denise. that one person sat here and listened to brian winchester describe how he had shot and killed her husband, the man she supposedly loved and cherished. absolute stone face. didn t bat an eye. didn t shed a tear. with that, the jury had the case. and remember, a point easy to lose sight of, it was denise on trial for murder, not brian. the waiting began. did you feel pretty good about things? i was feeling pretty confident. i mean, i wasn t 100% sure either. like, we didn t have a slam dunk case. there is no evidence. there is no proof. she did nothing wrong. she just has the story told by the ex-husband. exactly. late that night, about eight hours into deliberations, a verdict. cheryl had waited 18 years for this moment.
they told me the only consolation i could have was that michael didn t feel it. he was dead immediately. brian said after blasting mike with his 12-gauge, he grabbed his lifeless body and steered the boat to shore. and i pushed the boat back out into the water to make it look like, he had drowned, or disappeared. on shore, he stuffed mike s body into a dog crate in the back of his truck and drove back to tallahassee where he found an isolated area to bury his friend. later that day, when brian got a call from his father saying mike was missing, the two drove to lake seminole. there was a storm that came through that night. you know, my dad wanted to look. i think we were the last ones on the lake, and my dad didn t wanna give up. my dad loved mike. with no body ever found in the lake, brian testified they grew concerned about their
boat and got him to to stand up. and when he did, i pushed him into the water. what happened next? he was in the water and he was, like, struggling. i pulled off just a little bit to get kind of away from him, so that he couldn t reach back into the boat. and i didn t know it at the time. i didn t know if he was trying to swim or i didn t know what was going on. but what i came to find out or eventually realized was he was taking the waders and the jacket off. mike made it to a tree stump and clung for dear life. that s when brian decided to change the plan. and he was panicking, and i was panicking. and none of this was, like, going the way i thought it was gonna go. he
denise tried to steer the interview back to the kidnapping. i mean, this is your husband. he simply vanished. i m not comfortable talking about this right now. i ve had an unbelievable day. devaney kept pushing, telling denise if she didn t talk, he might get the story from someone else. i d much rather get it from you than from brian because when he s arrested, i m gonna talk to him, too. that s fine. i want to see what he says. okay. he may say something you don t want to hear. i don t know. well, i have no idea. guess we ll see. not a clue? for now, the mystery of mike s disappearance remained just that. but brian was arrested and charged with kidnapping denise. he pleaded not guilty to those charges. but a year later, he changed his plea to no contest. it comes down to my life or his, and i am asking you please to choose mine. at sentencing, denise appealed to the judge to give him a life sentence.
he will finish what he has started, no matter what age he is when he is released. i am asking you to sentence him to life in prison for the crimes he has committed. in the end, the judge gave brian winchester 20 years. in court, nothing had been said about mike williams. when they shuffled him off, we walked out and i looked to patti and i said, well, that s it. the door has just been we ll never know. slammed on whatever happened to mike. and we will never know. but the next day, fdle had a major announcement. they d found a skeletal body in a shallow grave. the human remains are those of mike williams. after all those, it was over. police were mum on how they d found mike s body. but speculation was that brian had led them to it. further forensic analysis concluded that mike williams was in fact murdered. and his body wasn t in lake seminole after all. it was 50 miles away. back in tallahassee, off a dead-end road by another swampy lake. i said, he can t b