http://www.tallahassee.com/story/ne...-letters-scott-and-not-single-reply/76370590/
This story was originally published on Sept. 6th, 2012.
Dec. 16 will mark 12 years that Tallahassee real estate appraiser, father and son Jerry Michael Williams disappeared without a trace the day he was to have celebrated his six wedding anniversary at the Gibson Inn in Apalachicola.
Six years ago, I was the first reporter to write extensively about his case. At first, law enforcement officials thought the 31-year-old was the victim of a drowning, a simple case of a duck hunter drug to the bottom of Lake Seminole in chest-high waders and eaten by hungry alligators.
But unlike every other drowning victim on the lake, Mike’s body never surfaced. People knew then something was wrong, though most kept quiet. Not Mike’s mother, Cheryl Ann Williams. She knew her son was not in that lake. Not just because of a mother’s sixth sense, but because of the facts. (Just for starters, gators typically do not feed in the winter and certainly would not consume a six-foot, 180-pound man without leaving something behind.)
TALLAHASSEE DEMOCRAT
Mike Williams disappears from Lake Seminole in 2000
If not for her tenacity, Mike’s story might have stayed submerged like so many things at the bottom of that dark, weedy lake. It took Cheryl Williams three years to convince law enforcement officials to even begin investigating her youngest son’s disappearance.
All these years later, investigators – even those now at odds with her – say she was right. Mike did not die in the lake. They now think Mike was the victim of human foul play, they just don’t have the physical evidence to prove it. The years-long delay in the start of the criminal investigation may make it impossible for charges ever to be filed. The cold case remains open and unsolved to this day.
In recent years, Cheryl Williams has grown frustrated over what she considers a willful mishandling the case and inaction on the part of some Florida Department of Law Enforcement officials. At the start of this year, she began a one-woman letter writing campaign to Gov. Rick Scott.
TALLAHASSEE DEMOCRAT
Portman: Mike Williams' disappearance continues to perplex
Since Jan. 1, she has penned and mailed one letter a day to the governor’s office, chronicling the case, her acrimonious meetings with FDLE officials and excerpts from her copious daily journals in the early days of the case. Her request: Scott assign her son’s case to a special prosecutor or investigator outside of FDLE.
The letters – approximately 240 – were addressed directly to the governor at this Capitol office on South Monroe Street.