Wife charged in poisoning of Maine man in Texas

A Texas veterinarian surrendered to authorities Wednesday on charges that she allegedly poisoned her husband, an Air Force staff sergeant and Lee native, dumped his body in a San Angelo pond and lied about it repeatedly.

Wendi Mae Davidson, 26, of San Angelo, turned herself in at about 2 p.m. after a grand jury indicted her on two charges of tampering with physical evidence and a single charge of murder, officials said. She was free Wednesday night on $50,000 bail.

Allison Palmer, a Tom Green County first assistant district attorney, said she hoped that the arrest might help the family of Michael Leslie Severance to heal, but she doubted it would.

“It’s so hard on the family to go through loss of a loved one, particularly in a homicide,” Palmer said Wednesday during a telephone interview from her office. “It’s just awful for them. This [the arrest] is another awful aspect of the loss of a loved one.”

Palmer would not say what police believe motivated the crime.

“Any circumstances that would produce a motive we would want to wait until we present at trial to introduce,” she said.

Severance family members in Maine did not immediately return telephone calls Wednesday night seeking comment.

Davidson is charged with poisoning Severance, 24, formerly of Lee, after a night of dancing on Jan. 15, dumping the body, then altering her veterinary records to cover the use of the poison, Palmer said.

Investigators found phenobarbital and large amounts of pentobarbital in Severance’s body. Those barbiturate drugs are commonly found in veterinarian’s offices and can incapacitate or kill humans.

Officials also found several stab wounds that they believe helped allow Davidson to sink the body into the pond.

Davidson reported Severance missing Jan. 16 and filed for divorce Jan. 17. When police questioned her, she initially described Severance, who was posted to nearby Dyess Air Force Base, as having fled to start another life because he was fearful of being posted in Iraq.

On March 5, she told her brother, Marshall Davidson, she had found her husband dead in bed that night and feared that someone in her family had killed him, police said. Police arrested Davidson on a single evidence tampering charge on March 6.

Police suspect Davidson acted alone, Palmer said.

“We are not seeking further indictments at this time,” she said. “We believe we have the correct person under indictment.”

The indictment seemed to catch San Angelo police by surprise. Lt. Frank Carter, commander of the San Angelo Police Criminal Investigation Division, said he knew the grand jury was meeting but didn’t know of the indictment or Davidson’s arrest until about 6 p.m. EDT Wednesday.

He acknowledged previous Severance family statements that San Angelo Police were slow to respond to family claims that Severance had fallen to foul play and would never desert at the prospect of postings overseas, having been deployed four times previously.

“At the time he was reported missing, we had nothing to go on. It could have branched off in every possible direction. We had nothing to move us in any direction,” Carter said. “Once we had a body, that’s when we put a guy on it, and we jumped on it.”

Family members still have suspicions that Davidson did not act alone. They said previously that when they called Severance’s cellular telephone in the days after his Jan. 15 disappearance, Marshall Davidson answered it several times.

San Angelo Police spokesman Lt. Curtis Milbourn would not comment on that statement.

Police are continuing their investigation.