Mike Williams’ Wife and Best Friend Killed Him to Be Together

From the outside looking in, Tallahassee, Fla., resident Mike Williams had an enviable life. Only 31 years old, he had married his high school sweetheart, Denise. They had a healthy baby girl, settled near where they grew up, had many friends and he made good money as a real estate appraiser.

It was well-deserved, according to friend Patti Ketcham, who worked with Williams at a real estate agency for nearly fifteen years.

“He had the strongest work ethic of anyone I’ve ever met in my life,” Ketcham tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “It was awful when he disappeared.”

At the time of his 2000 disappearance, which is covered in a season 2 episode of Cold Case Files and Hulu documentary Mr. and Mrs. Murder, no one knew that the subsequent investigation would eventually expose an extreme example of homicidal betrayal by his best friend and wife, motivated in part by a huge insurance payout. And it’s possible no one ever would have had it not been for the tenacious work of his mother, who mailed thousands of letters to Florida’s governor demanding that the truth be sought.

In the early morning hours of December 16, 2000, Mike left for a duck hunting trip to Lake Seminole, allegedly telling Denise that he would be home at noon to celebrate their sixth wedding anniversary. When evening came and he had not returned, Denise reported him missing. A massive search soon began.

Late that night, Mike’s best friend, Brian Winchester, found Mike’s boat on the lake.

“It’s interesting—when you see newscasts where people are in plane crashes and the families get in boats and go out [to the scene], I always thought, ‘Why do you feel compelled to do that? They’re gone,’” Ketcham says. “But we got the call that Mike had disappeared on Lake Seminole, and… I couldn’t get there fast enough. We never could understand Denise not going out there.”

Six months later, some of Mike’s gear surfaced on the lake: chest-high waders and a hunting jacket, NBC reported. His disappearance was officially ruled a death by accidental drowning, according to CBS.

Authorities initially thought Mike’s body hadn’t been recovered because alligators ate it. But his mother, Cheryl Williams, had trouble believing that her son simply disappeared into the lake. So for years, she wrote to the governor of Florida every day—more than 2,600 letters in total—urging the state officials to investigate further.

Authorities came around to the idea in 2004, when the case was reopened.

There were many reasons to be suspicious. For one, the money: Mike had taken out a $1.75 million life insurance policy shortly before he died. 

Then there was also the lack of any remains. Between the creation of the artificial lake in the 1940s and 2025, just over 100 people had drowned in the lake. Mike’s was the only body that remained unrecovered.

And in 2005, Denise remarried. 

Her new spouse: Mike’s best friend, Brian Winchester, the man who had found Mike’s boat. And the man who, incidentally, sold Mike the life insurance policy that paid Denise out.

Despite the suspicions of foul play and a growing belief amongst investigators that Denise and Winchester were criminally responsible for Mike’s disappearance, officials did not have the evidence they needed for charges. It would take years for them to get that evidence, but an unexpected break in the case was in the works.

After seven years of marriage, Denise and Winchester decided to separate in 2012. According to Winchester’s friends, he was miserable about the prospect of losing his marriage.

In 2016, Winchester hid out in Denise’s car and held her up at gunpoint. Denise reported him to the police, who arrested him and charged him with kidnapping and assault. At his sentencing hearing, Denise asked for him to receive a life in prison.

Winchester was sentenced to 20 years. But during an interrogation with investigators, he confessed to killing Mike—at Denise’s behest, he said. In exchange for the confession, prosecutors granted Winchester immunity for crimes connected to Mike’s murder.

According to Winchester, he and Mike went together to Lake Seminole, where he pushed Mike into the lake in the hopes of drowning him. When it became clear that Mike would survive, Brian shot and killed him and took his body away in his truck.

Winchester led investigators to Mike’s remains, which were buried in a dry creek bed a few miles from his Tallahassee home. According to the Washington Post, Winchester and Denise had decided to kill Mike via a “boating accident” because they wanted to be together, and Denise could not stand the stigma associated with a divorce.

Denise was arrested in May 2018 on murder charges. She pleaded innocent, but the jury found her guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, first-degree murder and accessory after the fact. The latter two convictions were later dropped. She is serving a 30-year sentence, according to The Tallahassee Democrat.

The question of “why” hangs over the story of Mike’s murder. 

“They tend to have a lot of delusions or be disassociated from reality,” Jill Manning, a licensed marriage and family therapist who specializes in betrayal tells A&E Crime + Investigation of people who commit these types of crimes. “They struggle with empathy. They tend to lack self-reflection and self-awareness, and they tend to be very ‘in the moment’ and lack impulse control.”

According to Manning, the case of Mike and Denise Williams boils down to “the weaponization of trust.” 

“That’s what’s so cruel about betrayal. We’re not betrayed by strangers—we’re betrayed by people close to us,” she adds.

Ketcham agrees.

“The thing that haunts us is: How in the world did Brian follow Mike out there to Lake Seminole—it’s an hour drive—not even mad at him? Knowing he was going to kill him?” she wonders. “The level of betrayal is just unbelievable.”