Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Friday Night Special: Gorgeous Mom/Doctor Found Bludgeoned Dead on Kitchen Floor. Hubby Appeals Death Sentence
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Crime Stories with Nancy Greece. Well, it's Friday night, and
- 0:09Speaker 1: it is special. It's the tenth anniversary of a murder
- 0:14Speaker 1: that shot not just Southwest Florida, but beyond. Do you
- 0:19Speaker 1: recall the name doctor Teresa Severs, because I will never
- 0:24Speaker 1: forget it. Her husband, Mark Severs, and his high school buddy,
- 0:29Speaker 1: who was a doppelganger, get together and murder his wife,
- 0:33Speaker 1: the mother of their two little girls. She was everything,
- 0:37Speaker 1: just precious, cute as a button, a tiny, diminutive woman,
- 0:44Speaker 1: the mother of the two. She was a medical doctor. Listen.
- 0:48Speaker 1: She not only brought home the bacon, but fried it
- 0:52Speaker 1: up and put it on the table. You see what
- 0:53Speaker 1: I'm saying. She supported him. How did he repay her
- 0:57Speaker 1: by killing her? And believe it or not, Mark Severs,
- 1:04Speaker 1: the killer, now wants out of jail on appeal. Surprised,
- 1:13Speaker 1: I'm not, I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. I
- 1:16Speaker 1: want to thank you for being with us. He just
- 1:21Speaker 1: won't go away, will he? After evidence proved him guilty
- 1:24Speaker 1: beyond a reasonable doubt, Mark Severs now decides, Hey, I
- 1:29Speaker 1: want to get out of jail. He should have thought
- 1:31Speaker 1: about that before he had his wife murdered. In this
- 1:34Speaker 1: elaborate plan ridiculous. His main point of contention is Jimmy Rogers,
- 1:45Speaker 1: one of the convicted killers hired by Severs to murder
- 1:49Speaker 1: his wife. Now Jimmy Rogers claimed in an interview with
- 1:56Speaker 1: week Wink that there was no conspiracy and accused his
- 2:01Speaker 1: former friend Curtis Wayne Wright, the high school doppel ganger,
- 2:06Speaker 1: of lying during his plea deal testimony against husband Mark Severs. Now,
- 2:15Speaker 1: if you will recall the high school friend, now convicted felon,
- 2:21Speaker 1: Curtis Wayne Wright testified in court he and Rogers, the killer,
- 2:26Speaker 1: were hired by husband Mark Severs, and they were promised
- 2:30Speaker 1: a huge payout of life insurance money to kill Teresa Severs.
- 2:36Speaker 1: High school friend Curtis Wright said, doctor Severs arrived home
- 2:40Speaker 1: earlier than expected from an out of town trip, and
- 2:43Speaker 1: he and Rogers used a ball peen hammer to murder her,
- 2:50Speaker 1: this tiny little female doctor who had these gorgeous twin girls.
- 2:58Speaker 1: Quote from high school friend. I hit her with the hammer.
- 3:02Speaker 1: I actually think she thought I was Mark because she said,
- 3:08Speaker 1: why this is what happened to doctor Teresa Severs.
- 3:17Speaker 2: H I at a friend's house. He's out of town
- 3:21Speaker 2: and I came here for second flight, and she's got
- 3:23Speaker 2: on the floor.
- 3:26Speaker 3: Okay, stand seraphone, stand line. Yes, okay, we're doing very well.
- 3:31Speaker 3: Good time. At the moment, we're going to connect you.
- 3:33Speaker 3: They're going to ask for the throne a fire here?
- 3:46Speaker 3: What did he addressed the emergency?
- 3:47Speaker 2: Two one zero three four Jarvis?
- 3:51Speaker 1: Okay?
- 3:52Speaker 3: And is that a house for an apartment?
- 3:53Speaker 4: Sir?
- 3:53Speaker 2: The house?
- 3:54Speaker 3: I mean, exactly what happened my.
- 3:57Speaker 2: Friend us she's a doctor. I'm a doctor. She came
- 4:03Speaker 2: home last night. Her husband is in Connecticut, and she
- 4:07Speaker 2: was to school at nine o'clock. They called me, and
- 4:10Speaker 2: I was on my way in the works. I swung
- 4:11Speaker 2: by and she's done, and the hammer at the side
- 4:15Speaker 2: and she's dashed in the back of the head.
- 4:17Speaker 1: You are hearing the nine to one one call from
- 4:19Speaker 1: a coworker, doctor Patrites, telling dispatch that his dear friend,
- 4:23Speaker 1: a beautiful mother of two girls, a beloved doctor who
- 4:28Speaker 1: practiced holistic medicine throughout that Florida region to many many women,
- 4:33Speaker 1: is dead on the floor. First thing I noticed, not
- 4:36Speaker 1: only the injuries to doctor Teresa. Seever's a tiny woman,
- 4:41Speaker 1: about four eleven or five feet tall. She's still wearing
- 4:46Speaker 1: the shoes the I call them stiletto's really high heel
- 4:50Speaker 1: she'd work as she was so short that she was
- 4:53Speaker 1: wearing the night before, the Sunday night before, she came
- 4:57Speaker 1: home from a family vacation with relatives to Connecticut, including
- 5:01Speaker 1: her husband and two little girls. That told me a
- 5:03Speaker 1: lot about the timeline. Seemingly she still had on her clothes.
- 5:07Speaker 1: She hadn't gone back to her bedroom to take a
- 5:08Speaker 1: bath or put on pj's. She was ambushed right as
- 5:12Speaker 1: she came home from the airport while someone following her.
- 5:16Speaker 1: Does someone know her flight plan? Or was it just
- 5:19Speaker 1: a burglary gone wrong? Let's start at the very beginning.
- 5:23Speaker 1: Take a listen to more of that nine one one
- 5:26Speaker 1: call weekly okay, yes.
- 5:29Speaker 3: Roy, sir, office for you on the way with you? Okay?
- 5:34Speaker 5: Right?
- 5:34Speaker 6: And so you said you're a doctor, Yes I am.
- 5:37Speaker 3: Okay, Are you with her now?
- 5:39Speaker 2: I'm outside of the house. I don't know if there's
- 5:41Speaker 2: in the house, okay right?
- 5:43Speaker 3: For how old?
- 5:44Speaker 7: Is all right?
- 5:48Speaker 3: Sir? And is she a week?
- 5:51Speaker 2: She's got one before? And those blood everywhere?
- 5:59Speaker 3: Okay? All right? So I do have paramedics, fire department.
- 6:03Speaker 3: Also law enforcement is on the line with us. Okay,
- 6:05Speaker 3: they're going to be going out. Okay, Okay, it's a
- 6:08Speaker 3: point to stand on line one moment.
- 6:10Speaker 6: I'm gonna think you're here because you know, I don't
- 6:15Speaker 6: know if there's still help.
- 6:16Speaker 3: Okay, all right, was right? It is the stand the
- 6:20Speaker 3: line I pick. A tariff office has questions and they're
- 6:22Speaker 3: going to conting you on what to do next. Okay, sure,
- 6:25Speaker 3: are you inside the resident instead?
- 6:27Speaker 4: No, I'm not.
- 6:28Speaker 2: I'm standing in the driveway.
- 6:29Speaker 3: Okay. And then when you walked in slave the house,
- 6:31Speaker 3: you said the blood was dryer.
- 6:32Speaker 1: What did you say?
- 6:34Speaker 2: Yeah, half the blood is dry, half the blast.
- 6:35Speaker 6: Is she cold dead?
- 6:36Speaker 8: Cult?
- 6:37Speaker 5: No?
- 6:37Speaker 1: I can't help but analyze that nine to one one call.
- 6:39Speaker 1: And this co worker, doctor Petreati, seems very very calm.
- 6:44Speaker 1: I'm going to go to doctor Bethany Marshall's psycho analyst
- 6:46Speaker 1: joining us from l A. Can find it at doctor
- 6:48Speaker 1: Bethany Marshall dot com. Doctor Bethany I was the same
- 6:51Speaker 1: way in court, no matter what happened, at least in
- 6:54Speaker 1: front of a jury. I would stay extremely calm, even
- 6:57Speaker 1: once when a prisoner launched at me with a shank.
- 7:01Speaker 1: Didn't make it, by the way, But long story short,
- 7:04Speaker 1: not in other areas of my life. But I guess
- 7:08Speaker 1: when it's your duty and you're trained a certain way,
- 7:12Speaker 1: you just carry on. What do you make of the
- 7:14Speaker 1: nine one one call doctor Bethany, Well, Nancy, let me
- 7:16Speaker 1: tell you a little story.
- 7:18Speaker 5: When I was doing your HLN show, I had a patient.
- 7:21Speaker 1: Who tried to kill herself.
- 7:22Speaker 5: She overdosed on benzodiazepines.
- 7:25Speaker 9: She called me up.
- 7:26Speaker 1: She into like a sort of.
- 7:28Speaker 9: A coma like state.
- 7:29Speaker 5: I called nine one one, and my biggest fear was
- 7:33Speaker 5: that the nine one one call was going to be
- 7:34Speaker 5: played on the evening news.
- 7:36Speaker 3: So I was very formal and how I reported it.
- 7:39Speaker 1: I said, this is.
- 7:39Speaker 5: Doctor Bethany Marshall, this is my license number, this is
- 7:41Speaker 5: where I got this call.
- 7:42Speaker 9: This is the woman's I.
- 7:43Speaker 5: Dress, here's her diagnosis, here are the benzodiazepines, the number
- 7:47Speaker 5: of pills she took on down the road. Because I
- 7:50Speaker 5: knew that that was a very formalized report, that this
- 7:54Speaker 5: could be played in court, this could be played on
- 7:56Speaker 5: the evening news. As I just said, so this is
- 7:58Speaker 5: the doctor who walks into a crime scene. The woman's
- 8:01Speaker 5: back of her head is bashed and she's still wearing
- 8:03Speaker 5: her stiletto shoes. He is the first one on the scene.
- 8:06Speaker 5: So yes, doctor Kim Gallagher is correct. You have to
- 8:09Speaker 5: be authoritative, you have to be calm in the midst
- 8:13Speaker 5: of the storm. But there's also this anxiety about how
- 8:16Speaker 5: you are going to come across as you report the incident.
- 8:19Speaker 5: You you are the first responder, You're the person who's
- 8:23Speaker 5: going to be questioned, So how you make that verbal
- 8:26Speaker 5: report is extremely important.
- 8:28Speaker 1: With me an all star panel today to break it down,
- 8:31Speaker 1: put it back together again, of course, in addition to
- 8:33Speaker 1: doctor Bethany Marshall with me, judge and trial lawyer anchor
- 8:36Speaker 1: Court TV Ashley Wilcott. You can find her at Ashley
- 8:40Speaker 1: Wilcott dot com. James Shelna twenty seven years Atlanta Metro
- 8:44Speaker 1: major k SWAT officer, now lawyer. But right now to
- 8:49Speaker 1: Amanda Hall, special guest joining us, investigative reporter from wi
- 8:53Speaker 1: in KTV Fort Myers, Florida, who has been on the
- 8:57Speaker 1: story since the get go. At the beginning, Amanda, let's
- 9:00Speaker 1: just take what we know. Tell me about the crime
- 9:04Speaker 1: scene for those of you just joining us, A stunning
- 9:06Speaker 1: development in the case of a murdered mom and doctor
- 9:10Speaker 1: doctor Teresa's severs remind those listeners that don't already know,
- 9:14Speaker 1: Amanda Hall, when cops came in, what did they find
- 9:18Speaker 1: at the scene, Nancy.
- 9:19Speaker 7: When police came in in June of twenty fifteen, they
- 9:23Speaker 7: came inside the Severs home and they found blood in
- 9:27Speaker 7: the kitchen, and they found Teresa Sever's bludgeon to death
- 9:31Speaker 7: with the claw end of a hammer. Blood.
- 9:34Speaker 1: Amanda, Amanda, Amanda, Amanda Hall joining me, w I ink
- 9:39Speaker 1: when you say blood in the kitchen, I mean, you know,
- 9:41Speaker 1: this morning, I was chopping up green beans and I
- 9:46Speaker 1: have to chop the tips off every single one or
- 9:48Speaker 1: Lucy won't eat it, and I cut my finger.
- 9:51Speaker 7: Okay, we're not talking about that kind of blood, Nancy.
- 9:53Speaker 1: What do you mean by blood just a tiny drop?
- 9:56Speaker 1: Tell me the whole.
- 9:57Speaker 7: Thing, Amanda, Nancy, there was so much bloo in there.
- 10:00Speaker 7: You know. When we have interviewed investigators and detective who
- 10:04Speaker 7: were initially on this case, some of them had never
- 10:08Speaker 7: seen anything like it. The amount of blood was stunning.
- 10:12Speaker 7: When you look at the report, seventeen crescent shaped cuts
- 10:18Speaker 7: to her head. I mean, she was bludgeoned over and
- 10:22Speaker 7: over and over and over, So you can just imagine
- 10:25Speaker 7: the amount of blood inside of that home.
- 10:28Speaker 1: What else did they find, Amanda.
- 10:30Speaker 7: The other thing they found was that the crime scene
- 10:33Speaker 7: was staged to make it look like a break in,
- 10:36Speaker 7: to make it look like a robbery. The thing is, Nancy.
- 10:39Speaker 7: They stuffed cash in different parts of the home, and
- 10:42Speaker 7: there was a whole cachet of guns that were untouched.
- 10:51Speaker 1: Crime stores with Nancy Grace. Do you know how when
- 10:58Speaker 1: you think a square a roach and then suddenly there
- 11:03Speaker 1: it is again? Same thing here husband Mark Severs. I
- 11:07Speaker 1: thought he was put away for life, but here he
- 11:10Speaker 1: is again. Now he wants to get out on appeal.
- 11:15Speaker 1: Let me just have a quick refresher on what happened
- 11:19Speaker 1: to the beautiful young mom of two, doctor Teresa Severs.
- 11:23Speaker 3: The hammer's sitting next to her, and you had wrapped
- 11:25Speaker 3: it and didn't touch anything.
- 11:27Speaker 6: No, I did not touch anything.
- 11:28Speaker 2: I touched her. I showok her a little bit.
- 11:32Speaker 3: All right, one moment. You're doing really well.
- 11:35Speaker 1: So the last time.
- 11:36Speaker 3: You had seen her is what time?
- 11:38Speaker 6: Probably too three weeks ago.
- 11:41Speaker 3: When you said she returned today.
- 11:44Speaker 2: I don't know when she came back, but she was
- 11:46Speaker 2: supposed to go back. She was supposed to go to
- 11:48Speaker 2: work today at nine o'clock and her husband called me
- 11:51Speaker 2: from Connecticut to say she didn't shut up the work
- 11:54Speaker 2: and she not answered her phone, and he checked her.
- 11:58Speaker 2: He tried to call him, try calling. He's going to
- 12:00Speaker 2: call her mom, and he said she was slinging by?
- 12:02Speaker 6: Can you sling by?
- 12:03Speaker 2: And I knocked on the front door and nobody answered,
- 12:06Speaker 2: and the lights were on. I could see your persons
- 12:08Speaker 2: on the countertop and she didn't answer. I pounded, powdered,
- 12:11Speaker 2: and he gave me the key code to get into
- 12:13Speaker 2: the gloves oil for the glass door, and the doors
- 12:16Speaker 2: leading into it was opened that and uh, and I
- 12:19Speaker 2: walked in. I just opened up the door, walked in
- 12:22Speaker 2: the door, and she've been on the floor.
- 12:23Speaker 1: Welcome back, everybody. I'm Nancy Gray's. That is a nine
- 12:26Speaker 1: one one call of a coworker doctor patritis, who shows
- 12:29Speaker 1: up when this gorgeous young mom of two little girls.
- 12:32Speaker 1: Doctor Teresa's Savers, very well known in the Bonita Springs area,
- 12:38Speaker 1: practiced mostly with women and had a very holistic method
- 12:44Speaker 1: toward medicine, very and closer to the whole community. Never
- 12:48Speaker 1: turned a person away. Tiny, diminutive woman. I think she
- 12:52Speaker 1: was about four eleven And that's important because she always
- 12:57Speaker 1: wore high heels, okay to you know, give her a
- 13:00Speaker 1: little height, and she still had on her heels, or
- 13:04Speaker 1: at least one of them when she was found. Dad,
- 13:07Speaker 1: she just flown in from Connecticut. Her husband and children
- 13:10Speaker 1: still in Connecticut. And normally you look at the husband,
- 13:13Speaker 1: first husband, lover, boyfriend ex. He's in Connecticut with the children,
- 13:18Speaker 1: on a vacation with her family. It was only when
- 13:22Speaker 1: she didn't shru up to work that morning that coworkers
- 13:25Speaker 1: became concerned and went to her home again. I'm Nancy Grace.
- 13:30Speaker 1: This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us.
- 13:32Speaker 1: And you know, Ashley Willcott, judge and trial lawyer, anchor
- 13:35Speaker 1: Court TV. Ashley Wilcott dot com. Ashley, you and I
- 13:39Speaker 1: both have a girl, and imagine two of them. You've
- 13:43Speaker 1: got two boys and a girl. I have a boy
- 13:45Speaker 1: and a girl. And John David is always just you know, happy,
- 13:50Speaker 1: go lucky, care free. You know, he just wants to
- 13:54Speaker 1: go outside and jump on the trampoline. He wants to
- 13:56Speaker 1: play with his friends on the computer. You know, nothing,
- 13:59Speaker 1: fai eat whatever I think? So where wouldever? I lay out?
- 14:02Speaker 1: And and't care if his hair is comb nothing, He's
- 14:04Speaker 1: just perfect. Girls are a whole nother ballgame, and you
- 14:08Speaker 1: need your mother, You need a loving guiding hand, somebody
- 14:14Speaker 1: that can say stand up, don't walk like a field hand,
- 14:17Speaker 1: and they don't get hurt. You're loving them, You're helping
- 14:21Speaker 1: them through all life's curveballs. These two little girls are
- 14:26Speaker 1: with dad at a Connecticut vacation with extended family. Their
- 14:30Speaker 1: mom is gone. I mean, how do you break something
- 14:33Speaker 1: like that to two little girls, Ashley, Yeah.
- 14:36Speaker 10: You know, I don't know, Nancy, you can't even imagine,
- 14:38Speaker 10: because depending on the age, they don't even necessarily understand
- 14:42Speaker 10: what that means. And so every day they're going to
- 14:44Speaker 10: still look for their mom and wonder where their mom
- 14:46Speaker 10: is and try to grasp what it means that she's
- 14:49Speaker 10: literally gone forever. But the other thing that bothers me is,
- 14:53Speaker 10: of course, it happens that one spouse is somewhere with
- 14:56Speaker 10: the kids and the other spouse has to travel back
- 14:58Speaker 10: to work.
- 14:59Speaker 6: But to me was the beginning of.
- 15:02Speaker 10: The story to say, he's in Connecticut with the kids,
- 15:07Speaker 10: she's here at home, and it happens to then get
- 15:11Speaker 10: killed the first night. Does this mean anything or not?
- 15:15Speaker 1: Take a listen to the questions the nine one one
- 15:18Speaker 1: operator poses to doctor Petredes.
- 15:21Speaker 3: Okay, and so you were there because they asked you
- 15:24Speaker 3: to take care of the house.
- 15:25Speaker 11: Is that correct?
- 15:27Speaker 6: Mark?
- 15:28Speaker 2: Her husband called me to say, please, can you check
- 15:32Speaker 2: on her because it's not like her not to show
- 15:34Speaker 2: up to work in you late?
- 15:37Speaker 3: Okay? So, and I know you told me before. But
- 15:40Speaker 3: when after he called the chuck and his wife because
- 15:45Speaker 3: she wasn't at work.
- 15:48Speaker 6: In parently talking one okay, gaging the code number he
- 15:54Speaker 6: founded a little you know, and you see the call
- 15:59Speaker 6: from work saying she was there. Yeah, I don't know.
- 16:04Speaker 3: Okay, that's fine.
- 16:06Speaker 2: He's her office manager.
- 16:08Speaker 3: Oh, she's the office manager of his business.
- 16:11Speaker 2: Now he's the office manager of her medical pricis okay?
- 16:15Speaker 1: Right there, we're getting a lot of clarification. Uh did
- 16:18Speaker 1: you hear that? To Amanda Hall, our special guest joining
- 16:21Speaker 1: us from w I in k Wink TV, Fort Myers,
- 16:24Speaker 1: this is in her backyard. So this is a common misconception.
- 16:28Speaker 1: The nine one one operators trying to figure out how
- 16:30Speaker 1: this calm, cool, collected coworker, a male co worker, happens
- 16:34Speaker 1: to show up at the home to find a dead body,
- 16:37Speaker 1: and he says that the husband Mark Severs out of
- 16:39Speaker 1: town far away, calls and says he found out she
- 16:43Speaker 1: wasn't at work and had him go over and check on.
- 16:47Speaker 1: Doctor Severs. His wife gives him the burglary code, the
- 16:51Speaker 1: burglar alarm code. Why would he know that because he's
- 16:55Speaker 1: the office manager. And at first you hear the nine
- 16:57Speaker 1: one one call operators say oh, she his office manager,
- 17:02Speaker 1: and he says, no, Amanda Hall, tell me, what's your
- 17:06Speaker 1: understanding is how did doctor Petridi's end up on the
- 17:09Speaker 1: same to find a dead body? Because I always look
- 17:12Speaker 1: at who finds the body and who calls nine on one,
- 17:16Speaker 1: because that tells me a lot. Circumstantially, she guess it
- 17:18Speaker 1: does Nancy.
- 17:19Speaker 7: And the reason that he was there is because he
- 17:21Speaker 7: was called by her husband, Mark, Mark was alerted that
- 17:25Speaker 7: she hadn't shown up for work, which is very unlike her.
- 17:28Speaker 7: You know, Teresa flew home a day ahead of the
- 17:31Speaker 7: rest of the family just so that she could be
- 17:34Speaker 7: at work Monday morning. She had a late flight in
- 17:37Speaker 7: Sunday night and was to see patients Monday morning. So
- 17:41Speaker 7: when Monday morning rolled around and she wasn't there, the
- 17:46Speaker 7: staff called Mark, who ran the office, and said, hey,
- 17:50Speaker 7: we haven't. We haven't heard from doctor Severs. She's not here.
- 17:54Speaker 1: I wants to take a listen to what our friends
- 17:57Speaker 1: at ABC News says.
- 17:59Speaker 4: Severs return Florida alone, calling her husband to let him
- 18:02Speaker 4: know she'd arrived safely. When she didn't show up for
- 18:05Speaker 4: work Monday morning, worried colleagues called police, who discovered her body.
- 18:10Speaker 1: Hearing our friends there at local ABC, the crime scene overwhelming.
- 18:16Speaker 1: But as Amanda Hall just told you, the crime scene
- 18:20Speaker 1: seemed staged because no money was taken. There was a
- 18:25Speaker 1: cash of guns there as well, Amanda Hall, I've never
- 18:29Speaker 1: known there to have been alleged any type of sex attack.
- 18:33Speaker 1: Is that correct?
- 18:33Speaker 4: Correct?
- 18:34Speaker 1: So she's bludgeoned dead in the kitchen and is my
- 18:38Speaker 1: understanding her pocketbook was there too, right, Amanda?
- 18:41Speaker 10: Right?
- 18:42Speaker 7: She came home, pulled into the garage and went from
- 18:46Speaker 7: the garage into the house and that's where.
- 18:48Speaker 1: She was attacked. You know, my first thought that when
- 18:51Speaker 1: this happened was the burglar alarm. James Shelnutt and James,
- 18:56Speaker 1: I'm this is not a plug. But I'm coming out
- 18:58Speaker 1: with a book June called Don't Be a Victim, And
- 19:02Speaker 1: I had to research and I included this case, case
- 19:06Speaker 1: after case after case after case regarding burglar alarms locking
- 19:10Speaker 1: your doors. That night, that day I heard about doctor
- 19:14Speaker 1: Teresa Severs being murdered. My first question was, what about
- 19:19Speaker 1: a burglar alarm. It's hard for me to believe that
- 19:21Speaker 1: a medical doctor with an office manager, husband, and two
- 19:25Speaker 1: little babies to take care of doesn't have a burglar alarm.
- 19:29Speaker 1: I mean, you can get a burglar alarm for ninety
- 19:31Speaker 1: nine dollars that covers your whole house, and why wouldn't
- 19:35Speaker 1: they have a burglar alarm? Then I found out, James,
- 19:38Speaker 1: they did have a burglar alarm, and that was a
- 19:41Speaker 1: brain twister for me. James, Yeah, absolutely.
- 19:44Speaker 12: And so from everything I've researched, the indicse that Mark
- 19:48Speaker 12: Severs had actually told, I believe it was either his
- 19:51Speaker 12: mother or her mother not to set the burglar alarm
- 19:55Speaker 12: because he was afraid that the pets may set the
- 19:58Speaker 12: alarm off.
- 20:00Speaker 1: Art Severs convicted and the murder of his wife, Teresa,
- 20:03Speaker 1: the mother of his children, wants Rogers Curtis Rogers to
- 20:09Speaker 1: testify for him and his attempt to get off death row. Hmmm,
- 20:16Speaker 1: did anybody think these two might be helping each other?
- 20:20Speaker 1: Has that dawned on anyone. Well, those two can plot
- 20:26Speaker 1: and plan and scheme all they want, gnashing their teeth
- 20:31Speaker 1: and twitching their tails. But this is what we learned
- 20:34Speaker 1: in court as to the death the murder of doctor Severs.
- 20:38Speaker 1: Severs was a popular fixture in her community. She had
- 20:41Speaker 1: the quality like a mother Teresa. She cared and she
- 20:45Speaker 1: had nothing more than love.
- 20:46Speaker 7: If she had nothing else to offer, it would be
- 20:49Speaker 7: her care and her love for the patient.
- 20:51Speaker 1: Thinking about doctor Teresa Severs, and you were just hearing
- 20:55Speaker 1: about how she was often called mother Teresa because of
- 20:59Speaker 1: the way that she treated her patients in the community.
- 21:01Speaker 1: That was ABC News reporter Rina Nanan. But I want
- 21:06Speaker 1: you to take a listen to something very odd that
- 21:10Speaker 1: happened at the funeral.
- 21:11Speaker 8: We were seeing her sisters on one side, and the
- 21:16Speaker 8: look that we were getting wasn't a look of sadness,
- 21:21Speaker 8: it was look of hatred.
- 21:24Speaker 13: Frank Hayes and his wife Sandra say, the look didn't
- 21:28Speaker 13: just come from doctor Sever's sisters. They were getting the
- 21:31Speaker 13: same look from the grieving widower.
- 21:34Speaker 8: I hugged him. What do you say, I said, Mark,
- 21:36Speaker 8: I am so sorry. I don't have words to say
- 21:40Speaker 8: to you, And he squeezed me so tight and nothing
- 21:44Speaker 8: came out of his mouth. Then Sandra hugged him. And
- 21:49Speaker 8: when Mark hugged Sandra, his teeth grinted and it wasn't
- 21:54Speaker 8: nothing of sorrow or sadness. The look was hatred that
- 21:59Speaker 8: I stepped back.
- 21:59Speaker 1: I holy, you are hearing our friend. I know you
- 22:02Speaker 1: recognize that voice. Aaron Moriarty at CBS forty eight hours.
- 22:06Speaker 1: A look of hate at the funeral and doctor Bethany Marshall,
- 22:12Speaker 1: psychologist joining me out of la Doctor Bethany, it's not
- 22:16Speaker 1: that looking back, he concocted this at the time, he
- 22:19Speaker 1: said he recoiled and was shot at the look on
- 22:23Speaker 1: the husband's face. Why did he somehow blame her family?
- 22:29Speaker 12: Why?
- 22:29Speaker 1: Why would hatred be a part of a funeral. That's
- 22:33Speaker 1: the first thing after a death that's unsolved. You start
- 22:38Speaker 1: looking at the crime scene, then at the funeral.
- 22:40Speaker 5: Nancy, can you imagine going to a funeral Teresa Severs's dad,
- 22:44Speaker 5: her husband's there. You expect him to be crying and grieving,
- 22:48Speaker 5: and instead he's looking at a.
- 22:50Speaker 1: Former employee with hatred.
- 22:54Speaker 5: Tells me, first of all, he's worried about all the
- 22:56Speaker 5: wrong things, but he's been worried about all the wrong
- 22:58Speaker 5: things all along. He disarms the alarm because of the pets.
- 23:02Speaker 5: His wife's coming home alone, he stays behind.
- 23:05Speaker 12: With the girls.
- 23:06Speaker 5: If he's a real man, why not go home with
- 23:08Speaker 5: your wife and help facilitate her going back to work.
- 23:13Speaker 5: He's the office manager while she's out there seeing patients.
- 23:15Speaker 5: I mean, on the face of it, nothing wrong with that,
- 23:18Speaker 5: But he's sending her out to work while he's doing
- 23:20Speaker 5: the easy work behind the desk. I mean, all along
- 23:23Speaker 5: this whole story, this husband has.
- 23:25Speaker 7: Never acted like a husband.
- 23:28Speaker 5: So the fact that he is glaring hatefully at one
- 23:32Speaker 5: of the attendees of the funeral tells me that he's
- 23:35Speaker 5: actually trying. If he indeed is the one who did it,
- 23:38Speaker 5: he's trying to shift the blame onto somebody else.
- 23:41Speaker 1: Let me go to Amanda Hall, special guest joining us
- 23:43Speaker 1: from wi in KTV Fort Myers, Florida. Amanda, what do
- 23:48Speaker 1: we know about the husband? And yes, I know he
- 23:51Speaker 1: was in Connecticut at the time. What do we know
- 23:53Speaker 1: about Mark Severs? Where's he from? What's his deal?
- 23:56Speaker 7: Well, we know that the two met while he was
- 23:58Speaker 7: a nurse and she was a new doctor practicing in
- 24:02Speaker 7: Saint Petersburg, Florida. We know that they married very quickly
- 24:06Speaker 7: had their first daughter shortly after they were married on
- 24:10Speaker 7: the beach. They had two girls, eleven and eight years
- 24:14Speaker 7: old at the time, and he became the office manager
- 24:18Speaker 7: of her practice, propping her up to do what she
- 24:22Speaker 7: did best, and that was treating people with a blend
- 24:25Speaker 7: of traditional medicine and holistic medicine. And he was really
- 24:29Speaker 7: the more of the caregiver for the two girls. Neighbors
- 24:33Speaker 7: said that they always saw him, you know, outside playing
- 24:36Speaker 7: with them and attending to the two daughters.
- 24:38Speaker 1: Where did you tell me he's from Amanda To start with,
- 24:42Speaker 1: Mark Severs grew.
- 24:43Speaker 7: Up in a little small town in Missouri.
- 24:46Speaker 1: Hmm, okay, I want to go to doctor Tim Gallagher
- 24:50Speaker 1: medical examiner. I want you to describe if he could,
- 24:54Speaker 1: the wounds to doctor Sever's body. And again there was
- 24:57Speaker 1: no sex attack and no or burglary from her person
- 25:02Speaker 1: or the home.
- 25:03Speaker 14: So her wounds were concentrated mostly on the back of
- 25:06Speaker 14: her head, so they were the crescent shaped impressions that
- 25:11Speaker 14: a hammer would make when they strike soft flesh. So
- 25:16Speaker 14: she had lacerations to the back of her head. Who
- 25:19Speaker 14: was extensive bleeding. There was a physical brain damage done.
- 25:25Speaker 14: The shards of the broken skull had penetrated into her
- 25:29Speaker 14: brain and there was massive bleeding.
- 25:31Speaker 1: What did you just say about charge of the skull.
- 25:34Speaker 14: Well, when the skull is broken, they're broken into very
- 25:37Speaker 14: sharp pieces. And as the attack continues, as the hammer
- 25:41Speaker 14: keeps now striking these pieces of bone, these loose pieces
- 25:46Speaker 14: of sharp bone are now being driven into the actual brain,
- 25:51Speaker 14: causing the tearing of the brain tissue and cutting of
- 25:57Speaker 14: the blood vessels as supply blood to the brain.
- 26:00Speaker 1: Trying to think about this massive attack on this tiny
- 26:03Speaker 1: woman and Amanda Hall, reporter w I in k TV
- 26:08Speaker 1: in Fort Myers, Amanda, most of the blows or to
- 26:13Speaker 1: the back of the head. Did she ever even get
- 26:15Speaker 1: a chance to fight back?
- 26:17Speaker 7: No, Nancy, she didn't. You know, she rolled her suitcase
- 26:20Speaker 7: into an attack and ambush, So.
- 26:23Speaker 1: Her suitcase was still sitting there.
- 26:24Speaker 7: Her suitcase was still in the garage. She had just
- 26:28Speaker 7: you know, walked in the door. Hadn't had a chance
- 26:30Speaker 7: to unpack anything, hadn't even had a chance to change
- 26:34Speaker 7: your clothes or do anything.
- 26:35Speaker 1: This is telling me so much about the attack. James
- 26:39Speaker 1: shell Nutt twenty seven years Atlanta Metro major case swat
- 26:42Speaker 1: officer now lawyer James shell Nutt. Somebody. I mean, it's
- 26:46Speaker 1: no coincidence that somebody is right there in the kitchen
- 26:50Speaker 1: as she walks in from the garage, parts her car
- 26:53Speaker 1: in the garage, gets your suitcase out of the car,
- 26:56Speaker 1: still sitting there in the garage. She walks in the
- 26:58Speaker 1: kitchen in bam attack. Nothing stolen, nothing taken from her,
- 27:03Speaker 1: and on her pocketbook and on her cell phone, nothing
- 27:06Speaker 1: all that money they had hidden in various spots, the
- 27:10Speaker 1: guns that the husband kept, nothing taken, no sex attack.
- 27:15Speaker 1: But someone is lurking right there. She can't even get
- 27:19Speaker 1: past the kitchen. They're waiting for her to come through
- 27:23Speaker 1: that garage door.
- 27:25Speaker 12: Yeah, all of this adds up to the fact that
- 27:29Speaker 12: you need to start looking at someone who is closely
- 27:31Speaker 12: connected to this victim. This is not something random. There's
- 27:35Speaker 12: too many coincidences. The coincidence about the husband, you know,
- 27:39Speaker 12: not flying back, the coincidence about the alarm not being set,
- 27:43Speaker 12: she walks into a house. There's no other motive evident
- 27:46Speaker 12: at that point. You start where you traditionally.
- 27:49Speaker 1: Start crime stories with Nancy Grace, husband turned killer. Mark
- 28:02Speaker 1: Severs Legal team is continuing their death sentence appeal as
- 28:08Speaker 1: a new hearing approaches. I thought he was gone. I
- 28:11Speaker 1: thought he would be in jail the rest of his
- 28:13Speaker 1: life until he got the death penalty. But no, he's back,
- 28:17Speaker 1: causing a stink recall. Severs was found guilty of hiring
- 28:21Speaker 1: two men, his high school buddy Curtis Wright aka doppel
- 28:26Speaker 1: Ganger they look exactly alike, and Jimmy Rogers, a neer Dowell,
- 28:31Speaker 1: to carry out a savage killing of his wife. They're
- 28:35Speaker 1: at the couple's homes and home in Benita Springs, Florida.
- 28:39Speaker 1: Why he didn't want to work like all of us
- 28:42Speaker 1: have to do. He wanted to pay out on her
- 28:45Speaker 1: four point four to three million dollar life insurance policy.
- 28:49Speaker 1: Wright was a longtime friend of Severs, as I mentioned before,
- 28:54Speaker 1: and Rogers. The two of them carried out the attack
- 28:57Speaker 1: while the husband, Mark Severs, made himself scared and gave
- 29:00Speaker 1: himself an alibi. M Well, I don't care what those
- 29:05Speaker 1: killers are planning behind bars. This is what I know
- 29:09Speaker 1: happened at trial.
- 29:10Speaker 13: Crash bags, flushable web wipes, black towels, black shoes, and
- 29:16Speaker 13: a lock picking kit. They paid cash for their purchase
- 29:20Speaker 13: with a one hundred dollars bill.
- 29:22Speaker 1: Who in the hey are these two you're hearing CBS
- 29:25Speaker 1: Aaron Moriarty describing two guys, Curtis Wainwright and Jimmy Ray
- 29:31Speaker 1: Rogers coincidentally Curtis Wainwright, longtime friend of doctor Severs husband Mark.
- 29:37Speaker 1: Not only that, if you look at the two of
- 29:39Speaker 1: them side to side, they look like twin brothers. That
- 29:42Speaker 1: often joke that they're brothers from another mother. They look
- 29:46Speaker 1: identical to each other, and they grew up together and
- 29:49Speaker 1: went to high school together. What were they doing in town?
- 29:53Speaker 1: What were they doing near Teresa Sever's home? A real
- 29:57Speaker 1: red flag? As then raised Listen to Aaron Moriarty.
- 30:01Speaker 13: When investigators uncovered five life insurance policies for Teresa totally
- 30:06Speaker 13: more than four million dollars, it was a red flag.
- 30:11Speaker 13: So was that trip Mark made to Missouri to be
- 30:13Speaker 13: Wainwright's best man. And as it turns out, the other suspect,
- 30:19Speaker 13: Jimmy Ray Rogers, was also a wedding guest. Taylor's shoemaker.
- 30:23Speaker 13: Jimmy's girlfriend claimed this was a murder for hire and
- 30:28Speaker 13: that Jimmy was supposed to be paid ten thousand dollars
- 30:32Speaker 13: eight months after Teresa Sivers was killed, Wayne Wright, facing
- 30:37Speaker 13: a possible death sentence, suddenly turned on his brother from
- 30:42Speaker 13: another mother.
- 30:43Speaker 1: And he took a deal. You were hearing our friend
- 30:47Speaker 1: Aaron Moriarty straight out to Amanda Hall, reporter w I
- 30:51Speaker 1: in KTV Fort Myers. How did these three hook up?
- 30:55Speaker 1: Tell me the whole thing, Amanda Hall?
- 30:58Speaker 7: Okay, Wayne Wright is a childhod friend. As you heard
- 31:01Speaker 7: of Mark Severs. They called themselves brothers from another mother,
- 31:05Speaker 7: but they really looked like real brothers. They looked like twins.
- 31:09Speaker 7: So Wainwright is getting married and Mark Severs is his
- 31:13Speaker 7: best man, and they started planning this while he was
- 31:18Speaker 7: there for the wedding. Mark is saying that his wife
- 31:23Speaker 7: is going to leave him and he's worried that he
- 31:26Speaker 7: can't pay to battle her for custody of their two daughters,
- 31:30Speaker 7: and that his only option is for Teresa to die,
- 31:35Speaker 7: and so he hires Wayne to do the job, says
- 31:38Speaker 7: he'll pay him one hundred thousand dollars from the insurance money,
- 31:42Speaker 7: and then Wayne brings in Jimmy the Rogers Hammer, a
- 31:46Speaker 7: man that he met while they were both serving time
- 31:49Speaker 7: in prison for other crimes. So Mark hires Wayne and
- 31:54Speaker 7: Wayne brings in the hammer.
- 31:56Speaker 1: Okay, now that's a heck of a nickname. You know.
- 31:58Speaker 1: I got to go to a shrink on that. Bethany
- 32:00Speaker 1: Marshall the Hammer.
- 32:02Speaker 7: Well, it's interesting he.
- 32:03Speaker 5: Called himself the hammer because that's what he used to
- 32:05Speaker 5: bludgeon the victim to death, and he did it quite aggressively,
- 32:09Speaker 5: quite maliciously. And Nancy, this was overkilled. When doctor Gallagher
- 32:14Speaker 5: was talking about shards of the skull in the brain,
- 32:19Speaker 5: I realized they could have hit her once and killed her.
- 32:22Speaker 5: They hit her multiple times. So Jimmy the Hammer has
- 32:27Speaker 5: this setishized interest in using a hammer on a woman.
- 32:31Speaker 5: Imagine what you want from that. But this is an
- 32:34Speaker 5: extremely aggressive man.
- 32:36Speaker 1: Amanda to backtrack, how many times does she bludgeon with
- 32:39Speaker 1: the hammer?
- 32:40Speaker 7: Doesn't at least seventeen? We know from the autopsy report
- 32:46Speaker 7: that there were seventeen crescent shaped wounds to the back
- 32:49Speaker 7: of her head.
- 32:50Speaker 1: To doctor Tim Gallagher, seventeen, I thought there were eighteen.
- 32:53Speaker 14: Well, sometimes it's difficult to say exactly how many there
- 32:56Speaker 14: are when they're when the number is so high. A
- 32:58Speaker 14: lot of them are intersecting, and a lot of them
- 33:00Speaker 14: obscure the one underneath it so seventeen is probably a
- 33:04Speaker 14: very conservative number that they could definitively say, but often
- 33:08Speaker 14: it's quite more than that.
- 33:09Speaker 1: I'm just just so repelled at this seventeen at least
- 33:16Speaker 1: seventeen blows to the back of her head with what
- 33:19Speaker 1: I understand is a claw hammer on this tiny, tiny
- 33:24Speaker 1: little lady. To Ashley Wilcott, judge and trial lawyer anchor
- 33:29Speaker 1: Court TV, Ashley, did you hear what Amanda Hall said that?
- 33:33Speaker 1: According to these two co defendants, of course, who knows
- 33:36Speaker 1: if they're telling the truth. They're shifting all the blame
- 33:38Speaker 1: to somebody else and off themselves. Look at him, not
- 33:40Speaker 1: at me. They say that at one of their weddings,
- 33:44Speaker 1: he basically said, we're going to split, We're going to
- 33:46Speaker 1: battle for custody. I have to kill her. Why not
- 33:48Speaker 1: just have joint custody, Ashley.
- 33:50Speaker 9: Is not a great question that we continue to entertain
- 33:52Speaker 9: and on this show, because they're defendant after defendant chooses
- 33:56Speaker 9: to kill someone instead of getting a divorce or having
- 33:59Speaker 9: joint customer.
- 34:00Speaker 1: You know, who knows why? You can't answer the why.
- 34:04Speaker 9: You can only look at what is the evidence show
- 34:07Speaker 9: and going after the person that the evidence show did
- 34:11Speaker 9: such a terrible thing.
- 34:12Speaker 1: You know, I'm just thinking through all of the evidence
- 34:15Speaker 1: to Amanda Hall, reporter wie K TV. As a former prosecutor,
- 34:20Speaker 1: you have to assess the witnesses and see their faults.
- 34:24Speaker 1: And here these two Curtis Wayne Wright, the childhood friend
- 34:29Speaker 1: of the husband Mark Sivers all the way through school together,
- 34:32Speaker 1: is an identical twin to Sivers and Jimmy Ray Rogers,
- 34:36Speaker 1: nicknamed the Hammer, just twenty nine years old. They're POC's
- 34:42Speaker 1: pieces of crap okay technical legal term. So why should
- 34:46Speaker 1: I believe them? What can you tell me about these two?
- 34:48Speaker 7: Wayne Wright and Jimmy Rodgers are both eleven hundred miles
- 34:53Speaker 7: away from Benita Springs in a small town in the
- 34:57Speaker 7: middle of Missouri.
- 34:58Speaker 1: And the way those two are.
- 35:00Speaker 7: Connected was from a stint in prison, So that tells
- 35:04Speaker 7: you a little bit about the character and the kind
- 35:07Speaker 7: of people that they are. Jimmy Rodgers is rumored to
- 35:11Speaker 7: have been a hit man before. It's in fact, it's
- 35:14Speaker 7: something that he regularly bragged about, and that's why Wayne
- 35:18Speaker 7: ultimately brought him in because he was afraid he wouldn't
- 35:22Speaker 7: be able to go through with it, so he needed
- 35:24Speaker 7: a guy who has done it. Before and would do
- 35:27Speaker 7: it again, and he knew that he'd be the one
- 35:30Speaker 7: to actually kill her and go through with it.
- 35:32Speaker 1: So fifty one year old Curtis Wayne Wright went to
- 35:36Speaker 1: school all the way through with Mark Savers childhood friends
- 35:39Speaker 1: in Missouri, and Savers moves to Florida, meets Teresa, they marry. Then,
- 35:47Speaker 1: when Mark Savers decides he needs a murder done and
- 35:52Speaker 1: he needs a hit man, Curtis Wayne Wright contacts Jimmy
- 35:56Speaker 1: Ray Rogers, who he met in jail twenty nine year
- 35:59Speaker 1: od Rogers aka the Hammer. Now, he would be so
- 36:05Speaker 1: easy for these two to blame Mark Severs to take
- 36:09Speaker 1: the heat off of them, But then enter another witness.
- 36:14Speaker 13: Less than an hour later, in the early morning hours
- 36:17Speaker 13: of Monday, June twenty ninth, the GPS shows Jimmy and
- 36:20Speaker 13: Wayne on the highway headed northbound for the seventeen hour
- 36:24Speaker 13: drive back to Missouri. The electronic trail would eventually lead
- 36:30Speaker 13: detectives to Jimmy Ray Rogers' door. Just like Wayne, he
- 36:36Speaker 13: denied being involved, but when they pulled in, Jimmy's girlfriend Taylor,
- 36:41Speaker 13: what a story she had to tell.
- 36:43Speaker 1: He hasd her to throw out parts of his cell
- 36:45Speaker 1: phone in a jumpsuit. What a couple of demons.
- 36:49Speaker 10: You know.
- 36:50Speaker 1: If the killer is the devil, these two are his minions.
- 36:54Speaker 1: Now we know that Curtis Wayne Right, the Childhood Brand,
- 37:00Speaker 1: pleads guilty to second degree murder. Then Rogers, so called
- 37:06Speaker 1: the Hammer, goes to trial and is convicted of second
- 37:11Speaker 1: degree murder. But the case against Mark Savers take a listen.
- 37:16Speaker 11: In the Circuit Court of the twentieth Judicial Circuit in
- 37:19Speaker 11: and for Lee County, Florida, Criminal Action, State of Florida
- 37:23Speaker 11: versus Mark D. Sivers, Case Number fifteen cf. Six seven
- 37:27Speaker 11: to three b verdict. We the jury find as follows
- 37:31Speaker 11: as to the defendant in this case count one first
- 37:34Speaker 11: degree murder. The defendant is guilty of first degree.
- 37:37Speaker 1: Murder, Mark Savers challenging his death sentence. Who do think it?
- 37:42Speaker 7: Well?
- 37:43Speaker 5: Me?
- 37:44Speaker 12: For one?
- 37:45Speaker 1: We wait as justice unfolds. Goodbye friend,