Police search home of woman married to missing Mainer

Police seized pliers, two rolls of monofilament line, a laptop computer, controlled substance logbooks, bank statements and a sink trap from the home of a Texas woman suspected of killing her Maine-born husband, according to search warrant affidavits police released Monday.

Investigators in San Angelo, Texas, also were searching for ketamine and other drugs that could have been used to incapacitate or kill Michael Leslie Severance, 24, formerly of Lee, before a body believed to be his was found tied to cinderblocks at the bottom of a Texas pond last week, the affidavits state.

The warrants identify Severance’s wife, a veterinarian named Wendi Davidson, 26, of San Angelo, as a murder suspect. She has not been charged with murder. She remained held on $500,000 bail late Monday after being charged a week before with tampering with evidence for admitting to hiding the body.

Investigators seized a blue notebook, trace evidence vacuumed from a vehicle, sections of carpet, a knife holster and two knives, an apron, a gold-colored ring and swabs of stains from the Severance-Davidson home at 4240 Sherwood Way, San Angelo.

The search warrants make clear that investigators believe the body is Severance’s, although the Lubbock County Medical Examiner’s Office has not confirmed this. Investigators hope to use dental records to identify the body soon, office Chief Investigator Robert Byers said.

“There are several different tests that we are running,” Byers said Monday. “I am hoping we’ll have something back this week.”

Severance, a staff sergeant and C-130 crew chief at Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene, Texas, has been missing since Jan. 15, the day he was due to fly home to Lee with his wife and 5-month-old son.

According to the arrest warrant affidavit detailing Davidson’s arrest, she lied to police on Jan. 16 when she filed a missing persons report claiming she last had seen Severance at about 3:30 p.m. the day before.

Davidson told her brother Marshall Davidson that she found Severance in bed deceased on Jan. 15, the affidavit states. She said she knew that members of her family hated Severance and that she believed that a family member had killed him.

Police, who had Davidson under surveillance, said she visited the pond after Severance’s disappearance and tried to research, possibly with her computer, how bodies decompose in water.

Ketamine, or ketamine hydrochloride, is a nonbarbiturate, rapid-acting anesthetic more commonly used on animals than humans, although it is used on both. It is marketed to veterinarians and medical personnel as Ketalar or Ketaset and is considered a controlled substance in California, Connecticut, New Mexico and Oklahoma, according to health.org, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ alcohol and drug information Web site.

Known on the street as K, Ket, Special K or Vitamin K, it is also a party drug that can produce numbness, loss of coordination, muscle rigidity and slurred or blocked speech, according to the Web site.

Ketamine can render the user comatose; 1 gram can kill.

Davidson opened Advanced Animal Care, a veterinary clinic in San Angelo, in October.

Death by poisoning is only one theory investigators are pursuing, said San Angelo police Lt. Curtis Milbourn, police spokesman. Determining exactly what killed the man investigators believe is Severance “will probably take even longer to do than identifying the body.”

“We are waiting for toxicology reports,” Milbourn said. “From what I understand, the body was very decomposed, and that made identification and everything else very difficult.”

Davidson’s case will go before a grand jury. In Texas, grand juries handle all felonies. No date has been set, Milbourn said.