Conviction affirmed in Lee native’s death Texas court agrees with 25-year sentence

The Texas 3rd District Court of Appeals has affirmed former veterinarian Wendi Mae Davidson’s 25-year sentence for the 2005 murder of Lee, Maine, native Michael Leslie Severance, rejecting arguments that Air Force investigators violated her rights by placing a tracking device on her car.

In a decision released Friday, Justice Jan P. Patterson found no basis in attorney Fred C. Brigman’s assertion that the electronic surveillance, and crucial evidence gathered by it, was inadmissible because the agents were investigating a missing-persons case and lacked authority to investigate the homicide.

The agents were properly investigating Davidson’s claim that Severance, an Air Force staff sergeant and her husband of four months, had fled Dyess Air Force Base and their San Angelo home to avoid serving overseas, the court ruled.

“It is the attempt by state officers to do indirectly what their statutes or constitution prohibits them from doing directly, by using federal agents to circumvent these requirements, that is prohibited,” Patterson wrote in a decision dated Thursday.

“The record does not show that the trial court abused its discretion in determining that the police did not violate appellant’s reasonable expectation of privacy by monitoring the tracking device … and the evidence obtained through use of the device was properly admitted,” Patterson added. “Having overruled the appellant’s sole issue, we affirm the trial court’s order denying appellant’s motion to suppress and the judgments of conviction.”

Brigman of San Angelo said he expected to ask for a review of the case with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeal, which in Texas is the highest court of review for criminal matters.

“We are not by any means giving up. We are going to pursue it as far as we can,” Brigman said Friday.

The appeal must be filed in 30 days.

As to his client, “she is holding up just fine,” Brigman said. Davidson remains incarcerated in a women’s prison in Gatesville, Texas.

Davidson was convicted of poisoning her husband in her San Angelo veterinary clinic, which also was their home, on Jan. 15, 2005, weighing his body down with car parts and cinder blocks, and dumping it in a pond outside city limits owned by Davidson family friend Terrell Sheen.

DNA evidence from Davidson that was found in the corpse indicated she had stabbed the body 41 times to keep it under water, investigators said.

The agents, local police and Texas Rangers used the tracking device to follow Davidson to the Sheen property several times and, in conjunction with their discovery that Davidson had been doing Internet searches regarding how bodies decompose in water, found Severance’s corpse in the pond on March 6.

Her murder trial ended Oct. 18, 2006, when Davidson, 29, pleaded no contest. She took a deal to serve a total 25-year sentence on the murder charge and two concurrent 10-year sentences on two evidence-tampering charges.

For Michael Severance’s father, the court’s decision was appropriate.

“Finally, for once we get some really good news,” Leslie Severance of Lee said Friday. “I don’t know how to describe it.”

“She’s a cold-blooded murderer whether her family believes it or not. They need to accept reality. She’s going to do 25 years,” said San Angelo attorney Thomas Goff, who represented the Severance family in its failed attempt to get full custody of Shane Michael Severance, the son of Michael and Wendi.

Leslie Severance shares custody of the boy with Lloyd and Judi Davidson, Wendi’s parents.