Wife swap kidnap and murder plot
Was he killed by a predatory reptile... or human hand?
A grisly, harrowing end to his life...
Couples Mike and Denise Williams and Kathy Thomas and Brian Winchester had a lot in common. The husbands and wives were close friends, had each been childhood sweethearts with their partners.
They’d had picture-perfect lives, growing up in sunny Florida. All four had been classmates at North Florida Christian School, before each marrying in 1994.
Children soon followed, and the couples would double date and take holidays together.
But on 16 December 2000, tragedy struck...
In the early hours, Mike took his boat out to go duck hunting on Lake Seminole. And never returned.
Distraught, his wife Denise reported Mike missing, and the authorities sent out search parties.
His friend
Brian joined the desperate hunt for him.
After 44 days, only
Mike’s empty boat had been found. He’d disappeared without a trace.
The police speculated it was likely
Mike had fallen into the water, drowned, and his body had been devoured by alligators.
It would have been a grisly, harrowing end to the 31-year-old’s happy life. Devastated, Denise was left to raise their toddler alone. Six months later, she petitioned the court to have Mike declared legally dead, before collecting $1.75million (around £1.35m) life insurance.
With the foursome now a trio, they tried to move on. But nothing was the same again.
A few years later, Kathy and Brian divorced – then, in a surprising twist, Brian and Denise became a couple.
And in 2006, Brian married his best friend’s widow.
Mike’s mum Cheryl had always been convinced something sinister had happened to her son, and now detectives started to listen. They reopened the case. Experts informed them that alligators don’t generally feed during the winter months.
Plus, six months after his disappearance, Mike’s waders had been found in perfect condition – no teeth marks or evidence of human remains.
Of 80 known deaths in Lake Seminole, only one body had never been found – Mike’s.
The alligator theory was now ruled out.
Still, it wasn’t until Denise and Brian’s marriage soured, years on, that the investigators made a breakthrough.
The couple separated in 2012, and Denise filed for divorce in 2015. But then, in August 2016, things turned ugly when Brian kidnapped Denise at gunpoint.
He let her go soon after, but she reported him to the police.
Brian was arrested. And the police officers became suspicious...
Could this all be linked to Mike Williams’ disappearance?
The detectives saw an opportunity to finally discover the truth about what happened to Mike all those years before.
In December 2017, Brian Winchester was sentenced to 20 years in prison, after pleading no contest to kidnapping.
But, shortly after, the police made a shocking announcement.
They’d found Mike’s body two months earlier, in October 2017.
It emerged that Brian had reached a plea deal – he’d get immunity for Mike’s murder as long as he told the police everything.
So he’d told them that he and Denise had planned Mike’s murder together.
He admitted inviting Mike on a duck-hunting trip that winter day 17 years earlier.
And to shooting him at close range, before burying his body. But why?
Because he and Mike’s wife Denise had been having an affair for three years.
Brian and Denise wanted Mike gone, so they could be together and claim the insurance money.
The police visited the site where Brian told them he’d disposed of Mike’s body.
After five days, they found Mike’s skeletal remains buried under 6ft of mud. He was still wearing his wedding ring.
When Brian and Denise had divorced, Brian had worried that she’d tell the police their long-kept secret, so he held her at gunpoint, threatening her to make her keep quiet.
Ironically, it was Denise reporting this incident that led to her own arrest.
In May last year, Denise Williams was charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. She denied everything. And, to those who knew her, Denise’s arrest was a big shock.
Friends said that Denise had always made the effort to tell her daughter what an amazing man her father was.
To them, the idea that Denise played a part in Mike’s murder simply didn’t make sense.
Last December, Denise
Williams faced trial at county court.
Brian’s first wife Kathy testified that, shortly after Mike’s disappearance, she’d begun to suspect her husband Brian and Denise of an affair.
‘Whenever it was just me with Brian and Denise, it was uncomfortable,’ she said.
‘I felt like the third wheel, I felt like I was on a date with the two of them.’
Brian Winchester took the stand and tearfully admitted he and Denise had been having an affair for three years. He said they were so desperate to be together, they hatched their cold-blooded plan and he’d lured Mike to the lake. He’d intended to push his best friend overboard, hoping his waders would fill with water and drag him to his death. But, once in the water, Mike managed to struggle out of his long boots and jacket. Panicking, Brian shot him in the head. He stuffed his friend’s body into a dog crate and travelled to Tallahassee to bury the body at a hunting spot. Then he went back to Lake Seminole and joined the search for Mike. The prosecutors pointed out that Denise showed little emotion as Brian Winchester described Mike’s brutal murder.
‘She sat here stone-faced – didn’t bat an eye.
Didn’t shed a tear,’ the prosecution lawyer told the jurors.
Yet Denise’s defence denied the entire story.
They claimed that there was no evidence that she was having an affair with Brian, or that she helped plot her first husband Mike’s killing.
They said there was no tangible evidence at all that connected Denise to the crime – that the only thing the prosecution had was Brian’s testimony, the ‘word of a murderer and a convicted felon’.
The jury had to decide. Was Denise a grieving widow, targeted by her bitter, murderous ex, Brian?
Had he dropped innocent Denise in it, simply to save his own neck?
Or was she equally responsible for Mike’s murder, guilty of stealing his life away for her own gain?
What do you think? Turn for the verdict...
GUILTY
Denise Williams, 48, was found guilty of the firstdegree murder and conspiracy to commit the murder of her childhood sweetheart Mike almost two decades earlier.
This February, Williams was sentenced to life in prison.
Mike’s grieving mother Cheryl said, ‘When I try to sleep at night, I will see my son clinging to a tree stump in Lake Seminole in the dark, knowing that his best friend is trying to kill him.
‘I hear his voice screaming for help. I wasn’t there to help him. It will haunt me forever.’
Williams’ lawyers said they plan to appeal her conviction.