00:00:02
This episode contains adult content. Please use discretion. On December 16th, 2000,
00:00:11
Mike Williams had planned to go duck hunting on Lake Seminole, which was um just on the Florida-Georgia border. And
00:00:20
Mike often went duck hunting. Usually he went with a friend, but this morning apparently he decided to go alone. And
00:00:26
although he was a successful duck hunter and he enjoyed it very much, some people said that he did
00:00:32
actually take risks, that he stood up in the boat to take risky shots and so forth. So, people became worried when he
00:00:40
hadn't returned home. This is Arthur McKitrick Brotman. Mike Williams was in his early 30s and
00:00:47
lived in Tallahassee, Florida with his wife Denise [music] and their young daughter.
00:00:53
The day Mike went duck hunting was his wedding anniversary. >> [music] >> He and Denise planned to celebrate by
00:00:58
spending the night at an inn on the coast, about an hour and a half south. They'd agreed to leave Tallahassee
00:01:04
around noon. >> [music] >> And people became more and more worried when Mike hadn't returned. Specifically
00:01:12
because he like I said, he was kind [music] of a known to be rather a a risky sportsman, but also because this
00:01:18
terrible storm front was coming in. So, [music] Denise and her father and a friend of Mike's went to the lake to
00:01:25
look for him. >> [music] >> Very quickly they found his car, but no sign of Mike.
00:01:32
They thought he must [music] be still out on the lake. Denise's father called Fish and Wildlife
00:01:37
to report [music] him missing. And he then drove to different spots along the bank with an officer looking
00:01:43
for a sign of his [music] boat on the water. Pretty soon a search party was organized
00:01:48
with the >> [music] >> Department of Fish and Wildlife, representatives from the Sheriff's
00:01:53
Department were there. Um it was a a huge search, but they couldn't continue searching that night
00:02:00
because there was this very unusual for Florida terrible [music] winter storm. So, the search was
00:02:06
delayed until the following morning, much to people's anxiety because at this time people were really panicking.
00:02:11
[music] Denise refused to come out of her room. She was terribly upset. As soon as the weather improved, Mike's
00:02:18
best friend, [music] Brian Winchester, and his father took a boat out to look for Mike.
00:02:24
And they actually came across Mike's boat after a few hours. >> [music] >> And Brian even found Mike's cap in the
00:02:31
water. So, people were incredibly frightened about what had happened. And even, you know, helicopters were brought
00:02:37
in, um, cadaver dogs brought in. State authorities borrowed a special underwater camera from the National
00:02:45
Geographic Society and brought in dive teams. When word spread that Mike had gone
00:02:52
missing, members of the community joined in the search efforts. A friend of Mike said that at least 20
00:02:58
people showed up every day. But they didn't find anything else. After 44 days, on February 10th, 2001,
00:03:09
the search was called off. Mike's family and friends presumed he was dead. Denise was
00:03:18
terribly, terribly upset by this. She cut herself off from all her friends. She was suffering horribly.
00:03:27
Mike's family held memorial service for him at the Baptist church they attended.
00:03:33
But some people still found it odd that no trace of his body had turned up at the lake.
00:03:40
A friend of Mike's knew a medical examiner and a retired state marshal, and he asked them what they made of it.
00:03:47
And they told him that it was very unusual for a body to disappear with no sign of it emerging from the water.
00:03:54
But when the water warmed up, the body would surface in the spring. Both of them were very sure that the body would
00:04:01
surface from their experience and their forensic knowledge. A few months went by and still no sign
00:04:10
of the body. The experts Mike's friend had consulted said the same thing that it was very unusual.
00:04:20
In June, a fisherman found a pair of hunting waders in the lake. Later that month, a friend of Mike's
00:04:26
brought an expert diver to the same spot and the diver found a camouflage hunting
00:04:31
jacket with Mike's hunting license in the pocket. >> [music] >> By late summer, authorities decided on
00:04:38
what they thought was the most likely reason >> [music] >> they hadn't found his body.
00:04:43
Lake Seminole was known for rather sizable alligators. And in fact, during the search to find
00:04:49
Mike's body, a number of the investigators said that they encountered alligators in the water
00:04:56
including one having his ankle bitten by one and someone else actually trod on one.
00:05:01
>> [music] >> And after Mike's body disappeared, many people started to wonder if he
00:05:07
might have been attacked by alligators. Nobody thought that he would actually have been eaten alive by alligators, but
00:05:14
people did wonder since his body didn't surface if he might have knocked himself
00:05:18
out, drowned, and then >> [music] >> his body being consumed by alligators. Makeda says that Mike's mother, Cheryl,
00:05:27
wasn't convinced by this explanation. [music] She decided to reach out to a biology
00:05:33
professor at Florida State University. And he actually wrote back and said to her,
00:05:39
"Your son could not have been eaten by an alligator because alligators don't eat during the winter."
00:05:45
The authorities also consulted alligator experts who agreed that alligators don't feed in
00:05:52
the winter. But, some people said that maybe an alligator had hidden Mike's body away
00:05:58
and had waited until spring to feed. Another problem with the alligator theory was that Mike's hunting jacket
00:06:06
had been found in the lake in good condition. No bite marks. Mike's mother believed there was enough
00:06:13
evidence to show that Mike had not been eaten by an alligator. She began wondering if Mike hadn't died
00:06:21
in the lake. She did not believe that Mike was dead and said that she had an experience that
00:06:28
she heard God's voice telling her, "Mike is not dead. Mike did not die in the lake. You have to bring him home." She
00:06:35
thought maybe he'd knocked his head, lost his memory, and was wandering somewhere. She thought perhaps he'd
00:06:42
taken on a new identity, gone to live in a different state. Mykita says Cheryl, who was 56 at the
00:06:49
time, started putting all of her energy into finding Mike. She reached out to missing persons
00:06:55
networks, made and distributed flyers and posters with Mike's photo, and put ads in the newspaper.
00:07:02
She even paid for a billboard. Cheryl also made a picket sign with Mike's face on it and the word missing
00:07:09
and would carry it around town outside the Florida State football stadium on game days
00:07:15
and outside a local church on Sundays. Denise was absolutely opposed to Cheryl's constant search for
00:07:23
Mike, which many people found peculiar. I mean, if your husband, your child's father, had gone
00:07:30
missing, wouldn't you do everything you possibly can to find him? But, Denise repeated what her family had
00:07:37
told her, which is you should listen to the experts. The experts told her that Mike would not
00:07:43
be coming back. She believed the experts. Denise and Mike's daughter was very young at the time.
00:07:50
And Denise had quit her job when she was born. Now, she didn't have a steady source of
00:07:55
income. Mike had several life insurance policies, but Denise wouldn't be able to
00:08:02
access that money until Mike was legally declared dead. A process that takes years when there's
00:08:07
no body. Marcus Winchester, the father of Mike's best friend Brian, offered to help.
00:08:16
Marcus owned an insurance and investment firm and used his connections to get Denise a
00:08:22
certificate of presumptive death in June of 2001, about 6 months after Mike disappeared.
00:08:29
She eventually received $1.8 million in benefits. As time went by, Denise and Brian
00:08:37
Winchester started spending more and more time together. By December of 2003, 3 years after Mike
00:08:45
disappeared, they were engaged. About 4 years later, a local reporter revealed that Brian Winchester
00:08:55
>> [music] >> had sold Mike a million dollar life insurance policy just 6 months [music]
00:09:00
before he disappeared. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. [music] >> [music] >> We'll be right back.
00:09:15
To listen without ads, join Criminal Plus. Denise and Mike Williams, Brian Winchester, and his first wife Kathy had
00:09:32
all grown up in Tallahassee together in in small Baptist community, very close, knew each other from actually from
00:09:41
preschool. Um a very tight-knit foursome as they went through high school. They went to a Christian high school. Mike
00:09:51
and Brian were football stars. Denise and Cathy were cheerleaders. Brian and Cathy were always a couple.
00:09:57
Mike and Denise were always a couple. After college, Brian and Cathy got married and Mike and Denise got married.
00:10:06
Author Broughton says that the four of them kept spending a lot of time together.
00:10:11
They started going to nightclubs and concerts, tried drugs, went to strip clubs.
00:10:17
And it was almost as though after denying themselves their whole lives sex, alcohol
00:10:24
the kinds of things that most most people enjoy in high school they sort of broke out of their
00:10:31
straightened Baptist circumstances and began to experiment. Sometimes Brian would ask his wife Cathy
00:10:37
and Denise to take their clothes off and pose together so he could take pictures.
00:10:43
It seemed that Brian and Denise were much more interested in these kind of lurid um games than were Cathy and Mike
00:10:50
who were keener on settling down. Cathy wanted to start a family and Mike just worked so
00:10:56
hard. You know, he wanted to get up early in the morning and go to work. He stayed at work late at night.
00:11:02
But Brian and Denise weren't ready to settle down. They would leave their spouses at home
00:11:06
and go to concerts and clubs together instead. And they kept it a secret from Cathy and
00:11:12
Mike. It became very clear >> [music] >> that during these escapades that Brian and Denise had long conversations about
00:11:19
their relationships, about their satisfaction about their respective marriages [music]
00:11:23
and it became very clear that they were interested in each other sexually. >> [music]
00:11:28
>> Perhaps even that they had both married the wrong person and that they should
00:11:33
have married each other. Makita says they started meeting at each other's houses when Mike and Kathy were
00:11:39
at work. Other times, they'd meet up in church parking lots or local hotels. Sometimes, if one of them went on a
00:11:48
business trip, the other would come along. It seemed like no one suspected them,
00:11:54
and they continued with their lives as normal. Kathy and Denise both got pregnant
00:11:59
within about a year of each other. Makita says Denise wasn't totally sure if the father of her baby was Mike or
00:12:07
Brian. Denise and Brian kept seeing each other, even though having young children at
00:12:14
home made it harder. They continued to be completely obsessed with each other and devoted to each
00:12:19
other, but they also continued to embrace the church, and over time they seemed to become
00:12:27
increasingly guilty, and began to think more about how could they be together while remaining
00:12:38
in the strictures of the Baptist church. Divorce was something that they simply Denise, in particular, was simply unable
00:12:46
to face, unable to consider. But both of them felt that if you had a really, really strong
00:12:53
feeling about something, a real desire towards something, it might be that God was pointing you in
00:12:58
that direction. And so, what Brian and Denise did was kind of try and wrap, stretch their religion to fit
00:13:06
their desires by telling each other that maybe they could submit Mike to a test, and if Mike
00:13:15
failed the test, it was a way that God was speaking to them, telling them that he wanted them to be together.
00:13:23
Brian later said the subject of Mike's death started coming up in conversations.
00:13:29
There were scenarios that were discussed. They talked about staging an accident.
00:13:34
Brian and Mike could go duck hunting together, and Brian could push Mike overboard.
00:13:40
The heavy-duty hunting waders [music] Mike was wearing would fill up with water, and he could drown.
00:13:47
And then, if he, you know, if he survived, that was God saying, "No, I don't want you to be together. [music]
00:13:54
Denise should stay with Mike." But if Mike drowned, that was God saying, "Yes, it's [music] my will that you two should
00:13:59
be together." In April of 2000, 8 [music] months before Mike disappeared, Brian sold him a new insurance policy
00:14:09
for $1 million. It was Mike's [music] third life insurance policy, and the second from
00:14:15
Brian. Mike had planned to let one of his other policies lapse, but Denise continued paying for it
00:14:22
behind his back. Denise and Brian decided to carry out their plan the week before Denise and
00:14:29
Mike's wedding anniversary. Brian and Mike made plans to go hunting, but the night before, Mike called Brian
00:14:39
and told him he had to cancel. Denise wanted Mike to stay home. Brian met up with Denise the next day to
00:14:47
find out what had happened, and remembers telling her, "Either we're going through with this,
00:14:52
or we're not." Duck hunting season was almost over, and so Brian persuaded Denise that it was
00:14:59
now or never, basically, and she agreed. She finally went along with it. After Mike disappeared, Kathy, Brian,
00:15:07
and Denise spent a lot of time together. Kathy later said that even though she and Brian were the couple, she started
00:15:15
to feel like she didn't belong. And she'd found a receipt for a necklace Brian had purchased.
00:15:22
The receipt that it had been a custom necklace with the word Meridian. Kathy immediately recognized Meridian as
00:15:30
a nickname Denise sometimes went by, her party name. Within a few years, Kathy and Brian
00:15:38
separated. She moved out and told him she wanted a divorce. And again, with all the stigma about
00:15:45
divorce in the Baptist church, and since Brian and Denise were unable to contemplate the fact of Denise's
00:15:52
divorce, it seemed strange that Kathy could just get divorced pretty easily from Brian.
00:15:59
It kind of threw into question what Brian and Denise had done. If there was If you could get divorced without
00:16:06
stigma, without condemnation, without being thrown out of the church, it really made what they'd done seem horrifyingly
00:16:15
unnecessary. But it didn't mean that Brian and Denise could stop keeping their relationship a
00:16:22
secret. In 2003, they got engaged and in 2005, they got married. Not all of Denise's relatives approved
00:16:33
of her marrying someone who had been divorced. And some people were surprised that
00:16:38
Cheryl Williams, Mike's mother, hadn't been invited to the wedding. >> [music] >> Besides paying for the billboard and
00:16:46
carrying a missing poster with Mike's face around town, Cheryl had been writing letters to the
00:16:51
local newspaper, the Tallahassee Democrat. Eventually, she got in touch with a reporter named Jennifer Portman.
00:16:59
Jennifer Portman became very interested in this case. She began to meet with Cheryl. She began to sympathize with
00:17:06
Cheryl. She too found it very suspicious that the man who'd sold Mike his insurance policies was now married to
00:17:14
Mike's wife. And [music] she began posting an article every year about Mike's disappearance say how many days
00:17:21
it was that he'd be missing, how many years it was since he'd been missing. >> [music]
00:17:26
>> Jennifer had reached out to Brian and Denise for comment multiple times. They wouldn't agree to talk, but
00:17:32
sometimes sent statements over email. In 2007, Brian wrote, "Nobody wants Mike to be found more than
00:17:40
we do. We continue to love Mike and miss him every day. We ask again that our privacy be
00:17:46
respected and that our family be allowed to live our lives in peace." After Jennifer learned that Brian had
00:17:54
sold Mike a large life insurance policy just a few months before his disappearance,
00:17:59
she reached out to Brian and Denise again. This time, they didn't respond at all.
00:18:06
There was a lot of talk and speculation about Mike's disappearance on the newspaper's online forum.
00:18:13
You know, gossip and implications and rumors and suggestions in the community. And
00:18:22
it really must have put enormous pressure on Brian and Denise. They wouldn't speak about the crime
00:18:31
even in front of each other in a private space. So, they developed this range of hand
00:18:37
signals that they would use to suggest that they wanted to talk about the crime. One of
00:18:43
them was um holding bars as if you're miming that you're in prison. And if either of them made one of these
00:18:50
gestures, it meant they wanted to talk about the crime. They would go to a a isolated
00:18:55
area. And before even having a conversation, they would leave their cell phones in
00:19:00
the car and sometimes even take the batteries out of their cell phones. Because by this time, they were getting
00:19:05
suspicious of each other. And there was even a stage where they would both actually
00:19:10
pat each other down before they had conversations. Makita says that by this point the
00:19:17
police no longer believe that Mike drowned and had been eaten by alligators. They suspected Mike had been murdered
00:19:24
>> [music] >> and that maybe Brian and Denise had something to do with it. But they had no evidence.
00:19:30
They said to each other many times, "Unless they turn on each other, nothing can be done."
00:19:37
Mike's mother, Cheryl, wrote letters to the governor's office daily trying to get someone to help.
00:19:44
In 2011, producers from a show called Disappeared heard about the case and put together an episode about it.
00:19:52
>> [music] >> They interviewed Mike's family, friends, and Jennifer Portman who said
00:19:57
>> [music] >> "If anyone should be questioning what happened to Mike, you'd think it'd be
00:20:00
his wife and best friend. >> [music] >> And they won't really comment on this." In 2012, Brian wrote in his journal that
00:20:09
Denise wanted to separate. He wrote that during an especially bad argument, he'd grabbed Denise's wrists
00:20:16
and pushed her against a door. "I saw how she was scared, so I let her go and she ran out."
00:20:24
Brian moved out, but Denise did agree to go to couples therapy for several years.
00:20:30
Still, in 2015, she filed for divorce. Brian later said "I did not handle the news well.
00:20:39
I dealt with it by drinking and indulging in inappropriate relationships." Makita says he was spending a lot of
00:20:45
money on strippers and prostitutes. >> [music] >> And then, in 2016, Denise went to the police
00:20:53
and said she wanted to tell them about something Brian had done. She said he had tried to kidnap her.
00:21:00
The police had been waiting for this chance for 16 years. [music] They'd been waiting for Brian and Denise to turn on
00:21:05
each other, and now it had happened. >> [music] >> We'll be right back. The day before Denise Williams went to
00:21:25
the police, Brian Winchester purchased a gun from a sporting goods store. He decides to kill himself. He writes
00:21:34
10 suicide notes to his various friends, family members, um his father, his mother, his son.
00:21:42
And then he decides before he does it, he wants to face Denise one last time. He wants to confront her one last time.
00:21:47
He gets very drunk. At night, he goes to Denise's house. He climbs over the gate.
00:21:53
He hides in her car, in the back of her car. The next morning, Denise got in her car
00:22:00
around 9:00 a.m. to go to work. When she was driving, she called her sister to check in.
00:22:07
She later said that the moment her sister picked up, she saw a movement in her rearview mirror.
00:22:12
It was Brian. He was climbing from the way back of her car into the back seat with a gun.
00:22:19
Denise is absolutely petrified. Um she's screaming. She throws her phone down. She manages to swerve
00:22:28
>> [music] >> into the parking lot of a pharmacy, a big pharmacy. And she pulls up where she knows that
00:22:35
there's a security camera. Denise later said that Brian held his gun to her ribs [music]
00:22:41
and said, "If you try to get away, I'll have to hurt you." She said that his breath [music] smelled
00:22:46
like alcohol and that he was rambling and wasn't making a lot of sense. He said he still loved her and that he
00:22:54
wanted to kill himself. They sat there for nearly [music] an hour. People went in and out of the pharmacy,
00:23:00
but Denise was scared that if she signaled to anyone, Brian would shoot her. She tried to calm him down.
00:23:07
She kept telling him that she could help him, that it wasn't too late to turn his
00:23:11
life around. Finally, she convinced Brian to let her go to work. She swore she wouldn't go to the police.
00:23:21
But as Brian got out of her car, Denise saw him take some things from the back. A plastic sheet
00:23:28
and what she thought looked like a bottle of bleach and a shovel. Denise decided to go to the police after
00:23:35
all. But Mekita says she didn't fully consider that if the police arrested Brian, they might also try to question
00:23:42
him more about Mike's disappearance. She did not want them to ask him about the murder or to charge him with the
00:23:50
murder because she knew that he would implicate her. Denise spoke with the police over
00:23:56
several hours describing what happened in the car. And then and I turned around and I go, "What do you mean hurt me?"
00:24:02
And he pulled out a gun like like a not a hunting gun but like a gun you would kill someone with. And he put it right
00:24:09
here in my ribs. He put it right here and he goes, "With this?" And he pressed it in there. You will turn. Well, I kept
00:24:15
in my head I was like, "I'm making it to CVS cuz that's our CVS." At one point, another investigator enters the room and
00:24:21
says he's leading the investigation into the disappearance of Mike Williams. He starts asking Denise about Mike and
00:24:28
about whether or not she thought Brian had anything to do with his disappearance.
00:24:34
Denise said, "I do not and I never have. I'd never have married him if I'd have thought that."
00:24:42
Later that day, the police arrested Brian and charged him with aggravated kidnapping, domestic assault with a
00:24:50
deadly weapon, and armed burglary. Brian was taken to the county jail and an state attorney decided to raise
00:24:59
the kidnapping charge from aggravated to armed, a more serious charge. And Manny couldn't be released on bond.
00:25:08
His lawyer tried to work out a plea deal, but was unsuccessful. And then Brian heard that Denise was
00:25:15
pushing for the maximum sentence. And the prosecutors came to him and said, "Look,
00:25:22
you're going to get life without parole, unless there's anything you want to tell
00:25:27
us about Mike's death." And at this point Brian realized it was his only chance.
00:25:34
The prosecutors agreed to grant him immunity in the disappearance of Mike Williams if he
00:25:40
fully and truthfully answered all their questions. So, Brian began to tell the story of
00:25:46
what actually happened on the lake. He and Mike went duck hunting as planned. [music]
00:25:54
They went out on the lake as planned. Brian asked Mike to stand up in the boat as as planned. He pushed Mike overboard
00:26:02
as planned. And that's where things stopped going as planned. Brian said that he and Denise had
00:26:10
expected Mike would drown. [music] He thought that the waders hunters wore could quickly fill with water.
00:26:16
But what Brian hadn't realized was Mike was wearing a new kind of waders that prevented [music] this from happening.
00:26:24
And Mike didn't drown. He actually swam to one of the stumps in the lake, clung onto the stump,
00:26:31
and started screaming. This was not what Brian had anticipated. >> [music] >> Brian
00:26:38
had no idea what to do. He said he felt he had no alternative. He started the motor on his boat.
00:26:46
He circled Mike a few times, getting closer and closer. Then he lifted his gun and shot him in
00:26:54
the head. After that, he realized Mike's body can't be found with a bullet hole in his head. You
00:27:03
know, this is obviously not a drowning. He realized he had to get rid of the body.
00:27:07
So, he took one of Mike's feet in his hand. He dragged the body to shore. He pulled
00:27:15
it up out of the lake. He went to get his truck. He lifted Mike's body into the tailgate
00:27:24
of his truck. Brian trained Labrador retrievers as a hobby and he actually had a crate in the
00:27:30
back of his truck, a dog crate, a big dog crate. So, he hauled Mike's body, shoved it into this dog crate in the
00:27:39
back of his truck, slammed the truck shut, and drove as fast as he could to Tallahassee.
00:27:46
He realized that he had to convince Kathy that he'd been there all along, that he hadn't gone out to go
00:27:54
duck hunting with Mike because Denise had told everyone that Mike had gone out alone.
00:28:02
So, Brian drives home with Mike's body in the trunk of his car. He parks the car outside the house.
00:28:08
He goes in the house. He undresses. He gets in bed where Kathy's still asleep. He's made sure that Kathy got pretty
00:28:15
drunk the night before. They went to a concert so that she doesn't wake up early.
00:28:20
Kathy's still asleep. Brian makes a big fuss about waking up, oversleeping. He says something to Kathy
00:28:29
about going out to take his dogs out. He makes sure that Kathy's acknowledged his presence.
00:28:37
He goes outside and there is the truck with Mike's body inside it. He has to bury the body, but first he
00:28:44
has to get a shovel and weight and a tarp. And to do that, he has to go to Walmart,
00:28:52
leave his car with Mike's body in it in the Walmart parking lot, go into Walmart, buy what he needs,
00:29:01
take it out and put it back in the car. And ironically, when he's in Walmart, he
00:29:05
actually runs into an old friend of his who now works for the police force. So, he gets out of
00:29:12
Walmart, gets back to the truck. He decides to take Mike's body to the a place that he knows
00:29:20
which is pretty isolated and overgrown. He digs this grave. Um and even then, during that time, he's actually
00:29:28
interrupted by a hunter who comes by and Brian manages to hide what he's doing and have a
00:29:34
make small talk and have an ordinary conversation. He manages to bury the body even though it's in a in a
00:29:41
shallow grave. And that's where it remains for the next 16 years. >> [music] >> The police recovered Mike's body after a
00:29:53
6-day excavation. It took a team of 30 people [music] to search and dig in the area Brian
00:29:59
identified. Police [music] wanted to keep the dig quiet, so they told onlookers that it
00:30:05
was just a training exercise. As part of Brian's immunity deal, he'd agreed to plead [music] guilty to
00:30:13
kidnapping Denise. Two months later, in December of 2017, he was sentenced to 20 years.
00:30:20
>> [music] >> Meanwhile, investigators finally believed they had enough to arrest
00:30:26
Denise and charge her with first-degree murder, >> [music] >> conspiracy to commit murder, and
00:30:30
accessory. The trial began on December 11th, 2018, 18 years after Mike was killed.
00:30:41
Because they had no physical evidence connecting Denise to Mike's death, the prosecution's case depended totally on
00:30:48
Brian's testimony. Makeda says that this was the first time Denise heard what actually happened on
00:30:54
the lake. So, he was in the water. And I pulled off just a little bit to get kind
00:31:05
of away from him so that he couldn't reach back into the boat. And I didn't know at the time I I didn't
00:31:10
know if he was trying to swim or I didn't know what was going on, but but what I came to find out or eventually
00:31:17
realized was he was taking the waders and the jacket off. And he uh he got those off.
00:31:25
And and he swam over to one of those stumps and held onto it. And he was panicking
00:31:38
and I was panicking. He was He started to yell. And I didn't know I didn't know what I
00:31:48
didn't know how to get out of that situation. So, I loaded my gun and I ended up
00:31:54
circling closer towards him. And as I passed by, I shot him. Where did you shoot him?
00:32:05
In the head. Everyone in the courtroom was learning for the first time what happened to
00:32:13
Mike, how Mike had been killed. There was absolute silence in the courtroom and there was absolutely no
00:32:19
expression from Denise at all. And this was held against her that she seemed to be so
00:32:25
cold and stoical when learning these dreadful, traumatizing facts. But actually I don't think I mean people
00:32:37
express their emotions differently. I think I don't think that should have been held against her. I can see why it
00:32:43
was, but she didn't testify. We heard everything from Brian's point of view. We didn't hear a word from
00:32:49
Denise. The jury found Denise guilty. And she was sentenced to life in prison. Someone had to take responsibility. And
00:32:59
all the responsibility fell on Denise. She wasn't just criticized for being a murderer. She was criticized for being a
00:33:06
sexually voracious woman. And there was even some sympathy for Brian when people
00:33:10
started to believe that, you know, that it was the Eve who tempted the Adam. It was Denise
00:33:17
using her sexuality and her feminine wiles had led him astray and led him to murder her husband.
00:33:24
And one member of the jury suggested, and I I kind of agree with this, is that yes, she agreed that they would kill
00:33:32
Mike. Yes, she agreed to taking the insurance money. Yes, she agreed that Brian would go out in the lake early in
00:33:39
the morning. But when Brian pushed Mike in the water, when he didn't die, when he grabbed onto the stump and
00:33:47
started screaming, what Brian did then, he did by his own agency. He did not have the opportunity to
00:33:54
consult Denise, what should I do? Mike had actually failed the test. He had not died. That
00:34:01
was a sign that God did not want Brian and Denise to be together. So, from Denise's perspective,
00:34:08
it seems at that point that Brian was acting of his own free will. Now, when Brian was asked about this, he said,
00:34:16
"Denise was there with him mentally, spiritually. She was on his shoulder. She was behind him.
00:34:23
He was doing this for her." But in legal terms, really, there's no evidence that she actually knew what
00:34:28
happened on the lake. Of course, that's means she's, you know, she's still responsible for the murder. I mean,
00:34:34
there's no question about that. But I do think that she [snorts] should not have received a longer sentence than
00:34:40
Brian did. Denise appealed, and eventually her murder conviction was overturned in
00:34:47
2020. In a decision, the court wrote that she didn't assist or encourage Brian at the
00:34:55
time of the murder. Her life sentence was overturned, and she was resentenced to 30 years.
00:35:04
Cheryl, Mike's mother, testified at the resentencing hearing. By this time, she was in her 70s.
00:35:12
December 16th, 2000, my life as I knew it changed forever. There is no how to find your missing child manual available
00:35:23
to help mothers in their search for lost children. I did what God told me to do.
00:35:29
I want to publish finish the book. >> [music] >> Reporter Jennifer Portman has said,
00:35:39
[music] "If not for Cheryl Williams, there's no way that we would know where Mike
00:35:44
Williams was or anything that ever happened to him. >> [music] >> She was the driving force."
00:35:53
>> [music] [music] [music] >> Mikki Broughton's book is Guilty Creatures: Sex, God, and Murder in
00:36:11
Tallahassee, Florida. >> [music] >> Criminalist created by Lauren Spore and me. Nidia Wilson is our senior producer.
00:36:19
>> [music] >> Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna
00:36:23
Robertson, Jackie Sajiko, Lily Clark, Lena Sillison, [music] and Megan Cain. Our show is mixed and engineered by
00:36:30
Veronica Somenetti. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode [music]
00:36:35
of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com. And you can sign up for our newsletter
00:36:41
at thisiscriminal.com/newsletter. [music] We hope you'll consider supporting our
00:36:46
work by joining our membership program, Criminal Plus. >> [music] >> You can listen to Criminal, This is
00:36:51
Love, and Phoebe Reads a Mystery without any ads. Also, you get bonus episodes. These are special episodes with me and
00:36:58
Criminal co-creator Lauren [music] Spore talking about everything from how we make our episodes to the crime stories
00:37:04
that caught our attention that week to things we've been enjoying lately. To learn [music] more, go to
00:37:08
patreon.com/criminal. We're on Facebook at thisiscriminal [music] and Instagram and TikTok at
00:37:15
criminal_podcast. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com/criminalpodcast. [music] Criminal is part of the Vox Media
00:37:24
Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. [music] I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.