page_title: Murder of Jerry Michael Williams
section_title: Subsequent developments
hierarchical_section_title: Murder of Jerry Michael Williams / Subsequent developments
caption_attribution_description: Mike Netherland (left) and Donald Morgan of the Army Corps of Engineers collect herbicide-resistant hydrilla from Lake Seminole in northern Florida.
context_page_description: Jerry Michael Williams was an American murder victim. Initially, it was said he left his home in Tallahassee, Florida, United States, to go duck hunting. After subsequent investigations, he was presumed to have drowned in Lake Seminole, a large reservoir straddling the Florida–Georgia state line; investigators later came to suspect he had been the victim of foul play, possibly at another location. His body was found in October 2017 near Tallahassee, and Florida Department of Law Enforcement officials confirmed Williams was a victim of homicide.
  After Williams's boat was found abandoned on the lake, the initial theory was that he had fallen out of it after a collision. However, a lengthy and exhaustive search of the lake bed in the area failed to find his body: at that time, it was the only known occasion when no remains or body had been discovered after a drowning death in the lake. It was eventually concluded that his body had been eaten by alligators. After waders and a jacket containing Williams's hunting license were found in the lake six months later, he was declared legally dead, following a court petition by his widow, Denise.
context_section_description: If Williams had drowned after accidentally falling out of his boat, his body would be the only one from 80 known deaths in the lake never to have been found. The head of a private search firm that supplemented official efforts near the end of the search offered a possible explanation. "With the wildlife around, I would guess that the alligators have dismembered and have stored the remains in a location that we would not be able to find," he wrote in a report. Early searchers had reported seeing many of them, and some of the officials were willing to accept the possibility. "Everyone knows the lake is full of alligators," said the FFWCC's David Arnette. "You look for other answers: 'Why hasn't the body appeared?'"
  It was suggested that perhaps Williams's body had become entangled in the beds of dense hydrilla beneath the lake surface, and then found by the alligators later, with turtles and catfish finishing what they had left behind. Denise Williams, who had avoided media attention during the search for her husband, accepted that her husband had died. She arranged for a memorial service for Mike to be held the day after the search ended.
  In June, an angler in the Stump Field area discovered a pair of waders floating in the lake, and divers called to search the area then recovered from the lake bottom a lightweight hunting jacket and a flashlight: in one of the jacket pockets, there was a hunting license with Williams's name and signature. However, there were no teeth marks or any other damage on the waders, none of the recovered items showed signs of having been in the water for anything like the period Williams had been missing, and there was no DNA evidence found to link the clothing to him. Nevertheless, a week later, a Leon County judge granted Denise Williams's petition to have Mike declared legally dead on the basis of those recovered items and an assumption that alligators and other water life had consumed the body in its entirety.
  The court decision allowed Denise Williams to immediately proceed with claims on her husband's life insurance policies, from which she received $1.5 million. Five years later, she married Brian Winchester, who had sold Mike some of the policies a few months before he disappeared. The couple went on to live in the same house where Denise and Mike had lived prior. Denise and Brian have mostly declined to discuss the case publicly.
caption: It was suggested that Williams's body could have been caught in the lake's dense underwater hydrilla beds
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