- December 4, 2025
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Editor’s note: This is the next in an ongoing series on unsolved crime cases in West Orange.
“IT’S A MATCH!!”
Those were the words Michelle Grogan, a retired detective for the Ocoee Police Department, wrote in her notebook as she finally had her answer to a cold case she started investigating in 2023.
With the help of members of the police department as well as national organizations, Grogan was able to identify the skeletal remains that were found on the side of the Florida’s Turnpike in 2016 and had become a nearly decade-old cold case.
She stood in her cubicle in the Ocoee Police Department bullpen and called Lancelot Williams, who lives in Jamaica.
“I have news for you,” she said to Williams on the phone. “It’s a match. It’s your father.”
Grogan was able to identify the skeletal remains as Lloyd P. Williams, a man who was reported missing by his son, Lancelot Williams, in 2013.
Grogan was a detective on the force when she was called to Exit 267 of the Florida’s Turnpike in 2016.
For the first time, she saw skeletal remains on the side of the road as cars sped past her. She interviewed the two surveyors who found him.
“You have guys who were saying, ‘We find all kinds of things on the side of the highway, but this is the first time we’ve seen a skeleton,’” Grogan said.
As she looked around, she said the area didn’t seem to be a homeless camp. Usually when they respond to a homeless camp, there are remnants of a tent or bed roll, food, needles and more.
Based on the proximity of the remains to the roadway, she said she figured he was in a vehicle or walking on the side of the Florida’s Turnpike, but she along with the other officers and detectives could not figure out how he ended up there.
Grogan stayed as the Orange County Sheriff’s Office crime scene team came to collect all the evidence to ensure not only chain of custody remained but also to ensure officers’ safety while they were collecting evidence.
Getting back to the police department, Grogan said she thought identifying the remains wouldn’t be difficult. Although there wasn’t a full skeletal set, there was the femur bone and teeth, so she was confident there would be DNA. She’d simply put the information she had about the remains into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, NamUs, and a name would pop up.
She had no idea the years and work that would go into identifying the remains.
As a retired detective in 2023, Grogan decided to pick up the “Mr. Bones” — also known as the “Mr. Western” — case. She wanted to respect the person who died, so she gave him the names she could. First, Mr. Bones and later Mr. Western as State Road 429 was being built at the time.
She wanted to bring closure to the family and that meant diving into the case.
The Orange County medical examiner keeps all unclaimed bodies in storage, and all the evidence still was in storage.
When she started the investigation, she took about two days to log in the evidence for reexamination. She examined the keys found with the body and saw there were two loyalty rewards cards, one for Winn-Dixie and another for CVS.
Grogan sent subpoenas to the grocery store and convenience store. CVS responded in a week stating the rewards card did not have any information associated with it.
A dead end.
Grogan had to wait to hear back from Winn-Dixie.
In the meantime, Grogan listed the skeletal remains in NamUs as well as the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, DOE Network and Black and Missing Foundation.
NamUs created a composite rendering using the skull and provided a composite sketch of what the organization predicted the man looked like in life.
An analyst in the department put the composite sketch on a big-screen TV, and everyone sat in front of it staring at the sketch.
“It was kind of eerie and cool at the same time,” Grogan said. “It was cool because they had the skeleton and kind of what it looked like from the medical examiner and then the composite. It was just like, ‘How did they get there?’ You just are in awe of people who can do stuff like that.”
Grogan printed the composite sketch and pinned it up on a wall in her cubicle, which remains there today.
“Every time I turned around I was like, ‘Hey Mr. Western, I got you. We’re going to get you home someday,’” she said.
While working with Othram, a genetic genealogy company that aids police departments in resolving and solving long-term missing persons cases, Grogan learned the remains were of a Jamaican-born male, specifically from the St. Mary region of Jamaica.
She was given three potential relatives who uploaded their DNA profile through gedmatch.com. Grogan contacted or attempted to contact each of them with no luck on receiving a match.
Another dead end.
Grogan tried contacting GMC, the car manufacturer of the key found on the body. The key was identified to belong to a Buick from the 1970s to 1980s. She submitted the information to dispatch to see the cars that matched the information GMC gave her, and hundreds of reports came back. After painstakingly checking by hand each individual report and calling the associated agencies to see if there were missing persons associated with the car, there were no matches.
Another dead end.
Every day, she kept detailed notes on what she did that day to try to solve the case. She wrote down everyone she’d spoken to and when.
“I write everything down because I don’t want to not do something,” Grogan said. “It’s not as big as you think, the missing persons community.”
She worked with other organizations to bounce off ideas and brainstorm new approaches to the case.
As a retired detective, Grogan said she would be floating in her pool at home while on the phone with Melissa Pope at NamUs talking about the case.
“It’s a collaborative effort,” Grogan said. “You can’t be all about yourself. You can’t be a big ego and think I’m going to solve this, and I don’t need any help from anybody.”
Grogan constantly was checking her email to see if she received information from any agency or Winn-Dixie.
On May 30, 2025, Grogan received an email from Winn-Dixie with the info associated with the loyalty rewards card. She jumped out of her chair and ran telling everyone she had a match.
“We’re hugging, we’re laughing, we’re like, ‘We got it. We got it. We got it,’” Grogan said. “As big as our police department is now, it is very much a family atmosphere. We’ve always kept that … feel of family and everybody wants to know the answer to something.”
“Winn-Dixie gave us a name!!” Grogan wrote in her notebook.
Lloyd P. Williams.
Finally, after two-and-a-half years of investigating, Grogan had the real name for Mr. Western.
Grogan asked analysts to look into the name and a missing persons report from 2013 was found.
She found the contact information for Lancelot Williams, whom Grogan contacted. She didn’t want to get his hopes up too high as there always was a chance his DNA wouldn’t match. She said Lancelot Williams was relieved to hear there might be an answer to his father’s disappearance.
Othram sent Lancelot Williams a DNA kit in the mail so he could provide a sample to compare to Lloyd P. Williams. Othram said it would take three to six weeks.
Grogan constantly checked in on the Othram website to see where the DNA testing was in the process. She watched as Othram updated it to say the kit went from being sent to Jamaica to being shipped to the U.S. to being received in the U.S. to being processed.
In two weeks, on July 29, 2025, Grogan received a call from Othram.
It was a match.
“I’m dancing around my house and everything,” Grogan said. “I’m calling our captain and running here to the police department and being like, ‘We got a match.’ Everybody is just ecstatic.”
Solving cases like this is why Grogan became a police officer and detective.
“You become a detective to see that case all the way to the end, to be able to give his name back to him, to be able to give his family his name back,” she said.
Grogan always connects with the families to learn about the loved ones they’ve lost. This case was no different.
Talking to Lancelot Williams, Grogan learned his father was a Jehovah’s Witness who was very active. He paid for Lancelot Williams’ college and even at 89 or 90 years old liked to walk every day around the neighborhood. He had a Buick in his garage at home.
Lancelot Williams reported his father missing in 2013 when an elder at the Jehovah’s Witness’ Kingdom contacted Lancelot William to say he hadn’t seen his father in some time.
Lancelot Williams contacted the Orange County Sheriff’s Office to report his father missing and he would be in the U.S. a few days later. When he arrived at his father’s home in Ocoee, he saw it had been ransacked and robbed. He called the sheriff’s office, which sent deputies to the property to take a burglary report.
The Medical Examiners Office reported the death of Lloyd P. Williams as “undetermined.”
Ocoee PD Detective Justin Hutchinson is working on the case, which is an open and active investigation. He will look into all aspects of not only how Lloyd P. Williams died but also what led to him going missing.
Anyone with information on the case should call the Ocoee Police Department at (407) 905-3160.
