Wendi Davidson and Mike Severance - Part 2

0:00 Hi, I'm Rich and I'm Tina. If there's one thing we've learned in over twenty years of. Marriage, it said, some days you'll feel like killing your husband, and. Some days you'll feel like killing your wife. Welcome to love, Mary Kill. Hey Tina, Hey Rich. How are you today? I'm pretty good? How about you? I am doing good. I'm happy to be back here in the light Bulb lab with you to record part two. I can't wait to hear what happens. We had a little road trip in between parts one and part two. We did kind of a spontaneous road trip.

0:43 You brought it up at the end of part one. You said, what are we going to do with our weekend? And you suggested a road trip, And within an hour we were in the car, we. Were on the road. Yeah, and we were back here within twenty four hours. But I feel like we accomplished a lot, and that twenty four hours because the BUCkies this is so we are so But BUCkies opened three hours from ups and it really was like exactly three hours, and so we decided, oh, what the heck, let's just go to BUCkies. But it wasn't like we were just going to BUCkies. There's also like it's in a we did oh my gosh. But there's a lovely area called the Yellow Springs. Yellow Springs is the town just outside of Dayton, and I used to live right near there, so kind.

1:23 Of my old stayed there. We went from Hike and we had a really nice time. We stayed. Originally I thought we were air being being a church, but it was actually a temple. But still it was. It was a converted temple, I guess. Yeah, And I was a little It looked a little like it could be creepy and we didn't get there till after dark, but it was actually lovely. We had a really nice time. Yeah. We have, of course talked about BUCkies over and over again. This will probably be the last time we talk. About it, I think, so we've overdone it a little. But we did go. It was our first visit to a Bucky's and it was wow. It was crazy. It had literally opened to the public on Monday. I did not know what to act back. I mean, I've read a little bit about BUCkies, but it was way beyond It was bigger and more crowded than I could ever have imagined.

2:08 Yeah, I have to imagine that it was so crowded because they had just opened. People like us were just curious. But it was literally elbow to elbow it was. Yeah. You couldn't even get close to like the food, like the hot food. Yeah, it was insane. Yeah. I was a little disappointed because I feel like I didn't I couldn't even tell what was being offered so many people were surrounding. But I did grab a brisket sandwich and it was as good as everyone said says it is. It was delicious. What else did we grab? We grabbed, but we both said, you take a basket and I'm going to take a basket and we'll see what we both come up with. And I think we got some beat a couple of bags of beaver nuggets, and I don't know, just a bunch of random stuff to random stuff. But you guys have been so generous with us throughout the years. I feel like we kind of.

2:53 Tried a lot of stuff. Yeah, but it was good to experience it for real. So you had just gotten a new car, yeah, an electric car, And my understanding was the electric car would make it from our house to BUCkies and then we would charge the car when we got to BUCkies because they usually have electric chargers. Yeah, that's not exactly what. It didn't work out quite that way. Yeah, well it was fun to take the brand new car, but yeah, I didn't know what to expect in terms of miles because. Well, people are going to ask what the car is. So it's a Kia EV six. And I actually have a Kia too, So now we are Familyikia family with. An electric car. You don't It tells you, you know how many miles roughly are left, but you really don't know for sure. And when you're on the freeway, you're driving, you know, seventy five eighty miles an hour.

3:41 And your previous electric vehicle was fairly reliable and it would say you should stop at this exit to charge right and this car, so. This is a whole different like network of charging stations that I've never used before. And we stopped at one and it was like in the middle of nowhere. Literally, well it wasn't in the middle of a newhere was at the Ohio State. In Ohio State, like pretty funny a camp like not the main campus, but remote campus. And I plugged in the car and it said it was going to take nine hours to charge. So I was like, oh, that's not going to work, and then we found another word. Anyway, it was a lot of learning along. We went to a lot of gas stations. We did go to a lot of a lot of gas stations. Yes, yeah, and the wah wah was was great too, was fabulous.

4:26 They have a lot of gas stations in Ohio that we don't have here. Yeah. In food places, we did not stop for Skyline chili. And I forgot how many waffle houses are on the way to Ohio, and we didn't go to a waffle house. No, we didn't get the Cane's chicken. We only had twenty four hours, so I'll have to to make it. It was fun. Are you ready for a snack? Not really, I have a little bit of a stomach agche from the weekend, but I will do. I have to eat both of these then I will. But I made some You already know this because you helped. But I made another recipe out of the Texas book that our friend Carla sent us, and I made prelins. Almost bought some prelins at BUCkies. That's kind of funny. Yeah, and I think they look good. You you added some chocolate to the top of them is your.

5:11 Own little chocolate, and I add a little sprinkling of liked salt. Well, they look good. I am going to give one a try. Would you like to travel? All right? Well, what did you think about the preleine? That was really good? It was very good, sweet, very sweet sweet. But it tastes just like a preleine. Shit, Well that's good. Then out of ten well done is always sorry, but I'm glad I added chocolate. I think the chocolate and. The chocolate is a nice touch. I was going to say I would post the recipe, but I don't know if I can find the recipe online because it's in a physical cookbook that we have, so. I think Pleine recipes are probably probably pretty standard. Yeah, well, how about we get back to the story of Wendy Davidson and Michael Severance Before we start. A content warning. This episode does include discussion of animals and youth in Asia. While not explicit, some listeners may find it disturbing, so please listen with care.

6:06 Last time, we introduced you to Michael Severn's, a young Air Force staff sergeant from Lee Man who had survived five combat deployments overseas, only to find himself in a troubled marriage to a West Texas veterinarian named Wendy Davidson. He had barely known each other when Wendy got pregnant, but Mike decided to do what he considered to be the right thing. He moved to San Angelo, Texas, helped raise Wendy sun Tristan alongside their newborn, Shane, and he was counting down the days to a family trip back home to Maine, but he never made it. On the morning they were supposed to fly out, Wendy called Mike's family to say he hadn't come home the night before. His truck, his wallet, and his cell phone were all still there. Over the weeks that followed, investigators chased down red herrings while the evidence kept pointing in one direction, and then at a cemetery in Grape Creek, Wendy admitted to her family, which she had been hiding for nearly seven weeks, she had found Mike dead and moved his body to a stock pond on a nearby ranch. Divers recovered Mike's body on March sixth, two thousand and five.

7:10 He'd been weighted down with a cinderblock, a break drum, a tire rim, and a boat anchor, and there were stab wounds across his body. That same night, three men in Air Force dress uniforms showed up at Leslie and Brenda's door in Maine and broke the news that Mike was dead. Now, Leslie is Mike's dad, and Brenda is his mom, stepmom, stepmom. That's right. His mom had died when he was a child. He was fourteen. Right. Is there anything else that we covered in part one that we should mention? Well, I think we have to talk about Judy, Judy and what was her husband's name, uh, Lloyd. So Judy is Wendy's mom and Lloyd is her dad. And Judy despises Mike.

7:50 She hated him from the moment she met him, and it only got worse over time. And she was very open and blunt about her hatred of Mike. Yeah, and like you said, she never even really tried to get to know him. She just hated him from the get go. She had a history of disliking anyone that Wendy had ever dated. Right, And when Wendy admitted to hiding Mike's body, her justification for it in her mind at least for what she said was that she assumed someone else in her family had killed him and she wanted to cover up to protect them. So she was basically saying she thought her mom killed Mike and she was hiding the body to protect her. And Judy had been interviewed by the police, and even in the police interview, she was pretty forthcoming with her dislike for Mike. And I'm wondering I didn't say it on the last episode, but do you think the police were instantly like, hmm, she sounds guilty, or she sounds like she had plenty of motive.

8:45 I'm sure it would have raised some eyebrows, just you know, talking to someone who's missing and talking to them in the way that she did. Just yeah, clearly despised him. On Tuesday morning, March eighth, detectives arrived at the clinic with a search warrant. Judy was there. They told her she needed to vacate, so she collected some things for the boys, clothing and toys. Officers followed her through the building as she gathered them. They lived at the clinic, right, that's right. There was a small apartment that was part of the clinic, the veterinary clinic that Wendy had started. The search was thorough. They sprayed luminol throughout the space looking for any trace of blood, but they found none. But they did notice something. A pistol and a boning knife that had been present during a previous visit to the clinic were gone. When investigators asked Lloyd about it, he said he thought Wendy's brother Marshall might have them. The room went quiet. Marshall Davidson was a law enforcement officer. He was a game warden for the state of Texas. If he had taken those items and was holding them back from an active homicide investigation, that wasn't just a problem, it was a serious crime. On March seventeenth, the Medical Examiner's office completed its examination of Mike's remains. They were still waiting for the toxicology results before making their final determination, but they released the body to the Severance family. Leslie wanted to bring his son home to Maine to be buried, but because Wendy was still legally Mike's wife, she had to sign off. Wendy called her brother Marshall from jail and talked about the other ideas that she had. So we're

10:17 going to do a little bit of true crime theater. Do you mind playing the part of Wendy? Sure, and I will play the part of her brother, Marshall. I know this sounds silly, maybe, but I just want Mike to be buried here because he's my husband and the kid's. Daddy, and Wendy, you need to let that go. The last two times you've called, all you've talked about is him. You need to worry about you now, Okay. But I don't want them to ship him off to Maine. Well that's where he was born and raised. And i'm his wife. What I'm his wife, Marshall. Yeah, but he's got family up there too. I don't know what they want to do, but I don't know. What's going to happen yet. Like I said, you need to talk to your lawyer, but you need to think about his dad. Probably do what his dad wants to do.

10:58 It doesn't matter what I want. Well, sure it matters, but y'all have been married for a few months. He'd been his dad's forever. And what about Shane and Tristan? What about them? That was their daddy. They're not going to be able to see him. Wendy, I don't understand what you're saying there. You know that as well as I do. Well, would you want Papa shipped off. Somewhere Papa was born and raised here. You need to think, Wendy. I don't know what to tell you. You're losing it. You need to pull yourself together. Shane doesn't have a clue who he is. I know. Wendy Davidson was sitting in jail, charged in connection with the death of her husband, a man who had been found at the bottom of a pond, weighed down with scrap metal, stabbed dozens of times, and what she wanted to talk about call after call, was where he would be buried. In the end, Leslie did bring Mike home to Maine. He was buried there among the people who had known him his whole life, in the state that he had been so eager to show his wife and kids.

11:54 On March eleventh, a memorial service was held for Mike at DAAs Air Force Base. The man, one who had volunteered for dangerous missions, logged hundreds of combat hours, and been described by everyone who knew him as someone who always put others first, was honored by the institution that he had served back in San Angelo. The legal maneuvering for custody of Shane had already begun. From jail, Wendy had her attorney draw up a power of attorney for childcare, naming Marshall as her agent to look after the children. But Marshall had a different suggestion Judy and Lloyd should seek formal custody. The thinking, as he laid it out, was strategic. It would be harder for Leslie to gain custody if Shane was already placed with the Davidsons. Marshall was just an uncle. Lloyd and Judy were Shane's grandparents, just like Leslie. On March fourteenth, Lloyd and Judy filed a petition for custody of their grandson, Shane Severance. Two days later, Leslie filed his own. In a phone call with her mother from jail. Around this time, Wendy was focused on the possibility of losing her veterinary licenset. I just threw seven years of my life away going to school.

13:03 Judy's response was pointed, well, Wendy, did you not think about that at all? Wendy snapped back, no, Mama, If I was thinking logically, I wouldn't be in this freaking boat. It was, in its own way, the most honest thing that she had said. In weeks in Maine, Mike's family was doing what families do. They were finding ways to hold each other up. They planned his funeral, and they also organized a fundraiser to help Leslie with the mounting costs of the custody fight for Shane. They held the event at the Knights of Columbus Hall, a DJ dancing music. It was a deliberate choice. Mike had loved to dance. He had taught himself the Texas two step and dragged friends onto dance floors. More than two hundred and fifty people bought tickets to the fundraiser. They came to remember him and to make sure his son had a fighting chance.

13:52 Like so many of these stories we tell, it's just the custody battle is so sad and heartbreaking and frustrating. Yeah, children really need their whole family. Yeah. While the Severan's family was rallying around each other in Maine, Wendy was on the phone from jail and the calls were revealing, Well. I'd like to do another true crime theater with you. This time, I will play Lloyd Wendy's dad, and you again will play Wendy. Okay with me, very authentic. It was exus. It was really well done, all right, So Lloyd is going to start he's referring to the investigation here. They're still talking to people and still getting stuff together. And in the meantime, I'm the one that's in trouble and they don't even know what's going on. Well, yeah, you're in trouble because you're the one that did something.

14:35 I'm ready to go to court. I'll tell everybody, the whole public of San Angelo, what I did. I'll do whatever I need to do. But I'm tired of sitting in here every day wondering what they think I might have done. Well, you pretty much know what they think you've done. They think you did something to Mike, and they know what you did at the tank. They're just trying to prove it. You know that, No, not really, Okay, what do you think that you ran a stop sign or something? You've got look at it from their perspective. If they think I'm such an evil, bad person, why don't they have me out there making a living taking care of my kids? I won't be eating up taxpayer dollars. Well, that's not how the system works. Why would they even have jails if it worked that way. Well, I don't know, but there are a lot of people on house arrest.

15:18 Yeah, but it's usually for little dinky things, not serious stuff. Most of the reason I'm in here is because Marshall called the police. He is the one that did that. No, you're the one that did. It, all right, So part of this is my fault. But I'm ready to go to court and I'll take whatever punishment they deal out for what I did. But this is not fair, Daddy. Life is not fair. Do you think any of this is fair to the rest of us? So I just found this conversation really interesting and revealing. The book that I read had a lot of transcripts of Wendy's phone calls from prison, and I didn't include too many of them. But she just did not seem to be able to wrap her head around the reality that she did something serious, even if, as she's claiming, all she did.

16:00 Was height his body body in the stock part. That's pretty serious too, But she just seems to think like this is just an inconvenience and it's all unfair to her. Wendy truly seemed illusional about how much trouble she was in. In a separate call with Marshall around March eighteenth, Wendy speculated that she would probably get probation. She talked about keeping the clinic running, maybe as the business manager, if her license was temporarily suspended, as if this were a bureaucratic inconvenience rather than a homicide investigation. She also wrote a letter to her parents. In it, she said she knew her father kept telling her that she was in serious trouble, that this wasn't like running a stop sign, but she said she honestly didn't feel like what she had done was anything horrible. She wrote that she still loved Mike and that if he could speak, she believed he would understand he wouldn't be mad at her. On April third, Wendy's grandmother, Jesse May, lost her battle with cancer.

16:55 Her lawyers had been trying to get approval for a visit before the end, but they didn't make it in time. On April eighth, the courts reduced Wendy's bail to fifty thousand dollars five hundred thousand dollars was very steep when the only charge at this point was tampering with evidence, and she was released. The toxicology report came back that same day. The lab had found phenobarbital and high levels of pentobarbital and Mike's gastric contents and liver tissue. Investigators pulled the crime scene photographs from their earlier searches of the clinic, and there it was bottles of phenobarbital tablets bottles of euthanasia D special, a common veterinary euthanasia solution whose active ingredient is pentobarbitol. Both drugs had been sitting in plain sight at Advanced Animal Care. Investigators went back to the records. They had already seized logs documenting the administration of controlled substances, including phenobarbital and euthanasia D to twenty one animals at the clinic. This type of careful paperwork was required for dealing with controlled substances. I remember from episode one that Wendy really did not like euthanizing animals.

18:09 As they carefully looked through the records, they found a discrepancy. They controlled substance log indicated that a Chihawah named Wheezy had been given phenobarbital, but in a garbage bind they found a loose sheet of paper with Wheezy written at in blue ink, a date of January first, two thousand and five, and two notations, one saying no prescription medications at this time and another about epilepsy. The first notation had been crossed out and replaced with a prescription for phenobarbital and valium. Investigators tracked down Wheezy's owner, a woman named Samantha Norfleet. She told them that her four and a half pound dog had suffered a seizure on New Year's Day. Wendy examined Wheezy, drew blood, and gave the dog a shot of valium. She told Samantha phenobarbital is usually used to treat seizures, but she didn't recommend it in this case. Samantha wrote a check for one hundred and ninety six dollars and took Wheezy home. But Wheezy was never given phenobarbital, but someone had altered her records to suggest that she was. On April fifteenth, Wendy was arrested again, this time on a second tampering with evidence charge for doctoring the controlled substance log and falsifying Wheezy's medical records. Her bond was set at one hundred thousand dollars and a property bond was posted and she was released once again. But the more investigators dug into the drug records, that clearer the picture became. The standard dosage of butthanasia D is one milli leader for every ten pounds of body weight. When investigators added up the excess

19:41 amounts recorded in Wendy's logs between October two thousand four and February two thousand and five, they came to ten point eight six millileterers, enough to euthanize a one hundred eight pound dog. Then there was a dog named Patience owned by a woman named Dana Schwartz. According to Wendy's technician, j Patients had died while being repositioned for an X ray, but Wendy had called Dana and told the owner that the dog needed to be euthanized and then build her for it. The log showed six milliliters of euthanasia D administered to patients added all together, and the excess bututhanasia D unaccounted for and the clinic's records was enough to euthanize a one hundred and sixty eight pound man, and Mike Severance weighed about one hundred and sixty pounds. To be fair, veterinarians sometimes administer slightly more than the minimum require dose, particularly when a pet owner is present, and investigators didn't have a clear baseline for what Wendy's normal practice looked like. They also discovered that she had made multiple trips to Mexico to purchase pharmaceuticals and had no way of knowing exactly what she had brought back across the border. But the toxicology report did make clear was this.

20:53 Mike's death was caused by the combined effect of phenobarbital and pentobarbital, the same drugs that had been been sitting in bottles at Advanced Animal Care and the same drugs Wendy Davidson used every day in her work. Basically, the bottom line is that Mike was euthanized. Essentially, Oh poor Mike. I know, it's just so so horrific. So are you saying that Judy is off the hook? I don't know. We'll talk more about that, for sure. We'll be back after a break. While the forensic picture was coming together. Investigators were also building a portrait of Wendy through the people who had worked with her. Former colleagues from the Lubbock clinic were interviewed.

21:41 The owner said she hadn't followed proper policies and procedures. If she hadn't quit, he would have fired her. Others described her as difficult and disagreeable. One recalled that she spoke way too openly about her sex life and habitually blamed others for her problems and mistakes. And then there was something else that was even more disturbing. She had reportedly talked out loud about ways to keep Mike from getting custody of the baby if they divorced. One of the ideas she floated punching the baby in the face and telling police that Mike had done it. On May twenty fourth, two thousand and five, a grand jury convened to consider the case. They confirmed both tampering with evidence charges and added a homicide indictment. Wendy surrendered herself at the tom Green County Sheriff's office the following day and was released on bond that same afternoon. Leslie severance following developments from Maine was struggling to understand how it was possible that the woman charged with killing his son was allowed to live in the same house as Shane. Leslie said, I cannot, for the life of me understand how he can be allowed to stay in the same house as her.

22:49 Nothing is going to bring Michael back. So there's Shane. I don't believe he should be where he's at. I'm sorry. I was so shocked when you said it that I didn't respond in real time. But she wanted to punch her baby in the face. I know, it's just and she told somebody that too, like yeah, and she's. Caring for people's animals. I mean. Wendy, for her part, took a private polygraph examination. Her attorney told the media that she had passed. That she had been asked directly whether she killed her husband and whether she knew who did, and that she had truthfully answered no to both. We hear a lot about private polygraph examinations that I always think it's just a pr ploy that if you are accused of committing a crime and your lawyer says we're going to take a private examination, that there's really nothing to that other than just.

23:41 Pr We were talking about this when we were driving to Ohio, about how some day I would love to, you know, have you take a polygraph test, because what we say to like you think you could pass it. But I don't even have anything incriminating to ask you. I don't think, not that I know of. I know you had mentioned in the first episode that when he had taken the polygraph exam and that she PA will know her. But you said that her lawyer told the media to the media that she had passed it. Right, Wendy still wasn't talking to investigators and had not admitted anything beyond moving the body. But based on the physical evidence, the toxicology results, and the timeline, here is what investigators believed happened to Mike Severance. After they got home from Graham's Central station. There was a bar that they went out to on Friday evening, January fourteenth. Wendy probably poured Mike a beer into it. She dropped five veterinary phenobarbital tablets. The drug dissolves easily, and the bitterness of the beer would have masked any taste. It wasn't a lethal dose, but it was enough to guarantee a deep heavy sleep lasting eight to twelve hours. Mike drank it, undressed and went to bed. When Wendy was confident that he was unconscious, she took a syringe loaded with butthanasia D and injected it into his chest. The solution contained a lethal concentration of pentobarbital diluted with phenytoin. It would have been only a matter of time before his breathing stopped and his heart followed. Investigators believed that she then backed Mike's pickup truck up to the rear door of

25:12 the clinic, dragged his body out, and loaded him onto the bed. She pulled a tarp or some covering over him, then gathered what she needed from an outbuilding, a cinder block, a brake drum, a spool of baling wire, a reel of fishing line. She drove north on Route eighty seven toward Grape Creek and to the four sevens Ranch. The stock tank on the property had a wooden dock built out over the water at one end, with a rowboat tied to it. She pulled up to the dock, rolled Mike's body out of the truck, and dragged him across the ground and onto the platform. She looped baling wire around his neck and fastened the brake drum to the other end. She tied fishing line from the cinder block to his leg. Then she rolled him off the edge into the water, drove back to the clinic in his truck, and went to sleep before Judy arrived to open the clinic in the morning. The Sheriff's department later reenacted what they believed that she had done and concluded that while it would be difficult, she could have managed it alone, but that wasn't the end of it. After searching for information about how bodies decompose in water, I don't know if you recall from part one, but they had found a search that she did. On January twenty sixth, Wendy must have realized her plan was flawed. Mike's body would eventually resurface, so she went back to the pond and could likely see Mike's body floating not far below the surface.

26:32 She got into the rowboat, rowed out to the body, and used an ore to push it toward the bank. Then she got out of the boat and went to work to allow gas to escape and slow the body's rise. She stabbed Mike through the chest and abdomen with a knife that she had brought. Then she rolled him over and did the same thing to his back. When she was finished, she had driven the knife into his body forty one times. Then she loaded the boat with everything heavy she could find, more cinder blocks, a boat anchor, additional scrap metal from the barn and the ranches dump, and rode back out to the center of the pond. She fastened the new weights to his ankles, wrists, and arms with rope and zip ties, and eased his body back under the water, and then she watched until he disappeared from view. Then she drove back to the clinic and went about her day. That at least is what the state of Texas believed happened. Wendy Davidson never said a word to confirm or deny it.

27:29 Were the kids with her mother that night? The Friday night? They were with her mother? Yes, But that's an interesting note because what Wendy's story was that it was Saturday night that she came back and found his body, and the kids were with her on Saturday night. So if her version of events is true, if she just came home and found him dead and decided to hide the body. The kids were with her the whole time, which is not a great look. But if it was Friday night that she did that, then the kids were with her parents. You have any idea how big Wendy is. I'd never read like what her size or weight was. I did see an interview with her on I think it was twenty twenty, and she looked like an average sized woman.

28:13 I would say, I'm average sized, and I don't think I could pick up a one hundred and sixty pound man and do everything that she did. I think it would be very difficult, Like I said, the Sheriff's department, they had a woman that worked there that was around Wendy's size, and they got a weight that was around Mike's weight and size, a dummy, and they went through and did the whole thing, and she was able to do it. Like I said, it wasn't easy, but it was feasible, is what they said. And if she's working with large animals, you know all the time, she's probably. Really pretty strong strong. The other part about this whole story that really sticks with me is the fact that she again we don't know for sure, but they believe that she went back you know, a week or two weeks after she dumped his body in the pond.

28:57 Any evidence to support that, I think the. Main Well, the evidence is that the stab wounds that he had were done after his death, they weren't done before death. And the fact that she did the internet search. They know the day she did the Internet search, and so I think they're just following that to its conclusion that that search alarmed her, so she went back to basically try to keep the body from rising. Yeah, that is a very disturbing thought. And because they didn't find any blood, that was another thing that they thought, well, there's no blood, then she must not have stabbed him in the apartment, right, And. The cause of death was clearly the drugs that were administered. While the criminal case moved forward, so did the fight over Shane. On June sixteenth, Judy and Lloyd were deposed in the custody proceedings. Both made clear they would stand behind their daughter no matter what, and that they intended to fight Leslie and the rest of Mike's family every step of the way. At one point during his deposition, Lloyd speculated that Leslie could be a child molester or a criminal and argue that any visiting he was granted should be supervised. The suggestion was so vicious and so thoroughly without basis that it visibly shocked those in the room.

30:09 What a low blow, I know. Leslie and Mike's brother Frank, arrived in West Texas the following day, on June eighteenth, They were allowed to see Shane for one hour att a McDonald's. That was what Judy and Lloyd would permit. Shane spent the entire visit sitting contentedly in Leslie's lap, as if he had always known him. On Sunday, Father's Day, Judy allowed one more hour, this time at a local park. Through both visits, she hovered nearby. How old is the baby. By this time? He's probably eight or nine months. The custody hearing came on June twenty fourth. Investigators took the stand and testified that it was possible Wendy had the children with her on the night she disposed of Mike's body. Leslie's attorney called it significantly bad judgment that she had been allowed to remain in the same home as Shane. The judge pushed back, reminding the courtroom that there was a presumption of innocence. When Judy was asked under oath whether she had hated Mike Severance, she answered, without hesitation, yes she had. Lastlie, for his part, told the court plainly what he feared, that Wendy might harm the child, that she might attempt a murder suicide, or that she might take Shane across the border into Mexico.

31:19 This part reminded me of the case that you did recently, the Andrew Bagbie Doctor. Andrew Bagbie just it's such a hard situation when the mother is accused of murderer, but she hasn't been convicted yet. But at the same time, is it really a wise decision to have her with the child of the man she was accused of killing. Yeah, Protecting the child should always come before victims, writes, but it's tricky. The judge's ruling gave neither side everything they wanted until the murder case was resolved. Joint custody was awarded to Judy and Lloyd on one side and Leslie on the other. Leslie was granted a sixty day window to take Shane back to Maine. Wendy was restricted to supervised visits two hours every Saturday, at a neutral location.

32:03 She was ordered to move out of her parents home. Both parties were required to undergo psychological evaluations and home studies by social workers. It wasn't perfect, but Leslie felt like things were pointing in the right direction. On June twenty seventh, Leslie and Frank boarded a plane with Shane and flew home to Maine. They were met at the airport by a crowd of family and friends, people who wrapped all three of them in hugs and shears and tears. Shane, not yet a year old, was carried into a home full of people who already loved him. The next morning, Leslie had a large portrait of Mike sitting on the floor propped against the wall. Shane crawled over to it, pulled himself up, and reached out to touch his father's space.

32:45 What are you trying to do to us? I know? Ah. As the custody battle wore on, Wendy began to worry about something closer to home. What if once her legal troubles were resolved, her own parents refused to give the children back. It wasn't an irrational fear. Judy and Lloyd had made clear that they intended to hold on to Shane, and their contempt for Wendy had been building for months. The next time Wendy visited her parents' home, she brought a hidden tape recorder, planning to capture something she could use against her parents someday if she needed. She didn't have to wait long. With Wendy present and three year old Tristan in the room, Lloyd began not arguing, not confronting, but singing. He made up a little song.

33:25 So I want to preface this before you go on in the book that I read. This song or whatever it is, went on for literally five or six pages. I included a little bit of it verbatim in here so you could get an idea of this, because this just blew my mind. But this is a recording, so you know what happened. Yes, And so this is Lloyd talking to his grandson who is three years old, and his daughter Wendy is in the room at the same time. Her hates her family, She hates her family, Her hates her whole family. She despises her mom. She wishes her dad, she hates her pa. She wished him dead. She hates her brother, she wishes him dead, she wishes her wishes her family dead, dead dead. Well, that's a beautiful song. Yeah, he kept going. He's saying about how Wendy wished her children would get run over, flattened like a pancake, so she'd have nothing left to worry about. He's saying that she hated everyone in the world, including her own kids.

34:20 Then he switched to the tune of He's got the whole world in his hands? Do you want to sing? Because I do not see? No, you go for it. Wendy hates the whole world. Wendy hates the whole world, hates the whole world, even the little kids. Wendy's so full of hate. Wendy stayed quiet through all of it, knowing the recorder was running. Then Lloyd stopped singing and turned his attention to Tristan directly. Watch it, Poppy, watch it. She'll try to strangle you. She's going to try to kill you. She kills them all, all the animals at the clinic. You'll be next. Don't trust her. She'll put you up on that table and kill you. They go in and expect to come out alive, and she kills them dead. Better watch it. She'll rip your heart right out, that's so disturbing that he's talking to. At some point during all of this, Tristan looked up at his mother and asked, Mommy, did you kill somebody? Wendy answered quietly, no, baby, pause.

35:11 Brainwashing you, that's all, because three year olds know what brainwashing is. Yeah, exactly. Lloyd Davidson had throughout the entire ordeal positioned himself as a defender of his family, a man holding things together while his daughter faced criminal charges. This was the same man doing this in front of a three year old. Whatever Wendy had done, the tape made one thing clear that davidson household was not a safe place for the children to grow up. It's just that that chapter of the book. I just my head almost exploded because I just how can I can't even imagine doing something like it, Saying things like that to a three year old. It just makes no sense. It's unbelievable. But I wanted to backtrack just a second.

35:53 What happened between Wendy and her parents. Did her parents they believed the case being built against her that she killed Mike. I don't think so. I think that Wendy felt like I think they knew that Wendy was going to end up going to prison probably, and I think in Wendy's mind she was like, Ah, this is going to be over soon. I'm going to be back, and she was. I think she was paranoid and worried that her parents were trying to take the kids from her, and that was, you know, the way she responded. Back in Main, the community around the Severance family had been showing up in the way that small towns do. In July, friends and neighbors donated more than five hundred household items to a yard sale to help fund Leslie's custody fight. The generosity was real, and it always needed.

36:36 The legal bills were mounting. Every trip to Texas costs money that Leslie didn't have been. On what would have been Mike's twenty fifth birthday, well I forgot how young he was. A package arrived at the Severans home. It was from Wendy. Inside were gifts for Shane, flowers with a note asking that they be placed on Mike's grave, and a birthday card. On the card, she had written, Mike, Happy Birthday, Love Wendy. Wow, she is a little old to do. Those there happened to be a reporter present when Leslie opened Why was there a reporter present? I think he was being interviewed by the local newspaper. He read the card and his composure broke quote. I just don't know what to make of this. God damn it. She dumped him in a pond and stabbed him forty one times, and now she wishes him a happy birthday.

37:20 It's vicious and revolting. Maybe we should respond by saying, Wendy, please take these flowers out to the pond where you buried him. A few weeks after that, Wendy wrote Leslie a long letter. In it, she told him that once this mess was all cleared up, she hoped that they could have a good relationship her and the whole seven's family. In August, Leslie flew back to Texas with Shane for another custody hearing. The Davidson family's attorneys went on the offensive, accusing Leslie of using his grandson as a fundraising tool, a reference to the yard sale and the community events held in Mike's memory. Leslie pushed back, he needed his community support just to afford the plane tickets to come fight for his grandson. The judge wasn't persuaded either way.

38:01 He rejected Leslie's petition for sole custody ahead of the trial and returned Shane to Judy and Lloyd, allowing Wendy her two hour supervised weekly visits. Leslie was given permission to see Shane on Saturdays and Sundays up to three times a month, between nine in the morning and six at night. For a man living in Maine, this was not ideal. Three trips a month to San Angelo, the flights, the hotels, the time away from work was simply not possible. Leslie flew home without his grandson. He was crushed. We'll be back after a break.

38:42 There was another casualty in all of this, one that didn't make as many headlines, but was significant in its own way. Wendy's brother, Marshall Davidson, had been the one to call the police. He had been the one to tell detectives where to find Mike's body. He had done the right thing, but at the same time he was trying to support his sister, and it cost him nearly everything. After the arrest, Marshall had applied for a hardship transfer within the Texas Parks and Wildlife, hoping to move closer to San Angelo to support his family. Meanwhile, investigators called Marshall and asked him to bring in the pistol and boning knife that had gone missing from the clinic. His response surprised them. He said he wanted to hold onto the items until he had spoken with Wendy's attorney. For a fellow law enforcement officer to withhold potential evidence from an active homicide investigation and to be so unapologetic about it struck the investigators as deeply troubling. As it turned out, Internal Affairs at Texas Parks and Wildlife had opened an investigation into Marshall back in March. Not long after everything came to light, Investigators on the severance case told Internal Affairs that Marshall had lied to them, refused to cooperate, and may have tampered with evidence. In September, Marshall was formally notified that he was being considered for corrective action up to an including termination. He hired an attorney and prepared a response. In December two thousand and five, the decision came down. Marshall Davidson was fired. The internal affairs

40:12 investigation had found that he had provided untruthful and misleading information, withheld information from investigators, and failed to cooperate with a homicide investigation. The department's conclusion was unambiguous. Marshall lacks the credibility and integrity to continue to function as a peace officer and a game warden for Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. In January two thousand six, Judy and Lloyd launched a letter writing campaign to the executive director of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission. They wrote about their son's dreams, his academic record, his character. They pointed out that he had been the one to turn his sister in. They said they believed Marshall had suffered a terrible injustice, but the department didn't budge. Marshall had been caught between loyalty to his family and his obligations as a law enforcement officer.

41:03 He was just another casualty of Wendy's choices. Marshall's dream had been to be a game warden, and now that dream was over thanks to his loyalty to Wendy. Well, I've learned in all of these stories that we've told is if you're a fired police officer in one area doesn't mean that you can't find a job in another community. That is true, and I was not able to find out what happened to Marshall, but you're probably right. He's probably working somewhere else. Just after midnight on Sunday, August twentieth, customers at the Buffalo Wild Wings on Sherwood Way noticed something strange in the parking lot. A little boy, maybe four years old, was riding a yellow Mini Suzuki Quad Sport four wheeler in circles between the parked cars, crying for his mommy's twelve ten am on a Saturday night, the restaurant manager brought him inside. The boy said he didn't know where his mother was, and so the manager called the police. Someone in the restaurant mentioned that I had a four year old named Tristan Davidson lived right across the street at the veterinary Clinic. An officer went to the clinic and called the number on the sign.

42:08 The answering service picked up, and he left a message. Minutes later, Wendy came rushing into the Buffalo Wild Wings. She told the officer she had put Tristan too bed and slipped out to Walmart for fifteen minutes. He must have woken up, gotten on his four wheeler, and made his way across five lanes of traffic on his own late on a Saturday night. Well, there are so many things wrong in this situation. So many things. And by the way, I did look at Google Maps to look at this road that he had crossed, and it was literally a five lane like two lanes on each side and a left turn lane. Obviously it's midnight on a Saturday night, but still, that's a really terrifying thought that he crossed this road.

42:48 Yeah, is that like a tiny little four wheel like, how is it one for little kids? Yeah, it's one that a little kid would ride on. But yeah, still horrifying. So she told them that she had been at Walmart and just slipped out. The officers knew that her story was a lie because they had just seen her coming out of Graham Central Station, the nightclub just up the road that's the one where she and Mike had gone dancing on the last night of his life. Knowing she was caught in a lie, Wendy dropped the Walmart story. I made a bad choice, she said. It will never happen again. She was handcuffed and charged with child endangerment, Lloyd came into town and picked up Tristan. Until that night, Wendy had maintained a small but vocal group of supporters in San Angelo, people who had believed her story or at least given her the benefit of the doubt. The next morning, when the story about Tristan hit the local news, that changed for many. This was the moment a woman awaiting trial for murdering her husband had left her four year old son alone in the middle of the night to go to a bar while a homicide charge hung over her head. Whatever goodwill remained evaporated overnight.

43:55 The trial had originally been scheduled to begin in March two thousand and six, didn't. The defense moved to push it to April seventeenth, then to May fifteenth, then to August twenty first, and then October sixteenth. Each delay was another inconvenience for the Severn's family. Plane tickets booked and canceled, plans made and unmade, a trip to San Angelo that kept receding into the future, and through all of it, a seventeen month old Shane remained in legal limbo, his future tied to the outcome of a trial. It couldn't seem to get off the ground before the trial began. In earnest, the defense filed a motion to suppress all evidence that followed from the tracking device being placed on Wendy's car. The argument was straightforward. Placing a tracker on her vehicle without a proper judicial warrant was an unreasonable search and seizure, a violation of her Fourth Amendment rights.

44:47 If the judge agreed, a significant piece of the prosecution's case would be thrown out. The Texas Rangers' concerns, raised months earlier when the Air Force had gone ahead without a civilian warrant, had been prescient. This was exactly what he had worried about. A hearing was held, but the judge ruled against the defense. No Fourth Amendment violation the tracking device evidence would stand. It was a critical moment. Without that ruling going their way, the prosecution's path to conviction would have been considerably narrower. With it, the case against Wendy Davidson looked, in the words of those watching closely, like a slam dunk. Jury's selection began on October sixteenth, two thousand and six, nearly two years after Mike Severns had been killed, but the trial didn't happen. With their emotion to suppress deny, the defense team made a calculation.

45:40 If Wendy went to trial and was convicted, she was looking at a sentence anywhere between nine and ninety nine years. A no contest plea was a different proposition that allowed her to avoid admitting guilt, preserved her right to appeal, and would likely met her a lighter sentence. Wendy later claimed that her turn ernies had told her that if she entered this plea, she would never spend a day in state prison and she would not lose her veterinary license. On that basis, Wendy Davis had pleaded no contest. The judge pronounced her guilty anyway that's how a no contest plea works, and sentenced her to twenty five years on the murder conviction, with ten years each on the tampering charges, all to run concurrently. She would be eligible for parole in thirteen years. Wendy was let out of the court room in tears, this time feeling like she'd been betrayed by her own lawyers. December, she wrote a letter to Judge Tom Gossitt, who had presided over her criminal case.

46:38 She said she had pleaded no contest to charges she was perfectly innocent of, on the absolute assurance of her attorneys that an appeal would resolve anything within three to nine months. She said she'd expected to remain in the local county jail while that appeal worked its way through the courts. Now she was being told that she would be transferred to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice within a matter of weeks, and that was not acceptable to her. Partly that's because she wanted to be available for custody hearings, but also she told the judge she had just found out that she was pregnant and she feared for the safety of her child in estate prison. She begged him on her hands and knees. She wrote, please have mercy, Please keep her here until the appeal was finished. She sent a similar letter to the judge overseeing the custody case, pleading to be held locally for the sake of her sons.

47:29 She enclosed a fourteen stands up home she had written called Angels, in which she wrote about Tristan and Shane's. Sorry I don't have that poem to read Moly. Molly She later admitted that she wasn't pregnant, but spored that she believed that she was at the time. Oh that's good because I thought she was. Yeah. These letters, though, they reak of someone writing a complaint about, you know, something unfair conditions, like she's being treated unfairly, and she just thought all this would be you know, done, and it would appeal and be over, and she just is, you know, this is unsatisfactory to her. Neither letter made a difference. On January ninth, two thousand and seven, Wendy Davidson was transferred into the custody of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. A month later, her license was revoked, though the board left open the possibility that she could apply for reinstatement after her release. The no contest plea had left almost every meaningful question unanswered.

48:24 There was no trial, no testimony, no cross examination, no explanation of what had actually happened in the clinic the night of January fourteenth, two thousand and five. Would the defense have pointed the finger at someone else, at Lloyd, at Judy, at some unnamed third party. No one will ever know. To this day, Wendy Davidson has never admitted that she killed Mike Severance for the Severns family, the plea was not justice. It was just an ending, abrupt, incomplete, and unsatisfying. Leslie had lost his son, He had fought for his grandson. He had sat through depositions and custody hearings and watched a woman in charge with killing his son sent birthday flowers to his house. And in the end there was no verdict, no moment of accountability, just to form filled in a courthouse and a woman who walked into a van headed for state prison, still insisting she hadn't done anything wrong.

49:15 Such a frustrating conclusion to this case, like not having that trial that where all the information would really come out. Yeah, no justice for Mike. Really, the custody battle for Shane had one more chapter to write, and it was just as painful. During a deposition, Wendy revealed that she had secretly recorded her father and that she had turned the tape over to her attorney. So up until this point that tape of her dad going on this weird rant, no one actually knew about it. Leslie's attorney was furious the recording should have been disclosed during discovery, and it hadn't been. It took several more days before they finally obtained a copy. When Leslie's attorney heard it, Lloyd Davidson singing to a three year old about how his mother wanted the whole family dead, telling that same child not to trust her, that she would put him on the table and kill him the way she killed the animals. He raised serious concerns about Lloyd's mental stability and asked that the children be removed from the Davidson home immediately. Child Protective Services reviewed the tape, and, for reasons that were never made entirely clear, decided not to investigate further. The tape was nonetheless admitted into the custody proceedings, and the testimony that followed painted a stark picture.

50:27 Dozens of people showed up to speak on behalf of the Severance family. Not one person came forward to testify in support of Judy and Lloyd Davidson. Despite all of that, a psychologist testified that separating Shane from Tristan, the only consistent presence in the boy's short life, would be detrimental. The judge agreed and awarded primary custody to Judy and Lloyd Leslie's attorneys appealed. He raised the point that Judy and Lloyd stood to receive more than two thousand dollars a month in Air Force survivor benefits and social stife security to care for the boys, along with a five hundred thousand dollars life insurance payout. They were, in other words, financially benefiting from the murder of Shane's father. But the appeal was rejected. In the end, Judy and Lloyd got primary custody, but Leslie got Shane for holidays, spring break and summers. It wasn't what he had fought for, but it was something. Shane would know his father's family, he would know Maine, and he would know where he came from.

51:28 In March two thousand and eight, Wendy's appeal was denied. The argument her attorneys had made was the same one that had been raised before trial, that the tracking device placed on her car by Air Force investigators violated her Fourth Amendment rights, as well as protections under the Texas Constitution and the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure. The core of it was a genuine legal question. Wendy Davidson was a civilian, not a member of the military. The same constitutional standards that governed local police should her attorneys are governed federal investigators acting against a civilian. The courts didn't see it that way. The trial judge had found that the Air Force followed its own proper procedures. Investigators had consulted with the US Attorney's office and obtained approval from their regional commander before placing the device under military guidelines.

52:19 That was sufficient. No judicial warrant was required as long as the tracker was installed in a public area. Wendy's attorneys had one more argument to make. She conceded. They said that investigators could lawfully track her car on a public road, but once she turned off onto private ranch land, passed through a locked gate, and drove to a stock pond on a secluded property. At that point, she had a reasonable expectation of privacy. What happened after that gate closed was her business. The appeals court disagreed. It found there was insufficient evidence to establish that Wendy had any reasonable expectation of privacy on Terrell Sheen's property, and be on that. It cited a longstanding legal principle, there is no expectation of privacy in an open field. The conviction was upheld. Wendy Davidson remains in prison today. She became eligible for parole in twenty nineteen and has been denied every time she has come up for a review. She was most recently considered in May twenty twenty four and denied again. Her next review is scheduled for May twenty twenty seven. If she does serve her full sentence, her latest possible release date is October twenty thirty one, when she will be fifty three years old. In twenty twenty one, she appeared in a twenty twenty episode about the case.

53:38 Here's a short clip of Wendy explaining why she didn't call the police and how she thought she would move Mike's body. How did you move the inert weight of a one hundred and sixty pound man. Well, there was a box setting over in the corner, and in my mind, I thought I was just going to roll the body in the box, and I was going to pick the box up and put it in. The back of the a cardboard box. Yes, that's what I thought in my crazy mind. Look, I can't make this stuff up. This is real, Okay, this is so crazy, Like you can't make this stuff up like Dan Kunks couldn't make this up. That clip of her laughing just she's talking about moving her husband's dead body and she starts laughing hysterically. Here's another short clip where she talks about stabbing the body to keep it from floating.

54:25 I knew error made bodies float, so I decided to make holes in the body, bent holes like so the air could escape. So you were actually stabbing your dead husband's abdomen to make these holes so that gases could escape. Yes. In the interview, she said that she last spoke to her parents in two thousand and nine, and that she has not seen her sons since they were two and five years old. She said she hopes to reconnect with them someday when she's out. The people who knew Mike Severan's best all said some version of the same thing. He always tried to do things the right way by the book. When a new soldier arrived at Dayas Air Force Base, Mike was the one who took him under his wing and tried to keep him on the straight and narrow. He had worked his way up to crew chief, and he was proud of it. He was shy, which is maybe why he loved to dance so much. He had taught himself the Texas two step and figured out that if you weren't great at talking to someone, you could always just ask them to dance. By all accounts, he was pretty good at it. His brother Frank called him his superman. He was always there when Frank needed him, the steady older brother who had stepped up at fourteen when their mother died and never really stopped stepping up after that. He survived five deployments Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Uzbekistan.

55:46 He volunteered for the dangerous missions but came home every time. But he didn't survive even six months of marriage to Wendy Davidson. He made it home from Afghanistan and Iraq, but he didn't make it home from San Angelo. Every year, the community in Lee, Maine gathers to remember him. There's music, dancing, and a scholarship raised in his name, given to a young person with their whole life out of them. It's a small town of eight hundred people, but they haven't forgotten Mike. Rest in peace, Mike. I wanted to mention my main source for this case was a book by Diane Fanning called a Poisoned Passion, A young mother, her war hero husband, and the marriage that ended in murder.

56:27 What do you think was justice done in this case? Wendy is in jail, so I guess. For twenty five years, which I don't know. Maybe that's a reasonable sense, right. I mean, she should be in jail for the rest of her life, but at least she is in jail now. The way she was talking, I was afraid she was going to get off. Yeah, like how her lawyers, I don't why did her lawyers say that to her. I don't know that they'd said that to her. That's what she says they saw, Oh maybe that's what she she you know, as we've seen, she's pretty she was pretty delusional. I mean, I really think she I don't know if it was just her telling a story, but she really seemed like she was not. That's what they didn't say that, but that's what she heard. Yeah, that's what I believe. We talked a little bit about this, But do you believe that Wendy acted alone or do you think there's a possibility that Judy or Lloyd potentially helped.

57:15 Her I think that's a really good question. But I think that Wendy would have definitely threw them under the boss if given the opportunity. That's what I believe too. And the fact that she and her parents haven't talked apparently for the last you know, several years, somebody would have turned on the others. And if her parents had helped, I think they would have had a lot of guilt that they hadn't been convicted to and they probably would have taken the voice to see her or something like that. Yeah, I suppose so her parents, her family. I just I found myself really disliking everyone in her family. It's not surprising to dislike Wendy, but I really like her mom and dad just don't seem like very good people.

57:57 In the book that I read, the author Diane Fanning, I think she interviewed at least Lloyd the dad, maybe the mom as well. But in the epilogue of the book, she wrote, I thought it was kind of funny. She said that when she talked to Lloyd at the like the very last time she talked to him, he said, just do your best to write things honestly and truly, And she was like, I think I did that, and you know, it didn't paint a good picture of Lloyd or Judy. Yeah, did he have any explanation of how he sang the song to his grandchild? There was nothing in the book about that. I don't know how you how, I don't know how you would explain that. Really. The custody battle is another frustrating part of this case. They ended up giving primary custody of Shane to Judy and Lloyd, and I think part of the reasoning was because his brother Kristin, you know, had was there.

58:44 I was thinking about that. It's a tough one to break up the Suns would be really hard. Yeah, it's a tragic situation because those people really don't seem like they should be parenting. You know. Well, now the kids are adults essentially, right. Yeah, And I was able to find out kind of what has happened to them, you know, hopefully they're doing well. It does sound like, you know, Leslie had them for the summers in. Maine, so well he had both of them, or he just had you know, it's a good question had Shane. Probably just had Shane. But I wouldn't be surprised if you know, Tristan had maybe come with. But I don't think that they would have allowed that. Yeah, I don't know, hard to say, but either way, it's it's it's tragic obviously when the kids are involved, and I don't think there's any good answer. I almost feel in some ways that Wendy does not believe she did anything wrong. And I don't know if i'm she just seems so delusional to me, her her delusion seems real, like she just seems like she doesn't get it.

59:41 Yeah, I mean she's not exactly based in reality. Is Yeah, that's kind of how it feels. And I just wonder if she'll ever if she ever admits to herself that she did something really, really bad. I think my question for you is, what was her motive? I do that is a really good I'm glad you brought that up because it is a great question. I have no idea. I mean, they were married for four months ish, they hardly knew each other, so yeah, it just doesn't make any sense. And I wonder how much influence her. You know, her mom would constantly say bad things to her about Mike and would trash talk Mike to her. I just wonder if there was if that influenced her decision to kill him, but there's there's no motive that makes sense in this case.

1:00:24 Did she have any history of abuse with any of her prior relationships? Do you know? Not that I read about. Now, I was sure that Judy was involved. Yeah, it definitely seemed that way through a lot of it. Maybe I intentionally misled you a little bit too, Oh dare you? I know? But she hated him, there's no doubt that she hated him, but it doesn't seem like she was involved. Well, that's a tragic story. And my heart is always with the children. And gosh, I hope they survived all of the dysfunction. I hope they're doing well. Yeah. Same. In my research for this case, there was a lot about veterinarians, and I found a veterinarian.

1:01:07 Veterinarians veterinary practice is the word. That you've tried to avoid reading every time it was in the script. Well, I in my defense, you have like people are like, this is how you say this word, but sometimes it's just hard to say it in a certain sentence. It is, and when we're reading the scripts, we don't read them before. I mean, you compose yours. I don't read them beforehand and vice versa. So it is harder than you think to read the script. I know, totally totally tricky. Especially like today, what was the one not just you know, but the other you for youth and Asia D youth and asia D. Yeah, like I hadn't seen that word before, and I was like, all right, we're gonna try to work this out. We do our best, and it's okay if you point out when we screw up.

1:01:51 But anyway, I wanted to share it. Sorry you, digress. I wanted to share one random fact about veterinarians that I found that was interesting. The hardest animal to annest, the size, the speaking of words. They're hard to say. I can't say it's a tough one. The size and nailed it. You did? Okay, what do you think that? What do you think is the hardest animal to the ties to. Put to sleep? I would guess a. Cow a gress. I guess you don't have to do that very often as a veterinarian. But I think it's really hard to figure out the right dosage of an anesthetic.

1:02:32 Where do you where do you dose it? I have no idea idea. The body probably not in the head. I didn't do that much research. Drafts are fascinating really if you think about like all the vertebrae and remember the one giraffe that had like the crooked neck. And I can't remember, like. We went to see it. It was many years ago, like our kids were may have actually only been Emma, but really young, and we went to the zoo and you had seen it years ago, so maybe it was was it Santa Barbara, might. Have been San Diego, Okay, but yeah, the draft had like a neck was like had like a kink in it, that sort of thing. It was very strange. But enough about veterinarians and animals.

1:03:13 I wanted to mention one thing before we go. We actually, I think you have a couple more things to talk about. I just wanted to say thank you to our military families in these uncertain times. You know, we have a lot of military people that listen to us, and there's a lot going on in the world, and I know that people are being called to different places to serve, and I just want to say you have our utmost appreciations in respect and gratitude. Well, before we go, should we tell everyone about Project Tail Mary. Yeah, a lot of people have probably seen it already because it's a pretty big hit, but we went and saw it last weekend, and yeah, it was really I really liked a lot. I think there's a lot of like with the Artemis mission, people really just love seeing the images and those astronauts were so full of joy. Yeah, that was to be able to be on that mission. It was just really really moving. And we had seen Project Tail Mary, which I was surprised by how much I liked it. It's great.

1:04:06 It's almost like an adult Disney film, which might sound like just some people like, oh, that sounds like I would not want to see that, But it was just heartwarming and touching and I feel like you could take your twelve year old to see it. Yeah, definitely. I had read the book before, and really I liked the book a lot, and I wasn't sure how they were going to be able to make it into a movie that was really well done. But I thought it was great. It was just like you said, it was heartwarming. It was a feel good movie. It was interesting too, and. Yeah, I thought there was some suspense and Ryan Gosling was and he was pretty darn adorable in that movie. Yeah, do you have a boy crush on? No, I wouldn't say I'm a boy crush so I could appreciate him. If you had to pick one man that you have a boy man crush on, who would it be? He is standing right behind you, by.

1:04:53 The way, it wouldn't be Keith Morris. I don't know. I don't know. I like, you're so n he's so uncomfortable right now. It's okay. I appreciate Ryan Gosling. He you would pick him, you'd be up there. I guess I pick picture with more with like, I don't know someone that's more you like those Narcos type shows, like. Like Pedro Pascal is that his name? Uh? Yeah, Yeah, I think I. Could have a boy crush on him. Sure, okay, all right, Well, once again you've wasted a perfectly good hour listening to Love Mary Kill. We really appreciate it. We sure do.

1:05:34 Find us on social media or send us an email at Lovemarykill at gmail dot com. Consider supporting us on Patreon. Go to patreon dot com slash love Mary Kill. For five dollars a month, you get early ad free access and a monthly bonus episode. You can find us on YouTube. Even if you don't watch us on YouTube, if you could subscribe to our YouTube channel, that would be really, that would be really. We're it's going pretty slowly, but oh yeah, but find us over there. Until next time, don't kill your wife and don't kill your husband.