[woman speaking]
[Wendy] Oh, my God. That's so cute.
She loved this house.
She was so excited to move in
and have a great place for Josh to grow up in.
[Wendy chuckles]
[Josh] I was just really happy that we were able to do all these things as a family.
I don't think I could've asked for anything more.
I was just such a happy kid.
[phone rings]
[Josh] We knew from the minute we got that phone call
that life was never going to be the same.
[operator speaking]
[Wendy] Looking over my shoulder,
into the backyard, looking to see,
jeez, you know, is he here? Is he gonna come after us?
[Josh] These are the kind of things you only see in movies.
And it's our life right now.
[man speaking]
[narrator] It's fall 1997.
[woman speaking]
[narrator] 30-year-old Brian Davidson is renovating his home
in Lynn, Massachusetts.
Brian's 28-year-old girlfriend, Wendi Balestrier
and her two-year-old son, Joshua, lend a hand.
[Brian speaking]
- [Wendi speaking] - [Brian speaking]
[Wendi speaking]
[Wendy] That camcorder was a pretty cool thing to have
so, she tried to capture,
you know, everything that she could
so that we'd always have those memories to look back on.
[narrator] Remodeling the upstairs is a breeze for Brian.
He owns his own construction company.
[Josh speaking]
[Brian speaking]
[narrator] And soon he, Wendi and Josh
will live together, as a family, under one roof.
[Wendy] Josh is trying to help his mom,
get his bedroom,
his big boy bedroom, ready.
[Wendi speaking]
[Wendy] I know when Wendi and Brian moved in together,
and they were putting Joshua's room together,
I know that my sister was pretty excited
to have a father figure for her son.
She never really had a relationship
with Joshua's biological dad.
[Wendy] Brian was amazing.
He took Joshua in, as if he was his own son.
[Josh] My parents bought me this toy drill,
so I could be just like my dad,
and help out.
I probably, to this day, still know how to use a drill,
so I don't know what I was thinking back then.
He always just showed me the love and care
that you want from a parent.
Just from the minute he came into my life.
[Sandi] Wendi was born on March 13, 1969,
in Stoneham, Massachusetts, to my sister Pat,
and her husband, Al Balestrier.
She had two brothers, the twins, David and Danny.
She loved, loved, to tease her brothers.
They, absolutely, were always fighting
with each other,
but it was a typical family.
Wendi was about three years old
when Al and my sister Pat divorced.
[narrator] Wendi makes a new best friend
when her father, Al, remarries.
[Wendy] When Wendi and I first met,
I just remember how excited I was to have a sister.
Because I was an only child, it was amazing.
And to also have the same name.
But she was Wendi with an "I",
and I was Wendy with a "Y".
Wendi and I always considered each other sisters.
We never thought about it being a stepsister.
She was just always happy,
and always saw the bright side,
and she would just be there for you.
[narrator] Wendy loves karaoke.
Her friends introduce her to Brian, on a night out.
[Wendy] When she met Brian I believe that,
she thought that he was the one.
My sister and Brian got married November 21, 1998,
and little Joshua was the ring bearer.
He was cute as a button.
Just happy, smiling.
Brian really helped Wendi establish normalcy
for Joshua to have a stable family environment.
[Brian speaking]
Christmas 1998, would have been
our first Christmas together
since they got married.
[toy vacuum buzzing]
[Josh] Oh, it was that toy vacuum.
Back when I thought it was fun to clean the house.
Wait, wait.
[woman speaking]
[Brian speaking]
[woman speaking]
[Wendy] My sister, Wendi, loved Christmas.
I used to get mad at her, telling her,
"Hey, you know, don't spend that much money.
He's not gonna remember, he's small,"
but she didn't care.
[narrator] Josh delivers presents to his uncles.
[Josh] This is back when I couldn't tell my two uncles apart.
I couldn't tell you which one's Danny
and which one's David in that video.
[Brian speaking]
[Josh] In the summer of 1999,
we took a day trip
to the Roger Williams Zoo, in Rhode Island.
And I remember it was my first time being to the zoo,
and I was so amazed by all the animals.
[indistinct chatter]
My mom would, you know,
explain to me what all the different exhibits were,
and what all the animals were,
and all these different fun facts about them.
I was just such a happy kid.
There was really nothing else I could ask for
for my childhood.
[dog barks]
[narrator] Fast forward to April 23, 2000.
[Wendi speaking]
[narrator] The Davidsons prepare to welcome a new member of the family.
[Josh] When I found out that my mom was pregnant,
I was so happy to become a big brother.
[Wendy] My sister definitely loved being pregnant.
She was only four foot nine,
so there wasn't much space for the baby.
Like magic.
[Wendy] She was just so excited to start her family,
and have a foundation that she could call her own.
[Brian speaking]
[Sandi] Little Bryan was born on May 3, 2000.
[Brian speaking]
[Sandi] Wendi was so excited when Bryan was born.
But she also was worried that Joshua would be jealous
of little Bryan.
He actually was very good with the baby,
but I would always hear Wendi saying,
"Be careful, be easy with your brother.
You gotta go careful. He's just a baby."
[singing indistinctly]
Bryan was baptized in early 2001
at St. Theresa's church, in Billerica, Massachusetts.
[Brian speaking]
My mom is definitely enjoying watching me get wet,
uh, just making me laugh.
I'm in my dad's arms, yeah,
you see me at one point,
lean into him and say, "Get me out of here."
When we were kids growing up,
we always wanted to have our own family.
She was just over the moon.
She truly was, to have her family together.
Two years later, in spring 2002,
I had my second birthday.
Josh and I loved sports.
We were competitive.
We were brothers and we were always going at it,
always trying to one-up each other,
just trying to be better than each other.
[spectators cheering]
My mom was always my biggest fan
when I was playing sports growing up.
She would be the one in the crowd
cheering and screaming.
[David speaking]
[crowd cheering]
[Josh] Basically sacrificing their entire weekends,
throughout the fall and spring,
to make sure that we could play every sport we wanted
and that we didn't miss anything.
[narrator] Brian and Wendi fit their busy parenting schedule
around their full-time jobs.
[Sandi] So, Wendi was always hard worker.
It was in her blood,
and she even wanted to do another job, and do two jobs,
just so she would have the money for the boys,
and she never, ever went without for the boys.
It was stressful on her, too, though,
because she was trying to balance her personal life,
with her work life.
Brian worked long hours because he owned his own company,
so it did put a lot of strain on their relationship.
[narrator] The cracks in Wendi and Brian's marriage
are starting to show by Christmas 2004.
- [Brian speaking] - [Wendi speaking]
[Brian speaking]
[Sandi] They were growing apart,
they were having, you know, quarrels and fights
and she didn't want the kids to be affected.
[woman speaking]
Ah, that's nice.
[Brian speaking]
[Josh] As you're growing up,
you don't really understand fully
what relationships are like.
So, as a kid I just kinda knew that, hey, that was my mom,
that was my dad, they're together, they love each other.
In the fall of 2005,
my parents sat my brother Bryan and I down,
and they told us that they were going to get a divorce,
and that there was going to be
some pretty drastic changes in our lives.
[Wendy] I know my sister.
She was heartbroken about the divorce.
It was really hard for Wendi.
Wendi had full custody,
but Brian could always see the boys
whenever he wanted to.
It was hard.
Hard being a single mom with two kids,
and taking care of a house by herself now.
[narrator] Wendy puts on a brave face
for the sake of her family.
[Wendy] And this is a video
of my daughter's birthday party.
[woman speaking]
[man speaking]
[Wendy] And there's my sister.
Helping out with all the kids.
That was right after she had had her divorce
and she still came.
Happy as can be.
Taking care of everybody.
[man speaking]
[laughs] They loved her.
They loved this.
I just remember her laughing.
She just loved making people happy.
Following the divorce,
Wendi worked for a company called AHA Consulting.
I think she was just pretty excited to start working on herself
and to better herself as a mom and as a human being.
[Sandi] She worked very hard. She started as a receptionist,
and she worked her way up
and she became an accountant for them.
Well, after Wendi got the promotion,
she believed that she could do anything.
[Josh] In 2014,
around the time that my mom had gotten this promotion at work,
she moved back in with her brother Danny, in North Andover.
[Stacy] It was kind of a win-win for her.
She was able to move back in with her brother,
and they were able to split the rent
and so she was helping him as well as herself.
[narrator] The fresh start prompts Wendy
to look for love.
My mom, like, she dated, and I mean,
she had a few boyfriends from here or there
that we had met but, you know,
nothing really ever stuck around long-term.
[Sandi] I would always ask her the next day,
when she called me, "Hi, how was your date last night?"
And she would always say,
it was good, it was bad, indifferent,
whatever it might be.
In 2017, in December,
she had called me and told me that she had met someone.
[narrator] Wendi's new match
is 51-year-old Brian Chevalier,
from Merrimack, New Hampshire.
He works in traffic control
for construction and utility companies.
[Stacy] She said, this guy Brian
was super nice. She couldn't wait for me to meet him
and Wendi was like, "Oh, my God.
He's like, the best." Da, da, da, da, da.
[Wendy] He looked like a neat, put together kind of guy.
He wore beads around his neck
and he also wore beads around his wrist.
I thought it was cool, and I thought that maybe
he was spiritual.
And so, if I thought he was spiritual
then I felt, then maybe he is kind.
[narrator] Brian lives at home
to look after his elderly mother.
[Stacy] The fact that Brian was caring for his mother
was a huge factor of why Wendi felt
even more attracted to him.
'Cause here's a guy who is back at home
taking care of his mom.
So I definitely think Wendi,
being in that relationship and being a family person,
you know, that made her fall even harder for him.
[Sandi] Wendi had told me
that she felt that this gentleman
was fun to be with,
like to do the things that she did.
He was handsome,
that they had a great time when they went out.
They laughed.
[Wendy] And she, you know, fell in love with the fact
that he was in love with her
and made her feel that special feeling.
[Josh] In February of 2018,
I open up Facebook, and, lo and behold,
the top post I see is that my mom is engaged.
I was like, "What?"
Like, I...
I didn't even know she was dating anybody at the time.
She was like, "I hate that you had to find out this way,
but I've been seeing someone that I met online
for about two months now,
and we just hit it off."
I questioned that they didn't know each other that long,
and is she absolutely sure that this is the right thing?
And she said to me, "Auntie,
you met uncle Jimmy,
and you married him in a month and nine days.
And you've been married for over 30 years to that man,
and I want someone that treats me the way
that uncle Jimmy treats you."
[Josh] A couple days after learning of her engagement,
I figured I was gonna find what he did for a career,
and just kind of figure out who this person was.
The first result that came up
was an article
about a kidnapping that was committed by
a person with this name.
And you read through the article,
and you see all these different words like,
"kidnapping" and "assault,"
that just send chills down your spine.
And I remember reading it
and being like, there's no way. Like,
there's gotta be many people
in this world with that same name.
There's just no way.
[narrator] Josh discovers that in 2003,
police in New Hampshire charge Brian Chevalier
with the kidnap and sexual assault of a woman.
A jury acquit Chevalier of the sexual assault charge,
but it finds him guilty of kidnapping.
Chevalier serves 13 years of a 30-year sentence.
Authorities in New Hampshire parole him 2017.
I called my mom later that night
and she told me that she was aware.
She linked me to another article
that showed that he was acquitted
of all charges except for kidnapping
and he said that he was, more or less,
falsely accused of all of this.
[narrator] Wendi shows her sons a letter
signed by two police officers
that was presented at Chevalier's parole hearing.
The letter states that Brian is innocent
of the kidnapping charge.
[Bryan] She opens up.
This happened to him,
I have these papers that say
that he didn't do it.
[narrator] And that's what Chevalier
tells the parole board in 2017.
[Chevalier speaking]
[man speaking]
[Chevalier speaking]
[man speaking]
[Chevalier speaking]
[Sandi] And he said that
he went before the parole board
and told them that he was a changed man,
and that all's he wanted to do was take care of his mother
because she was very sickly,
and he wanted to try to re-acclimate himself into society.
[narrator] Wendi introduces Brian to her family
a week after her surprise engagement.
[Sandi] She had called me and told me that
she wanted my husband and I to meet him.
So we agreed that she could come over the house with him,
and she brought little Bryan with her also.
He was very attentive to her.
They were holding hands,
he was stroking her hand with his finger,
the affection piece of it that she really, really loved.
[Bryan] My mom always liked to see the good in people.
So when she was dating someone,
she would always find the good in them,
and she would tend to hang onto that.
[Sandi] The whole conversation,
he never looked at us once in the eyes.
He kept looking down, looking at her, looking away.
She had called me later that evening and said,
"What do you think of him?"
And I honestly said to her
that Uncle Jimmy and I were uncomfortable with him.
She said, "He was really nervous, Auntie,
I told him how important you and Uncle Jimmy were to me,
and how close I was to you,
and that he had to understand
that you were going to drill him
and ask him questions."
And I said, "Okay, fine."
She fully trusted him
and believed that he was innocent.
[Stacy] Wendi had contacted me at, like,
the beginning of March, 2018,
that Brian had started to change.
He was becoming very needy,
and constantly wanting Wendi's attention 24-7,
and would get upset with her if she would choose
to be with her friends that day,
or go see the boys that day,
or if she'd even come visit us for an event.
She said to me, "I'm not really sure
that this is really gonna work out
because he seems to be, you know,
really clingy and very needy."
And she had expressed to me
that she was willing to work it through
as long as he agreed to go to counselling.
He kept telling her that he was gonna do it,
he was gonna do it, he was gonna do it,
but then he'd blow it off.
[narrator] Wendi calls off the engagement in April, 2018.
April 2, at nine o'clock in the morning, she said,
"I broke it off with him this morning,
I did it over text, but I don't care."
She said, "I gave back the ring,
I told him that I really
don't want to be engaged to him anymore."
[narrator] Wendi appears to be her old bubbly self again,
a few weeks after she ends the relationship with Brian.
April 14 of 2018,
was my 40th birthday party.
[man speaking]
My mom, Wendi's Auntie Sandi,
walked me through the door,
and everybody yelled, "Surprise!"
And the first person to yell, "Surprise" in my face
that was by the door was Wendi,
who jumped into my arms and gave me a huge hug and a kiss.
She was dancing with her boys,
Joshua and Bryan were up dancing with us.
It was, like, the happiest I had seen her
since back in January.
She just almost seemed like a weight had been lifted off of her shoulders.
[Josh] We danced,
we laughed,
and it was just, we had a really nice time.
But little did we know that was going to be
the last time that I ever saw her in person.
[phone rings]
[operator speaking]
[Breanna] North Andover Police received a 911 call
at half past noon on Saturday, April 21, 2018.
It was a man who called North Andover Police
to say that his sister was found in the basement of their home.
[Danny speaking]
- [operator speaking] - [Danny speaking]
[operator speaking]
[Danny speaking]
[Breanna] Within minutes, first responders
from North Andover Police and EMS responded to the home.
They go down to the basement, and they find Wendi Davidson.
They found that Wendi was strangled to death.
There was a USB cord secured with a zip tie
around her throat.
Wendi's brother, Danny, had told police
that the last time he saw his sister
was the previous morning, about 6:00 am,
before he was going to work.
A neighbor that had lived upstairs in this two-family home
had gone downstairs to change the water in a humidifier
and that is when she made the discovery of Wendi's body.
Danny had told police that he had come home from work,
about five o'clock the night before
his sister's body was discovered.
She wasn't home, and it wasn't anything he thought much of.
He just assumed she was out and he had gone to bed.
[phone rings]
[Josh] I answer the phone, and it's my grandfather.
And he says, "Josh," you know,
I'm gonna need you to come home."
And he says, "Josh...
mom's dead."
[Wendy] I just remember
thinking that she was in the basement by herself.
[sobbing]
And I just wanted to be with her
because I didn't believe that she was gone.
[Breanna] Police combing the home for evidence
go upstairs to Wendi's bedroom,
and they find some blood stains on the bed sheet.
The evidence found upstairs in Wendi's bedroom
indicated that some sort of a struggle
had likely happened there
before Wendi's body was moved down to the basement.
Missing from the scene are Wendi's purse,
including her bank cards, her cell phone, her car keys.
Once police discover
that Wendi's white Nissan is not in the driveway,
they put out an alert to local law enforcement
to keep an eye out for it, it may be in the area.
Though Wendi's body was not discovered
until Saturday, April 21,
the medical examiner determines
by looking at her injuries
that the time of death was the day prior,
sometime in the morning of Friday, April 20.
A few days after she was killed...
and they wrapped up the crime scene,
we knew we needed to go there.
My uncle, all of his belongings were there.
He needed clothes, he needed his things.
So we go into the house,
start walking through,
turn into her bedroom,
and there's blood stains on the sheets,
and there was beads all over the floor.
[Wendy] And all of a sudden, we were standing there,
and one of the beads just kind of rolled out.
And we are all standing there like, "holy moly".
[Josh] Immediately, we knew
who those beads belonged to.
[Wendy] We knew that they were Brian Chevalier's beads.
[Breanna] Police found Wendi's car in a parking lot
outside of Choice Fitness, a gym about a mile down the street.
They were able to request surveillance footage
from a restaurant across the street.
On the afternoon of April 20, the day that Wendi was killed,
about 3:25 in the afternoon,
surveillance taken from the restaurant
shows a man walking
from the direction of Choice Fitness,
and he was walking back towards the direction of Wendi's home.
The man identified was Brian Chevalier.
He was caught on surveillance footage in his own vehicle,
traveling away from the scene.
When police obtain reports
from Wendi's missing bank cards,
they discover that one of the cards had been used
about 30 miles away from North Andover,
in Manchester, New Hampshire.
A withdrawal of $503 was made at an ATM
close to the Manchester airport.
Police head there, to Manchester, New Hampshire,
where they find Brian Chevalier's Dodge Caliber,
behind the business.
They find Wendi's car keys, her cell phone,
a package of zip ties,
as well as a receipt for zip ties.
Those zip ties are said to have very closely matched
the type that was found on Wendi's body.
[narrator] Brian Chevalier
is long gone.
[Bryan] No one knew where he was or what he was doing.
When we were all gathered at the house that afternoon,
every time a car would drive by,
everybody would kind of stare at the window, just in case.
[Wendy] What's his plan?
What is he thinking?
Is he angry at the whole family now?
Is he gonna come after us?
[Breanna] Detectives continuing to review
the activity on Wendi's bank cards
discovered that it is used in Mount Vernon, Missouri.
That's at least a 22-hour drive
from last place that the card was used.
On Sunday, April 22, Wendi's bank card was used again,
in Sonora, Texas.
At this point,
Brian is 2,000 miles across the country.
Police have an indication
that he is likely headed towards the border with Mexico.
At the newspaper, we started to research Brian.
Even a quick search of court records
under Brian Chevalier's name
indicated that he had a criminal history
dating back to the mid-1980s.
Some of the details of the cases were alarmingly similar
to what had happened here in North Andover.
In 1990, when Brian was 22 years old,
he was arrested and charged for suffocating a woman.
He is accused of putting a pillow over her face
for up to 60 seconds at a time,
hindering her breathing.
Brian ended up serving a year in jail
for a single count of simple assault.
In 2003, Brian was arrested and charged
with aggravated sexual assault against a separate victim,
as well as kidnapping.
The victim was dating Brian Chevalier.
They had been together for about three months
but she was ending the relationship
because of some controlling tendencies that he had.
She was held against her will for 21 hours.
At one point she reported being duct taped to a futon
and repeatedly sexually assaulted.
Brian was eventually found guilty,
and sentenced for the kidnapping but was acquitted
of the aggravated felony of sexual assault allegations.
The more we dug into Brian's life,
the more shocking his criminal past was.
We couldn't have imagined how terrible it had been.
[Josh] Friday, April 27,
we're in the limos on the way to the funeral.
My grandmother gets a text from our District Attorney,
and he says, "We have some news.
The person responsible has been captured."
[Stacy] Everybody just started to cry.
Oh my God, they found him.
Like, he got caught.
Maybe we'll get justice for Wendi.
[narrator] Mexican law enforcement apprehends Brian
shortly after he crosses the border into Mexico.
They hand him over
to the Imperial County Sheriff's Department,
in California.
Honestly, when he was arrested,
I was happy, but very eager
to get to the trial
so that we could, you know, put this guy away.
[Breanna] On July 19, 2018,
Brian Chevalier was taken into court,
and he pleaded not guilty to the murder charge.
Later that same month, about 10 days after,
I received a letter in the newsroom.
The letter is a message to Wendi's family.
He tells them that they should file a wrongful death suit
against the State of New Hampshire.
He essentially uses the letter to place blame
on the system that freed him,
saying that he didn't receive
the resources and the help that he needed,
and that he knew he was about to break.
I was so upset and couldn't understand
how a person could take another person's life,
especially Wendi's,
and then turn around and tell us, the family,
that we should sue the parole board
and the State of New Hampshire
because it was their fault that he murdered my niece,
that it was their fault that he didn't get
the help he needed.
I was devastated by that.
[narrator] There's no evidence
that the New Hampshire Parole Board
acted wrongfully in Brian Chevalier's release.
[Breanna] On December 4, 2020,
Brian Chevalier appears in court
and says that he is going to change his plea
from not guilty to guilty.
During the plea and sentencing hearing,
the prosecution lays out a timeline
and a series of evidence
that they planned to present to a jury.
On April 19, there was a series of conversations
between Wendi and Brian.
Investigators learned that in Wendi's own words,
she described Brian as an emotional timebomb.
Before sunrise on the morning of April 20,
Brian leaves a voicemail for his employer, quitting his job.
Says that he is not returning.
A few hours later at 6:49 am,
Wendi sends Brian a message
explaining why they can't get back together.
Why she believes that being with him is not good for her.
Cell phone records show that Brian never responded
to that last message that Wendi sent him.
Prosecutors said in court that sometime after 6:00 am,
Brian made the 40-minute drive
from his home in New Hampshire,
to Wendi's home in North Andover.
They say that there's a struggle in Wendi's bedroom
in which the beaded necklace that he was known to wear
was broken off of his neck,
and broken onto the floor.
After that, Wendi is said to have been strangled to death
with a USB cord secured with a zip tie,
and brought down to the basement.
[narrator] Brian flees in Wendi's car.
The receipt for the zip ties that investigators find
in Brian's own car, proves that he planned Wendi's murder.
Prosecutors said in court
that the crime was premeditated.
They believed that there was more than enough proof
to indicate that.
[narrator] The judge sentences Brian Chevalier
to life in prison, without the possibility of parole.
When he pled guilty,
I would say that for me, personally,
um...
I was glad, but I was also sad at the same time because,
you know, he is gonna get punished for his crime,
but we still have to live without her.
[Sandi] I just miss her, I miss her so much.
And...
I just feel like I was cheated
out of the rest of my life,
watching her grow,
watching her see her kids grow.
[Bryan] Even though my mom isn't still here on this earth,
she sits with me every day
in this necklace I wear around my neck,
filled with her ashes.
My brother and I have matching necklaces.
They're dolphins, they were her favorite animal.
[Josh] If she was here today,
Bryan and I would just tell her we did it.
We got through the most difficult thing
that will ever happen to us and our family.