Defense Calls Police to Testify on Dally’s Behalf

Launching the defense case, attorneys for Michael Dally tried to raise doubts Tuesday about their client’s knowledge of his wife’s kidnapping and suggested he helped--rather than hindered--a police investigation.

In all, the defense called 17 witnesses, including some police officers who helped investigate the case, to counter statements made during the prosecution’s case.

Over the last five weeks, prosecutors have presented evidence to suggest Dally knew too much about his wife’s May 6, 1996, abduction not to have been involved in a conspiracy to kill her.

Within a day of her disappearance, for example, Dally told friends and relatives his wife, Sherri, had been “nabbed.” And he later told a friend she had been handcuffed and put into the back seat of a car.

But witnesses said Tuesday that rumors and police leaks were swirling in the community, providing Dally and everyone else in Ventura with detailed information about the crime.

A manicurist told jurors that rumors surrounding Sherri Dally’s disappearance, including the fact she was handcuffed, were the “talk of the shop” in the days after the 35-year-old homemaker vanished.

A neighbor testified that a Ventura police officer told her two days after the disappearance that Sherri Dally had been handcuffed and placed into the back of a car.

And Marina Duffner, a former Ventura police detective, told the jury that she shared information about the investigation with her friend, Leslie Avila, the day after Sherri Dally was reported missing.

Duffner testified that she told Avila that a witness had seen a woman matching Sherri Dally’s description handcuffed and put into a car. Later, Duffner told her superiors she leaked the information. She was subsequently transferred and now works as a patrol officer.

Avila also testified Tuesday, telling jurors roughly the same story. Avila is married to the defendant’s childhood friend, John, a security guard at the Target store where Sherri Dally was kidnapped while walking to her car.

She said Duffner asked her not to tell anyone about the information she had shared, and Avila acknowledged that she lied to protect her friend when questioned by police.

“I didn’t want her to get in trouble,” she said.

Defense attorneys also tried Tuesday to shore up questions about Dally’s whereabouts on the night his wife was kidnapped.

A Ventura police officer previously testified that he knocked on Dally’s door after midnight on May 7, but no one answered. Defense attorneys have suggested their client was a sound sleeper. But prosecutors have a different theory.

Dally’s lover and co-defendant Diana Haun was seen at about the same time parked beneath a highway overpass a mile from where Sherri Dally’s body was found.

The prosecution contends Michael Dally was with her that night, covering up evidence at the crime scene. Haun was convicted of murder last year and sentenced to life in prison.

Attempting to show that Dally was home but asleep, defense attorneys questioned Det. Glen Young about another night he had trouble rousing the defendant.

Young went to Dally’s house on June 1 to tell him Sherri Dally’s remains had been found. But even after pounding on the door, Young said, he could get no response.

Young walked to the nearby home of Lawrence Dally, the defendant’s father, who used a key to let detectives inside his son’s house. Lawrence Dally walked to his son’s bedroom, and moments later Michael Dally came out, Young said. He told the jury that the defendant appeared to have been sleeping.

Young and another detective involved in the investigation told jurors that Michael Dally was cooperative and assisted them by providing bank account numbers and identifying a pager code system he set up with Haun.

Dally also agreed--reluctantly--to place a “cool call” to Haun on June 20 from his home as part of the Police Department’s efforts to link her to the crime. The call was tape-recorded by police, but not played for the jury.

But on cross-examination Tuesday, prosecutors tried to show that Dally was not being helpful to police and may have shown interest in the investigation only because he was worried about getting caught.

Sgt. George Morris, who led the investigation for the first two weeks after Dally’s disappearance, told the jury that Dally called him numerous times to keep tabs on the investigation.

Asked by defense attorney James Farley whether Dally sounded concerned about his missing wife during those calls, Morris said he did.

But on cross-examination, Deputy Dist. Atty. Lela Henke-Dobroth asked: “You don’t know, Sgt. Morris, whether that concern in his voice was for his wife or for himself, do you?”

“I have an opinion,” Morris answered, “but no.”