The Test
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What happened to Mike Williams during his duck hunting trip?
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I got in the water in the very early morning before the sun had risen and the water was pitch black. I started swimming and I felt the water hollowing out around me and felt like something really big was swimming below.
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Why did Mike's family believe he was missing?
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On December 16th, 2000, Mike Williams had planned to go duck hunting on Lake Seminole, which was just on the Florida-Georgia border. And Mike often went duck hunting. Usually he went with a friend, but this morning apparently he decided to go alone. And although he was a... successful duck hunter and he enjoyed it very much, some people said that he did actually take risks, that he stood up in the boat to take risky shots and so forth. So people became worried when he hadn't returned home.
This is author Makeda Brotman. Mike Williams was in his early 30s and lived in Tallahassee, Florida, with his wife Denise and their young daughter. The day Mike went duck hunting was his wedding anniversary. He and Denise planned to celebrate by spending the night at an inn on the coast, about an hour and a half south. They'd agreed to leave Tallahassee around noon today.
And people became more and more worried when Mike hadn't returned, specifically because he, like I said, he was kind of known to be rather a risky sportsman, but also because this terrible storm front was coming in. So Denise sent her father and a friend of Mike's out to the lake to look for him. Very quickly they found his car, but no sign of Mike.
They thought he must be still out on the lake. Denise's father called Fish and Wildlife to report him missing, and he then drove to different spots along the bank with an officer, looking for a sign of his boat on the water.
Pretty soon a search party was organized with the Department of Fish and Wildlife. Representatives from the Sheriff's Department were there. It was a huge search, but they couldn't continue searching that night because there was this very unusual for Florida, terrible winter storm. So the search was delayed until the following morning, much to people's anxiety because at this time people were really panicking. Denise refused to come out of her room. She was terribly upset.
As soon as the weather improved, Mike's best friend, Brian Winchester, and his father took a boat out to look for Mike.
And they actually came across Mike's boat after a few hours. And Brian even found Mike's cap in the water. So people were incredibly frightened about what had happened. And, you know, helicopters were brought in, cadaver dogs brought in.
State authorities borrowed a special underwater camera from the National Geographic Society and brought in dive teams. When word spread that Mike had gone missing, members of the community joined in the search efforts. A friend of Mike's said that at least 20 people showed up every day, but they didn't find anything else.
What theories emerged about Mike's disappearance?
After 44 days, on February 10, 2001, the search was called off. Mike's family and friends presumed he was dead.
Denise was terribly, terribly upset by this. She cut herself off from all her friends. She was suffering horribly.
Mike's family held a memorial service for him at the Baptist church they attended. But some people still found it odd that no trace of his body had turned up at the lake. A friend of Mike's knew a medical examiner and a retired state marshal, and he asked them what they made of it.
And they told him that it was very unusual for a body to disappear with no sign of it emerging from the water.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What happened to Mike Williams during his duck hunting trip?
0:00–1:02
2
Why did Mike's family believe he was missing?
1:02–4:05
3
What theories emerged about Mike's disappearance?
4:05–8:27
4
How did Mike's mother challenge the alligator theory?
8:27–14:31
5
What role did Brian Winchester play in Mike's life and disappearance?
14:31–22:54
6
What was the plan Denise and Brian devised regarding Mike?
22:54–29:25
7
How did the investigation into Mike's disappearance evolve?
29:25–36:41
8
What were the outcomes of the trials related to Mike's case?
36:41–39:38