Testimony Released in Haun Murder Case

Prosecutors tried to indict Michael Dally as a co-conspirator in the brutal kidnap-murder of his wife during nine days of grand jury hearings last summer but failed to put the case together, according to transcripts released Thursday.

The transcripts of 1,585 pages of testimony provide new insights into the prosecution’s case against Diana Haun, Dally’s longtime lover, whom the grand jury did indict in the abduction of Sherri Dally from a Ventura shopping center parking lot May 6 and in her death by beating and being stabbed with an ax-like weapon.

On the last day of the proceedings, Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury told the grand jurors that prosecutors “have attempted to present to you virtually all evidence that would indicate guilt or responsibility on the part of Miss Haun and Mr. Dally.”

Dally’s attorney James Farley said Thursday that if the prosecutors had a case against his client, they would have indicted him.

But Farley added that prosecutors “have decided that he is guilty--so the investigation is by no means over.”

Among the new evidence against Haun contained in the transcripts:

* Haun purchased an ax from Kmart two days before Sherri Dally was abducted from the Target store parking lot.

* Two witnesses saw Haun sitting terrified in a blue-green rental car the night after Sherri Dally’s disappearance about 1 1/2 miles from the ravine where Dally’s body was eventually found.

* The dusty, blue-green rental car allegedly used in the kidnapping was seen parked across the street from Haun’s home on the morning of May 7, the day after Sherri Dally disappeared.

* Haun sent a coded message to Michael Dally’s pager the morning after Sherri Dally disappeared that investigators interpreted as “Di-Di bad.” The message also contained Dally’s call-sign, which was “666.”

Hundreds of pages of the grand jury transcripts were edited or simply removed from eight phone book-size volumes made available to the public for the first time Thursday. Many of the blacked-out sections appeared to deal with Michael Dally’s possible involvement, while others contained redacted testimony by six mystery witnesses.

The pages that remain, however, describe the sequence of events leading up to Sherri Dally’s disappearance and detail how her face was crushed by repeated blows to the cheek and jaw, her skull smashed by a blunt object and her torso stabbed at least four times with a knife.

*

The transcripts also provide snapshots of the bizarre relationships between Michael Dally and the two women he said he loved, but they leave unanswered questions about Dally’s possible involvement in the kidnap-slaying of his wife of 14 years.

“I have always loved Sherri,” he testified. “We were always loving and caring. I never harmed her in any way.”

Dally was the first witness called by prosecutors and spent an entire day on the witness stand Aug. 1, according to documents. He was later recalled, and in each instance he maintained his innocence and Haun’s, whom he described repeatedly as his best friend.

Dally said he and his wife had stopped talking while his relationship with Haun flourished. The two worked together at a Vons supermarket in Oxnard, and they lived together for five months in 1995. He later moved back in with his wife to be closer to his two sons, he said.

At one point during the proceedings, Dally tried to explain to Bradbury that he was in love with both women and could not choose between them.

*

“It would be like if you had two children and both of them were drowning, and they were too far apart. . . . Which one would you save? They would probably both die because you couldn’t make the decision,” he said.

“I loved both of these women dearly,” Dally continued, “one because she was the mother of my children . . . and the other one brought me back to life.”

Dally explained that he and Haun would send coded messages to one another through their pagers. His code name was “666,” the sign of the devil, which was given to him because he was always getting in trouble, he said.

Dally said he thought about divorcing his wife, but only after his two young sons had grown up. At one point during the questioning, Deputy Dist. Atty. Lela Henke-Dobroth asked: “Did Diana Haun at any time put any pressure on you or suggest to you that perhaps if the two of you could get rid of Sherri you could be together?”

“No,” Dally responded, explaining later that he was upset when his wife failed to come home. “I didn’t know if she was hurt. I didn’t know what was going on.”

*

At first, he said, he thought maybe Sherri was playing a trick on him--getting even with him for continuing to see Haun when she had asked him not to. Sherri Dally had twice confronted Haun about the affair, he said.

“She [Sherri Dally] said one day . . . that she was gonna get that bitch and get her good,” Dally said of his wife, “And I assumed this was part of her plan.”

Medical Examiner Ronald O’Halloran told the grand jury that Sherri Dally was struck in the face with a weapon that had a wide, V-shaped blade, such as an ax or a meat cleaver. An autopsy of her skeletal remains indicated that she had been brutally struck in the cheek with this weapon, which also chopped her jaw in two pieces.

O’Halloran said Sherri Dally was also struck in the back of the head and stabbed at least four times in the chest with deep, downward striking motions that may have pierced her heart.

The medical examiner said he could not determine when Sherri Dally died or whether she was conscious during the repeated blows.

“We just can’t be that precise from the decomposition process on estimates when the actual time of death was,” he said.

Authorities have not found an ax, wig, handcuffs or badge--items witnesses said Haun purchased before May 6. Her trial is set for Feb. 3.

*

Among the circumstantial evidence that appears key to the prosecution’s case is testimony that Haun bought a number of objects thought to be part of the Dally abduction and slaying shortly before the 35-year-old homemaker’s disappearance.

Just two days before Dally was kidnapped from a Ventura department store parking lot, prosecutors think, the deli clerk bought the beige suit the kidnapper wore and the camping ax thought to be one of the murder weapons.

An official from a Kmart store in Ventura testified that a check drawn on Haun’s account was used to pay $70.62 for a beige woman’s coat, pants and shoes, the camping ax and a variety of other items that could be used on an outing.

Also, in the days before the abduction, Haun bought several items that prosecutors suspect she used to hide her identity and gain Sherri Dally’s cooperation during the kidnapping. A clerk at a Ventura novelty shop testified that Haun bought a badge and silver handcuffs in separate purchases on May 2 and 3.

And a clerk at an Oxnard discount wig store testified that Haun, after saying she wanted to play a trick on someone and to look authoritative, bought a $100 blond wig on May 4. Haun used a check, and a picture of Haun, Dally and his two sons was seen in her wallet, clerk Sandra Acevedo testified.

On the morning before Sherri Dally disappeared, a woman using Haun’s driver’s license and other identification rented a 1995 blue-green Nissan Altima sedan at Oxnard Airport, a clerk testified. The woman had used Haun’s Visa card to confirm the reservation.

Clerk Carol Lake said she was not sure that Diana Haun was the woman who rented the car, but Haun “looked familiar.”

Haun has claimed that she lost her checks, Vons Visa credit card and driver’s license, or that they were stolen. And she reported them lost or stolen a few days after the abduction.

*

Sherri Dally was kidnapped about 9:30 a.m. after buying her mother a Mother’s Day present. Two witnesses said they saw a blond woman wearing a beige suit in a blue-green sedan parked in the Target lot before the kidnapping.

“Her face was kind of like either she was trying to clear up acne . . . or she was in a disguise of some kind,” witness Joanne Bidlingmaier said.

A second witness, Margaret Wilmeth, said she was only inches away from the blond woman and Sherri Dally when the homemaker got out of her van and put her hands behind her back to be handcuffed. The woman said she heard no conversation between the two as Dally walked to the sedan and got into the backseat.

The car then sped away, the witness said.

Phone records show that someone using Haun’s phone credit card called Michael Dally at work once and at home twice over the next four hours.

Meanwhile, Michael Dally had come home from work and called his two sons’ elementary school to see if their mother had picked them up.

School office manager Ellen Carpenter said that when she mistakenly told him they had been, he responded: “Really?” A few minutes later she notified him that the boys were still at school, and he picked them up.

Haun said later that she spent much of the day on a bike ride to Camarillo, where she collided with a pickup truck and was scratched on the face.

A summary of the facts by the grand jury foreman, George Billinger, maintained that Haun also called a Camarillo cleaners from a pay phone in the hours after Dally’s disappearance.

The cleaners’ owner said the caller wanted “to know how to remove a lot of blood from the backseat of a car.” The woman, who did not identify herself, said her son had been in an accident.

*

Crime lab investigators later found that although someone had tried to clean blood from the rental car, a great deal of blood had soaked into the upholstery of the seats and the foam underneath.

A man who rented the car next also said the steering wheel had a dark, sticky substance on it.

Michael Dally called police to report his wife’s disappearance about 4 p.m., but he did not notify her mother in Santa Maria until about 9 p.m.

“He said she’d been snatched,” mother Karlyne Guess said. “His tone of voice was not very comforting.

“He told me that she had gone shopping at Target to buy a Mother’s Day present, and did so in a tone of voice that indicated that if she hadn’t been shopping for a Mother’s Day present she’d be alive.”

In a revelation that had not been made before, a 27-year-old Ventura woman, Samantha Spencer, told investigators she was riding in a car with another woman on Canada Larga Road about 2 a.m. the day after Dally’s disappearance. The pair saw a terrified Haun sitting in a blue-green car.

The location was only about 1 1/2 miles from the brushy ravine where the homemaker’s battered and decomposed body was found June 1.

A detective asked Spencer, who had picked Haun out of a six-picture photo lineup, what made her think it was Haun she had seen. Another detective, describing the interview, testified that Spencer said, “ ‘Her eyes.’ And the detective said, ‘You remember seeing her eyes when she was in the car?’ And her response was, ‘Big time.’ ”

Also revealed in testimony was that in reporting her lost checks, Haun opened a new checking account by showing the bank officer her driver’s license to prove her identity.

The same day, Haun applied for a new driver’s license, saying hers had been lost or stolen. A new one was sent in the mail.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

‘I Never Hated [Sherri Dally]. . . . ‘ Nearly 60 witnesses testified over nine days at the grand jury investigation into the death of Sherri Dally and laid out a circumstantial case that led to the murder indictment of Diana Haun.

Some of the highlights include:

“I never hated her and she’s always been a part of my family, and to hurt her . . . to hurt her in that way . . . wouldn’t be right.”

--Michael Dally, speaking about his wife.

*

“Six-sixty-six is me, or it identifies me. I know 666 stands for the devil, but . . . just to us it means trouble, and I’m always in trouble it seems like.”

--Dally, on the code he and Haun used on beepers.

*

“It was a woman. And she just . . . she just looked terrified. . . . Her face had total terror.”

--Samantha Spencer, a 27-year-old Ventura woman, who said she saw Haun in a blue-green “sedan-like” car about 2 a.m. May 7, parked about 1.6 miles from the ravine where Sherri Dally’s remains were eventually found.

*

“Have you ever seen Diana with an ax?”

--Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury, questioning Haun’s 71-year-old mother, Kiku Haun.

*

“Where did they go? If you know, please tell me.”

--Sherri Dally asking Haun’s mother where her husband was in March. He and Diana Haun were in Mexico.

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“Well, I raise children and she’s like the opposite. So we’re kinda not as close as we might be.”

--Mary Oliver, Haun’s sister, talking about their relationship.

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“When I picked the car up that Tuesday morning, I put my hands on the steering wheel. They stuck to the steering wheel. . . . It was just very sticky, very bad.”

--Richard John Stefanec, an insurance salesman who used the rental car in which police believe Sherri Dally may have been slain.

*

“Wow, there’s a lot of blood here. There’s a lot.”

--Margaret Schaeffer, a crime lab blood expert, after looking at the car.

*

“I’d say she more like goes along, you know, kind of tends to do what they say.”

--Gilbert Oliver, Haun’s brother-in-law, talking about Diana Haun’s relationships with men.

*

“When she was on the night crew with us, she’d bring him lunch. She’d kiss him. They’d hug. They’d bite each other on the neck. . . . She worshiped him, basically. She’d do whatever he said. . . . I said I needed a woman like a puppy, like him.”

--Jason County, Diana Haun’s co-worker at Vons.

*

“I said: ‘This stinks. Something isn’t right here.’ ”

--John Avila, Target security chief, after Michael Dally told him that “somebody nabbed” Sherri Dally. No investigation had yet begun.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Chronology of Events in the Sherri Dally Case

According to grand jury testimony

Late April/early May: Diana Haun meets Michael Dally, the victim’s husband, for confidential talks at 4 a.m. breaks during his night shift at Vons grocery, store employees testify.

May 2: Haun buys with cash phony police badge from Uniforms Etc. in Ventura, clerk testifies.

May 3: Haun buys with cash silver handcuffs from same store, clerk testifies.

May 4: Haun buys with personal check a blond wig from Oxnard discount wig shop for $100.12, clerk testifies.

May 4: Woman buys with a check from Haun’s bank account a beige, women’s coat, pants and shoes, a camping ax and other items for $70.62, records indicate. Haun later applied to replace her checks, driver’s license and Visa credit card, saying they were lost or stolen.

May 5: Woman using Haun’s driver’s license and other identification rents a 1995 blue-green Nissan Altima sedan at Oxnard Airport agency, clerk testifies. The woman had used Haun’s Visa card to confirm the reservation. Clerk says Haun looks familiar but can’t make a positive identification.

May 6: Haun’s mother testifies that she saw her daughter and Michael Dally during the early morning talking in the foyer of the house. Dally, however, was working a graveyard shift at Vons at that time, other witnesses testify.

May 6: At about 8 a.m, a witness sees a woman in blond wig and beige suit sitting in blue-green sedan in Target parking lot, the witness testifies.

May 6: Shortly after 8 a.m., Sherri Dally arrives at Target, meets an old friend who heads up store security and shops, then leaves at 9:22, the security chief testifies.

May 6: About 9:30 a.m., a witness sees a woman in a blond wig, beige suit, scarf and pancake makeup persuade Sherri Dally to get out of her van, put her hands behind her back and get into the back seat of a blue-green Altima. The vehicle license plate jotted by the witness is very similar to the car rented in Haun’s name. A car of the same description is spotted the next morning across the street from Haun’s home.

May 6: At 10:18 a.m., records show, Haun’s calling card was used to phone Michael Dally’s store.

May 6: About 11:45 a.m., Michael Dally, home from work, calls an elementary school and asks if his two sons had been picked up by their mother. He seems surprised, a school employee testifies, when she mistakenly tells him the boys had been picked up.

May 6: At 12:55 p.m., records show, Haun’s calling card was used to call Dally’s Ventura home.

May 6: At 1:27 p.m., records show, Haun’s calling card was used to call the Dally home.

May 6: Haun called a Camarillo cleaners from a pay phone, records show. The cleaners’ owner says the woman caller wanted “to know how to remove a lot of blood from the back seat of a car.” The caller, who did not identify herself, said her son had been in an accident.

May 6: Haun reports to work as a Vons clerk at 3:15 p.m., 15 minutes late, and co-workers note three scratches on her face. Haun said she was in a bike accident, but co-workers testify they doubt the story since she had no cuts or bruises on her arms, legs or knees.

May 6: Michael Dally calls police to report his wife missing about 4 p.m.

May 6: Sherri Dally’s empty van is found in the Target parking lot at 5:30 p.m.

May 6: About 6:30 p.m., Michael Dally tells the Target security chief that “somebody nabbed” Sherri Dally, a comment the chief thought was suspicious because an investigation into the disappearance had not yet begun.

May 6: About 9 p.m., Michael Dally reaches his wife’s mother by phone to say that her daughter had “been snatched,” the mother testifies.