Dally Said Wife’s Body Was Moved, Jurors Told

It was a conversation Deborah English says she remembers clearly.

The body of her best friend, Sherri Dally, had been found at the bottom of a steep ravine between Ventura and Ojai. And Dally’s husband, Michael, knew something about it, she said.

“He said the body was not in the right place, that it had been moved,” English testified Tuesday at Michael Dally’s murder trial.

English told jurors the defendant made the remark during a conversation in June 1996, a few weeks after her friend’s skeletal remains were found in a gully off Canada Larga Road.

Based on police photographs of the scene, Michael Dally told her that his wife’s body had been moved about 10 feet and that her wedding ring had also been moved, English testified.

Asked by prosecutor Lela Henke-Dobroth whether Dally had offered an explanation on how he knew, English said simply: “No, ma’am.”

Dally is facing murder, kidnapping and conspiracy charges for allegedly planning his wife’s May 1996 killing with Diana Haun, his lover. Haun has already been convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.

Prosecutors say Dally, a 37-year-old former supermarket manager, persuaded Haun to kill his wife so he could avoid a costly divorce and collect on her life insurance policy. Dally has denied any role in the slaying.

English was one of three witnesses to testify Tuesday during the second week of testimony in Dally’s trial.

But before English addressed the jury, prosecutors requested that the defendant’s father, Lawrence Dally, be barred from the courtroom during her testimony.

Outside the jury’s presence, English told Superior Court Judge Charles W. Campbell Jr. that the senior Dally had recently approached her at home. They live in the same Ventura neighborhood.

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Lawrence Dally told her that if she did not speak with investigators for his son’s defense team, she “would be helping the boys lose their father,” English said.

Michael and Sherri Dally’s two sons, Devon, 9, and Max, 8, live with his parents.

Campbell ruled that Lawrence Dally would not be allowed in the courtroom while English was on the witness stand.

During her testimony, English told the jury in a small, sometimes quavering voice of her eight-year friendship with Sherri Dally and the events following her disappearance.

English testified she knew Sherri Dally’s daily routine: She would take her boys to school, sometimes shop or clean house, then pick them up in the afternoon. She also cared for other children in her home.

But on May 6, 1996, Sherri Dally did not pick up her children from school. Her empty van was found parked in a Target parking lot.

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It was not until 7 p.m. that evening, English said, that Michael Dally called her at home to ask if she had seen his wife.

“He didn’t seem upset,” she testified.

In the weeks that followed, English said, Dally talked to her about getting rid of his wife’s belongings. When she came over to clean out Sherri’s closet, English said, she saw a photograph of Haun on a bedroom dresser.

Michael Dally’s two-year affair with the 36-year-old grocery clerk had been a source of emotional turmoil for Sherri Dally, English testified. So had Michael Dally’s drug use and financial problems, she said.

“It was like a roller coaster,” she said of Sherri’s emotional state. “She had days where she felt good and days where she would cry all the time.”

Although English acknowledged on cross-examination that that she never saw Michael Dally physically abuse his wife, she said the defendant was psychologically abusive.

“She suffered emotional abuse,” English said. She told jurors that Michael Dally would call his wife fat and curse at her.

In other testimony Tuesday, a co-worker at the Vons grocery store where Michael Dally and Haun worked testified about statements Haun made before Sherri’s Dally disappearance.

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Teresa Estrella told jurors that Haun was a self-described “witch” who talked about wanting to perform a human sacrifice “as a birthday present to a male friend.”

And a receptionist at a Ventura optometrist office told jurors that she observed a hostile confrontation among Haun, Sherri and Michael Dally outside her office on Jan. 12, 1996.