True Crime Vault: Dead Man Talking

Speaker 1 This show is supported by Hot and Deadly, a podcast from ID. Hot and Deadly brings you American true crime that is often stranger than fiction.

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Speaker 1 This is the 2020 True Crime Vault.

Speaker 7 Most people would call the police if they found their husband dead on the floor in their living room.

Speaker 9 What I did was absolutely horrible, but it's the absolute truth.

Speaker 11 She's in prison for murdering her her husband.

Speaker 14 But she swears she's innocent.

Speaker 15 They look like a slightly struggling, but optimistic young couple. Mike up at the Air Force Base, Wendy building her new veterinary practice.

Speaker 18 At what point did this apparent dream life sour?

Speaker 19 And why?

Speaker 20 Michael said that his marriage was rocky. and that he was thinking about getting out.

Speaker 21 It was on this ranch that police found a decomposing body believed to be that of 24-year-old Dya Staff Sergeant Michael Severance.

Speaker 15 Michael Severance survived five tours of duty in the Middle East, but he did not survive five months of marriage to Wendy Davidson.

Speaker 9 He was telling her that he had a secret mission he was going on. I said, Wendy, that man hasn't got skills enough to pour piss out of the boot.

Speaker 9 You can't make this stuff up. Like, Dean Koontz couldn't make this up.

Speaker 25 How is it that a wife finds the only way to get rid of a husband is through murder? It doesn't sound right. It doesn't feel right.

Speaker 9 I did not kill him.

Speaker 4 We all know that Wendy's a pathological liar.

Speaker 28 Who killed Mike Severance if it wasn't her?

Speaker 29 I'm traveling to the Gatesville Correctional Facility about an hour west of Waco.

Speaker 34 I'm there to meet Wendy Mae Davidson, the former veterinarian, current convicted murderer.

Speaker 38 From day one, she has insisted she wasn't responsible for the death of her husband, Staff Sergeant Michael Severance.

Speaker 39 When you do interviews like this, you always wonder what it's going to be like looking into the eyes of a killer.

Speaker 39 But Wendy doesn't look or act like any of the killers I've talked to.

Speaker 39 I'm going to cut to the chase and get right to business.

Speaker 18 You know, you've basically kept your silence for 15 years.

Speaker 42 Why did you decide to do this first network interview?

Speaker 9 I was kind of advised from the get-go, maybe it'd be best not to talk. It seems like that that hasn't done me any favors.
So I want my side of the story of what happened heard.

Speaker 9 So I want people to know what did and didn't happen.

Speaker 35 Wendy's story starts here in West Texas.

Speaker 15 San Angelo is a funny little town because it's so isolated.

Speaker 15 There's just acres and acres and miles and miles of nothing leading up to San Angelo.

Speaker 28 It's pioneer country. It's ranchers.
It's people who go to church. have very traditional values.
Marriage, family, raising your children right. These are going to be the priorities for most people.

Speaker 25 We are out here on our own. The closest town really of any size is an hour and a half away.
So the people take care of the people here.

Speaker 32 In the 1980s in San Angelo, Texas, a bright little girl named Wendy Mae Davidson grows up on what's a modest ranch.

Speaker 32 It's a quiet life with her father, Lloyd, who's a handyman, her stay-at-home mom, Judy, and her younger brother, Marshall.

Speaker 15 Wendy was a happy little child. Animals became her life.
In fact, by the age of seven, she knew she wanted to be a veterinarian when she grew up.

Speaker 2 Wendy excelled as a student. She had to work hard and she really worked hard.
She was driven in a lot of ways to succeed.

Speaker 30 Wendy took part in future Farmers of America events and volunteered at a local veterinary clinic while she was still a student at Water Valley High School.

Speaker 46 She went to school with my daughter. She was just fun-loving, and like I said, she was outgoing and she was very responsible.

Speaker 35 2,000 miles to the northeast is another small town,

Speaker 41 Lee, Maine.

Speaker 7 It's very small, very very depopulated.

Speaker 50 Lots of open land but all of it was choked with trees

Speaker 2 as thick as any jungle.

Speaker 2 This area you get all four seasons.

Speaker 51 So during the summer you're rollerblading, you're biking, you're outside in the summer, you're outside in the winter, there's always something to do.

Speaker 39 In this deeply rural countryside, a little boy named Michael Severance also grows up in a close-knit family with his mom, dad, and younger brother, Frank.

Speaker 17 Michael loved the snow.

Speaker 15 He loved being outdoors and he went hunting, he went fishing, he went skiing. He wanted to do everything downhill, cross-country, you name it.
And he excelled at it.

Speaker 15 And he was of the fabric of the woods of Maine.

Speaker 33 And Michael's family still lives up here in North Maine.

Speaker 19 Hi, Matt.

Speaker 10 Welcome to Maine.

Speaker 52 Oh, thanks for having us.

Speaker 55 This way. We appreciate it.

Speaker 52 Thank you. How you doing today?

Speaker 56 Tell me about Mike.

Speaker 52 What was he like growing up?

Speaker 4 I had a great son.

Speaker 4 He was a very, very good man. He put other people first.
I can show you document after document, letters after letters of his co-workers and such that say the same thing.

Speaker 51 I often called my brother, Mike, kind of my Superman. He was always

Speaker 51 there when I needed him.

Speaker 30 Tragedy hits this family early on when Michael's mother suddenly collapses with a brain aneurysm.

Speaker 4 I believe he was around

Speaker 4 13 or 14 when his mom died. I think Frankie was 11.

Speaker 2 Tough age to lose your mom.

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 51 It was a shock to the system.

Speaker 51 We as a family, Mike, dad, myself, we didn't know how to function without her.

Speaker 51 It was

Speaker 51 challenging. There were nights where I would cry myself to sleep.
And he would be there rubbing my back or

Speaker 51 just kind of telling me, you know, everything's going to be okay.

Speaker 47 Near the end of high school, what were his career ambitions or just ambitions in general?

Speaker 4 I said, I suggest the military. And a little while later, he came to me and said, Dad, I'm going to enlist in the Air Force.

Speaker 50 This was the life-changing event for him to join the Air Force to do the things that he had always dreamed of doing in terms of adventure and being part of a team.

Speaker 15 Mike was stationed at the Air Force Base in Abilene, which is about an hour and a half from San Angelo. He loved the job because of the camaraderie, because of the sense of adventure,

Speaker 15 because of the feeling he got from knowing he was doing something to serve his country.

Speaker 15 That meant a lot to him.

Speaker 50 Joining the Air Force is a turning point in Michael's life. Being a part of that Air Force team and then ending up in Texas, certainly he was a fish out of water in many ways in Texas.

Speaker 22 There are a lot of ifs about this case.

Speaker 8 If only Michael had never left Maine. If only he'd never joined the Air Force.

Speaker 13 If only he'd never been stationed in Abilene, Texas.

Speaker 44 But all of that did happen to a young man with a promising military career ahead of him.

Speaker 41 And then he met Wendy.

Speaker 9 I mean, I wish I could do it all over again. I don't think I was a terrible person.
I think I just made a really horrible mistake.

Speaker 15 A lot of people were pretty certain that something was wrong.

Speaker 7 At what point did this apparent dream life sour and why?

Speaker 14 Long before Wendy Mae Davidson crosses paths with Michael Severance, she's an aspiring young woman with a dream of working with animals.

Speaker 39 Even as a teenager at Water Valley High School, she has plans to become a veterinarian.

Speaker 14 Her younger brother, Marshall, has ambitions to go into law enforcement.

Speaker 44 And at the heart of the family is Judy, a powerful personality who's got high hopes for her children.

Speaker 2 The Davidson family was...

Speaker 2 People described them as close-knit, and I always thought that meant guarded.

Speaker 13 Going way back, who was Wendy Mae Davidson?

Speaker 20 Who were you?

Speaker 9 I grew up on a farm.

Speaker 9 So

Speaker 9 my life pretty much revolved around animals.

Speaker 9 I mean, I like to go out and have fun, but for the most part, you know, animals, veterinary medicine, and my family, you know, that was pretty much, that was pretty much me.

Speaker 16 By almost all accounts, the person closest to Wendy, the central figure in her life, is Judy, a strong and loving mother.

Speaker 30 Judy saw the potential in her daughter and was determined to help her fulfill it.

Speaker 39 In 1996, Wendy graduates second in her class from Water Valley High School.

Speaker 2 Judy wanted her daughter to be successful. There was a lot of drive in that family.

Speaker 31 And success in high school leads to success in college for Wendy.

Speaker 2 Wendy went to Texas A ⁇ M, which is one of the toughest veterinary schools, and she did very well.

Speaker 2 But she was also rebellious. She also wanted to have fun.

Speaker 15 I think in some ways, once she tasted freedom, she just went overboard.

Speaker 2 And she got pregnant while still in Texas A ⁇ M.

Speaker 30 In October 2001, Tristan is born.

Speaker 11 Now, Wendy says that her relationship with Tristan's father falls apart, leaving her a single mother and a student.

Speaker 65 Her mom moved across the state of Texas to live with Wendy, to care for the infant, so that Wendy could continue to go to school.

Speaker 30 Wendy graduates with a veterinary degree in May 2002 and she heads back to West Texas.

Speaker 62 Gets her first job as a vet in Abilene.

Speaker 30 Meanwhile, Michael Severance is also in Abilene stationed at Dyess Air Force Base.

Speaker 50 After several deployments to combat zones in the Middle East, Mike continues to build a terrific career and assume greater levels of responsibility as a C-130 crew chief.

Speaker 50 So he loved the Air Force, was doing really well.

Speaker 8 The worlds of Wendy Mae Davidson and Michael Severance are about to collide.

Speaker 2 Mike and Wendy met when he was out line dancing. And I think she just was drawn to him like a magnet.

Speaker 9 I was there with a friend, and he came and asked me to dance.

Speaker 9 and I had an emergency call before

Speaker 9 long

Speaker 9 so I had to go see a pet.

Speaker 9 Something I normally wouldn't do, I gave him my phone number just because I had to leave and I figured I might never see this guy again.

Speaker 2 They had a flash romance. I think they just hit it off immediately.

Speaker 15 He was quite surprised when she called up and said, hello, I'm pregnant with your child.

Speaker 14 Despite only knowing each other for a couple of months, the couple decides they want to make a go of it, and Wendy introduces Mike to her family.

Speaker 28 Mike probably didn't make the best impression on the Davidsons family. They probably think he's a little bit too much of a playboy, a guy who's out at the bars trying to pick up women.

Speaker 28 Judy did not like him from the outset.

Speaker 6 Why didn't your family like Mike?

Speaker 9 Um, I think it was probably primarily my mom. She never liked any guy I ever dated.
She always felt like they weren't good enough.

Speaker 9 Mike came along. She thought that he was rude.

Speaker 38 In what way rude?

Speaker 9 One story she told me was when we were staying at her house overnight.

Speaker 9 She told me she saw him walking in the hallway to the bathroom at night in his boxer shorts, and she thought that was disrespectful.

Speaker 54 Judy described Mike as lazy and claimed he'd get angry if anyone asked him to do anything.

Speaker 29 So she said she kept her distance from him.

Speaker 2 I think she looked at him as kind of a scrub. He's come into her life and the first thing he does is get her pregnant.

Speaker 9 So I found out I was pregnant with Shane, but it was just things happened out of order.

Speaker 6 Kind of sounds like the pregnancy forced you into marriage.

Speaker 9 He asked me, you know, do you want to get married now? And I, of course, I wanted to. You know, I wasn't going to pressure him.

Speaker 14 In September 2004, Wendy's second child, Shane, is born.

Speaker 31 Mike makes a decision that will change his life forever.

Speaker 15 The wedding was in a Justice of the Peace office.

Speaker 46 They repeated their vows.

Speaker 65 The rings were exchanged, and that was that.

Speaker 30 Michael's dad and brother traveled to Texas for the wedding, and it feels like an immediate culture clash.

Speaker 4 Lloyd came in, and he said, you must be the dad.

Speaker 4 And I said, I am. And he said, well,

Speaker 19 I'm Lloyd.

Speaker 4 We shook hands, and he turned around and left.

Speaker 19 And that was

Speaker 4 pretty much it. Judy Davidson came in, pretty much just introduced herself and left.

Speaker 36 But Judy remembers the day differently.

Speaker 14 She says she bought the wedding cake, paid for the dinner, and that Mike never even thanked her.

Speaker 38 As for Les, Judy says she felt he was a bit standoffish.

Speaker 4 They were supposed to meet us all for this dinner, which they never showed up. So there was animosity right from the get-go.

Speaker 30 The Davidsons want to give their daughter a hand, so they help her finance her veterinary clinic.

Speaker 39 At the back of the building, there's just enough space for a small apartment, and it's there that Mike eventually moves in with Wendy and the two boys.

Speaker 15 It was really very small and cramped for four people.

Speaker 65 It wasn't a very comfortable existence.

Speaker 69 Wendy is trying to manage two small children, a tiny little residential area, her family, and her practice.

Speaker 69 So there's a tremendous amount of stress in this relationship for a young couple that basically are starting out with two young kids.

Speaker 38 And adding to these rising tensions, Michael's about to be redeployed.

Speaker 50 So long days, and then on top of that, he chose to live well away from the base, so ended up having to spend three hours out of every day commuting which in itself takes a toll.

Speaker 28 It just becomes almost a big cauldron boiling a situation that could easily boil over.

Speaker 8 Michael's just returned from an Air Force training course and gets into an argument with Wendy.

Speaker 4 Wendy started yelling at him and Michael's pretty much said, screw this,

Speaker 4 I'm going to take Shane and go to Abilene. That stirred up a hornet's nest.

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Speaker 42 It's Thursday, January 13th.

Speaker 36 It's been four months to the day since Wendy married Mike.

Speaker 14 He's just gotten back from an Air Force training course and gets into an argument with Wendy.

Speaker 15 And Mike, without saying a word,

Speaker 15 took Shane and drove up to Avilene.

Speaker 49 Just to, you know, cool off, lose team.

Speaker 47 And

Speaker 55 he hadn't shown Shane around to his friends.

Speaker 4 He didn't tell Wendy he was leaving. I mean, he was upset with Wendy.

Speaker 28 Wendy, of course, is losing her mind trying to figure out where he is and where he has taken their son. She's calling him, but he will not answer the phone.

Speaker 2 There was a confrontation with him.

Speaker 51 When he got back, he caught howl from Wendy that he can't just take the baby whenever he likes. Mike said, oh, he's my son, too.
Like, I can take my son where I want.

Speaker 2 Wendy took Michael's taking off with the baby as a sign of things to come,

Speaker 49 as a warning, a portend.

Speaker 14 He's now under significant pressure at home, and Mike is also readying himself for redeployment, likely to the Middle East.

Speaker 50 We learned today of two more American soldiers killed in Iraq. 577 U.S.
troops have died in action now since the war began.

Speaker 50 Michael had deployed several times to the Middle East after 9-11, so he knew what deployments were like.

Speaker 50 But this was the first time with this new wife with a baby that he would have to leave them behind and again go somewhere else on the other side of the world.

Speaker 50 And it creates a lot of anxiety and angst. So that house was under a lot of pressure, a lot of anxiety just prior to his deployment.

Speaker 44 It did seem you had a guy who had a good job.

Speaker 39 Maybe he was about to be deployed, but was there for you and the children.

Speaker 5 He helped. He was loving to you.

Speaker 44 You guys had fun.

Speaker 7 At what point did this apparent dream life sour?

Speaker 19 And why?

Speaker 9 I still don't know that it ever did. Everything was fine to me, but see, I was busy.
I was in the middle of trying to run this clinic I had just opened, taking two care of two little babies.

Speaker 9 The only thing that I noticed that changed with Mike was he was having a very hard time driving back and forth to Abilene every day. So

Speaker 9 I did notice that

Speaker 9 he had started, he was still drank every afternoon. He was drinking, but then he started kind of, at first I noticed he was using

Speaker 9 caffeine pills and like Ephedra, something like that. He did ask me on a couple occasions if I had anything that could help him sleep.
And the only thing I ever gave him was Benadryl.

Speaker 39 Would you say that he was abusing alcohol and drugs?

Speaker 9 At the time, I didn't realize there was an issue. But looking back, you know, like hindsight's 2020 and everything.
So looking back, obviously there was a problem. That's not normal.

Speaker 14 Now, despite what Wendy says, there was never any evidence that Michael had a problem with drugs or alcohol.

Speaker 17 It seems that even with everything else they're going through, the couple has at least one thing to look forward to.

Speaker 26 They plan to squeeze in a trip to Michael's hometown in Maine before his next deployment.

Speaker 62 They book tickets for the whole family, Mike, Wendy, Tristan, and baby Shane, for Sunday, January 16th.

Speaker 4 Michael was very, very excited because we were excited. A lot of his friends were going to get to see the baby and his new wife.

Speaker 72 So he was really much looking forward to spending an hour or five minutes or just, hey, good to see you, give him a quick hug. Hold the baby and spend some time with the baby.

Speaker 51 And, you know, just kind of show Tristan what snow was. I'm not even sure if Wendy had ever seen snow, so it was going to be a change for them, too.

Speaker 14 Regardless of the challenges they're facing, on Friday, Wendy and Mike decide to go out for the evening.

Speaker 61 Just the two of them.

Speaker 16 Michael doesn't know it yet, but his days are now numbered.

Speaker 30 That last Friday night that you went out to dinner together, probably had a few drinks.

Speaker 71 Yes.

Speaker 18 Do you remember anything about that night?

Speaker 9 We went out, we had fun, we came back, he slept in. I mean, mean, everything seemed fine to me, you know, that night and even the next day when I saw him.

Speaker 14 That was Friday, you saw him Saturday.

Speaker 9 Yeah, he was at the clinic.

Speaker 28 And then everything gets murky. Between Friday night and Sunday morning, we really just have Wendy's version of events.

Speaker 6 Describe to me the last time that you say you saw your husband alive.

Speaker 9 Okay, so Saturday morning, I stayed at the clinic until 3,

Speaker 9 and I was going to take Shane and go get Tristan because we were supposed to go to Maine on Sunday.

Speaker 9 I saw Mike, he was in the back watching TV and I told him that I was going to go out to my parents' house and get Tristan and I would be home in a little while.

Speaker 73 No one other than Wendy knows exactly what happens next, but one thing is for sure, Mike will never be heard from again.

Speaker 9 And Tristan started crying. And he said, mommy, why are we crying? And I said, because I don't know where daddy is.
I said, I guess we're not going to go to the main.

Speaker 2 It was January 16th, 2005, and that's when everything changed up here for the Severance family.

Speaker 4 We were supposed to go to the airport and pick him up.

Speaker 4 I walked through the door and said, how come you guys aren't ready? Let's go, let's go. We've got to get out.

Speaker 4 We've got an hour and a half ride to Bangor to pick Mikey and Mikey's wife and baby. We've got to get them.
And Brenda says, You need to sit down.

Speaker 4 She said, Well, Michael's missing. I said, What do you mean, Michael's missing?

Speaker 49 Well,

Speaker 4 Wendy can't find him.

Speaker 15 She's saying that she couldn't go to Maine because she can't find Michael. She's saying, Maybe Michael went to Maine without me.

Speaker 4 I got to talk to Wendy and ask her, What's going on, Wendy?

Speaker 49 What's up?

Speaker 47 And she says, well, I don't know.

Speaker 4 I had taken this truck and gone to

Speaker 19 my mom's house.

Speaker 4 And when I got back,

Speaker 4 he was gone.

Speaker 39 Clearly, Michael, Wendy, and the boys are not catching that flight to Maine.

Speaker 11 Instead, Wendy calls her mother Judy.

Speaker 31 Did your parents know that Mike disappeared?

Speaker 9 When I called, I asked my mother, do you know where Mike is?

Speaker 9 And she said,

Speaker 52 no.

Speaker 9 Do you know where Mike is?

Speaker 9 And I said, well, he's not here. I don't know where he is.
And she said, well, then you need to come up to the house right now.

Speaker 9 So I got the boys, went out there.

Speaker 9 I went to sleep at some point.

Speaker 62 Now here's one of the first strange things Wendy does.

Speaker 31 Despite her parents telling her to call the police, Wendy spends that Sunday sleeping on and off throughout the day at their house.

Speaker 72 Definitely thinking like if my husband was missing, I wouldn't sleep. I wouldn't eat.
I would be searching for him. I would be looking for him.

Speaker 72 I would be calling everybody I knew on the sun to come help me.

Speaker 39 And And Wendy does eventually call the San Angelo Police Department at 6.43 p.m.

Speaker 59 that night, telling them her husband is missing.

Speaker 44 And a manhunt begins.

Speaker 64 That knew we had a missing airman, and they were in a process of looking for him.

Speaker 2 He'd totally fallen off the radar screen, totally disappeared.

Speaker 43 The very next day, Wendy does something extraordinary.

Speaker 2 Within 24 hours, she filed for divorce.

Speaker 40 Bizarre as this sounds, Wendy does have an excuse.

Speaker 31 It wasn't her idea, she says.

Speaker 9 It was her parents. I was a zombie at this point in time, just doing whatever they said.
My dad took me to the attorney's office,

Speaker 9 told him whatever.

Speaker 6 You signed the papers, though.

Speaker 9 Of course I did. They told me to sign the papers.

Speaker 9 I did what they told me to do.

Speaker 9 And I don't know why.

Speaker 15 Not only did she file for for divorce, but she got a restraining order against him. A restraining order that forbid him from writing to her,

Speaker 16 being around her, talking to her on the telephone.

Speaker 14 In that request for the restraining order, Wendy claims she's worried Michael will take Shane away from her.

Speaker 57 Just a day after Mike went missing, But Wendy filed for divorce and filed for a restraining order against Mike.

Speaker 47 Red flag.

Speaker 11 In the days that follow, officers talk to Wendy and visit the clinic.

Speaker 16 On Wednesday, Wendy is interviewed by the San Angelo Police Department. She says that Saturday afternoon was the last time she saw her husband.

Speaker 9 I walked in and he went anywhere.

Speaker 75 But I thought, well, that's not unusual.

Speaker 9 He probably crossed a couple of loggings or maybe went down to Grams or something. He went back to old bit.
I started getting more worried and more worried and I started crying.

Speaker 9 And Tristan started crying. He said, Mommy, why are we crying? And I said, because I don't know where daddy is and if he don't hurry up and get back and we can't get everything packed.

Speaker 9 I said, I guess we're not going to go to Maine. So about five o'clock, that's when I picked up the phone and I called my parents and said, y'all heard the microphone.

Speaker 29 Days later, the investigation ramps up when the San Angelo police team up with the Texas Rangers.

Speaker 20 My name is Sean Palmer. I'm a retired Texas Ranger.

Speaker 20 I joined the investigation with the Tom Green County Sheriff's Department and and the San Angelo Police Department as kind of a task force approach to the investigation.

Speaker 20 And so we got together and came up with ideas of other leads that we could follow to find out what happened to Michael.

Speaker 39 The investigators want to know if they can think of any reason why Michael might have run off.

Speaker 14 They talked to some of his buddies.

Speaker 45 I believe I met him in the latter part of November of 2004.

Speaker 63 I'd even told him that anytime he was in San Angelo to give me a shout.

Speaker 63 So he said, I don't go down there a whole lot because my mother-in-law hates me and she wished I was dead. And I kind of giggled about it.

Speaker 45 He said, no, I'm serious.

Speaker 45 I just thought, well, maybe he's had enough of it and kind of went for a few days away.

Speaker 63 And

Speaker 63 then I learned he left his car and his cell phone. And I thought that was really strange because

Speaker 45 You know, everybody lives by both nowadays. And that's when I really began to wonder if something was really going on.

Speaker 29 The more the Rangers dig, the more they discover just how unhappy Michael appears to be in his marriage.

Speaker 20 During the investigation, we interviewed a friend of Michael Severance named Jeffrey Holden.

Speaker 20 During our interview with Mr. Holden, he said that he had spoken to Michael around the November-December period.

Speaker 20 And during that conversation, Michael said that his marriage was rocky and that he was thinking about getting out.

Speaker 31 Now, this is something the Texas Rangers want to drill down into further.

Speaker 20 So I obtained the cell phone records for his cell phone to try and determine what activity there was on his phone around the time that he went missing.

Speaker 20 And in one case, a female had his phone number programmed in her phone.

Speaker 30 It was a compelling lead.

Speaker 26 These calls to Michael's phone, could Mike, in fact, be seeing another woman?

Speaker 4 This is not my son, Michael. This is not what he does.

Speaker 36 Staff Sergeant Michael Severance is missing.

Speaker 38 His newlywed wife, veterinarian Wendy Davidson, says he left their home while she was out with her family.

Speaker 14 There's no sign of him anywhere.

Speaker 7 His father, Les, is getting very anxious.

Speaker 57 At that time, were you confident of the investigation by the Texas Rangers? and the San Angelo police?

Speaker 49 No.

Speaker 4 No, I got to be honest. I was not.
They weren't asking asking the right questions.

Speaker 50 When Michael doesn't show up for work, he's considered AWOL, absent without leave. But it's highly unusual for somebody that had been in the service this long to just disappear.

Speaker 50 That raised the red flags, and that's why the Air Force was so diligent. We need to find out what happened here.

Speaker 50 So they now need to get the OSI involved, the Office of Special Investigations, because this is a mystery.

Speaker 27 OSI has a lot of resources they can use on investigation. and as investigation progress such as this one, where we're looking at a deserter case.

Speaker 50 There are now several law enforcement agencies joining together to investigate Michael's disappearance.

Speaker 50 The task force then goes back to the clinic and decides they need to take a closer look at the cell phone records.

Speaker 20 We were able to identify some of the phone numbers that contacted him and in one case a female had his phone number programmed in her phone.

Speaker 27 One of the scenarios that came up was the fact that Michael might be having an affair with another woman.

Speaker 39 It seemed like a compelling lead.

Speaker 24 Midnight calls to Michael's phone from a mystery woman.

Speaker 11 Maybe he was hiding out with her.

Speaker 72 I believe that if Michael was going to leave with another woman, he would have ended things with Wendy. He would have said, this isn't for me anymore.
I want a divorce.

Speaker 72 And he would have done it the right way before he would have walked away. I don't think Mike had it in him to be a cheater or anything like that.

Speaker 38 It turns out this would-be girlfriend is just an old friend calling Michael.

Speaker 14 Nothing more than that.

Speaker 17 But when investigators talk to the Davidsons, the couple supports the other theory from their daughter, Wendy, that Michael's gone AWOL.

Speaker 9 He was all concerned about he didn't want to be deployed because he was afraid that something bad was going to happen.

Speaker 9 And he kept saying, like, those guys that went over to Canada, it would be so easy just to go into Canada.

Speaker 67 What do you think happened to him?

Speaker 9 I think he just piped out.

Speaker 67 You think it's strange you left with no clothes and no money?

Speaker 9 If you had met the guy, you wouldn't think it's strange at all.

Speaker 9 Because I mean he was just one suit of widow.

Speaker 67 You think anybody hurt him or anything?

Speaker 9 He had a pretty smart mouth on him. So you know if he popped off at somebody, I don't know.

Speaker 9 I mean he was obnoxious, he was rude, he was nasty.

Speaker 58 He wanted no part of me.

Speaker 9 And I didn't want her or my babies to have any part of that meeting.

Speaker 71 I'm not going to lie. I didn't like him, never did, and never will.

Speaker 9 And I hope no harm's come to him. But if I never see him again, that's fine, too.

Speaker 13 I'm going to ask this question of everybody.

Speaker 67 Did you do anything to him?

Speaker 71 No, I didn't.

Speaker 67 You just have a seat right there. I'll be right back.

Speaker 67 Well, I asked Judy this too. I said, because

Speaker 67 I've got to ask you, and

Speaker 67 we don't think anything did.

Speaker 76 But I asked her, I said, did you do anything to him?

Speaker 67 Did you hurt him? Or do you know if anybody did?

Speaker 77 Do you know him?

Speaker 69 Well, I never did.

Speaker 68 I never would.

Speaker 78 My thoughts are

Speaker 78 that.

Speaker 78 At first I was leaning towards he'd probably hid out somewhere around

Speaker 78 because that's where most of his friends are and stuff, you know, people that he knew.

Speaker 78 But then, you know, the more time went by, I think, well, maybe one of his family members hid him out since he always told Wendy how easy it'd be to go over to Canada from Maine.

Speaker 78 And then, according to her, he had even said something about how easy it'd be to get fake IDs and stuff like this.

Speaker 76 If he had taken off to Canada or something, you wouldn't

Speaker 67 cover for him.

Speaker 9 Oh, gosh, no. I'd let y'all have him in a minute.
He was telling her that he had a secret mission he was going on.

Speaker 9 I said, when

Speaker 9 that man hasn't got sense enough to pour piss out of a boot. Do you really think they're going to send him on a secret mission?

Speaker 71 He had like three, four years,

Speaker 9 something like that.

Speaker 9 He wanted out. He was hurting people telling him what to do.

Speaker 20 The Davidson family seemed to indicate that they believed that Michael was worried about an upcoming deployment, and so he left on his own to avoid being deployed.

Speaker 39 The task force talks to Michael's family and friends and look into his service record.

Speaker 30 Michael really loved the service.

Speaker 2 There was no indication that he was a malcontent. He liked being in the Air Force and he had gone to Afghanistan and he was going to do it again.

Speaker 39 His friends' minds are starting to go to some pretty dark places.

Speaker 63 I mean, things started running through my head that maybe possibility that something has happened to him. That somebody did do something to him.

Speaker 9 You know.

Speaker 40 It's now more than two weeks since Michael was last seen, and investigators search Wendy's clinic yet again.

Speaker 10 This time, they get Wendy's permission to make a copy of her computer hard drive for analysis.

Speaker 14 It'll be several weeks before the results come back.

Speaker 30 In the meantime, investigators aren't ruling anything out.

Speaker 38 They're even considering the possibility that if Michael is AWOL, maybe it's Wendy who's helping them hide out.

Speaker 16 Their next move is critical. They put Wendy under surveillance in the hope she'll lead them to where Michael might be.

Speaker 27 We were given permission to place the tracking devices on Wendy's car.

Speaker 58 With that tracker in place, the task force will know anywhere that Wendy goes, and they're hoping it leads them to Michael's location.

Speaker 26 Wendy's car is recorded making a trip to the 4-7s ranch.

Speaker 60 It's about 20 miles outside of San Angelo.

Speaker 4 They noticed on the tracking download that she had spent quite a bit of time at the pond.

Speaker 30 Then on March 3rd, the results of Wendy's laptop search come in. Some bone-chilling revelations come to light.

Speaker 20 Ultimately, what became a breaking point in the investigation was when we learned about the research that she had done on the computer.

Speaker 15 When they looked in that computer, they found out that she'd looked to see about body decomposition.

Speaker 20 For her to research that, it would indicate that she had some knowledge that Michael's body was in a body of water.

Speaker 14 Ranger Sean Palmer goes back to the clinic to question Wendy one more time.

Speaker 40 And at first, she seems to have answers for why she's searching the internet about decomposing bodies.

Speaker 20 She wasn't caught off guard by those questions.

Speaker 20 She explained that she had researched the decomposition of a body in water because during that time period, searchers, volunteer searchers, were out searching for Michael.

Speaker 36 But he presses Wendy further, telling her he knows she's been to the 4-7s ranch and he wants to know why.

Speaker 20 She obviously became disturbed by the information that the pond would be searched, and it caused her to...

Speaker 20 kind of lose her composure that she had maintained throughout the investigation.

Speaker 15 That's when Wendy started to feel the fire breathing down her neck.

Speaker 20 She grabbed her infant son, jumped in her car, and took off.

Speaker 2 If you're keeping score as to who's behaving like they're innocent and who's behaving like they're guilty, Wendy's behaving like she's guilty.

Speaker 59 Once police started really being on your tail, you called your brother Marshall.

Speaker 16 Yes.

Speaker 16 Wendy's brother, Marshall, is a game warden. That's a law enforcement role.
And he's now in an awkward position.

Speaker 14 They agree to meet at a nearby location, Grape Creek Cemetery.

Speaker 36 And that's where Wendy May's story is about to take a major plot twist.

Speaker 79 So Marshall arrived first, and he said, why am I here?

Speaker 24 What are we doing here?

Speaker 15 And she said, I've got to tell y'all something.

Speaker 15 He said, well, tell me now.

Speaker 15 What happened there?

Speaker 9 I told him what had happened. That I found Mike dead and he dumped his body in the pond.

Speaker 16 The story Wendy tells her brother is that she came home that Saturday and found Michael dead in their living room.

Speaker 16 And in a panic, she decides to get rid of his body in a pond on the 47s ranch.

Speaker 15 Of course, he was a bit shocked, but she kept swearing that she hadn't killed Michael.

Speaker 8 But Wendy's revelation to her law enforcement brother, Marshall, is about to tear this close-knit family apart.

Speaker 9 He said, Wendy, he said, I'm a cop. You can't be telling me this.
He was like, you know, I can't believe you just told me this.

Speaker 9 Parents drove up. And me and my brother were telling them everything that happened, which was, you know, that I had found him dead and he dumped his body in the pond.

Speaker 9 My brother told me that he was gonna try to call an attorney,

Speaker 9 and instead he called the police.

Speaker 18 So as your brother had called the police, they came to take you away to questioning.

Speaker 13 What did you think? What was going through your mind?

Speaker 36 Did you feel betrayal at that moment?

Speaker 9 I didn't feel anything except impending doom.

Speaker 9 I was crying, vomiting.

Speaker 9 Everything was horrible. Everything.

Speaker 14 And then the bombshell.

Speaker 60 As they approach Wendy, investigators hear her say that she didn't kill Mike, but that someone else in her family did.

Speaker 15 Wendy was insisting that a member of her family had murdered Mike, and so she got rid of the body to save one of her family members from getting into trouble.

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Speaker 44 so let's just take a step back you wake up saturday morning you have a veterinary clinic a live husband two kids and a life

Speaker 30 almost all of that is gone

Speaker 15 wendy's revelation to her brother marshall is about to tear this close-knit family apart wendy was insisting that a member of her family had murdered Mike so she'd got rid of the body.

Speaker 6 Your two boys are in the car seats in the truck and in the flatbed is your husband who's dead.

Speaker 10 Yes.

Speaker 9 Unfortunately, yes, that's the truth.

Speaker 49 If she didn't kill that young man, why did she throw him away?

Speaker 4 I thought if somebody killed my son, maybe somebody would try and kill my grandson.

Speaker 43 Wendy, only a guilty person disposes of a body the way you did.

Speaker 18 An innocent person calls the police.

Speaker 9 You wouldn't do anything to protect your mother or your child or your wife.

Speaker 34 Is there one memory from the good times that you hold on to?

Speaker 9 The best thing that I remember about Mike was one morning I had woke up on a Sunday morning and he was laying in the crib with both the boys asleep curled up with him. He said Shane woke up.

Speaker 9 So he said I was trying to get him to go back to sleep and then Tristan woke up and came and crawled in bed with us.

Speaker 73 Sounds like a sweet dad.

Speaker 9 He was a good dad.

Speaker 41 So all in all, we're talking about a good man.

Speaker 71 Yes.

Speaker 35 A good man, but one whose body Wendy says she left at the bottom of that stock pond.

Speaker 15 A couple of detectives' cars came pulling up and they went to where the Davidson family were gathered at the cemetery.

Speaker 7 When you found your husband dead, when you say you found him dead.

Speaker 9 Right.

Speaker 5 What did you do?

Speaker 9 I had both the boys with me and I told Tristan, you know, go play in the other room. And I went over to him to see if he was alive to feel for a pulse.

Speaker 9 And of course there wasn't a pulse. He was cold to the touch.

Speaker 7 Why did you call the police?

Speaker 9 I think that that's maybe what most people would have done if they didn't think that someone in their family was involved. This is what I thought.
He's dead. I can't bring him back.
I can't save him.

Speaker 9 But if my mother is involved in this,

Speaker 9 I can save her. So I made the horrible, horrible decision that I was going to move his body and just pretend he went missing.

Speaker 15 Wendy was insisting that a member of her family had murdered Mike and so she got rid of the body to save one of her family members from getting into trouble.

Speaker 69 How do you make that leap to my mother must have done this? And then another huge leap back to going, oh, well, I have a decision to make.

Speaker 69 Because even if my mother must have done this, you probably still should be calling 911.

Speaker 35 Wendy's put in the back of the patrol car and taken from the cemetery to the police station for what's going to be a very long night.

Speaker 16 And by the time Wendy gets into the interrogation room, she's suddenly doing a lot less talking.

Speaker 9 Kind of gotta know from you

Speaker 81 why this all happened.

Speaker 47 But I'm not pocket right now.

Speaker 14 And that's just about all the police get from Wendy that night. Now, Wendy's brother Marshall is also interviewed by police that night about his sister's shocking revelations.

Speaker 61 What happened this evening?

Speaker 78 We gotta let him out there.

Speaker 82 Well, I don't know if I should tell you either. But I mean basically, well, she did something, but she didn't kill him, hurting, anything like that.

Speaker 2 But she knows where he's at.

Speaker 75 She's like, no, I didn't do anything, this and that.

Speaker 14 Now, in the interview room is Wendy's mother, Judy, who, given the circumstances, seemingly has no problem with the fact that her son called the police on his sister.

Speaker 9 She's pretty upset with him.

Speaker 67 Well, and I know she is, but he did the right thing.

Speaker 77 He did the right thing, and I know he's going to catch flat

Speaker 67 for her, but

Speaker 74 he. He did the right thing.

Speaker 77 Did Wendy call you, y'all, at the house, or did she call your son, Marshall?

Speaker 74 She called the house.

Speaker 47 And I answered the phone.

Speaker 77 And she said

Speaker 75 to everybody to come to the cemetery.

Speaker 53 What did she say?

Speaker 76 Was there blood?

Speaker 77 Did she say she just found him dead?

Speaker 9 She just found him dead.

Speaker 74 She said, I didn't do it.

Speaker 74 But I moved it.

Speaker 77 She thought

Speaker 75 I had done something

Speaker 68 on one of us.

Speaker 77 Did you have anything to do with

Speaker 77 what happened to Mom?

Speaker 74 I thought he had run away. No.

Speaker 77 Okay.

Speaker 77 I understand that's a hard question.

Speaker 68 No, it's not.

Speaker 71 I know you have to ask it, and he knows that I hated it, but I'm never, ever.

Speaker 68 I could eat an open

Speaker 79 thought that would I can.

Speaker 16 And now, Wendy's father, Lloyd, confronted with his daughter's unthinkable accusations.

Speaker 76 What did she say she found at the point?

Speaker 78 She said she walked in and said he was laying in the floor and his butts were sharp.

Speaker 78 And she went over and looked at him and said he was dead. And I said, well,

Speaker 78 I said, well, how did he die or whatever? She said, well, I don't know. I said, it didn't.
Seem like anybody had shot him or anything. She said he was just laying there dead.

Speaker 76 What did she do?

Speaker 77 What did she say she did? Did them?

Speaker 78 She just said she, that's why she was so scared. She said she just knew that since we had keys and stuff, that just knew one of us had done it.

Speaker 75 Were you kind of surprised that she thought Jolly killed him?

Speaker 82 Well,

Speaker 78 yes, I was

Speaker 78 kind of, but

Speaker 78 not totally shocked because she

Speaker 78 knew that Judy hated hated him.

Speaker 75 I've never heard Judy

Speaker 78 threaten to kill him.

Speaker 39 And what about Lloyd and Judy urging Wendy to go to that lawyer to file for divorce?

Speaker 75 Was it John's idea or was it Wendy's idea to file for divorce?

Speaker 78 That was ours and especially Judy's because we said, you know, said if he's starting to pull that kind of stuff,

Speaker 78 it's going to do nothing but get worse.

Speaker 78 I mean, if he's already getting drunk all the time, He's already running off with the baby and stuff.

Speaker 75 So you don't need that.

Speaker 78 So we need to get away from him.

Speaker 59 So at this point, all Wendy is being charged with is tampering with evidence, and she's going to be held at the county jail.

Speaker 14 With no reason to believe that Wendy's family is in any way involved in the disposing of Michael's body, they do not press charges against Lloyd, Marshall, or Judy.

Speaker 44 But a gruesome discovery is about to be made at that pond, and it turns out that dead men do tell tales.

Speaker 17 How do you go to a pond

Speaker 26 and stab that body 41 times?

Speaker 69 How do you do that?

Speaker 51 I was coming home from hanging out with some friends, pulled in the driveway, and the car with government plates was in our driveway at 9, 10, 11 o'clock at night.

Speaker 51 That's not a good sign.

Speaker 43 Walked down over the driveway,

Speaker 51 and dad said he's gone.

Speaker 51 When I lost my mom, I was still a little young to fully grasp the effects.

Speaker 51 So when I lost Mike, I lost a big part of myself.

Speaker 13 So what do we have here?

Speaker 4 This is Michael in front of his aircraft, C-130.

Speaker 4 It's hard to convey to people what kind of a person your son is because everybody has a great son. He said to me one day, Dad, I want to be a truck driver.

Speaker 19 I'm going to haul logs.

Speaker 4 And I sat him down and I said, Michael, you only know Lee Main.

Speaker 4 You need to go out and see the world and then decide if you want to come home and be a truck driver and haul logs in Lee Maine.

Speaker 4 I said, I suggest the military. But if I hadn't said that, if I'd have said, go ahead and be a truck driver, Mike,

Speaker 4 he might be coming through the door right now.

Speaker 9 I'm sorry.

Speaker 51 It's not your fault, Miss.

Speaker 51 I know.

Speaker 4 But you can't always control your emotions.

Speaker 29 And now the true horror of what had happened to Michael Severance is about to unfold.

Speaker 31 The investigative team makes its way to the 47s ranch.

Speaker 48 To get to this ranch, you travel seven miles north of the city limits on U.S.

Speaker 64 Highway 87. You'll turn on one of the side-paved roads and follow it.
for about three miles.

Speaker 20 There were approximately 10 investigators along with the Texas Department of Public Safety dive team.

Speaker 52 It's not a great big pond.

Speaker 10 And I know it was cold and there's a little breeze that would come off that water and make it cold.

Speaker 20 It was kind of an uneasy anticipation about what would be found.

Speaker 64 We're all on the shoreline kind of watching where the divers are. These are guys are like search divers.
I mean they have the boots and the big bell head and they run air down to them.

Speaker 64 And all of a sudden they said something and the guy, the diver that had the radio that was talking with him, and he looks up, says, they got him, they found him.

Speaker 2 He was wearing underwear and he had lots of different implements tied to his body.

Speaker 64 They knew something was holding him down because he just wasn't buoyant.

Speaker 64 and then guided him to the shoreline where other ones were able to get him out of the water and that's when we got him in in the body bag.

Speaker 20 Because of the cold temperatures in the water, the body had been preserved.

Speaker 49 In all the 36 years I've been doing this I've never had a human remains in water with apparatuses tied around his person to hold him in the water.

Speaker 30 How did you move the inert weight of a 160-pound man?

Speaker 9 Well, there was a box sitting over in the corner and in my mind I thought I was just going to roll the body in the box and I was going to pick the box up and put it in the back of the truck.

Speaker 7 A cardboard box?

Speaker 9 Yes, that's what I thought in my crazy mind. Look, I can't make this stuff up.
This is real. Okay.

Speaker 47 This is so crazy.

Speaker 9 Like, you can't make this stuff up. Like, these hoons couldn't make this up.

Speaker 9 What I did was absolutely horrible, but it's the absolute truth.

Speaker 9 I rolled the body in this big cardboard box and of course, no, I couldn't lift it into the back of the truck like my crazy mind thought.

Speaker 9 So I devised a ramp out of a couple of boards, put them on the tailgate.

Speaker 44 Where are your kids while you're devising the ramp and loading cinder blocks on your dead husband?

Speaker 9 Shane was only four months old, so I'm almost positive that he was asleep through that whole thing. I do remember they were both asleep when I got in the truck because I put them in the car seats.

Speaker 6 So your two boys are in the car seats in the truck, and in the flatbed is your husband who's dead.

Speaker 9 Yes, unfortunately, yes, that's the truth.

Speaker 16 Wendy says she drove her husband's body to the stock pond on the 47s ranch.

Speaker 9 I had these cinder blocks in the fishing line and a knife to cut the fishing line. I put the cinder blocks on these handles in this big cardboard box and pushed it down the hill.

Speaker 9 As soon as the cardboard box hit the water, it disintegrated.

Speaker 9 So now I have to devise something different.

Speaker 44 So Mike's body is now floating in the pond?

Speaker 9 It's sitting in about a foot of water.

Speaker 9 So

Speaker 9 I had to take these weights and I'm trying to tie them on to this body. And of course, it's the middle of the night, you know, can't hardly see.

Speaker 31 And there's one other grisly detail. The police now discover.

Speaker 30 Michael's body is covered in puncture wounds, 41 of them, suggesting he had been stabbed to death.

Speaker 16 His body is taken to the medical examiner's office to determine the cause of death.

Speaker 23 The main thing I think we came out of this was there were a number of stab wounds. They were in some sort of like cluster.
But I don't believe a single wound would be considered lethal or would

Speaker 23 generate a death to the individual. I think the conclusion was these were post-mortem stab wounds.

Speaker 16 If the stab wounds didn't cause Michael's death, why were they there?

Speaker 9 I knew air made bodies float, so I decided to make holes in the body, vent holes, like so the air could escape.

Speaker 6 So you were actually stabbing your dead husband's abdomen to make these holes so that gases could escape.

Speaker 10 Yes.

Speaker 15 She really thought that nobody would find the body at the bottom of that pond.

Speaker 15 She took a gamble, sure, but taking gambles never seemed to bother Wendy.

Speaker 39 So if it wasn't drowning or the stab wounds, investigators now have to wait for the toxicology report to reveal the cause of death.

Speaker 51 They have found animal tranquilizers in the system.

Speaker 39 And how will a chihuahua named Weezy finally break the case wide open?

Speaker 38 With her husband's body now retrieved from its icy tomb, Wendy Mae Davidson is taken into custody and remains there for the next 34 days.

Speaker 14 It calls Wendy Mae to her brother Marshall and her mother Judy.

Speaker 36 It seems jail is a shock to her system.

Speaker 36 How are you doing? I'm hoping about it.

Speaker 84 I'll be much quieter when I get out of this little cell

Speaker 84 when it's about to found me safe

Speaker 84 because there's no TV.

Speaker 84 You know, I'm stuck here. There's only girl with a without knowing she was actually girl.

Speaker 84 So I didn't talk to her about the case at all.

Speaker 17 And then Judy gives Wendy some savvy advice.

Speaker 84 I know, I didn't say nothing.

Speaker 16 Then, with her brother Marshall, it's sounding like Wendy is starting to worry about Michael's toxicology report, which her lawyer told her is about to be released.

Speaker 74 They sent Sambo to somebody who wanted to see on toxicology.

Speaker 84 Now, he said he doesn't know about if there's anything in the system or not. I mean, if there is, they still can't prove that it was me or you or anybody else.

Speaker 38 On April 8th, Wendy gets out on bond and goes back to work at her animal clinic.

Speaker 60 And then the toxicology report on Michael comes back.

Speaker 30 It reveals exactly what was in his system.

Speaker 23 We are very confident that the cause of death was due to the combined toxicity of three drugs. Phenytoon, pentobarbital, and phenobarbital.
That was why the person died. It was not the stab wounds.

Speaker 23 It was not a drowning. It was not because they were weighted down.
There was no lethal blunt force trauma. This is the cause of death.
It's the taking of these drugs.

Speaker 39 Now that toxic cocktail of three drugs is a showstopper for investigators. Why?

Speaker 61 Because of what those drugs are used for.

Speaker 2 The first thing the medical examiner found when he got the body was that he had been poisoned with medications that veterinarians use usually to tranquilize or euthanize animals.

Speaker 51 When we find out that he had been euthanized, it's kind of sign seal delivered, right? She's a veterinarian, and they had found animal tranquilizers in his system. Kind of writes itself from there.

Speaker 39 Armed with this new information, the task force conducts yet another search of Wendy's vet clinic.

Speaker 20 We had to go back and conduct another search to go ahead and seize those drugs that were consistent with what was found in Michael's body.

Speaker 66 Now, keep in mind, Wendy's been out of jail for a couple of days now.

Speaker 8 She's back at work at her animal clinic when police arrived to conduct that search.

Speaker 20 Phenobaritol is a controlled substance. Its dispensing must be documented in controlled substance logs.
We seize controlled substance logs from the clinic.

Speaker 15 They find crumpled-up records in the trash can.

Speaker 16 The records belonged to a dog named Weezy. He'd apparently been prescribed a large dose of phenobarbital for his seizures.

Speaker 15 Little Weezy, the Chihuahua, did not receive the kind of medication that was now on his record.

Speaker 20 Such a large dose of phenobarbital would not be used to treat such a small animal.

Speaker 17 But it turns out a large amount of that same drug, phenobarbital, it's what Michael has in his system.

Speaker 20 It was clear that somebody did not want that record to be found because it was clear once we found it that we would identify that the records had been doctored.

Speaker 26 Now, Weezy is just fine, but is that crumpled record in the trash just a clumsy attempt to cover up that missing phenobarbital?

Speaker 4 Those were her drug logs. Those were her drug books.
They weren't somebody else's. She's responsible for the drugs.
She's responsible for the logs. She's responsible for trying to change the logs.

Speaker 39 I believe that there were false documents written by you purporting to show that a Chihuahua named Weezy was the one who received the drugs that actually killed your husband.

Speaker 9 No, that's not true.

Speaker 6 But you did falsify veterinary documents about the use of medication for your animals.

Speaker 9 That's not true, though. The only thing that.

Speaker 6 They do not falsify documents.

Speaker 9 No.

Speaker 9 No, there was nothing falsified.

Speaker 39 And here's where things really go sideways.

Speaker 44 All along, Wendy has been claiming she thought Michael was murdered.

Speaker 24 But now, in the same interview, she's about to completely change her story.

Speaker 53 Somebody planned to kill him.

Speaker 59 Somebody had access to the drugs at the clinic.

Speaker 14 And only one person here is a vet.

Speaker 26 And that was you.

Speaker 9 But nobody takes into account that he had access to this. He's not the only one.
Everybody at that clinic had access to this. But he certainly had access to this.

Speaker 31 So why did you say that at the time?

Speaker 18 And you also basically, you know, accused your mother.

Speaker 41 And only now do you realize that it might have been a fatal overdose?

Speaker 9 I didn't know drugs were involved until I read it in the newspaper. That's how I found out the cause of death.
My aunt called

Speaker 9 whenever that was, two, three months after he was dead.

Speaker 20 It appears that Wendy Davidson has changed her story from believing that one of her family members killed Mike, and that's why she disposed of the body, to now that possibly Michael either accidentally or intentionally took his own life.

Speaker 31 So could Michael have taken the drugs himself?

Speaker 31 The medical examiner on this case says that even if Michael used drugs, as Wendy alleges, they're not the typical kind of drugs that a user would go looking for.

Speaker 23 If we're talking about drugs to go to sleep,

Speaker 23 you know, generally we're not looking at pentobarbital or phenobarbital or phenytuan. This isn't generally what you take to decide to take a nap or go to sleep.
Is that a possibility?

Speaker 23 Somebody could say that, but it didn't make sense.

Speaker 31 Remember, Wendy says she allegedly saw Michael abusing alcohol and possibly drugs.

Speaker 39 She recalled caffeine pills and maybe ephedra.

Speaker 69 What she wants us to believe is that Mike somehow made this huge leap from taking oral medications to injectable medications.

Speaker 4 At this stage of the game, we all know that Wendy's a pathological liar. She has told so many different stories that you cannot believe anything that Wendy says.

Speaker 16 The toxicology report and the missing euthanizing drugs are enough for the grand jury to indict Wendy for the murder of her husband.

Speaker 14 Ultimately, authorities reject Wendy's claim that someone in her family was involved in Michael's murder.

Speaker 16 But soon enough, Wendy finds herself in yet another mess.

Speaker 46 And this time, it's her son who's in danger.

Speaker 15 Tristan was found on his little tricycle across two busy lanes of traffic, unsupervised, while his mother was in a bar.

Speaker 4 You never want to give up that hope,

Speaker 4 but I knew. I knew in my own mind that I wasn't going to see Michael again because I believed with all my heart that if Michael was alive, he would have contacted me.

Speaker 65 It's too much loss for one man. You're not supposed to lose a child ever.

Speaker 65 Parents are supposed to die before their children.

Speaker 57 On the one hand, at least there's closure. You know Michael's been found.

Speaker 51 On the other hand, you now know that he's not alive.

Speaker 4 I can't imagine what these parents go through that don't find their children. It's got to be the worst horror in the whole world, not knowing what happened to your child.

Speaker 4 I kind of count my blessings that we did find Michael.

Speaker 50 Michael is buried in Maine with full military honors.

Speaker 34 But a few months after Mike's funeral, his father Les gets a letter from Wendy, who's out on bond.

Speaker 2 I was at Les's house and he literally got a letter from Wendy. She basically said, you know, when this is over, I hope we can become a cheerful family again and everybody can get along and

Speaker 2 we'll have a good future.

Speaker 51 I hope to come to Maine and spend time with you guys and, you know, either become or stay a part of the family. And, you know, why?

Speaker 71 Like,

Speaker 69 this is the role-playing that she's chosen to do. She has to ingratiate herself with Mike's family, with her family, playing the role of, you know, the victim here.

Speaker 69 Essentially, what she's saying is, Mike's left. I wanted this relationship to work.
I loved my husband.

Speaker 26 It's Wendy doing Wendy.

Speaker 4 This is what she does.

Speaker 16 It's a hot summer night and Wendy leaves her older son Tristan, she thinks, asleep in bed while she goes out to a local bar called Graham Central Station.

Speaker 15 Tristan was found on his little tricycle, having traveled across two busy lanes of traffic over to a shopping center, unsupervised.

Speaker 4 A waitress came out, got him, and called the police. The police recognized him, knew he was from across the street.
They took him back to the clinic.

Speaker 4 Wendy pulled up about the same time, went to the police officer, said, oh, I just ran down to the pharmacy to get Tristan some medicine.

Speaker 81 The policeman said, you can stop that because we know that you were at Grand Central Station. And she broke down and she was so sorry.

Speaker 79 Wendy gets arrested again, this time for child endangerment.

Speaker 51 If my opinion could get any lower,

Speaker 71 that's where it bottomed out.

Speaker 58 Because not only are you a horrible wife, you're a horrible mother.

Speaker 29 In the end, the San Angelo Police Department decides not to charge Wendy with child endangerment.

Speaker 16 Now as prosecutors begin to plan for trial, there is one thing that's been eluding them, and that's motive. Why would Wendy have wanted Michael dead?

Speaker 28 Based on what Wendy says, she has no motive to kill her husband, Mike.

Speaker 28 So we have to conjecture, would it relieve the stress in her household?

Speaker 22 Or is it a motive as old as time itself?

Speaker 80 Is Michael worth more to Wendy dead than alive?

Speaker 4 Congress added $100,000 to the SGLI, the military life insurance. It's a quarter of a million dollars if your husband dies while he's in the military.
She made sure that she was a beneficiary.

Speaker 4 So Michael called me before this ever happened. Dad, I got married.
I have to change my beneficiary. I said, sure, I understand that.
You've got to provide for your family. Something should happen.

Speaker 30 The trial date is set.

Speaker 59 The prosecution has, it thinks, a cut-and-dried case.

Speaker 31 That is until Wendy's defense team pulls an an ace out of its sleeve. Is it possible that a key piece of evidence could be thrown out?

Speaker 83 Coming to Disney Plus in Hulu. Cassidy, get us home.
Jonas, brother, you got it. It'll be the best Jonas Christmas ever.

Speaker 2 Can't wait to see you guys. We love you.

Speaker 80 If they can only make it home.

Speaker 51 What's going on? Our tour plane burned?

Speaker 34 No. We cannot miss Christmas.

Speaker 10 Nothing can stop us from getting home now.

Speaker 68 Homeland.

Speaker 26 We alone this trip! You lost all three of your passports?

Speaker 4 It's Christmas. Anything can happen, right?

Speaker 83 A very Jonas Christmas movie now streaming on Disney Plus and Hulu with a TBPGDL.

Speaker 85 It started with a phone call in the early hours of the morning.

Speaker 40 911, what is the address to your emergency?

Speaker 85 A terrified woman tells the operator she's been kidnapped, assaulted, and that she's trapped in a room with her attacker.

Speaker 85 He's fallen asleep, So she quietly and ever so carefully finds his phone and calls for help.

Speaker 52 Is there any way you can get out of the building? I don't know without waking him. I'm scared.

Speaker 85 This 911 call began an investigation that would turn the town of Ashland into a crime scene.

Speaker 2 We've got something big going on here.

Speaker 38 The first thing to hit my mind is a monster.

Speaker 85 A new series from ABC Audio and 2020, The Hand in the Window. Out now, wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 7 Wendy, did you murder your husband?

Speaker 6 I didn't.

Speaker 34 If not you, then who?

Speaker 9 The first thing that I would do if I was an investigator, if I found a body body in a pond of course you're gonna think foul play and you're gonna think the spouse that's always what they think that's the first thing

Speaker 31 because most often it is the spouse sure

Speaker 71 sure

Speaker 28 she's just kind of like it's horrible it's unbelievable I know believe me don't believe me I wanted you to hear my side of the story and that's a really hard thing to do convincingly if you're lying Her point of view is it reliable or unreliable?

Speaker 28 Is she lying or is she manipulating us? We have to go with the facts of the case.

Speaker 16 Michael's family is feeling confident as the trial is about to begin.

Speaker 51 Leading up to the trial, from what we had been informed, we were pretty certain

Speaker 51 she was going away for a long, long time.

Speaker 16 But Wendy's defense quickly play their ace. They file a motion to suppress the evidence gained gained from the tracking device on her car, claiming it was illegally obtained.

Speaker 2 Wendy Davidson's attorneys tried to argue that the evidence obtained from the GPS was improperly collected.

Speaker 16 Generally, police officers need, by law, to get a court order to allow them to attach a tracker to a person's vehicle.

Speaker 59 Now, Wendy is banking her whole future on this one legal technicality, and her lawyers are confident.

Speaker 28 Don't worry, we're going to get this whole thing tossed because they didn't have a warrant.

Speaker 16 Without the evidence from the tracker, the prosecution would be struggling to make a case. Wendy would get off on a technicality.

Speaker 27 Based on the fact that OSI followed the rule of law at the time that we gained the permissions and approval to utilize the tracking devices, I was not concerned with the outcome.

Speaker 50 So it isn't the San Angelo police who put the tracker on the car, it's OSI, and they operate under different rules and regulations.

Speaker 27 We were looking for a deserter and that was our reason why we utilized the tracking devices to see if that would bring forth a discovery of microsides.

Speaker 16 And the judge rules in favor of the prosecution. The tracker was legal and therefore the evidence gained via the tracker is admissible.

Speaker 2 If they had succeeded, they probably would have taken the guts right out of the case against Wendy because it was her movement in and around the stock pond and the ranch that led police to the discovery of Michael's body in the first place.

Speaker 38 Wendy's defense has taken a huge hit.

Speaker 31 What happens next absolutely stuns the Severance family.

Speaker 51 Last minute, we're sitting in a room. waiting for the trial to start.
And the DA comes in and has a conversation with Dad. And they usher us into the courtroom and Wendy pled no contest.

Speaker 69 So when Wendy's defense team loses this legal argument about the GPS trackers, it's really harmful to their case.

Speaker 69 At this point, Her lawyers, based on the evidence that the prosecution has, recommends that Wendy take that plea.

Speaker 69 Basically saying, I'm not saying I committed this homicide. What I'm agreeing to is that if we were to go to trial, that the prosecution has enough evidence that I would likely be convicted.

Speaker 51 The easiest way to explain that, from my understanding, is admitting guilt without admitting guilt.

Speaker 16 The judge rules there is enough evidence to support the no-contest plea. He finds Wendy guilty of murder.
Her sentence, 25 years.

Speaker 28 The truth is, once she took that plea, no contest, she was saying, in essence, she was guilty.

Speaker 22 Those who were in the courtroom say they saw Wendy collapse onto the floor, sobbing.

Speaker 59 Her mom, Judy, is in tears.

Speaker 18 What was your reaction to the judge pronouncing you guilty?

Speaker 9 I think I was just in shock and I was horrified. I mean, by everything.

Speaker 71 I mean, I never went to trial.

Speaker 9 I never got to give my side of the story.

Speaker 29 That plea deal leaves the Severance family feeling deeply unsatisfied.

Speaker 4 She should have got life.

Speaker 4 The death penalty would have been fine with me. I don't understand it.

Speaker 4 Here's somebody out fighting for your country. What more can you ask for of a person than to go fight for your country?

Speaker 51 I don't think forgiveness is in my heart.

Speaker 8 Wendy is taken to Tom Greene County Jail where she lobs another grenade.

Speaker 69 So she writes a letter to the judge and basically tells the judge, you can't send me to prison because I'm pregnant.

Speaker 16 Two months after Wendy Davidson is sentenced to 25 years for murdering her husband, she's in her jail cell and picks up her pen. She's writing a last-ditch effort letter to her trial judge,

Speaker 16 pleading that he not send her to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the TDC, and then another Wendy Davidson stunner.

Speaker 8 In the letter Wendy writes to the judge, she says she's pregnant.

Speaker 69 Even if that were true, it would be so easy to verify whether she was pregnant or not.

Speaker 59 And Wendy now says that although she thought she was pregnant at the time, she was mistaken.

Speaker 15 It wasn't true, and it didn't stop anything. She is a person

Speaker 15 who runs from responsibility.

Speaker 72 When Wendy killed Michael, she hurt this community. She took a part of this community.
And Lee Maine's a small town. Everybody knows everybody.

Speaker 43 There's a lot of collateral damage left in the wake of all of this.

Speaker 24 And we can't lose sight of the two other lives shattered.

Speaker 73 Those two boys, Tristan, now 20, and Shane, now 17.

Speaker 16 Do you have any contact with Shane?

Speaker 23 I do.

Speaker 4 We have joint custody. The Davidsons have primary care, and I get visitation on all the holidays and spring break.
And I get him in the summer.

Speaker 72 Mike was definitely robbed of a lifetime of getting to know his fantastic son. And it's hurtful.
It's painful. Because you'd love anything.

Speaker 72 I would give nothing more than to watch Mike be able to give his boy a hug.

Speaker 52 I didn't just lose my brother.

Speaker 51 Dad didn't just lose his son. Shane didn't just lose his father.
The world, the country, lost a soldier. lost one of the most decent human beings ever.
For what?

Speaker 51 I don't know.

Speaker 2 Even among all the endless futilities of homicides, this one's one of the most, if not the most futile, that I've ever seen.

Speaker 39 The Davidsons declined an interview request for this program.

Speaker 31 Wendy says she last spoke to her parents in 2009, more than 12 and a half years ago.

Speaker 17 She says she hasn't seen her sons since they were two and five years old.

Speaker 18 Are you hoping to be able to see them again one day, too?

Speaker 18 Yes.

Speaker 9 I would hope so.

Speaker 9 Yes.

Speaker 73 At the start of our interview, Wendy told us she wanted to tell her side of the story.

Speaker 73 And now having served 15 of her 25-year sentence, she still seems disappointed that she never got her day in court.

Speaker 61 And she still refuses to confess to Michael's murder.

Speaker 40 Would you say that in all of this story, Wendy Mae Davidson is a victim?

Speaker 52 No.

Speaker 9 I think my husband was a victim. I think my children were victims.
I think Mike's family are victims.

Speaker 9 I did what I did.

Speaker 9 I think it was horrible. I think that I made a bad choice.
There were better choices to be made.

Speaker 9 But I still didn't kill him.

Speaker 9 What I did was horrible.

Speaker 9 There's no excuse. I mean, I might have had crazy reasons in my head,

Speaker 9 but there's no excuse.

Speaker 22 Whatever Wendy might say she did or didn't do, the authorities have absolutely no doubts about the facts of this case.

Speaker 20 I can speak to the fact that 100% certainty that we found no evidence that anybody else but Wendy Davidson was responsible for Michael's murder.

Speaker 39 What strikes me after leaving the Gatesville Correctional Facility

Speaker 42 and then meaning less is how raw the pain still is for less severance.

Speaker 4 Wendy was kind of happy because she didn't get life. She got 25 years.

Speaker 19 She'll be out in a little while walking the streets. Michael's not out.
He got life.

Speaker 4 He's gone.

Speaker 4 She took his life. That's forever.

Speaker 1 You've been listening to the 2020 True Crime Vault. Friday nights at 9 on ABC.
You can also find all new broadcast episodes of 2020.

Speaker 45 Thanks for listening.

Speaker 86 It's one of Britain's most notorious crimes. The killing of a wealthy family at Whitehouse Farm.
But I got a tip. that the story of this famous case might be all wrong.

Speaker 52 I know there's going to be a twist, won't they? A massive twist.

Speaker 55 At every level of the criminal justice system, there's been a cover-up in this case.

Speaker 86 I'm Heidi Blake. Blood Relatives is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker.
Find it now in the In the Dark podcast feed.