Dally Jurors Tour Key Sites in the Murder Case

They gawked.

They gossiped.

They observed every nuance of the crime scene.

And that was just the shoppers who walked out of Ventura’s Target store Wednesday morning to find jurors in the Michael Dally murder trial viewing Sherri Dally’s abduction site in a cordoned-off section of the parking lot.

“I’m down here to buy underwear and this is going on,” said a surprised Lisa Spellman, who has closely followed the trial because her husband went to school with Michael and Sherri Dally, and her neighbor went to high school with convicted murderer Diana Haun.

“It’s a small town. . . . It’s kinda creepy,” Spellman said.

Creepy or not, on the day before the prosecution is expected to rest its case, the jurors took a daylong tour of crucial sites in the trial.

Dally, a 37-year-old former grocery store employee, is accused of conspiring with his mistress--whom he met while she worked behind a deli counter in the same store--in the June 1996 killing of his wife. Haun was sentenced to life in prison last fall for stabbing and bludgeoning Sherri Dally and dumping her body in a ravine on Canada Larga Road, north of Ventura.

The ravine, eroded from February’s rains but still adorned with a flower-covered wooden cross erected in Sherri Dally’s memory, was among the stops on the four-city tour. The bus trip to sites in Ventura, Oxnard, Port Hueneme and Camarillo was identical to a similar trek conducted during Haun’s trial.

Stops included the Telephone Road optometrist office where Sherri Dally and Haun reportedly had a heated argument after Dally saw her husband and his lover together on the street. Also on the itinerary was the Oxnard Kmart where, in the days before the slaying, Haun had shopped for an eclectic list of items that included an ax, garbage bags and the tan pantsuit she wore when she abducted and killed Sherri Dally.

But jurors spent the most time at the ravine, the Target store and the Channel Islands Drive home where the Dallys had lived with their two sons.

Dally’s father, Lawrence, who lives down the block from the home where his son and deceased daughter-in-law resided, was out sweeping the sidewalk in front of his house in an attempt to catch a glimpse of his son as the court convoy drove past.

He couldn’t.

Dally emerged just once from behind the tinted windows of the Sheriff’s Department sports utility vehicle he was riding--at the remote ravine where his wife’s body was dumped.

Nevertheless, the elder Dally tearfully waved at the vehicle in which his son was riding after the jurors’ 10-minute visit. It was the first time Michael Dally had returned to his former home since his arrest about 1 1/2 years ago, his father said.

The months since have been difficult, Lawrence Dally acknowledged. He recalled the times he had carefully tended the yard on his son’s house before it was sold, and the twice-weekly jailhouse visits he made before the trial began. During those visits, his son watched through a window as his two boys rode their skateboards on the sidewalk outside.

“They always ask, ‘Is Dad coming home pretty soon?’ “‘ he said. “I always say, ‘Oh, yeah.’ ”

In contrast to Lawrence Dally’s lone vigil on Channel Islands Drive, many shoppers at the busy Target store took time to scrutinize the unusual goings-on in the store’s parking lot.

The scene--with jurors taking notes as they wandered around the rental car Haun had used to block the path of Sherri Dally’s van--was fascinating even to people not from the area.

A couple visiting their son from Minnesota said they had heard about the sensational case in the Midwest and compared Wednesday’s scene with their visit to O.J. Simpson’s Brentwood home.

“We’ll just put it up there with Disneyland and the Getty,” said the woman, who declined to give her name.