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On December 16th 2000, + woke up at 4:30am to go duck hunting at Lake Seminole. Later that day had an anniversary dinner planned with his wife, Denise. What seemed to be a perfect day for a successful real-estate agent, turned out to be a day of horror for the Williams family. By noon, Mike was not answering his phone from Denise, so she called her father to tell him about Mike’s odd behavior. Mike’s close friend, Brian Winchester, and his father later drove to the areas of the lake where they knew Mike usually goes duck hunting. But he was nowhere to be found. They called the police and the search for Mike began. They found his 1994 Ford Bronco near the boat launch. They located Mike’s boat and found his shotgun inside, but he was nowhere near. In June 2001, an angler in the Stump Field area discovered a pair of waders floating in the lake, which are basically waterproof boots worn by fishermen. Divers were called to search the area and then recovered from the lake bottom a lightweight hunting jacket and a flashlight. A hunting license with Williams's name and signature was in one of the jacket pockets. A week later, a Leon County judge granted Denise Williams's petition to have Mike declared legally dead based on those recovered items and an assumption that alligators and other water life had consumed the body in its entirety. Before we jump into the future of Denise as a grieving widow with a daughter to raise, we have to take you back just enough to understand Mike’s disappearance from a wider perspective. So for that, let’s rewind to 1994, the year Mike and Denise got married. They knew each other from their school years at North Florida Christian High School and attended the Florida State University, but among them were two friends who had a similar story; those two were Brian Winchester and Kathy Thomas. After their marriages in 1994, the two couples have gone on double dates, had kids, and even their family members got closer. For Michael, life was smooth sailing as he was close to making $200,000 annually at the time, he had bought a home on the east side of the city and his coworkers claimed he was as devoted to raising his daughter as he was to his work. After Mike’s disappearance, you’d think Denise would mourn and take time, but her actions from that point on compelled a lot to wonder whether she had something to do with Mike’s disappearance or not.
