it be great if we also, oh, by the way, collected, you know, almost $2 million in insurance.
We would end up together. We would live happily ever after. Oh, and as a side note, we've got all this money to enjoy a wonderful life together. The happily ever after part didn't work out so well. In May 2018, five months after the discovery of Mike's body was announced, Denise Williams was arrested and charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder,
And accessory after the fact. It was a very bizarre moment. And she said nothing. And she didn't look at anybody. She just looked straight ahead. It's a bittersweet feeling. You are so thankful that she has been outed for the true person she is. But it doesn't... You're still left with the same result. Even though you saw her lit away in shackles. In an ugly dress and...
hair that needed a dye job. I gotta tell you, that felt pretty good to me. Because I know how important appearances are to her. She didn't do it. She had nothing to do with it. She's completely innocent. Defense attorney Ethan Way is representing Denise. Did she know about it? No. Not before, not during, not after. You are very confident. I have an innocent client. It's the best kind.
On December 11th, 2018, prosecutor John Fuchs gave his opening argument at Denise Williams' murder trial. Denise likes the sound of being a widow much more than a divorcee. Obviously can't be caught with a murder, so they had to make it look like an accident. Raise your right hand, please. Early on, the state called...
Brian Winchester. We had an agreement that she would never say anything about me and I would never say anything about her because we felt like that as long as neither one of us talked, that nobody would ever find out what happened. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you.
Ethan Way was in an enviable position for a defense attorney representing an accused murderer. The prosecution's star witness admits he is the killer. When you shot Mike Williams with a 12-gauge shotgun, was Denise Williams standing there with you? No, she wasn't. She was in my head behind me. Denise Williams had no idea that you shot her husband in the face with a shotgun, did you? Correct. Mr. Winchester, you're a murderer, isn't it true? Yes, sir.
Mr. Winchester, you're a liar, isn't it, Trev? Yes, sir. Of course, Cheryl Williams always suspected her one-time daughter-in-law was involved, and Cheryl was now a witness for the prosecution. The initial theory was that he was missing and possibly eaten by alligators. Right. You never believed that, did you? No, sir. How long did it take before Denise called you and said, I'm sorry, I was wrong all these years? She never did.
Finally, Winchester's ex-wife, Kathy, testified Denise kept quiet as part of a conspiracy of silence between Brian and Denise. Were you aware that Brian Winchester kidnapped Denise Williams? Yes. About a week after that, did Denise ask you to do something? Denise asked me to get a message to Brian that I'm not talking.
After three days of testimony, both sides rested. Ethan Way was so confident the state had no hard evidence that he didn't want the jury to consider any charges less than murder one. This is a strategy decision. As you understand, it's a little bit out of the ordinary. I guess for want of a better word, it's a little bit of a gamble. The jury was now facing an all or nothing decision.
and the attorneys presented their closing arguments. This is not a case about trying to get, quote, justice for Mike. This is a murder case. There's no evidence that supports any of the allegations against my client. We are counting on you to return a verdict that speaks the truth, and that verdict is not guilty. Think back three days ago. Brian Winchester is on the stand describing how he shot his best friend.
Everybody in this entire room was moved by the sheer horror of that situation. That one person sat here, absolute stone face, didn't bat an eye, didn't shed a tear. That lady right there is Denise Williams. The jury took eight hours to reach a verdict. The defendant is guilty of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. Denise Williams was found guilty...
As to count two, we the jury find the defendant is guilty of first-degree murder. On all counts. The defendant is guilty of accessory after the fact of first-degree murder. Mike's family and friends waited 18 years for this day. Sometimes the wheels of justice turn slowly, but they do still turn. For Cheryl Williams, it has been a long, heartbreaking fight.
But now she can finally lay her son to rest. It hit her really hard. And I think she's still coming to terms with it. I mean, the brutality of it, the finality of it, how anyone could do this to Mike. It kind of destroys your faith in man. To do this to him and the way it was done, it's just unimaginable. You still miss him. Oh, God.
He was such a good guy. He loved to work. He loved his family. He put them on a pedestal and he got killed for it. That's the irony of this is the kid did nothing wrong. If you like this podcast, you can listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a quick survey at wondery.com slash survey. Across America, BP supports more than 300,000 jobs to keep our energy flowing.
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