Imagine waking up one morning, kissing your baby daughter goodbye, and driving off to do the thing you love most in the world. You never come home. Your boat is found. Your truck is found. Your gear is found. But you, you are gone. And the two people who cry the hardest at your memorial, the two people who hold each other and weep in front of everyone, they are the ones who killed you.
This is the story of Mike Williams, a man who did everything right, worked harder than anyone around him, loved his wife more than she deserved, and trusted his best friend with his life. And that trust, that blind, loyal trust, is exactly what got him killed. Jerry Michael Williams was born in Bradfordville, Florida.
Everyone called him Mike. He grew up in a small trailer with his older brother Nick, his father Jerry, and his mother Cheryl. His dad drove a Greyhound bus. His mom ran a daycare from home so she could be there when the boys came back from school. They didn’t have much. But what they had, they protected fiercely.
Cheryl and Jerry made a decision early on. Their boys were going to get a good education, no matter what it cost. So they saved. They cut corners. They lived small so their sons could live big. They sent both boys to North Florida Christian School, a private school. The kind of place where you work hard and people notice. Mike noticed.
And Mike worked. He ran everywhere. His mother always said that. Mike never walked anywhere. He was always running, always eager, always the first one there and the last one to leave. He was student council president, captain of the football team, the kind of kid the teachers remembered years later.
But here is what people remembered most about Mike Williams. He was just genuinely good. Not performing good. Not good because someone was watching. Just good. His friend said, “If anyone was picking on you, Mike stepped in. Didn’t matter if it was his fight or not. He made it his fight.
” And it was in those school hallways, between football practice and student council meetings, that Mike met a cheerleader named Denise Merrell. She was pretty. She was confident. And from the very beginning, Denise had a way of letting Mike do everything while she simply received it. Mike chased. Mike worked. Mike gave. Denise accepted.
His friends noticed it even back then. But Mike, Mike was blind to it. Because when you love someone that completely, you don’t look for the cracks. You just keep building. Around the same time, Mike met a boy named Brian Winchester. They became best friends in ninth grade. Brian was charming, easy-going, always smiling.
The kind of guy who made everything look effortless. He had a girlfriend named Kathy. And so, the four of them became one unit. Mike and Denise. Brian and Kathy. Double dates. Same plans. Same dreams. On the surface, it looked perfect. But here is the thing about surfaces. They hide everything underneath.
In 1988, all four of them graduated. And life moved exactly the way it was supposed to. Mike went to Florida State University. Got hired before he even graduated by a real estate appraisal company that saw something in him immediately. Brian went into insurance. Selling policies. Building relationships.
And in 1994, both couples got married. Same year. Because that is what they did. Everything together. Mike’s work ethic in adulthood became almost legendary. His boss, Clay Ketcham, said Mike was the hardest working man he had ever known in his entire life. Mike would arrive before sunrise. Work through the day.
Come home for dinner. Eat with his family. Then go back to the office and work until 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning. Then be back first thing the next day. Clay eventually had to physically take the building keys away from him. Because Mike would show up on weekends when the office was supposed to be closed. By 1999, Mike Williams was making 200,000 a year. He was 30 years old.
He had no idea he had exactly one year left to live. In 1999, Denise gave birth to their daughter. They named her Ansley. A local TV crew happened to be at the hospital that day, and Mike, this strong, driven, unstoppable man, stood in front of that camera completely overwhelmed.
I have a whole new respect for my wife, and for women in general, and what they go through to bring new life into the world. He adored that little girl from the first second he saw her. Everything he did, every 15-hour day, every weekend at the office, it was for her. When Mike’s father passed away not long after Ansley was born, Mike held on even tighter.
He told his mother he wanted Ansley to have a sibling. He told Denise, “Let’s try for another baby.” He told his friends, “I want a big family.” He still called his mother every few days. And when Denise called him at the office to say she needed gas, Mike would stop everything, drive to wherever she was, pump her gas, and drive back.
His friends laughed about it. They said, “We all wanted to be married to Mike.” But here is what nobody was laughing about. Money was quietly disappearing from their bank accounts. Small amounts at first, then bigger ones. Mike noticed. He sat down with the one person he trusted more than anyone else in his life.
He sat down with Brian Winchester. He told Brian everything. The missing money, his confusion, his fear that something was wrong with Denise. Brian listened carefully. He looked Mike in the eye. He put a hand on Mike’s shoulder. He told him not to worry. And Mike, trusting, loyal, completely devoted Mike, felt better after that conversation.
He had no idea the money wasn’t going to drugs. He had no idea the money was going to hotel rooms. He had no idea the Brian Winchester knew exactly where every single dollar was going, because Brian was the one receiving it. Brian Winchester testified later under oath in a courtroom about exactly when the affair began, October 13th, 1997.
He remembered the exact date, not approximately, not sometime in late 1997, the exact date. Mike and Denise had been married for 3 years at that point. Brian was still married to Kathy. Their children were not yet born. Their houses were side by side. Their lives completely intertwined. Brian described it in court with a chilling casualness.
He said it snowballed. The more time they spent together, the more they wanted. The more they complained about their spouses, about Mike, about Kathy, the more justified it felt. And then he said these exact words, “I had a good wife. I had a kid. And I had Denise on the side.
” They met up to 15 times a week, hotels, business trips. Brian would follow Mike and Denise when Mike traveled for work. And while Mike sat in meetings, Brian and Denise would disappear together. And sometimes, they met at Mike’s house while Mike was at the office. Working until 2:00 in the morning.
Building the life that was funding their affair. Brian knew all of it. He knew on the day Mike’s father died and Mike cried on his shoulder. He knew when Ansley was born and Mike stood in front of that hospital camera overwhelmed with love. He knew on every single ordinary Tuesday that Mike called him just to talk.
He knew. And he kept showing up. Sometime in early 2000, 9 months before Mike died, the conversations between Brian and Denise changed. They’d been talking for years about being together permanently. The obvious answer was divorce. But Denise would not do it. Brian testified that Denise was, his exact words, “ultra concerned about appearances.
” She had grown up in a certain community with certain expectations. Divorce carried a weight she was not willing to carry publicly. She also had another reason, Ansley. If Denise divorced Mike, she would have to share custody. She was not willing to share her daughter with the man who adored that little girl more than anything in the world.
So, divorce was off the table. And in the spring of 2000, they began talking about the only option they had left. They started talking about how Mike could die. They considered different ways to do it. One idea, both Brian and Mike would go into the water during a hunting trip, Mike would drown, Brian would survive.
An accident, tragic, believable. Brian said Denise liked that particular idea because of what she said about it. She said it would feel better if Mike had a chance to survive. If it was in God’s hands, if it was technically possible that he could make it out. That way, she told Brian, it wouldn’t really be murder.
It would just be God’s will. They settled on a date. December 9th, 2000. The morning arrived. Brian was ready. His phone rang. It was Denise. She told him to stop. Not today. She wasn’t ready. Call it off. Brian said later he felt relieved. He thought maybe it was over. He waited.
Three days later, Denise called him back. Her voice was steady. Her mind was made up. December 16th. Their wedding anniversary. The day Mike was planning to take her to a bed and breakfast to celebrate 6 years of marriage. The day he had been looking forward to for weeks. Denise had chosen the one day of the year Mike would be most certain to come home. She picked their anniversary.
Now, before that morning, there is one more thing you need to understand. Mike had three life insurance policies. One for 500,000, one for 250,000, and one for 1,000,000. Total, 1.75 million dollars. Denise was the sole beneficiary of all three. Mike had planned to stop paying the premiums on his two older policies.
He thought they were lapsing. Denise had been paying them in secret every single month without telling him. And that million-dollar policy, the newest one, Brian Winchester had sold it to Mike just 6 months before he disappeared. Brian had encouraged it. Told Mike it made sense.
A hunter, a fisherman, a man with a young daughter should be covered. Mike agreed. Because Mike trusted Brian. That policy also had a contestability clause, a legal window during which the insurance company could investigate and deny a claim. Brian had sold Mike that policy in mid-2000. That clock was running.
If Mike died after that window closed, the company could ask questions, could deny everything. December 2000 was the deadline. And Mike Williams died in December 2000. The night before, December 15th, Brian got Kathy drunk, deliberately, carefully. Enough that she would sleep late the next morning and never know he had left.
Before dawn on December 16th, he slipped out of bed and drove to meet Mike at a gas station. Just two friends, early morning, heading to the lake. They launched the boat at an isolated landing, away from other hunters, away from witnesses. Out on the water, Brian had one job. Get Mike into the water with his waders on. He told Mike they were heading to a good spot that required waders.
Mike, who had a firm rule about never wearing waders while driving the boat, trusted Brian’s judgment. He put the waders on. Brian waited for the right moment. Then he stood Mike up and pushed him overboard. Mike hit the water. The waders filled immediately, heavy, pulling him down. Exactly as planned.
Brian killed the engine, watched, but something went wrong. Mike got the waders off. In cold water and full panic in the dark, he got them off. He got his jacket off. He was free of the weight that was supposed to kill him, and now he was swimming. Brian sat in that boat and watched his best friend fight for his life.
He did not reach out a hand. He did not throw a rope. He pulled the boat back, just far enough that Mike could not grab on. Mike was calling out to him, screaming his name. The man he had trusted since they were 14 years old. The man who had stood at his wedding. The man who had held his daughter as a baby. The man who had sat across from him at dinner a hundred times and listened and nodded and said all the right things.
Mike was in the water, screaming that man’s name. Brian reached for his shotgun. Mike swam toward the stumps and grabbed on. He held on. He was still calling out. Brian brought the boat around slowly. As he passed that stump, Mike still holding on, still in the water, still alive.
Brian raised his shotgun and shot Mike Williams in the head point-blank range. The water went quiet. Brian did not wait. He dragged Mike’s body to the shoreline, loaded it into the back of his Suburban, pushed the boat back out onto the water, engine off, tank full, shotgun still in its case to make it look like Mike had gone out alone and never came back.
He drove home. Kathy was still asleep. He got into bed next to her. Later that morning, he drove to a Walmart. He bought a shovel. He bought a tarp. He drove to a remote area near Carr Lake, quiet, isolated, just 10 minutes from his own home, 5 mi from where Mike’s mother Sheryl lived. He dug a hole.
He buried his best friend. Then he drove home, called his father-in-law, said he had overslept, wouldn’t make the hunting trip. Sorry about that. Phone records showed he was home that morning. Alibi established. A few hours later, his phone rang. Mike was missing. Brian Winchester got in his car and drove to Lake Seminole to help search for the man he had just buried in a field 10 minutes from his house.
He walked the banks. He talked to law enforcement. He got emotional with Mike’s friends. And at 2:30 in the morning, in the dark and the cold, he found Mike’s empty boat. Inside, the shotgun still in its case. The gas tank completely full. No mud. No signs of struggle. No signs of anything.
And when people asked Brian how he was holding up, he told them he was devastated. The search that followed became one of the most intensive missing person searches in Florida history. 735 man-hours, 44 days, 15 boats, helicopters, divers, cadaver dogs, investigators with long metal poles pushing them into the lake bed every 6 to 8 in feeling for anything that didn’t belong.
A log gives a hard thump. Something softer gives a different feeling. They covered every single inch of a 10-acre search area. They felt nothing. Because Mike was not in that lake. He had never been in that lake. Then came the explanation. Lake Seminole was full of alligators. During the search, no fewer than 15 to 20 large alligators had been spotted circling the area, moving slowly, watching.
The official theory, Mike fell overboard. His waders filled with water. He drowned. The alligators consumed the remains. That is why the body was never found. A private search firm put it in writing. The alligators had likely dismembered and hidden the remains somewhere searchers would never find. Florida Fish and Wildlife officially closed the case.
Accidental drowning. Case closed. But there was one person who heard that explanation and felt something cold move through her. Not grief, rage. Mike’s mother, Cheryl, had worried about those waters for years. And every time, Mike had given her the same answer. “Mom, alligators sleep when the water is cold.
We only hunt ducks when the weather is cold.” Cheryl picked up the phone and called a wildlife expert herself. The expert confirmed exactly what Mike had always told her. In December, with those water temperatures, alligators do not feed. They are barely moving. And even if one had somehow attacked, there would always be evidence.
Clothing, fragments, something. An alligator does not consume a 185-lb man in cold December water without leaving a single trace. Then Cheryl found one more number. In the entire recorded history of Lake Seminole, there had been 80 known drowning deaths. Every single body had been recovered. Every single one.
Mike Williams would have been the first person in 80 cases to simply vanish. Cheryl closed her notebook. Her son was not in that lake. And someone, someone who had been standing right next to her, crying at the memorial, holding her hand, knew exactly where he was. Six months after Mike disappeared, a pair of waders appeared floating in the lake.
Clean, no slime, no damage, no deterioration. Inside the jacket found 2 days later, Mike’s hunting license, still readable, a flashlight, still working after six months underwater, and not a single poke hole in that clothing from the searchers who had covered that exact area every six to eight inches for 44 straight days.
Those waders had not been in that lake for six months. Someone had put them there. And Denise’s court hearing, where she needed proof of death to collect the insurance money, was less than one month away. Denise filed her petition. A judge agreed. Six months after Mike disappeared, he was officially declared dead.
Accidental drowning. Five years became six months. She collected nearly two million dollars. Then Brian Winchester pulled up alongside Cheryl in his truck one day. He mentioned the death certificate, how quickly it had all come through. And then he looked at Cheryl, the mother of the man he had murdered, and said, “Well, I guess you’re surprised they declared Michael dead so quickly.
” Cheryl looked back at him. “Not the way that evidence just popped up out of nowhere.” Brian smiled. “Ms. Williams, that was a gift from God.” Cheryl held his gaze. “Brian, I have had gifts from God before. Those waders were planted.” Brian drove away. Then Denise came to Cheryl directly and told her, “If you keep pushing for an investigation, you will never see your granddaughter again.
” Ansley. 19 months old. The only living piece of Mike that Cheryl had left. Cheryl sat with that threat. Then she made her choice. She chose Mike. She took the energy she would have spent loving that child, and she used it to find her daddy. But here is what made this case almost impossible to break for the next 17 years.
In 2005, Brian Winchester divorced Kathy and married Denise. They moved into the house Mike had built. The house Mike had paid for. The house where Mike’s daughter was growing up. Being raised by the two people who had planned her father’s death. And under Florida law, as long as they stayed married, neither one could be forced to testify against the other.
They had planned for everything. The insurance, the planted evidence, the alibi, the marriage, everything except one thing. They had not planned for what happens when a marriage falls apart. And in 2012, it started falling apart. Brian and Denise had been separated since 2012.
Four years of trying to patch things together. Four years of therapy and phone calls and promises that went nowhere. Brian desperate to save what they had. Denise pulling further away. By 2016, the divorce was almost final. And Brian Winchester, the man who had kept his composure through a murder and a burial and 16 years of Sunday dinners with people who trusted him, was coming apart at the seams.
His mother had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. His teenage son had chosen to go live with Kathy instead of him. Everything he had built, the life he had murdered his best friend to have, was gone. And Denise would not return his calls. August 5th, 2016. Denise walked out of her house, got into her car, and started driving to work.
Ordinary morning, ordinary routine. Then something moved in the backseat. She turned. Brian Winchester climbed over the seat toward her, a semi-automatic pistol in his hand, pressing it into her ribs before she could speak. He told her to drive. She drove straight. He told her to turn. She kept going straight.
She pulled into the parking lot of a CVS pharmacy. Large, public, security cameras covering every angle. People coming and going in broad daylight. She stopped the car. She told Brian, “This is the only place I will talk to you.” Brian could not do anything there. Not on camera. Not with witnesses.
Not in a public parking lot in broad daylight. So, they sat for 45 minutes, gun still in his hand. They talked. Brian was crying, saying he had lost everything. That he did not want to hurt her. That he wanted the divorce called off. That he He his life back. Denise stayed calm. She told him she knew he loved her.
She told him he could get everything back if he just turned his life around. She agreed with whatever he said. She kept his temperature down with the same cold precision she had used her entire life. When he had calmed enough, she drove him back to his truck. He got out.
He reached into the back of her car and took what he had brought with him, a tarp, a spray bottle filled with bleach, a small hammer. He had not come just to talk. Denise watched him take those items, said nothing, waited until he drove away. Then she went straight to the police. At the Leon County Sheriff’s Office, Denise reported Brian for armed kidnapping.
An investigator saw immediately what this moment was. Not just a domestic incident, not just a jealous ex-husband with a gun. This was the crack they had been waiting 16 years for. Within hours, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement was involved. The same investigators who had worked Mike’s case for years, the same people who knew every detail, every inconsistency, every unanswered question from December 16th, 2000.
They sat Denise down and for 3 hours they tried everything. They told her Brian had come to that car with a tarp and bleach and a hammer and that was not a man coming to talk. They told her he would do it again. They told her the only way she was truly safe was if she told them what she knew.
Denise sat across from them, stone-faced, controlled, completely still. She said she only wanted to talk about the kidnapping. She said she had no idea what happened to Mike. She said she had always believed he drowned in that lake. One investigator leaned forward and told her, “In the entire recorded history of Lake Seminole, not one person who drowned there was never found.
Not one, except Mike. That is not a coincidence.” Denise said she did not know anything about that. They told her Brian was going to be arrested, that when he was sitting in a cell facing 30 years, he might decide to start talking. Denise said she had no idea what Brian would say. 3 hours, every angle, every pressure point. She gave them nothing.
But here is what Denise did not understand. She thought reporting Brian for kidnapping was a power move. She thought she could have him arrested, have him locked away, and stay protected behind the wall of silence they had both maintained for 16 years. She did not understand that by walking into that police station, she had already handed investigators everything they needed.
Because now Brian was arrested. Now Brian was facing serious prison time. And now, for the first time in 16 years, Brian and Denise were no longer married. The spousal privilege that had protected them both, the legal shield that had made this case impossible to crack, was gone. Brian Winchester could now be compelled to testify.
And prosecutors wasted no time making him an offer. “Tell us what happened to Mike Williams. Tell us everything. And we will give you complete immunity from any charges related to his death. We will also recommend a reduced sentence on the kidnapping.” Brian Winchester sat with that offer. 16 years of silence. He took the deal.
In October 2017, Brian Winchester told investigators everything. The affair. October 13th, 1997. 15 times a week. Hotels. Mike’s own house while Mike was at work. The planning. March 2000. 9 months before Mike died. The scenarios they considered. Denise’s reasoning. “It wouldn’t be murder. It would be God’s will.
” December 9th. The day Denise called off at the last minute. December 16th. The day they did not call off. The gas station before dawn. The isolated boat launch. The waders. Pushing Mike overboard. Watching him fight. Pulling the boat back deliberately. Mike getting the waders off. Mike swimming to the stump.
Holding on. Calling out. The shot. The drive home. Kathy still asleep. Getting into bed next to her. Walmart. The shovel. The tarp. He told them everything. And then he told them where Mike was. Investigators spent 5 days at Carr Lake, 16 hours a day, digging 9-ft holes across a remote marshy field, 10 minutes from Brian’s home, 5 miles from Sheryl Williams’ front door.
Cadaver dogs finally located the spot. They dug, and they found Mike Williams, 17 years after he disappeared. They brought him home. His skeletal remains, his winter boots, his gloves, the clothes he had been wearing on the morning of December 16th, 2000, and on his hand, still in place after 17 years in the ground, his wedding ring.
The forensic evidence confirmed what Brian had confessed, shot at point-blank range in the face with a shotgun, up close, personal, by his best friend. One day after Brian Winchester was sentenced to 20 years in prison for kidnapping, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement held a press conference.
Special Agent in Charge, Mark Perez, with the Tallahassee Regional Operations Center. Standing here now, I can tell you that we know what happened to Mike Williams. He was murdered. After 17 heard those words. She had been right about everything for 17 years. But there was still one more person who had not been held accountable, the person who had picked the date, who had chosen their wedding anniversary, who had sat in that interrogation room for 3 hours and given investigators absolutely nothing while her husband’s
body lay in a field 5 miles away. 5 months after Mike’s body was found, on the morning of May 8th, 2018, investigators arrived at Denise Williams’ office. It was Ansley’s 19th birthday. Mike’s daughter turned 19 years old on the day her mother was arrested for his murder.
Denise said nothing when they put the handcuffs on. She looked straight ahead, composed, controlled. She had spent 17 years protecting her image. The image was gone. December 11th, 2018, 18 years after Mike Williams drove into the dark and never came home, his wife sat in a courtroom charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, accessory after the fact.
Prosecutor John Futchus stood before the jury and said it plainly, Denise Williams liked the sound of being a widow much more than a divorcee. That was the motive. Not complicated. Not mysterious. She did not want the shame of a divorce. She did not want to share her daughter. She did not want to split the money Mike had spent 15-hour days building.
She wanted all of it and she wanted Brian. So, she made a plan. And that plan ended with Mike Williams in a shallow grave, 5 miles from his mother’s home, with his wedding ring still on his finger. Defense attorney Ethan Way had a strategy. It was bold, unusual, and on paper, logical. Brian Winchester had admitted under oath that he pulled the trigger. He was the killer.
A self-confessed murderer sitting on the witness stand. So, Way made a decision that almost no defense attorney ever makes. He waived all lesser charges. No manslaughter. No conspiracy alone. No accessory. Murder one or nothing. He was betting everything on one argument, that the prosecution could not prove Denise had directed the crime, that Brian had acted alone, that Denise was an innocent woman who had unknowingly married the man who killed her husband.
He said so himself, out loud, in court. It was a gamble. Brian testified for hours. He described the affair, the planning, the theological justification, December 9th called off, December 16th carried through, the gas station, the boat, the waders, Mike fighting, the stump, the shot.
He sat on that witness stand and described shooting his best friend in the face, and the entire courtroom went still. Every person in that room felt it. Every person except one. Denise Williams sat at the defense table throughout Brian’s entire testimony. She did not move. She did not flinch. She did not shed a single tear.
Not when Brian described the affair. Not when he described planning the murder. Not when he described pulling that boat back so Mike could not reach it. Not when he described the shot. Absolute stillness. Absolute control. Prosecutor Fuchsia stood before the jury in his closing argument and pointed directly at her.
Think back to when Brian Winchester was on that stand describing how he shot his best friend. Everybody in this room was moved. Every single person felt the horror of that moment. One person sat there with an absolute stone face. Didn’t bat an eye. Didn’t shed a tear. That lady right there. Ms.
Denise Williams. Ethan Way made his closing argument. No physical evidence connecting Denise to the crime. No fingerprints. No DNA. No recording of any conversation where she directed Brian. The only evidence was the testimony of a self-confessed killer who had been given immunity in exchange for his words. A murderer.
Who would say anything to save himself? That was reasonable doubt Way argued. The jury went to deliberate. Eight hours. They came back. Count one. Conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. Guilty. Count two. First-degree murder. Guilty. Count three. Accessory after the fact. Guilty. All three counts.
Ethan Way’s gamble had failed completely. Denise Williams sat at that table stone-faced straight ahead exactly as she had sat through everything and heard the word guilty three times. She said nothing. She looked at no one. Before sentencing, there was one more person who needed to speak. Cheryl Williams stood before the judge.
She had been fighting for this moment for 17 years. She had walked those sidewalks and written those letters and placed those birthday ads and paid every price that Denise had put in front of her without ever once stopping. And now she was here. She looked at the judge and she said, “For the next 17 years I made telephone calls, put up missing person signs, compiled my notes into a book.
I stood on street corners waving picket signs with pictures of Mike on them. I was cussed out by ministers for being too close to their church. I wrote 2,600 letters to the governor of Florida asking for help finding my son. They told me Mike drowned and got eaten by alligators and there was no need for an investigation.
They laughed at me and called me crazy.” She paused. “I am a fighter, not a victim.” And then, her voice steady, her words precise, she said the line that captured 17 years in a single image. “Judge, for the rest of my life, when I try to sleep at night, I will see my son clinging to a tree stump at 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.” The courtroom was silent. Denise Williams was sentenced to life in prison. In 2020, she appealed. The appeals court ruled that the prosecution had not sufficiently proven she was a direct principal to the murder.
The planning a crime was not the same as pulling the trigger. The first-degree murder conviction was overturned. The conspiracy conviction, the one that said she had planned her husband’s death, that one held. She was resentenced to 30 years with 85% to be served before any possibility of parole.
Cheryl Williams heard the news and kept placing the birthday ad. Brian Winchester is serving his 20 years at Wakulla Correctional Institution near Tallahassee. He will be eligible for parole in 2034. He will be 63 years old. Ansley, Mike’s daughter, grew up in that house.
She was raised by those two people. She knows no other version of her father’s death except the one they gave her. She was 19 years old when her mother was arrested. Whatever she believes, she came to those beliefs honestly inside a lie she did not know was a lie. She stood in court and asked for the minimum sentence for her mother.
She believes Denise is innocent. Cheryl still has not seen her Every year on Ansley’s birthday, she takes out a small ad in the newspaper, a photograph of Mike, a few quiet words, no response, but she keeps placing it. Mike Williams was finally given a funeral. Cheryl stood up and said she wanted everyone there, not just Mike’s family and friends, everyone.
She extended the invitation to the friends and family of Brian Winchester, too. Because that is who Mike was. That is the unbearable irony at the center of this entire story. Mike Williams did not die because he was careless. He did not die because he made a mistake. He did not die because of anything he did wrong.
He died because he was good, because he worked too hard and loved too completely and trusted too fully, because he put the people around him on a pedestal and one of them used that pedestal to look down at him. Denise Williams is currently serving her sentence at the Florida Women’s Reception Center in Ocala, Florida.
And Cheryl Williams, the woman who did what God put on her heart to do, the woman who chose Mike when it cost her everything, is still out there. Still placing that birthday ad, still waiting. Mike Williams deserved the anniversary trip. He deserved the second child he talked about.
He deserved to watch Ansley grow up. He deserved to grow old next to people who actually loved him. He got none of that. But he got one thing that the people who killed him never counted on. He got his mother. And his mother, with nothing but 27 pages and a pen and a pain that had nowhere to go except forward, brought him home.
Rest in peace, Mike Williams.
