They Almost Got Away With It (Thanks to the Alligators) | The Murder of Mike Williams

True Crime Society

True Crime, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 9 January 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Timestamps:
(3:33) - Updates (Liam Payne arrests, Gypsy Rose had a baby)
(14:09) - The Murder of Mike Williams

In 2000, Florida man Mike Williams seemed to have it all. He was married to his high school sweetheart, Denise, and they had a beautiful daughter together. Mike was successful in his career and enjoyed many hobbies, including hunting.

One early morning in December 2000, Mike allegedly took his boat and went hunting on Lake Seminole. Denise raised the alarm when he did not return by noon. The search for Mike began, and ran for months. One theory was that Mike had been injured in a boating accident, fallen overboard and drowned. It was expected that his remains would eventually surface in the lake. They didn’t.

Just months after he disappeared, Denise petitioned to have Mike declared dead so that she could claim almost $2m in life insurance. A judge agreed, despite the usual waiting period in Florida for someone to be declared dead being five years.

Five years after Mike vanished, Denise married his best friend (and life insurance salesman) Brian Winchester. Their marriage was tumultuous and would eventually end in divorce. After their marriage fell apart, the truth came out. Brian and Denise had been having an affair and they worked together to kill Mike. His remains were found in 2017.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The True Crime Society podcast contains adult themes and violence and is not intended for all audiences.
0:05.5	Listener discretion is advised.
0:07.6	And if you'd like to skip the intro or move to any specific part of the podcast, please refer to the timestamps listed in the episode description.
0:14.5	Thank you.
0:39.7	Thank you. What's up, guys, welcome back to another episode, True Crime Society podcast, the first episode of the year, 2025.
0:45.6	We're happy to be back, hoping for a wonderful year.
0:53.3	It's started off with a bang with all these cyber truck explosions and chaos, as usual.
0:55.4	Not to start off on a downer note.
0:56.4	I didn't mean to do that.
0:58.1	It's going to be a good year.
1:00.1	Yeah, hopefully.
1:02.9	Hopefully for everyone who listens in us, it's going to be a good year.
1:04.8	Things are onwards and upwards from here.
1:06.6	Yeah, we had our break.
1:09.4	We're happy to be back, feeling well-rested.
1:10.0	Yeah.
1:15.2	And like you were saying on Patreon, when you go back to your job after a break, usually you're like, ugh, I feel horrible.
1:16.9	I don't want to go back to my job.
1:18.1	But podcasting, it's actually exciting to come back because I'm like, wow, I haven't
1:21.0	done this for a while.
1:22.3	Yeah.
1:22.6	And I feel like, I don't know if you feel the same, but over the holiday break prior to New Year, it feels like things were quieter in the crime space. There wasn't a whole lot going on.
	...

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