Even before murders, Standlee brought nightmares

For the first time in years, Dawn Humphries Ware says she has slept with few nightmares about the man she said punched her, threatened her, hurt her children and choked her to the point of unconsciousness during their two-year marriage.

Ware, 45, says her marriage to Travis Standlee not only included mental abuse and beatings, but also ended with him serving eight years in prison for abusing her 5-year-old daughter — and with her going to prison, too, for not protecting her child.

Standlee, 45, now is likely to spend the rest of his life in an Iowa prison. Juries twice found him guilty of murder charges — first for killing Raymond Ursino, 55, and then Sharon Mead, 41, both in September 2015 and both in Cedar Rapids. All were homeless.

Ware, during a phone interview from her home in Jacksonville, Texas, admitted to failing her children because she didn't leave Standlee. She lost custody of her daughter and son, age 7.

Ware decided to speak out after she read articles that Standlee was convicted of killing Ursino and — at that time — was about to go to trial for killing Mead.

Ware, who followed live online coverage of his trial last month, said it was difficult to fathom his testimony because he told 'bald faced lies.'

Standlee testified during the Mead murder trial that he never had 'altercations with women.' During sentencing in the Ursino case, he portrayed himself as a non-violent person, saying it wasn't his 'nature' to harm anyone.

'People should know he's not just a homeless guy, but a guy who is violent and maniacal,' Ware said. 'He carried knives and even made swords when he worked at a factory in Texas. He also picked fights and threatened to kill me and my family.'

Standlee, already sentenced to 50 years in prison for killing Ursino, was sentenced Thursday to another 50 years for killing Mead. The sentences are to be served consecutively, which is essentially a life sentence because he must serve at least 35 years of each sentence before he is eligible for parole.

Story all too familiar

The prosecution's theory of how Mead was killed — by strangulation after she rejected Standlee's kisses — sounded all too familiar to Ware. Standlee didn't like rejection, she said.

When she read the testimony about Mead's injuries, she knew the bruises were under her chin and on her neck because Ware once had them. Standlee choked her during one incident in 2001 that Ware feared might be the end for her.

'It went on for hours,' she said. 'He was choking me and I would lose consciousness and then come to and he would choke me again. He was yelling at me that I was worthless. He always said things like that.'

Ware never reported any beatings and there are no police records.

She said she stayed with Standlee because she had no place to go, had no money and didn't have a working car. She said she was scared.

Ware said the relationship was good for about a year and a half.

She briefly dated Standlee in 1988 while in high school in Troup, Texas, but Standlee moved and she didn't reconnect with him until 1999 when he came back to Troup and worked at a plastics factory.

Back then, she was attracted to him because he was a talented musician, she said, noting Standlee played guitar and liked heavy metal, mostly Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath. He even mastered the song 'Ironman,' a nickname he gave himself.

She knew about his convictions in 1997 of unauthorized use of a motor vehicle. He received a suspended sentence and probation for that, Fannin County, Texas, court records show.

He had several violations while serving time in a community corrections facility, including breaking out a window of an isolation room and not following a treatment program, court records also show. His probation was eventually revoked and he was sentenced in 1999 to a year in jail.

And Standlee had some drunken driving convictions in 2013 and 2014, Wichita County District Court records show.

The couple married in 2000. But Ware said his musical talent didn't sustain his appeal.

She said he drank too much, but she didn't allow it in their home because of her children — he was not their father. Ware said alcohol didn't explain all his irrational behavior; he could have violent outbursts without drinking, she said.

violence begins

Ware said Standlee started changing in 2000 after joining the Texas Air National Guard. Everything had to be 'military' clean and he wanted the kids to obey military-style rules. When they didn't, he would punish them with grueling exercises, making her son vomit once.

His behavior worsened after he went to Germany with the Guard for three weeks, she said.

'It was like someone flipped a switch and everything set him off after that,' Ware said.

The incident that led to her and Standlee's conviction happened in 2001 when Standlee was spanking her daughter. He wouldn't stop, Ware said, so she got in between them and told the girl and her brother to get out of the apartment.

A schoolteacher found bruises on her daughter afterward, and officials from child protective services were called to investigate, Ware said.

Her children were taken away from her, she admitted, because she had allowed them to be in an unsafe environment, She said she he felt 'ashamed' and helpless.

Time to LEAVE

Ware said after her kids were taken away, she gave up until one night in 2001 when she finally got some help after Standlee became drunk at a bar and was kicked out. Friends persuaded her not to go home but instead stay with them.

About a week later, she asked police to go with her to the apartment she and Standlee shared to get her clothes. She decided she wasn't going back to him.

But when she arrived, she discovered Standlee had taken his belongings and left. The next time she saw him was at the police station, when they were both charged in the abuse of her daughter, about a month later.

She was charged with third-degree felony injury to a child with intent to cause bodily injury. Standlee was charged with two felony counts of injury to a child causing bodily injury and third-degree retaliation, court documents in Smith County, Texas, show.

His case wasn't resolved until 2004 when he was convicted and sentenced to eight years, court documents show.

Standlee was handed a dishonorable discharge from the Guard in 2002, according to testimony in Mead's trial.

She and Standlee divorced in 2002.

Ware served 18 months of a four-year sentence in prison.

Her children went to live with relatives.

Moving on

Ware said she always looked over her shoulder, living in fear that Standlee would show up after he was released from prison in 2012.

After a few years, she remarried and moved to Georgia, but eventually got divorced again and returned to Texas. She never got her children back but, over the years, developed a relationship with them, she said. They are adults now.

Over the last several years, she would go online and search for Standlee to make sure he wasn't around again.

'I'm a survivor,' Ware said. 'I have a relationship with my kids. I have forgiven him — I had to so I could move on. I'm happy his victims' families got justice.'

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