Wendi Mae Davidson

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Sparks fly when a New England airman meets a born-in-the-saddle West Texas cowgirl.

He was innately polite, very gentlemanly.

She was raised on a ranch.

She wasn't afraid to get down and dirty.

They were a match made in honky-tonk heaven.

He liked to go out line dancing, two-step, and it was a flash romance.

But all good things are destined to end, one way or another.

I walk in and went anywhere.

He just took off.

Were the pressures of returning to war too much to bear?

He was going to be redeployed back there.

I did notice he was drinking off.

He said to me, very matter-of-factly, I think something's up.

Or had a well-traveled soldier fallen victim to a devious domestic enemy?

Her parents didn't trust him.

He was a Yankee.

The dive team members located something.

There was this feeling of slow, dawning dread.

San Angelo, Texas is an isolated frontier town where folks are friendly and family always comes first.

San Angelo is stereotypical for what the public thinks of Texas.

Very conservative, snoo-pee-laid-back town.

It's out in the middle of nowhere, basically.

A lot of the economy there is based on farming, ranching.

In January of 2005, San Angelo residents Mike Severance and his new wife Wendy just had a child together and were planning a trip more than 2,000 miles northeast to Mike's hometown of Lee, Maine.

Mike was definitely excited to be a dad.

He had spent so much time with Wendy's other son.

So shortly after their son was born, Mike and Wendy and their kids were supposed to fly to Maine to introduce Wendy and kids to Mike's family up here.

And we had a little wedding reception type thing planned for him.

Everybody was excited and happy.

We just waited for the oldest boy because he had never seen snow.

We had all kinds of things planned for him.

But on January 16th, 2005, Mike's family family receives a phone call from Texas that throws a wrench in their plans.

Wendy called Michael's family, says, Have you heard from Michael?

Wait, can't find him.

He's disappeared.

Michael's missing.

What do you mean, Michael's missing?

Well, that ain't like Michael.

What the hell's going on?

Mike wouldn't disappear.

He knew too many people down there.

He would have called somebody.

There was this feeling of slow, dawning dread over everybody at Maine.

Michael Severance was born on July 20th, 1980, in Lee, Maine, a rural northeast town less than 50 miles from the Canadian border.

He was a little bit mischievous, non-braggart, but you never knew what he was going to do.

He was at times shy and awkward as a kid growing up, but if you put him on wheels or skis he was adventurous and outgoing and all depending on the situation he was in he could fit into almost any crowd

as mike neared high school graduation he began planning for his future he told me that uh Dad, I'm going to drive truck.

Well,

that's all well and good.

Truck driving's a good career.

Then Mike said, Michael, you've never left Maine.

You need to go out and see the world before you decide what you want to do.

Dad convinced him, Mike, you can do that anytime you want.

Dad was in the Air Force, so he kind of talked to him about the military, see the world.

If you don't like that, you can always get out and do the truck driver thing.

Following his father's advice, Mike enlisted in the Air Force and quickly rose through the ranks.

He was a crew chief on a C-130.

There's a lot of pride in being a crew chief.

That is your aircraft.

They used to put your name right on the outside of that aircraft.

Mike liked the military because it was a purpose, knew it was a respectable career, and it gave him a lot of opportunities.

After multiple deployments overseas, Staff Sergeant Michael Severance received a new assignment, Dyas Air Base in Western Texas.

He was stationed in Abilene, and that's fairly close to San Angelo, San Antonio and all that area there.

The Lone Star State quickly won the Yankee over.

Michael absolutely loved Texas.

It seems like Michael really did adopt and adapt to the culture in West Texas.

And San Angelo is not an easy town for outsiders.

He likes to go out line dancing, two-stepping.

He liked to go racing, go to the races, go out to eat, just enjoy the nightlife.

Michael learned how to dance,

which totally blew me away.

Did that Texas two-step thing,

and he figured out early on: listen, if you want to get girls, we just go out and dance.

In 2003, one pretty ranch girl caught Mike's eye, Wendy Mae Davidson.

Born on July 23, 1978, Wendy grew up in a very tight-knit San Angelo family amidst the cattle ranches of West Texas.

She wasn't afraid to get down and dirty with livestock if she needed to.

She was raised on a ranch.

After high school, Wendy channeled her passion for animals into her career aspirations.

What Wendy wanted to do was become a vet her whole life.

Wendy was always involved with animals from early age.

Her family had a lot of animals, you know, the typical ranch animals, plus horses and goats and just all kinds of animals.

She went to AM, which is maybe the best veterinary school in the nation.

Though a dedicated student, Wendy wasn't afraid to cut loose every now and then.

There was another side to Wendy, which is that when she got away from the pressures of her work and school, she could raise help, she could party, and she did.

In her third year of vet school, Wendy's wild side led to an unexpected pregnancy.

The father was not welcomed by the family, and the pregnancy could have really upended her plans to be a veterinarian.

Despite the odds against her, Wendy successfully completed vet school while raising her young son alone.

San Angelo is a good area to be a veterinarian because you could work with all sizes of animals, whether it's horses or small household pets.

As she balanced her career in motherhood, Wendy still left some room in her life for a little fun.

She liked to go out and have a good time, you know, dance and have a couple beers.

And it was on a night out in 2003 that Wendy met the handsome Air Force Sergeant Mike Severance.

Mike started dancing with Wendy, spent the whole night kind of enjoying each other's company, exchanged numbers, met up again another night, same thing.

It was a flash romance.

It was, you know, boom, boom, boom, very fast.

When Wendy introduced Mike to her parents, her family's deep Texas roots incited skepticism.

There was was some tension between Wendy's family members and Michael.

Stereotypical classic clash of cultures.

He was the main, and when they first got together, it was fine.

But her parents didn't trust him.

He was a Yankee.

And I think her parents' big fear was he was in the military and they would not stay in San Angelo.

Winnie's dad was a very sweet man.

He did like maintenance around buildings.

Winnie's mom was really nice too, but she would put you in your place.

They may not have liked Michael because of the cultural difference from where he was from and us being from Texas.

This is a small town.

It's not Little Biddy, but it is a smaller town.

People tend to want their daughters and sons to marry people that are from Texas.

But the differences that made Wendy's family distrust the Northeasterner were what drew the couple together.

In the case of Wendy and Mike, opposites definitely attractive.

She was outgoing, almost fiercely outgoing.

He had an element of mystery about him.

He was quiet.

They did genuinely seem to get along with each other.

Wendy, it was motivated, she was driven.

I could see why Mike would be

attracted to her on a personality level.

She had that southern draw that draws a lot of Yankees in, so she had that going for her.

Just a few months into their relationship, much to their excitement, Wendy became pregnant once the initial shock wore off i think mike was definitely excited to be a dad he really loved kids

in september 2004 mike and wendy tied the knot in a courthouse wedding just a couple weeks after their son was born wendy um bought this veterinary clinic

and they remodeled it and put in a an apartment actually right in veteran Plane so they lived right there

as they settled into their new life Wendy and Mike made plans to introduce their new son to Mike's family 2,000 miles north

Wendy and Michael were going to Maine for her to meet his family and take the child and they had plane tickets I mean, we didn't get to see Mike very often anyway, so it would have been a joyous occasion for him to come home.

Instead of the joy of a family reunion, the Severance clan now shares mounting anxiety about the news that Michael has gone missing.

It just became a kind of nightmare.

It was like clouds filling the sky.

Coming up, a special investigation team takes on the case.

They're kind of like a mini-CIA.

They are really, really clever.

They knew what it looked like when a guy wanted out, and Mike didn't have that.

January 16, 2005, just before a long-anticipated trip to his hometown in Maine, 24-year-old Sergeant Mike Severance has reportedly disappeared from his residence in Texas.

His brand new wife, 26-year-old Wendy Davidson, is in contact with Mike's family up north.

The message that Wendy gave was: we're not coming up.

Mike is gone.

He just took off.

I said, Something ain't right here, Wendy.

You've got to call the police.

So she called the police.

San Angelo police ask Wendy to come to the station for a formal interview.

She tells them she last saw her husband the day before they were scheduled to leave for Maine.

Saturday morning, he always sleeps late in the morning.

And when I left, I was getting everything together.

He was sitting on the couch and he was wearing his walker shorts.

And I left.

She remained calm.

Wendy indicated that the last time she saw him was he was in the clinic when she left at approximately 3 p.m.

There was no indication at that time that there was anything unusual in his demeanor or what was going on with them.

Wendy says when she came home around 8 p.m., Mike was gone.

I walked in and he went anywhere.

I stayed up and I just waited and waited.

Wendy reported to the police department that he had left behind his vehicle and his cell phone, which was in the vehicle.

I mean, it made no sense.

Didn't take his bill fold, didn't take his phone, didn't take his truck, but he disappeared.

Wendy says she initially thought Mike had taken off to blow off steam.

She had two kids to take care of.

He had to commute to his job, the Air Force.

There was no telling when he was going to get sent overseas.

I think there was a lot of bills that needed to be paid.

They definitely weren't rolling in the dough

prior to all of this happening.

Wendy says, once Mike failed to return, she began to suspect there was something more serious behind his absence.

In the days leading up to their trip, he'd been hard to live with.

He started like going to the liquor stores with my bear, which he never did.

Even when I first was dating him, he never drank it home.

He went out.

At first, Wendy couldn't understand what was driving Mike Spender.

Even days he has to get up real early in the morning, go to work, and he would step and drink.

And I didn't know why he was doing that other than I knew he was a little agitated, and I thought it it was a community.

Wendy says she realized what was troubling Mike wasn't her at all.

He had been serving in the war, Afghanistan war, and he was going to be redeployed back there.

Wendy told the law enforcement that he wasn't happy with the Air Force.

She said, oh, he didn't want to be deployed.

He kept saying he didn't want to be deployed.

After speaking with Wendy, San Angelo police reach out to the Texas Rangers for additional investigative assistance.

I was contacted and met with several other investigators who were going to work on the investigation and figure out what had happened to Michael.

I obtained his cell phone records.

With those cell phone records, I identified that there were calls with another woman.

Mike's phone records spark a new theory that could explain the odd behavior Wendy had described to police.

There were lots of theories concerning his disappearance, maybe an affair.

There was a phone call to Michael's phone that they traced to a woman, but they went to talk to her and she said, no, I was just heard that through the Air Force friends that Michael was gone and I just called his phone.

I was just trying to see what was going on.

I don't believe he would.

I think he had two children that he had too much going on to be messing around.

I don't think he had time.

There was nothing that we identified that would indicate that he was having an affair or was involved with another woman at all.

With an affair quickly ruled out, investigators face two possibilities.

You gotta try and get into the mind of the person that's missing and figure out whether they went missing voluntarily.

or if there's some foul play involved.

On January 18th, investigators search Mike and Wendy's residence and surrounding property.

They were looking for anything out of the ordinary or any signs that would indicate what had happened to him.

During the initial search, there wasn't anything that stood out to them as far as evidence.

As the investigation slows, Mike's father, Leslie, reaches out to the Air Force for help.

He is put into contact with Special Agent Greg McCormick.

The Air Force Office of Special Investigations, they're kind of like a mini CIA.

They are really, really clever.

Greg McCormick talked to me.

I said, yeah, my son's missing.

Something's wrong.

Greg McCormick says to me, he says, hold on.

I'll call you back in 15 minutes.

McCormick spoke immediately to Mike's supervisors, and they told him he wouldn't have just taken off like this.

They knew what it looked like when a guy wanted out.

And Mike didn't have that.

Greg calls me back.

He said to me,

very matter-of-factly, I think something's up.

Because Mike is technically still on scheduled leave for five more days, Greg McCormick and Air Force OSI have to take a jurisdictional back seat until January 24th.

He was on leave, so because of that, the Air Force couldn't really

do much because he went AWOL.

With OSI benched for a few more days, San Angelo detectives sit down with Wendy's vet assistant, Jamie Carrasco.

They start by asking Jamie about the relationship between Wendy and Mike.

If they were as affectionate as they were and they never fought, I mean, why do you think he might have just run off?

Did you get an impression?

Well, he might have just got tired of, you know, having to deal with Wendy or her parents.

He didn't like them either at all.

Jamie says the couple had been bickering lately, and it was usually about the same thing.

Wendy's mom, Judy Davidson.

Anywhere you go, anybody that ever met Mike,

nobody hated him, except for the Davidson family.

Coming up, could family tension have anything to do with Mike's disappearance?

I don't know if it was mother-in-law syndrome or what it was.

And the investigation reaches a new level.

A whole apparatus, military apparatus worldwide, started coming into play here.

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During their investigation into Mike Severance's January 2005 disappearance, detectives in San Angelo, Texas have uncovered tension in his relationship with his mother-in-law, Judy Davidson.

I mean, did Judy go out of her way to tell you she didn't like Mike, or could you just tell?

My puts her work in there.

She's like, she looked back at me and was like, do you like Mike?

She flat out told me she didn't like him.

Judy Davidson wasn't just Mike's mother-in-law.

She also ran the business side of Wendy's vet clinic.

Wendy's mother worked as an office manager at the practice.

She was there during business hours.

I don't know if it was mother-in-law syndrome or what it was, but she just plain didn't like Michael.

According to veterinary assistant Jamie Carrasco, Every day on the job at Mike and Wendy's combination home and vet practice was tense.

Judy, from the very beginning, told me that, you know, she didn't didn't really care for him.

And it was weird to me because he seemed like perfect.

Jamie Carrasco says there was a particularly hot flare-up between Wendy, Mike, and his in-laws just a few days before Mike vanished.

Judy told me that

Mike took off with Navy and they didn't know where he was and he wouldn't answer his phone.

And then he finally answered and said that he was in Abilene.

He was going to take his son up to Abilene and show him off to his friends.

He was just an infant.

She became livid, just absolutely livid.

Don't she ever take that child without my permission, that kind of thing.

Wendy's family was very angry with Michael.

Then to find out that he just disappeared like that on her, they were mad.

When investigators summon Judy Davidson to the police department for questioning, she doesn't disguise her disapproval.

I didn't like him then.

He was very, very rude, disrespectful.

I mean, he would walk around my house, in my house, with his underwear on in front of me.

Eat my food, never say thank you, wash his clothes.

I mean, you know,

what do you expect from a person?

Judy freely admits to being furious when Mike took his infant son to Abilene without warning.

I mean, has he got a mental problem?

Does he,

well, I don't know.

But that's, you don't take a baby and just leave.

I don't care if it is or not.

You tell somebody.

Despite her distaste for Mike, Judy insists she had nothing to do with his disappearance.

I don't like him.

I want y'all.

I'm not going to lie.

I didn't like him, never did, and never will.

And I hope no harm's come to him.

But if I never see him again, that's fine too.

Detectives are taken aback by Judy's obvious disdain for Michael, but detectives have no evidence of anything more than that.

As leads dwindle, the case stalls after only a week.

Pretty quickly, the local law enforcement, I think, just threw their hands up.

They didn't know what happened.

Then, on January 24th, Mike's official leave from the Air Force expires, which means the OSI can finally take the lead.

OSI became involved because in addition to Michael Severance being a missing person, he also didn't show up for work

in the Air Force, and it made him AWOL and ultimately a deserter investigation for them.

The Air Force doesn't take it mildly when one of their people leaves.

And so a whole apparatus, military apparatus worldwide, started coming into play here.

For weeks, the OSI, along with local police, retrace every step of the previous investigation, including another search of the couple's property on February 2nd.

When they went to the clinic, they got her hard drive from her computer.

Local police also informed the OSI that early in the investigation, Wendy offered a potential explanation for her husband's absence.

Wendy told the law enforcement that he wasn't happy with their force and he didn't want to be deployed.

If Mike did desert, OSI Chief Investigator Greg McCormick suspects his wife Wendy could be secretly assisting him.

Greg would call me and talk with me.

And

one of the things that Greg said to me was, if you were were Wendy, where would you hide Michael?

So I told McCormick, I said, I would search that thousand-acre ranch where Wendy keeps her horses.

If Michael had left and she was assisting him and going AWOL, maybe he was out there at the ranch.

Investigator McCormick is eager to locate the ranch.

Since he's with OSI, McCormick has easy access to invasive investigative techniques.

They put trackers on Wendy's car and her parents' car, but they didn't know what happened.

And they just tracked where she was going.

Normally that has to be ordered by a judge, and OSI has different rules, being the Air Force, and they only had to have it okayed by a supervisor to place the tracking device.

After nearly two weeks of observation, Air Force analysts notice Wendy has paid several visits to a sprawling livestock ranch just outside of town.

The ranch that she traveled to,

investigators learned that that belonged to a friend of the family.

By itself, it wasn't unusual for her to travel there, but during her travel to that ranch, there was an incident where she stopped briefly near a pond and then left.

With the ranch owner's permission on March 3rd, police converge on the precise location where OSI's trackers repeatedly placed Wendy.

The investigators from the OSI searched outbuildings there to see if perhaps Michael was staying out there at the ranch, and they were unable to locate any sign that he had been out there.

Though investigators come up dry,

they refuse to give up.

Later that day, they receive results from the search conducted on the computer confiscated from Wendy's vet clinic a month ago.

The investigators with OSI conducted a search of Wendy's computer.

It took some time to get that information back once that search was completed.

They found that Wendy had looked into how bodies decompose in water.

Coming up,

family ties begin to crumble.

I can't even trust my brother.

Why would I trust him?

And the search for answers takes police underwater.

It was held together underwater with wire running to things like tire rims, concrete blocks.

Nearly two months after the disappearance of Mike Severance, his whereabouts remain a mystery.

But after discovering alarming activity on his wife Wendy's computer, investigators feel a little closer to cracking the case.

They discovered on the hard drive on the computer, after he turned up missing, that she had researched bodies decomposing in water.

And, okay, that's a clue.

On March 5th, Ranger Palmer meets Wendy at her vet clinic and demands answers.

He went back out and said, Wendy, why were you researching on the internet bodies decomposing in water?

She basically laughed and indicated that she expected to be asked because she had searched it when

investigators are searching an area behind the clinic.

where there's a very small creek.

And so her explanation was that if Michael was in that creek and that little bit of water that was there, what would have happened to his body?

Investigators have a very different idea about Wendy's suspicious online research based on the precise coordinates from the OSI tracker placed on her car.

When we learned of the location where Wendy stopped at,

and that location being right next to a pond, and that coupled with the internet search in reference to the decomposition of a body in water brought on great suspicion.

But Ranger Palmer's conversation with Wendy is cut short.

While I was interviewing Wendy at the clinic, she received a telephone call from somebody that had an emergency case with a cat that had been injured.

And so she indicated that she would need to take care of that.

Just before leaving, investigators issue a warning.

They specifically told her, don't go near the ranch.

We're going out to search the ranch.

Shortly after I departed the clinic, I received a telephone call from an investigator that told me that Wendy Davidson had arrived at the gate and had attempted to enter the ranch.

When she was prevented from entering the ranch, she departed that area.

Her reaction of quickly traveling out to that area was the first indication of any kind of sense of panic or distress on her part during this whole investigation.

At 6.45 that same evening, a call comes in at the San Angelo Police Department.

The police department received a telephone call from Wendy's brother.

Wendy's brother indicated that the investigator needed to come out to the Grape Creek Cemetery.

According to Wendy's brother, Wendy had gone to the cemetery after police caught her at the ranch.

Wendy leaves the ranch and

she

called her brother and said, You know, you need to get the family and you need to come to the cemetery.

She met there with her brother and Lloyd and Judy, her parents, and essentially confessed to

dumping the body.

Police race to the cemetery.

When investigators arrived at the cemetery, Wendy's brother made some statements to them that they needed to search the pond.

During the exchange between the investigators and Wendy and her family members, some comments were made to the effect that Wendy didn't kill Michael.

She found him and moved his body to the pond.

The information is incriminating enough for police to take Wendy into custody.

Investigators later on that evening attempted to interview Wendy Davidson.

She refused to be interviewed and requested an attorney.

You told us earlier you didn't want to say anything.

Was that...

I don't want to say anything.

Someone you want to speak to first or what?

Oh no.

See, my brother was supposed to be calling a lawyer, but I can't even trust my own brother.

Why would I trust him?

One of the things that I mentioned was that

we

kind of got to know from you,

you know, why this all happened.

But I'm not talking right now.

I guess you've forgotten that part of the conversation.

I'm not right now.

Following that, the evidence that we had up to this point was put forth in an affidavit for an arrest warrant for her for tampering with evidence.

The next morning, investigators returned to the ranch to search for Mike's body in the stock pond.

The dive team from the Texas Department of Public Safety arrived and initiated their dive search of the pond itself, which is a slow, methodical process.

So it was unclear at that time how long it would take to complete that.

After three and a half hours of searching, police on shore receive a signal from the lead diver.

The dive team members had located something.

The water is cloudy, muddy, murky.

And so once they were able to get closer, and they were able to identify that it was in fact a body that was located in the pond.

It was held together and held underwater.

with wire running to things like tire rims, concrete blocks.

Once the items were removed from the body and the body was buoyant enough to come to the surface, we could see that it was a male, a white male.

Though investigators will not be able to confirm the body's identity until autopsy, they have little doubt they've just found Mike Severance.

The body was clothed in a pair of boxers, which was significant because Wendy had described the last thing that she'd seen Michael wearing when she left the clinic was a pair of boxers.

Once out of the pond, investigators get a closer look at the body, which had been preserved by the cold water.

It had been nearly two months since Michael had been reported missing, but the body was in pristine condition.

He had, I think it was like 44 stab wounds to his body.

It was unclear at that time whether those were something that caused his death or if those were something that was done post-mortem.

The following afternoon, the Lubbock County Medical Examiner confirms through fingerprints that the John Doe is Michael Severance.

The ME also determines the dozens of stab wounds on Mike's body were inflicted after he died with a specific purpose in mind.

It was done post-mortem to kind of help keep his body

from floating in water.

When we heard that it was post-mortem, the initial emotion is shock.

A toxicology analysis reveals Mike's actual cause of death.

Michael was murdered with a combination of poisons that paralyzed him and stopped his heart.

Phenobarbital, pentobarbital, and phenytoin.

These are all horse tranquilizers.

It really didn't take us very long to put two and two together that Mike's wife is a veterinarian.

Coming up, investigators work to pin down a killer.

This was just a case of an explosion of pressures.

And an accused killer speaks out.

The biggest thing that people always ask,

you know, why did you kill your husband?

A month after the body of Sergeant Michael Severance was recovered from a stock pond in Texas, A toxicology panel has revealed the presence of animal tranquilizers in his system.

Part of that evidence that was collected included the controlled substance logs that were kept for the clinic and in reference to the veterinary care that was given to animals.

If we use anything, we have to write it in our log.

Detectives did bring me the logs and I had to go through and initial all of my entries in there for them and there was one or two of those that were Wendy's in there.

Upon their review of the logs, investigators noticed something off about Wendy's entries.

We identified this animal by the name of Weezy, this dog.

It had received rather large dose of the phenobarbital.

Weezy was a very small dog.

The amount of drugs that she said that she used on Weezy, it didn't add up.

When the owner of the animal was interviewed, she advised that she had taken the dog to be treated for seizures and that the dog had been prescribed valium and had not been prescribed any form of phenobarbital.

The discovery gives investigators a direct link between Wendy and the murder weapon.

The investigators believe that she put a sedative into his ear.

Say here, have a beer, Mike.

Rendered him unconscious.

She euthanized him

very deliberately.

He was actually drugged and then stabbed several times

and then weighted down with car parts and dunked in a stockpond.

As prosecutors move closer to an indictment, the question of why remains.

It was never really clear to us what caused Wendy Davidson to murder Michael Severance.

I was never able to establish a motive for the murder.

I could establish a lot of facts about going to Maine and the hatred of the mother.

I took her mother's deposition.

She made no bones about she hated Michael.

I think there's a little bit of gaining her mother's approval.

Her mother hated Mike so much.

And I think there's more

to the story that we don't know.

After weighing the evidence, a grand jury upgrades the charge from Wendy's initial arrest.

They returned indictments for Wendy Davidson for two charges of tampering with evidence and for the charge of murder.

In the year leading up to Wendy's murder trial, both sides prepare for a drawn-out court battle.

But in October 2006, Wendy's defense blinks at the 11th hour.

She had decided to plead no contest.

And I remember the judge saying to her, Wendy Mae Davidson, do you understand by pleading no contest,

you will be

considered a convicted murderer?

And Wendy says, yes, yes, I understand.

She was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the murder of Michael Severance.

After nearly a decade and a half in prison, Wendy Davidson maintains she did not kill Mike.

The biggest thing that people always ask, or they just assume, I guess, and of course they'll assume with this show too,

you know, why did you kill your husband?

That's what people will say.

Maybe people need to think outside the box and think,

well, was he murdered?

Was he really murdered?

There's always a motive when it comes to murder.

And

the police, the authorities, they went through all that.

We were only married four months.

We were happy.

There were no problems.

And

if he was,

could have somebody else murdered him

instead of just always thinking,

why did you murder him?

Wendy says she has felt the repercussions of Mike's death.

I've lost everything.

You know, obviously I lost him.

You know, I've lost my family.

I've lost my kids.

I've lost my freedom, you know, my career.

So, you know, I was the girl that had everything and lost it all.

I have a 25-year sentence, so I've done 13 years of that so far.

My whole life is in somebody else's hands, you know, and I don't know who all's hands my life is in.

I just know that I have no control over it at this point in time.

So I guess my only goal is to get out of prison.

And, you know, from there, I guess we'll see what happens.

Mike's going to be remembered as a fun-loving, laid-bag type of guy.

I don't think we got to see the best of him.

I think we really would have got to see the best of Mike as a father, as a role model for

his son.

He's our hero.

He's Staff Sergeant Michael Severance.

He survived Afghanistan.

But the same evil got him at home in his own bed.

Wendy Davidson became eligible for parole on April 15th, 2019 at the age of 40.

A parole board denied her first request for release in May 2019.

There is no evidence connecting either of Wendy's parents to the crime.

For more information on Snapped, go to oxygen.com.

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