Haun Arrested a 2nd Time in Dally Slaying

Capping an intense three-month investigation, police on Thursday arrested Port Hueneme grocery clerk Diana J. Haun on suspicion of kidnapping and killing Ventura homemaker Sherri Dally, the wife of her longtime lover.

Quiet and calm, the 35-year-old Haun was taken into custody from behind a Vons deli counter at about 8:30 a.m., handcuffed while still in the store and led to a police cruiser. “I walked out with her and she didn’t say a word,” Ventura Police Lt. Don Arth said.

Prosecutors said they will file kidnapping and first-degree murder charges with a special circumstance before Haun’s Monday arraignment, which would allow for the death penalty upon conviction. Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury may try the case personally, going to trial for the first time in more than a decade, a spokesman said.

Still dressed in her white-and-black Vons uniform, the thin, pale Haun was booked into Ventura County Jail, where she was being held on $1-million bail. It was the second time Haun has been arrested in the case. She was first jailed May 18 on suspicion of murder, but released four days later for lack of evidence.

Sherri Dally, a 35-year-old homemaker and day-care center operator, was abducted May 6 from the parking lot of a Ventura department store after dropping off her two young sons at school and buying a Mother’s Day gift.

Her skeletal body--skull fractured and stabbed repeatedly in the chest--was found by a search party of friends June 1 in a ravine north of Ventura.

Dally’s husband, Michael, 36, remains a suspect in the case, authorities said.

“We have not eliminated Michael Dally from our investigation,” said Arth, who led a team of 20 investigators who pieced together the complicated, circumstantial case. “I think there was more than one person involved in this crime. . . . Our investigation remains open. We’re still asking for anyone who has information to contact us.”

Neil Quinn, the deputy public defender who has represented Haun since May, said Haun will plead not guilty.

“She is innocent when she pleads not guilty,” he said. “The law provides that she’s innocent. And no one, including the police or the public, should start jumping to conclusions about what the actual facts are going to show.”

Quinn said it would not be proper for him to talk about the facts of the case at this point.

Haun, 35, professed her innocence last month in a lengthy interview with The Times. She said she even passed a lie detector test in May, an assertion on which authorities have refused comment.

Michael Dally, who has also said he had nothing to do with the death of his wife of 14 years, could not be reached Thursday at the Oxnard grocery where he works, nor at his mid-Ventura home.

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Even as Haun was being arrested, prosecutors were serving witnesses in the case with subpoenas to testify as early as Monday before a county grand jury. Ventura County prosecutors routinely seek grand jury indictments in murder cases, avoiding lengthy preliminary hearings and preventing defense attorneys from getting an early preview of their case before full trial in Superior Court.

Haun’s arrest climaxed an agonizing period for the family and friends of Sherri Dally. Although grateful the investigation is moving forward, they said the arrest just opens a new chapter in a tragic story.

“I was expecting them to arrest her,” said Claris Guess, Sherri Dally’s grandmother. “When you lose somebody, it leaves a great loss in your life. The whole family was very close to Sherri.”

John Avila, longtime friend of both Sherri and Michael Dally, expressed relief that at least one arrest has been made.

“It’s about time,” Avila said. “I just hope they get everybody. I hope they get all the parties involved.”

Friends and family of Haun and Michael Dally refused comment.

Why authorities decided to arrest Haun at this time was a question only partially answered Thursday.

Police had said they would not make an arrest until they received the results of DNA genetic tests on suspects’ blood and hair, and following delivery of an FBI analysis of suspects’ handwriting. The genetic analysis still had not arrived from a private lab Thursday.

“We’re confident at this point where we’re going,” Arth said. “It is time to make our case.”

When police arrested Haun two months ago, “we had a few pieces of the puzzle,” he said. “We feel we have a pretty complete puzzle this time.”

Homicide detectives presented their case to prosecutors late Tuesday, including the FBI handwriting results and tests done on physical evidence by the local Sheriff’s Department crime lab, Arth said.

With the new evidence, authorities said they think they can prove the prosecution’s theory that Haun killed Sherri Dally so she and Michael Dally could marry and raise the Dallys’ two young sons without a financially ruinous divorce and child custody battle.

A bludgeon thought to be the instrument used to fracture Sherri Dally’s skull has been found, sources said. They would not elaborate. Arth would not comment Thursday on whether police had a weapon in evidence.

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Nor would police or prosecutors comment on the evidence against Haun. But law enforcement sources have detailed what they think happened to Sherri Dally the morning of May 6.

The sources said prosecutors will try to prove that Haun first struck Sherri Dally with a blunt instrument shortly after she abducted the woman in the parking lot of the Ventura Target store.

Authorities said they believe that the homemaker willingly entered a car allegedly rented by Haun because the suspect was posing as a store security guard.

Haun--disguised in a blond wig and heavy makeup--flashed a phony badge purchased a few days earlier and told Sherri Dally she was suspected of shoplifting, sources said authorities believe.

After a brief discussion witnessed by several people, Sherri Dally willingly got out of her car and submitted to handcuffing, sources said. Haun had purchased handcuffs just a few days earlier, they said.

When Sherri Dally was placed in the back seat of the rental car, witnesses told police that the woman in the blond wig put her hand on the back of the homemaker’s head, as a peace officer would.

One witness has said that the woman then drove Sherri Dally toward the back of the Target store. And sources said authorities think Haun bludgeoned Dally there to keep her quiet, knocking her out and perhaps killing her at the same time.

Sources said other evidence also points to Haun. Witnesses say Haun rented the car used in the abduction the day before the crime, bought a blond wig two days before the kidnapping and bought handcuffs and a badge only days before Dally disappeared.

Also, just 50 minutes after the abduction, sources said someone used Haun’s telephone credit card to call the Oxnard grocery store where Michael Dally was working as a clerk.

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About two hours later, sources said, records also show someone using Haun’s telephone card called the Dally house from a pay phone across from a car wash in Camarillo. At about the same time, the charge card was used to call a rug cleaner, sources said. Blood stains have been found in the rental car in which witnesses say Sherri Dally was abducted.

In an interview, Haun told The Times that she probably did call Michael Dally several times the day of the kidnapping, but that would not have been unusual. She had called him regularly since they began dating two years ago, she said.

While prosecutors think they have enough evidence to prove that Haun is responsible for Sherri Dally’s death, police said a key question remains about whether she acted alone.

For two months, in fact, authorities have insisted that they have a solid circumstantial case against Haun. But they said they did not want to file charges until they had done more to try to build cases against other suspects.

Arth said Thursday that he does not know if or when more arrests will be made.

“I do not have any plans of making another arrest in the next couple of days,” he said.

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Sherri Dally’s friends, still mourning her death, said they think there will be more developments to come.

The Haun arrest, some friends said, was not cause for celebration. It is only the first step in a long process, said Kristin Olson, a close friend of Sherri Dally who helped organize the search for the missing woman.

“I have real mixed feelings. It’s hard to say I am happy about this,” said Olson, whose children were cared for by Sherri Dally. “But I think it’s a step we’ve been waiting for. And I feel a bit of relief that she’s not out there and feeling cocky, like maybe she’s gotten away with it.”

Debbie English, one of the victim’s closest friends, said they have been patiently waiting for a break in the case.

“You don’t know how many people have been praying for something to happen. We’ve had prayer groups all the way to Colorado,” said English, who runs a day care center and teamed with Sherri Dally on children’s outings. “The detectives have been saying just be patient and they were right. They know what they are doing.”

Almost from the day Sherri Dally was abducted, police have pursued the theory that her husband and Haun, who had dated for two years, plotted the kidnapping and killing together.

According to an affidavit filed to justify the May 18 search of the Haun and Dally houses, police were suspicious partly because of Michael Dally’s “inappropriate behavior [after the abduction] showing a lack of concern and a failure to act in assisting to locate his wife.”

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Within a week of her disappearance, Dally had filed for legal separation and custody of their two sons, Devon, 8, and Max, 6, citing irreconcilable differences.

Interviews with co-workers and Dally’s former lover also led police to conclude that Dally had thought about divorcing his wife--or killing her--for years.

Dally 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 the affidavit. And a woman who said she was Dally’s lover for three years beginning in 1989 told police that Dally wanted to divorce his wife even then, but was stuck in the marriage by the birth of his sons.

Dally would tell the woman that he felt like a “trapped animal with no way out,” the affidavit said.

Investigators initially focused on the actual events before and after the May 6 abduction.

They concluded that Haun’s alibi for the day did not hold up.

Haun told investigators that she went on a long bike ride from her Port Hueneme home to Camarillo and back, and never went to Ventura, the site of the kidnapping.

However, a co-worker told police that she saw Haun in her Jeep Wrangler in Ventura about six hours after Sherri Dally’s 9:30 a.m. disappearance.

Police also said they doubted Haun’s explanation that fresh scratches on her forehead down to her nose were from a bike accident the day of the kidnapping, two days before police first interviewed her.

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 normally occur in a bicycle accident, the affidavit said.

Among the evidence is a co-worker’s recollection that Haun, angry that she was being transferred to another store to separate her from Dally after his wife’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.