Murder of Mike Williams
On December 16, 2000, Jerry Michael '"Mike" Williams', a 31‑year‑old man, disappeared during what was believed to be a solo duck‑hunting trip on Lake Seminole, a reservoir on the Georgia–Florida border. His boat was later found abandoned, prompting an extensive search that failed to recover any remains, an outcome unprecedented for drowning cases on the lake. Investigators initially concluded that Williams had drowned and that his body had likely been consumed by alligators. Six months later, waders and a jacket containing his hunting license were recovered, and he was declared legally dead after a petition by his wife, Denise.
Over the following years, concerns emerged about inconsistencies in the alligator‑related explanation. His mother, Cheryl, repeatedly challenged the official findings and urged state authorities to reopen the case. In 2004, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement reopened the investigation, noting that alligators typically do not feed during winter months. However, the lack of a secured crime scene and the absence of new evidence prevented further progress. Additional reviews also failed to produce significant findings, despite continued pressure from the family. The case later gained national attention through a 2012 episode of the Investigation Discovery series Disappeared.
The investigation shifted in 2016 when Brian Winchester — a longtime friend of Williams and later Denise's second husband — was arrested in an unrelated kidnapping incident involving her. He received a 20‑year sentence the day before the FDLE announced that Williams's remains had been located near Tallahassee in October 2017. The FDLE confirmed that Williams had been murdered.
In May 2018, Denise was arrested and charged with first‑degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and accessory. During her 2018 trial, Winchester testified that he had shot Williams at her direction after their initial plan to stage a boating/duck hunting accident failed. She was convicted in December 2018 and sentenced to life in prison in January 2019. In 2020, a Florida appellate court overturned the murder conviction but upheld the conspiracy conviction, for which she is serving a 30‑year sentence.
Background
Jerry Michael Williams was born on October 16, 1969, and was known as Michael or Mike. He grew up in Bradfordville, the son of a Greyhound bus driver and a day care provider who raised him and his older brother Nick in a double-wide trailer. Instead of building a house, the parents saved their money so both boys, who helped by working nights at supermarkets, could attend North Florida Christian High School. There Mike excelled, serving as student council president, playing football and being active in the Key Club. At the age of 15, he began duck hunting as a hobby, and also came to know fellow student Denise Merrell.After North Florida Christian, he attended Florida State University, where he majored in political science and urban planning. Before graduation, he was hired by Ketcham Appraisal Group as a property appraiser. He distinguished himself as "the hardest-working man I ever saw", according to the company's owner. After he married Merrell in 1994, he would often go home for dinner and return to work after she went to bed, and he sometimes went into work after going duck hunting in the morning. According to his mother, Mike was making an annual salary of at the time of his disappearance. He and Denise had bought a home in a small upscale subdivision on the east side of the city.
In 1999, Williams's only child, a daughter, was born. His coworkers said he was as devoted to her as he was to his work. The following year his father died. Midway through the year, the couple bought a $1million life insurance policy on him through Brian Winchester, a childhood acquaintance of Merrell who had also become best friends with her husband.
Two days before his disappearance, Mike and Denise told his mother, as well as his brother Nick, that they were planning to have another child soon. In 2001, she said, they were planning to go on a cruise in Hawaii that spring; later in the year he expected to travel to Jamaica for work as well.
Disappearance
According to Denise Williams, on the morning of December 16, 2000, a Saturday, her husband awoke early, leaving the house on Centennial Oaks Circle well before dawn, boat in tow, to go duck hunting at Lake Seminole. The lake is a large reservoir approximately west-northwest of Tallahassee located in the southwest corner of Georgia along its border with Florida, where three other streams merge to form the Apalachicola River. The couple had plans to celebrate their sixth wedding anniversary that night in Apalachicola.At noon, Denise called her father to tell him that Mike had not returned; Brian Winchester's father drove with Winchester to the areas of the lake where they knew Mike Williams frequently went duck hunting. They found his 1994 Ford Bronco near a remote boat launch in Jackson County, on the Florida side. After investigators with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission were called, a search began, but soon had to be called off after a storm blew in.
Search
The initial search investigation was handled by the FFWCC. Since it had been reported to them as a missing hunter, the agency handled the case that way, focusing on search and rescue or recovery. "We didn't have a whole lot to go on except there was an empty boat and the guy didn't show up," one of the agency's officers recalled later, after his retirement. "There was nothing there that we had from the scene that suggested foul play at all." Deputies with the Jackson County Sheriff's Office were present, but primarily worked in a support capacity.Searchers focused on the of the lake surrounding the cove where Williams's truck was parked. His boat was soon found roughly from the ramp by a helicopter pilot, who initially assumed it was a boat being used in the search. After retrieving the boat, investigators found Williams's shotgun, still in its case, but no sign of Williams himself.
The cove is locally believed to have been an orchard before the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers and Spring Creek were dammed to create the lake. It took its name, Stump Field, from the many remaining stumps that protruded above and below the water level, requiring careful handling of any powerboat in the area. Searchers thus assumed that Williams had hit a stump with his boat, fallen out, sunk into waters deep when his waders filled, and then drowned when he was unable to extricate himself.
Had Williams drowned, his body would have been expected to eventually float to the surface, making it easier to discover. Investigators assured the Williams family that his body would surface, like other drowning victims, within three to seven days, or perhaps slightly longer due to the cold front that had moved in after the first night's storm. No body was found, however.
Ten days into the search, a camouflage-patterned hunting hat was found, but it could not be connected to Williams. Efforts continued until the search was called off in early February. It has since been suggested that the search might have been continued had Denise Williams indicated an interest in such. At that time, the case was still considered open. "Nothing in investigative or search and rescue efforts has produced any definitive evidence of a boating accident or a fatality as of this date," read the final report, issued in late February 2001.
Subsequent developments
If Williams had drowned after accidentally falling out of his boat, his body would be the only one of 80 known deaths in the lake never to have been found. The head of a private search firm that supplemented official efforts near the end of the search offered a possible explanation. "With the wildlife around, I would guess that the alligators have dismembered and have stored the remains in a location that we would not be able to find," he wrote in a report. Early searchers had reported seeing many of them, and some of the officials were willing to accept the possibility. "Everyone knows the lake is full of alligators," said the FFWCC's David Arnette. "You look for other answers: 'Why hasn't the body appeared?'"It was suggested that perhaps Williams's body had become entangled in the beds of dense hydrilla beneath the lake surface, and then found by the alligators later, with turtles and catfish finishing what they had left behind. Denise Williams, who had avoided media attention during the search for her husband, accepted that her husband had died. She arranged for a memorial service for Mike to be held the day after the search ended.
In June, an angler in the Stump Field area discovered a pair of waders floating in the lake, and divers called to search the area then recovered from the lake bottom a lightweight hunting jacket and a flashlight: in one of the jacket pockets, there was a hunting license with Williams's name and signature. However, there were no teeth marks or any other damage on the waders, none of the recovered items showed signs of having been in the water for anything like the period Williams had been missing, and there was no DNA evidence found to link the clothing to him. Nevertheless, a week later, a Leon County judge granted Denise Williams's petition to have Mike declared legally dead on the basis of those recovered items and an assumption that alligators and other water life had consumed the body in its entirety.
The court decision allowed Denise Williams to immediately proceed with claims on her husband's life insurance policies, from which she received $1.5 million. Five years later, she married Brian Winchester, who had sold Mike some of the policies a few months before he disappeared. The couple went on to live in the same house where Denise and Mike had lived prior. Denise and Brian have mostly declined to discuss the case publicly.