Worker Tells Jury of Dally Comments on Day of Slaying

An elementary school office worker told jurors Wednesday that Michael Dally sounded surprised when she mistakenly told him his son had been picked up from kindergarten by his wife on May 6, 1996, the day she was kidnapped and stabbed.

“He said, ‘Oh really?’ ” Ellen Carpenter testified.

Jurors were told the conversation occurred at 11:45 a.m., about two hours after witnesses at a Target store parking lot reported seeing Sherri Dally get into the back seat of a teal-colored car driven by a blond woman.

Prosecutors say that woman was Michael Dally’s mistress, Diana Haun. They say she was wearing a wig and disguise to carry out a murder scheme the pair had concocted. Dally, 37, is charged with murder, kidnapping and conspiracy. Haun was convicted of the same charges last fall and sentenced to life in prison.

To bolster the charge of conspiracy, prosecutors have begun to question witnesses about statements Dally made before and after his wife’s disappearance. Carpenter was among those questioned.

As the office manager at Blanche Reynolds Elementary School in Ventura, Carpenter told jurors that because she had not seen Dally’s son, Max, now 8, in her office, she assumed he had been picked up by his mother.

But in fact, the boy and another child that Sherri Dally regularly cared for had not been picked up from school.

When Carpenter told Michael Dally the children were gone, “he sounded surprised,” she testified. She told the jury Dally did not ask whether anyone at the school had seen his wife.

A few minutes after the phone call, Max and the other child walked into the office and Carpenter immediately called Michael Dally back, she said. Dally drove to campus and picked up the children without speaking to school officials, Carpenter said.

Later that afternoon, Jerry Benisek dropped his 1-year-old daughter, Ashley, off at the Dally Channel Drive home in Ventura for baby-sitting. Sherri Dally was not there and her husband answered the door, Benisek said.

“I just made the comment, ‘Was Sherri out picking up kids?’ and he said, ‘Yeah,’ ” Benisek told the jury.

When Benisek returned to pick up his daughter before 7 p.m., Dally acted “perfectly normal,” he said.

The next day, Benisek said he and his wife attempted to leave Ashley at the Dally house again. But this time no one answered the door. Benisek called and left a message. Michael Dally returned the call within 15 minutes, he said.

“He said Sherri was missing and they were trying to get on with their lives,” Benisek testified. He said Dally also told him, “There would be no more baby-sitting.”

A civilian desk officer for the Ventura Police Department told jurors that at about 3 p.m. on May 6, 1996, Dally called police to report his wife missing.

The call between the defendant and Richard French was tape-recorded. That recording was played for the jury Wednesday afternoon. It was the first time jurors had heard Dally’s voice.

“My wife dropped my boys off at school at 8:30 this morning and she’s been missing ever since,” Dally says on the tape-recording. “She’s gone,” he adds later.

When French suggests that Dally contact his wife’s parents in Santa Maria to rule out a sudden visit, the defendant resists making the call at first.

“I don’t want to deal with them right now,” he says on the tape. Dally then agrees to place the call and hangs up.

French testified that a few minutes later, Dally called him back, explaining that he could not reach Sherri’s parents, and asked to proceed with a missing-person report.

In other testimony Wednesday, Diana Haun’s mother told the jury that in May 1996 she saw her daughter and the defendant talking after midnight in her living room.

Kiku Haun lived with her daughter in Port Hueneme. She could not recall specifically what day or at what time she had observed the conversation.

An employee at a Camarillo hardware store also testified Wednesday. Steffan Brigati told jurors that Diana Haun purchased $12.22 worth of cleaning supplies on May 6, 1996.

Prosecutors theorize that Haun had stabbed or bludgeoned Sherri Dally in the back seat of a rental car and bought stain remover to wash out the blood.