Murder Victim's Fiance Kidnapped Ex-Girlfriend In 2003

NORTH ANDOVER, MA -- The fiance of a woman found strangled to death in the basement of her North Andover home Saturday was released from prison last year after serving 14 years of a 33-year prison sentence. Essex County District Attorney's office spokeswoman Carrie Kimball-Monahan said Monday she could not confirm if Brian R. Chevalier, 51, of Manchester, NH was a person of interest in the death of 49-year-old Wendi Rose Davidson.

Chevalier does not have a listed telephone number and did not respond to a Facebook message requesting comment Monday. Investigators have not named a suspect or made any arrests in the case and are awaiting autopsy results, but have said that a preliminary investigation suggests Davidson was strangled. They also said that Davdison's death does not appear to be a random act. Her body was discovered Saturday morning in the basement of her home at 50 Lincoln Street.

In 2004 a jury convicted Chevalier of kidnapping. On December 29, 2003, a 33-year-old Jaffrey, NH woman came home from work to find Chevalier waiting for her. Chevalier, according to court records, attacked her and forced her into the bedroom. He then beat her, repeatedly sexually assaulted her and threatened to kill her.

For most of the next 21 hours, Chevalier kept her duct taped to the bed. Police said at one point Chevalier choked the woman until she passed out and told her he would kill her and "leave her body in a freezer in the basement of her house." The woman said he also tried to force her to buy plane tickets to California, saying he planned to flee there after he killed her.

At the time of the attack, Chevalier was on parole after serving a previous prison sentence for burglary. That sentence was extended when he attacked another inmate. During the 21-hour assault, Chevalier called his parole officer to tell him he would not be at the home in Merrimack, NH he shared with his mother that night because they had had an argument.

The victim said Chevalier was drunk for most of the time she was held captive. When he sobered up, she said, he pleaded with her to not tell police because he did not want to go back to jail. At 2:30 pm the next day he had the woman drive him to Blake Street in Jaffrey, where he had parked his vehicle.

The woman immediately reported the attack to police, who arrested Chevalier later that night at his home in Merrimack, NH and charged him with kidnapping, burglary, criminal threatening, reckless conduct and three counts of aggravated sexual assault.

The victim had dated Chevalier for about three months in 2003 but tried to break up with him him after a "violent incident" on December 19, 2003, according to court records.

In 2006, the State of New Hampshire Supreme Court denied Chevalier's appeal of his conviction. Chevalier argued the trial court erred when it denied his request to preserve a copy of the hard drive of the victim’s computer to determine whether it contained exculpatory evidence. Chevalier had argued that the hard drive may have shown evidence of a previous interest in sexual bondage by his victim, which would have bolstered his argument that the sex and restraint was consensual.

"Even if we assume that the victim’s computer might have contained materials related to sexual bondage, their presence was irrelevant to whether the victim consented to engage in this activity with the defendant on the night in question," the court wrote in its opinion. "Accordingly, we find no error in the trial court’s ruling."

New Hampshire Corrections records show that Chevalier is no longer in custody. The earliest he could have been released, according to parole records, was December 14, 2017. Had be served his full sentence, Chevalier would have been released in December, 2037.

Chevalier and Davidson were engaged on February 14 of this year. While Davidson's profile still said the couple was engaged at the time of her death, Chevalier's profile said he was single. Earlier this month he had begun asking for friends on Facebook if they knew of an apartment for rent in New Hampshire.

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Dave Copeland can be reached at dave.copeland@patch.com or by calling 617-433-7851. Follow him on Twitter (@CopeWrites) and Facebook (/copewrites).