Brian Winchester and the Murder of Mike Williams

Brian Winchester is a former Tallahassee financial planner who confessed in 2017 to the December 2000 murder of his best friend, Mike Williams, and led investigators to the body he had hidden for 17 years. Because Winchester traded that confession for immunity, he has never been charged with the killing. He is serving a 20-year sentence for a separate 2016 crime: kidnapping his estranged wife at gunpoint. That wife was Denise Williams, Mike’s widow, and Winchester’s testimony against her closed one of the longest-running cold cases in Florida.

Who Brian Winchester Was to Mike Williams

Brian Scot Winchester grew up around Tallahassee and married his high school sweetheart, Kathy Thomas, in 1994. He ran the Winchester Financial Group as an insurance agent starting in 1993 and later held securities registrations through Sunset Financial Services and Securities America. He also owned a commercial leasing business, Barrington Park Business Center.¹

Winchester and Mike Williams were inseparable. Their families attended the same Baptist church, hunted and fished together, and even planned their children’s births months apart.² Winchester was also Mike’s insurance agent, selling him the life insurance policies that would later provide the financial motive for his death.

On October 13, 1997, Winchester began a secret affair with Denise Williams.³ According to Winchester’s later testimony, Denise did not want to divorce Mike because of child custody concerns, and the pair began discussing how to kill him so they could be together and collect on his policies. Winchester testified the planning was “very mutual,” though he acknowledged he “instigated a lot of it.”

How the Killing Was Planned and Carried Out

The couple considered staging a robbery at Mike’s office before settling on a fake hunting accident at Lake Seminole in Jackson County. The idea was to push Mike into the water in heavy chest waders and let the weight drown him. Winchester brought a shotgun as a backup.⁴

The murder was first set for December 9, 2000, but Denise got cold feet and it was pushed back. Winchester pressured her, telling her “we’re either going to be together or we’re not” and noting that one of Mike’s policies was about to lapse and duck season was ending.⁴ Mike carried three life insurance policies totaling $1.75 million at the time of his death, including at least one Winchester himself had sold him about six months earlier.⁵

On December 16, 2000, Mike Williams, a 31-year-old real estate appraiser, left home for a solo duck hunt. Winchester was waiting. He pushed Mike from the boat, but Mike shed his waders and grabbed a floating tree stump. Winchester then shot him in the head at close range with a shotgun.⁶ Winchester later told prosecutors they had preferred a drowning scenario so they could “feel better about ourselves if there was a chance that he could make it out of it. It will be up to God what happens, not us. It won’t be a murder, it’ll be an accident.”² Winchester then drove the body roughly 60 miles to Carr Lake in Leon County and buried it in mud.

The 17-Year Cover-Up

When Mike failed to come home, Denise reported him missing. Searchers found his truck and boat the next day but no body, and combed Lake Seminole for 44 days without result.⁷ A fisherman recovered Mike’s waders in June 2001, followed by his jacket, hunting license, and flashlight. A judge declared him dead in July 2001, ruling the cause accidental drowning, and investigators publicly floated the theory that alligators had consumed the body.

Denise filed insurance claims 19 days after Mike disappeared.⁸ Kansas City Life Insurance Company eventually paid her roughly $1.3 million in two checks, and a separate claim was filed on a $500,000 Cotton States Life policy.⁹ Winchester later testified they deliberately delayed parts of the collection to avoid appearing like “the eager widow ready to cash in her life insurance.”²

Mike’s mother, Cheryl Williams, refused to accept the drowning story. Over 17 years she wrote daily letters to the governor for nine years, compiled 27 pages of notes challenging the official narrative, paid for billboards and a full-page newspaper ad, and spent down her retirement savings.¹⁰ Her pressure pushed the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to open a criminal case in 2004, though investigators logged more than 3,000 hours without a breakthrough.¹¹

Denise used the couple’s daughter, Anslee, as leverage. She warned Mike’s mother and brother Nick that if they kept pushing for an investigation they would “never see Anslee again,” and cut off contact in January 2005.¹² Winchester and Denise married in December 2005, five years after the killing.³

The Kidnapping That Broke the Case

The marriage fell apart. Winchester and Denise separated in 2012, and she filed for divorce in 2015. According to the appellate court, police told Winchester that Denise intended to reveal what she knew about Mike’s murder once the divorce was final.⁴

On August 5, 2016, Winchester broke into Denise’s SUV overnight and hid in the cargo area with a handgun, a tarp, and a bottle of bleach. When Denise got in to drive to work the next morning, she found him. He pointed the gun at her, saying he only wanted to talk.¹³ Denise calmed him by agreeing to talk and offering to drive him back to his car; instead she drove to the police. Winchester was arrested and charged with armed kidnapping, aggravated assault with a firearm, and armed burglary of a conveyance.¹⁴

The Immunity Deal

Facing a potential life sentence for the kidnapping, Winchester and his attorney, Tim Jansen, negotiated with State Attorney Jack Campbell. On October 4, 2017, they signed an agreement giving Winchester “use and derivative use immunity” for the murder of Mike Williams. In return, Winchester had to give a full and truthful account of the killing and lead investigators to the body. Lying would void the deal. The state also agreed not to seek a life sentence in the kidnapping case and not to use information from a jailhouse informant against him at sentencing.¹⁵

Prosecutors called the immunity agreement a “very, very difficult decision,” but argued there would have been “no case whatsoever” without Winchester’s cooperation, since the body had not been found and no physical evidence tied anyone to Mike’s disappearance.¹⁶ Denise’s defense attorney, Ethan Way, later called the deal a “Christmas present” for Winchester and described Jansen’s work as “the best lawyering he’s seen in his 20-year career.”¹⁵

In December 2017, Winchester pleaded no contest to the kidnapping and was sentenced to 20 years. One day after his sentencing, on December 20, 2017, the FDLE announced the recovery of human remains at the dead end of Gardner Road in Leon County, more than 50 miles from Lake Seminole. DNA confirmed the remains were Mike Williams. Shotgun pellets and his wedding ring were found with him.¹¹⁷

Testimony Against Denise Williams

Winchester was the state’s star witness at Denise Williams’ December 2018 trial. He walked jurors through the conspiracy, describing Denise’s role as providing an alibi and making sure Mike went hunting, while he carried out the killing alone. He recounted the planning, the postponement, the pressure he applied when she wavered, and the insurance motive. He also testified that after the murder Denise threatened Cheryl Williams with the loss of access to Anslee to shut down any investigation.⁴

Jurors found him credible. He broke down while describing the killing, and one juror noted the contrast with Denise’s flat affect during the proceedings.¹⁷ The jury convicted Denise of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and accessory after the fact, and she was sentenced to life in February 2019. An appellate court later reversed the first-degree murder conviction for insufficient evidence, and she was resentenced in September 2021 to 30 years on the conspiracy count that remained.⁶

Where Winchester Stands Today

Winchester is serving his 20-year sentence for the kidnapping. Because of the immunity agreement, he has never been charged with murdering Mike Williams and cannot be. No one has been convicted of the actual killing. Cheryl Williams accepted that trade-off publicly: “We did not want Denise getting away. I guess we have to take what we can get.”¹⁸

FINRA permanently barred Winchester from the securities industry in May 2017 after he failed to respond to a request for information.¹ The case has continued to draw public attention, most recently through the Hulu docuseries Mr. & Mrs. Murder, which features an interview with Winchester’s first wife, Kathy, about her own efforts to uncover what happened to Mike.¹⁹

1
FINRA. BrokerCheck Report for Brian Scot Winchester
2
Entertainment Weekly. Where Is Denise Williams Now
3
Tallahassee Democrat. Murder, Marriage, Confession: Details of the Plot to Kill Mike Williams
4
Caselaw Findlaw. Williams v. State of Florida
5
MySunCoast. Witness Details How He Killed Lover’s Husband for Insurance
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Tallahassee Democrat. Denise Williams Resentenced to 30 Years
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CBS News. Mike Williams Murder, Tallahassee, Florida
8
Law and Crime. Denise Williams Quickly Claimed Huge Life Insurance Policy
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Tallahassee Democrat. Denise Williams Charged With Insurance Fraud
10
News4Jax. Woman Spends Years Searching for Truth, Justice in Son’s Murder
11
WCTV. Answers in 17-Year-Old Disappearance
12
Law and Crime. Denise Williams Allegedly Issued Harsh Ultimatum to Murder Victim’s Family
13
1st DCA Florida. Williams v. State, Initial Brief on Merits
14
Tallahassee Democrat. After Kidnapping, Cops Grilled Denise About Mike Williams’ Disappearance
15
Tallahassee Democrat. Details of Brian Winchester’s Plea Deal That Cracked the Mike Williams Case
16
Law and Crime. Prosecutor Reveals Why He Reached Immunity Agreement With Admitted Killer Brian Winchester
17
Tallahassee Democrat. Juror Says Brian Winchester Testimony Was Credible
18
Tallahassee Democrat. Mike Williams’ Mom: They Did Not Have the Right to Kill My Son
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Tallahassee Democrat. Mike Williams Case Documentary Mr. and Mrs. Murder to Stream on Hulu