Dally Seen as Always Calm, Cool : Acquaintances Say His Life Has Followed Familiar Patterns

Michael Dally’s life has followed familiar patterns.

He has lived all his 36 years in Ventura, has worked 20 years for the same employer and married his high school sweetheart and stayed with her, more or less, for two decades--until she was kidnapped and murdered, a crime with which he is now charged.

The son of a soft-spoken general contractor father and a Japanese homemaker mother, Dally was a quiet, well-mannered boy and remains today cool and calm, almost aloof, displaying a casual cockiness even in the days after his wife’s death.

“He’s always been sort of the same,” remembers Kristin Olson, who socialized with the Dallys in recent years. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen fluctuation in his demeanor. No matter what’s going on, he’s just always sort of, ‘Let’s have fun, I’m a cheery guy.’ . . . He seems very separated from what’s really going on.”

At the time of his arrest Friday, Dally still lived just a few houses from his parents and a block or so from his sister’s family.

Even in recent weeks, when the graveyard-shift grocery clerk worked, his relatives cared for his sons, Devon, 8, and Max, 6.

It is a closeness of family that friends remember from the childhood of Dally, whose father dubbed him “Butchy.”

“Butchy was raised being very polite,” said longtime friend John Avila, who helped organize searches for Sherri Dally’s body in May. “His mom was Japanese from Okinawa. He dad was over there in the Seabees during the Korean War.”

By the time Dally transferred from St. Bonaventure High School to Ventura High as a sophomore, however, he had begun to change, Avila said.

*

An average student, Dally drove a fast metallic-green Chevy Supersport and reveled in things that would bring him special attention.

“Even in high school he’d do anything that was enough to shock somebody,” Avila said, refusing to elaborate. “If it was weird or different then, ‘OK, what’s the big deal?’ That was always his personality.”

Dally’s best friend through elementary and high school, Avila said his old pal’s penchant for doing “wild things” created a gulf between them.

One incident led to Dally’s arrest, court records show. He was arrested in 1990 in downtown Ventura for possession of an illegal knife.

“I would characterize him as overconfident,” Avila said. “He was someone who always wanted to stand out in a crowd.”

That tendency showed itself even in the years just after the Dallys married in 1982, Avila said.

“A lot of what Michael was about didn’t really incorporate with Sherri,” Avila said. “He’d do his own thing. Just going off on little one- or two-day trips. He liked Big Sur and Carmel. He’d say, ‘I’m just going to go drive.’ ”

Dally had at least one long-term girlfriend during his marriage, according to friends and a police affidavit. The three-year relationship ended in 1992, the woman told investigators.

A Dally co-worker told The Times: “If you went back into his record, he’s always got a girl on the side. He’s cocky--a very manipulating strong-willed, egotistical man.”

Dally never went to college, pursuing instead his livelihood in the grocery business. However, the onetime 16-year-old box boy saw his career founder. In fact, Dally lover and co-suspect Diana Haun said in an interview with The Times that Dally’s aloof demeanor is really a defense mechanism that helped him handle the stress of a management job he once held.

“He said that developed from when he was working as a manager at Vons,” she said. “He would get bleeding ulcers because of the pressures. And one way of dealing with it is to put on this outside thing so that people wouldn’t pressure him.”

*

Some friends and co-workers judge Dally more harshly. Friends say that Dally is even estranged from some members of his family because of the way he treated his wife for years and because of his behavior after she disappeared.

Within a week of her disappearance, he had filed for legal separation and custody of their two sons.

And while Dally publicly vouched for Haun’s integrity, he described his wife as “just your average homemaker . . . just your average mom.”

“She’s a beautiful and wonderful person,” he said of Haun. Of his wife, he said, “I wish they’d just find Sherri so her family can go on. Her mother’s a mess.”

Once a search party of friends--minus Michael Dally--found Sherri Dally’s skeletal remains June 1, her husband expressed little emotion, even smiling and joking at her funeral two weeks later.

Several of Sherri Dally’s closest friends were appalled by Dally’s behavior.

“I’ve never felt this kind of anger,” Olson said. For years, she would go to the beach or the movies with the Dallys. But even then, Michael Dally’s disrespect for his wife showed through, Olson said.

“He was cold,” she said. “Even when there were several of us in a group, I always got the feeling the rest of us were treated with more dignity and respect and Sherri sort of got the leftover.”

Yet, Olson said she always felt that both Michael and Sherri Dally were her friends.

“With Mike it was just sort of a pat you on the back or joking friendship,” she said. “But I felt like if things were tough, Mike would be there as well. I don’t think that any more.”