Double lives and a murder for marriage: Confession details plot to kill Mike Williams

As part of a plea deal, Brian Winchester told investigators he was manipulated to murder by his wife Denise

Jennifer Portman

Tallahassee Democrat

An illustration from a wedding photo of Mike and Denise Williams

Mike Williams’ murder wasn’t a crime of passion.

It was cold and calculated, Brian Winchester told investigators, the final act of a scheme he and Mike’s wife Denise hatched so the lovers could be together.

It would look like an accident; her pious image wouldn’t be ruined by a divorce, they’d “live happily ever after,” he said. And with Mike’s nearly $2 million in life insurance, they’d be rich, too.

But things didn’t go as planned, Winchester said in his sworn confession last fall. Not the killing he carried out, not the pact of silence that concealed the crime for 17 years, certainly not the everlasting love.

Denise Merrell Williams, 48, is led out of her accounting office at Doak Campbell Stadium in handcuffs on May 8, after a Leon County grand jury indicted her on a charge of first-degree murder of Mike Williams.

More:The plea deal: Immunity for Brian Winchester cracked Mike Williams case

More:On day she was kidnapped, investigators grilled Denise on Mike Williams' disappearance

More:Read the plea agreement between Brian Winchester, State Attorney

Today, both are behind bars. The 47-year-old Winchester is serving a 20-year prison sentence for kidnapping Denise Williams, 48, in 2016. She’s in jail, arrested May 8 and charged with Mike’s murder, the planning of it and its cover-up.

It's a salacious story, Williams’ criminal defense lawyer Ethan Way says — if it were true. Winchester acted alone, Way contends, and his concocted story about her involvement is pure fiction.

She was not in any way a party to killing her 31-year-old husband, he said, and has no knowledge whatsoever about what Winchester, her ex-husband, did to Mike. Way says there is no evidence to back up his outrageous claims, provided only after he was given complete immunity from punishment for his admitted murder of Mike.

"Brian Winchester got the sweetheart deal of the century," Way said. "He can say whatever he wants at this point. He has license to make up whatever he wants to make up."

Prosecutors are trying to hold the wrong person responsible for Mike's killing, Way insists, and he plans to prove her innocence at trial as soon as possible and will argue in court next week that she be let out of jail until then.

All Denise ever knew was her husband went hunting one morning and never came home.

But in sworn statements made to law enforcement officials and obtained by the Tallahassee Democrat, Winchester tells a different story.

“Denise,” he said, “has had a double life going on for 20 years.”

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Denise Williams, Mike Williams and Brian Winchester shared a yearbook page spread at North Florida Christian School in 1988.

A storybook romance unravels

The affair between Brian and Denise, who first met in preschool, began Oct. 13, 1997, he said, just three years after they’d both married their North Florida Christian High School sweethearts.

The 1988 yearbook is packed with photos of them. Mike, a standout athlete and student council president, voted “best personality.” Denise, a cheerleader, voted “best dressed.” Kathy Aldridge, who became Kathy Winchester, also on the cheer squad, voted “best all around.” Brian, a key club member, whose senior portrait sits side-by-side with Mike’s.

The two couples lived parallel lives from high school on up, graduating together the same year, going to Florida State, getting married in 1994 and having their babies in 1999, two years after Brian said the affair began.

When they rang in the new century and within a year all turned 30, they were the best of friends. Brian, who worked for his father's financial services firm, was “somewhat content" with the ongoing clandestine relationship. Denise, an accountant working for the state, was not.

Mike Williams would not live to celebrate another new year.

“I was manipulated in ways I didn’t know at the time,” Brian told investigators during one of three recorded statements made to investigators as part of a plea agreement and provided to the Democrat as part of a public records request.

“I had a good wife, I had a kid and I had Denise on the side. This is messed up thinking, but in my mind, I had it pretty good,” he said. “Denise and Mike, on the other hand, they were at each other’s throats and she had two million reasons for this to happen.”

Mike didn’t know about the affair, but he knew something was up. He was unhappy with his marriage, unhappy with his work as a real estate appraiser, and unhappy with his recently widowed mother, Brian said. Mike wanted a change – a new job, a new town, a new baby.

Denise wanted none of those things.

“Denise was getting worried that things were going to blow up,” Brian said.

Mike Williams with his daughter, and wife Denise Williams, weeks before law enforcement now says he was murdered.

Scenarios 'snowballed' to murder

Brian doesn’t remember who brought up the idea first. But sometime in early 2000, as he and Denise grew closer, Mike became more miserable and pressure began to mount. “The subject of Mike or Kathy’s deaths started coming up in conversations,” Brian told investigators.

“Denise basically made it clear she would never get divorced, primarily because of appearances,” he explained. “She is ultra-concerned about the way she appears to the world.”

There was only one way they were going to end up together. They started concocting “scenarios,” Brian said.

In one, both couples would go boating. There’d be an accident and only Brian and Denise would survive. Brian said he nixed that idea because Kathy was the mother of his son. Her life also wasn’t insured for more than a million dollars.

“The other scenario was where Mike and I went hunting and there was an accident and he didn’t make it, but I made it back to safety,” Brian said.

“Denise has this thing where she gets people to do stuff for her and she minimizes her guilt or conscience or whatever in it,” he spoke haltingly, choosing his words. “She wanted it all to be on me and not on her, and she wanted in her mind a scenario where it wasn’t a murder but it was an accident.”

The idea “snowballed,” Brian told investigators, and together they began to plot the details. During that time, about six or nine months before he was killed, Brian sold Mike – with Denise’s encouragement – a $1 million life insurance policy, supplementing the two others he had totaling $750,000.

“We would be together and live happily ever after and, as a side note, we’d have all this money and enjoy a wonderful life together,” Brian said from his prison cell at the Wakulla Correctional Institute.

“Stupid, stupid 30-year-old.”

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Lake Jackson on Gardner Road where the remains of Mike Williams were found.

Waders were the murder weapon of choice

By December, the tension reached a crescendo.

Increasingly suspicious, Mike had gone to Denise’s mother concerned about missing money from their accounts and cash disappearing. Was she having an affair? Was she doing drugs?

Denise and Mike’s sixth wedding anniversary was looming. He was pressing her to have another baby and planned a spring trip with her to Hawaii. And one of those three life insurance policies – the $500,000 one from Cotton States – was about to lapse.

“Her daughter was getting older,” Brian added, “and if something were going to happen to Mike she wanted her to be young enough so she wouldn’t remember.”

Saturday, Dec. 9, 2000, was to be the day. Waders were to be the murder weapon.

Brian would take Mike long before dawn to a “secret “duck hunting spot at Lake Seminole in Jackson County. Brian knew the lake, knew the landing he would launch from, knew the depth of the water. The distance from Tallahassee – about an hour away – was a problem, but he said, “for what we had planned to happen it seemed to be the best location.”

Denise would see to it Mike would go. Their alibis were well rehearsed, Winchester said as part of the plea deal.

Brian would do the crime early, then actually go hunting with his father-in-law, who could vouch for his whereabouts. Denise would stay at home with 18-month-old Anslee and make a few calls from the house to prove she’d been there.

But hours before they were to head out, Mike called Brian. He had to cancel. Brian contacted Denise as soon as he could. She said she got cold feet and called it off.

“I was relieved, but I was like, ‘What the hell?’ This isn’t something to be wishy-washy over,” Brian told investigators with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Within days, Denise regained her resolve, Brian said.

She was set to go with Mike to Apalachicola for their anniversary trip the next Saturday afternoon, Dec. 16. She didn’t want to have sex with him and get in another fight about it. And that $500,000 was about to disappear.

Brian needed to take care of things that morning before she had to go to the Gibson Inn.

CHRONICLING THE MIKE WILLIAMS MYSTERY:

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Sources confirm Mike Williams' remains were found at the end of Gardner Road. Gardner Road is off North Meridian Road and dead ends into eastern Carr Lake, an extension of Lake Jackson.

Mike Williams' final moments

Mike spent the last Friday night of his life ringing the bell for the Salvation Army Christmas red kettle collection, then went home to Denise and Anslee.

Brian and Kathy got a babysitter for their toddler son, Stafford, and went to Floyd’s MusicStore to see the band Vast. She had a few drinks and fell asleep hard, Brian said.

“Denise and I had agreed we would have very limited communication, as limited as we could make it prior to the incident and after the incident just to avoid detection,” he told investigators.

Early Saturday morning Brian met Mike at a gas station on Thomasville Road near I-10.

“I told him not to call me, that my phone wasn’t working because I didn’t want any record of phone calls,” Brian stammered, his voice breaking.

Mike didn’t think anything of it. He led the way in his gold Ford Bronco to the lake, with Brian following in his white Chevy Suburban. They got to the deserted landing in the dark and launched Mike’s boat.

“It was just like a hunting trip is supposed to be,” Brian said.

And that’s what it would have appeared to have been – a sad, tragic, hunting trip – when Mike Williams accidentally fell from the small boat wearing his waders and sank like a stone. That was the plan.

Mike was wearing those waders – the ones assumed for so long to have been planted – and he did fall into the lake, but it was no accident.

“We got to the area where his waders and jacket were found,” Brian said, pausing frequently as he recounted the murder for the record.

“I got him to stand up and I pushed him into the water – he, he got his jacket off and his waders off and he was in a panic, obviously. I was in a panic. I was driving the boat –and I didn’t know what to do – and I ended up shooting him.”

Shot him right in the head with a cheap 12-gauge shotgun.

Brian cried, blew his nose, heaved a deep sigh and continued: “He went under the water and -- so I found him in the water and I drug him to the shoreline.”

He ran back along River Road to the landing where they parked, got his truck and backed it to the edge of the lake. He put Mike’s dead body in the back and pushed his boat out into the water.

As he sped away, Brian said he broke down the shotgun he’d bought from an FSU student and threw the pieces out the window.

He rushed home and slipped into bed with Kathy, pretending he never left but had overslept, missing his hunting date with her father. He called him on the home phone to apologize so there would be a record.

Kathy stayed in bed and Brian drove to the Walmart on north Thomasville Road, where he bought a blue tarp and a shovel. Mike’s bloody body was in the back the whole time.

“I almost think I was in some kind of shock because there isn’t a lot I can remember about that day,” Brian said.

Hours later, he’d act surprised when he and his dad Marcus Winchester would find Mike’s boat about 2 a.m. the next day as they helped to search the lake for the body he knew wasn’t there.

Brian Winchester cries with his head in his hands Tuesday at a Leon County Courthouse, where he was sentanced to 20 years on charges of armed burglary and kidnapping of his estranged wife, Denise Winchester, at gunpoint last year.

Haunted by the secret

Over the last 17 years, Brian told investigators he and Denise had a lot of conversations about Mike. But he did not tell her everything.

“She does not know that the plan that she had come up with, that was agreed upon, she does not know that is not what happened,” he said in an October interview. “I didn’t want her to know the truth about how things went down; she didn’t know Mike was shot and I didn’t want her to know that part.”

He tried once to tell her, he said, but Denise didn't want to know.

Days after first spilling his story to law enforcement, Brian would lead them to the spot at the end of Gardner Road where they recovered Mike’s buried bones and his skull, riddled with shotgun pellets.

Once and for all the inane theory Mike was eaten by alligators was put to rest.

There was nothing special about the burial site at the edge of what was then Carr Lake’s dry shore – it was familiar to Brian as a kid growing up in northern Leon County hunting. Back in 2000, it was remote, but he could get to it easily in his truck.

The slope to the lake was far steeper than it is now. He dug a hole about two feet deep, put Mike and the tarp in and filled in the dirt.

The high bank helped conceal his gruesome work from a man who showed up looking to hunt deer on the dry lake bottom. Brian engaged the man who was none the wiser. Brian said he watched him walk away until he was out of sight.

Over the years, Brian would go to the site randomly, just to check. He worried the landing would eventually be developed. He considered moving the body but never did.

“Does it ever get to you?” State Attorney Office Investigator Jason Newlin asked.

“Every day, man, every day. I regret it, everything,” Brian replied. “It affected me a lot more than Denise because Denise has an uncanny ability to live in denial. It’s weird, man, when you live a certain way, over a time period, and you act like something is the truth, it’s almost like you begin to believe it.”

Denise Winchester enters a Leon County Courthouse to give a victim’s impact statement against her former husband, Brian Winchester, who was sentenced to 20 years for her armed burglary and kidnapping at gunpoint.

A marriage reinforced by 'mutual destruction'

They waited an appropriate amount of time, almost five years to the day, before getting married. They swore to each other, Brian said, they would never, ever tell.

“It was discussed and agreed on multiple occasions that neither one of us would ever say anything no matter how much pressure we were put under,” Brian told investigators.

“We felt like neither one of us was going to be held responsible unless one of us flipped on each other,” he explained. “It was a cold war, the theory of mutual destruction. If you tell on me, I’ll tell on you.”

They took precautions. After Mike’s mother, Cheryl Williams, got law enforcement involved, they developed hand gestures – the letter “C” – to signal when they needed to talk about Mike.

They’d meet outside in parks, such as the Miccosukee Greenway, Brian said. It was across from Mike and Denise’s house, the one he moved into when they married in December 2005. For years law enforcement believed that was where Mike was killed.

Brian and Denise became convinced the place was bugged and the phone was tapped. They thought their cell phones were being used for surveillance. As their paranoia grew, Brian said they’d pat each other down for a wire before talking.

As time went on, Denise wanted to talk about Mike less and less. While Brian followed every news story, he said Denise shielded herself from anything to do with her husband’s mysterious disappearance, which eventually became a subject of international speculation and one of the hottest cold cases in town.

“She preferred to live in la-la land where she pretended she had nothing to do with it,” Brian said.

“It got to where she believed nothing would ever transpire from it from a law enforcement perspective so her story that she needed to believe — what she told her daughter and told herself and be able to live with herself — was the story we created for her, which was she was at home with her baby, Mike went hunting and she has no idea what happened.”

Their relationship began to fall apart. By 2012, when they separated and he moved out of her house, their marriage was in shambles. Brian said she played the victim and made him out to be the bad guy, but she was no saint. Cheating on Mike was the least of it, he told investigators.

“Her friends don’t know the truth about Denise,” he said. “Not just the affair, but behaving behind closed doors in a way if her friends and family found out they would completely disown her... Sexually she was off the charts."

Denise finally filed for divorce in 2016 and Brian became unhinged. His son, Stafford, now about to graduate high school, found photos on the phone of his dad – an admitted sex addict — with prostitutes. The boy moved in with his mother full time.

Brian’s own mother was diagnosed with the aggressive cancer that would swiftly kill her. And Denise, she wouldn’t talk to him anymore.

He was convinced when the divorce was done and the protection of marital privilege was gone she would “cave” or try to pin everything on him. Denise assured him – even as he held a gun to her ribs that August day, triggering the spilling of 17 years of secrets – she would never tell.

She kept her promise.

Brian told prosecutors there was no scenario for what would happen if one of them was arrested and revealed what really happened that December morning, who planned what and how it was concealed for so long.

“It was set in stone,” he said. "It was set in stone."

Contact Jennifer Portman at jpormtan@tallaahssee.com