Dally Wanted His Wife Dead, Former Girlfriend Tells Jury

During the first full day of testimony in Michael Dally’s murder trial, a former girlfriend told jurors that Dally hated his wife so much he wanted to kill her and make her suffer for trapping him in a loveless marriage.

“He wanted to stab her,” said Sallie Lowe, who had an affair with Dally nine years ago. “He also said he wanted someone else to kill her, so he would never be charged with murder.”

But defense attorneys raised doubts about the 41-year-old Santa Barbara woman’s credibility and her motives for testifying. They showed that she lied on a job application and tried to portray her as a scorned mistress.

And at one point, when her memory became hazy, defense attorney Robert I. Schwartz asked if Lowe was taking prescription medication. She said she wasn’t.

Lowe’s testimony lasted most of the day and provided intimate details of Dally’s alleged motives for murder, which the prosecution contends were festering years before Sherri Dally was killed.

The 35-year-old Ventura homemaker was kidnapped from a Target parking lot on May 6, 1996. She was bludgeoned and stabbed to death, and her corpse was dumped in a steep ravine north of the city. A search party discovered her skeletal remains about a month later.

Dally faces murder, conspiracy and kidnapping charges. In addition, prosecutors charge that he conspired to kill his wife for financial gain--a special circumstance that would make him eligible for a death sentence. Another of his lovers, Diana Haun, was convicted of first-degree murder last fall for fatally stabbing Sherri Dally.

Lowe told jurors Tuesday that during their affair, Dally talked about wanting to stab his wife and throw her body off a cliff--statements that prosecutors say are consistent with the manner in which Sherri Dally was killed.

“He said if you could never find the body, you could never be charged with murder,” Lowe said.

Dally talked “very frequently” about wanting his wife dead, and once asked her if she could commit murder, Lowe said. She told him she could not.

Lowe testified that she asked Dally whether he had considered the effect Sherri’s death would have on his two children, now ages 8 and 9.

“He said, ‘They would forget about her,’ ” Lowe said.

It was after Lowe heard reports of Sherri Dally’s disappearance on a television newscast that she contacted Ventura authorities, she said.

But on cross-examination, Schwartz questioned what Lowe told police and when. She never mentioned Dally’s alleged statement about wanting to stab his wife during an initial interview with police. Nor did she mention it during subsequent interviews in May and June of 1996.

It was not until July 1996 that she recalled the remark, she acknowledged. And by that time, Sherri’s body had been found and the cause of death determined, Schwartz said.

But when he suggested that Lowe made up the statement after hearing news reports, she became incensed.

“I have been devastated by this case,” she said. “I could not take hearing about it.”

Lowe said she met Dally in 1989 when she began working as a grocery clerk at a Vons store in Santa Barbara. He was a manager at the store. Lowe had recently separated from her husband and as Dally pursued her they began a relationship. It lasted nearly three years.

During that time, Dally spoke frequently about how he was unhappy in his marriage, Lowe said. He told her that he married too young. He told her he married the wrong person.

At one point during their affair, Michael’s wife became pregnant with their second child and Lowe recalled his reaction distinctly.

“He was so angry,” she said. “He felt trapped. He said ‘I feel like a trapped animal in a cage.’ ”

But divorce was not an option for Dally, Lowe said. He feared child support, alimony, house and car payments would leave him financially ruined, she said.

During their affair, Lowe said, Dally would drive to Santa Barbara to be with her. But she also recalled a time when she went to Ventura to see him.

It was the night Sherri had given birth to the couple’s second child, Max. With his wife in the hospital, Michael Dally asked Lowe to spend the night with him and she agreed.

It was one of many decisions that defense attorneys questioned during a heated cross-examination Tuesday, implying that Lowe’s moral compass was askew and her testimony self-serving.

“You slept in Sherri Dally’s bed, is that correct?” Shwartz asked.

“That’s correct,” she answered.

“And you participated in consensual sex?” the lawyer asked.

“Yes,” Lowe responded.

“Do you feel any responsibility for Mr. Dally’s marital problems?” Schwartz said.

“His marital problems were there long before I came along,” Lowe answered. “None whatsoever.”

At one point, Schwartz questioned why Lowe continued to have an affair with a married man, and she said she was “sexually addicted” to Dally.

“We both had the same appetite so to speak,” she said.

In other testimony Tuesday, two former prostitutes testified they were solicited by Dally in the early 1990s.

The first witness--whom was only identified to jurors as Deborah--said she met Dally in 1993 while working a Thompson Boulevard street corner. On nearly a dozen occasions, Dally paid her for sex, she testified. Usually, he would give her about $100 each time, she said.

A second former prostitute, identified only as Holly, testified that Dally once pulled up to a liquor store in Ventura to ask for a “date” while his two sons were in the van. She said she was unclear whether Dally wanted her to leave with him in the van or to meet him later. She said he left and didn’t return.

Testimony is scheduled to continue today.