Witness Links Michael Dally to Sex, Drugs

A petty thief testified Monday that she took drugs and had sex with Michael Dally while his girlfriend was in jail on murder charges.

Tamara Leach told the jury at Diana Haun’s murder trial that in August 1996 she went to Dally’s Ventura home twice--once to smoke rock cocaine with him and another time in which the two ended up in bed together.

Leach was among about a dozen witnesses who testified Monday as Haun’s trial entered its sixth--and possibly last--week of testimony.

Since opening their side of the case, defense attorneys have launched an aggressive attack on Michael Dally’s character, calling Leach and other witnesses to the stand to testify about his drug use and adultery.

The defense has also challenged the testimony of several prosecution witnesses and continued Monday to raise doubts about statements the jury heard earlier in the case.

Wearing a black skirt and tan blazer, Leach took the witness stand early Monday afternoon. She testified that she met Michael Dally about two years ago through an alleged drug dealer known as “Texas” Tom Nelson.

On at least 15 occasions, she said she helped purchase drugs for Dally. Sometimes, Leach testified, they would share the drugs in a Ventura motel room or he would give her a little cash for her efforts.

“He’d usually give me some money or some of the dope,” Leach said. “A lot of times he would take it home.”

One time, she told the jury, Dally called his wife, Sherri, to come pick him up from a motel because he was too high on cocaine to drive home.

After Sherri Dally disappeared from a Target parking lot May 6, 1996, Leach said Michael Dally told her he believed his wife had been taken by someone.

“He said, ‘I guess I’m a single parent now,’ ” Leach testified. She added that Dally made the remark “way before” his wife’s stabbed and beaten body was discovered in a steep ravine on the outskirts of Ventura.

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A search party found the 35-year-old homemaker’s skeletal remains June 1, 1996, 26 days after she was reported missing.

Two months later, Haun was arrested on suspicion of murdering Sherri Dally. She and Michael Dally, both grocery clerks, were eventually charged with murder, kidnapping and conspiracy. Michael Dally was not arrested until November.

It was during the weeks that followed Haun’s Aug. 1 arrest, Leach said, that she and Dally took drugs and had sex in his Ventura home. She said his two boys were not in the house at the time.

After their liaison, Leach said he admitted to feeling guilty because his girlfriend was locked up in the county jail, she testified.

Leach, who told the jury she is currently being held on petty theft charges, testified for about 20 minutes Monday. Her time on the witness stand was lengthy compared to many other witnesses who testified for only five or 10 minutes.

Among the more lengthy testimonies offered Monday was one from Ventura resident Tracy Girt, who--in contrast to an earlier witness--offered a starkly different description of a car and driver she saw parked beneath a highway overpass on May 7, 1996.

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Earlier in the trial, Girt’s friend, Samantha Spencer, testified that she saw a dark-haired woman sitting in a blue-green car on the left-hand side of Canada Larga Road on the morning after Sherri Dally disappeared.

In court, Spencer identified Haun as being the woman she saw in the car about 1:30 a.m. on May 7, 1996.

But on Monday, Girt said she also saw a parked car with a woman in it shortly thereafter. She passed the car while driving to Spencer’s house, she testified.

The car Girt told the jury she saw was not blue-green but tan. She said the car was parked on the right side of the road--not the left--and was an older model, possibly from the ‘70s.

She further recalled that the woman sitting in the car was a blond with shoulder-length hair. The only similar detail that Girt and Spencer recalled in their testimony was that the woman in the car had large, wide eyes.

On cross-examination, however, Girt acknowledged that her story had changed slightly from what she originally told authorities. She said she was playing pool at a bar in Ventura, the Red Cove, before leaving for Spencer’s west Ventura home. But she testified that she had not had anything alcoholic to drink.

In other testimony Monday, Haun’s hairstylist told the jury that the defendant dyed her dark brown hair blond once. Despite her changed appearance, George Beesley said he could still recognize Haun.

Defense attorneys have argued that their client could not have been the blond-haired person who kidnapped Sherri Dally on the grounds that Dally would have recognized her.

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Five Ventura police officers also took the stand Monday, telling the jury about surveillance of Haun’s Port Hueneme home in the days after Sherri Dally was reported missing.

Officer Matt Liston said he saw Haun and Michael Dally get into an argument outside her 7th Street house not long after they were first interviewed by police.

Liston said he could not hear their conversation. But he said: “It wasn’t going smoothly.”