GUILTY FL - Jerry 'Mike' Williams, 31, Tallahassee, 16 Dec 2000 *Wife Arrested in 2017*

The most damning aspect, I felt, was that Mike was sold an insurance policy by Christian, the best friend. This is the friend who then goes on to Marry Denise the ex wife.

When LE attempt to question Christian he refuses and lawyers up, as does Denise. Consequently they have not been questioned or taken polygraphs.

Dear god how much clearer can it be? They might as well have "No 1. suspects" tattooed on their foreheads.

I'm glad LE has put pressure on them by pointing at the finger at them obviously if not officially. I get the impression this investigation was hampered by it never being treated as a criminal investigation. When items like waders just started appearing things should have immediately changed though.

I hope this secret burns the way through these people and out into the open.

Her father was well connected in this town from what I recall, admittedly, its been a while since I read or watched the story, but I'm pretty certain that is what happened.

The well off and well connected are always treated with kid gloves from what I can see in this country, certainly more so then the average bloke.

Sorry doesn't cut it in this case either......:(
 
Why did the insurance company not investigate the matter before paying out on the policies?

Considering the large amount, one would assume an investigation would have been done.
 
Hi All!

First post. Longtime follower of this site as a guest, recent registrant and here I am. :) Just watched this episode this morning and am left SHOCKED that his ex-wife and "best friend" are living OUTSIDE prison walls. It is so obvious to me that these two are involved. And I wonder if the truck had ever been fingerprinted? It spent MONTHS at the home of the father of the "best friend?" What the heck!
 
bump for Mike. The fact that the ex-Wife threatened his mother about continuing the case and not being able to see the grandchild, makes her so guilty! i always felt the whole investigation was botched so that she could get the money from the insurance company and it was one big cover up with the original police on the scene!
 
Hey everyone! I think this is my first post on this forum. I wanted to comment on this particular case because there is something that no one else brought up. Isn't the granddaughter old enough now to be an adult? Or at least close to it? I think she'll be the key to getting this case back open. I'm not sure if she lived with Denise all this time in that house, but if she did, I'm sure she overheard SOMETHING that she shouldn't have. Or noticed something. The thing is, if she does have information, I don't think she would come forward unless she had her own apartment away from Denise & Christian.

But I think authorities she question her to see if she remembered anything that happened at the house that would seem out of place.
 
According to “Disappeared”, Mike stopped by his office that morning and picked up his shotgun.

Does anyone know for certain that the shotgun was at the office Friday night and gone Saturday morning?

If yes, then

a.) Someone took the shotgun
b.) Whomever took the shotgun knows what happened to Mike

If Mike didn't take the shotgun, then this leaves a fairly short list of suspects. Find out who took it, and you have your prime suspect.

If no one else took it, then it had to be Mike. From this we know that Mike

a.) left the house that morning
b.) made it to the office to pick up his shotgun
c.) left the office with his shotgun

which makes it highly probable that Mike

a.) intended to go hunting
b.) wasn't killed at his house
c.) should be relatively near his intended destination
d.) would not be too close to the search site (where his truck and boat were found)
e.) is somewhere in deep water with something countering his buoyancy or somewhere in the woods near the lake

Very good questions.
I just re-watched this on Disappeared last night. It said that when the Florida wildlife person checked his boat that he found the rifle (shotgun?) still in it's case. So someone picked up the gun. Was it at the office or home I don't know. but the gun was found in the boat.
 
That’s no consolation of course for Williams’ mother. Not a day goes by that she doesn’t think about her second son, who was 31 when he vanished. Since Gov. Rick Scott took office in 2011 she has sent him a handwritten letter every day. The letters, she has learned, are opened by someone in the governor’s office and sent to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, where they are added to her son’s file. While there has been no movement in the case, it is still considered open and remains off-limits to the public.


http://www.tallahassee.com/story/op...ams-disappearance-continues-perplex/21731297/
 
Yes, let's help this reporter / journalist who writ3es for the Tallahasse.com newspaper, keep Mike's memory and just as important, his case and killers alive in the memory of Florida politics. :(
 
This case infuriates me! I actually lived in Tallahassee at the time and had never even heard about Mike being missing - and at that time I read the paper almost every day at work. Apparently there was a billboard but I never saw it. Tally is not exactly a bustling metropolis so this should have been front page news, and for SOME REASON his disappearance was kept fairly quiet. Money talks there, and business & politics are intertwined and incestuous...that's all I'm going to say about that, because MOO & IMO etc.

All I know is that if I had known about this at the time I would have tried to become involved in the search. Time was wasted, evidence handled incorrectly. I was shocked when I saw the Disappeared episode - all of this happened in the city I was living in - and the fact that it was such a blatant and obvious case‽! I mean - you couldn't write this story and try to sell it...it's too cliched to be believable. Man - my blood pressure rises every time I think of it. Need to go take a bubble bath to calm down! His poor mother :(
 
If those two individuals are not involved, than that's a crazy amount of coincidences. That was an upsetting episode to watch as all the evidence clearly points to their involvement and not only did they get away with it but they also profited heavily from his disappearance. I guess there's a hope that if his body is found than maybe they can press charges but it seems unlikely now.
 
After watching this case on "Disappeared" today, my immediate thoughts are to keep the heat on Denise (Williams) Winchester and Brian Winchester. I'm surprised that they still remain in Leon County. It seems the most dangerous animals in Florida are not alligators or poisonous snakes, but people who plot, carry out and then conceal a murder.
 
I am a lifelong Tallahassee resident and I remember when this happened and the billboards and everything. Recently saw the "Disappeared" episode and it made me think about it again.

I haven't seen this aspect brought up anywhere, so I figured I'd throw it out there for y'all to mull over...This is 100% speculation, just things that come that seem to make sense:
Something tells me that that kid wasn't his. I'd be willing to bet the little girl was Brian's all along and Michael never knew. Or perhaps he *did* find out, and a divorce was emminent...in which case Denise wouldn't be entitled to his insurance $ anymore, so she and Brian conspired to get rid of him before that could happen. But, with the way they shut off access of the grandmother to the little girl (heartbreaking), I guess there's no way to tell. As someone mentioned, she must be in the 17-18 year old range at this point...perhaps one day she will be curious and do her own digging into the case. Perhaps she can reach out to her grandmother and do a paternity test to see if Michael was really her father.

I also checked out the Winchester's living situation via the property appraiser's website...they appear to have purchased a $675,000 home in an affluent area of Tallahassee back in 2012. One would assume that they live there currently. However, Denise still owns the house she shared with Michael after all these years (still listed under Denise Williams). Really makes you wonder why she wouldn't sell it. My guess is he's on the grounds in some capacity. Makes you wonder if neigbors have been interviewed to see if there were any additions, patios, etc added to the home around this time.

Hopefully one day there is a resolution to this very sad story.
 
Also just found that Denise (under Denise Williams) still owns a piece of property (nearly 8 acres), that she purchased in 2002. The property appraiser's website shows that this land is still undeveloped, it appears to be heavily wooded, annnnd......it's lakefront (Lake McBride).

Anyone think maybe Michael was somehow kept in their original house for a while until things calmed down and then later moved to this wooded property long after the fact? A crazy thought....but stranger things have hapenned.
 
Jerry has been added to NamUs.
https://www.findthemissing.org/en/cases/show/26767
Case Information
Status Missing
First name Jerry
Middle name Michael
Last name Williams
Nickname/Alias Mike
Date last seen December 16, 2000 00:00
Date entered 11/14/2014
Age last seen 31 to years old
Age now 45 years old
Race White
Ethnicity Other
Sex Male
Height (inches) 70.0
Weight (pounds) 170.0 to 180.0
Dental Status: Dental information / charting is available and will be entered later
DNA Status: Sample submitted - Tests complete
Fingerprint Information Status: Fingerprint information is available elsewhere
 
http://www.tallahassee.com/story/ne...-letters-scott-and-not-single-reply/76370590/

This story was originally published on Sept. 6th, 2012.

Dec. 16 will mark 12 years that Tallahassee real estate appraiser, father and son Jerry Michael Williams disappeared without a trace the day he was to have celebrated his six wedding anniversary at the Gibson Inn in Apalachicola.

Six years ago, I was the first reporter to write extensively about his case. At first, law enforcement officials thought the 31-year-old was the victim of a drowning, a simple case of a duck hunter drug to the bottom of Lake Seminole in chest-high waders and eaten by hungry alligators.

But unlike every other drowning victim on the lake, Mike’s body never surfaced. People knew then something was wrong, though most kept quiet. Not Mike’s mother, Cheryl Ann Williams. She knew her son was not in that lake. Not just because of a mother’s sixth sense, but because of the facts. (Just for starters, gators typically do not feed in the winter and certainly would not consume a six-foot, 180-pound man without leaving something behind.)


TALLAHASSEE DEMOCRAT
Mike Williams disappears from Lake Seminole in 2000

If not for her tenacity, Mike’s story might have stayed submerged like so many things at the bottom of that dark, weedy lake. It took Cheryl Williams three years to convince law enforcement officials to even begin investigating her youngest son’s disappearance.

All these years later, investigators – even those now at odds with her – say she was right. Mike did not die in the lake. They now think Mike was the victim of human foul play, they just don’t have the physical evidence to prove it. The years-long delay in the start of the criminal investigation may make it impossible for charges ever to be filed. The cold case remains open and unsolved to this day.

In recent years, Cheryl Williams has grown frustrated over what she considers a willful mishandling the case and inaction on the part of some Florida Department of Law Enforcement officials. At the start of this year, she began a one-woman letter writing campaign to Gov. Rick Scott.


TALLAHASSEE DEMOCRAT
Portman: Mike Williams' disappearance continues to perplex

Since Jan. 1, she has penned and mailed one letter a day to the governor’s office, chronicling the case, her acrimonious meetings with FDLE officials and excerpts from her copious daily journals in the early days of the case. Her request: Scott assign her son’s case to a special prosecutor or investigator outside of FDLE.

The letters – approximately 240 – were addressed directly to the governor at this Capitol office on South Monroe Street.
 
Bumping for Mike. Here's the article from last December. Sadly it seems the only way this case will progress is if someone comes forward and that doesn't seem likely.

Mother Continues Search for Answers 15 Years After Son's Disappearance

It's been 15 years since Cheryl Williams' son went missing. 5,475 days that she's held onto hope that Michael will be found.

"Until God tells me in my heart that that child is dead, I cannot give up looking for him," Williams said.

FDLE opened a criminal investigation three years later. By then much of the evidence was gone.

"There's nothing that they could do unless somebody comes forward. There are people in Tallahassee who know what happened to Mike," Williams said.
 
Williams has written Governor Scott a letter every day since he took office, asking him to appoint a special prosecutor to the case. She's never received a response.

He assumed office January 4th, 2011, so over a year and a half now of letters? :thinking: How can anyone with a beating heart ignore this mother's pleas?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Scott
 
http://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/2016/08/08/man-ties-cold-case-jail-unrelated-charged/88418470/

BREAKING: Brian Winschester has just been been charged with kidnapping Denise along with various other charges.

A Tallahassee man with ties to one of the area’s most vexing unsolved crimes is in jail, accused of kidnapping his wife at gunpoint.

Brian Winchester, 45, was arrested Friday on charges of kidnapping, domestic assault and armed burglary. Denise Winchester, 46, told Leon County Sheriff’s Office investigators her estranged husband snuck into her car and held her against her will for about an hour. His defense attorney, Tim Jansen, of Tallahassee, says he is innocent of the charges.

Denise Winchester is the former wife of Tallahassee real estate appraiser Mike Williams, who disappeared Dec. 16, 2000, while duck hunting alone on Lake Seminole. Years after he vanished – law enforcement officials initially surmised he must have been eaten by alligators – Williams was considered a suspicious missing person.

Investigators today believe the 31-year-old father was the victim of foul play but have named no suspects or persons of interest in the cold case.
 

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