Murder Drama Unfolds Before Packed House

For every would-be spectator crowded outside Courtroom 45 on Monday, the looming murder trial of Diana Haun promised something different:

For young prosecutors, a taste of the big leagues.

For the families of Haun and victim Sherri Dally, the grim accounting of a murder.

And for the veteran court watchers, a whiff of O. J. and of Ventura County’s biggest trials gone by.

Clad in crisp summer whites, one elderly Ventura couple waited patiently outside the packed courtroom with an enthusiastic gleam in their eyes.

Mo and Virginia McElvaney stood there among lawyers and reporters, all hoping for the rare privilege of glimpsing what they think will be a historic trial.

“We are old-timers,” said a smiling Mo McElvaney, a 90-year-old retired frozen food distributor. “And there’s only been three trials in Ventura that have attracted this much attention: Ma Duncan, Lucy Hicks and now Diana Haun.”

Lucy Hicks is recalled by longtime locals as a charming, accomplished Oxnard cook and brothel keeper--who turned out to be a man. Ventura spectators mobbed the 1946 trial where Hicks was convicted of defrauding the government by cashing his soldier “husband’s” government aid checks.

The 1959 conviction of Elizabeth Ann “Ma” Duncan for hiring two drifters to kill her pregnant daughter-in-law won her a 1962 execution, the last time California ever killed a woman convict. The McElvaneys remember sitting in on part of her trial at the old Ventura Courthouse, now Ventura City Hall.

And Diana Haun, well:

“We’re here just because it’s Ventura,” said Virginia McElvaney, 87, a retired beautician.

“We wonder how anyone could commit such a hideous crime,” said husband Mo. “We’re here for the same reason so many people went to see the O.J. trial.”

Louise and Donald Angus had their own reasons.

They devour legal dramas on TV. They shop at the Vons where Diana Haun once worked.

And besides, they needed a good excuse Monday to vacate the house while their cleaning lady worked.

“We’ve always wanted to see a court trial,” said Donald Angus, a 74-year-old retired construction worker. Added Louise Angus, 68, a former credit manager: “I’m glad I wasn’t called to be a juror, because I think they’re both guilty. I think it’s terrible.”

But the Anguses and McElvaneys were left to wait outside, with gentle promises from the bailiffs that if anyone gave up a seat they would be allowed in next.

Nearly half the small courtroom’s 56 seats were taken up by the families of Haun, Dally and Michael Dally, who faces a separate trial on charges that he conspired with Haun to murder his wife.

Reporters, photographers and a newspaper artist took up 10 more seats.

By the time curious attorneys and court workers packed the rest of the seats, the courtroom’s temperature began to rise.

“That’s it, folks, full house,” called a bailiff, and the doors closed with a muffled thud.

Then the buzz of conversation hushed suddenly. Diana Haun was led from the lockup cell to the defense table in a cream-colored jacket, black skirt and low-heeled pumps, a Manila envelope clasped in hand.

A court clerk carefully read aloud the indictment accusing Haun of laying in wait, kidnapping and murdering Sherri Dally for financial gain.

And there--on a soft rectangle of carpet hemmed in by the audience, the judge, the defendant, court reporter and 18 Santa Barbara jurors and alternates--the trial attorneys laid out their theories of how Sherri Dally died.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Frawley sketched a story line dark as a clip of film noir, punctuated by grisly forensic facts.

He outlined Michael Dally’s love affair with Diana Haun, the $50,000 insurance policy Dally took out on his wife, and discussions Dally had with a former girlfriend about killing his wife, pushing her off a cliff, getting her out of his life.

Frawley cataloged physical evidence he said will tie Haun to the crime. Receipts for a camping ax allegedly used to kill Sherri Dally. Blood soaking the seats of Haun’s rental car. Scars left in the victim’s bones that testify to the ferocity of the murder.

And he showed the jury photos. Of the Target parking lot where Haun is accused of abducting Sherri Dally. Of Haun in a chameleonic array of wigs and makeup. And of the scratches and bruises found on Haun’s face and arms after the slaying.

But Deputy Public Defender Neil Quinn took a different tack.

With the courtroom lights dimmed, and the text of the defense theory beaming onto the wall from a projector, Quinn likened his case to a novel, one that will tell a different story of Haun’s role in Sherri Dally’s death.

He painted the young defendant as a love-struck dupe, an innocent, nonviolent vegetarian who unwittingly let Michael Dally draw her into his plans to murder his wife.

He described Michael Dally in monstrous terms, as a womanizing adulterer who frequented prostitutes, bragged of violence and hated and psychologically abused his wife.

Quinn alluded to a “young male Hispanic” seen gassing up Haun’s rental car the day after the murder.

He vowed to deconstruct one of the prosecution’s chief props: He took the sunglasses off a mannequin that was dressed to resemble Haun’s alleged disguise and put them on himself, saying she never wore them.

And in an eerie echo of the bloody gloves highlighted in O.J. Simpson’s trial, Quinn promised that, later in the trial, Haun will try on the ash-blond wig believed worn by Dally’s kidnapper.

During a break, a Santa Paula court watcher said this trial promises to be as exciting as another murder trial that grabbed her attention, one that ended in the acquittal of Altadena mortician David Wayne Sconce.

“I came to that, and I couldn’t tear myself away,” Earline Randall, 66, of Santa Paula confided enthusiastically.

“If it’s an interesting case, I get hooked.”