“That’s correct, sir.”
“And narrow down to what you are doing, is that right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And that’s what you did in this case?”
“On those notes, that was really early in the case, and I was just considering every possibility.”
“Okay. But in the beginning, you suspected that there was foul play, did you not?”
“It was among a bunch of possibilities, yes, sir.”
“Well, you and Agent McCormick both suspected that, didn’t you?” Brigman accused.
“We both considered the possibility,” Harner admitted.
“You didn’t think people were being honest with you in the Davidson family?”
“That’s correct, yes, sir.”
“And yet—And nobody else believed that Sergeant Severance deserted; is that right?”
“. . . We had speculated it was a possibility.”
“Okay. Now, going back to your application, your commander signed off on that and approved it, and he is an OSI guy, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So he is a law enforcement agent?”
“That’s correct, sir.”
“So he is not a magistrate?”
“No, sir.”
Near the end of the examination, Brigman returned to the language found in the reports. “You don’t usually refer to deserters as ‘victims,’ do you?”
“No . . . ‘Investigational target’ or ‘subject’ is the typical terminology.”
“One other—Maybe just one more question,” Brigman said. “In here, in your assumptions, you have a question, and it’s ‘How do we get the perpetrator to take us to the remains?’ ”
“Yes, sir.”
“And this is on January twenty-fourth, and you are making an assumption that Michael Severance is dead?”
“I was considering the possibility.”
“Is it fair to say that that was one of the bigger possibilities throughout this investigation?” Brigman pushed.
“At that point in the investigation, we had no idea where Mike Severance was.”
“Okay. I will pass the witness,” Brigman said to the judge.
On redirect, Alison Palmer asked, “You wouldn’t be a good investigator if you didn’t consider every possibility?”
“Yes, ma’am, that’s correct.”
The prosecutor had the witness reinforce his testimony that the application for the mobile tracking device was based on the Davidson family allegations that Mike had gone AWOL and that Terrell Sheen had granted permission to search the ranch without any knowledge of the existence of tracking device data. He was only the first witness, but already the defense allegation looked weak.
FIFTY-ONE
Alison Palmer called San Angelo Police Department Detective Dennis McGuire to the stand next. “Officer McGuire, is a missing persons investigation a criminal state investigation?”
“It’s one that we try to find a missing person if they are reported to us, yes, ma’am.”
“You try to help?”
“Yes.”
“But is it a crime to be missing as an adult?”
“No.”
“As a juvenile, you may be a runaway, is that correct?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And then you could have some juvenile kinds of charges, but if you are over seventeen, can you go missing?”
“You can be reported missing, but it’s not a crime for you to go.”
“. . . It was kind of a community caretaking function, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“It wasn’t really like you were investigating Michael Severance, that he committed a crime or that there was a crime committed, is that right?”
“No, ma’am.”
Alison Palmer turned her questions to his knowledge of Terrell Sheen, laying the groundwork for the state’s contention that investigators would have searched the 7777 Ranch without any information from the tracking device.
McGuire said, “I actually learned of him on the eighteenth [of January] in my initial interview. He owned the clinic building where the business was housed.”
“So early on, you all knew that Terrell Sheen was involved with his family?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Did you all have any intentions with regard to Mr. Sheen and any property?”
“We were interested in it, of course, because we knew that he had properties,” McGuire testified. “Lieutenant Sweet ran a property check to see what property he owned.”
“. . . You were searching to determine various properties that Terrell Sheen had owned so that you can conduct searches of properties that you felt Michael Severance may have had access to, is that right?”
“Yes, ma’am,” McGuire affirmed.
“Did you learn, after those meetings, and with your research on Mr. Sheen’s properties trying to find some particular place to search for Mr. Severance, that the military wanted to place a mobile tracking device on the vehicles of Lloyd Davidson, Judy Davidson and Wendi Davidson to assist in their search for Mr. Severance?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“When you heard about it, what was your response?”
“It was something that they were going to do to try to find an AWOL or deserted individual who is missing. My response also was to contact Sergeant Mabe and inquire of him about the tracking device and ask him to check also with the assistant U.S. attorney’s office.”
“And why did you do that?”
“To make sure everything was done properly, and to make sure that Sergeant Mabe felt that there was proper authorization for that—basically. So we weren’t doing anything on a state level that would violate her rights or privileges, or anything just to make sure that everything looked good.”
“You all, in addition to the military authorization going through all the procedures, wanted to preserve her constitutional rights, to make sure from your aspect that you were observing the constitutional rights of anyone who these tracking devices would be placed on?”
“Yes.”
“Wendi Davidson and Judy Davidson or Lloyd Davidson?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Alison Palmer next asked him why he’d made the trip to Grape Creek Cemetery.
McGuire said, “Because I was summoned there by Marshall Davidson.”
After going through the events of that night, the state turned the witness over to the defense for cross-examination. Fred Brigman asked, “As far as the decision to search the pond on the Four-Sevens Ranch, when y’all went to Terrell Sheen’s house earlier on March fifth, was that when it was at your decision to go search the pond, or who had made that decision?”
“Well, there hadn’t been a decision made at that point to search the pond. I think because of the information that Special Agent Harner gave us on the fourth, that we were certainly interested in looking at that property, and we went and . . . asked for Mr. Sheen’s consent to go look at the property at that time . . . It was a collective decision. Ranger Palmer was actually at this point basically lead investigator, I guess, so it was something that probably several people felt might be beneficial.”
“You had some input in it, but it really wasn’t your choice to do that?”
“Right. It was outside the city, so it was outside my jurisdiction.”
Brigman shifted the questioning to the investigation itself. “When you were working on this case, what were your suspicions or your hunches?”
“Well, I mean, certainly the longer that he was missing, I felt like there was a possibility that something happened, and I think that was probably just about everybody’s feeling, that the longer he was missing without contact or without any visible means of supporting himself, that there was a chance that something had happened to him.
“As late as February twenty-sixth, Ranger Palmer and I went and interviewed a gentleman in Hamlin, Texas, and actually searched his house to see if Mr. Severance was there, so
we were still looking, hoping, and I had made comments several times throughout that, you know, ‘I hope he has gone somewhere, that we find him.’ You know, until the comments were made at the cemetery, I wasn’t sure if he had gone somewhere or not.”
“Well, realistically, and you have been a police officer for twenty years, and worked real hard at it, when you searched the veterinary clinic where they lived, his clothes were still there, is that right?”
“Yes, there were even some clothes that he brought back from a trip.”
“His clothes were there, his personal vehicle was there. Did you check to see if he had used credit cards?”
“Yes. Actually, the defendant checked her own records while we were there, computer banking. We ran subpoenas for credit cards to see if anyone had used the credit cards, and they had not. We even talked about contacting some people here locally that had been in contact with someone who had actually deserted and gone off to Canada, and so I think we were looking at a lot of different things,” McGuire answered.
“I mean, you checked all that out? You checked out there were no big cash withdrawals from the bank?”
“Yes.”
“You checked to see if he had left—checked the airlines to see if he had flown out of town?”
“I checked buses, I checked cab companies.”
“Rental cars?”
“There was a rental car that I checked into, but that was based on his vehicle being repaired or something.”
Next witness for the state was San Angelo Police Officer Bill Mabe. He corroborated much of McGuire’s testimony. “And what did you do to determine whether or not you felt like everyone’s constitutional rights were being observed?” Alison Palmer asked.
“Well, I told him [McGuire] that I felt like that if the military did the installation, that they would be under federal guidelines and I contacted an assistant United States attorney in Lubbock, Texas, and asked her opinion on it . . . She stated that she, after I kind of briefly gave her the scenario of our incident, she stated that she felt like, being’s they were military personnel, they would be considered to be federal agents and that they would be under the same guidelines as federal law enforcement agents and that the tracking device could be installed without a court order.”
“Without a warrant?” the prosecutor asked. “Yes, that’s correct.”
“How come?”
“She said that was the federal guidelines again, and that it was authorized under federal law.”
“Is that if the tracking device were in private places or public places?” Alison Palmer probed.
“In public places, if it was installed in a public place.”
“And monitored in a public place?”
“Yes.”
“And that was the basis that you asked if . . . the authorization was sufficient to just be careful of everyone’s constitutional rights?”
“Yes.”
“Y’all’s intention, then, in seeking this advice was to make sure you weren’t violating anyone’s rights?”
“That’s correct.”
After Mabe, Texas Ranger Shawn Palmer took the stand. Alison asked how he’d become involved in the investigation.
“My first involvement was on January, I believe it was the twenty-fourth, 2005, I attended a meeting with other investigators.”
“From various agencies?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“And at that meeting did you all discuss trying to find this missing person, perhaps on some properties owned by Terrell Sheen?”
“I don’t remember discussing it in that meeting on the twenty-fourth. I think that there were some locations discussed at a later meeting at the second meeting that I attended.”
“Do you recall the military was getting authorization to place a mobile tracking device on some vehicles involved in this missing person investigation?”
“Yes I do.”
“Do you remember when the tracking devices were placed?”
“I want to say it was on or around the twenty-ninth.”
“Was it late February 2005?” Alison Palmer asked. “Yes, ma’am. It was all on the twenty-fifth of February 2005.”
“Were you involved in that placement?”
“I was present at the Advanced Animal Care clinic when I was told that it would be placed on,” Shawn Palmer clarified.
“At the time of the placement of the mobile tracking device, what kind of investigation is going on?”
“A missing person investigation as far as law enforcement, and then an AWOL investigation as far as the Air Force.”
“So there wasn’t really . . . a crime you are investigating? The only crime being investigated was being investigated by the military?”
“Correct.”
“You all know that there was a possibility, you know looking at all the possibilities, there was a possibility that foul play was involved?”
“Correct.”
“However, you didn’t have a whole lot of evidence to support that at that time, is that correct?”
“That’s correct.”
“In fact, the best evidence you had was that this man had deserted the Army?”
“. . . Right,” Shawn Palmer said, “there was no evidence that I was aware of that he’d been the victim of any crime, or that any crime was committed other than him not reporting for duty.”
“So the only information y’all had, as far as criminal investigations go, was really it was the military’s purview to investigate a crime, at that time? And all law enforcement was doing was the community caretaking function to assist with the location of this missing person?”
“Correct, I think the only other offense that may have been involved was, there was a reported theft along with the missing person report.”
“Were y’all actively investigating that theft during the course of this investigation?”
“I was not.”
Alison Palmer rested her case for the irrelevance of the tracking device in the outcome of the investigation. It was only a hearing on the admissibility of evidence, but the prosecutor knew that the decision on this motion would dictate whether or not justice would be served.
FIFTY-TWO
The courtroom was now in the hands of the defense. They called Air Force Special Agent Greg McCormick to the stand. It seemed odd that Wendi’s attorneys would call someone to the stand who’d played a role in their client’s current predicament, but the purpose of this witness was clear: The defense hoped his testimony would drive home their theory that the Air Force hadn’t really been looking for a deserter when they requested permission to install tracking devices. The defense alleged that the military investigators had concealed their belief that foul play had occurred and hidden their real objective to find the dead body of an airman.
Brigman presented documents to his witness. “These are not in order, but I will show you what starts out as Defendant’s Exhibit Number Four. It’s titled ‘Agent’s Notes, Interview with Leslie Severance.’ And in your notes, you have a little breakdown of who the players are in it—and the first one is ‘victim’?”
“That’s correct,” McCormick said. “These agent notes are done by two other special agents that we send a lead out to, so this would have been their handwriting instead of mine.”
“Okay. But they refer to him as a victim as well?”
“Again, I can only explain why I would have used ‘victim’ in any of my notes.”
Brigman pressed that point and McCormick said, “I used ‘victim’ on the medication profiles . . . a Bank of America statement. Again, my explanation is that I use that quite frequently in my case reports, and to use it on a cover sheet for [this report] would be something of a habit.”
The defense turned to questions about the investigation itself. “Did you bring in a bus load of Air Force personnel to conduct a ground search?”
“Yes, sir, I did.”
“What day was that?”
“Th
at was on the twenty-eighth of January, oh-five.”
“And where was that ground search located?”
“That search was located mainly around the veterinary clinic itself. We tried to cover a two-mile-square radius. Again, this is my guess to how the radius was, a two-mile radius. We covered possible areas that Michael could have walked off to, or might have led to a way to try to find where he went off to at any point, so that is just one of the areas that we eliminated.”
“And you didn’t find anything?”
“No, we did not.”
“Was there an aerial search conducted as well?”
“No,” McCormick said. “No, I could never get a helicopter, for some reason.”
“Are you familiar with—that the DPS conducted an aerial search?”
“I do recall them saying something about an aerial search, but I don’t know the—I cannot recall exactly what was said about it. I never saw any photos or anything like that.”
“When you installed the device on Ms. Davidson’s vehicle, you said that was at twelve forty A.M.?
“Yes, sir.”
“And that was in the parking lot of her clinic?”
“That is correct.”
“Are you familiar that there is an ordinance in San Angelo that you can’t be present in the parking lot of a business during these hours that it’s not open to the public?” Brigman asked with “Gotcha” written all over his face.
“No. I am not aware of an ordinance. There were vehicles driving through that parking lot all through that time period.”
An incredulous defense attorney asked, “There were vehicles driving through there all during that time period?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“So there were people driving through there while y’all were putting this on the vehicle?”
“That’s correct,” McCormick repeated.
On cross-examination, Alison Palmer asked, “So those vehicles that were driving through there weren’t being stopped and ticketed for being in that public parking lot?”
“Oh, no, ma’am, they weren’t.”
As soon as Alison Palmer finished with the witness, the judge got right to his decision. “I am going to make the following findings: I first find there is no violation of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.” He cited case law and said, “There is no expectation of privacy in traveling in an automobile on a public thoroughfare, therefore, there was no search and no seizure.”
A Poisoned Passion Page 23
