The trial of a Texas veterinarian accused of poisoning a Lee, Maine, native, then stabbing his body 41 times before dumping it in a pond will be delayed a month, court officials in San Angelo, Texas, said Tuesday.

Fred Brigman III, one of the attorneys defending murder suspect Wendi Mae Davidson, asked State District Judge Thomas Gossett for the delay Tuesday during a pretrial hearing, citing concerns about DNA tests that need to be done on evidence, court officials said. Another pretrial hearing is scheduled for May 2.

Davidson, 27, who attended the hearing with her parents, Judi and Lloyd Davidson, is accused of murdering Michael Leslie Severance, an Air Force staff sergeant who grew up in Lee, Maine, and who was stationed at Dyess Air Force Base in Texas at the time of his death in January 2005.

His father, Leslie Severance, and some of Michael Severance’s friends expressed disappointment at the delay, the trial’s second since Davidson was arrested March 5, 2005.

“It’s a two-sided coin,” Severance said Tuesday.

Trial delays mean that the questions burning in Severance’s mind since his son’s disappearance the weekend of Jan. 15 – the weekend Michael, his wife and their 11/2-year-old son, Shane Michael, were due to visit Maine – will remain unanswered until the trial begins the week of May 15. That is, if further delays do not occur.

“But if it’s got to be done, we want it to be done right,” Severance said.

Julie Fesmire, whose husband, Derrick Fesmire, served with Michael Severance at Dyess and who was among the last people to talk to the slain airman, wasn’t so patient.

“I think they [Davidson’s attorneys] have had long enough to prepare for this trial,” Fesmire, a close friend of Michael Severance’s, said Tuesday in an interview from Abilene, Texas. “They need to stop beating around the bush. Let’s get on with it.”

Reached Tuesday at his San Angelo office, Brigman declined to comment.

“Some scientific testing needs to be done,” Brigman said in a published report. “It’s just one of those things. You’ve got to turn every stone there is.”

Efforts Tuesday to reach Assistant District Attorney Allison Palmer, who will prosecute the case with her boss, District 51 District Attorney Stephen R. Lupton, for comment were unsuccessful.

Derrick Fesmire is among 65 people subpoenaed by Palmer to testify during the murder trial. Other potential witnesses include members of the Severance-Leighton family of Lee, San Angelo’s most prominent landowner, and a receptionist who worked at the San Angelo veterinary clinic where police say Severance was drugged.

A Texas grand jury indicted Davidson on May 25, 2005, on a charge of murder and two charges of evidence tampering. Police accused her of using drugs that normally euthanize animals to poison her husband and stabbing his body 41 times before dumping it in a San Angelo pond owned by a family friend, landowner Terrell Sheen, on Jan. 15, 2005.

Then, police said, she conspired to alter records to conceal the drugs’ use in the homicide.

Davidson filed for divorce a few days after reporting that her husband had deserted his family because he didn’t want to be posted overseas. Davidson also told police and friends that her husband had been partying a lot, all claims the Severance family hotly disputes.

The veterinarian was arrested after telling her brother, Marshall Davidson, that she came home late Jan. 15, found her husband’s body in their San Angelo home, which also housed the clinic, and disposed of it because she feared other family members had killed him.

The body was found the day after Wendi Davidson was arrested. She withdrew the divorce claim within a few weeks.

Davidson, who is free on bail, has pleaded innocent. One of her attorneys has said she passed a lie detector test that showed she didn’t murder Severance and doesn’t know who did.

The Severance-Leighton family will use vacation time from work to attend the murder trial, Leslie Severance said. He and his son Frank, who both have been subpoenaed to testify, work at the Lincoln Paper and Tissue LLC mill in Lincoln, Maine.