GULFSHORE LIFE: On Her Terms: A Naples Woman Speaks Out

By Jennifer Reed

One Monday afternoon in July 2024, Teri Williams was sitting on her bed in her Naples home, freshly back from a friend’s birthday lunch, when she heard her front door click open. She froze. It had to be her husband.

They had been living apart for five months, but he would periodically show up, unannounced and uninvited. She’d attempted to change the locks, but a locksmith refused without proof of ownership. The house was in her husband’s name.

In Teri’s account, he had spent the weekend swinging between insults that cut to the bone and pleas to restore the marriage. For the first time in their 25-year marriage, she’d held firm and stayed away.

Now, as his broad-shouldered frame filled the doorway, she braced. Teri says she had weathered his insults for years, but this time it felt different. In his voice, she heard a loathing she’d never detected before. It scared her.