2nd Defendant Goes on Trial in Murder Plot

Likening the case to the movie “Fatal Attraction,” an attorney for a Ventura grocery store manager accused of killing his wife told a jury Monday that the murder was carried out by the husband’s obsessive lover acting alone.

The lawyer made his comments as 37-year-old Michael Dally went on trial in Ventura County, where his former lover already has been convicted in a plot to kidnap and kill his wife of 14 years.

Dally faces a possible death sentence if convicted. Defense attorney Robert Schwartz, however, said there is not a shred of direct evidence linking Dally to a murder conspiracy.

“Diana Haun did this all by herself,” Schwartz said of Dally’s former lover. “The evidence will show clearly she was a very, very coldblooded murderess who would do anything to get what she wanted.”

But prosecutors asserted that Dally was the mastermind behind the May 1996 slaying.

Warning jurors that “there is no smoking gun,” prosecutors acknowledged that Dally made none of the key purchases--the clothing and blond wig used as a disguise or the getaway rental car--leading up to Sherri Dally’s murder.

Nor was Dally present when his wife was kidnapped from a Target parking lot or when Haun dumped her corpse in a remote canyon, said Ventura County Assistant Dist. Atty. Lela Henke-Dobroth.

“That is because he designed it that way,” the prosecutor said during opening statements in one of Ventura County’s most sensational murder cases.

Henke-Dobroth described Dally as a self-centered man who led an extravagant lifestyle that included drugs and prostitutes.

A big spender, he ran out of money shortly before his wife was killed, and Sherri Dally had refused to put up with his conduct any longer, the prosecutor said. Afraid that a divorce would leave him “financially devastated,” he turned to his girlfriend to carry out the killing.

Dally is charged with murder, conspiracy and kidnapping. Haun, his lover for two years, was convicted of murder and other charges last fall and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Today, the prosecution plans to introduce testimony from a former girlfriend of Dally who contends that Dally told her he wanted his wife dead and talked about stabbing her or pushing her off a cliff.

Witnesses also will include a former prostitute who said Dally asked her to party with him on Canada Larga Road a week after his wife’s disappearance. Sherri Dally’s body was found in a ravine along that road three weeks later.

Defense attorney Schwartz acknowledged that for many years Dally had a reckless lifestyle, but said none of that has anything to do with the charges against him.

“A mere character assassination does not make him a murderer,” Schwartz said.

Sherri Dally disappeared from a Target store parking lot May 6, 1996, after witnesses saw her climb into the back seat of a teal-colored car driven by a blond woman.

Police immediately focused their investigation on Dally and his girlfriend. Haun was arrested May 18, 1996, but later released.

In the weeks that followed, police tracked the pair’s movements and phone calls. They arrested Haun again after Sherri Dally’s skeletal remains were found in a steep ravine.

Haun was indicted for murder in August 1996, but the grand jury initially did not indict Dally.

Prosecutors returned to the grand jury and secured an indictment against Dally the following November.

As with the Haun case, a jury from Santa Barbara County has been picked for Dally’s trial because of heavy pretrial publicity in Ventura County.

Although many of the same witnesses will testify in the second trial, what they will testify about and how they are presented to jurors may be quite different, lawyers say. In part, that is because Dally is accused not of wielding the murder weapon but of encouraging Haun to kill.

Under the law, a person who assists, instigates or advises someone else to commit murder is equally guilty. Prosecutors have acknowledged that the concept can be difficult for jurors to accept, and legal experts agree.

“It is tougher on the prosecution to go on an aiding-and-abetting theory,” said Laurie Levenson, an associate dean at Loyola Law School.

“It is just harder because you don’t have the direct evidence,” she said. “Usually what you need is strong motive or an admission or statements made after the fact.”