Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Friday Night Special: Gorgeous Mom/Doctor Found Bludgeoned Dead on Kitchen Floor. Hubby Appeals Death Sentence

Episode Date: November 1, 2025

A beautiful and brilliant medical doctor, Dr. Teresa Sievers, takes her family on a vacation trip to visit extended relatives with her husband and her two little girls.  Teresa comes home early, leaving family behind in Connecticut so she can go to work the next morning. Mark Sievers calls a co-worker of his wife to go to the home and check on her when she doesn't show up.  Dr. Teresa Sievers was found brutally bludgeoned, still wearing the outfit, complete with high-heeled shoes, she wore home from the airport Sunday night. The kitchen is covered in blood, a hammer by her side.  Husband Mark Sievers is ultimately charged with murder, accused of arranging for his childhood friend, Curtis Wayne Wright, to murder his wife. Wright pleaded guilty to 2nd-degree murder, cooperating with prosecutors in Mark Sievers's trial.  Sievers is convicted and now is appealing his death sentence.   Joining Nancy Grace to discuss the case: Ashley Willcott: Judge and trial attorney, Anchor on Court TV, www.ashleywillcott.com  James Shelnutt: Attorney, served 27 years as Atlanta Metro Major Case Detective, SWAT Officer Bethany Marshall: Psychologist  Dr. Tim Gallagher: Medical Examiner   Amanda Hall: Reporter, WINK TV, Ft Myers, Florida   Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Well, it's Friday night, and it is special. It's the 10th anniversary of a murder that shocked not just Southwest Florida, but beyond. Do you recall the name Dr. Teresa Severs because I will never forget it? Her husband, Mark Severs, and his high school buddy who was a doppelganger, get together and murder his wife, the mother of their two little girls. She was everything, just precious, cute as a button, a tiny, diminutive woman, the mother of the two, she was a medical doctor. Listen, she not only brought home the bacon, but fried it up and put it on the table.

You see what I'm saying? She supported him. How did he repay her by killing her? I mean, and believe it or not, Mark Severs, the killer, now wants out of jail on a pill. Surprised, I'm not. I'm Nancy Grace. This is crime stories. I want to thank you for being with us.

He just won't go away, will he? after evidence proved him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Mark Severs now decides, hey, I want to get out of jail. He should have thought about that before he had his wife murdered in this elaborate plan. Ridiculous. His main point of contention is Jimmy Rogers, one of the convicted killers hired by Severs to murder his wife. Now, Jimmy Rogers claimed in an interview with Wink, W-I-N-K, that there was no conspiracy and accused his former friend Curtis Wayne Wright, the high school doppelganger, of lying during his plea deal testimony against husband Mark Severs. Now, if you will recall, the high school friend, now convicted felon, Curtis Wayne Wright, testified in court.

He and Rogers, the killer, were hired by husband Mark Severs, and they were promised a huge payout of life insurance money to kill Teresa Severs. High school friend Curtis Wright said Dr. Severs arrived home earlier than expected from an out-of-town trip, And he and Rogers used a ball-pane hammer to murder her. This tiny little female doctor who had these gorgeous twin girls. Quote from high school friend, I hit her with the hammer. I actually think she thought I was Mark because she said, why? Oh, this is what happened to Dr. Teresa Severs. I'm there.

I had a friend's house. He's out of town and I came here to check him with wife and she's dead on the floor. Okay. Okay. Stay on the line. Oh, sir. Hold on. Yeah.

Yes. Okay. You're doing very well. Good job. Just a moment we're going to connect you. They're going to ask the address. A.M. L.S. Empire. What is the address of the emergency? 21034 Jarvis.

Jarvis. Okay. And is that a house for an apartment, sir? The house. Tell me exactly what happened. My friend, Pritha Severs, she's a doctor. I'm a doctor. She came home last night. Her husband is in Connecticut, and she was supposed to go to work in 9 and They called me, and I was on my way in the works like swung by, and she's dead on the floor.

And there's a hammer at the side, and she's bashed in the back of the head. You are hearing the 911 call from a coworker, Dr. Petrides, telling dispatch that his dear friend, a beautiful mother of two girls, a beloved doctor who practiced holistic medicine throughout that Florida region, to many, many women is dead on the floor. First thing I noticed, not only the injuries to, Dr. Teresa Sievers, a tiny woman about 4-11 or 5 feet tall. She was still wearing the shoes, I call them stiletto,

really high heels she'd work because she was so short that she was wearing the night before, the Sunday night before, she came home from a family vacation with relatives to Connecticut, including her husband and two little girls. That told me a lot about the timeline. Seemingly, she still had on her clothes. She hadn't gone back to her bedroom to take her. bath, they put on PJs. She was ambushed right as she came home from the airport while someone

following her. Does someone know her flight plan? Or was it just a burglary gone wrong? Let's start at the very beginning. Take a listen to more of that 911 call. Sam the line with me, sir, okay? Yes. Sam alone, Mickey. Sheriff officer, are you on the way? Yes, no. Okay. And so you said you're a doctor? Yes, I am. Okay. Are you with her now? I'm outside of the house because I don't know if there's anybody in the house. Okay. All right. So how old is your reason?

Uh, she's 50s. 47 is. All right, sir. And is she awake? No, she's down before. She's cold. And we'll put back in the gas in and there's blood everywhere. Okay.

All right. So I do have paramedics, fire department. Also, law enforcement is on the line with us. Okay. They're going to be going out, okay? Okay. Okay. Okay. I want you to stay on the line one moment.

I'm going to stay here until I get here because, you know, I don't know if you're still in health. Okay. It was right. All right. All right. It's just stay on the line. Okay. The sheriff's office has questions and they're going to come to you on what to do next.

Okay. Sir, are you inside the residence then? No, I'm not. I'm standing in the driveway. Okay. And then when you walked inside the house, you said the blood was dry or what did you say? Yeah, half the blood is dry, half the sweat. She's cold.

She's dead cold. You know, I can't help. but analyze that 911 call and this coworker, Dr. Patridi, seems very, very calm. I want to go to Dr. Bethany Marshall's psychoanalyst joining us from L.A. You can find it at Dr. bethanymarshal.com. Dr. Bethany, I was the same way in court. No matter what happened, at least in front of a jury, I would stay extremely calm, even once when a prisoner lunged at me with a shank.

Didn't make it, by the way. But long story short, not in other areas of my life, but I guess when it's your duty and you're trained a certain way, you just carry on. What do you make of the 911 call, Dr. Bethany? Well, Nancy, let me tell you a little story. When I was doing your HLN show, I had a patient who tried to kill herself. She overdosed on benzodiazepines. She called me up, she into like a sort of a coma-like state.

I called 911, and my biggest fear was that the 911 call was going to be played on the evening news. So I was very formal in how I reported it. I said, this is Dr. Bethany Marshall. This is my license number. This is where I got this call. This is the woman's address. Here's her diagnosis. Here are the benzodiazepines, the number of pills she took on down the road because I knew that that was a very formalized report that this could be played in court.

This could be played on the evening news, as I just said. So this is a doctor who walks into a crime scene. The woman's back of her head is bashed in. She's still wearing her stiletto shoes. he is the first one on the scene. So, yes, Dr. Kim Gallagher is correct. You have to be authoritative. You have to be calm in the midst of the storm.

But there's also this anxiety about how you are going to come across as you report the incident. You are the first responder. You're the person who's going to be questioned. So how you make that verbal report is extremely important. With me, an all-star panel today to break it down, put it back together again. Of course, in addition to Dr. Bethany Marshall, With me, Judge and Trial lawyer, anchor, Court TV, Ashley Wilcott. You can find her at Ashley Wilcott.com. James Shelna, 27 years Atlanta Metro Major, K-Swat Officer, now lawyer.

But right now, to Amanda Hall. Special guest joining us, investigative reporter from W.I.N.K. TV, Fort Myers, Florida, who has been on the story since the get-go. At the beginning, Amanda, let's just take what we know. Tell me about the crime scene. For those of you just joining us, a stunning development in the case of a murdered mom and doctor, Dr. Teresa Severs. Remind those listeners that don't already know, Amanda Hall, when cops came in, what did they find at the scene? Nancy, when police came in in June of 2015, they came inside the Severs home, and they found blood in the kitchen, and they found Teresa Severs bludgeon to death. ball end of a hammer.

Blood. Amanda, Amanda, Amanda, Amanda, Amanda, Amanda Hall joining me, W-I-N-K, when you say blood in the kitchen, I mean, you know, this morning, I was chopping up green beans and I have to chop the tips off. Every single one or Lucy won't eat it. And I cut my finger. Okay, we're not talking about that kind of blood, Nancy. What do you mean by blood?

Just a tiny drop. Tell me the whole thing, Amanda. Nancy, there was so much blood in there. You know, when we have interviewed. investigators and detectives who were initially on this case. Some of them had never seen anything like it. The amount of blood was stunning. When you look at the report, 17 crescent-shaped cuts to her head. I mean, she was bludgeoned over and over and over and over, so you can just imagine the amount of blood inside of that home. What else did they find, Amanda? The other thing they found was that

the crime scene was staged to make it look like a break-in, to make it look like a robbery. The thing is, Nancy, they stuffed cash in different parts of the home, and there was a whole cachet of guns that were untouched. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. You know how when you think you squash a roach and then suddenly, Finally, there it is again. Same thing here, husband Mark Severs. I thought he was put away for life, but here he is again.

Now he wants to get out on appeal. Let me just have a quick refresher on what happened to the beautiful young mom of two, Dr. Teresa Severs. The hammer sitting next to her and you had left it. Did you touch anything? No, I did not touch anything. I touched her. I shook her a little bit.

Okay. All right. One moment. You're doing really well. So the last time you had seen her is what time? Probably three weeks ago. Two or three weeks ago. Okay. And you said she returned today? I don't know when she came back, but she was supposed to go back. She was supposed to go to work today at 9 o'clock. And her husband called me from Connecticut to say she didn't show up at work. And she's not answering her phone. And he checked her. He tried calling. Try calling him. He was going to call her mom. And he said, she was swinging by can you swing by and I knocked on the front door and nobody answered

and the lights were on I can see her purse is on the countertop and she didn't answer I pound and pounded and he gave me the key code to get into the garage door I opened the garage door and and the door leading to it was open and I walked and I just opened up the door and walked in the door and she did have on the floor welcome back everybody I'm nancy gray's that is the 911 call of a co-worker Dr. Petrides who shows up when this gorgeous young mom of two little girls, Dr. Teresa Severs, very well known in the Bonita Springs area, practiced mostly with women, and had a very holistic method toward medicine, very inclusive to the whole community, never turned a person away, tiny, diminutive woman.

I think she was about 4.11, and that's important because she always wore high heels, okay, and to, you know, give her a little height. and she still had on her heels, or at least one of them, when she was found, Dad, she had just flown in from Connecticut, her husband and children still in Connecticut. And normally, you look at the husband first, husband, lover, boyfriend, X. He's in Connecticut with the children on a vacation with her family. It was only when she didn't show up to work that morning

that coworkers became concerned and went to her home. Again, I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. And you know, Ashley Wilcott, Judge and Trial Lawyer, Anchor Court TV, Ashley Wilcott.com. Ashley, you and I both have a girl. And imagine two of them. You've got two boys and a girl.

I have a boy and a girl. And John David is always just, you know, happy, go lucky, carefree. You know, he just wants to go outside and jump on the trampoline. He wants to play with his friends on the computer. You know, nothing. He'll eat whatever I fix. He'll wear whatever I lay out. He didn't care if his hair is come.

Nothing. He's just perfect. Girls are a whole other ballgame. And you need your mother. You need a loving, guiding hand. Somebody that can say, stand up, don't walk like a field hand. And they don't get hurt. You're loving them.

You're helping them through all life's curveballs. These two little girls are with dad at a Connecticut vacation with extended family. their mom is gone. I mean, how do you break something like that to two little girls, Ashley? Yeah, you know, I don't know, Nancy. You can't even imagine because depending on the age, they don't even necessarily understand what that means. And so every day they're going to still look for their mom

and wonder where their mom is and try to grasp what it means that she's literally gone forever. But the other thing that bothers me is, of course, it happens that one spouse is somewhere with the kids and the other spouse has to travel back to work. But this to me was the beginning of the story to say he's in Connecticut with the kids. She's here at home and happens to then get killed the first night. Does this mean anything or not?

Take a listen to the questions the 911 operator poses to Dr. Petrides. Okay. And so you were there because they asked you to take care of the house. Is that correct? Mark, her husband, called me. to say, please, can you check on her because it's not like her not to show up to work in New Lake. Okay, so, and I know you told him before, but when, um, after he called the check on his wife because if she wasn't at work, correct.

All right, and in, I would talk to him one. Okay. And he gave me the code number. He sounded a little, you know, whatever. And he received the call from work. saying she wasn't there? I don't know. Okay, that's fine.

You know, he's her office manager. Oh, she's the office manager of his business? No, he's the office manager of her medical practice. Okay, right there, we're getting a lot of clarification. Did you hear that? To Amanda Hall, our special guest joining us from W-I-N-K-W-W-K-W-W-K-W-W-T-V-T-Vort Myers. This is in her backyard.

So, this is a common misconception. the 911 operator is trying to figure out how this calm, cool, collected co-worker, a male coworker, happens to show up at the home to find a dead body. And he says that the husband, Mark Severs, out of town, far away, calls and says he found out she wasn't at work and had him go over and check on Dr. Severs, his wife, gives him the burglary code, the burglar alarm code. Why would he know that? Because he's the office manager.

and at first you hear the 911 call operators say, oh, she's his office manager, and he says no. Amanda Hall, tell me, what's your understanding is how did Dr. Petrides end up on the scene to find a dead body? Because I always look at who finds the body and who calls 911 because that tells me a lot, circumstantially. Yes, it does, Nancy. And the reason that he was there is because he was called by her husband, Mark.

Mark was alerted that she hadn't shown up for work, which is very unlike her. You know, Teresa flew home a day ahead of the rest of the family just so that she could be at work Monday morning. She had a late flight in Sunday night and was to see patients Monday morning. So when Monday morning rolled around and she wasn't there, the staff called Mark, who ran the office and said, hey, we haven't heard from Dr. Sievers. She's not here. I want you to take a listen to what our friends at ABC News says. Severs returned to Florida alone, calling her husband to let him know she'd arrive safely.

When she didn't show up for work Monday morning, worried colleagues called police who discovered her body. During our hearing our friends there at local ABC, the crime scene overwhelming. But as Amanda Hall just told you, the crime scene seemed staged because, No money was taken. There was a cash of guns there as well. Amanda Hall, I've never known there to have been alleged any type of sex attack. Is that correct? Correct. So she's bludgeon dead in the kitchen. And it's my understanding. Her pocketbook was there too. Right, Amanda? Right. She came home, pulled into the garage, and went from the garage into the house, and that's where she was attacked. You know, my first thought that when this happened was the

burglar alarm, James Sheldnut. And James, this is not a plug, but I'm coming out with a book in June called Don't Be a Victim. And I had to research, and I included this case, case after case after case regarding burglar alarms, locking your doors. That night, that day, I heard about Dr. Teresa Severs being murdered. My first question was, what about a burglar alarm? It's hard for me to believe that a medical doctor,

with an office manager husband and two little babies to take care of doesn't have a burglar alarm. I mean, you can get a burglar alarm for $99. It covers your whole house. And why wouldn't they have a burglar alarm? Then I found out, James, they did have a burglar alarm. And that was a brain twister for me, James. Yeah, absolutely.

And so from everything I've researched, they indicate that Mark Severs had actually told, I believe it was either his mother or her mother, not to set the burglar alarm because he was afraid that the pets may set the alarm off. Husband Mark Severs convicted in the murder of his wife, Teresa, the mother of his children, wants Rogers, Curtis Rogers, to testify for him and his attempt to get off death row. Hmm. Did anybody think these two might be helping each other? Has that dawned on anyone? Well, those two can plot and plan and scheme all they want, gnashing their teeth and twitching their tails.

But this is what we learned in court as to the death, the murder of Dr. Severs. Severs was a popular fixture in her community. She had the quality like a mother, Teresa. She cared and she had nothing more than love. If she had nothing else to offer, it would be her care and her love for the patient. I'm thinking about Dr. Teresa Severs, and you were just hearing about how she was often called Mother Teresa because of the way that she treated her patients in the community. That was ABC News reporter Rina Ninen. But I want you to take a listen to something very odd that happened at the funeral.

We were seeing her sisters on one side, and the look that we were getting wasn't a look of, um, sadness, it was look of hatred. Frank Hayes and his wife Sandra say, the look didn't just come from Dr. Seaver's sisters. They were getting the same look from the grieving widower. I hugged him. What do you say? I said, Mark, I am so sorry.

I don't have words to say to you. And he squeezed me so tight and nothing came out of his mouth. Then Sandra hugged him. And when Mark hugged Sandra, his teeth grinned it and it wasn't nothing of sorrow or sadness the look was hatred

I stepped back I saw holy you are hearing our friend I know you recognize that voice Aaron Moriarty at CBS 48 hours a look of hate at the funeral and Dr. Bethany Marshall psychologist joining me out of L.A.

Dr. Bethany it's not that looking back he concocted this at the time he said he recoiled and was shocked at the look on the husband's face. Why? Did he somehow blame her family? Why? Why would hatred be a part of a funeral?

That's the first thing. After a death that's unsolved, you start looking at the crime scene, then at the funeral. Nancy, can you imagine going to a funeral? Teresa Severs is dead. Her husband's there. You expect him to be crying and grieving. being, and instead he's looking at a former employee with hatred. It tells me, first of all, he's worried about all the wrong things,

but he's been worried about all the wrong things all along. He disarms the alarm because of the pets. His wife's coming home alone. He stays behind with the girls. If he's a real man, why not go home with your wife and help facilitate her going back to work? He's the office manager. Well, she's out there seeing patients. I mean, on the face of it, nothing wrong.

with that, but he's sending her out to work while he's doing the easy work behind the desk. I mean, all along this whole story, this husband has never acted like a husband. So the fact that he is glaring hatefully at one of the attendees of the funeral tells me that he's actually trying, if he indeed is the one who did it, he's trying to shift the blame onto somebody else. Let me go to Amanda Hall, special guest joining us from W-I-N-K-TV, Fort Myers, Florida. Amanda, what do we know about the husband? And yes, I know he was in Connecticut at the time.

What do we know about Mark Severs? Where is he from? What's his deal? Well, we know that the two met while he was a nurse, and she was a new doctor practicing in St. Petersburg, Florida. We know that they married very quickly, had their first daughter, shortly after they were married on the beach. They had two girls, 11 and 8 years old at the time.

and he became the office manager of her practice, propping her up to do what she did best, and that was treating people with a blend of traditional medicine and holistic medicine. And he was really the more of the caregiver for the two girls. Neighbors said that they always saw him, you know, outside, playing with them and attending to the two daughters. Where did you tell me he's from, Amanda, to start with? Mark Severs grew up in a little small town in Missouri. Hmm. Okay.

I want to go to Dr. Tim Gallagher, medical examiner. I want you to describe, if you could, the wounds to Dr. Severs' body. And again, there was no sex attack and no theft or burglary from her person or the home. So her wounds were concentrated mostly on the back of her head. So they were the crescent-shaped impressions that a half, would make when they strike soft flesh. So she had a lacerations to the back of her head. It was extensive bleeding.

There was physical brain damage done. The shards of the broken skull had penetrated into her brain, and there was massive bleeding. What did you just say about shards of the skull? Well, when the skull is broken, they are broken into very sharp pieces. And as the attack continues, as the hammer keeps now striking these pieces of bone, these loose pieces of sharp bone are now being driven into the actual brain, causing the tearing of the brain tissue and cutting of the blood vessels that supply blood to the brain. I'm just trying to think about this massive attack on this tiny woman. and Amanda Hall, reporter W-I-N-K-TV in Fort Myers, Amanda, most of the blows were to the back of the head. Did she ever even get a chance to fight back?

No, Nancy, she didn't. You know, she rolled her suitcase into an attack, an ambush. So her suitcase was still sitting there? Her suitcase was still in the garage. She had just, you know, walked in the door, hadn't had a chance to unpack anything, hadn't even had a chance to chance. your clothes or do anything. This is telling me so much about the attack. James Shelnut, 27 years, Atlanta Metro, major case, SWAT officer, now lawyer, James

Shelnut, somebody, I mean, it's no coincidence that somebody is right there in the kitchen as she walks in from the garage, parks her car in the garage, gets her suitcase out of the car, still sitting there in the garage, she walks in the kitchen and bam, she's attacked. Nothing stolen, nothing taken from her, not her pocket. book, not her cell phone, nothing, all that money they had hidden in various spots, the guns that the husband kept, nothing taken, no sex attack, but someone is lurking right there. She can't even get past the kitchen. They're waiting for her to come through that garage door. Yeah, all of this adds up to the fact that you need to start looking at someone who is closely connected to this

victim. This is not something random. There's too many coincidences. The coincidence about the husband, you know, not flying back, the coincidence about the alarm not being set. She walks into a house. There's no other motive evident. At that point, you start where you traditionally start. Crime stories with Nancy Grace. husband turned killer Mark Severs' legal team is continuing their death sentence appeal as a new hearing approaches. I thought he was gone. I thought he would be in jail the rest of his life until he got the death penalty.

But no, he's back causing a stink. Recall Severs was found guilty of hiring two men his high school buddy Curtis Wright, a.k.a. a doppel ganger. They look exactly alike. And Jimmy Rogers, a near-du-well, to carry out a savage killing of his wife there at the couple's home in Bonita Springs, Florida. Why? He didn't want to work like all of us have to do. He wanted the payout on her $4.43 million life insurance policy. Right was a longtime friend of Severs, as I mentioned before, and Rogers, the two of them carried out the attack while the husband Mark Severs made himself scarce and gave himself an alibi. Well, I don't care what those killers are planning behind bars. This is what I know

happened at trial. Crash bags, flushable wet wipes, black towels, black shoes, and a locked picking kit. They paid cash for their purchase with a $100 bill. Who in the hay are these two? You're hearing CBS Aaron Moriarty describing two guys, Curtis Wainwright and Jimmy Ray Rogers. Coincidentally, Curtis Wainwright, long-time friend of Dr. Severs' husband, Mark. Not only that, if you look at the two of them side to side, they look like twin brothers. They'd often joke that they're brothers from another mother. They look identical to each other, and they grew up together and went to high school together. What were they doing in town?

What were they doing near Teresa Siever's home? A real red flag as then raised. Listen to Aaron Moriarty. When investigators uncovered five life insurance policies for Teresa, totally more than $4 million, it was a red flag. So was that trip Mark made to Missouri to be Wayne Wright's best man. And as it turns out, the other suspect Jimmy Ray Rogers was also a wedding guest. Taylor's shoemaker, Jimmy's girlfriend, claimed this was a murder for hire and that Jimmy was supposed to be paid $10,000.

Eight months after Teresa Severs was killed, Wayne Wright, facing a possible death sentence, suddenly turned on his brother from another mother, and he took a deal. You're hearing our friend Aaron Moriarty straight out to Amanda Hall reporter WI-N-K-TV. Myers. How did these three hook up? Tell me the whole thing, Amanda Hall. Okay, Wayne Wright is a childhood friend, as you heard, of Mark Severs. They called themselves brothers from another mother, but they really looked like real brothers. They looked like twins. So, Wayne Wright is getting married, and Mark Severs is his best man. And they started planning this while he was there for the wedding. Mark is saying that, his wife is going to leave him and he's worried that he can't pay to battle her for custody of their two daughters

and that his only option is for Teresa to die. And so he hires Wayne to do the job. He says he'll pay him $100,000 from the insurance money. And then Wayne brings in Jimmy the Rogers Hammer, a man that he met while they were both serving time in prison for other crimes. So, So Mark hires Wayne, and Wayne brings in the hammer. Okay, now that's a heck of a nickname. You know, I've got to go to shrink on that. Dr. Bethany Marshall, the hammer. Well, it's interesting he called himself the hammer because that's what he used to bludgeon the victim to death.

And he did it quite aggressively, quite maliciously. And Nancy, this was overkill. When Dr. Gallagher was talking about shards of the skull in the brain, I realized they could have hit her once and killed her. kill they hit her multiple times so jimmy the hammer has this fetishized interest in using a hammer on a woman imagine what you want from that but this is an extremely aggressive man amanda to backtrack how many times is she bludgeon with the hammer dozens uh at least 17 um we know from the autopsy report that there were 17 crescent-shaped wounds to the back of her head to dr tim gallager 17. I thought there were 18.

Well, sometimes it's difficult to say exactly how many there are when the number is so high. A lot of them are intersecting, and a lot of them obscure the one underneath it. So 17 is probably a very conservative number that they could definitively say, but often it's quite more than that.

I'm just so repelled at this. 17, at least 17 blows to the back of her head with what I understand is a claw hammer. on this tiny, tiny little lady to Ashley Wilcott, Judge and Trial lawyer, Anchor Court TV. Ashley, did you hear what Amanda Hall said, that according to these two co-defendants, of course,

who knows if they're telling the truth, they're shifting all the blame to somebody else and off themselves. Look at him, not at me. They say that at one of their weddings, he basically said, we're going to split, we're going to battle for custody. I have to kill her. Why not just have joint custody, Ashley? Isn't that a great question that we continue to entertain on this show because their defendant after defendant chooses to kill someone instead of getting a divorce or having joint custody? You know, who knows why? You can't answer the why. You can only look at what is the evidence show and going after the person that the evidence show did such a terrible thing.

You know, just thinking through all of the evidence to Amanda Hall, reporter W-I-N-K-TV as a former prosecutor, you have to assess the witnesses and see they're false. And here, these two, Curtis Wayne Wright, the childhood friend of the husband, Mark Severs, all the way through high school together is an identical twin to Severs, and Jimmy Ray Rogers, nicknamed the Hammer, just 29 years old, their POCs, pieces of crap, okay, technical legal term. So why should I believe them? What can you tell me about these two?

Wayne Wright and Jimmy Rogers are both 1,100 miles away from Benita Springs in a small town in the middle of Missouri. And the way those two are connected was from a stint in prison. So that tells you a little bit about the character and the kind of people that they are. Jimmy Rogers is rumored to have been a hitman before. In fact, it's something that he regularly bragged about. and that's why Wayne ultimately brought him in because he was afraid he wouldn't be able to go through with it. So he needed a guy who has done it before and would do it again, and he knew that he'd be the one to actually kill her and go through with it.

So 51-year-old Curtis Wayne Wright went to school all the way through with Mark Severs, childhood friends in Missouri. And Severs moves to Florida meets Teresa. They marry. Then, when Mark Severs decides he needs a murder done and he needs a hitman, Curtis Wayne Wright contacts Jimmy Ray Rogers, who he met in jail, 29-year-old Rogers, aka The Hammer. Now, it would be so easy for these two to blame Mark Severs, to take the heat off of them, but then enter another witness. Less than an hour later, in the early morning hours of Monday, June 29th, the GPS shows Jimmy and Wayne on the highway headed northbound for the 17-hour drive back to Missouri. The electronic trail would eventually lead detectives to Jimmy Ray Rogers' door.

Just like Wayne, he denied being involved. But when they pulled in Jimmy's girlfriend, Taylor, what a story she had to tell. He asked her to throw out parts of his cell phone and a jumpsuit. What a couple of demons. You know, if the killer is the devil, these two are his minions. Now we know that Curtis Wayne Wright, the childhood friend, please guilty to second degree murder. Then Rogers, so-called the hammer, goes to trial and is convicted of second-degree murder.

But in the case against Mark Severs, take a listen. In the circuit court of the 20th Judicial Circuit, in and for Lee County, Florida, criminal action. State of Florida versus Mark D. Severs, case number 15 CF 673B. Verdict, we, the jury, find as follows as to the defendant in this case. Count one first-degree murder, the defendant is guilty of first-degree murder. Mark Severs challenging his death sentence. Who to thunk it? Well, me, for one. We wait as justice unfolds.

Goodbye, friend. This is an I-Heart podcast.