WENDI Mae Davidson is serving a 25-year sentence for murdering her husband in 2005.
For the first time, she’s speaking about the murder and her life in prison.
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Davidson told reporters for ABC’s 20/20 that she did not kill her husband, Michael Severance, and she wants the world to know her side of the story.
She continues to maintain her innocence after pleading no contest to first-degree murder and two counts of tampering with evidence in October 2006.
“I did what I did, I think it was horrible, I think that I made a bad choice, there were better choices to be made. But I still didn’t kill him,” Davidson said in a preview of the prison interview.
Davidson reported her husband, Air Force Staff Sgt Severance, missing in January 2005.
Two months later, his body was found in a pond on a remote ranch about 20 miles outside of San Angelo, Texas, where the couple was living.
The toxicology report showed Severance had been poisoned with animal tranquilizers and then stabbed 41 times after his death.
Davidson was a veterinarian.
Initially, she told police that the last time she saw her husband was the day before he went missing, saying he was concerned about being deployed and nervous “something bad would happen.”
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At the time of his disappearance, Severance had been deployed to the Middle East five times and was preparing for his sixth tour.
The couple had just celebrated the birth of their first child together, with Davidson already having had a child from a previous marriage. She claimed the stress of family and work was getting to Severance.
Davidson said Severance’s three-hour round-trip drive to work led him to take caffeine pills, and she claimed she noticed him drinking every afternoon.
There was never any evidence to suggest he had any issues with substance abuse.
“I was busy, I was in the middle of trying to run this clinic I had just opened, taking care of two little babies,” she said to 20/20.
“At the time, I didn’t realize there was an issue but looking back you know, like hindsight’s 20/20 and everything, so looking back obviously there was a problem, that’s not normal.”
The San Angelo Police Department, the Texas Rangers, and the Air Force Office of Special Investigation (OSI) began to investigate the disappearance, though Severance was on leave at the time so OSI couldn’t create an inquiry until he was expected back at work.
When Severance did not show up, he was considered AWOL and OSI was able to take the lead in the investigation, designating him as a deserter.
In February 2005, a month after he was reported missing, there was a break in the case.
OSI was able to place a tracking device in Davidson’s car under the reasoning she may have been helping Severance hideout.
They found she had been visiting a remote ranch called Four Sevens Ranch.
OSI and the San Angelo Police Department had also searched the family’s home and Davidson’s veterinary clinic. Results showed suspicious searches including “decomposition of a body in water.”
Davidson claimed she was researching this because of the ongoing search for her husband.
After the police interview, Davidson called her brother, Marshall Davidson, who was a game warden at the time.
She reportedly told him she found Severance dead in the living room and dumped his body into a pond at Four Sevens Ranch, but swore she hadn’t killed him.
Marshall told her he was a cop and she couldn’t tell him that. He and their parents went to her home to discuss things, but Marshall called the police to tell them what she had told him.
Wendi Mae Davidson said she moved the body to the pond, stabbed it, and weighed it down with cinderblocks before putting it in the water.
“I had to take these weights, and I’m trying to tie them onto this body, and of course, it’s the middle of the night, you know, can’t hardly see,” she said.
“I knew air made bodies float, so I decided to make holes in the body, vent holes, like, so that air could escape.”
After the body was discovered, Wendi Mae Davidson was taken into custody and charged with first-degree murder and two counts of tampering with evidence.
She was bonded out of jail before a toxicology report revealed that Severance had been poisoned by animal tranquilizers that Davidson would have had access to in her clinic.
“I think my husband was a victim, I think my children were victims,” she said. “I think Mike’s family are victims.”
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