Evidence in Dally Case Is Outlined in Affidavit

Grocery clerk Michael Dally, suspected in the slaying of his homemaker wife in May, once complained to a co-worker about the cost of child support and said he had connections to people who could “knock off” his wife, according to a search-warrant affidavit released Monday.

In the sworn statement, Ventura Police Det. Sean Conroy also concluded that the person who kidnapped Sherri Dally from a Ventura department store parking lot lay in wait for her on information provided by Michael Dally.

“Michael Dally was the only person who could have known that Sherri Dally was going to be shopping at a given hour,” the detective said, when seeking search warrants for Dally’s Ventura house and the Port Hueneme home of his longtime lover, Diana J. Haun.

The searches took place May 18, nearly two weeks after Sherri Dally’s disappearance. Haun was arrested the same day, but released later for lack of evidence. The stabbed and beaten body of the 35-year-old child-care center operator was found June 1 in a ravine north of Ventura.

In the affidavit released Monday by Superior Court Judge Frederick Jones and partially blacked out for privacy and investigative reasons, police also concluded that Haun’s alibi for the day of the kidnapping did not hold up.

Haun told investigators that she went on a long bike ride from Port Hueneme to Camarillo and back that day, and never went to Ventura.

However, a co-worker told police that she saw Haun in her Jeep Wrangler in Ventura about five hours after Sherri Dally’s 9:30 a.m. disappearance from a Target store on Main Street.

*

Police also said they doubted Haun’s explanation that fresh scratches on her forehead were from a bicycle accident on the day of the kidnapping. “Haun had suspicious scratches on her forehead that appeared to other Vons employees as being from a fight,” the document said.

Haun told police she was hit by a truck while on the bicycle ride, but she never filed an accident report, according to the affidavit. Nor did she have scratches on her hands, arms or knees, as would usually occur in a bicycle accident, the affidavit contended.

In a brief interview Monday, Haun said she did take a long bike ride the day of the kidnapping.

“Yes, it took place, from my home to Camarillo,” Haun said before refusing further comment. Haun also said she probably talked with Dally by phone several times that day. “That’s nothing new,” she said. “That’s been going on for two years.” Haun’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Neil Quinn, dismissed the significance of the affidavit information.

“There is no evidence,” Quinn said. “There is no case that’s filed.”

Dally, who has refused interviews in recent weeks, would not comment. Previously, Dally had maintained his innocence.

At least one of the details in the affidavit did tend to favor Haun, however. Two witnesses described Sherri Dally’s kidnapper as 5 feet, 3 inches tall and weighing 130 to 140 pounds. Haun’s driver’s license indicates she is 5 feet, 7 inches tall and weighs 127 pounds, according to police.

And despite assertions in their affidavit, investigators cautioned Monday that the 22-page document is a summary of evidence as it existed six weeks ago and does not necessarily represent the current status of the case.

For example, authorities now say they have conflicting evidence on whether the kidnapper actually staked out the Target store parking lot in Ventura. More recent evidence indicates that Sherri Dally may have been followed from home by the assailant, one source said.

“Our case has moved forward considerably since [then],” said Ventura Police Lt. Don Arth, who is directing the investigation. “I’m not going to comment on Michael Dally’s status in the investigation at this point.”

Police publicly identify only Haun as a suspect, but law enforcement sources say Dally is the second main suspect and that the possible involvement of a third suspect is being investigated.

The affidavit lays out the police case for the first 11 days after Sherri Dally disappeared. Jones ruled that it showed probable cause that Haun and Michael Dally were involved in the homicide and justified the searches.

*

Among the evidence is a co-worker’s recollection that Haun, angry that she was being transferred to another store after Sherri Dally’s kidnapping, said she did not like the manager at her new store. “Maybe he will come up missing too,” the co-worker recalled Haun saying.

Police also maintain in the affidavit that Michael Dally made conflicting statements to police about whether he knew his wife was going shopping the morning she was kidnapped, first saying he did and then later denying it.

In addition, the manager of an Oxnard rental car agency told investigators that Haun looked like the woman who rented a blue-green Nissan Altima believed used in the kidnapping, according to the affidavit. The car was rented by a customer who showed a picture identification and a credit card the day before the May 6 kidnapping and returned the day after it. DNA tests are being run on blood stains from the car. However, investigators said previously that the signature on the car rental receipt does not match Haun’s normal handwriting.

*

Other information cited in the affidavit as indicators of Dally’s and Haun’s possible involvement in the crime were:

* Statements that Michael Dally was having serious financial problems and talked with a paralegal about filing for bankruptcy.

* Confirmation by Haun that Sherri Dally twice confronted her about her affair with Michael Dally, saying in the last argument that she wanted to beat Haun up.

* “Michael Dally’s inappropriate behavior showing a lack of concern and a failure to act in assisting to locate his wife.”

* Statements by a woman who said she was Dally’s lover for three years beginning in 1989. She said he wanted to divorce, but Sherri Dally became pregnant. Dally would tell the woman that he felt like a “trapped animal with no way out,” the affidavit said.

Much of the affidavit concerns the relationship of Michael Dally, 36, and Haun, 35, who dated for two years while working together at a Vons market in Oxnard. It also noted the strain in the Dally marriage.

John Avila, former head of security at the Target store from which Sherri Dally was kidnapped and an old friend of the couple, told detectives that he had a conversation with the victim just before she disappeared.

“Avila recounted how Michael Dally was psychologically abusive to Sherri, calling her ‘fat and ugly,’ ” according to the affidavit. “He noted that Sherri had lost a substantial amount of weight and changed her manner of dress, to be more attractive to Michael.”

*

In an interview Monday, Avila also said that Sherri Dally told him just before she was kidnapped that she had confronted Haun only a few days earlier and told Haun to leave her husband alone.

In a statement to police cited in the affidavit, Haun confirmed the two confrontations with Sherri Dally--the first last year after Haun and Dally had lived together for months.

“Haun was confronted by Sherri and asked if she was having sex with Mike. Haun said that since Sherri had asked, she told her ‘yes,’ ” according to the affidavit.

In the second confrontation, Haun told police that Sherri Dally had threatened to “pound you [Haun] into the ground,” Haun told detectives. Haun said the wife then went inside the Vons store and confronted her husband in front of his superiors.

Co-workers told police that Dally regularly referred to himself as divorced and Haun described Sherri Dally as her boyfriend’s ex-wife.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Comments to Police

These are excerpts from the affidavit justifying the searches of the homes of Michael Dally and Diana J. Haun:

“Haun arrived at work with scratches on her forehead that extended down to the area of her nose. Haun said her scratches were from falling from her bicycle during an exercise ride earlier in the day.”

--Summary of co-worker’s statement about Diana Haun on the day of Sherri Dally’s kidnapping.

*

“Haun is apparently upset with the transfer [to another store]. Haun does not like the manager of the Port Hueneme store and commented: ‘Maybe he will come up missing too.’ ”

--Summary of statement by a co-worker of Diana J. Haun.

*

“Dally would say he felt like ‘a trapped animal with no way out.’ ”

--A former Michael Dally lover describing Dally’s marriage to Sherri Dally.

*

“Dally talked one time about how expensive child support is. Dally made the comment that he had ‘connections’ to persons he could get to ‘knock off’ his wife.”

--Summary of statement by Michael Dally’s co-worker.