Dally Surprised, Confused Over His Arrest, Lawyer Says

Michael Dally, the adulterous grocery clerk who adopted the symbol of the antichrist as his pager code name, told his lawyer Saturday he was “genuinely surprised” he was arrested on suspicion of murdering his wife.

Attorney James Farley visited Dally, 36, Saturday morning in his Ventura County Jail cell, the day after he was arrested at his Channel Drive home in Ventura.

Dally is scheduled to be arraigned at 1:30 p.m. Monday on charges that he conspired with longtime girlfriend Diana Haun to kidnap and murder his wife, Sherri Dally.

“Mike is very confused as to why he’s in there,” Farley said after a half-hour meeting with Dally. “He doesn’t understand why he can be arrested when he hasn’t done anything. . . . He’s genuinely surprised as to why he’s in jail.”

Dally’s wife was found bludgeoned and stabbed in a ravine north of Ventura on June 1, after she was abducted May 6 from the parking lot of the Target store in Ventura.

The Ventura County Grand Jury indicted Haun, 35, on charges of kidnapping and murder with the special circumstance of lying in wait. Dally was indicted Friday by the grand jury on the same charges, with the additional allegations of conspiracy to commit kidnapping and the special circumstance of financial gain.

Farley said he did most of the talking during the conversation with his rattled client. Fearful of their discussion being monitored, he said he did not discuss specifics of the case with Dally, who spent an uncomfortable night in isolation in the jail’s second-floor medical unit.

Nothing is physically or mentally wrong with Dally, Farley said, but jail officials refused comment Saturday on why he was placed in the unit.

Farley expects that Dally will soon be placed with other inmates.

“He’s sleeping on a cold concrete floor with just a thin little mattress and a half a blanket,” Farley said. “I don’t know whether this is a punishment thing or what it is. He should be placed in a regular cell. . . . My only concern today was make sure he is all right, No. 1, and No. 2, to make sure he doesn’t talk to any of his new friends in the jail who would rat on him in a heartbeat.”

Farley was apparently the only visitor jail officials permitted Dally to receive Saturday.

Dally’s parents, Lawrence and Yaeko Dally, attempted to see their son Saturday afternoon, but officials refused their request and told them to try again Monday.

“Our feelings are pretty sad right now,” said a solemn Lawrence Dally as he stood for what turned out to be a futile wait in line at the visitation sign-in window. “That’s all I can say to you right now.”

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Farley has told his client to prepare for a lengthy jail stay. Dally is being held without bail and Farley doesn’t expect that will change.

“If they do set bail it will be a quarter of a million or a half-million dollars and he can’t [make] that,” Farley said. “This guy doesn’t have any money.”

Investigators suspect that Dally and Haun, who carried on a two-year love affair, conspired to kill Sherri Dally to collect a life insurance policy and avoid the financial entanglements of a divorce. If convicted, the two could receive the death penalty.

Farley downplayed the likelihood that new evidence was presented to the grand jury Friday tying Dally to the bloody slaying of the mother of his two children. The panel had failed to indict Dally three months ago, when charges were filed against Haun.

“I do know the district attorney’s office was very perturbed over the fact they didn’t get an indictment the first time,” he said. “I think they just pressured the grand jury into doing something.”

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The transcripts of more than 1,500 pages of grand jury testimony provided startling insight into the love triangle of Haun, Dally and the high school sweetheart with whom he fathered two sons, 8-year-old Devon and 6-year-old Max.

At one point during his married life, Michael Dally had moved out of his house to live with Haun, a former grocery store co-worker. The transcripts detailed Dally’s relationship with the woman he sometimes referred to as “Di-Di,” including the pager code name--666--that Haun used to signal her boyfriend.

“Six-sixty-six is me, or it identifies me,” he told the grand jury, explaining the pager code. “I know 666 stands for the devil, but . . . just to us it means trouble, and I’m always in trouble it seems like.”

Friends and relatives of Dally’s slain wife said Saturday they were relieved that he had been arrested.

John Avila, who was fired from his job at the store where Sherri Dally was abducted after helping organize searches for her, said Dally’s arrest eased fears he would avoid prosecution.

“That’s something Butchy should have thought about when he was planning this little deal,” said Avila, referring to Dally’s childhood nickname. “Now [Max and Devon] don’t have a mommy or a daddy. . . . I think it was grating on all of us to see Michael as carefree and cocky as he’s been through this whole thing.”

Sherri’s parents, Ken and Karlyne Guess, had little to say about the arrest. But Sherri’s grandmother, Claris Guess, said the development is just another step in working through the ordeal.

“I don’t have too much of feeling about it one way or another . . . until they find out how guilty he is,” she said. “I’ve kind of built a wall around myself to prepare for what happened one way or another. But nothing can bring [Sherri] back.”

Staff writer Rodney Bosch and correspondent Kate Folmar contributed to this story.