She complained about her dental problems and then wrote:
I just got one of the very nice guards to finally look + tell me why I was in isolation. Well, we all suspected, but get this—the investigators requested it. They want me in here until the investigation is complete so I can stew on it. That was exactly what the guard said + said sorry there was nothing they could do about it—they just had to do what they were told. This is an awful, awful, horrible place to be. What are the police doing—are they really trying to solve a possible crime or is just easier to try + blame everything on me? At first, I thought I didn’t really want to know everything that happened. But now, I do. I wish I did know—good, bad—no matter how bad it hurt me because I would tell those jerk-offs so they would get off my back and I could get out of here.
At the end of the letter, she laid the maudlin approach on even thicker:
Take all my pictures off the wall + just forget I ever existed. That’s the only way I know to help y’all is for y’all to just move on.
As if they could. She’d caused so much destruction to her own family, to the Severance family and most particularly to her two young sons. And she was not finished yet.
THIRTY-SIX
Wendi called home on April 1 to complain about the funeral for her grandmother. Jessie Mae was still alive, but her life expectancy was now being measured in hours. “I don’t want to get out for the funeral,” Wendi said, “because I’m not going to go in jail clothes and handcuffs . . .”
“You don’t have to,” her mother said.
“Yes, you do. Maybe I could change clothes, but I’d be handcuffed the whole time and I’m probably not going to be allowed to talk to y’all.”
“That’s stupid. Who told you that? . . . They are not going to do that to you at a funeral. They’re not.”
“Oh, they probably will . . . I guess I can talk to the attorney, if he ever comes up here, and find out what’s going on, but there’s going to . . . have to be a guard there. We’re going to have to pay them a hundred dollars just to get me out of there. They’re going to be there baby-sitting my every little hand [sic], which is the most ridiculous thing. I know for sure I’m going to be handcuffed, and I’m not going to go to a funeral in front of my entire family.
“I didn’t get to go to Mike’s funeral. Funerals are—All they’re cracked up to be is to make everybody that’s alive feel better, but dead people, they don’t care if they even have a funeral . . . It would have made me feel a whole lot better if I could have gone to Mike’s funeral and it would make me feel a lot better if I could go to Nanny’s funeral, but I’m not going to go when I’m sitting there being told that I can’t talk to y’all, that I can’t hold my kids, that I can’t do anything.
“You know, I’m not going to go in a freaking police car to a church or a grave or anything else and be like that in front of everybody. You know, everybody already knows that I’m in trouble. I don’t want anybody to see me like that, especially like at a funeral. You know, I love Nanny and I want to see her alive. I don’t want to see her, you know, in . . .”
“Well, that’s your choice . . . You can go see her now or you can go to the funeral. They left it open for you to make that decision.”
“What do you mean? I can go see her now?”
“Well, I don’t know. As soon as I get the letter to the attorney, then they’re going to take it and see if they can’t do something.”
“Well, I’d rather see her now than at the funeral if I . . . could.”
“Well, then Monday we’ll see what they can get done. I don’t know. They may not let you go to either one, but I’m going to try.”
“. . . I just can’t believe I can’t get out of here . . . I know y’all obviously understand better than I do, but I think it’s silly that everybody is just, you know, clowning around just because it’s, you know, a process. Well, fuck the process. I’m the one in here, not them. So . . .”
“Well, Wendi, I know that and I am so sorry . . . If there were anything I could do, I would do it,” Judy said.
Wendi acknowledged what her mother said, then voiced an eerie opinion about Jessie Mae’s medical care that echoed her own actions in January: “Personally, I think that if she’s not doing good, it would be kinder just to drug her up and not even let her wake up.”
When Judy turned the phone over to Lloyd, Wendi repeated all her complaints. Lloyd was growing weary of listening. “You keep going off the handle and you’re mad at us and everything else, and we’re trying our best to do everything we know how.”
“Daddy, I’m not mad at y’all. I promise I’m not mad at y’all. It’s just I’m not in control of myself. I’m not. I mean, one minute I’m fine. The next minute I’m crazy . . .”
Lloyd interrupted. “Well, we’re not in control of our world anymore. It’s just in a big spin right now, and that’s what I mean. We’re trying to work with that we’ve got and that’s the best we can do.”
“I know,” Wendi muttered.
“You know, we’re going to have to all stick together and work this out.”
“I know. I know, Daddy.”
“You know, we tell you . . . you’ve just got to do the best you can, because obviously they’re not going to listen to you or me or Mom or anybody else. So you just have to work with what you’ve got. You’ve got to accept that you’re there and do the best you can, because we can’t get you out right now . . . and obviously they won’t do a thing we say or they won’t even answer questions . . . You have to just accept it . . . What can you do?”
“Nothing. I’m doing the best I can, Daddy. I am.”
“Okay,” Lloyd said. “Getting all blowed up at—I know you’re frustrated and I would be, too. Any probably normal person would be, but, like I say, what can you do? Not a darn thing except for work with what you’ve got . . . We’re hearing all these different rumors going around.”
“. . . Is it anything to do with me and Mike?” Wendi asked.
Lloyd grew exasperated with his daughter again. “Well, I wouldn’t be telling you there’s rumors about somebody in Hawaii on a vacation. I mean, obviously it’s about what’s going on.” Lloyd turned the conversation to the veterinary business. “Terrell said that he’s going to take somebody by the clinic from Midland and look at it.”
“That wants to buy it?”
“Yeah. He said he knows we don’t want to give it up yet, but just . . . down the road . . . if it doesn’t pan out . . . whoever this is had already looked at it and knows what he’s talking about. I said, ‘Well, that’s fine . . . show it to people if you want and . . . if worst comes to worst and it doesn’t pan out, then . . . at least people have seen it,’ ” Lloyd explained.
“I don’t know what I would do if I lost the clinic. I think I would probably move to another country and just start a whole new life or something with the kids, because I don’t think I could face y’all or face San Angelo ever again if it came to that.”
“Well, it’s not us that caused all this, and it’s not San Angelo . . . It’s you that put yourself in this position, but it just so happens that there’s a bunch of jerks doing the investigation and everything. So . . .”
“Well, I know,” Wendi said. “But if I can’t be a veterinarian, I mean, there’s—You know, that’s why I moved to San Angelo, to be a vet and be close to y’all, and if I can’t do that, I don’t know.”
“Well, obviously one of the reasons you did, because you had the kids and you couldn’t take care of them by yourself. So that was the main reason,” her father snapped back.
“I can take care of the kids just fine. I mean, I was doing—Me and Mike were doing just fine, and I was even doing fine after he was gone. I can do that now.”
“Well, it didn’t seem like you was doing fine with the kids, because you were having such a hard time with them.”
“Well, I can do it,” Wendi rebutted. “Everything will be just fine if I can just keep the clinic . . . And I shoul
d be able to because, I mean, from my understanding, Brad said they could even lower the charge from tampering with evidence to abuse of a corpse, which is a Class C misdemeanor, and that wouldn’t even be a felony.”
“Well, you know, we just have to take everything a day at a time, because I still feel like they’re going to try to press more charges. They might not, but . . . I feel they’re going to . . . Take everything a day at a time and hope for the best.”
Two days later, on Sunday, April 3—one day before the lawyers were going to try to get Wendi out of jail for a visit with her grandmother—Jessie Mae Eggemeyer lost her battle with cancer. She died without seeing her only granddaughter—without one final squeeze of her hand. The pain Wendi had caused by her murderous actions on January 15 continued to grow unabated.
THIRTY-SEVEN
The day after Wendi’s grandmother passed away, Officer Carrie Poyner received a call from one of the guards about Wendi. “There may be a needle of some type in inmate Davidson’s property.”
Poyner and four other guards moved into J-Block for a shakedown. When they searched through Wendi’s cell, they found prohibited items: several pieces of string, an extra pair of shoes and two pieces of paper hidden in a sanitary napkin box. On the paper was a list of people she had known, with a description of her relationships with them. The contraband was confiscated.
That night at 7, Johnson’s Funeral Home Chapel hosted a rosary for Jessie Mae Elliott Eggemeyer. The family gathered for her graveside service in the tiny Grape Creek Cemetery on Tuesday, April 5, at 4 P.M. Wendi was not allowed to attend either event.
Wendi indulged in a verbal rampage in her letter to her parents dated April 6, 2005:
All I know is that the police + DA are probably just trying to do their job and they don’t care about anything else. If they destroy innocent people, break families + crush children that is just a by-product of their so-called duty. It’s not their lives + families that are being torn completely apart.
I just want y’all to prioritize everything. My kids have to be y’all’s top priority. Y’all cannot worry about me anymore. Do not spend any more money on me. Save it for my kids. They need it far more than me. There apparently is nothing more that y’all can do for me. And I am trying to make peace with that. But don’t go telling the attorneys that y’all are worried about me, then he comes up here to lecture me on being patient, it’s just a process, to hang, ok.
FUCK! I DON’T SEE ANYBODY IN HERE BUT ME. So unless he has been here, he doesn’t have a clue. Not a teeny tiny idea. So then he calls y’all to tell y’all everything is ok. It is not ok. I am not ok. He knows I am not ok. So let him do what y’all are supposedly paying him for. They already are full of lies, don’t make him lie more. Just take care of my kids + fight tooth + nail for them. I am in a tank of sharks—the only way to save me would be for y’all to climb in with me. Then, no one would have a chance.
Two days later, Wendi got her wish. Court convened and her bail was dropped to $50,000. She was finally able to go home.
In response to this development, the Lubbock Medical Examiner’s Chief Investigator Robert Byers told the Bangor Daily News: “Judges tend to not want people sitting in jail for a long, long time. We’re waiting for the results from the autopsy for the final definition of what Mr. Severance died of. Because it had taken so long, we thought her attorney would contest it and she might get her bond reduced. She is in jail for tampering with evidence and it was a high bond for that charge. They weren’t going to wait forever for us.”
That same day, Texas Ranger Shawn Palmer contacted Dr. Sridhar Natarajan at the Lubbock County Medical Examiner’s Office. The doctor delivered the results of the toxicology analysis. The lab found Phenobarbital and high levels of pentobarbital in the cavity fluid, gastric contents and tissue from the liver taken from Michael Severance’s body.
Palmer pulled out the photographs taken during the consent search conducted by the San Angelo Police Department in January and verified his recollection of what he’d observed in the clinic in March. Bottles of phenobarbital tablets were present at the clinic as well as bottles of Beuthanasia-D Special, containing pentobarbital as the active ingredient. To Palmer, the method used to murder Michael Severance was clear.
San Angelo Police Department spokesman Lieutenant Curtis Milbourn spread the net wider when he spoke to media. “She felt a family member had done it, and that’s got to be looked into. She may have done it, and that’s got to be looked into. He may have done it himself, and that’s got to be looked into.”
Up in Maine, the family recoiled at the suggestion of suicide. “It’s not a possibility at all,” Nicole Leighton responded. “He was a very happy person. He never once complained about his life in general. He was so happy. He had no reason to take drugs. Anyone that would have known Michael would have known that’s not a possibility.
“It tears us apart. We don’t want anything like that said about him. I guess we can’t get frustrated because the police can only tell us so much, so we do our best to handle it.”
Palmer reached into his file and pulled out the controlled substances log seized during his search of the clinic. He found the records that documented the administration of Beuthanasia-D to twenty-one different animals. The list also indicated that Wendi had given phenobarbital to Wheezie, a Chihuahua owned by Samantha Norfleet. It was time for a second search of the clinic. Palmer prepared another affidavit. In his request, he reiterated all of the arguments in the previous one and added information about the toxicology results. Then he added:
the suspected person was released from the Tom Green County Jail. It is the belief of your affiant that the suspected person is currently in control of the suspected place and has access to the items sought as evidence.
District Judge Tom Gossett signed the search warrant authorizing another foray into the property at 4240 Sherwood Way on the afternoon of April 12. The next morning, Texas Ranger Shawn Palmer pulled into the clinic parking lot at 9:25. As he did so, he saw Terrell Sheen driving away in a white pick-up truck. He glanced up at the billboard, which now read: “Things aren’t always what they seem.”
When he entered the building, Judy Davidson was behind the desk in the reception area. Palmer asked for Wendi. Judy walked to the back, returning with a message. “She says that you need to speak to her attorney.”
Palmer moved toward the door to the back as Wendi stepped out front. He showed her the search warrant. Wendi picked up the telephone. When she put the receiver down, Palmer told the two women that they were free to leave the premises.
“We’ll stay here,” Wendi said.
“You’ll need to step outside during the search,” he said.
Wendi and Judy stood by the front entrance watching technicians and officers come in and out of the building.
Using a Physicians’ Desk Reference as his guide, Palmer collected drugs: sealed and open bottles of phenobarbital tablets, a box containing Beuthanasia-D and a file with records relating to the purchase of medications and equipment, as well as several containers of medicine prescribed by physicians at Dyess Air Force Base for Michael Severance. San Angelo Police Department Detective McGuire gathered up the twenty-one manila folders for the pets who had been euthanized by Wendi Davidson. He could not find the file for Wheezie, the Chihuahua that the controlled substance log indicated Wendi had treated with phenobarbital. Other officers collected invoices, notepads and unlabeled pill bottles.
One of the most provocative items found during the search was discovered by McGuire in a trash receptacle in the reception area. Across the top of a yellow sheet of paper, someone had written “Wheezie” in blue ink. In the margin, also in blue, was the date 1/1/05. In that same color, there were two other notations: “No Rx meds @ this time” and “Counseled on Epilepsy.”
Black ink scratched through the medication notation and replaced it with: “Rx 1½ gr phenobarb and Rx 10 mg valium.” The importance of the missing file for this pet was evi
dent. Palmer asked Judy Davidson about it. She looked, but was unable to locate it. Palmer asked her about the office policy for purging files.
Judy tried to avoid answering the question and then cut off the conversation. “I have been told not to talk to you.”
At 2:15, Palmer explained the list of seized items to Judy and Wendi. Judy signed the inventory, and law enforcement left the building. But they wouldn’t stay away for long.
THIRTY-EIGHT
The day after the search, Palmer met with Samantha Norfleet to question her about Wheezie’s treatment. She told him that her 4-and-a-half-pound dog had had a seizure on January 1, 2005, and Samantha immediately drove her pet to Advanced Animal Care. When she arrived, the business was closed because of the holiday.
She’d called the emergency number listed on the front door. She left a message and ten minutes later, Wendi returned the call. Fifteen minutes after that, Wendi came out from the right side of the building and unlocked the front door. They all went inside.
Wendi examined Wheezie, took a blood sample and gave the tiny dog a shot of valium, saying, “Phenobarbital is usually used to treat seizures, but I don’t recommend it in this case.”
Samantha wrote a check for $196 and left the clinic with Wheezie. Wendi did not provide any additional medication. Palmer drafted a new affidavit—this time for a search warrant and an arrest warrant.
At 10:38 A.M. on April 15, the Texas Ranger pulled into the clinic parking lot again with four other law enforcement officers and a crime-scene technician. Wendi and Judy were outside in front of the building. When they spotted the arriving vehicles, they went inside. Palmer followed them through the door.
A Poisoned Passion Page 16
