LEE – Les Severance is ready for the next step, his attorney said Tuesday.

The father of murder victim Michael Leslie Severance will be in San Angelo, Texas, on Dec. 1 to petition a Tom Green County civil court judge for extra visitation rights for his grandson as part of a larger plan to eventually seek full custody of the child Michael Severance had with wife Wendi Mae Davidson, Shane Michael Severance.

“He is ready now for the next phase. It’s more important for him to get custody of his grandson than for him to count the years Wendi will be serving,” attorney Thomas Goff of San Angelo said Tuesday.

Davidson’s murder conviction is “the closure that he’s been seeking. He is ready for the next phase,” Goff said.

Severance could not be reached for comment Tuesday. He seeks two weeks of visitation with the boy at the Severance home in Lee over the Christmas season, Goff said.

Davidson, 28, of San Angelo, pleaded no contest and took a deal Oct. 18 that will compel her to serve a total 25-year sentence on the murder charge and two concurrent 10-year sentences on two evidence-tampering charges. She faced a sentence of nine to 99 years if found guilty in trial.

She will be eligible for parole in about 13 years.

Davidson was accused of poisoning her husband of four months on Jan. 15, 2005, with drugs used to euthanize animals, weighing his body down with car parts and cinder blocks, and dumping it in a pond after stabbing the body 41 times to keep it under.

The criminal court deal leaves an avenue for an appeal should Davidson’s attorneys file one in Texas 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. That court could overturn Gossett’s decision admitting police evidence and call for a new trial with all or most of the prosecution’s evidence disqualified, her attorneys said.

Goff expects a full custody trial to begin in January or February, he said.