He was a world away, but Michael Leslie Severance never forgot Maine.

For six years, several times a week, Michael, 24, telephoned his father from Texas.

The staff sergeant chatted about life in the Air Force, about his newborn son, Shane, and his veterinarian wife, Wendi Mae Davidson. Often they talked about Michael’s amateur stock car racing.

On Jan. 15, the calls stopped.

Michael was missing.

Michael and his family were due to return to Maine, but according to his wife, he had left sometime Jan. 15 with $221 in cash taken from her clinic. By Jan. 18, Wendi had filed for divorce and sought a restraining order barring Michael from contact with their 11-month-old son.

Les Severance’s nightmare had begun.

Les knew that Wendi’s parents, Judi and Lloyd Davidson of San Angelo, Texas, didn’t like his son, but the hateful things he heard from San Angelo police and saw in newspapers baffled the 47-year-old millworker – that his son, an honor student at Lee Academy, was lazy, drunk, a deserter.

More shocks followed. On March 5, Wendi Davidson allegedly told her brother Marshall that she had found Michael Severance dead at home on Jan. 15 and that she hid his body because she feared her family had killed him.

The next day, the poisoned corpse, clad in boxer shorts and riddled with 41 stab wounds, was pulled from a San Angelo pond.

Wendi Davidson was indicted for murder and for two counts of tampering with evidence.

Les realized that he knew of his son’s West Texas life only from those cheerful telephone calls. He knew he couldn’t protect his grandson, defend his son’s honor, and understand what had happened from his home in Lee. He knew he had to do something he dreaded.

He had to go to Texas.