Secrets of Lake Seminole

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Speaker 3 How does anybody look at somebody drowning

Speaker 3 and not help them?

Speaker 5 How do you do that?

Speaker 6 They found the boat. Mike wasn't in it.

Speaker 7 We thought maybe he's had an accident.

Speaker 8 The thought is the alligators have eaten Mike.

Speaker 9 Something don't add up.

Speaker 8 People don't just disappear.

Speaker 5 There was an affair happening for years.

Speaker 3 I'm telling you, kill Mike when he wasn't so good.

Speaker 5 That is just a whole nother level.

Speaker 12 A chilling confession and a crime almost too cruel to be true.

Speaker 3 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 14 Here's Dennis Murphy with Secrets of Lake Seminole.

Speaker 16 Lake Seminole, an hour outside Florida's state capital, is deep south.

Speaker 17 Fishing hunting country with Spanish moss on the oaks.

Speaker 19 In season, the duck hunters are out before dawn.

Speaker 23 And it was there in the year 2000 on a December morning, an experienced outdoorsman named Mike Williams went duck hunting.

Speaker 25 It was the 30-year-old hunter's sixth wedding anniversary, and there'd be a stay at a romantic B ⁇ B that evening.

Speaker 12 But the morning hours were his to hunt.

Speaker 26 That was his

Speaker 26 outlet. That was what he enjoyed.

Speaker 11 The thing is, he never came back, seemed to simply vanish.

Speaker 30 His wife, Denise, called around to family it was already late afternoon when mike's brother nick got the worrying news there was going to be a search already starting over at lake seminar so we called a friend of ours and we went together mike's co-worker christy garrett mike is very skilled i mean he is a very skilled hunter and we thought he maybe he's had an accident

Speaker 20 As a cold front moved in, a formal search began on the 30,000-acre lake. One member of the search party arrived early and stayed late.

Speaker 33 It was Mike's best friend going back to school days, Brian Winchester.

Speaker 20 He and his dad, using a spotlight, made the first big discovery.

Speaker 6 Brian Winchester had found the boat. Mike wasn't in it.

Speaker 30 His decoys were all in the boat, which,

Speaker 30 of course, let everybody think obviously he'd never got started hunting that morning.

Speaker 35 What picture came together for you at that point?

Speaker 36 Well, I think I was like everybody else, worried that he might have fallen out.

Speaker 8 It's Clay.

Speaker 31 Mike's boss, Clay Ketchum.

Speaker 8 Brian stood with me, and anytime they would come up with a potential hit, Brian said, I just don't want to be here when they find Mike.

Speaker 36 Man-made Lake Seminole can be treacherous for boaters.

Speaker 24 It was a one-time peach orchard before it was flooded, and tree stumps lurked just below the surface.

Speaker 39 At night, these are very hard to see.

Speaker 39 Fish and Wildlife Officer David Arnett.

Speaker 38 You hit a stump, and you could be thrown out very easily.

Speaker 40 They didn't have a body, but there was an early theory among seasoned hunters about what might have happened.

Speaker 19 Mike in the pre-dawn hour had hit a stump and been thrown into the weed-filled lake.

Speaker 16 Like most duck hunters, he was known to wear chest-high waders, and they could turn deadly just like that.

Speaker 42 Waders are bulky.

Speaker 39 They're basically like putting two buckets on your legs. You got problems with them filling up with water and taking you down.

Speaker 3 And what was down there, everybody knew, were alligators.

Speaker 28 Hard to think of such an awful end for a nice, hard-working husband and father like Mike Williams.

Speaker 35 Popular mind, the Gators got him, huh?

Speaker 8 Yes, your heart is kind of, in your stomach is kind of gripped by that, but just the sheer awfulness of it.

Speaker 20 But there was a big problem with the Gator theory.

Speaker 12 With such unusually cold temperatures, fish and wildlife officers like Alton Rayno knew the alligators weren't stirring much.

Speaker 43 His metabolism is down so low, he don't want to eat. They're like a bear.
They go into hibernation.

Speaker 33 Then, on the 10th day of searching, Officer Raynu found a hunter's hat floating on the water.

Speaker 31 Ryan, the best friend, thought it looked familiar.

Speaker 43 He comes up out here to the tent and shows us a photograph with Mike with that hat on.

Speaker 28 Surely that hat was as good as evidence that Mike had had an accident and drowned in Lake Seminole.

Speaker 11 Mike's coworkers, Liz Boyette and Christy Garrett, felt hope slip slip away.

Speaker 22 When did you both realize that this was it?

Speaker 26 I think we all knew that something had happened.

Speaker 3 True.

Speaker 45 After a few weeks had passed, we knew that Mike wasn't coming back.

Speaker 32 Months went by with no sign of Mike.

Speaker 19 And then in June, something of Mike's did literally surface that made people wonder.

Speaker 11 His chest high waiters.

Speaker 16 They were as clean as this new pair and showed no sign of a gator attack.

Speaker 39 We found no indication of any bite marks on the waders, no indication of any human remains whatsoever.

Speaker 17 Traces of Mike, but still no body.

Speaker 12 And how unusual that was for a lake not to give up its dead.

Speaker 30 Mike at that point was the only hunter, fisherman that had gone overboard in that lake that had never been found.

Speaker 15 Fish and wildlife officers were confounded.

Speaker 28 Eventually, the case of the missing boater was handed off to local sheriff's detectives to investigate.

Speaker 9 I remember telling some of the guys, investigators, we might want to look into this a little deeper because something don't add up.

Speaker 15 Duck hunter Mike Williams had disappeared on Lake Seminole, and his wife, Denise, was alone with a young daughter to raise.

Speaker 11 Their story began as high school sweethearts.

Speaker 24 He, the football star and student council president, she, the cheerleader and homecoming queen.

Speaker 20 Patty Ketchum, the wife of Mike's boss, got to know them both.

Speaker 22 Impressions of her, Patty?

Speaker 5 Oh, just as nice, just absolutely delightful. Absolutely delightful.

Speaker 33 After attending a private Christian high school, the two graduated from hometown Florida State University and got married.

Speaker 47 Their baby girl, Ansley, was born on Mother's Day.

Speaker 11 Denise was a CPA. Mike, meanwhile, had become an ACE real estate appraiser in his hometown, Tallahassee.

Speaker 16 Mike's boss, Clay Ketchum, was amazed that despite the 15-hour days Mike put in at the office, he always made time to take care of the home front.

Speaker 8 Make sure that dinner was ready,

Speaker 8 laundry got going.

Speaker 25 So he's Mr. Mom.

Speaker 8 He's Mr. Mom.
We all said we wanted to be married to Mike Williams. I mean, we all needed a Mike Williams in our life.

Speaker 31 Mike's co-workers took mischievous delight in wondering what Denise had in store for him when she called him at the office.

Speaker 5 I'm across the street, please.

Speaker 45 I need gas.

Speaker 45 He worked upstairs, so you hear this bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam down the steps. I guess Denise needs to be in the game.

Speaker 45 You have a small child and a wife to take care of?

Speaker 5 Sure. Yeah, you need to get insurance, you know.

Speaker 11 Brian, Mike's best friend and an insurance broker himself, helped Denise navigate the claims process.

Speaker 36 For as long as most people could remember, Denise and Mike and Brian and his wife Kathy had been couples together.

Speaker 13 They all attended that private Christian high school, married their high school sweethearts, and had children about the same time.

Speaker 16 And then came Lake Seminole.

Speaker 27 After a year had gone by since Mike disappeared, Denise asked Patty to take her to the lake.

Speaker 5 She told me how she had been going to a Christian counselor and he had encouraged her to do this.

Speaker 5 And she had a flower with her and she'd written Mike a note.

Speaker 46 And I guess probably 30, 45 minutes later, she came back and she'd been crying.

Speaker 34 The flower and the letter in particular.

Speaker 46 Those were left at the lake.

Speaker 20 Gone, but definitely not forgotten, according to Becky Moss, Denise's friend and co-worker.

Speaker 52 She loved him like a woman would love your life partner, your soulmate.

Speaker 8 The official death certificate said Mike mike drowned while duck hunting but for mike's family and friends doubts started creeping in spurred on by little things that just didn't add up like those waders found six months after mike disappeared they looked almost pristine no uh-uh something is wrong here at staged i thought staged because i know that anything left in a lake for any period of time is going to have algae on it Speculation gave way to suspicion.

Speaker 24 Could Mike's disappearance be the result of foul play?

Speaker 27 Enter the wild card, the squeakiest of squeaky wheels, Mike Williams' mother, who simply was not buying the official story that Mike, an experienced outdoorsman, had an accident on that lake.

Speaker 49 Ike is not in Lake Seminole.

Speaker 49 He did not drown.

Speaker 49 He did not get eaten by alligators.

Speaker 14 Some called Cheryl Williams with her pigtails eccentric, even crazy.

Speaker 19 But she demanded answers, appealing first to the media, and when she didn't get any results, she opened her purse and spent money she really couldn't afford.

Speaker 51 I take out an ad in the Tallahassee Democrat, and I ask the public to help me find my son. There was a $1,200 ad.

Speaker 32 Earnings from the daycare center she operated out of her home.

Speaker 51 You have to change a lot of diapers to pay for an ad that expensive. But it got publicity.

Speaker 3 Some of the daycare center kids, now all grown like Maria Denmark, remembered making missing person posters.

Speaker 5 I was only six years old when Mike went missing. I remember somebody would draw out Mike's name and missing, and then we would fill it in with like a black Sharpie.

Speaker 18 Miss Cheryl, as she became known, was a one-woman campaign.

Speaker 21 She wrote letters to the governor every day for years, 2,600 in all.

Speaker 16 She paid for billboards and stood outside churches with posters.

Speaker 51 The ministers would get mad because I was outside their church. Miss Williams, why don't you leave?

Speaker 54 Cheryl didn't.

Speaker 34 You were getting a reputation around town as this kind of batty lady with the pigtails out there with her signs and the billboards and the letters to the editor, and you became...

Speaker 51 Everybody called me crazy.

Speaker 20 But not everybody.

Speaker 16 Police began to take Cheryl seriously after years of her struggling to draw attention to Mike's case.

Speaker 10 Miss Cheryl is a straight shooter, and she tells it like it is.

Speaker 11 Will Mickler is an agent with the FDLE, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, a top cops agency with statewide jurisdiction.

Speaker 41 Four years after Mike went missing, they agreed to take the case.

Speaker 10 If it wasn't for Ms. Cheryl, this case would have never gotten into the hands of criminal investigators.

Speaker 32 But Mike's widow, Denise, didn't appreciate what Cheryl was doing.

Speaker 51 She's upset because she and her daddy said it was an invasion of their privacy.

Speaker 36 Denise's friend, Becky Moss, in her defense, said Denise told Cheryl to stop all the noise because it was confusing her daughter.

Speaker 52 Mrs. Williams had very strong feelings that Mike was still alive, and she was telling that to the little girl when, by all accounts, he was not.

Speaker 51 Nick and I never told Ansley that her daddy was alive. Never.

Speaker 41 Then, Denise upped the ante, laying down a demand to her mother-in-law, stop raising a ruckus, or Cheryl would never see her granddaughter Ansley again.

Speaker 51 So she followed through with her promise.

Speaker 47 And your granddaughter's gone.

Speaker 51 Totally gone out of my life. But I couldn't stop.
I had to find out what happened to Mike.

Speaker 11 And that smoldering stalemate between Cheryl and Denise held fast as the years went by.

Speaker 19 In time, Denise Williams began dating, even thinking about marriage with one of her suitors.

Speaker 16 But soon the rumor mill would be abuzz with a more sensational take on Denise's love life.

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Speaker 11 Duck seasons came and went as the years rolled by.

Speaker 25 Long after Mike Williams' ill-fated hunting trip, Denise was working for the state as an accountant, a young widow raising her daughter Annsley.

Speaker 19 She'd started dating again, and one day there was a new man in her life, someone with a very familiar name.

Speaker 30 And then all of a sudden we find out she's dating Brian Winchester.

Speaker 19 Brian, Mike's best friend and fishing and hunting buddy.

Speaker 28 Since their days as a happy foursome in high school and beyond, Brian and his wife Kathy had gotten a divorce.

Speaker 11 Friend Becky Moss said Brian wasn't Denise's first relationship after Mike.

Speaker 5 Denise dated other people.

Speaker 13 So she didn't fly right into his arms.

Speaker 52 No. I mean, she had reservations for a while.
He really kind of had to prove himself to her in terms of where he was at with his Christianity.

Speaker 11 Nonetheless, this was a juicy tidbit.

Speaker 41 Mike's best friend hooking up with the widow of the man who disappeared.

Speaker 33 It didn't take the court of public opinion long to do the math.

Speaker 29 Could Brian have had anything to do with Mike's disappearance?

Speaker 11 And what did Denise know? Those coffee shop conspiracies took wing when five years after Mike's disappearance, Brian married Denise.

Speaker 24 Mike's old boss and his wife were invited to the wedding.

Speaker 54 They'd heard the rumors too.

Speaker 8 The minister got up and said, there is nothing that I don't know

Speaker 8 between the two of them. And Patty and I kind of punched each other in the ribs and said, well, there might be one little piece of information that he's not aware of.

Speaker 11 Brian moved into the same house Mike and Denise had lived in together and began raising Mike's daughter.

Speaker 8 What really bothered me the most was the fact that they stayed in Mike's house.

Speaker 34 Raising that child.

Speaker 8 Raising the child and assumes the role of father.

Speaker 3 Takes over his life. Takes over his life.

Speaker 5 It's just, it's so creepy.

Speaker 33 For Cheryl, the marriage seemed to corroborate long-running suspicions that she'd worked like a sick tooth.

Speaker 41 She'd kept a detailed notebook about Mike's disappearance, and Brian and Denise were filling more and more pages in it.

Speaker 11 She alerted investigator Mike Devaney from the FDLE about her suspicions and shared a 27-page summary of her notes.

Speaker 58 She was a good source of information, and

Speaker 28 she was a real bulldog on this.

Speaker 15 Like this item, Cheryl noted.

Speaker 16 Remember those insurance policies Mike bought?

Speaker 36 They were worth $1.75 million.

Speaker 3 And it was Brian who actually sold Mike a large part of them.

Speaker 13 And those waiters that surfaced after Mike went missing were used by Denise's lawyer as evidence to declare Mike dead in just seven months so she could collect her money.

Speaker 16 That's better than icing icing on the cake if you're if one of your goals is to get the woman you also get the money that that was all that i really needed to know but the authorities needed much more than idle gossip tully sparkman an investigator for the prosecutor's office worked the case for 10 long years

Speaker 59 are suspicions getting grounded in the relationship between denise and brian or was it in the money trail or what it was all of it i mean it's it's it's a cumulative thing you start looking at you know the the the odd fact that the body never floated the waiters popping up.

Speaker 59 The money.

Speaker 15 So the investigators kept their eyes on the married couple, Brian and Denise, and bided their time.

Speaker 24 If either one of them was harboring a secret involving foul play, eventually it might have a corrosive effect on their relationship.

Speaker 59 Well, they're not going to turn on each other while they're married, but then you're waiting on things to flare up.

Speaker 41 And in 2012, seven years into their marriage, they did flare up.

Speaker 3 Brian moved out.

Speaker 14 Denise wanted a divorce, but Brian managed managed to put it off for years.

Speaker 22 So the marriage was finished at that point.

Speaker 3 I would say that.

Speaker 36 In August 2016, Brian did something that nearly ended very badly for Denise.

Speaker 40 The wild episode started one morning as Denise got in her car to go to work.

Speaker 3 Hiding in the back seat, Brian popped up, shoved a gun in her ribs, and said drive.

Speaker 24 Denise managed to pull into a shopping center parking lot where she talked Brian into letting her go.

Speaker 20 She promised she wouldn't tell police.

Speaker 3 But after Brian left, she did report her abduction.

Speaker 60 He's frightening and I'm just like shaky.

Speaker 19 Denise said it unhinged Brian, upset about the divorce, even threatened to take his own life.

Speaker 60 He kept saying, I've lost everything. I have nothing to live for many times.
I'm going to kill myself. Did he tell you how he was going to do that or where he was going to do that?

Speaker 60 No, but he said he bought the gun to do it. I said, did you actually plan to kill both of us today? She goes, well, me.

Speaker 32 As Denise relived the horror of the day, little did she know that in an adjoining room, an FDLE agent was listening.

Speaker 11 He wasn't interested in some high-voltage domestic quarrel, he wanted to know about Mike's disappearance and what Brian had to do with it, and what Denise might know.

Speaker 22 Denise's already very bad day was about to get infinitely worse.

Speaker 15 Denise Williams had been carjacked at gunpoint by her estranged husband, Brian Winchester.

Speaker 11 And now she was sitting in a police interview room giving her version of the abduction.

Speaker 60 What would lead you to this?

Speaker 60 I want to kill himself because, I mean, our marriage is over.

Speaker 11 But police believe Brian wasn't going to kill just himself, especially after Denise told them he'd brought along a tarpon bleach as well as the gun.

Speaker 60 Denise,

Speaker 60 he was going to kill you. He brought that stuff using the cover's tracks.

Speaker 37 For years, police felt that Brian and Denise were the keys to understanding Mike's disappearance.

Speaker 32 And now with the kidnapping, they believe Brian was taking no chances in getting rid of the one person who might know what he had done.

Speaker 60 I'm sure sometimes he told you something. I'm telling you, he killed Mike.
He was going to kill you if you go away.

Speaker 15 The detective pressed her, asking Denise if she really knew the man she'd married.

Speaker 60 That person you saw they could kill Mike, didn't he? That person couldn't. He did.
And that's who he was then. He has conned you to no end.

Speaker 60 It's not your fault. I mean, that person today could have done anything and anything.

Speaker 60 I didn't,

Speaker 60 that's not the person that I married. That's not the person that I knew.

Speaker 31 Mike Devaney, the FDLE lead agent, couldn't believe Denise was finally being questioned about what happened to Mike.

Speaker 58 FDL agents had approached Brian and Denise on one occasion, and they both refused to talk. They went straight to an attorney, and that was that.

Speaker 47 Devaney had waited a long time for this moment.

Speaker 31 Now it was his turn to enter the room and find out what Denise knew.

Speaker 60 40th March, Berry.

Speaker 60 Oh, I have no idea.

Speaker 56 You don't really believe he died on the lake.

Speaker 60 I do. Why?

Speaker 60 I just always have. That's what I believe.

Speaker 16 Denise tried to steer the interview back to the kidnap.

Speaker 60 I mean,

Speaker 60 this was your husband.

Speaker 60 Something vanished. I'm not comfortable talking about this right now.

Speaker 60 I've had an unbelievable day.

Speaker 14 Devaney kept pushing, telling Denise if she didn't talk, he might get the story from someone else.

Speaker 60 I'd much rather get it from you

Speaker 60 than from Brian, because when he's a resident, I've talked to him too. That's fine.
I don't want to see what he says.

Speaker 60 Okay.

Speaker 60 He may say something you don't want to hear. I don't know.
Well, I had no idea. You have nothing.

Speaker 24 For now, the mystery of Mike's disappearance remained just that.

Speaker 15 But Brian was arrested and charged with kidnapping Denise.

Speaker 40 He pleaded not guilty to those charges.

Speaker 21 But a year later, he changed his plea to no contest.

Speaker 3 It comes down to my life or his.

Speaker 3 And I'm asking you, please, to choose mine.

Speaker 19 At sentencing, Denise appealed to the judge to give him a life sentence.

Speaker 4 He will finish what he has started, no matter what age he is when he is released. I'm asking you to sentence him to life in prison for the crimes he has committed.

Speaker 15 In the end, the judge gave Brian Winchester 20 years.

Speaker 36 In court, nothing had been said about Mike Williams.

Speaker 8 When they shuffled him off, we walked out and I looked at Patty and I said, well, that's it. The door has just been slammed on whatever happened to Mike, and we will never know.

Speaker 27 But the next day, FDLE had a major announcement.

Speaker 19 They'd found a skeletal body in a shallow grave.

Speaker 61 The human remains are those of Mike Williams.

Speaker 16 After all those years, it was over.

Speaker 36 Police were mum on how they'd found Mike's body, but speculation was that Brian had led them to it.

Speaker 61 Further forensic analysis concluded that Mike Williams was in fact murdered.

Speaker 23 And his body wasn't in Lake Seminole after all.

Speaker 32 It was 50 miles away, back in Tallahassee off a dead end road by another swampy lake.

Speaker 49 I said, he can't be dead. He can't be.
And they said, it's Mike. I said, you know that? And they said, yes, we've done all the DNA.

Speaker 19 FDLE agent Will Mickler broke the news to Denise.

Speaker 10 I saw her tear up when the death notification was provided to her that Mike Williams' remains had been

Speaker 10 identified and located.

Speaker 23 Now, you'd think with the recovery of the body, murder charges would be filed forthwith.

Speaker 18 But that didn't happen.

Speaker 25 Detectives continued to investigate.

Speaker 15 They had another suspect in their sights.

Speaker 53 And what a sensation that turned out to be.

Speaker 40 Five months after Mike's body was recovered, a perp walk to remember.

Speaker 15 Denise Williams in handcuffs being marched by cops from her office at Florida State University.

Speaker 12 She was charged with the first-degree murder of her first husband, Mike.

Speaker 17 It was her daughter Ansley's 19th birthday.

Speaker 19 The indictment said that Denise had conspired with Brian Winchester to kill his best friend, Mike.

Speaker 24 She pleaded not guilty.

Speaker 19 But Denise was the only one charged.

Speaker 3 What about Brian?

Speaker 51 They told us that they had had to make a

Speaker 51 deal with the devil.

Speaker 19 Some called it the deal of the century.

Speaker 62 Really, what they wanted was information of what happened to Mike, where the body was.

Speaker 15 His attorney, Tim Jansen, said prosecutors had but one priority, to find Mike's body.

Speaker 62 They never said to him, you have to give any evidence against Denise.

Speaker 17 But he would.

Speaker 11 In exchange for his testimony against Denise, Brian got 20 years for the kidnapping and would not face murder charges.

Speaker 42 State of Florida versus Denise Williams.

Speaker 16 Almost 18 years after Mike Williams disappeared, Denise went on trial.

Speaker 19 She faced a mandatory life sentence if convicted.

Speaker 40 Prosecutors had a lineup of witnesses, FDLE agents, fish and wildlife officers, and Mike's mother, their head barely showing above the witness box.

Speaker 15 Yes.

Speaker 19 And the jury met Brian's first wife, Kathy.

Speaker 63 Did you suspect that Brian Winchester, your husband, was having an affair with Denise Williams?

Speaker 7 I did suspect that.

Speaker 15 Suspicions that were confirmed after Brian asked her to join them in a threesome at a beach condo before the murder.

Speaker 11 There were snapshots with partial nudity. Kathy also said Denise tried to involve her in a cover-up after Brian's arrest.

Speaker 52 To get a message to Brian

Speaker 7 that I'm not talking.

Speaker 16 But those witnesses were merely the side dishes to the state's main course.

Speaker 36 The mesmerizing confession of Brian Winchester.

Speaker 37 It was a stunning story of betrayals.

Speaker 12 A wife betraying her husband.

Speaker 19 Her lover betraying his best friend.

Speaker 3 I had my gun in the boat.

Speaker 16 And a confession from the stand you'll never be able to unhear.

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Speaker 7 I'm Elena, and I'm Ash, and we are the hosts of Morbid Podcast. Each week, we dive into the dark and fascinating world of true crime, spooky history, and the unexplained.

Speaker 7 From infamous killers and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends, we cover it all with research, empathy, humor, and a few creative expletives.

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Speaker 44 Denise Williams was standing trial for first-degree murder, conspiring in the death of her first husband, Mike.

Speaker 11 And who was she accused of conspiring with?

Speaker 15 Why, her now ex-husband, number two, and Mike's best friend, Brian Winchester.

Speaker 24 He would be the state's star witness against her, required to testify to every grisly detail.

Speaker 16 Prosecutors John Fuchs and Andy Rogers knew their star witness came with some baggage.

Speaker 53 You guys have to worry whether the jury is going to hate your star witness, Brian?

Speaker 66 There's no question they were going to hate him.

Speaker 66 That from day one was obvious. We hate him.

Speaker 63 They walk out, they don't believe Brian Winchester.

Speaker 40 She walks.

Speaker 44 Now here he was.

Speaker 11 Brian Winchester, looking haggard and drawn after almost two years in jail on the kidnapping charge, about to tell his story of duck hunting, sex, and murder.

Speaker 56 We connected like nobody else.

Speaker 14 Brian said he and Denise had been secret lovers for three years before Mike Williams was murdered.

Speaker 56 The more we were together, the more we wanted to be together. It just snowballed.

Speaker 19 So fast that within two years, Denise and Brian were plotting Mike's so-called accident on Lake Seminole.

Speaker 56 I think there was even talk about, you know, well, it'll be up to God what happens and not us. It won't be a murder.
It'll be, you know, an accident.

Speaker 15 To most people, divorce would have been a better solution.

Speaker 11 But Brian said Denise, a devout Christian, didn't want to endure the stigma.

Speaker 56 Because of the way she was raised, because of her pride, I guess she did not want to get divorced. I mean, we wanted to be together

Speaker 56 and we weren't going to let anything stop that.

Speaker 22 Better to be a killer than a divorcee.

Speaker 66 A widow gets sympathy.

Speaker 66 And on top of that, she gets $1.75 million.

Speaker 33 So the weekend of the wedding anniversary became D-Day.

Speaker 11 Bryant testified Mike was not hunting alone.

Speaker 57 He was along as his early morning duck hunting buddy.

Speaker 11 They pushed off.

Speaker 36 The plan was to make it look like Mike drowned in a boating accident.

Speaker 11 The murder weapon would be Mike's waiters.

Speaker 56 We believed that if you fell overboard with the waders on, that you would sink pretty quickly. We got to that area that I knew was a deep area.

Speaker 60 I

Speaker 56 basically stopped the boat and got him to stand up. And when he did, I pushed him into the water.

Speaker 66 What happened next?

Speaker 56 He was in the water

Speaker 56 and he was

Speaker 56 like struggling. I

Speaker 56 pulled off just a little bit to get kind of away from him so that he couldn't reach back into the boat.

Speaker 56 And I didn't know it at the time. I didn't know if he was trying to swim or

Speaker 56 I didn't know what was going on. But what I came to find out or eventually realized was he was taking the waders and the jacket off.

Speaker 37 Mike made it to a tree stump and clung for dear life.

Speaker 16 That's when Brian decided to change the plan. And he was panicking and I was panicking.

Speaker 56 And none of this was like going how I thought it was going to go. He was, he started to yell.

Speaker 56 And so

Speaker 56 I had my gun in the boat.

Speaker 56 And

Speaker 56 so I loaded my gun

Speaker 56 and I just

Speaker 56 made

Speaker 56 one or two circles around,

Speaker 56 and I ended up

Speaker 56 circling closer towards him,

Speaker 56 and he was in the water.

Speaker 56 And as I passed by,

Speaker 60 I shot him.

Speaker 60 Where did you shoot him?

Speaker 56 The head.

Speaker 11 Autopsy x-rays showed buckshot throughout Mike's head.

Speaker 12 As the details emerged emerged in court, Cheryl was struck yet another blow.

Speaker 51 What's hard for me now is what I found out in court was how he was murdered.

Speaker 54 It's a horrible story.

Speaker 49 They told me the only consolation I could have was that Michael

Speaker 49 didn't feel it.

Speaker 3 He was dead immediately.

Speaker 37 Brian said after blasting Mike with his 12-gauge, he grabbed his lifeless body and steered the boat to shore.

Speaker 56 And I pushed the boat back out into the water

Speaker 56 to make it look like he had drowned or disappeared.

Speaker 28 On shore, he stuffed Mike's body into a dog crate in the back of his truck and drove back to Tallahassee, where he found an isolated area to bury his friend.

Speaker 41 Later that day, when Brian got a call from his father saying Mike was missing, the two drove to Lake Seminole.

Speaker 56 There was a storm that came through that night.

Speaker 56 You know, my dad wanted to look at it.

Speaker 56 I think we were the last ones on the lake, and my dad didn't want to give up. My dad loved Mike.

Speaker 31 With no body ever found in the lake, Brian testified they grew concerned about their other incentive to murder Mike.

Speaker 56 The concern between she and I then became:

Speaker 56 well, if his body's not found, what's going to happen with the life insurance?

Speaker 32 Brian admitted to staging the hack found 10 days into the search.

Speaker 56 I was the one that put it in the water during one of my searches on the lake to kind of confirm that he had drowned.

Speaker 19 And for the next 16 years, Brian said he and Denise kept a mafia-like oath of silence.

Speaker 22 It is riveting testimony, this first-person story of taking a best friend out and killing him.

Speaker 44 And you can tell from the jurors that they're on the edge of their seat.

Speaker 15 It was strong, emotional testimony. But would it be strong enough to convict?

Speaker 16 That would be for the jury to say.

Speaker 31 Now Defense Attorney Ethan Way rose with his goals set upon demolishing the star witness' credibility.

Speaker 52 Mr. Winchester, you're a murderer, isn't it true?

Speaker 37 The prosecution case would live or die by its star witness.

Speaker 16 Would jurors believe Brian Winchester?

Speaker 22 Does it come to a matter of jurors? It's he said, she said.

Speaker 3 Pick one. Yes.

Speaker 29 Who do you believe?

Speaker 43 I believe her.

Speaker 68 Every day, twice on Sunday.

Speaker 56 I had my gun in the boat.

Speaker 40 Brian's chilling account of murdering his best friend in a plot with Mike's wife, Denise, was an award-worthy performance, thought Denise's attorney, Ethan Way.

Speaker 12 Compelling, that is, if you were a sucker for crocodile tears.

Speaker 55 He is a well-rehearsed, well-trained, well-timed liar.

Speaker 19 Denise's defense boiled down to Brian being an obsessed lone wolf.

Speaker 55 He coveted Denise.

Speaker 61 He had this desire to have her.

Speaker 19 The defense said he was the only killer.

Speaker 16 She had nothing to do with his murderous craziness.

Speaker 11 In cross-examination, the defense wanted jurors to see that Brian's only goal was to save his own bacon by implicating Denise.

Speaker 44 And for his efforts, he wasn't charged with murder.

Speaker 16 and got just 20 years in prison for kidnapping her.

Speaker 67 He got to jail on August 5th, 2016 on the charges of armed kidnapping. You didn't straight away go to law enforcement and volunteer the details of the Mike Williams murder, did you?

Speaker 56 Absolutely not.

Speaker 67 In fact, while you were in jail, you decided you were going to take certain steps to try to frustrate the prosecution of the armed kidnapping case. Isn't that true?

Speaker 56 Yes, sir. I was desperate to do anything that I possibly could to avoid going to prison.

Speaker 54 Like having a discussion with one jail inmate who offered to kill Denise and get others to lie in his kidnapping case.

Speaker 56 He did offer to

Speaker 56 make Denise go away and make other witnesses in the case go away. And I've said, don't ever speak to me of that again.

Speaker 67 So you were drawing the line at having witnesses eliminated?

Speaker 56 Yes, sir.

Speaker 67 You were not drawing the line at having witness testimony and other evidence fabricated.

Speaker 56 Correct.

Speaker 31 With the possibility of new charges for witness tampering, the defense said that's when Brian agreed to a deal.

Speaker 11 In exchange for his deal, he has to throw her under the bus.

Speaker 22 He has to deliver.

Speaker 55 Well, he has to deliver, but he also gets a revenge element.

Speaker 58 Denise is the one that turned him in.

Speaker 58 If Denise Williams was involved in this murder in any way, why would she take the one person that can incriminate her and turn him into law enforcement and have him locked up?

Speaker 19 As for the actual murder, the defense got Brian to admit it was he and he alone pulling the trigger.

Speaker 33 Denise was an hour away at home in Tallahassee with the baby.

Speaker 67 When you shot Mike Williams at Lake Seminol with a 12-gauge shotgun, was Denise Williams standing there with you?

Speaker 56 No, she wasn't. She was in my head behind me.

Speaker 67 Is it fair to say that over the years you've been obsessed with Denise Williams?

Speaker 56 Obsessed.

Speaker 56 Denise and I were best friends. We were Bonnie and Clyde.
We were partners in crime.

Speaker 29 Then why, the defense asked, was his Bonnie in the dark about what actually happened at the lake?

Speaker 67 Denise Williams had no idea that you shot her husband in the face with a shotgun, did she?

Speaker 56 Correct. I tried to tell her about it one day, and she did not want to know the details.
She told me that she

Speaker 56 assumed that what we had planned did not happen, and God was going to forgive us.

Speaker 40 In the end, the defense attorney got Brian to tell jurors exactly why they should not believe him.

Speaker 67 Mr. Winchester, you're a murderer, isn't it true?

Speaker 56 Yes, sir.

Speaker 67 Mr. Winchester, you're a liar, isn't it true?

Speaker 56 Yes, sir.

Speaker 48 You got him to say yes to both those things.

Speaker 58 I have probably in 20 years never had a witness come right out and say boldly and emphatically that they are a liar.

Speaker 15 In his final remarks to the jury, attorney Ethan Way argued, if you exclude Brian's lying testimony, you're left with nothing forensically, evidentially, tying Denise to the murder.

Speaker 69 This case is only about crying Winchester. It is only about him killing Mike Williams.
It is only about him doing the most heinous thing that can be done.

Speaker 3 In his closing remarks, Prosecutor Fuchs pointed to Denise.

Speaker 66 That one person sat here and listened to Brian Winchester describe

Speaker 48 how he had shot and killed her husband, the man she supposedly loved and cherished.

Speaker 48 Absolute stone face.

Speaker 48 Didn't bat an eye, didn't shed a tear.

Speaker 15 With that, the jury had the case.

Speaker 19 And remember, a point easy to lose sight of, it was Denise on trial for murder, not Brian.

Speaker 24 The waiting began.

Speaker 46 Did you feel pretty good about things?

Speaker 25 I was feeling pretty confident.

Speaker 24 I mean, I wasn't 100%

Speaker 55 sure either.

Speaker 16 Like, we didn't have a slam dunk case.

Speaker 52 There is no evidence. There is no proof.
She did nothing wrong.

Speaker 16 She just has the story told by the ex-husband.

Speaker 52 Exactly.

Speaker 25 Late that night, about eight hours into deliberations, a verdict.

Speaker 11 Cheryl had waited 18 years for this moment.

Speaker 42 State of Florida versus Denise Williams.

Speaker 23 Cheryl's jaw dropped when she heard the decision.

Speaker 42 We the jury find the defendant is guilty of first-degree murder.

Speaker 3 Guilty on all counts.

Speaker 51 We cut justice for Mike.

Speaker 49 And this was about justice for Mike.

Speaker 51 He loved Denise.

Speaker 49 His wedding ring was on his hand when they found his remains.

Speaker 11 The conviction meant a mandatory life sentence for Denise Williams. Our interview with Cheryl and Nick came on a very difficult day.

Speaker 24 Ms.

Speaker 22 Cheryl, this is an important day as we sit here, isn't it?

Speaker 14 This is an anniversary day.

Speaker 51 Yes, sir.

Speaker 51 It's the 18th anniversary of Mike's disappearance. Now that I now know that it's his murder.

Speaker 22 What'd you learn about yourself in the midst of all this?

Speaker 51 I do believe in what's right, and I will stand up and I will fight for that.

Speaker 61 All right, Court is back in session.

Speaker 55 But even with the guilty verdict, it wasn't quite over.

Speaker 29 An appeals court threw out the first-degree murder conviction, citing a lack of evidence, but let stand the murder conspiracy charge.

Speaker 32 Cheryl went through another painful sentencing hearing.

Speaker 16 After hearing from her and other witnesses, the judge sentenced Denise to 30 years in prison. She'll be 77 years old when she gets out.

Speaker 20 That's all for now.

Speaker 12 I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 14 Thanks for joining us.

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