The Test

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1:12This episode contains adult content. Please use discretion. On December 16th, 2000, Mike Williams had planned to go duck hunting on Lake Seminole, which was just on the Florida-Georgia border. And Mike often went duck hunting. Usually he went with a friend, but this morning apparently he decided to go alone. And although he was a successful duck hunter and he enjoyed it very much, some people said that he did actually take risks, that he stood up in the boat to take risky shots and so forth. So people became worried when he hadn't returned home. This is author Makita Brotman. Mike Williams was in his early 30s and lived in Tallahassee, Florida, with his wife Denise and their young daughter.

2:03The day Mike went duck hunting was his wedding anniversary. He and Denise planned to celebrate by spending the night at an inn on the coast, about an hour and a half south. They'd agreed to leave Tallahassee around noon. And people became more and more worried when Mike hadn't returned, specifically because he, like I said, he was kind of a, known to be rather a risky sportsman, but also because this terrible storm front was coming in. So Denise sent her father and a friend of Mike's out to the lake to look for him. Very quickly they found his car, but no sign of Mike. They thought he must be still out on the lake.

2:46Denise's father called Fish and Wildlife to report him missing. And he then drove to different spots along the bank with an officer, looking for a sign of his boat on the water. Pretty soon a search party was organized with the Department of Fish and Wildlife. Representatives from the Sheriff's Department were there. It was a huge search. but they couldn't continue searching that night because there was this very unusual for Florida, terrible winter storm. So the search was delayed until the following morning, much to people's anxiety because at this time people were really panicking. Denise refused to come out of her room.

3:24She was terribly upset. As soon as the weather improved, Mike's best friend, Brian Winchester, and his father took a boat out to look for Mike. And they actually came across Mike's boat after a few hours, and Brian even found Mike's cap in the water. So people were incredibly frightened about what had happened. And, you know, helicopters were brought in, cadaver dogs brought in. State authorities borrowed a special underwater camera from the National Geographic Society and brought in dive teams. When word spread that Mike had gone missing Members of the community joined in the search efforts A friend of Mike's said that at least 20 people showed up every day But they didn't find anything else After 44 days, on February 10th, 2001 The search was called off Mike's family and friends presumed he was dead Denise was terribly, terribly upset by this.

4:31She cut herself off from all her friends. She was suffering horribly. Mike's family held a memorial service for him at the Baptist church they attended. But some people still found it odd that no trace of his body had turned up at the lake. A friend of Mike's knew a medical examiner and a retired state marshal, and he asked them what they made of it. And they told him that it was very unusual for a body to disappear with no sign of it emerging from the water. But when the water warmed up, the body would surface in the spring. Both of them were very sure that the body would surface from their experience and their forensic knowledge.

5:18A few months went by and still no sign of the body. The experts Mike's friend had consulted said the same thing, that it was very unusual. In June, a fisherman found a pair of hunting waders in the lake. Later that month, a friend of Mike's brought an expert diver to the same spot, and the diver found a camouflage hunting jacket with Mike's hunting license in the pocket. By late summer, authorities decided on what they thought was the most likely reason they hadn't found his body. Lake Seminole was known for rather sizable alligators. And in fact, during the search to find Mike's body, a number of the investigators said that they encountered alligators in the water, including one having his ankle bitten by one and someone else actually trod on one.

6:12And after Mike's body disappeared, many people started to wonder if he might have been attacked by alligators. Nobody thought that he would actually have been eaten alive by alligators, but people did wonder, since his body didn't surface, if he might have knocked himself out, drowned, and then his body being consumed by alligators. Makita says that Mike's mother, Cheryl, wasn't convinced by this explanation. She decided to reach out to a biology professor at Florida State University. And he actually wrote back and said to her, Your son could not have been eaten by an alligator because alligators don't eat during the winter.

6:56The authorities also consulted alligator experts, who agreed that alligators don't feed in the winter. But some people said that maybe an alligator had hidden Mike's body away and had waited until spring to feed. Another problem with the alligator theory Was that Mike's hunting jacket Had been found in the lake in good condition No bite marks Mike's mother believed There was enough evidence to show that Mike Had not been eaten by an alligator She began wondering If Mike hadn't died in the lake She did not believe that Mike was dead And said that she had an experience That she heard God's voice telling her Mike is not dead.

7:42Mike did not die in the lake. You have to bring him home. She thought maybe he knocked his head, lost his memory, and was wandering somewhere. She thought perhaps he'd taken on a new identity, gone to live in a different state. Makita says Cheryl, who was 56 at the time, started putting all of her energy into finding Mike. She reached out to missing persons networks, made and distributed flyers and posters with Mike's photo, and put ads in the newspaper. She even paid for a billboard. Cheryl also made a picket sign with Mike's face on it and the word missing, and would carry it around town, outside the Florida State football stadium on game days, and outside a local church on Sundays.

8:29Denise was absolutely opposed to Cheryl's constant search for Mike, which many people found peculiar. I mean, if your husband, your child's father had gone missing, wouldn't you do everything you possibly can to find him? But Denise repeated what her family had told her, which is, you should listen to the experts. The experts told her that Mike would not be coming back. She believed the experts. Denise and Mike's daughter was very young at the time, and Denise had quit her job when she was born. Now, she didn't have a steady source of income. Mike had several life insurance policies, but Denise wouldn't be able to access that money until Mike was legally declared dead, a process that takes years when there's no body.

9:21Marcus Winchester, the father of Mike's best friend Brian, offered to help. Marcus owned an insurance and investment firm and used his connections to get Denise a certificate of presumptive death in June of 2001, about six months after Mike disappeared. She eventually received$1.8 million in benefits. As time went by, Denise and Brian Winchester started spending more and more time together. By December of 2003, three years after Mike disappeared, they were engaged. About four years later, a local reporter revealed that Brian Winchester had sold Mike a million-dollar life insurance policy just six months before he disappeared.

10:14I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

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11:51The Snake. Dream Team. New Habitats. Zootopia has a secret reptile population. You can watch the record-breaking phenomenon at home. You're clearly working it. Zootopia 2, now available on Disney Plus Rated PG. Denise and Mike Williams, Brian Winchester, and his first wife, Kathy, had all grown up in Tallahassee together. In a very small Baptist community, very close, knew each other from, actually from preschool, a very tight-knit foursome. As they went through high school, they went to a Christian high school. Mike and Brian were football stars. Denise and Kathy were cheerleaders. Brian and Kathy were always a couple.

12:39Mike and Denise were always a couple. After college, Brian and Kathy got married, and Mike and Denise got married. Author Makita Brotman says that the four of them kept spending a lot of time together. They started going to nightclubs and concerts, tried drugs, went to strip clubs. And it was almost as though after denying themselves their whole lives, sex, alcohol, the kinds of things that most people enjoy in high school, they sort of broke out of the straightened Baptist circumstances and began to experiment. Sometimes Brian would ask his wife Kathy and Denise to take their clothes off and pose together so he could take pictures.

13:24It seemed that Brian and Denise were much more interested in these kind of lurid games than were Kathy and Mike, who were keener on settling down. Kathy wanted to start a family, and Mike just worked so hard. You know, he wanted to get up early in the morning and go to work. He stayed at work late at night. But Brian and Denise weren't ready to settle down. They would leave their spouses at home and go to concerts and clubs together instead. And they kept it a secret from Kathy and Mike. It became very clear that during these escapades that Brian and Denise had long conversations about their relationships, about their satisfaction, about their respective marriages.

14:04And it became very clear that they were interested in each other sexually. Perhaps even that they had both married the wrong person and that they should have married each other. Makita says they started meeting at each other's houses when Mike and Kathy were at work. Other times, they'd meet up in church parking lots or local hotels. Sometimes, if one of them went on a business trip, the other would come along. It seemed like no one suspected them, and they continued with their lives as normal. Kathy and Denise both got pregnant within about a year of each other. Makita says Denise wasn't totally sure if the father of her baby was Mike or Brian.

14:51Denise and Brian kept seeing each other, even though having young children at home made it harder. They continued to be completely obsessed with each other and devoted to each other, but they also continued to embrace the church. And over time, they seemed to become increasingly guilty and began to think more about how could they be together while remaining in the strictures of the Baptist church. Divorce was something that they simply, Denise in particular, was simply unable to face, unable to consider. but both of them felt that if you had a really really strong feeling about something a real desire towards something it might be that God was pointing you in that direction and so what Brian and Denise did was kind of try and wrap stretch their religion to fit their desires by telling each other that maybe they could submit Mike to a test and if Mike failed the test It was a way that God was speaking to them, telling them that he wanted them to be together.

16:04Brian later said, the subject of Mike's death started coming up in conversations. There were scenarios that were discussed. They talked about staging an accident. Brian and Mike could go duck hunting together, and Brian could push Mike overboard. The heavy-duty hunting waiters Mike was wearing would fill up with water, and he could drown. And then if he survived, that was God saying, no, I don't want you to be together. Denise should stay with Mike. But if Mike drowned, that was God saying, yes, it's my will that you two should be together. In April of 2000, eight months before Mike disappeared, Brian sold him a new insurance policy for$1 million.

16:52It was Mike's third life insurance policy, and the second from Brian. Mike had planned to let one of his other policies lapse, but Denise continued paying for it behind his back. Denise and Brian decided to carry out their plan the week before Denise and Mike's wedding anniversary. Brian and Mike made plans to go hunting, but the night before, Mike called Brian and told him he had to cancel. Denise wanted Mike to stay home. Brian met up with Denise the next day to find out what had happened And remembers telling her, either we're going through with this, or we're not Duck hunting season was almost over And so Brian persuaded Denise that it was now or never, basically And she agreed, she finally went along with it After Mike disappeared, Kathy, Brian, and Denise spent a lot of time together Kathy later said that even though she and Brian were the couple, she started to feel like she didn't belong.

17:58And she'd found a receipt for a necklace Brian had purchased. The receipt showed that it had been a custom necklace, with the word Meridian. Kathy immediately recognized Meridian as a nickname Denise sometimes went by, her party name. Within a few years, Kathy and Brian separated. she moved out and told them she wanted a divorce. And again, with all the stigma about divorce in the Baptist Church, and since Brian and Denise were unable to contemplate the fact of Denise's divorce, it seemed strange that Kathy could just get divorced pretty easily from Brian. It kind of threw into question what Brian and Denise had done.

18:45If you could get divorced without stigma, without condemnation, without being thrown out of the church, it really made what they'd done seem horrifyingly unnecessary. But it did mean that Brian and Denise could stop keeping their relationship a secret. In 2003, they got engaged, and in 2005, they got married. Not all of Denise's relatives approved of her marrying someone who had been divorced. And some people were surprised that Cheryl Williams, Mike's mother, hadn't been invited to the wedding. Besides paying for the billboard and carrying a missing poster with Mike's face around town, Cheryl had been writing letters to the local newspaper, the Tallahassee Democrat.

19:35at. Eventually, she got in touch with a reporter named Jennifer Portman. Jennifer Portman became very interested in this case. She began to meet with Cheryl. She began to sympathize with Cheryl. She, too, found it very suspicious that the man who'd sold Mike his insurance policies was now married to Mike's wife. And she began posting an article every year about Mike's disappearance, saying how many days it was that he'd been missing, how many years it was since he'd been missing. Jennifer had reached out to Brian and Denise for comment multiple times. They wouldn't agree to talk, but sometimes sent statements over email.

20:16In 2007, Brian wrote, Nobody wants Mike to be found more than we do. We continue to love Mike and miss him every day. We ask again that our privacy be respected and that our family be allowed to live our lives in peace. After Jennifer learned that Brian had sold Mike a large life insurance policy just a few months before his disappearance she reached out to Brian and Denise again This time they didn't respond at all There was a lot of talk and speculation about Mike's disappearance on the newspaper's online forum You know, gossip and implications and rumors and suggestions in the community, and it really must have put enormous pressure on Brian and Denise.

21:08They wouldn't speak about the crime even in front of each other in a private space. So they developed this range of hand signals that they would use to suggest that they wanted to talk about the crime. One of them was holding bars as if you were miming that you were in prison. And if either of them made one of these gestures, it meant they wanted to talk about the crime. They would go to an isolated area. And before even having a conversation, they would leave their cell phones in the car and sometimes even take the batteries out of their cell phones, because by this time they were getting suspicious of each other.

21:48And there was even a stage where they would both actually pat each other down before they had conversations. Makita says that by this point, the police no longer believe that Mike drowned and had been eaten by alligators. They suspected Mike had been murdered, and that maybe Brian and Denise had something to do with it. But they had no evidence. They said to each other many times, unless they turn on each other, nothing can be done. Mike's mother, Cheryl, wrote letters to the governor's office daily, trying to get someone to help. In 2011, producers from a show called Disappeared heard about the case and put together an episode about it.

22:33They interviewed Mike's family, friends, and Jennifer Portman, who said,

22:47In 2012, Brian wrote in his journal that Denise wanted to separate. He wrote that during an especially bad argument, he'd grabbed Denise's wrists and pushed her against a door. Quote, I saw how she was scared, so I let her go, and she ran out. Brian moved out, but Denise did agree to go to couples therapy for several years. Still, in 2015, she filed for divorce. Brian later said, I did not handle the news well. I dealt with it by drinking and indulging in inappropriate relationships. Makita says he was spending a lot of money on strippers and prostitutes. And then, in 2016, Denise went to the police and said she wanted to tell them about something Brian had done.

23:38She said he had tried to kidnap her. The police had been waiting for this chance for 16 years. They'd been waiting for Brian and Denise to turn on each other, and now it had happened.

23:55We'll be right back.

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24:51We are about to see millionaires, billionaires, and yes, probably even the world's first trillionaire created overnight. And yes, it's that guy. This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy. Chainsaw! But all the tech bros who are going to make all the money, they need our money way more than we need their products. And we're going to remind you why on today's Explained from Vox. The day before Denise Williams went to the police, Brian Winchester purchased a gun from a sporting goods store. He decides to kill himself. He writes ten suicide notes to his various friends, family members, his father, his mother, his son.

25:37And then he decides before he does it, he wants to face Denise one last time. He wants to confront her one last time. He gets very drunk. At night, he goes to Denise's house. He climbs over the gate. He hides in her car, in the back of her car. The next morning, Denise got in her car around 9 a.m. to go to work. When she was driving, she called her sister to check in. She later said that the moment her sister picked up, she saw a movement in her rearview mirror. It was Brian. He was climbing from the way back of her car into the back seat with a gun. Denise is absolutely petrified. She's screaming.

26:18She throws her phone down. She manages to swerve into the parking lot of a pharmacy, a big pharmacy, and she pulls up where she knows that there's a security camera. Denise later said that Brian held his gun to her ribs and said, if you try to get away, I'll have to hurt you. She said that his breath smelled like alcohol and that he was rambling and wasn't making a lot of sense. He said he still loved her and that he wanted to kill himself. They sat there for nearly an hour. People went in and out of the pharmacy, but Denise was scared that if she signaled to anyone, Brian would shoot her. She tried to calm him down.

27:02She kept telling him that she could help him, that it wasn't too late to turn his life around. Finally, she convinced Brian to let her go to work. She swore she wouldn't go to the police. But as Brian got out of her car, Denise saw him take some things from the back, a plastic sheet, and what she thought looked like a bottle of bleach and a shovel. Denise decided to go to the police after all, but Makita says she didn't fully consider that if the police arrested Brian, they might also try to question him more about Mike's disappearance. She did not want them to ask him about the murder or to charge him with the murder because she knew that he would implicate her.