Tallahassee true-crime tale of mystery and murder retold in new book

Most of us find Tallahassee pretty quiet. A tranquil place, bowered by trees, abundant lakes, and filled with upright citizens who bear us no ill-will nor would do us harm.

But then we don’t always know what’s in the verdant woods or for that matter, what might be buried near that shimmering lake.

Which brings us — once again — to the 20-year saga of what is perhaps one of Tallahassee’s most shaking crime stories. One that the Tallahassee Democrat’s then News Director, Jennifer Portman, kept alive in people’s minds across the decades.

It is a story that continues to fascinate crime-followers in podcasts, TV series, and now, in another “true crime” literary recounting, the just published, "Guilty Creatures: Sex, God, and Murder in Tallahassee, Florida," ($28.99, One Signal Publishing 2024 ) which came out July 23.

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The nonfiction page-turner is written by Baltimore-based crime writer Mitika Brottman, a psychoanalyst with a Ph.D. from Oxford University, and a day-job as a professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art. The author has been called, “one of the finest practitioners of nonfiction.”

Brottman's penchant is for telling in carefully researched detail the facts and outcomes of a crime, as well as delving deeply into the motivations and perceptions of its participants.

"Guilty Creatures" takes us back to 2000 when real-estate agent Mike Williams went duck-hunting, supposedly alone, on Lake Seminole. His wife, Denise, was at home with their baby daughter. But Mike didn’t return that day. Nor was there a trace of him at Lake Seminole.

It seemed fortunate, that as time went on without a trace of her husband, that only six months before, he had taken out a $2 million life insurance policy. When Mike Williams was declared dead a year later, it was assumed he had fallen overboard and “been eaten by alligators.” Now, that life-insurance policy could make life easier for his widow and child.

However, his mother, Cheryl Williams, never believed that her son’s death was so “simple” and across decades she would continue to press for deeper investigation into what she thought was foul-play.

In 2005, Denise Williams remarried Brian Winchester, who with his former wife had been longtime friends of the Williamses. Winchester, was also the agent who had sold Mike Williams the life insurance policy.

Still, with constant lobbying to high government officials and taking out ads in the Tallahassee Democrat pressing for continued investigation of Williams’ death, his mother Cheryl Williams remained convinced that justice had not been served. She became alienated from her granddaughter, and was called “crazy” by Denise.

But by 2012, the marriage between Brian Winchester and Denise Williams itself was falling apart. In 2016, Denise had filed for divorce. And it was then that Winchester, in a rage, abducted her and showed evidence that he may have been planning a murder-suicide. Denise “talked him down” and escaped, but she immediately contacted the police.

During the next year, Winchester would be arrested for the kidnapping and receive a sentence of 20 years in prison. Shortly thereafter, however, after so many years, the body of Mike Williams was finally found — uneaten by alligators, but buried in a swampy muck alongside Lake Carr.

It wasn’t long before Denise Williams was arrested as well, and charged with the murder of her husband. During her trial, Brian Winchester, her former husband, testified against her and also admitted that he had shot Mike Williams as he clung to a stump in the lake, then moved and buried his body near Lake Carr.

The couples’ motive: to eliminate Denise’s husband and collect the insurance. Denise was sentenced to first life in prison, and later, when that sentence was vacated, to serving the 30-year sentence she had also received for conspiracy to commit murder.

Author Mitika Brottman said in a telephone interview that she plunged into “deep research through visits to Tallahassee, the homicide files, trial footage, court transcripts, and discovery documents associated with the case. The Sunshine Laws in Florida easily permitted this kind of access.”

She acknowledges a previous book about the case, "Evil at Lake Seminole," by Steven Epstein as of invaluable help. “I have made many attempts to contact both Denise (now incarcerated in the Florida Women’s Reception Center) and Brian Winchester (held at the Wakulla Correctional Institution.) But have been unsuccessful.”

One may wonder what is it that intrigues a true-crime writer? Why this genre?

“I’m fascinated by the way people’s minds work, and what happens psychologically to people who commit terrible crimes," Brottman said.

"In this case, a murder remained covered for 16 years," Brottman said. "What happened in the minds of Brian and Denise during those years? How did they justify the crime to themselves, especially since they were both devout Baptists? Did they repress and deny their involvement to such an extent that they really believed they had nothing to do with it?"

Brottman says she tries to “get into the head” of criminal perpetrators in her books, and now believes that “there’s nothing different about the psychology of a person who commits a crime — just that they experience all of the same emotions everyone else does, but more extreme. Basically, I believe that anyone is capable of murder in certain circumstances.”

Even though the author is currently touring to promote her book, soon she will return to Baltimore to resume her duties as a literature professor where she teaches Edgar Allen Poe and Jane Austen.

“Interestingly, I don’t read a lot of true crime,” she said, preferring “prewar women’s fiction.” But while Brottman’s personal taste goes light on tales about horrendous deeds, she hopes you will delve into the tale of a crime that kept Tallahassee wondering for decades.

Brottman's page-turner was named one of The New York Times 19 Nonfiction Books to Read This Summer , praised as “catnip for true-crime aficionados.”

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Tallahassee true-crime tale of mystery and murder retold in new book