Mr & Mrs Murder

On December 16, 2000, Mike Williams went duck hunting at Lake Seminole in the Florida Panhandle and never came home. He was 31 years old, a devoted husband and father, loved by everyone who knew him. His wife Denise had planned an anniversary trip to Apalachicola that afternoon. When he didn't return by noon, she started calling friends. By evening, search parties were combing the lake. The conditions were strange—the kill switch on his boat was still attached, suggesting he hadn't fallen out. And there were alligators everywhere. "People had no idea they were there," recalled a helicopter pilot who flew overhead. "It gives you a really foreboding feeling of if he is in the lake, it's not good."

For 17 years, Mike's mother Cheryl stood on street corners holding a sign asking if anyone had seen her son. She was dismissed by some as unable to move on. But she was right to keep pushing.

The Perfect Couples

Kathy and Brian Winchester, Denise and Mike Williams—they were two young married couples who had been friends since high school in Tallahassee. They all came from conservative Baptist backgrounds where divorce was unthinkable. "We all had the expectation to be perfect," Kathy recalled. "No drinking, no drugs, no sex before marriage."