Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - INJUSTICE with NANCY GRACE: Young dad Mike Williams goes duck hunting on Lake Seminole, then vanishes without a trace. Tragic accident or something sinister?

Episode Date: July 17, 2019

Dad Mike Williams goes out early one morning to duck hunt on Lake Seminole, Florida, but never returns to his wife and young daughter. Everything points to a tragic accident, but Mike’s mother Cheryl refuses to believe it. Nancy Grace previews the second episode of her new true crime TV show INJUSTICE with NANCY GRACE, airing Saturday July 20th at 6/5pm central only on Oxygen, the true network for crime. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. I have been a felony prosecutor in inner city Atlanta for over a decade. I have been a journalist over 20 years. I've handled and covered literally thousands of cases. Of all of those cases, the injustice of some just stick with me. Wrongful accusations.

I don't care what the f*** they said. Sentences that don't fit the crime. Victims' cries for help ignored. Many cases may have been resolved in courts, but not resolved in my mind. Hi guys, Nancy Grace here. And before I say another word about our upcoming series, Injustice with Nancy Grace on Oxygen. Listen to this. With every minute that passes, you're losing the chance of finding the person, much less alive. They're out there all night, all Lake Seminole, all law enforcement. They're thinking, how could he survive through the night?

Not a trace. Everything runs through your head. Everything. Could he have been the victim of a burglary? I mean, we didn't really know what had happened to Mike. So if he wasn't in the lake, where could he be? Oh, that horrible, horrible feeling trying to figure out what happened. You're hearing Mike's friend, Clay Ketchum, a young dad, a husband, a loving husband, I might add, says he's going out duck hunting and he never comes home. I've been to Lake Seminole many, many times. Dark, dark waters. If you look out on it, it's very eerie looking. Even in the daytime, when you drive by, you look out and it's vast. You can't even see the other side to it at some points.

And the water looks black, even in the daytime. And what makes it so eerie looking to me, stumps, dark stumps jutting out of the water. And they're sharp. They're sharp on the edges like spikes. And they're throughout Lake Seminole. I don't know how anybody boats on it or fishes on it or hunts on it with all those stumps. And what's under the water is scarier. There are gators there, for real, gators. So how this is a sportsman's paradise, I really don't know. But I

do know that this young dad, Mike Williams, goes out duck hunting. He loved hunting early, early on a morning. He promises to come back because very important, it's his anniversary. He and his wife already have one baby girl named Ansley. Love, love, love Ansley. They want to add to their family. And that evening, after he gets back from duck hunting and she does what she has to do that day, they're heading for an anniversary celebration at a bed and breakfast, and they're going to start on a baby. Okay. I can't really think of a happier time. So I'm circling back to what Mike's friend Clay Ketchum said. They have no idea. Every theory running through family's head, his wife's head, what could have happened to him? Had

there been some attack? Had there been a burglary of some sort they didn't know about? They're trying to figure out because they don't find his body. They can't find any evidence of a struggle, nothing. It's like he disappears off the face of the earth. Days, weeks, months go by and suddenly the case goes cold. The wife is struggling financially to support the house and the daughter all on her own, keep it all going, all the balls in the air. And they say the case goes cold. Cold cases are tough because you continually have your regular workload. And then you've got this case over here that you continue to look at, but you know, it's a cold case. So there's times when there's nothing going on. It's just sitting there and you're waiting for it to flare up. You're hearing our friend Tully Sparkman, investigator with the state's attorney's office

there in Leon County, Florida. And it's not that the cops or the investigators don't want to solve the case. They want to. I've been in the same boat they're in. You know, you get 100 new cases a week, brand new felonies to investigate, and you work to solve them. you work to take them to trial

to investigate them, then there are the ones that stump you. You don't want to ignore them. You don't want them to go cold, but they're just not fitting together. They started re-questioning everyone, nailing down alibis yet again, trying to get a better timeline of what happened that early, early morning, December 16, when Mike Williams seemingly vanished off the face of the earth. They went to everybody. They went to friends. They went to bosses. They spoke to Denise. They did it all. And they did it over and over and over again, and still nothing until evidence seemingly resurfaces that offers a crack in the case. But was it? This is a case that needs a spotlight. This case stands for so much. The injustice heaped on Mike Williams and his family.

I can't get it out of my mind. Join us July 26th, 5 Central. Injustice with Nancy Grace on Oxygen, the true network for crime. Nancy Grace signing off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.