Co-Workers Say Dally Boasted of Perfect Crime

Michael Dally’s co-workers told a jury Wednesday that he was an arrogant braggart who showed no respect for women and boasted about being so smart that he could “get away with murder.”

Eight co-workers from the Oxnard grocery store where Dally worked took the witness stand in his murder trial and portrayed him as a man fully capable of killing his wife.

But their testimony was not without setbacks for the prosecution.

In questioning the supermarket employees, Dally’s attorneys tried to turn the spotlight away from their client and onto another figure in the high-profile case--Diana Haun.

She had an affair with Dally for two years and was convicted last fall of killing his wife.

Prosecutors say the pair, who both worked at Vons, conspired to kill Sherri Dally to collect her $50,000 life insurance policy and to save him the cost of a divorce.

But Dally’s attorneys maintain Haun was a crazed lover who acted alone. And to press that point, they questioned the store clerks and supervisors about their observations of Haun as much as for their opinions of Dally.

“Would you say Diana Haun was obsessed with Michael Dally?” defense attorney James M. Farley asked witness Geralee Blair, who supervised Haun.

She initially rejected the idea, but changed her mind after Farley cited a previous statement to investigators in which Blair described Haun as being willing to “do anything” for Dally.

“Maybe,” she acknowledged, “it could have been an obsession.”

Dally is accused of planning with Haun the May 6, 1996, kidnapping and slaying of his wife, Sherri, whose body was found in a steep ravine north of the city about a month later. He faces a possible death sentence if convicted.

Dally’s role--if any--remains the key question. Launching the second day of testimony, prosecutors called a series of witnesses to establish the defendant’s possible motive and character.

Andrew Pier worked the graveyard shift with Dally a decade ago at a Vons store in Ventura. He told the jury that Dally once bragged about his ability to craft the perfect crime.

“He mentioned that he didn’t know how an individual would get caught and that he could get away with murder,” Pier testified.

Dally elaborated by saying he would dispose of a murder weapon by tossing it in the ocean, Pier said.

Other employees at the Oxnard grocery store where Dally more recently worked testified that he was unhappy in his marriage. They said he made no attempt to conceal his affair with Haun.

“He was more concerned about Diane when she was arrested than when Sherri disappeared,” Blair said.

“He did not like his wife,” said Yvete Bohnert, a store supervisor who said Dally resented his wife for financial reasons. “He said she was trying to control him and he wasn’t going to put up with it.”

Another co-worker, Richard Ready, worked with Dally for three years stocking shelves in the back room of the Vons on Rose Avenue in Oxnard. Ready, who is divorced, said Dally used to tease him about his expensive child support payments.

“He said, ‘I’m never going to pay child support,’ ” Ready testified.

But on cross-examination he said Dally told him he would not divorce his wife for another reason: He said he had “the best of both worlds” having both a lover and a wife.

Vons employee Anna Marie Fair told jurors that Dally once said “it was cheaper to keep her” referring to his wife. She described Dally as cocky and a braggart.

On cross-examination, Farley questioned Fair’s obvious dislike for Dally--which she did not deny.

In fact, she told jurors she disliked him so much she threw the subpoena from his attorneys in the trash and told investigators “she would go to jail before she would help Michael Dally.” She was called as a prosecution witness.

While many of the witnesses testified for only 10 or 20 minutes, Blair, who supervised Haun, stayed on the stand twice as long. Mostly, she told jurors about the changes she observed in Haun as she began her relationship with Dally.

“She went from being a really excellent employee to not a very good employee,” Blair said. “She was spending more time with Mike than doing her job.”

At one point, Haun was reprimanded when she left work for two hours to be with Dally and didn’t clock out.

She once told Blair: “This is just my job--Michael Dally is my life.”

Like many of her co-workers, Blair told the jury she didn’t like Dally. He was loud and obnoxious, she said. And he made no effort to search for his wife after she disappeared, she said.

“He did not encourage anybody at work to help,” Blair said.

But Farley took issue with her statement and Blair admitted no organized effort to search for Sherri Dally’s body was initiated by anyone else at the grocery store.

She told Farley that she never personally approached Dally to ask if she could help.

“We were not friends,” she explained, adding that the only friend Dally had at work was Haun.

Geri Rex told jurors she considered Dally a friend, even though he made at pass at her when she first met him. Contrary to the testimony of other co-workers, Rex said that Dally did seem upset at the loss of his wife.

“He said, ‘You’re going to think I’m crazy,’ ” she recalled of a conversation they had at the store after Sherri disappeared, “ ‘but I see Sherri. I see her every night. I see her in the hallway and she’s looking in the boy’s room.’

“After that, he became a little emotional,” Rex said. “It’s the first time I saw him choke up. He didn’t cry, but he was upset.”

In other testimony Wednesday, a former drug dealer told the jury about his friendship with the defendant, which centered around weekly sales of rock cocaine to Dally.

Tom Nelson testified that he sold Dally $20 worth of rock cocaine about once a week for several years. The transactions began about four years ago and continued until Nelson was arrested in February 1996, he said.

Nelson, who is now on probation, testified that he never saw Dally use the drugs and never sold him more than $100 worth of cocaine at a time. He told the jury he is no longer dealing drugs.

During opening statements on Monday, prosecutors told jurors they planned to call a prostitute to the witness stand who would testify that Dally picked her up the week after his wife’s disappearance and asked her to “party” with him at a location on Canada Larga Road.

The ravine where his wife’s corpse was dumped is along Canada Larga Road.

But when the prostitute was called to testify Wednesday morning, she said Dally never made such statements and that they had never had sexual intercourse.

“Did you ever tell anyone that you and Michael Dally went to Canada Larga Road?” Farley asked the witness, identified only as Patricia.

“No,” she said.

Prosecutors suggested that she had told this to her brother, Stan, who later told investigators. But when called to testify after his sister, Stan denied any knowledge of the alleged liaison at Canada Larga Road. He admitted, however, that he would not say anything that might incriminate his sister.

Testimony in the trial is scheduled to resume Tuesday.