GUILTY CREATURES

body eaten by alligators. But things took an unexpected turn when within five years of Mike's disappearance, Brian Winchester divorced his wife and married Denise. Their surprising romance set tongues talking. People began wondering how long they had been a couple and whether they had anything to do with Mike's death. It took another twelve years for the truth to come out, and when it did, it was unimaginable. Now the full shocking story is revealed by Makita Brotman, acclaimed true crime

writer of the enthralling and unax Blain Death. Through tenacious research and clear eyed prose, she probes the psychology of a couple who killed and explores how it feels to live for eighteen years with murder on the soul. The book they're featuring this evening is Guilty Creatures, Sex, God and Murder in Tallahassee, Florida, with my special guest writer, psychoanalyst, and professor of literature, Makita Brotman. Thank you very much

for this interview and welcome back to the program. Makda Broughtman, Hi, thank you for having me. Thank you so much, and congratulations on this book, Guilty Creatures.

at that time. Denise Merrill, tell us, as you do in this act one, as you call it, introduce the characters integral to this story.

So I think that comes into the case a lot, because there's a lot of reference to swamps and lakes there, and a lot of strange cases take place in Florida for a lot of reasons. So the beginning of the story, I just introduced the location in Tallahassee, which also has an interesting history. Like you said, it's a very very beautiful place, but it also used to be the center of the slave trade and had a sort of a

bad reputation for crime and so on. So the story begins with two couples, Mike and Denise Williams and Kathy and Brian Winchester. They were all born and raised in very strict Baptist families, and they'd known each other forever. They went to middle school together and high school together, and as they grow up and leave school, the two couples marry. They stay very close friends, and they settle

down to raise families together. But then one day, Mike, Denise's husband disappears during a session where he's out duck hunting with Brian because they're both really big hunters, and his body never surfaces, and everyone assumes that he's drowned because his wade is filled up with water and it was a really terrible there was a terrible storm that night too. It's a Christmas the Christmas season, very in winter,

very very bad weather, especially for Florida. So his body never surfaces and everyone assumes that he's been eaten by alligators, and his death really sort of tears the community apart. Eventually, Brian and Kathy divorced, and Mike's mother, Cheryl, who's a very devoted mother, is compelled to find out what happened to Mike because she simply doesn't believe that he's vanished. She believes that he's still alive. She's had messages from God.

She believes that something nefarious or and a hand took place, and she believes that Brian and Denise, who eventually marry, are somehow responsible for Mike's disappearance, if not his death. And others in the community too don't believe that Mike drowned. And I should also add that Brian was from a wealthier family than the other the other three, and he

worked in an insurance business. His father was an insurance salesman, and it happened that Brian sold Denise a couple of insurance policies on Mike's life, including a rather large policy, and eventually she received over a million dollars. So again that sort of encouraged suspicion in the community, and the suspicion one was directed particularly towards Brian and Denise, and eventually Cheryl went to the police, and the police got

involved and eventually opened an investigation. So that's the first act of the of the story.

sort of broke free from the church. They started to experiment sexually, They started to drink, they started to do drugs. Just like most people do in their teenage years, this forsome waited until they were in their twenties because they realized, particularly Brian and Denise, that they were kind of dissatisfied

with the way things are. They'd been going to church, they've been praying, They've been brought up to believe that they would be rewarded, you know, sexual pleasure after they married, and they were kind of disappointed that things didn't turn out as they had expected them to be. And after

these sexual experiments, Brian and Denise started to have an affair. Kathy, Brian's wife, was more conservative and more sort of home loving, and at first she The foursome, but particularly Brian and Denise were very interested in sexual experiments, going to the strippers, having threesomes, and at first Cathy joined in. Mike was less interested. Mike was very, very hard working, he was a real estate appraiser. He wasn't really interested in you know, drinking, smoking.

He needed to guess up and get to work in the morning, so he was kind of out of this these hijinks. But eventually, like I said, Brian and Denise started to have an affair, and it was at this time that they started to consider how they could different ways in which they could be together. And I don't know if you want me to say more at.

custody of her child. Neither of them wanted to go through the social stigma or the financial loss of the divorce, and so they gradually began to talk about ways that they might be together. And eventually they had this plan where Brian and Mike were be duck hunters. So Brian and Might would go duck hunting. Brian would push Mike out of the boat. But they didn't see it as

a murder. They saw it as an accident and a test, a test of God's will, they believed, and they wanted to believe that God wanted them to be together, and so they decided to test this. If my survived, then it was a miracle from God, and God wanted Denise to stay with Mike. But if Mike died, that was God telling them that they wanted to be together. So this is a way that they kind of go through These go through this murder, and yet they're at the

same time, they're committed Baptists. So what interested me so much is how they justify it, especially when so many people in the community didn't believe that Mike might drown. And I'm interested in how much the social pressures reinforced Brian and Denisa's lives, sort of bringing them together at one point and then driving them apart. And I explore their psychology and in particular the ways that they defended

themselves against guilts through the years. They had this astonishing range of psychological manipulations and maneuverings and justifications and denials, and their relationship to each other sort of changed over time. First they were united and then they were driven apart. So so yeah, I mean, one might simply say it's easy to get divorced, how could you possibly contemplate murder? And said, but when you have unbearable pressure on you,

your mind the strange and incomprehensible things. And that's what happened. And that's what I'm really kind of interested in getting at in the book.

million dollars. So they had this one policy I think it was from I can't remember what they had, and they had a second policy that they were going to planning to that lapse. However, Denise was a CPA and she was the one in their household who was in charge of the accounts. And what happened was when they bought the third policy and were planning to let the second one lapse, Denise continued to pay the quarterly installments on the second policy, so unbeknownst to Mike, there were

actually three policies on his life. And after he disappeared and was presumed dead, Denise Mike sorry, Brian's father was in insurance agent two and knew very much lost about finances, and he assisted Denise in getting Mike declared dead in it rub the swift way, I mean, things like that normally take a long time, apparently, and so Denise was able to claim all the insurance money, which was I think it was certainly a million dollars, and again that

certainly led to wagging tongues in the community.

in terms of the idea about the alligator. A fortunate accident happens for with Mike and Brian that gives Brian this idea, and before we talk about how they say we have to do something, it's now or never, right.

the bank records and notice that she's paid it again. Secondly, duck hunting season's coming to an end and they'll be thinking about a duck hunting accident. And what happens to kind of solidify plan is that Mike and Brian go

on a trip. Mike, Mike and Brian go hunting together, go dick hunting together, and what happens is Mike falls into what seems to be an alligator hole and he's about to drown, and the very last minute, he puts out his hand and drops his gun and Brian takes his hand and pulls him out and he Brian tells this to Denise when they get back, and they start to think to themselves, well, you know, if Brian hadn't been there to save him, Mike would simply have disappeared

and nobody would ever know what happened to him. They would have simply assumed that he'd been drowned and eaten by alligators. And that's what puts the spur into their heads that this is this would be a great way to die if we can get him, if we can get it to appear as if he's drowned, everyone will simply assumed his body's been eaten by alligators, and that would be the perfect excuse for his absence in the community.

his tracks. They get to Lake Seminole, they go out in the boat. They find a place that's rather deep where Brian believes that it will be possible to enact this grizzly deed. He pushes Mike out of the boat. However, instead of Mike drowning as he assumes what happened, Mike does not drown. His waders don't fill with water. He manages to take off his waders. He starts swimming. There are lots of cypress stumps growing out of the lake. There. He manages to get hold of a cypress stump and

starts screaming. Absolutely nothing has gone the way that Brian has planned this. What he saw is a very simple act of pushing someone out of the boat has now become this terrible, horrifying situation. And he later tells the police that he had no other option, which is ridiculous. But he has his duck hunting rifle in his boat. He circles Mike a few times and then shoots him in their head. And this is absolutely nothing that the couple had considered at all. They thought it was a

very simple accident. What Brian has to do next is to actually get rid of the body, and you know, he's not prepared for this at all. He'd actually arranged to meet his father in law later that morning to go duck hangingting, so it's set up an alibi. He has to somehow get around that. So he manages to get Mike's body out of the lake, drag it up onto the shoreline, bring his car around, all Mike's body into the trunk of his car, drive into town. He has to go to Walmart to get a spade and

tarps and weights. He has to go home to wash the car, He has to find somewhere to bury the body, and he has to do all this without being seen by anybody, and then his in laws are having a party in Georgia and he has to drive all the way to Georgia arrive at the party as though nothing's happened. So I saved this experience to the end of the book. I tell this at the end of the book. But this is actually what happened on the lake. It was

absolutely nothing like what Brian imagined it would be. It was this kind of horrendous, horrendous experience and absolutely horrifying wife of Mike to die.

had borrowed, so he somehow manages it. No one seems to notice him out of character at all at this family gathering and what happens after in terms of the search for Mike Williams.

tells her that Mike hasn't come home. And there have been other occasions where Mike and Brian have gone out duck hunting and they've they've got stuck in an island, or they've just you know, lost track of time. So at first everyone thinks it's just something like that. But eventually, when the hurricane comes in and things get very stormy, Denise asks her father if she'll go out, he'll go out to the lake and look for Mike. The father

goes out to the lake. He gets the help of some forestry staff to help search the waters, and eventually a full scale search takes place, involving many members of the community, including Brian and his father, including the police. There's satellite operations, there's all kinds of police dogs searching the premises, and that search goes on and on over the next actually until February. It continues going on. People are always going out to the lake looking for Mike's body,

and there's a huge search and rescue operation. All kinds of equipment is used, eventually helicopters, and there's no sign of Mike's body, and people do comment that there are an awful lot of large alligators around. In fact, Lake Seminole is apparently known for its sizeable alligators. But eventuallyually Mike's cap is found, his hunting cap, and then much later on his waders and his torch and his gun belt are found, and so it's decided pretty clearly that

Mike has drowned. It's surprising that his body isn't there, but everyone assumes that when when things warm up, his body will rise to the surface, and when that doesn't happen, people assume that he's been eaten by alligators, and so he's met this kind of grizzly fate. Although there are people in the community who's simply you know that it's known that alligators don't eat in the winter, and there's a lot of confusion, but do they eat in the winter?

Is that just North florigator allegators of South Flora alligators and do they hibernate And everyone's you know, wondering about whether this is possible because it seems very unlikely for alligators to in the winter to have eaten someone without any evidence of their body surfacing. So it is kind of perplexing, but it goes you know, because the body

never surfaces, things sort of are left to lie. And so Mike has declared dead, but there is this always this undercurrent of suspicion in the community, especially on the part of Mike's mother Cheryl.

that Mike had died duck hunting. Cheryl was also a very religious person, even though her religion was less sort of traditional than others in the community. So Cheryl a few days after his son went missing, she went out to Lake Seminole and she had what she believed was a revelation from God, and God told her that Mike did not drown in the lake. And after that again she devoted herself completely to this campaign of finding out what happened to Mike. When everyone else in the community

he'd accepted his death. Cheryl was constantly putting at missing posters, talking to people, trying to get the police involved, interviewing people in the community. She kept a journal like you said, She often had dreams and read tips in newspapers, and very seriously kept track of everything that she thought might give her a clue as to what happened to her son and how to find him. And like I said,

at this stage, she still believed he was alive. She believed that he might have had a shock, lost his memory, be wandering somewhere not knowing who he was, and so she kept track of all clues and signs that she'd witnessed in her dreams and things that she'd heard people saying in the community. Event she did go to the police, and at first they were rather dismissive of her, but eventually they started to take her more and more seriously,

especially after she showed them her diary. And although again she didn't believe Mike was dead, her suspicions were oriented themselves more and more frequently towards Brian and Denise. She didn't think that they'd killed Mike, but she certainly believed that they had something to do with his disappearance, and one of the reasons for this was that Denise and Mike had a daughter, Annesley, which was Cheryl's beloved granddaughter, who Cheryl spent as much time as possible with. They

had a really close relationship. It was a really loving relationship. Denise, Cheryl and Annesley were devoted to each other. And Denise told Cheryl, her mother in law, to stop putting notes in the newspaper, to stop trying to search for Mike, to stop putting up missing posters. There'd been an article in the Tallahassee Democrat about missing people that includes Mike's photograph. Cheryl said, if you don't stop searching for Mike, you

won't see your granddaughter again. And Cheryl just couldn't believe this, I mean, why would anyone wouldn't. Why didn't Denise want to find Mike. Her husband had gone missing, her child's father had gone missing. Why was she simply not just going to stop searching, but to put an end to anyone else's search. And it's at this point that Cheryl really started to believe that Denise was somehow responsible. And

Denise did exactly what she threatened to do. She did not she stopped allowing Cheryl to see her granddaughter, and Cheryl hasn't seen her granddaughter since that day. So again, it was a terrible threat that she then made good on.

was very interested in these ads. Cheryl had also done other things, like she paid she didn't have very much money, She ran a daycare, She paid to take out a huge billboard on the highway with Mike's picture on it and a phone number asking people to get in touch if they'd seen him, as well as paying for these

large ads in the Talent Hazey Democrats. So Jennifer Portman became very interested in Cheryl in her case and talked to her and gradually got involved in the case, and Jennifer Portman too began to believe that Brian and Denise

were somehow responsible for Mike's death. She assumed that he died at this point, and she too started to talk to the police, interview people who are involved in the case, and she started to also to run annual and often more than annual articles in the newspaper about this case, about the suspicious circumstances around it, about the insurance money, about the fact that Mike was still missing, about the fact that Brian Denise, as they eventually did, got married,

and her reporting again was really central to fueling the suspicions around this case, and with between Jennifer and Cheryl and then later on members of law enforcement, suspicions grew and grew and grew, and though again because this was a Baptist community and because there was a sense of you know, judged, not unless she be judged, people were reluctant to say anything out loud about the situation, but behind closed doors, thanks to Jennifer Portman's reporting and to

Cheryl's pressure, people really starting to wonder if this you know, if Mike, if the facts behind Mike's murder would ever come to lie.

the case. And I haven't I seen any other episodes of the show, but apparently they kind of do reconstructions of cases in which people have missing under very suspicious circumstances, and I think most of the time there's a kind of implicit pointing the finger at those who might be responsible.

So when this is twenty eleven, when this episode of Investigation Discovery aired, it was kind of bringing up everything in the community that people had been talking about among themselves but not perfectly, And so finally there was an opportunity for things to sort of go public, and people started texting and posting on Facebook, and there's a forum, an Internet forum called web Sleuths where people get together sort of amateur sleuths get together and share evidence and

earth documents, and that community became very very active in the case. The people and people remembered Cheryl's billboard. People who knew nothing about the case then became involved and started to you know, to pick up clues and begin investigations.

People were very critical of the police for not doing anything, because this documentary made it very very c that you know, wife, husband disappears, wife marries insurance agent who sold her the policy, and they refused to talk about husband's disappearance and refused to have anything to do with husbands and mother. You know, even if you don't know anything about the case, even if you didn't live in the community, it seemed very

very suspicious. So yes, social media, the Internet all became very important and this started to I wouldn't say drive a wedge between brianon Denise, but it started to really exert pressure on them. Remember this was ten years since Mike's disappearance, So to all intents and purposes, they believed that they'd got away with it, and you know, no longer really talked about it. They just kind of went about their lives as usual, and they were very devout Baptists.

They would go to church, they were involved in Denise was involved in a prison ministry, they were closely involved in all kinds of family and religious ventures. So to all intents and purposes, from the outset their stability and they were stable, good Christian church going family. And yet these rumors in this reconstruction on the television program really started to earn earth secrets in the community which then became public.

didn't want Kathy to talk to Cheryl. But eventually, after Brian married Denise, Kathy became closer and closer to Cheryl, and Cheryl actually informed Kathy that the police were involved and she was keeping track of events for the police.

There was a police investigation that Denise and Brian were actually persons of interest in this investigation, and so then Kathy became involved with the police too, And because even though they were separated, because Kathy and Brian shared a child together, Kathy inevitably had to see Brian, had to spend time with Brian, had to contact him about custody

and child pickups at school and so on. And so what the police police did is ask Kathy if she would work as a confidential informant at this stage, simply passing along anything that Brian said or did that seemed suspicious or you know, that that gave clues that something that he might be concealing something, or he might be

anxious about something. Occasionally she would record telephone calls with Brian, and sometimes she would bring up Mike's disappearance and and find out if he had anything to say about it. So gradually sort of forces were mounting against Brian and Denise, although it took a really really long time before anything happened, because you know, there was no all the evidence was circumstantial and there was no there were no concrete details that Brian Deese had anything to do with Mike's death.

It was just rumor and superstition. But as you know, as as Kathy began to sort of get evidence of Brian asking her to keep quiet and so saying that Cheryl was crazy, and you know, just the kinds of things he said did not seem to imply that he was desperate to find his best friend who'd gone missing, or even regretted Mike's absence or even ever thought about Mike at all. So so Cathy became involved with the

police supporting. There were more and more police involvement at this point, and the police are putting together a case, but again nothing could be done because they didn't actually have any concrete evidence.

to one another. In turn, Denise would get more involved in the church and Brian would be more blase, and then Brian would become more guilty and Denise would see more blase, and so over time passed they they went through these different iterations of guilds, even to the extent that they wouldn't speak about the murder in the same room as anyone else. They had these gestures that they would make to each other to indicate that they wanted to go out to a quiet place to have a

conversation about them murder. They even got to the stage of patting each other down before they had a conversation about the murder, because they were then that the other other one might be wearing a wire. Even then, when they went out to talk about the murder, they would take the batteries out of their cellphones. So it wasn't just that they were suspecting other people in the community. They were suspecting each other. And this is something that

really began to wear them down. And it was almost as the Denise kind of got more and more involved in her Baptist community and with her daughter and Brian, and was moving far away from Brian. Brian had always had a problem with alcohol and with sex addiction, you know,

pornography and prostitutes, and strippers. Brian started to get fall back into his old ways and fall away from the church, and the more he struggled, the more Denise moved away from him and made it started to make it very clear that she wanted to separate and also eventually that she wanted to divorce. I mean, this is now seventeen sixteen, seventeen years after the murder. Denise's religious views have changed.

She's still devotely Baptist, she still prays and goes to church, but her feelings about divorce have now changed, especially since, for example, Kathleen managed to divorce Brian quite simply with that the approbrium of the community coming down on her. So Denise finally tells Brian that she she wants to divorce.

And Brian, by the way, has started to believe that Denise maybe she doesn't want to talk about the murder at all, not even in private, and sometimes he thinks maybe she's recording him, because she seems to be, you know, when he brings up the murder, she seems to deflect the conversation in rather strange ways, and so he starts to think, what if she's what if she's going to

you know, put this all on him. What if that's her plan maybe to go to the police and say that Brian killed Mike, or if Mike's murder does come out, then she might have, you know, evidence to say, well, it was I knew nothing about it, it was all Brian an act. Horrified to find out that Brian was responsible for her husband's death. Brian started to believe that Denise really actually was almost to the stage where she didn't even think she had nothing to do with it.

She'd repressed the memory so deeply.

is the only option, but again he's extremely anxious. He's not thinking straight. It's not really clear whether he actually doesn't tend to commit suicide. He certainly writes suicide notes. He gets very very drunk, and then he says that he's going to commit suicide outside Denise's house. So he goes down to Denise's house in the middle of the night, very very drunk. He has a backpack that contains a topplin, a gun, and some water to spray the windows from

the inside of the car so he's not seen. He gets in the inside of Denise's car and falls asleep. The next morning, Denise gets up to drive to work, Brian jumps over the back of the car holds a gun to her head. Basically, he's conducting an armed kidnapping, insists that she come up the side of the road, says that he's going to shoot her and tells her

that he's going to kill himself and that she's responsible. However, Denise, although she's completely frantic, she does manage to talk him down eventually and tells him, look, let's do this together. We'll get back together. We just need to pray to God, we need to go to therapy, get help. We can restore our marriage, we can restore our relationship. Of Course,

she doesn't believe any of this. She's just kind of talking down and as soon as she manages to do that and takes Brian leaves, she immediately calls her sister, who is married to a police officer, and immediately go to the police station and reports that Brian has tried to conduct this armed kidnapping and believes that he might

even possibly have been ready to kill her. Of course, at the police station, most of the cops have believed for you know, ten years, that Brian and perhaps Denise have had something to do with the murder of Mike. So as Denise is talking about what happened, they try to get her to talk about the murder of Mike. They really pressure her. This cop called Mike Devaney, who's now taken over the case, who's been gathering all kinds of information for a long time. No has got all

these facts about the case. He really tries to pressure her to say, look, we know what happened to Mike. We want to talk about Mike Brian. Tell us now that Brian did this and this, you know, this weight will be off your chest. But Denise won't talk. She desperately wants Brian to be arrested because she's afraid that he's got a gun and that he's going to, you know, come after her. But basically that's when that's when they turn on each other, and that's that brings about the

their downfall. Basically because when Brian, you know, kidnapped Denise at gunpoint, he had no conception of the fact that she might get to the police. After all, she's a murderer, and why would a murderer go to the police. Getting the police involved in their relationship is just going to open up this whole pandora's box about their involvement in

Mike's murder. So he has no conception of the idea that Denise is so repressed this conception of her involvement in the murder so deeply, and also that she has separated herself and her mental state from that of Brian so intensely that she basically believes that she can go to the police with a clear conscience. Brian will be punished for his you know, perhaps find or perhaps given short term in prison for his armed kidnapping. They'll get divorced and things will go back to the way they

were before. But of course that doesn't happen. Brian is immediately arrested for armed kidnapping. He's put in prison, and he's told that he's going to get a life sentence unless there's anything else he can do to and give them any information that they need. And that's when the story comes out.

rest of his life life in prison. So, as you say, this is when the story turns and Brian makes a decisive move, doesn't it.

have all this information against Brian. They say, look, we're going to go for the life. Brian's fifty at this time, we're going to ask for a life sentence. You're going to spend life in prison. If there's anything that you have to tell us about Mike's murder, now would be the time to do so. And so Brian realizes that he's you know, he's facing lefe in prison. This is his only opportunity to get out of that sentence. He says, okay, if I tell you what happened to Mike, you promise

not to ask for a life sentence. And so he makes this deal with the state's attorney that they will hear anything to do with Mike's murder. He will he will have immunity, so whatever his involvement in the murder is, he won't be punished for it. He'll only be punished for the armed kidnapping. And so that's when Brian during this proffer to the to the state's attorney. That's what this is, when Brian tells the whole story of what

he did to Mike. You know, it's basically eighteen years ago, where he hid the body, and that actually sets off a series of events in which involve the state investigators going to the lake where Mike buried. Well, sorry, got Brian barried Mike and an earthing remains.

his fingers his wedding ring perfectly intact. So it's a kind of horribly ironic coder to the investigation.

what he's did, the murder, the terrible murder. I mean, he breaks down a few times during his during the account. I mean, it's incredibly dramatic. Denise, however, if she's telling the truth, which is that she had nothing to do with the murder, this will be the very first time that she's hearing about that her ex husband killed her previous husband, the father of her daughter. And the jury found it very disturbing that she appeared to show no

emotion whatsoever. She didn't take the stand herself, so nobody got to hear her speak in the same way that they got to hear Brian speak. And despite the terrible things Brian was saying, there was a clear kind of sense of at least some remorse. But with Denise, there was absolutely The jury heard and saw absolutely nothing, and so on the basis of Brian's confession, they found her guilty of murder. And it was really all on the basis of Brian's confession because there was, you know, this

affair Mike. Mike was murder in two thousand and one. This even this affair had been going on for a long time, but there was almost no evidence of it. There were no you know, at the time, there were no texting with no cell phones, there were no Google searchers,

there was no evidence of this affair at all. And so Denise's defense lawyers said that this is, you know, just Brian had been obsessed with Denise, she had rejected him, and so he'd killed Mike to be with her, and now he was just simply loading everything, throwing her under the bus by making up this concocting this story about them having an affair. But the jurya didn't buy it. I mean, they believed that they found Denise guilty on

all counts. Actually, although the murder count, the first degree murderccount, was later overturned on appeal because there was there was certainly evidence that she was involved in the conspiracy to commit murder, but there was no evidence that she'd actually taken taken part in the murder itself. But her sentence was her sentence remained unchanged. I mean, they're both going to be in pros and for twenty twenty five years and they're birth in the fifties, so maybe not a

life sentence. Maybe they'll they'll see the light of day, but they're certainly birth going to be in prison for a very long time.

there was nobody to be punished for the murder. Brian hadn't been punished for the murders, so but someone had to be there. So there was this kind of free flooting like sense of gil someone had to give Cheryl justice. There had to be some payment, and that seems to have all landed underneath, you know, someone had to be held responsible, and so she was completely held responsible, even

though she and Brian were equally responsible. And Brian perhaps a lot more than she was, since he was the one who actually, you know, pulled the trigger.

It's obvious what happened. Why aren't the police doing anything about it? Why can't they just arrest her? But the police were doing all they could. I mean, you can't just the police can't just go and arrest someone without evidence. They had to wait until something happened, until that the couple turned on each other, which people were hoping that they would do and which they eventually did. So it's not that the police were useless or not involved in

the case at all. They were monitoring this very closely from a distance, hoping, waiting for a moment when something might when something might be revealed. And in fact it was you know, when Brian and Denice turned on each other. I mean, that was the things. It's almost as though you know, Cheryl was right and that God had spoken to her and that she had been been given finally been given justice.

Mike and his guilt and his responsibility. But he seemed to believe. And this is something that really interested me in the book, is that Denise actually got to the stage where she no longer believed that she had any

part in the murder. And that's what she, you know, claimed a trial that she knew nothing about this, that she learned, she learned that her second husband had killed her first husband, and that But whether or not someone can go into denial to such an extent that they actually, you know, memories of some heinous do that they've committed, I'm not really sure if that's probably. And I think at some level you must have knowledge of what you've done,

your own guilt, however, however deeply you've repressed it. However, however deeply your denial, I think there's, you know, some part of you that is always going to recognize your own.

through these tests. So they basically took their religious belief and stretched it in a way to cover the murder. So they could sort of square their Baptist doctrine with their adultery, which is a really bizarre thing to do if you think about it, to twist your biblical doctrine to cover your sin.

sex shamed at the same time. So certainly Brian suffered all kinds of public hatred, but Denise perhaps even more so. And the way that the case was kind of regarded in the media was that Brian was this weakling who Denise had manipulated and subdued with her evil sexuality, rather like Adam and Eve, to commit this crime that she wanted committed to kill her husband, whereas Brian was trapped in her deadly force, almost mesmerized, and had no choice

but to do what she wanted him to do. And she was described as, you know, a Jezebel or a Delilah or evil these biblical women who managed to seduce men into committing crimes on their behalf. So that's what Ethan, what I meant by the factor that it's usually the woman who is seen as responsible for corrupting the man and not the other way around. And Denise was described in the media during the trial as both like cold and unemotional and heartless, but at the same time as

voracious and passionate and sex starve. And so there were these strange, kind of paradoxical and contradictory views of Denise. And I think it's all to do with this notion of the Eve factor, that women throughout the time immemorial have had this evil power to seduce men into performing their will.

And there's lots and lots of other examples where it's a couple that commit the murder, but the woman is, you know, given enormous amounts of sometimes blame that should not be attributed to them, and it is also seen as personally offensive in a way that the man often isn't. The man's often seen as a victim exactly.