Dana Conley

A Round Rock woman who gave birth during a two-year coma caused by a brutal assault died Thursday at a San Antonio nursing home.

Dana Conley, 40, was pregnant in Feb. 2007 when her estranged husband, Julius Conley, a Travis County corrections officer, beat her with a 10-pound dumbbell. She was packing up her Round Rock house to move to a new job in California when the attack happened. During the beating Julius Conley killed her friend, Quincy Van Johnson, 38, who was at the house helping her.

Dana Conley was in a coma immediately after the beating and six months later gave birth to a girl at University Medical Center at Brackenridge. She was transferred to a nursing home in San Antonio after giving birth, where she remained in a coma until she died. Her parents, who are raising her baby girl and her two sons at their home in California, said they didn't yet know the cause of her death.

"I am devastated," said her mother, Regina Foster of Vallejo, Calif. "I was hoping that she might get better, but from what the doctors say it's the way she was," Foster said. "It may be better for her to pass on. She had an older child who died so she can be with him."

Conley previously had a 4-year-old son who was hit by a car and died, Foster said. Foster and her husband, Darrell Foster, said they were planning to bring the three children next month to visit their mother, who they hadn't seen since she gave birth.

Julius Conley, the father of all three of Dana Conley's children, received two life sentences, and must serve at least 30 years. He will not face additional charges because of Dana Conley's death, said Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley.

"When we resolved the case with two life sentences, it was done with the understanding that, even should she die, we would not come back and file additional charges," Bradley said.

"I have never seen a more violent, just horrible domestic violence case than this one," Bradley said. "He literally beat to death two people in front of witnesses." Three construction contractors were in the house during the attack but they did not intervene. The Conley's infant son was also there. "He's had nightmares about it but he doesn't have them anymore," said Regina Foster.

Dana Conley had had a history of problems with her husband. She filed for divorce in September 2007 and applied for a protective order in which she accused her husband of choking her until she was unconscious.

A few days before she died, she told authorities at the Travis County Sheriff's office that she had been having trouble with Julius Conley and asked for help. The department had begun an investigation but had not yet questioned Julius Conley before the attack.

Dana Conley had been planning to start a new job as a dispatcher for an emergency medical service in California when she died, her parents said. Raised in Oakland, Calif., she had attended a junior college in Oakland before enlisting in the Army for six years and becoming a sergeant.

"She was very friendly and outgoing," said her mother. "She spent most of her time with her boys; they were more or less her life."

Claire Osborn, American-Statesman Staff, cosborn@statesman.com; 445-3871