Mike Williams: Alligators Blamed in Murder of Florida Duck Hunter

What Happened to Mike Williams?

It was a frigid morning on December 16, 2000, in Tallahassee, Florida. Mike Williams left his home around 3 a.m. to travel to Lake Seminole, about an hour away.

It was duck season, and he wanted to be on the water before dawn to get his spot at first light. Mike told his mother, Cheryl Williams, that Lake Seminole had always been an extraordinary place for him.

By late afternoon, Mike’s wife, Denise Williams, began calling around and asking if anyone had heard from or seen him. He failed to return home after the trip as promised, as it was his marriage anniversary.

She called her father and a friend named Brian Winchester to look around the lake.

The Search

Denise’s father and Brian Winchester found Mike's truck parked along the shoreline at a remote boat ramp. Nothing appeared to be amiss, but Mike was nowhere to be found.

Williams' brother Nick and dozens of friends went to the lake to search. They were joined by officials from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, along with two helicopters and airboats.

Late that night, Mike’s best friend Brian Winchester found his boat. The gas tank was full, and Mike’s duck decoys had never been used, meaning he could not have been on the water long.

Officials searched for days and turned up nothing. On day 10 of the search, a searcher found what looked like Mike’s hat floating in the water. They searched for an additional 56 days and could not find his body. It would not be hard to drown in Lake Seminole by hitting a tree stump. Officials and even experienced hunters speculated he drowned, and addressed the terrifying possibility that Mike was eaten by the many alligators there.

However, that theory was erased due to the weather. A cold snap brought the temperatures down to the 20s the night he vanished. Fish and Wildlife Officer Alton Ranew said alligators’ metabolism decreases, and they don’t eat when it’s that cold. They hibernate for the winter.

Six months later, something else surfaced. His hunting jacket with his hunting license inside and high waders were found. The clothing had no tears or bite marks, so an alligator attack was ruled out.

Meanwhile, Denise had filed to have Mike declared legally dead. A Leon County judge granted Denise’s petition based on the recovered items and the assumption that alligators and other wildlife had eaten him in his entirety.

The court decision permitted Denise to put a claim on her missing husband’s life insurance policy, for which she received $1.5 million.

Mike's Early Life

Jerry Michael “Mike” Williams grew up in Bradfordville, Florida, north of Tallahassee. His mother was a daycare provider, and his father was a Greyhound bus driver. They raised Mike and his older brother Nick in a double-wide trailer. They opted not to build a house and saved their money so their children could attend the private North Florida Christian High School. Mike was an exceptional student who was active in the Key Club and served as student council president. He also played football.

“Mike was a child who was always in a hurry,” his mother told Cold Case Files. “He never walked; he ran.”

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At age 15, Mike began duck hunting. It was around that time he started seeing a fellow student named Denise Merrell.

After attending North Florida Christian, Mike attended Florida State University, majoring in political science and urban planning. Before he graduated, he was hired by Ketcham Appraisal Group as a property appraiser. According to the group’s owner, Mike was the hardest-working person he ever saw.

Mike married Denise in 1994. Their daughter was born in 1999. Mike was a dedicated father who often came home from work to eat dinner, then returned to work as a real estate appraiser after his wife and daughter went to bed.

According to his mother, Mike was making $200k a year and bought a home in a stylish subdivision on the east side of Tallahassee.

“Mike was a good, honest person,” Cheryl told A&E. “He always worked for everything he got.”

Mike’s father died in mid-2000. Shortly after, Mike and Denise bought a $1.75 million life insurance policy through his friend Brian Winchester. Brian was a childhood acquaintance of Mike and Denise, and Mike's best friend.

Two days before Mike vanished, he and Denise told his brother Nick and Mike’s mother that they planned on having another child soon. Denise also said they planned to cruise to Hawaii that spring. Mike also planned on traveling to Jamaica for work. There was no reason why Mike would ever walk away from his life.

Rumors and Developments

Investigators felt the facts in Mike's disappearance were inconsistent with the alligator theory, but regardless, the case went cold.

There was one person who was not satisfied with the search—his mother.

Cheryl believed her son might still be alive, but she wanted police to investigate. She requested help from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) in 2004, who finally agreed they would initiate an investigation.

By then, in 2005, rumors began to swirl. Denise had received her share of the life insurance policy and married Brian Winchester, who had divorced his wife a few years earlier. They even remained residing in Mike’s house.

After the wedding, FDLE investigators began focusing on Denise and Winchester. Cheryl Williams told officials that Denise threatened that she could no longer visit her granddaughter if she continued to pursue the investigation.

When Cheryl told Denise, “I couldn’t stop this investigation if I wanted to,” Denise kept her promise and no longer let Cheyl see her granddaughter Anslee.

Case Closed

By 2006, investigators no longer returned Cheryl’s calls, and she became agitated. In early 2007, FDLE closed the case. They were convinced the alligator story was not true, but they had no leads or evidence in the case that would allow them to continue investigating. However, a new lead was developed in October 2007.

Michael’s older brother found a photograph and serial number for a Ruger .22 caliber pistol that had once belonged to their father. Michael had inherited it after his father’s death, and it was the only firearm not returned to former in-laws by Denise when Michael was declared deceased.

Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) visited Denise and Winchester’s house to interview them. Several days later, their attorney brought the gun to FDLE, and it was sent to the state forensics lab for DNA testing.

The couple have never been vocal in the case, even though Brian Winchester was Michael’s best friend. However, on the anniversary of Mike’s disappearance that year, the Winchesters made a public statement.

“For seven years, we have prayed and hoped to find out what happened to Mike,” Brian said in an email to the Tallahassee Democrat. “Nobody wants Mike found more than we do.”

Lobbying Efforts

Cheryl would not be dissuaded from continuing the search for her son despite the FDLE investigation coming to another close.

She became frustrated with FDLE, believing they were incompetent and lacking interest in solving the case.

On New Year’s Day in 2012, Cheryl began writing one letter per day to Governor Rick Scott, requesting another agency to investigate or assign a special prosecutor. She wrote over 200 letters without acknowledgment and began to inquire why.

It turned out that the governor’s office had forwarded the unopened letters to FDLE, where they were placed in the case file. Cheryl was distraught.

“They could not have hurt me more if they had punched me in the face,” she told the Tallahassee Democrat.

Break in the Case

In 2012, Denise and Brian separated, supposedly because of his sex addiction. She filed for divorce in 2015.

In August 2016, Winchester abducted Denise at gunpoint. Investigators thought Winchester was going to kill her to stop her from telling officials what she knew about Mike's disappearance.

This was the break authorities had been waiting for.

Winchester was arrested for kidnapping, domestic assault, and armed burglary, but his attorney was able to maneuver a deal for him. If he showed the police where he buried Mike's body and told them the truth about Mike's murder, they would only charge him for the abduction of Denise and not the murder of Mike.

Winchester was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the kidnapping of Denise in December 2017. He is now serving his sentence at Madison Correctional Institution in Raiford, Florida. His release date is July 30, 2036.

Discovery of the Body

Mike was not mentioned at Winchester's sentencing; however, State Attorney Jack Campbell told the media that he had hoped that the Winchester case would somehow solve Mike's disappearance.

It would later be found out that Winchester had reached an agreement with prosecutors before the sentencing that they would not pursue a life sentence on the kidnapping charge. Further agreement details between Winchester and the prosecutors have never been released.

The following day, FDLE Special Agent in Charge Mark Perez announced Mike's body had been found, and his death was determined to be a homicide.

Afterward, the FDLE released that Mike's remains were found within five miles of where he grew up at a dead end on Gardner Road in northern Leon County. His DNA matched his mother's.

FDLE disclosed they had received information about the location of the body in early October 2017.

County works employees utilized backhoes for what they were only told was an exercise. They dug for five 16-hour days in nine feet of mud at the corner of the lake. During the effort, they had to hold back the lake water by dams and pumps while working amidst water moccasins and eels.

On October 18, 2017, search dogs and investigators found Mike’s remains in mud with plywood stacked on top only five miles from his mother’s home. According to the Tallahassee Democrat, 98% of his bones were located and remarkably preserved, including his clothing, winter gloves, and booties.

Wife's Arrest

On May 8, 2018, Denise Williams was arrested at Florida State University, where she was employed. She was arrested when she left work to celebrate her daughter’s 19th birthday.

Only hours before, the grand jury had indicted her on charges of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, and accessory after the fact.

Winchester had testified before a grand jury that he and Denise had planned to kill Mike for the insurance and that they had been lovers for three years before Mike was murdered.

Two FDLE investigators went to notify Cheryl of the indictment.

Two days later, the three-page indictment was released. In it, investigators believed that Denise began to conspire with Winchester in March 2000, only nine months before Mike vanished. Winchester is alleged to have shot Mike with a gun.

Denise’s lawyer, Ethan Way, said Denise had nothing to do with Mike’s murder and that Winchester acted on his own. Way entered a not-guilty plea.

The Trial of Denise Williams

In late June 2018, Denise was held without bond, and her trial date was scheduled for September 24.

The court played audio of Winchester’s interview. In the recording, he admitted to pulling the trigger of the gun but that it had been Denise’s idea. Her attorney argued that the tape should not be entered into evidence because, despite Winchester admitting he murdered Mike, he was not charged with anything. The court denied the motion.

Winchester was the state’s star witness against Denise and testified at length that he and Denise had never ended their high school relationship, even after both married.

“Denise made it clear she would never get divorced, primarily because of appearances because she is ultra-concerned of how she appears to the world,” Mike told investigators. “She wanted a scenario where it was an accident.”

Winchester described in dreadful detail how he pushed Mike from his boat, hoping his waders would sink him. When Mike resurfaced, he circled the boat around him several times, then he shot Mike in the face with a shotgun, later burying his body in Leon County.

“I wanted to get something to hide his body, so I got a tarp and a shovel,” Winchester told the court.

While it took nearly 18 years to get the real details behind Mike's disappearance, it only took a jury eight hours to find Denise guilty of first-degree murder, a life sentence with no possibility of parole. The prosecutors had proved Denise was the mastermind.

On November 25, 2020, the court reversed her first-degree murder charge, and the accompanying life sentence was reversed on appeal. However, the charge of conspiracy to commit murder remains active with a 30-year sentence.

Denise is serving time at the Florida Women’s Reception Center in Ocala, Florida, with a release date of October 17, 2046.

A Mother's Dedication

Mike would not have been found without his mother’s courage and grit, which kept his story alive for so many years. Cheryl refused to believe alligators had eaten her son in a duck hunting accident.

Shortly after her son’s disappearance, Cheryl visited Lake Seminole, looking for hope. She told A&E:

“I was standing on this little board out on the water, and this voice came to me just as clear as a bell, and it said, 'Mike is not in Lake Seminole. You have to find him and bring him home.' So I thought Michael was alive.”

She set out to find her son and would go to any lengths. She put up billboards around town, placed newspaper ads, and even stood on street corners with signs.

“I just did what any mother would do,” Cheryl told the Tallahassee Democrat in 2020. “If I had known he was dead, I wouldn’t have been able to do what I did.”

Cheryl sat in the courtroom, listening to the gruesome details of how Michael was clinging to a stump in the water as his best friend shot him in the face.

The pain a mother feels losing a child is beyond comprehension, and Cheryl is no exception.

“He was a good person, a friend to everybody, and now, at night, when I go to sleep, the last thing I see is Michael, clinging to a stump in the middle of the lake, screaming for help, and I wasn’t there to help him,” Cheryl told A&E in a taped interview. “And it’s what I have to live with.”

Cheryl also lives with the loss of her granddaughter, whom she has not seen since she was five years old and is now an adult.

“I would love to have my granddaughter in my life, and there are a million things I would like to tell her about her daddy, but the main thing I would like her to know is he loved her more than life itself.”

© 2023 Kym L Pasqualini