Witness details how he killed lover’s husband for insurance

Attorney describes the case against woman as ‘sex, lies and deceit’

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — With a plot that echoes a well-known Hollywood masterpiece, a trial began Tuesday for a Florida woman accused of helping orchestrate the death of her husband in order to secure a massive insurance payout.

Prosecutors contended that Denise Williams planned the December 2000 slaying of her husband with a man that she was having an affair with and later married. On a cold morning in north Florida, Mike Williams disappeared while duck hunting on a large lake west of Tallahassee; initially, it was believed that he had fallen from his boat and that his body had been devoured by alligators. His disappearance triggered a massive search by local and state authorities.

It was revealed years later that Williams had died from a shotgun blast to the head and had been buried near a lake north of the state capital. The man who shot him was his best friend and insurance agent Brian Winchester, who confessed last year to the killing and repeated that confession in court. At the time of his death, Williams had three life insurance policies worth $1.75 million.

“Sex, lies and deceit,” was how Assistant State Attorney Jon Fuchs described the case against 48-year-old Denise Williams, which resembles the plot of the famed 1940s film noir classic “Double Indemnity.”

Williams is charged with firstdegree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and accessory after the fact in her husband’s killing.

Without a body, Denise Williams petitioned to have him declared dead due to accidental drowning. She married Winchester in December 2005, but the relationship soured and they divorced in 2016.

Last year, Winchester pleaded no contest to kidnapping his ex-wife at gunpoint and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. The very next day, authorities announced that Mike Williams’ remains were found at the end of a dead-end road after they received “new information.” The body had been discovered two months earlier, but the state’s Department of Law Enforcement needed to confirm through DNA tests that it was actually Mike Williams.