Disclaimer: This article contains mentions of murder. Reader discretion is advised.
In 2006, Wendi Mae Davidson, the wife of Air Force Staff Sergeant Michael Severance, pleaded no contest to charges stemming from his murder. Davidson then received a 25-year prison sentence. Now, ABC 20/20’s Bad Romance will look into Severance’s murder and the case. The episode “Dark Waters” will air on Monday, March 4, 2024, at 10 p.m. ET.
The official synopsis for the upcoming episode reads, “When a military hero’s body is found at the bottom of a pond, authorities race to find the killer; the shocking evidence leads to someone closer than authorities could have imagined.”
Michael Severance went missing in January 2005, months after he and Wendi Mae Davidson got married, per ABC News. The subsequent investigation involved local police, Texas Rangers, and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. The evidence they uncovered during the investigation eventually implicated Davidson, who had confessed to her brother.
The outlet stated that Davidson, a veterinarian, claimed to have found her husband dead. She admitted to moving his body to a remote ranch, where police discovered the victim’s remains two months later. However, a toxicology report revealed that Severance died of poisoning from animal tranquilizers. The killer then stabbed him 41 times posthumously.
Wendi Mae Davidson is now serving her sentence in the William P. Hobby Unit, as per the Texas Department of Corrections.
What did Wendi Mae Davidson do to Michael Severance?
The evidence that surfaced while investigating Michael Severance’s disappearance implicated Wendi Mae Davidson in the crime. The Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI) was able to track her car to a remote ranch called Four Sevens Ranch.
According to Oxygen, the OSI and local law enforcement uncovered more evidence while searching their home and Davidson’s veterinary clinic. They found incriminating searches on her work computer’s hard drive. Data from the hard drive revealed that she had searched for “decomposition of a body in water” and polygraph tests.
When police confronted Davidson with the evidence, she claimed to have done the searches when volunteers searched for Severance. However, after the interview, she reportedly called her brother and confessed to the crime, per ABC News. She said she found Severance dead in their living room and then moved his body to the ranch. Before dumping the body in the pond, she stabbed it and weighed it down with cinderblocks.
Davidson’s brother, Marshall, a game warden, said he would have called an attorney at the time. Instead, he called investigators and told them about his sister’s confession. Wendi would later tell ABC 20/20, “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. I knew air made bodies float, so I decided to make holes in the body, vent holes, like, so that air could escape.”
Authorities discovered Michael Severance’s body in the pond on Four Sevens Ranch two months after she went missing. They arrested Wendi Mae Davidson and charged her with first-degree murder and two counts of tampering with evidence.
A toxicology report eventually revealed that the killer had poisoned Severance using animal tranquilizers. The outlet stated that Davidson had easy access to animal tranquilizers in her veterinary clinic. In 2006, she pleaded no contest and received 25 years in prison. She was denied parole in 2019.
Davidson further told 20/20 that she does not think of herself as a “victim” but believed that her “husband was a victim.” She even added, “I think my children were victims. I think Mike’s family are victims.”
According to the Texas Department of Corrections, Davidson remains incarcerated in the William P. Hobby Unit. The records show that her release date is October 15, 2031.
The case against Wendi Mae Davidson will feature in the upcoming episode of ABC’s Bad Romance on March 4, 2024.
