Dally Verdict Prompts Tears, Shouts of Joy

Outside Courtroom 45, a restless crowd waited for the information everybody wanted to know.

Elbow to elbow, they jostled for a glimpse of the tiny, soundless television monitor that linked them to the drama inside.

“They’re giving the verdict now,” said one person, spotting Judge Charles W. Campbell’s lips moving.

“He’s guilty of aiding and abetting,” another shouted.

“Financial gain,” said another, listening on headphones.

Then came the news everyone had been waiting for:

“Guilty of first degree,” a gravelly voice crackled out over a walkie-talkie.

A collective whoop of joy exploded from the spectators.

After a seven-week trial and four days of deliberations, the jury returned its verdict just before 2:30 p.m. Monday, convicting Michael Dally of conspiracy, kidnapping and first-degree murder in the slaying of his wife, Ventura homemaker Sherri Dally.

Jurors also convicted Dally, 37, of two special circumstances necessary to propel the case into the penalty phase: murdering for financial gain and lying in wait.

The second phase of Dally’s trial will begin Monday--and the outcome will determine whether the former Vons manager should spend the rest of his life in prison or be executed.

Dally’s lover, Diana Haun, was convicted of first-degree murder last year and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

As spectators pumped their fists, screamed in joy and hugged each other over the verdict, a bailiff poked his head out and asked them to keep quiet.

“I’m excited, I’m so happy,” said court watcher Raylene Robinson, fluttering her hands like fans to cool herself off.

When Sherri Dally’s mother, Karlyne Guess, had arrived late and pushed her way through the media gantlet before the verdict, Robinson had told her, “We’re with you.”

After the verdict, Robinson’s eyes welled up with tears.

“My heart goes out to Karlyne Guess, who lost her daughter,” she said.

Then family members, law enforcement officials and jurors from Haun’s trial began to pour out of the courtroom.

Downstairs, people rushed from the courthouse yelling, “He’s guilty. He’s guilty.”

Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury was the first to emerge into the hallway.

He left with a big smile and one thumb up.

“Justice has been served,” he said to the reporters who thronged him.

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Ventura Police Det. Skip Young, who spent hundreds of hours with other investigators piecing together the cases against Haun and Dally, wasn’t sure which way the jury would go when he walked into the courtroom Monday.

“We received this as a missing-persons report,” he said after the verdict. “We get missing-persons reports all the time, and fortunately most of them don’t pan out. But this one was different from the very beginning.

“All her family and friends said Sherri Dally would never leave her kids.”

Sherri’s mother appeared emotionally exhausted and leaned on the arm of a victims’ advocate for support. She said little when surrounded by cameras and reporters.

“I thought it was a hard decision for the jury to make,” she said. “It was a just verdict. That’s all I’m going to say right now.”

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Sherri’s brother Scott said he was pleased by the verdict but saddened by what it confirmed about his former brother-in-law and what it means for Dally’s two young sons.

“I’m very sad for the boys, that the man her mother loved, her husband, would betray her like that,” he said.

Hannah Murray, Michael Dally’s niece, burst into tears after the verdict was read.

Murray, who testified in the Haun and Dally trials, worried not only about the boys but also about her elderly grandparents. She said her grandfather is hurting inside, even though he showed little emotion Monday.

“He doesn’t show reactions in front of anyone,” she said. “But I know it’s going to kill him, and it’s going to kill my grandma too.”

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Meanwhile, clustering in the hallway, a crowd of people who had avidly followed the Dally trial from start to finish buzzed over the verdict.

June Barnes, who sat through most of both trials, said she was thrilled by the outcome.

She and two friends planned to get together for a celebratory coffee to mark the end of their court-watching days.

The women were drawn to the trials because one of them had hired Sherri Dally to watch her children.

“I love it,” Barnes said. “There is no doubt in my mind that he was in on it. He was unaffected by the trial. He thought he was O.J. sitting there.”

“It’s wonderful,” said Betty Wingate, clutching her friend’s arm with excitement and for support. “It’s well-deserved. It’s good for all battered women--and that’s what she was.”

Ann Scott and Donna Morlock, two jurors from the Haun trial, returned to Ventura to hear Monday’s verdict on Dally.

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“I would give Michael Dally the death penalty,” said Scott, who called him a “slimy, manipulative” character. “He was the mastermind of this whole thing.”

Her friend Morlock, an alternate on the Haun jury who emerged from the courtroom Monday teary and short of breath, agreed.

“I’m very, very glad,” she said. “They made the right decision all the way down the line. Justice was done.”

Meanwhile, friends and former colleagues across the county stopped what they were doing to hear the Dally verdict.

At the Vons supermarket where Dally last worked, sympathy was in short supply.

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When the verdict was read, workers in the meat department turned up their radio.

“It was a shocker,” said meat clerk Nick Garcia. “A lot of people here thought he would get off. They were pleased he didn’t.”

When told of the verdict, Andres Sanchez, a manager at Vons, cried. “Way to go, brother!”

Sanchez knew Dally, who managed the night crew at the store, which is next to Wal-Mart on Rose Avenue. He said he had never thought of Dally as exceptional in any way, but changed his mind when Sherri disappeared.

“He got just what he deserved,” Sanchez said as he rearranged plastic jugs on a shelf. “Everyone here was afraid he’d get out. We’re happy it’s all over.”

Haun had abducted Sherri Dally from the Target parking lot in Ventura--an everyday setting that resonated with residents who closely followed the case.

In that lot Monday, yards from where the kidnapping occurred, a woman responded vigorously to the guilty verdict.

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“Yes!” she said. “I hope they throw him in with Manson. The two will make good company for each other.”

Sherri Dally’s best friend could not remove a grim smile from her face after hearing the verdict over the radio in her Channel Drive home, a few houses down the street from where the Dally family had lived.

“I’m happy justice was done,” Debbie English said. “I’m happy that somebody who felt he could get away with it didn’t. And I’m happy that all the time everybody has worked--from the detectives on up--has paid off.”

Two years have passed since Sherri Dally disappeared.

“It’s been a rough two years,” she said.

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English no longer socializes with Dally’s parents, who live almost directly across the street. Her two oldest boys, who used to play with the Dally sons, no longer do so.

And English has put her home up for sale.

“You pretend like they are not there,” she said of the parents of the man she calls “a very good actor.”

“The Dally boys run up and down the street and play. It’s hard. It’s hard on my children.”

But Michael Dally’s sons will never find an escape from their father’s crime, she said.

“I feel really bad for the boys--they’ve lost them both,” English said. “That’s something they’ll never be able to outlive. That will be with them for the rest of their lives.”

Farther down the street, Michael Dally’s two sons, Max, 8, and Devon, 9, played on their skateboards on the sidewalk outside their grandfather’s home after the verdict.

Their grandfather, who is their legal guardian, said he had told them of the verdict immediately. “Boys will be boys,” said Lawrence Dally as he collected the mail, adding that his grandsons did not show much reaction to the news.

“What can a little boy say except look at you a little glassy-eyed? . . . It’s funny about kids. They do better than grown-ups sometimes.”

Then, with a tear in his eye, Dally turned and went back inside his home.

Times staff writers Fred Alvarez, Miguel Bustillo and Steve Chawkins, and correspondent Nick Green, contributed to this story.

* MAIN STORY: A3