Dally Shared Rumors of Wife’s Fate, Witnesses Say

In the weeks before Sherri Dally’s stabbed and beaten body was found, Michael Dally suggested to co-workers that his wife had been kidnapped and tortured, two Vons employees testified Monday.

“He said, ‘I know something you don’t know,’ ” co-worker Martha Garcia told jurors. “He said that she was handcuffed . . . He said that he thought that she was dead and tortured.”

Launching the fourth week of testimony in Dally’s murder trial, prosecutors called a series of witnesses who recalled statements the defendant made after his wife vanished.

Dally’s 20-year-old niece, Hannah Murray, tearfully recalled intimate conversations she had with her uncle in the month after her aunt’s May 6, 1996, disappearance.

And rounding out a full day of testimony, family friend Sarah Bommarito told jurors Dally reluctantly admitted that his lover, Diana Haun, killed his wife.

They not did discuss how, why or where Haun had killed Sherri Dally, Bommarito said. But around the same time--in late May 1996--Bommarito claims, she had a premonition about where the missing homemaker had been murdered.

“It was on the way to Ojai,” she said, recalling that she suddenly felt a peculiar sensation while driving near Foster Park one evening with a friend.

“I told her, ‘This is where Sherri is going to be found,’ ” Bommarito said. “I was feeling death. I was smelling blood. My hair was standing on end.”

About a week later, a search party found Sherri Dally’s remains in a steep ravine off Canada Larga Road, which is between Ventura and Ojai, a few miles from Foster Park.

Dally is accused of conspiring with Haun to kill his wife of 14 years. Prosecutors say he wanted to avoid a costly divorce and continue a relationship with Haun.

Dally--who faces a possible death sentence if convicted of murder and related charges--has denied any role in his wife’s slaying. Haun was convicted of the murder last fall.

Two employees who worked the night shift with Dally at a Vons store in Oxnard testified Monday that the defendant openly discussed his wife’s disappearance and suggested that she had been killed.

Dally’s supervisor, Moses Vargas, said the defendant told him “the word on the street was that she was tortured and she was handcuffed.”

Garcia told the jury that Dally told her he couldn’t sleep at night because he kept hearing his wife screaming. At one point, she said, she asked Dally how his children were coping with their mother’s disappearance.

“He said that they didn’t need her,” Garcia testified. “He said they didn’t miss her.”

But Dally’s niece painted a different picture of her uncle’s demeanor during that time. Murray said he was “clearly upset” and acted agitated and confused in the days after Sherri Dally was reported missing.

On May 10, 1996, Murray said she moved in with her uncle to help care for his two young boys, Devon and Max. When she walked up to the front door of his house at about 9:30 p.m., Murray said she could hear her uncle yelling.

“He was calling to Sherri, saying ‘Sherri? Sherri is that you?’ ‘ Murray said. “He kept yelling for her.”

But as time went on, Murray said, her uncle changed. He told her that he believed his wife had taken money set aside for household bills and run away. He talked about his future life with Haun and his desire to build a family with her.

About a week after Sherri Dally’s disappearance, Murray went out to eat with Michael Dally, Haun and the two boys. During dinner, her uncle told Haun about unpaid bills he found in the house and his plans to file for legal separation from his wife, Murray testified.

Dally remarked that soon the boys would be his, and Haun responded, “The boys will be ours,” she said.

Asked by Deputy Dist. Atty. Lela Henke-Dobroth how Dally responded, Murray said, “He put his arm around her and kissed her.”

At one point during the investigation into her aunt’s disappearance, Murray asked her uncle directly whether he was involved, she told the jury.

“I said, ‘Please tell me that you didn’t have anything to do with Sherri being missing,’ ” she said. “And he just said, ‘Promise me that you’ll be on my side, no matter what.’ ”

Later Monday, Bommarito took the witness stand. She did not testify at the trial of Haun, Dally’s alleged conspirator, and told jurors she was reluctant to testify at Dally’s trial for fear she would not be taken seriously.

Defense attorneys indeed raised questions about her credibility. James M. Farley questioned Bommarito about how well she knew his client and how much she had been drinking on the night she spoke to him.

Bommarito acknowledged drinking “one or two beers” while talking to Dally on May 21, 1996. Farley pressed the point, citing prior testimony to the Ventura County Grand Jury in which Bommarito said she drank twice that amount.

And in a slightly sarcastic tone, Farley questioned Bommarito’s psychic visions.

A Ventura resident, she told the jury that a few weeks before her conversation with the defendant, she called police to report a dream she had about the case.

“I dreamed that I saw Sherri in a mountainside with lots of trees and rocks,” she said. “I think I told them they were looking in the wrong place for her.”

Farley asked Bommarito, “Do you consider yourself some kind of psychic?” “No,” she answered.

“Just a dreamer?” he responded. “Yes,” she said.