Dateline NBC - Secrets of Lake Seminole

Episode Date: April 13, 2022

When experienced outdoorsman Mike Williams disappears on a duck hunting trip on Lake Seminole, authorities first believe he could have drowned or been eaten by alligators until his mother presses law enforcement to reopen the case. Dennis Murphy reports.

I was one of the last to suspect anything. Even though you were hopeful, you knew. As soon as you hung up the phone, you knew. How does anybody look at somebody drowning and not help them? How do you do that? A perfect husband. A perfect father. A perfect mystery. They found the boat.

Mike wasn't in it. We thought maybe he's had an accident. The thought is the alligators have eaten Mike. But this lake was hiding more than gators. Mike was the only hunter that had gone overboard in that lake that had never been found. Something don't add up. People were saying, why did he ran off? There have just been so many wild stories.

Two lovers share a secret. He had this desire to have her. There was an affair happening for years. They can choose each other. You're waiting for that crack. He was going to kill you and make you go away. Obviously she knew what happened to him. She had to know. Or choose the truth.

Finally we're going to find out what really happened. Maybe justice will be served. A chilling confession reveals a crime almost too cruel to be true. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Dennis Murphy with Secrets of Lake Seminole. Lake Seminole, an hour outside Florida's state capital, is deep south. Fishing hunting country with Spanish moss on the oaks. In season, the duck hunters are out before dawn.

And it was there in the year 2000 on a December morning, an experienced outdoorsman named Mike Williams went duck hunting. It was the 30-year-old hunter's sixth wedding anniversary, and there'd be a stay at a romantic B&B that evening. But the morning hours were his to hunt. That was his outlet. That was what he enjoyed. The thing is, he never came back, seemed to simply vanish. His wife Denise called around to family. It was already late afternoon when Mike's brother Nick got the worrying news.

There was going to be a search already starting over at Lake Seminole, so we called a friend of ours and we went together. Mike's co-worker Christy Garrett. Mike is very skilled. I mean, he is a very skilled hunter, and we thought maybe he's had an accident. As a cold front moved in, a formal search began on the 30,000-acre lake. One member of the search party arrived early and stayed late. It was Mike's best friend going back to school days, Brian Winchester. He and his dad, using a spotlight, made the first big discovery. Brian Winchester had found the boat. Mike wasn't in it.

His decoys were all in the boat, which, of course, let everybody think, obviously, he'd never got started hunting that morning. What picture came together for you at that point? Well, I think I was like everybody else, worried that he might have fallen out. Mike's boss, Clay Ketchum. Brian stood with me, and anytime they would come up with a potential hit, Brian said, I just don't want to be here when they find Mike. Man-made Lake Seminole can be treacherous for boaters. It was a one-time peach orchard before it was flooded, and tree stumps lurked just below the surface. At night, these are very hard to see. Fish and wildlife officer David Arnett. You hit a stump, and you could be thrown out very easily. They didn't have

a body, but there was an early theory among seasoned hunters about what might have happened. Mike, in the pre-dawn hour, had hit a stump and been thrown into the weed-filled lake. Like most duck hunters, he was known to wear chest-high waders, and they could turn deadly just like that. Waders are bulky. They're basically like putting two buckets on your legs. You've got problems with them filling up with water and taking you down. And what was down there, everybody knew, were alligators.

Hard to think of such an awful end for a nice, hardworking husband and father like Mike Williams. Popular mind, the gators got them, huh? Yes. Your heart is kind of, and your stomach is kind of gripped by that. Just the sheer awfulness of it. But there was a big problem with the gator theory. With such unusually cold temperatures, fish and wildlife officers like Alton Rayno knew the alligators weren't stirring much. His metabolism is down so low, he don't want to eat. They're like a bear, they go into hibernation. Then, on the 10th day of searching, Officer Rainew found a hunter's hat floating on the water.

Brian, the best friend, thought it looked familiar. He comes up out here to the tent and shows us a photograph with Mike with that hat on. Surely that hat was as good as evidence that Mike had had an accident and drowned in Lake Seminole. Mike's co-workers, Liz Boyette and Christy Garrett, felt hope slip away. When did you both realize that this was it? I think we all knew that something had happened. After a few weeks had passed, we knew that Mike wasn't coming back.

Months went by with no sign of Mike. And then, in June, something of Mike's did literally surface that made people wonder His chest-high waders They were as clean as this new pair and showed no sign of a gator attack We found no indication of any bite marks on the waders No indication of any human remains whatsoever Traces of Mike, but still no body. And how unusual that was for a lake not to give up its dead.

Mike, at that point, was the only hunter, fisherman that had gone overboard in that lake that had never been found. Fish and wildlife officers were confounded. Eventually, the case of the missing boater was handed off to local sheriff's detectives to investigate. I remember telling some of the guys, investigators, we might want to look into this a little deeper because something don't add up. One year after Mike goes missing, his wife Denise visits the lake for a final goodbye.

When we come back... She had a flower with her and she'd written Mike a note. And there is growing suspicion this wasn't an accident. No. Uh-uh. Something is wrong here. Duck hunter Mike Williams had disappeared on Lake Seminole, and his wife, Denise, was alone with a young daughter to raise. Their story began as high school sweethearts. He the football star and student council president, she the cheerleader and homecoming queen.

Patty Ketchum, the wife of Mike's boss, got to know them both. Impressions of her, Patty? Oh, just as nice, just absolutely delightful. Absolutely delightful. After attending a private Christian high school, the two graduated from hometown Florida State University and got married. Their baby girl, Ansley, was born on Mother's Day. Denise was a CPA. Mike, meanwhile, had become an ace real estate appraiser in his hometown,

Tallahassee. Mike's boss, Clay Ketchum, was amazed that despite the 15-hour days Mike put in at the office, he always made time to take care of the home front. Make sure that dinner was ready, laundry got going. So he's Mr. Mom. He's Mr. Mom. We all said we wanted to be married to Mike Williams. I mean, we all needed a Mike Williams in our life. Mike's co-workers took mischievous delight in wondering what Denise had in store for him when she called him at the office.

I'm across the street, please. I need gas. Come pop my gas. He worked upstairs, so you hear this bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam down the steps. I guess Denise needs gas. But now, with Mike gone, Denise would be the sole provider for their young daughter. Fortunately, Mike had several hefty insurance policies. You have a small child and a wife to take care of? Sure. Yeah, you need to get insurance, you know. Brian, Mike's best friend and an insurance broker himself, helped Denise navigate the claims process.

For as long as most people could remember, Denise and Mike and Brian and his wife Kathy had been couples together. They all attended that private Christian high school, married their high school sweethearts, and had children about the same time. And then came Lake Seminole. After a year had gone by since Mike disappeared, Denise asked Patty to take her to the lake. She told me how she had been going to a Christian counselor, and he had encouraged her to do this. And she had a flower with her, and she'd written Mike a note. And I guess probably 30, 45 minutes later, she came back and she'd been crying. The flower and the letter in particular.

Those were left to the lake. Gone, but definitely not forgotten, according to Becky Moss, Denise's friend and co-worker. She loved him like a woman would love your life partner, your soulmate. The official death certificate said Mike drowned while duck hunting. But for Mike's family and friends, doubts started creeping in, spurred on by little things that just didn't add up. Like those waders found six months after Mike disappeared. They looked almost pristine.

No. Uh-uh. Something is wrong here. Staged? I thought staged because I know that anything left in a lake for any period of time is going to have algae on it. Speculation gave way to suspicion. Could Mike's disappearance be the result of foul play? Enter the wild card, the squeakiest of squeaky wheels, Mike Williams' mother, who simply was not buying the official story that Mike, an experienced outdoorsman, had an accident on that lake. Mike is not in Lake Seminole. He did not drown.

He did not get eaten by alligators. Some called Cheryl Williams, with her pigtails, eccentric, even crazy. But she demanded answers, appealing first to the media, and when she didn't get any results, she opened her purse and spent money she really couldn't afford. I take out an ad in the Tallahassee Democrat, and I ask the public to help me find my son. It was a $1,200 ad. Earnings from the daycare center she operated out of her home. You have to change a lot of diapers to pay for an ad that expensive.

But it got publicity. Some of the daycare center kids, now all grown, like Maria Denmark, remembered making missing person posters. I was only six years old when Mike went missing. I remember somebody would draw out Mike's name and missing, and then we would fill it in with like a black sharpie. Ms. Cheryl, as she became known, was a one-woman campaign. She wrote letters to the governor every day for years, 2,600 in all. She paid for billboards and stood outside churches with posters. The ministers would get mad because I was outside their church. Miss Williams, why don't you leave?

Cheryl didn't. You were getting a reputation around town as this kind of batty lady with the pigtails out there with her signs and the billboards and the letters to the editor, and you became famous. Everybody called me crazy. But not everybody. Police began to take Cheryl seriously after years of her struggling to draw attention to Mike's case. Ms. Cheryl is a straight shooter, and she tells it like it is. Will Mickler is an agent with the FDLE, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, a top cops agency with statewide

jurisdiction. Four years after Mike went missing, they agreed to take the case. If it wasn't for Ms. Cheryl, this case would have never gotten into the hands of criminal investigators. But Mike's widow, Denise, didn't appreciate what Cheryl was doing. She's upset because she and her daddy said it was an invasion of their privacy. Denise's friend, Becky Moss, in her defense, said Denise told Cheryl to stop all the noise because it was confusing her daughter. Mrs. Williams had very strong feelings that Mike was still alive, and she was telling that to the little girl, when, by all accounts, he was not. Nick and I never told Ansley that her daddy was alive.

Never. Then Denise upped the ante, laying down a demand to her mother-in-law. Stop raising a ruckus, or Cheryl would never see her granddaughter Ansley again. So she followed through with her promise. And your granddaughter's gone. Totally gone out of my life.

But I couldn't stop. I had to find out what happened to Mike. And that smoldering stalemate between Cheryl and Denise held fast as the years went by. In time, Denise Williams began dating, even thinking about marriage with one of her suitors. But soon the rumor mill would be abuzz with a more sensational take on Denise's love life. Coming up. All of a sudden we find out she's dating Brian Winchester. Shocking to some, suspicious to others. It's just, it's so creepy. When Dateline continues. Duck seasons came and went as the years rolled by. Long after Mike Williams' ill-fated hunting trip,

Denise was working for the state as an accountant, a young widow raising her daughter Ansley. She'd started dating again, and one day there was a new man in her life, someone with a very familiar name. And then all of a sudden we find out she's dating Brian Winchester. Brian, Mike's best friend and fishing and hunting buddy. Since their days as a happy foursome in high school and beyond, Brian and his wife Kathy had gotten a divorce. Friend Becky Moss said Brian wasn't Denise's first relationship after Mike.

Denise dated other people. So she didn't fly right into his arms. No. I mean, she had reservations for a while. He really kind of had to prove himself to her in terms of where he was at with his Christianity. Nonetheless, this was a juicy tidbit. Mike's best friend hooking up with the widow of the man who disappeared. It didn't take the court of public opinion long to do the math. Could Brian have had anything to do with Mike's disappearance? And what did Denise know? Those coffee shop conspiracies took wing when five years after Mike's disappearance, Brian did Denise know? Those coffee shop conspiracies took wing when five

years after Mike's disappearance, Brian married Denise. Mike's old boss and his wife were invited to the wedding. They'd heard the rumors too. The minister got up and said, there is nothing that I don't know between the two of them. And Patty and I kind of punched each other in the ribs and said, well, there might be one little piece of information that he's not aware of. Brian moved into the same house Mike and Denise had lived in together and began raising Mike's daughter. What really bothered me the most was the fact that they stayed in Mike's house. Raising that child.

Raising the child and assumes the role of father. Takes over his life. Takes over his life. It's just, it's so creepy. For Cheryl, the marriage seemed to corroborate long-running suspicions that she'd worked like a sick tooth. She'd kept a detailed notebook about Mike's disappearance and Brian and Denise were filling more and more pages in it. She alerted investigator Mike Devaney from the FDLE about her suspicions and shared a 27-page summary of her notes. She was a good source of information, and she was a real bulldog on this. Like this item, Cheryl noted. Remember those insurance policies Mike bought? They were worth $1.75 million. And it was Brian who actually

sold Mike a large part of them. And those waiters that surfaced after Mike went missing were used by Denise's lawyer as evidence to declare Mike dead in just seven months so she could collect her money. That's better than icing on the cake. If one of your goals is to get the woman, you also get the money. That was all that I really needed to know. But the authorities needed much more than idle gossip. Tully Sparkman, an investigator for the prosecutor's office, worked the case for 10 long years. Are suspicions getting grounded in the relationship between Denise and Brian, or was it in the money trail, or what? It was all of it. I mean, it's a cumulative thing. You start looking at, you know, the odd fact that the body never floated, the waiters popping up, the money.

So the investigators kept their eyes on the married couple, Brian and Denise, and bided their time. If either one of them was harboring a secret involving foul play, eventually it might have a corrosive effect on their relationship. Well, they're not going to turn on each other while they're married, but then you're waiting on things to flare up. And in 2012, seven years into their marriage, they did flare up. Brian moved out. Denise wanted a divorce, but Brian managed to put it off for years. So the marriage was finished at that point? I would say so. In August 2016,

Brian did something that nearly ended very badly for Denise. The wild episode started one morning as Denise got in her car to go to work. Hiding in the back seat, Brian popped up, shoved a gun in her ribs, and said drive. Denise managed to pull into a shopping center parking lot where she talked Brian into letting her go. She promised she wouldn't tell police, but after Brian left, she did report her abduction. He's screaming and I'm just like shaking. Denise said an unhinged Brian, upset about the divorce, even threatened to take his own life. He kept saying I've lost everything. I have nothing to live for. Many times I'm going to kill myself. Did he tell you how he was going to do that? No, but he said he bought the gun to do it. I said, did you actually plan to kill both of us today? He goes, well, me. As Denise relived

the horror of the day, little did she know that in an adjoining room, an FDLE agent was listening. He wasn't interested in some high voltage domestic quarrel. He wanted to know about Mike's disappearance and what Brian had to do with it, and what Denise might know. Denise's already very bad day was about to get infinitely worse. Coming up... Where do you think Mike's buried at? Oh, I have no idea. So many secrets. What was the truth? I'm sure at some point he told you something. Denise Williams had been carjacked at gunpoint by her estranged husband, Brian Winchester. And now she was sitting in a police interview room, giving her version of the abduction.

What would lead him to this? To want to kill himself? Because, I mean, our marriage is over. But police believe Brian wasn't going to kill just himself. Especially after Denise told them he'd brought along a tarp and bleach, as well as the gun. Denise, he was going to kill you. He brought that stuff because it covers tracks. For years, police felt that Brian and Denise were the keys to understanding Mike's disappearance. And now with the kidnapping, they believe Brian was taking no chances

in getting rid of the one person who might know what he had done. I'm sure at some point he told you something. I'm telling you, he killed Mike and he was going to kill you and make you go away. The detective pressed her, asking Denise if she really knew the man she'd married. That person you saw today could kill Mike, couldn't he? That person could. And he did. And that's who he was then. He has conned you to no end.

It's not your fault. I mean, that person today could have done anything and of anything. That's not the person that I married. That's not the person that I knew. Mike Devaney, the FDLE lead agent, couldn't believe Denise was finally being questioned about what happened to Mike. FDLE agents had approached Brian and Denise on one occasion, and they both refused to talk. They went straight to an attorney, and that was that. Devaney had waited a long time for this moment.

Now it was his turn to enter the room and find out what Denise knew. Where do you think Mike's buried at? Oh, I have no idea. You don't really believe he died on the lake? I do. Why? I just always have. That's what I believe. Denise tried to steer the interview back to the kidnap. I mean, this was your husband. He simply vanished. I'm not comfortable talking about this right now. I've had an unbelievable day. Devaney kept pushing, telling Denise if she didn't talk,

he might get the story from someone else. I'd much rather get it from you than from Brian, because when he's arrested, I'm going to talk to him, too. That's fine. I don't want to see what he says. Okay. He may say something you don't want to hear. I don't know. Well, I have no idea.

You have no clue. For now, the mystery of Mike's disappearance remained just that. But Brian was arrested and charged with kidnapping Denise. He pleaded not guilty to those charges. But a year later, he changed his plea to no contest. It comes down to my life or his. And I'm asking you, please, to choose mine. At sentencing, Denise appealed to the judge to give him a life sentence. He will finish what he has started, no matter what age he is when he is released. I'm asking you to sentence him to life in prison for the crimes he has committed. In the end, the judge gave Brian Winchester 20 years.

In court, nothing had been said about Mike Williams. When they shuffled him off, we walked out and I looked to Patty and I said, well, that's it. The door has just been slammed on whatever happened to Mike and we will never know. But the next day, FDLE had a major announcement. They'd found a skeletal body in a shallow grave. The human remains are those of Mike Williams. After all those years, it was over.

Police were mum on how they'd found Mike's body, but speculation was that Brian had led them to it. Further forensic analysis concluded that Mike Williams was in fact murdered. And his body wasn't in Lake Seminole after all. It was 50 miles away, back in Tallahassee off a dead-end road by another swampy lake.

I said, he can't be dead. He can't be. And they said, it's Mike. I said, you know that? And they said, yes, we've done all the DNA. FTLE agent Will Mickler broke the news to Denise. I saw her tear up when the death notification was provided to her that Mike Williams' remains had been identified and located. Now you'd think with the recovery of the body, murder charges would be filed forthwith. But that didn't happen. Detectives continued to investigate. They had another suspect in their sights. And what a sensation that turned out to be. Five months after Mike's body was recovered, a perp walk to remember. Denise Williams in handcuffs being marched by cops from her office at Florida State University. She was charged with the first degree murder of her first husband, Mike.

It was her daughter Ansley's 19th birthday. The indictment said that Denise had conspired with Brian Winchester to kill his best friend Mike. She pleaded not guilty. But Denise was the only one charged. What about Brian? They told us that they had had to make a deal with the devil. Some called it the deal of the century. Really what they wanted was information of what happened to Mike, where the body was. His attorney, Tim Jansen, said prosecutors had but one priority, to find Mike's body. They never said to him, you have to give any evidence against Denise. But he would. In exchange for his testimony against Denise, Brian got 20 years for the kidnapping and would not face murder charges. State of Florida versus Denise Williams.

Almost 18 years after Mike Williams disappeared, Denise went on trial. She faced a mandatory life sentence if convicted. Prosecutors had a lineup of witnesses. FDLE agents, Fish and Wildlife officers, and Mike's mother, their head barely showing above the witness box. And the jury met Brian's first wife, Kathy. Did you suspect that Brian Winchester, your husband, was having an affair with Denise Williams? I did suspect that. Suspicions that were confirmed after Brian asked her to join them in a threesome at a beach condo before the murder. There were snapshots with partial nudity. Kathy also said Denise tried to involve her in a threesome at a beach condo before the murder. There were snapshots with partial nudity. Kathy also said Denise tried to involve her in a cover-up after Brian's arrest.

To get a message to Brian that I'm not talking. But those witnesses were merely the side dishes to the state's main course, the mesmerizing confession of Brian Winchester. It was a stunning story of betrayals, a wife betraying her husband, her lover betraying his best friend. I had my gun in the boat. And a confession from the stand you'll never be able to unhear. Coming up, after so many years, finally, the truth. We wanted to be together, and we weren't going to let anything stop that. When Dateline continues.

Denise Williams was standing trial for first-degree murder, conspiring in the death of her first husband, Mike. And who was she accused of conspiring with? Why, her now ex-husband number two and Mike's best friend, Brian Winchester. He would be the state's star witness against her, required to testify to every grisly detail. Prosecutors John Fuchs and Andy Rogers knew their star witness came with some baggage. You guys have to worry whether the jury is going to hate your star witness, Brian.

There's no question they were going to hate him. That from day one was obvious. We hate him. If they walk out, they don't believe Brian Winchester, she walks. Now here he was, Brian Winchester looking haggard and drawn after almost two years in jail on the kidnapping charge, about to tell his story of duck hunting, sex, and murder. We connected like nobody else. Brian said he and Denise had been secret lovers for three years before Mike Williams was murdered. The more we were together, the more we wanted to be together. It just snowballed. So fast that within two years, Denise and Brian were plotting Mike's so-called accident on Lake Seminole. I think there was even talk about, you know,

well, it'll be up to God what happens and not us. It won't be a murder. It'll be, you know, an accident. To most people, divorce would have been a better solution. But Brian said Denise, a devout Christian, didn't want to endure the stigma. Because of the way she was raised, because of her pride, I guess she did not want to get divorced. I mean, we wanted to be together, and we weren't going to let anything stop that. Better to be a killer than a divorcee? A widow gets sympathy, and on top of that, she gets $1.75 million.

So, the weekend of the wedding anniversary became D-Day. Brian testified Mike was not hunting alone. He was along as his early morning duck hunting buddy. They pushed off. The plan was to make it look like Mike drowned in a boating accident. The murder weapon would be Mike's waders. We believed that if you fell overboard with the waders on, that you would sink pretty quickly. We got to that area that I knew was a deep area.

I basically stopped the boat and got him to stand up. And when he did, I pushed him into the water. What happened next? He was in the water and he was like struggling. I pulled off just a little bit to get kind of away from him so that he couldn't reach back into the boat. And I didn't know it at the time. I didn't know if he was trying to swim or I didn't know what was going on.

But what I came to find out or eventually realized was he was taking the waders and the jacket off. Mike made it to a tree stump and clung for dear life. That's when Brian decided to change the plan. And he was panicking and I was panicking. And none of this was like going well. I thought it was going to go. He was, he started to yell. And so I had my gun in the boat,

and so I loaded my gun, and I just, I made one or two circles around. And I ended up circling closer towards him. And he was in the water. And as I passed by, I shot him. Where did you shoot him? At the head. Autopsy x-rays showed buck him? At the head. Autopsy

x-rays showed buckshot throughout Mike's head. As the details emerged in court, Cheryl was struck yet another blow. What's hard for me now is what I found out in court was how he was murdered. It's a horrible story. They told me

the only consolation I could have was that Michael didn't feel it. He was dead immediately. Brian said after blasting Mike with his 12-gauge, he grabbed his lifeless body and steered the boat to shore. And I pushed the boat back out into the water to make it look like he had drowned or disappeared. On shore, he stuffed Mike's body into a dog crate in the back of his truck and drove back to Tallahassee, where he found an isolated area to bury his friend. Later that day, when Brian got a call from his father saying Mike was missing, the two drove to Lake Seminole.

There was a storm that came through that night. You know, my dad wanted to look at it. I think we were the last ones on the lake. And my dad didn't want to give up. My dad loved Mike. With no body ever found in the lake, Brian testified they grew concerned about their other incentive to murder Mike. With no body ever found in the lake, Brian testified they grew concerned about their other incentive to murder Mike. The concern between she and I then became, well, if his body's not found, what's going to happen with the life insurance? Brian admitted to staging the hack found 10 days into the search. I was the one that put it in the water during one of my searches on the lake to kind of confirm that he had drowned. And for the next 16 years, Brian said he and Denise kept a mafia-like oath of silence.

It is riveting testimony, this first-person story of taking a best friend out and killing him. And you can tell from the jurors that they're on the edge of their seat. It was strong, emotional testimony. out and killing him? And you can tell from the jurors that they're on the edge of their seat. It was strong emotional testimony, but would it be strong enough to convict? That would be for the jury to say. Now defense attorney Ethan Way rose with his goal set upon demolishing the star witness's credibility. Mr. Winchester, you're a murderer, isn't it true? Coming up, will there finally be justice for Mike? We didn't have a slam dunk case. We did very fine as follows. Does it come to a matter of jurors?

It's he said, she said. Pick one. Yes. The prosecution case would live or die by its star witness. Would jurors believe Brian Winchester? Does it come to a matter of jurors? It's he said, she said. Pick one. Yes.

Who do you believe? I believe her. Every day, twice on Sunday. I had my gun in the boat. Brian's chilling account of murdering his best friend in a plot with Mike's wife, Denise, was an award-worthy performance, thought Denise's attorney, Ethan Way. Compelling, that is, if you were a sucker for crocodile tears. He is a well-rehearsed, well-trained, well-timed liar.

Denise's defense boiled down to Brian being an obsessed lone wolf. He coveted Denise. He had this desire to have her. The defense said he was the only killer. She had nothing to do with his murderous craziness. In cross-examination, the defense wanted jurors to see that Brian's only goal was to save his own bacon by implicating Denise. And for his efforts, he wasn't charged with murder and got just 20 years in prison for kidnapping her. He got to jail on August 5th, 2016 on the charges of armed kidnapping.

You didn't straight away go to law enforcement and volunteer the details of the Mike Williams murder, did you? Absolutely not. In fact, while you were in jail, you decided you were going to take certain steps to try to frustrate the prosecution of the armed kidnapping case. Isn't that true? Yes, sir. I was desperate to do anything that I possibly could to avoid going to prison. Like having a discussion with one jail inmate who offered to kill Denise and get others to lie in his kidnapping case. He did offer to make Denise go away and make other witnesses in the case go away. And I said, don't ever speak to me of that again.

So you were drawing the line at having witnesses eliminated. Yes, sir. You were not drawing the line at having witness testimony and other evidence fabricated. Correct. With the possibility of new charges for witness tampering, the defense said that's when Brian agreed to a deal. In exchange for his deal, he has to throw her under the bus. He has to deliver. Well, he has to deliver, but he also gets a revenge element. Denise is the one that turned him in. If Denise Williams was involved in this murder in any way, why would she take the one person that can incriminate her and turn him into law enforcement and have him locked up? As for the actual murder,

the defense got Brian to admit it was he and he alone pulling the trigger. Denise was an hour away at home in Tallahassee with the baby. When you shot Mike Williams at Lake Seminole with the 12-gauge shotgun, was Denise Williams standing there with you? No, she wasn't. She was in my head behind me. Is it fair to say that over the years you've been obsessed with Denise Williams? Obsessed? Denise and I were best friends. We were Bonnie and Clyde. We were partners in crime. Then why, the defense asked, was his Bonnie in the dark about what actually happened at the lake? Denise Williams had no idea that you shot her husband in the face with a shotgun, did you? Correct. I tried to tell her about it one day, and she did not want to know the details.

She told me that she assumed that what we had planned did not happen, and God was going to forgive us. In the end, the defense attorney got Brian to tell jurors exactly why they should not believe him. Mr. Winchester, you're a murderer, isn't it true? Yes, sir. Mr. Winchester, you're a liar, isn't it true? Yes, sir. Mr. Winchester, you're a liar, isn't it true? Yes, sir. You got him to say yes to both those things. I have probably in 20 years never had a witness come right out and say boldly and emphatically that they are a liar. In his final remarks to the jury, attorney Ethan Way argued if you exclude Brian's lying testimony,

you're left with nothing forens forensically, evidentially, tying Denise to the murder. This case is only about Brian Winchester. It is only about him killing Mike Williams. It is only about him doing the most heinous thing that can be done. In his closing remarks,

Prosecutor Fuchs pointed to Denise. That one person sat here and listened to Brian Winchester describe how he had shot and killed her husband, the man she supposedly loved and cherished. Absolute stone face. Didn't bat an eye, didn't shed a tear. With that, the jury had the case. And remember, a point easy to lose sight of, it was Denise on trial for murder, not Brian. The waiting began. Did you feel pretty good about things? I was feeling pretty confident. I mean,

I wasn't 100% sure either. Like, we didn't have a slam dunk case. There is no evidence. There is no proof. She did nothing wrong. She just has the story told by the ex-husband. Exactly. Late that night, about eight hours into deliberations, a verdict. Cheryl had waited 18 years for this moment. State of Florida versus Denise Williams. Cheryl's jaw dropped when she heard the decision. We, the jury, find the defendant is guilty of first-degree murder. Guilty on all counts. We caught Justice for Mike, and this was about Justice for Mike. He loved Denise.

His wedding ring was on his hand when they found his remains. The conviction meant a mandatory life sentence for Denise Williams. Our interview with Cheryl and Nick came on a very difficult day. Ms. Cheryl, this is an important day as we sit here, isn't it? This is an anniversary day. Yes, sir. It's the 18th anniversary of Mike's disappearance. Now that I know that it's his murder.

What'd you learn about yourself in the midst of all this? I do believe in what's right and I will stand up and I will fight for that. But even with the guilty verdict, it wasn't quite over. An appeals court threw out the first degree murder conviction, citing a lack of evidence, but let stand the murder conspiracy charge. Cheryl went through another painful sentencing hearing. After hearing from her and other witnesses, the judge sentenced Denise to 30 years in prison. She'll be 77 years old when she gets out. That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.