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Speaker 2: Good Evening. Mike and Denise Williams had a tight knit,
Speaker 2: seemingly unbreakable bond with childhood friends Brian and Kathy Winchester.
Speaker 2: The two couples were devout, hard working Baptists who lived perfect,
Speaker 2: quintessentially Southern lives. Their friendship seem ironclad. That is until
Speaker 2: December sixteenth, two thousand, when Denise's husband, Mike, disappeared while
Speaker 2: duck hunting on Lake Seminole. After nobody was found, everyone
Speaker 2: assumed that Mike had drowned in a tragic accident, his
Speaker 2: body eaten by alligators. But things took an unexpected turn
Speaker 2: when within five years of Mike's disappearance, Brian Winchester divorced
Speaker 2: his wife and married Denise. Their surprising romance set tongues talking.
Speaker 2: People began wondering how long they had been a couple
Speaker 2: and whether they had anything to do with Mike's death.
Speaker 2: It took another twelve years for the truth to come out,
Speaker 2: and when it did, it was unimaginable. Now the full
Speaker 2: shocking story is revealed by Makita Brotman, acclaimed true crime
Speaker 2: writer of the enthralling and unax Blain Death. Through tenacious
Speaker 2: research and clear eyed prose, she probes the psychology of
Speaker 2: a couple who killed and explores how it feels to
Speaker 2: live for eighteen years with murder on the soul. The
Speaker 2: book they're featuring this evening is Guilty Creatures, Sex, God
Speaker 2: and Murder in Tallahassee, Florida, with my special guest writer, psychoanalyst,
Speaker 2: and professor of literature, Makita Brotman. Thank you very much
Speaker 2: for this interview and welcome back to the program. Makda Broughtman, Hi,
Speaker 2: thank you for having me. Thank you so much, and
Speaker 2: congratulations on this book, Guilty Creatures.
Speaker 3: Thanks very much. I'm very pleased with it.
Speaker 2: Yes, you take us to set the stage for when
Speaker 2: the story occurs. The locale is Tallahassee, Florida. You say,
Speaker 2: population about two hundred thousand, a city of great beauty.
Speaker 2: But where the trailer parks outnumber the gated communities. You
Speaker 2: take us to nineteen eighty eight North Florida Christian High
Speaker 2: School yearbook, and you introduce quarterback Jerry Michael Williams or
Speaker 2: Mike as he goes by. You also introduce his girlfriend
Speaker 2: at that time. Denise Merrill, tell us, as you do
Speaker 2: in this act one, as you call it, introduce the
Speaker 2: characters integral to this story.
Speaker 3: Well, the setting, as you said, is in Tallahassee, Florida,
Speaker 3: and that I begin the book by talking a little
Speaker 3: bit about Tallahassee, and the story is set in this
Speaker 3: sort of intensely religious Baptist community. But my interest in
Speaker 3: Florida and the story in particular isn't just necessarily just Tallahassee.
Speaker 3: I mean a lot of early writers who are writing
Speaker 3: about Florida testified that there's something about the heat and
Speaker 3: the lassitude that encourages moral laxity and sinful behavior in Florida.
Speaker 3: So I think that comes into the case a lot,
Speaker 3: because there's a lot of reference to swamps and lakes there,
Speaker 3: and a lot of strange cases take place in Florida
Speaker 3: for a lot of reasons. So the beginning of the story,
Speaker 3: I just introduced the location in Tallahassee, which also has
Speaker 3: an interesting history. Like you said, it's a very very
Speaker 3: beautiful place, but it also used to be the center
Speaker 3: of the slave trade and had a sort of a
Speaker 3: bad reputation for crime and so on. So the story
Speaker 3: begins with two couples, Mike and Denise Williams and Kathy
Speaker 3: and Brian Winchester. They were all born and raised in
Speaker 3: very strict Baptist families, and they'd known each other forever.
Speaker 3: They went to middle school together and high school together,
Speaker 3: and as they grow up and leave school, the two
Speaker 3: couples marry. They stay very close friends, and they settle
Speaker 3: down to raise families together. But then one day, Mike,
Speaker 3: Denise's husband disappears during a session where he's out duck
Speaker 3: hunting with Brian because they're both really big hunters, and
Speaker 3: his body never surfaces, and everyone assumes that he's drowned
Speaker 3: because his wade is filled up with water and it
Speaker 3: was a really terrible there was a terrible storm that
Speaker 3: night too. It's a Christmas the Christmas season, very in winter,
Speaker 3: very very bad weather, especially for Florida. So his body
Speaker 3: never surfaces and everyone assumes that he's been eaten by alligators,
Speaker 3: and his death really sort of tears the community apart. Eventually,
Speaker 3: Brian and Kathy divorced, and Mike's mother, Cheryl, who's a
Speaker 3: very devoted mother, is compelled to find out what happened
Speaker 3: to Mike because she simply doesn't believe that he's vanished.
Speaker 3: She believes that he's still alive. She's had messages from God.
Speaker 3: She believes that something nefarious or and a hand took place,
Speaker 3: and she believes that Brian and Denise, who eventually marry,
Speaker 3: are somehow responsible for Mike's disappearance, if not his death.
Speaker 3: And others in the community too don't believe that Mike drowned.
Speaker 3: And I should also add that Brian was from a
Speaker 3: wealthier family than the other the other three, and he
Speaker 3: worked in an insurance business. His father was an insurance salesman,
Speaker 3: and it happened that Brian sold Denise a couple of
Speaker 3: insurance policies on Mike's life, including a rather large policy,
Speaker 3: and eventually she received over a million dollars. So again
Speaker 3: that sort of encouraged suspicion in the community, and the
Speaker 3: suspicion one was directed particularly towards Brian and Denise, and
Speaker 3: eventually Cheryl went to the police, and the police got
Speaker 3: involved and eventually opened an investigation. So that's the first
Speaker 3: act of the of the story.
Speaker 2: Well, let's go back to how this all occurred. You'd
Speaker 2: take us back to early on when this couple was
Speaker 2: They married at the same time, these two couples in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety four. They were raised in the strict Baptist
Speaker 2: church and they all attended church and took it very
Speaker 2: very seriously. But as you write, things changed over time.
Speaker 2: So tell us take us back to Mike his upbringing
Speaker 2: and how things changed for Mike and the rest of
Speaker 2: those people in the two couples.
Speaker 3: Well, again, as you mentioned there from a very strict,
Speaker 3: very intil a Baptist community had been together for a
Speaker 3: very long time, and we're very conservative spiritually and just
Speaker 3: emotionally speaking, that he just hadn't had very much experience.
Speaker 3: They didn't drink, they didn't smoke, they didn't have sex
Speaker 3: before marriage. They followed all the biblical injunction. But as
Speaker 3: after they married, things started to change and they radically
Speaker 3: sort of broke free from the church. They started to
Speaker 3: experiment sexually, They started to drink, they started to do drugs.
Speaker 3: Just like most people do in their teenage years, this
Speaker 3: forsome waited until they were in their twenties because they realized,
Speaker 3: particularly Brian and Denise, that they were kind of dissatisfied
Speaker 3: with the way things are. They'd been going to church,
Speaker 3: they've been praying, They've been brought up to believe that
Speaker 3: they would be rewarded, you know, sexual pleasure after they married,
Speaker 3: and they were kind of disappointed that things didn't turn
Speaker 3: out as they had expected them to be. And after
Speaker 3: these sexual experiments, Brian and Denise started to have an affair. Kathy,
Speaker 3: Brian's wife, was more conservative and more sort of home loving,
Speaker 3: and at first she The foursome, but particularly Brian and
Speaker 3: Denise were very interested in sexual experiments, going to the strippers,
Speaker 3: having threesomes, and at first Cathy joined in. Mike was
Speaker 3: less interested. Mike was very, very hard working, he was
Speaker 3: a real estate appraiser. He wasn't really interested in you know, drinking, smoking.
Speaker 3: He needed to guess up and get to work in
Speaker 3: the morning, so he was kind of out of this
Speaker 3: these hijinks. But eventually, like I said, Brian and Denise
Speaker 3: started to have an affair, and it was at this
Speaker 3: time that they started to consider how they could different
Speaker 3: ways in which they could be together. And I don't
Speaker 3: know if you want me to say more at.
Speaker 2: This point, let's go back to the idea of divorce.
Speaker 2: Like many people would say, why not divorce exactly?
Speaker 3: I mean, that's that's what's so interesting to me about
Speaker 3: the story and so kind of confusing. Why so Brian
Speaker 3: and Denise start to consider the possibility of murdering Mike.
Speaker 3: And of course anyone would would say, why not just
Speaker 3: get divorced? I mean, murdering someone is absurd. And yet
Speaker 3: because of their strict upbringing, because of the Baptist community,
Speaker 3: because of the social pressure, and both Brian and Denise
Speaker 3: had children at this point. Denise didn't want to lose
Speaker 3: custody of her child. Neither of them wanted to go
Speaker 3: through the social stigma or the financial loss of the divorce,
Speaker 3: and so they gradually began to talk about ways that
Speaker 3: they might be together. And eventually they had this plan
Speaker 3: where Brian and Mike were be duck hunters. So Brian
Speaker 3: and Might would go duck hunting. Brian would push Mike
Speaker 3: out of the boat. But they didn't see it as
Speaker 3: a murder. They saw it as an accident and a test,
Speaker 3: a test of God's will, they believed, and they wanted
Speaker 3: to believe that God wanted them to be together, and
Speaker 3: so they decided to test this. If my survived, then
Speaker 3: it was a miracle from God, and God wanted Denise
Speaker 3: to stay with Mike. But if Mike died, that was
Speaker 3: God telling them that they wanted to be together. So
Speaker 3: this is a way that they kind of go through
Speaker 3: These go through this murder, and yet they're at the
Speaker 3: same time, they're committed Baptists. So what interested me so
Speaker 3: much is how they justify it, especially when so many
Speaker 3: people in the community didn't believe that Mike might drown.
Speaker 3: And I'm interested in how much the social pressures reinforced
Speaker 3: Brian and Denisa's lives, sort of bringing them together at
Speaker 3: one point and then driving them apart. And I explore
Speaker 3: their psychology and in particular the ways that they defended
Speaker 3: themselves against guilts through the years. They had this astonishing
Speaker 3: range of psychological manipulations and maneuverings and justifications and denials,
Speaker 3: and their relationship to each other sort of changed over time.
Speaker 3: First they were united and then they were driven apart.
Speaker 3: So so yeah, I mean, one might simply say it's
Speaker 3: easy to get divorced, how could you possibly contemplate murder?
Speaker 3: And said, but when you have unbearable pressure on you,
Speaker 3: your mind the strange and incomprehensible things. And that's what happened.
Speaker 3: And that's what I'm really kind of interested in getting
Speaker 3: at in the book.
Speaker 2: Let's get to the insurance policies, which are an important
Speaker 2: part of this story. Brian was an insurance salesman and
Speaker 2: saw two of the three policies. But tell us about
Speaker 2: this one policy that was about to collapse and regarding
Speaker 2: the new policy for a million dollars.
Speaker 3: Yes, So, like I said, Brian was an insurance salesman,
Speaker 3: and Denise and Mike had three insurance policies. Well, initially
Speaker 3: they had two. I can't remember the l where they
Speaker 3: were from, but one of them was about to lapse
Speaker 3: and it was paid quarterly, and Brian and sorry, Denise
Speaker 3: and Mike decided to let that one lapse and take
Speaker 3: out a new policy, which Brian sold them for a
Speaker 3: million dollars. So they had this one policy I think
Speaker 3: it was from I can't remember what they had, and
Speaker 3: they had a second policy that they were going to
Speaker 3: planning to that lapse. However, Denise was a CPA and
Speaker 3: she was the one in their household who was in
Speaker 3: charge of the accounts. And what happened was when they
Speaker 3: bought the third policy and were planning to let the
Speaker 3: second one lapse, Denise continued to pay the quarterly installments
Speaker 3: on the second policy, so unbeknownst to Mike, there were
Speaker 3: actually three policies on his life. And after he disappeared
Speaker 3: and was presumed dead, Denise Mike sorry, Brian's father was
Speaker 3: in insurance agent two and knew very much lost about finances,
Speaker 3: and he assisted Denise in getting Mike declared dead in
Speaker 3: it rub the swift way, I mean, things like that
Speaker 3: normally take a long time, apparently, and so Denise was
Speaker 3: able to claim all the insurance money, which was I
Speaker 3: think it was certainly a million dollars, and again that
Speaker 3: certainly led to wagging tongues in the community.
Speaker 2: Let's get back to this plan to heal Mike. Denise
Speaker 2: and Brian. They have this deadline because of this lapsed policy,
Speaker 2: but also that duck hunting season is going to end
Speaker 2: and it's getting laid in the season period, and so
Speaker 2: they have to do something. They have to put this
Speaker 2: plan into motion and their sixth anniversary, Mike and Denise's
Speaker 2: wedding anniversary is coming up. So tell us what happens
Speaker 2: in terms of the idea about the alligator. A fortunate
Speaker 2: accident happens for with Mike and Brian that gives Brian
Speaker 2: this idea, and before we talk about how they say
Speaker 2: we have to do something, it's now or never, right.
Speaker 3: So there's you know, they've been talking about this for
Speaker 3: a while. They've decided on that they're going to try
Speaker 3: and somehow get rid of mine, but they're not actually
Speaker 3: sure when to do it. So a number of things
Speaker 3: are sort of coming to a head. One is that
Speaker 3: the next insurance policy is due and that fall, oh
Speaker 3: that winter, and Denise isn't sure if she gets away
Speaker 3: with it by paying it again, that Mike's bound to
Speaker 3: see something wrong. He's going to look at the finances,
Speaker 3: the bank records and notice that she's paid it again. Secondly,
Speaker 3: duck hunting season's coming to an end and they'll be
Speaker 3: thinking about a duck hunting accident. And what happens to
Speaker 3: kind of solidify plan is that Mike and Brian go
Speaker 3: on a trip. Mike, Mike and Brian go hunting together,
Speaker 3: go dick hunting together, and what happens is Mike falls
Speaker 3: into what seems to be an alligator hole and he's
Speaker 3: about to drown, and the very last minute, he puts
Speaker 3: out his hand and drops his gun and Brian takes
Speaker 3: his hand and pulls him out and he Brian tells
Speaker 3: this to Denise when they get back, and they start
Speaker 3: to think to themselves, well, you know, if Brian hadn't
Speaker 3: been there to save him, Mike would simply have disappeared
Speaker 3: and nobody would ever know what happened to him. They
Speaker 3: would have simply assumed that he'd been drowned and eaten
Speaker 3: by alligators. And that's what puts the spur into their
Speaker 3: heads that this is this would be a great way
Speaker 3: to die if we can get him, if we can
Speaker 3: get it to appear as if he's drowned, everyone will
Speaker 3: simply assumed his body's been eaten by alligators, and that
Speaker 3: would be the perfect excuse for his absence in the community.
Speaker 2: And so there is a moment where they make the
Speaker 2: plan and then Mike is called by Brian to set
Speaker 2: up duck hunting at Lake Seminole. What happens so Mike.
Speaker 3: And Brian often go duck hunting very very early in
Speaker 3: the morning at Lake Seminole, So this particular morning, the
Speaker 3: morning of them that the murder has planned to take place,
Speaker 3: Brian calls Mike late at night and invites him to
Speaker 3: go duck hunting. Mike agrees. Mike gets up very early
Speaker 3: the next morning, meets Brian and they drive out to
Speaker 3: Lake Seminole. It's very early in the morning. They Brian
Speaker 3: switches off his cell phone and says that it's not
Speaker 3: working because he wants to create an alibi to cover
Speaker 3: his tracks. They get to Lake Seminole, they go out
Speaker 3: in the boat. They find a place that's rather deep
Speaker 3: where Brian believes that it will be possible to enact
Speaker 3: this grizzly deed. He pushes Mike out of the boat. However,
Speaker 3: instead of Mike drowning as he assumes what happened, Mike
Speaker 3: does not drown. His waders don't fill with water. He
Speaker 3: manages to take off his waders. He starts swimming. There
Speaker 3: are lots of cypress stumps growing out of the lake. There.
Speaker 3: He manages to get hold of a cypress stump and
Speaker 3: starts screaming. Absolutely nothing has gone the way that Brian
Speaker 3: has planned this. What he saw is a very simple
Speaker 3: act of pushing someone out of the boat has now
Speaker 3: become this terrible, horrifying situation. And he later tells the
Speaker 3: police that he had no other option, which is ridiculous.
Speaker 3: But he has his duck hunting rifle in his boat.
Speaker 3: He circles Mike a few times and then shoots him
Speaker 3: in their head. And this is absolutely nothing that the
Speaker 3: couple had considered at all. They thought it was a
Speaker 3: very simple accident. What Brian has to do next is
Speaker 3: to actually get rid of the body, and you know,
Speaker 3: he's not prepared for this at all. He'd actually arranged
Speaker 3: to meet his father in law later that morning to
Speaker 3: go duck hangingting, so it's set up an alibi. He
Speaker 3: has to somehow get around that. So he manages to
Speaker 3: get Mike's body out of the lake, drag it up
Speaker 3: onto the shoreline, bring his car around, all Mike's body
Speaker 3: into the trunk of his car, drive into town. He
Speaker 3: has to go to Walmart to get a spade and
Speaker 3: tarps and weights. He has to go home to wash
Speaker 3: the car, He has to find somewhere to bury the body,
Speaker 3: and he has to do all this without being seen
Speaker 3: by anybody, and then his in laws are having a
Speaker 3: party in Georgia and he has to drive all the
Speaker 3: way to Georgia arrive at the party as though nothing's happened.
Speaker 3: So I saved this experience to the end of the book.
Speaker 3: I tell this at the end of the book. But
Speaker 3: this is actually what happened on the lake. It was
Speaker 3: absolutely nothing like what Brian imagined it would be. It
Speaker 3: was this kind of horrendous, horrendous experience and absolutely horrifying
Speaker 3: wife of Mike to die.
Speaker 2: That Jesus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now,
Speaker 2: you do leave this for his testimony at trial, where
Speaker 2: he reveals everything that happened. But let's go back to
Speaker 2: what happens right after this. After he does manage to
Speaker 2: go to Cairo and catches up with his wife and
Speaker 2: daughter at his in laws, he also calls his in
Speaker 2: law back, his father in law back, and explains gives
Speaker 2: him an excuse why he said he overslept, and he
Speaker 2: said he lost the keys to the boat that he
Speaker 2: had borrowed, so he somehow manages it. No one seems
Speaker 2: to notice him out of character at all at this
Speaker 2: family gathering and what happens after in terms of the
Speaker 2: search for Mike Williams.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Bizarrely enough, Brian manages somehow to go through with
Speaker 3: this this family reunion. He returns home to Tallahassee with
Speaker 3: his wife and son the next Later that night, there
Speaker 3: are you know, Mike hasn't come home. And Mike and
Speaker 3: Denise were supposed to be going to it was their
Speaker 3: sixth wedding anniversary. They had booked a kind of romantic
Speaker 3: getaway in a hotel, and so when Mike hasn't come
Speaker 3: back from from duck hunting that morning, Denise starts to
Speaker 3: get kind of frantic, and she calls her sister and
Speaker 3: tells her that Mike hasn't come home. And there have
Speaker 3: been other occasions where Mike and Brian have gone out
Speaker 3: duck hunting and they've they've got stuck in an island,
Speaker 3: or they've just you know, lost track of time. So
Speaker 3: at first everyone thinks it's just something like that. But eventually,
Speaker 3: when the hurricane comes in and things get very stormy,
Speaker 3: Denise asks her father if she'll go out, he'll go
Speaker 3: out to the lake and look for Mike. The father
Speaker 3: goes out to the lake. He gets the help of
Speaker 3: some forestry staff to help search the waters, and eventually
Speaker 3: a full scale search takes place, involving many members of
Speaker 3: the community, including Brian and his father, including the police.
Speaker 3: There's satellite operations, there's all kinds of police dogs searching
Speaker 3: the premises, and that search goes on and on over
Speaker 3: the next actually until February. It continues going on. People
Speaker 3: are always going out to the lake looking for Mike's body,
Speaker 3: and there's a huge search and rescue operation. All kinds
Speaker 3: of equipment is used, eventually helicopters, and there's no sign
Speaker 3: of Mike's body, and people do comment that there are
Speaker 3: an awful lot of large alligators around. In fact, Lake
Speaker 3: Seminole is apparently known for its sizeable alligators. But eventuallyually
Speaker 3: Mike's cap is found, his hunting cap, and then much
Speaker 3: later on his waders and his torch and his gun
Speaker 3: belt are found, and so it's decided pretty clearly that
Speaker 3: Mike has drowned. It's surprising that his body isn't there,
Speaker 3: but everyone assumes that when when things warm up, his
Speaker 3: body will rise to the surface, and when that doesn't happen,
Speaker 3: people assume that he's been eaten by alligators, and so
Speaker 3: he's met this kind of grizzly fate. Although there are
Speaker 3: people in the community who's simply you know that it's
Speaker 3: known that alligators don't eat in the winter, and there's
Speaker 3: a lot of confusion, but do they eat in the winter?
Speaker 3: Is that just North florigator allegators of South Flora alligators
Speaker 3: and do they hibernate And everyone's you know, wondering about
Speaker 3: whether this is possible because it seems very unlikely for
Speaker 3: alligators to in the winter to have eaten someone without
Speaker 3: any evidence of their body surfacing. So it is kind
Speaker 3: of perplexing, but it goes you know, because the body
Speaker 3: never surfaces, things sort of are left to lie. And
Speaker 3: so Mike has declared dead, but there is this always
Speaker 3: this undercurrent of suspicion in the community, especially on the
Speaker 3: part of Mike's mother Cheryl.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about Mike's mother and what her beliefs are
Speaker 2: about her son, who was very experienced in her mind
Speaker 2: died hunting, and also the uh she keeps a journal.
Speaker 2: She's very very serious about this, and also tell us
Speaker 2: about her campaign that she undertakes to be able to
Speaker 2: find her son.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Mike's mother, Cheryl is absolutely the heroine of the story.
Speaker 3: I mean she she spends the rest of her life basically,
Speaker 3: she leaves no stone unturned in trying to find her son.
Speaker 3: So she knows that Mike is a trained hunter. She
Speaker 3: you know, she made sure that he had lessons. Family
Speaker 3: friends gave him lessons, He practiced with his waiters. He
Speaker 3: knew exactly how to remove his ways in the water,
Speaker 3: how to surface. He was very security conscious, and so
Speaker 3: Cheryl knew that she found it very unlikely to believe
Speaker 3: that Mike had died duck hunting. Cheryl was also a
Speaker 3: very religious person, even though her religion was less sort
Speaker 3: of traditional than others in the community. So Cheryl a
Speaker 3: few days after his son went missing, she went out
Speaker 3: to Lake Seminole and she had what she believed was
Speaker 3: a revelation from God, and God told her that Mike
Speaker 3: did not drown in the lake. And after that again
Speaker 3: she devoted herself completely to this campaign of finding out
Speaker 3: what happened to Mike. When everyone else in the community
Speaker 3: he'd accepted his death. Cheryl was constantly putting at missing posters,
Speaker 3: talking to people, trying to get the police involved, interviewing
Speaker 3: people in the community. She kept a journal like you said,
Speaker 3: She often had dreams and read tips in newspapers, and
Speaker 3: very seriously kept track of everything that she thought might
Speaker 3: give her a clue as to what happened to her
Speaker 3: son and how to find him. And like I said,
Speaker 3: at this stage, she still believed he was alive. She
Speaker 3: believed that he might have had a shock, lost his memory,
Speaker 3: be wandering somewhere not knowing who he was, and so
Speaker 3: she kept track of all clues and signs that she'd
Speaker 3: witnessed in her dreams and things that she'd heard people
Speaker 3: saying in the community. Event she did go to the police,
Speaker 3: and at first they were rather dismissive of her, but
Speaker 3: eventually they started to take her more and more seriously,
Speaker 3: especially after she showed them her diary. And although again
Speaker 3: she didn't believe Mike was dead, her suspicions were oriented
Speaker 3: themselves more and more frequently towards Brian and Denise. She
Speaker 3: didn't think that they'd killed Mike, but she certainly believed
Speaker 3: that they had something to do with his disappearance, and
Speaker 3: one of the reasons for this was that Denise and
Speaker 3: Mike had a daughter, Annesley, which was Cheryl's beloved granddaughter,
Speaker 3: who Cheryl spent as much time as possible with. They
Speaker 3: had a really close relationship. It was a really loving relationship. Denise,
Speaker 3: Cheryl and Annesley were devoted to each other. And Denise
Speaker 3: told Cheryl, her mother in law, to stop putting notes
Speaker 3: in the newspaper, to stop trying to search for Mike,
Speaker 3: to stop putting up missing posters. There'd been an article
Speaker 3: in the Tallahassee Democrat about missing people that includes Mike's photograph.
Speaker 3: Cheryl said, if you don't stop searching for Mike, you
Speaker 3: won't see your granddaughter again. And Cheryl just couldn't believe this,
Speaker 3: I mean, why would anyone wouldn't. Why didn't Denise want
Speaker 3: to find Mike. Her husband had gone missing, her child's
Speaker 3: father had gone missing. Why was she simply not just
Speaker 3: going to stop searching, but to put an end to
Speaker 3: anyone else's search. And it's at this point that Cheryl
Speaker 3: really started to believe that Denise was somehow responsible. And
Speaker 3: Denise did exactly what she threatened to do. She did
Speaker 3: not she stopped allowing Cheryl to see her granddaughter, and
Speaker 3: Cheryl hasn't seen her granddaughter since that day. So again,
Speaker 3: it was a terrible threat that she then made good on.
Speaker 2: You mentioned a integral person in this story, which was
Speaker 2: a journalist Jennifer Portman at the Tallahassee Democrat. Cheryl was
Speaker 2: in contact with her, but also that every year she
Speaker 2: would publish a story on the anniversary of Mike's disappearance.
Speaker 2: So tell us about Jennifer Portman and her reporting.
Speaker 3: Yes, Cheryl, as I said, Cheryl placed an ad every
Speaker 3: year on Mike's the anniversary of Mike's disappearance, with a
Speaker 3: picture of him and a description of what happened to him,
Speaker 3: and the advertising for anyone to get in touch with
Speaker 3: her if they had any information about his whereabouts. And
Speaker 3: Jennifer Portman, who was a journalist at the Tallyhousie Democrat,
Speaker 3: was very interested in these ads. Cheryl had also done
Speaker 3: other things, like she paid she didn't have very much money,
Speaker 3: She ran a daycare, She paid to take out a
Speaker 3: huge billboard on the highway with Mike's picture on it
Speaker 3: and a phone number asking people to get in touch
Speaker 3: if they'd seen him, as well as paying for these
Speaker 3: large ads in the Talent Hazey Democrats. So Jennifer Portman
Speaker 3: became very interested in Cheryl in her case and talked
Speaker 3: to her and gradually got involved in the case, and
Speaker 3: Jennifer Portman too began to believe that Brian and Denise
Speaker 3: were somehow responsible for Mike's death. She assumed that he
Speaker 3: died at this point, and she too started to talk
Speaker 3: to the police, interview people who are involved in the case,
Speaker 3: and she started to also to run annual and often
Speaker 3: more than annual articles in the newspaper about this case,
Speaker 3: about the suspicious circumstances around it, about the insurance money,
Speaker 3: about the fact that Mike was still missing, about the
Speaker 3: fact that Brian Denise, as they eventually did, got married,
Speaker 3: and her reporting again was really central to fueling the
Speaker 3: suspicions around this case, and with between Jennifer and Cheryl
Speaker 3: and then later on members of law enforcement, suspicions grew
Speaker 3: and grew and grew, and though again because this was
Speaker 3: a Baptist community and because there was a sense of
Speaker 3: you know, judged, not unless she be judged, people were
Speaker 3: reluctant to say anything out loud about the situation, but
Speaker 3: behind closed doors, thanks to Jennifer Portman's reporting and to
Speaker 3: Cheryl's pressure, people really starting to wonder if this you know,
Speaker 3: if Mike, if the facts behind Mike's murder would ever
Speaker 3: come to lie.
Speaker 2: You also talked about that an interesting development twenty eleven,
Speaker 2: a series on investigation Discovery channel called Disappeared was interested
Speaker 2: in the story, and you also talk about just to
Speaker 2: keep it in context, is in two thousand as opposed
Speaker 2: to twenty twenty four you talk about Facebook, Gmail, Google,
Speaker 2: social media in general and its lack of influence compared
Speaker 2: to later on.
Speaker 3: That's right. So when the prime took place or Mike
Speaker 3: went missing two thousand and one, there was not almost
Speaker 3: no social media in the way that we know today.
Speaker 3: I mean, people did have cell phones, but texting wasn't common.
Speaker 3: People couldn't simply look things up on the Internet, they
Speaker 3: couldn't post gossip on social media, they couldn't discuss things
Speaker 3: on online forums. But by twenty eleven, when this Investigating
Speaker 3: Discovery documentary was made, it was like a reconstruction of
Speaker 3: the case. And I haven't I seen any other episodes
Speaker 3: of the show, but apparently they kind of do reconstructions
Speaker 3: of cases in which people have missing under very suspicious circumstances,
Speaker 3: and I think most of the time there's a kind
Speaker 3: of implicit pointing the finger at those who might be responsible.
Speaker 3: So when this is twenty eleven, when this episode of
Speaker 3: Investigation Discovery aired, it was kind of bringing up everything
Speaker 3: in the community that people had been talking about among
Speaker 3: themselves but not perfectly, And so finally there was an
Speaker 3: opportunity for things to sort of go public, and people
Speaker 3: started texting and posting on Facebook, and there's a forum,
Speaker 3: an Internet forum called web Sleuths where people get together
Speaker 3: sort of amateur sleuths get together and share evidence and
Speaker 3: earth documents, and that community became very very active in
Speaker 3: the case. The people and people remembered Cheryl's billboard. People
Speaker 3: who knew nothing about the case then became involved and
Speaker 3: started to you know, to pick up clues and begin investigations.
Speaker 3: People were very critical of the police for not doing anything,
Speaker 3: because this documentary made it very very c that you know, wife,
Speaker 3: husband disappears, wife marries insurance agent who sold her the policy,
Speaker 3: and they refused to talk about husband's disappearance and refused
Speaker 3: to have anything to do with husbands and mother. You know,
Speaker 3: even if you don't know anything about the case, even
Speaker 3: if you didn't live in the community, it seemed very
Speaker 3: very suspicious. So yes, social media, the Internet all became
Speaker 3: very important and this started to I wouldn't say drive
Speaker 3: a wedge between brianon Denise, but it started to really
Speaker 3: exert pressure on them. Remember this was ten years since
Speaker 3: Mike's disappearance, So to all intents and purposes, they believed
Speaker 3: that they'd got away with it, and you know, no
Speaker 3: longer really talked about it. They just kind of went
Speaker 3: about their lives as usual, and they were very devout Baptists.
Speaker 3: They would go to church, they were involved in Denise
Speaker 3: was involved in a prison ministry, they were closely involved
Speaker 3: in all kinds of family and religious ventures. So to
Speaker 3: all intents and purposes, from the outset their stability and
Speaker 3: they were stable, good Christian church going family. And yet
Speaker 3: these rumors in this reconstruction on the television program really
Speaker 3: started to earn earth secrets in the community which then
Speaker 3: became public.
Speaker 2: Jesus is an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now,
Speaker 2: you talked about Cheryl going to law enforcement in Florida
Speaker 2: Department of Law Enforcement, and there was a person named
Speaker 2: Ronnie Austin, but he left the fdl E and Tully
Speaker 2: Sparkman took over. So tell us a little bit about
Speaker 2: Cheryl becoming a confidential informant and what that entailed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's actually Kathy who became the confidential conformance. So
Speaker 3: Kathy was Brian's wife who he had since divorced, and
Speaker 3: while Brian and Kathy were married, Brian was very suspicious
Speaker 3: of Cheryl, especially when she was talking about Mike hadn't
Speaker 3: been murdered and that he hadn't drowned and that he
Speaker 3: was he had vanished, and she was kind of trying
Speaker 3: to get things going regarding Mike's disappearance, and so Brian
Speaker 3: didn't want Kathy to talk to Cheryl. But eventually, after
Speaker 3: Brian married Denise, Kathy became closer and closer to Cheryl,
Speaker 3: and Cheryl actually informed Kathy that the police were involved
Speaker 3: and she was keeping track of events for the police.
Speaker 3: There was a police investigation that Denise and Brian were
Speaker 3: actually persons of interest in this investigation, and so then
Speaker 3: Kathy became involved with the police too, And because even
Speaker 3: though they were separated, because Kathy and Brian shared a
Speaker 3: child together, Kathy inevitably had to see Brian, had to
Speaker 3: spend time with Brian, had to contact him about custody
Speaker 3: and child pickups at school and so on. And so
Speaker 3: what the police police did is ask Kathy if she
Speaker 3: would work as a confidential informant at this stage, simply
Speaker 3: passing along anything that Brian said or did that seemed
Speaker 3: suspicious or you know, that that gave clues that something
Speaker 3: that he might be concealing something, or he might be
Speaker 3: anxious about something. Occasionally she would record telephone calls with Brian,
Speaker 3: and sometimes she would bring up Mike's disappearance and and
Speaker 3: find out if he had anything to say about it.
Speaker 3: So gradually sort of forces were mounting against Brian and Denise,
Speaker 3: although it took a really really long time before anything happened,
Speaker 3: because you know, there was no all the evidence was
Speaker 3: circumstantial and there was no there were no concrete details
Speaker 3: that Brian Deese had anything to do with Mike's death.
Speaker 3: It was just rumor and superstition. But as you know,
Speaker 3: as as Kathy began to sort of get evidence of
Speaker 3: Brian asking her to keep quiet and so saying that
Speaker 3: Cheryl was crazy, and you know, just the kinds of
Speaker 3: things he said did not seem to imply that he
Speaker 3: was desperate to find his best friend who'd gone missing,
Speaker 3: or even regretted Mike's absence or even ever thought about
Speaker 3: Mike at all. So so Cathy became involved with the
Speaker 3: police supporting. There were more and more police involvement at
Speaker 3: this point, and the police are putting together a case,
Speaker 3: but again nothing could be done because they didn't actually
Speaker 3: have any concrete evidence.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about how Denise and and Brian, despite this
Speaker 2: bond that Brian felt they had because of this murder,
Speaker 2: how they drifted apart, and how eventually they got to
Speaker 2: the point where they were separated. And then again the
Speaker 2: specter of the dirtiest word in their religion, divorce comes
Speaker 2: to be Yes.
Speaker 3: So over time, I mean, Brian and Denise had had
Speaker 3: committed this murder, that was, they had vowed to stay
Speaker 3: together at all costs, and the murders, you know, it
Speaker 3: seemed to be sort of justification for keeping them together.
Speaker 3: They couldn't divorce because they had this murder. But over
Speaker 3: time they started to fall apart, move move a part
Speaker 3: perhaps like most couples do, and it was almost as
Speaker 3: if they were like passing the burden of guilt on
Speaker 3: to one another. In turn, Denise would get more involved
Speaker 3: in the church and Brian would be more blase, and
Speaker 3: then Brian would become more guilty and Denise would see
Speaker 3: more blase, and so over time passed they they went
Speaker 3: through these different iterations of guilds, even to the extent
Speaker 3: that they wouldn't speak about the murder in the same
Speaker 3: room as anyone else. They had these gestures that they
Speaker 3: would make to each other to indicate that they wanted
Speaker 3: to go out to a quiet place to have a
Speaker 3: conversation about them murder. They even got to the stage
Speaker 3: of patting each other down before they had a conversation
Speaker 3: about the murder, because they were then that the other
Speaker 3: other one might be wearing a wire. Even then, when
Speaker 3: they went out to talk about the murder, they would
Speaker 3: take the batteries out of their cellphones. So it wasn't
Speaker 3: just that they were suspecting other people in the community.
Speaker 3: They were suspecting each other. And this is something that
Speaker 3: really began to wear them down. And it was almost
Speaker 3: as the Denise kind of got more and more involved
Speaker 3: in her Baptist community and with her daughter and Brian,
Speaker 3: and was moving far away from Brian. Brian had always
Speaker 3: had a problem with alcohol and with sex addiction, you know,
Speaker 3: pornography and prostitutes, and strippers. Brian started to get fall
Speaker 3: back into his old ways and fall away from the church,
Speaker 3: and the more he struggled, the more Denise moved away
Speaker 3: from him and made it started to make it very
Speaker 3: clear that she wanted to separate and also eventually that
Speaker 3: she wanted to divorce. I mean, this is now seventeen sixteen,
Speaker 3: seventeen years after the murder. Denise's religious views have changed.
Speaker 3: She's still devotely Baptist, she still prays and goes to church,
Speaker 3: but her feelings about divorce have now changed, especially since,
Speaker 3: for example, Kathleen managed to divorce Brian quite simply with
Speaker 3: that the approbrium of the community coming down on her.
Speaker 3: So Denise finally tells Brian that she she wants to divorce.
Speaker 3: And Brian, by the way, has started to believe that
Speaker 3: Denise maybe she doesn't want to talk about the murder
Speaker 3: at all, not even in private, and sometimes he thinks
Speaker 3: maybe she's recording him, because she seems to be, you know,
Speaker 3: when he brings up the murder, she seems to deflect
Speaker 3: the conversation in rather strange ways, and so he starts
Speaker 3: to think, what if she's what if she's going to
Speaker 3: you know, put this all on him. What if that's
Speaker 3: her plan maybe to go to the police and say
Speaker 3: that Brian killed Mike, or if Mike's murder does come out,
Speaker 3: then she might have, you know, evidence to say, well,
Speaker 3: it was I knew nothing about it, it was all
Speaker 3: Brian an act. Horrified to find out that Brian was
Speaker 3: responsible for her husband's death. Brian started to believe that
Speaker 3: Denise really actually was almost to the stage where she
Speaker 3: didn't even think she had nothing to do with it.
Speaker 3: She'd repressed the memory so deeply.
Speaker 2: So he is paranoid, to say the least. He's afraid
Speaker 2: of Denise and he needs someone to talk to At
Speaker 2: this time. You talk about this Ron Rickner. He's a
Speaker 2: Christian counselor, so he's going to counseling about his porn addiction.
Speaker 2: And then he has a sponsor for his Sex Addicts
Speaker 2: Anonymous and that's a person named Stephen Moonkin. So what
Speaker 2: happens with his paranoia and what does he do next
Speaker 2: in terms of trying to convince his wife not to
Speaker 2: divorce him.
Speaker 3: Well, Brian doesn't really believe in mental health and therapy.
Speaker 3: He goes to this Christian sex Addicts Anonymous group, but
Speaker 3: he doesn't believe in medication, but he's obviously extremely mentally
Speaker 3: ill at this point with anxiety and with depression. I mean,
Speaker 3: he's having a nervous break and he decides he actually
Speaker 3: becomes suicidal when he realizes that Denise is actually going
Speaker 3: through with a divorce. Brian's son even turns against him.
Speaker 3: He has nobody left. He starts to believe that suicide
Speaker 3: is the only option, but again he's extremely anxious. He's
Speaker 3: not thinking straight. It's not really clear whether he actually
Speaker 3: doesn't tend to commit suicide. He certainly writes suicide notes.
Speaker 3: He gets very very drunk, and then he says that
Speaker 3: he's going to commit suicide outside Denise's house. So he
Speaker 3: goes down to Denise's house in the middle of the night,
Speaker 3: very very drunk. He has a backpack that contains a topplin,
Speaker 3: a gun, and some water to spray the windows from
Speaker 3: the inside of the car so he's not seen. He
Speaker 3: gets in the inside of Denise's car and falls asleep.
Speaker 3: The next morning, Denise gets up to drive to work,
Speaker 3: Brian jumps over the back of the car holds a
Speaker 3: gun to her head. Basically, he's conducting an armed kidnapping,
Speaker 3: insists that she come up the side of the road,
Speaker 3: says that he's going to shoot her and tells her
Speaker 3: that he's going to kill himself and that she's responsible. However, Denise,
Speaker 3: although she's completely frantic, she does manage to talk him
Speaker 3: down eventually and tells him, look, let's do this together.
Speaker 3: We'll get back together. We just need to pray to God,
Speaker 3: we need to go to therapy, get help. We can
Speaker 3: restore our marriage, we can restore our relationship. Of Course,
Speaker 3: she doesn't believe any of this. She's just kind of
Speaker 3: talking down and as soon as she manages to do
Speaker 3: that and takes Brian leaves, she immediately calls her sister,
Speaker 3: who is married to a police officer, and immediately go
Speaker 3: to the police station and reports that Brian has tried
Speaker 3: to conduct this armed kidnapping and believes that he might
Speaker 3: even possibly have been ready to kill her. Of course,
Speaker 3: at the police station, most of the cops have believed
Speaker 3: for you know, ten years, that Brian and perhaps Denise
Speaker 3: have had something to do with the murder of Mike.
Speaker 3: So as Denise is talking about what happened, they try
Speaker 3: to get her to talk about the murder of Mike.
Speaker 3: They really pressure her. This cop called Mike Devaney, who's
Speaker 3: now taken over the case, who's been gathering all kinds
Speaker 3: of information for a long time. No has got all
Speaker 3: these facts about the case. He really tries to pressure
Speaker 3: her to say, look, we know what happened to Mike.
Speaker 3: We want to talk about Mike Brian. Tell us now
Speaker 3: that Brian did this and this, you know, this weight
Speaker 3: will be off your chest. But Denise won't talk. She
Speaker 3: desperately wants Brian to be arrested because she's afraid that
Speaker 3: he's got a gun and that he's going to, you know,
Speaker 3: come after her. But basically that's when that's when they
Speaker 3: turn on each other, and that's that brings about the
Speaker 3: their downfall. Basically because when Brian, you know, kidnapped Denise
Speaker 3: at gunpoint, he had no conception of the fact that
Speaker 3: she might get to the police. After all, she's a murderer,
Speaker 3: and why would a murderer go to the police. Getting
Speaker 3: the police involved in their relationship is just going to
Speaker 3: open up this whole pandora's box about their involvement in
Speaker 3: Mike's murder. So he has no conception of the idea
Speaker 3: that Denise is so repressed this conception of her involvement
Speaker 3: in the murder so deeply, and also that she has
Speaker 3: separated herself and her mental state from that of Brian
Speaker 3: so intensely that she basically believes that she can go
Speaker 3: to the police with a clear conscience. Brian will be
Speaker 3: punished for his you know, perhaps find or perhaps given
Speaker 3: short term in prison for his armed kidnapping. They'll get
Speaker 3: divorced and things will go back to the way they
Speaker 3: were before. But of course that doesn't happen. Brian is
Speaker 3: immediately arrested for armed kidnapping. He's put in prison, and
Speaker 3: he's told that he's going to get a life sentence
Speaker 3: unless there's anything else he can do to and give
Speaker 3: them any information that they need. And that's when the
Speaker 3: story comes out.
Speaker 2: Let's usus as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now,
Speaker 2: let's get back to this assault. She says to police
Speaker 2: that she's deathly afraid of Brian, and so as a result,
Speaker 2: she pushes for the maximum sentence, which is life in prison.
Speaker 2: The minimum sentence for this, because it's armed kidnapping or
Speaker 2: armed burglary, is ten year minimum. So now he realizes,
Speaker 2: finally he realizes that she wants him to spend the
Speaker 2: rest of his life life in prison. So, as you say,
Speaker 2: this is when the story turns and Brian makes a
Speaker 2: decisive move, doesn't it.
Speaker 3: Okay? Brian realizes that, I mean, the States attainly makes
Speaker 3: it clear that he's going to ask for the maximum sentence.
Speaker 3: That and by the way, Brian has done all kinds
Speaker 3: of absurd and ridiculous things. He's tried to suborn state witnesses.
Speaker 3: He's got a guy in prison to offered him money
Speaker 3: to try and get witnesses to recount their stories and
Speaker 3: kinds of things. We have been actually recorded on the
Speaker 3: telephone because from the prisoner are recorded. So the state
Speaker 3: have all this information against Brian. They say, look, we're
Speaker 3: going to go for the life. Brian's fifty at this time,
Speaker 3: we're going to ask for a life sentence. You're going
Speaker 3: to spend life in prison. If there's anything that you
Speaker 3: have to tell us about Mike's murder, now would be
Speaker 3: the time to do so. And so Brian realizes that
Speaker 3: he's you know, he's facing lefe in prison. This is
Speaker 3: his only opportunity to get out of that sentence. He says, okay,
Speaker 3: if I tell you what happened to Mike, you promise
Speaker 3: not to ask for a life sentence. And so he
Speaker 3: makes this deal with the state's attorney that they will
Speaker 3: hear anything to do with Mike's murder. He will he
Speaker 3: will have immunity, so whatever his involvement in the murder is,
Speaker 3: he won't be punished for it. He'll only be punished
Speaker 3: for the armed kidnapping. And so that's when Brian during
Speaker 3: this proffer to the to the state's attorney. That's what
Speaker 3: this is, when Brian tells the whole story of what
Speaker 3: he did to Mike. You know, it's basically eighteen years ago,
Speaker 3: where he hid the body, and that actually sets off
Speaker 3: a series of events in which involve the state investigators
Speaker 3: going to the lake where Mike buried. Well, sorry, got
Speaker 3: Brian barried Mike and an earthing remains.
Speaker 2: Yes, he led investigators to the remainder took it took
Speaker 2: six days of digging, but they did find the body.
Speaker 2: Tell us what they did find in those remains, Yeah.
Speaker 3: There was you know, this has been sixteen years, so
Speaker 3: there was almost nothing left. But eventually they found bones.
Speaker 3: They found part of Mike's skull with which had been
Speaker 3: embedded with shotgun palette. So it was it seemed to
Speaker 3: be clear that Brian was telling the truth about how
Speaker 3: he murdered Mike. They found, you know, a femur bone,
Speaker 3: They found sort of socks and shreds of clothing, and
Speaker 3: most ironically, they found Mike's hand and on one of
Speaker 3: his fingers his wedding ring perfectly intact. So it's a
Speaker 3: kind of horribly ironic coder to the investigation.
Speaker 2: Yes, now, so as a result, obviously, now Denise is
Speaker 2: being charged. She has three serious charges, first degree murder,
Speaker 2: conspiracy to commit first degree murder, then accessory after the
Speaker 2: fact in murder. Let's just go through Basically, the most
Speaker 2: dramatic part of this trial is when Brian takes the stand.
Speaker 2: The jury has to believe his testimony or Denise might
Speaker 2: not go to prison. Tell us about that testimony.
Speaker 3: All the all the what's at stake here is Denise's life,
Speaker 3: Denise's sentence. Because Brian has already done a deal with
Speaker 3: the state, Brian can't be prosecuted any further for his
Speaker 3: role in the crime, right, so all that's at stake now,
Speaker 3: this is, this is Denise's murder trial, and so very
Speaker 3: very Brian is the star witness, the state star witness,
Speaker 3: and very dramatically and with great emotion, he recounts this
Speaker 3: what he's did, the murder, the terrible murder. I mean,
Speaker 3: he breaks down a few times during his during the account.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's incredibly dramatic. Denise, however, if she's telling
Speaker 3: the truth, which is that she had nothing to do
Speaker 3: with the murder, this will be the very first time
Speaker 3: that she's hearing about that her ex husband killed her
Speaker 3: previous husband, the father of her daughter. And the jury
Speaker 3: found it very disturbing that she appeared to show no
Speaker 3: emotion whatsoever. She didn't take the stand herself, so nobody
Speaker 3: got to hear her speak in the same way that
Speaker 3: they got to hear Brian speak. And despite the terrible
Speaker 3: things Brian was saying, there was a clear kind of
Speaker 3: sense of at least some remorse. But with Denise, there
Speaker 3: was absolutely The jury heard and saw absolutely nothing, and
Speaker 3: so on the basis of Brian's confession, they found her
Speaker 3: guilty of murder. And it was really all on the
Speaker 3: basis of Brian's confession because there was, you know, this
Speaker 3: affair Mike. Mike was murder in two thousand and one.
Speaker 3: This even this affair had been going on for a
Speaker 3: long time, but there was almost no evidence of it.
Speaker 3: There were no you know, at the time, there were
Speaker 3: no texting with no cell phones, there were no Google searchers,
Speaker 3: there was no evidence of this affair at all. And
Speaker 3: so Denise's defense lawyers said that this is, you know,
Speaker 3: just Brian had been obsessed with Denise, she had rejected him,
Speaker 3: and so he'd killed Mike to be with her, and
Speaker 3: now he was just simply loading everything, throwing her under
Speaker 3: the bus by making up this concocting this story about
Speaker 3: them having an affair. But the jurya didn't buy it.
Speaker 3: I mean, they believed that they found Denise guilty on
Speaker 3: all counts. Actually, although the murder count, the first degree murderccount,
Speaker 3: was later overturned on appeal because there was there was
Speaker 3: certainly evidence that she was involved in the conspiracy to
Speaker 3: commit murder, but there was no evidence that she'd actually
Speaker 3: taken taken part in the murder itself. But her sentence
Speaker 3: was her sentence remained unchanged. I mean, they're both going
Speaker 3: to be in pros and for twenty twenty five years
Speaker 3: and they're birth in the fifties, so maybe not a
Speaker 3: life sentence. Maybe they'll they'll see the light of day,
Speaker 3: but they're certainly birth going to be in prison for
Speaker 3: a very long time.
Speaker 2: You said that she would be eligible for release in
Speaker 2: two thousand and forty seven, right, So.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so she may she may get out, actually may
Speaker 3: spend some time, spend her you know, basically her final
Speaker 3: years outside of prison. That's quite possible. The same with Brian.
Speaker 3: But and and people in the community are very shocked
Speaker 3: by the fact that Brian's certainly going to serve a
Speaker 3: long time in prison. I think he got twenty years.
Speaker 3: But none of it is for Mike's murder. It's all
Speaker 3: for the armed kidnappings. So and that was something interesting
Speaker 3: about the trial too, because Brian did this deal. Then
Speaker 3: there was nobody to be punished for the murder. Brian
Speaker 3: hadn't been punished for the murders, so but someone had
Speaker 3: to be there. So there was this kind of free
Speaker 3: flooting like sense of gil someone had to give Cheryl justice.
Speaker 3: There had to be some payment, and that seems to
Speaker 3: have all landed underneath, you know, someone had to be
Speaker 3: held responsible, and so she was completely held responsible, even
Speaker 3: though she and Brian were equally responsible. And Brian perhaps
Speaker 3: a lot more than she was, since he was the
Speaker 3: one who actually, you know, pulled the trigger.
Speaker 2: You're right that and we really didn't go into it.
Speaker 2: But without Cheryl and Jennifer Portman, there wouldn't have been
Speaker 2: any justice. Without those people's extraordinary efforts.
Speaker 3: That's right. And also the police. Mike Devaney was the
Speaker 3: policeman who was in charge of the case, and people
Speaker 3: were very Yeah, I mean between Cheryl, between Cheryl's kind
Speaker 3: of obsessive quest to get justice and between Jennifer Portman's
Speaker 3: an intensive reporting plus Mike Devane's investedation, the crime would
Speaker 3: never have come to justice. But people were very critical
Speaker 3: of the police because they said, look, everyone in the
Speaker 3: community noted this. These people married, she's spending the insurance money.
Speaker 3: It's obvious what happened. Why aren't the police doing anything
Speaker 3: about it? Why can't they just arrest her? But the
Speaker 3: police were doing all they could. I mean, you can't
Speaker 3: just the police can't just go and arrest someone without evidence.
Speaker 3: They had to wait until something happened, until that the
Speaker 3: couple turned on each other, which people were hoping that
Speaker 3: they would do and which they eventually did. So it's
Speaker 3: not that the police were useless or not involved in
Speaker 3: the case at all. They were monitoring this very closely
Speaker 3: from a distance, hoping, waiting for a moment when something
Speaker 3: might when something might be revealed. And in fact it
Speaker 3: was you know, when Brian and Denice turned on each other.
Speaker 3: I mean, that was the things. It's almost as though
Speaker 3: you know, Cheryl was right and that God had spoken
Speaker 3: to her and that she had been been given finally
Speaker 3: been given justice.
Speaker 2: You also right though, that Brian felt a lot of
Speaker 2: pressure that Denise didn't feel, because Denise didn't partake in
Speaker 2: social media and closed herself off and didn't listen to
Speaker 2: the rumors, whereas Brian was felt the pressure and heard
Speaker 2: the rumors and went on social media, so in his
Speaker 2: mind he worked up this paranoia that led to his
Speaker 2: downfall eventually.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, like I said, they had different ways
Speaker 3: of reacting to the guilt and to the pressure and
Speaker 3: the relationship, and sometimes one of them would feel more
Speaker 3: guilty and the other one would. But eventually Denise seemed
Speaker 3: to retreat into her the life of her daughter and
Speaker 3: of her church and became very serious and very devout
Speaker 3: and very religious, whereas Brian seemed to be more like
Speaker 3: he couldn't help looking at social media, he couldn't help
Speaker 3: starting to crumble under the pressure of the search for
Speaker 3: Mike and his guilt and his responsibility. But he seemed
Speaker 3: to believe. And this is something that really interested me
Speaker 3: in the book, is that Denise actually got to the
Speaker 3: stage where she no longer believed that she had any
Speaker 3: part in the murder. And that's what she, you know,
Speaker 3: claimed a trial that she knew nothing about this, that
Speaker 3: she learned, she learned that her second husband had killed
Speaker 3: her first husband, and that But whether or not someone
Speaker 3: can go into denial to such an extent that they actually,
Speaker 3: you know, memories of some heinous do that they've committed,
Speaker 3: I'm not really sure if that's probably. And I think
Speaker 3: at some level you must have knowledge of what you've done,
Speaker 3: your own guilt, however, however deeply you've repressed it. However,
Speaker 3: however deeply your denial, I think there's, you know, some
Speaker 3: part of you that is always going to recognize your own.
Speaker 2: Guilt, wasn't a part of this is that they used
Speaker 2: their the interpretation of the Bible that they said was
Speaker 2: infallible to justify what they were doing. And Brian believing
Speaker 2: that they were forgiven for this and it was God's plan,
Speaker 2: that's right.
Speaker 3: They you know, when they back in two thousand and one,
Speaker 3: when they decided that they wanted to kill Mike, they
Speaker 3: justified their adolporous passion by claiming that God wanted them
Speaker 3: to be together, and they found all kinds of sort
Speaker 3: of biblical narratives like the story of David and Bashe
Speaker 3: to convince themselves that sometimes, you know, God wanted God
Speaker 3: wants people to be murdered. Sometimes God pushed these people
Speaker 3: through these tests. So they basically took their religious belief
Speaker 3: and stretched it in a way to cover the murder.
Speaker 3: So they could sort of square their Baptist doctrine with
Speaker 3: their adultery, which is a really bizarre thing to do
Speaker 3: if you think about it, to twist your biblical doctrine
Speaker 3: to cover your sin.
Speaker 2: You tah about in the last part of this book,
Speaker 2: you call it the factor, and you discuss what you
Speaker 2: mean by that. Can you discuss that for us?
Speaker 3: Yeah? That phrase was actually used by Denise's defense attorney
Speaker 3: Eathan Way, and he said that whenever you get a
Speaker 3: case where a husband and wife or a man and
Speaker 3: a woman inspire to kill either the husband's wife or
Speaker 3: the wife's husband pretty much always is pretty much always
Speaker 3: the man who actually commits the crime itself, but the
Speaker 3: woman always gets punished equally if not isn't sometimes even
Speaker 3: given a worse sentence, but it is also kind of
Speaker 3: sex shamed at the same time. So certainly Brian suffered
Speaker 3: all kinds of public hatred, but Denise perhaps even more so.
Speaker 3: And the way that the case was kind of regarded
Speaker 3: in the media was that Brian was this weakling who
Speaker 3: Denise had manipulated and subdued with her evil sexuality, rather
Speaker 3: like Adam and Eve, to commit this crime that she
Speaker 3: wanted committed to kill her husband, whereas Brian was trapped
Speaker 3: in her deadly force, almost mesmerized, and had no choice
Speaker 3: but to do what she wanted him to do. And
Speaker 3: she was described as, you know, a Jezebel or a
Speaker 3: Delilah or evil these biblical women who managed to seduce
Speaker 3: men into committing crimes on their behalf. So that's what Ethan,
Speaker 3: what I meant by the factor that it's usually the
Speaker 3: woman who is seen as responsible for corrupting the man
Speaker 3: and not the other way around. And Denise was described
Speaker 3: in the media during the trial as both like cold
Speaker 3: and unemotional and heartless, but at the same time as
Speaker 3: voracious and passionate and sex starve. And so there were
Speaker 3: these strange, kind of paradoxical and contradictory views of Denise.
Speaker 3: And I think it's all to do with this notion
Speaker 3: of the Eve factor, that women throughout the time immemorial
Speaker 3: have had this evil power to seduce men into performing
Speaker 3: their will.
Speaker 2: I agree with you. I've seen the phenomena, even when
Speaker 2: you talk about the stark Weather case and the fugate
Speaker 2: girl and that people were putting in ordinary amount of
Speaker 2: blame on this little, I don't know teen girl from
Speaker 2: a little nowhere out of nowhere place.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's lots and lots and lots of cases. I
Speaker 3: mean I looked them. I can't remember the case now,
Speaker 3: but it was the very famous case with the school
Speaker 3: teacher who who's still in prison. Actually her first name
Speaker 3: is Pamela, I can't remember the last name, who kind
Speaker 3: of seduced her one of her students to murder her husband.
Speaker 3: And there's lots and lots of other examples where it's
Speaker 3: a couple that commit the murder, but the woman is,
Speaker 3: you know, given enormous amounts of sometimes blame that should
Speaker 3: not be attributed to them, and it is also seen
Speaker 3: as personally offensive in a way that the man often isn't.
Speaker 3: The man's often seen as a victim exactly.
Speaker 2: I want to thank you so much for coming on
Speaker 2: and talking about guilty creatures, sex, god and murder in Tallahassee, Florida.
Speaker 2: You're also the author of an Explained and Unexplained Death
Speaker 2: for those that might want to find out more about
Speaker 2: your other books and this book. Do you have a
Speaker 2: website and do you do any social media?
Speaker 3: No, just my website. It's just my name Makita dot
Speaker 3: Brockman dot com, so just my name.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for this interview, and you have
Speaker 2: a great evening. Thank you so much for this interview,
Speaker 2: and good night.