Haun Painted as Victim or Vicious Killer

Skilled in witchcraft and black magic, Diana Haun viciously murdered Sherri Dally as a human sacrifice to mark her lover’s birthday.

That was the message Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Frawley delivered in his opening statement Monday as he portrayed Haun, 36, as a deceptive woman who wanted an inconvenient wife out of her way.

But defense attorney Neil Quinn urged jurors to view his client not as a murderess, but as a guileless woman blinded by love who became an unwitting pawn in Michael Dally’s murder scheme.

“There was planning to kill, but it was not by Diana Haun,” Quinn said in his opening statement, suggesting that another suspect may have been involved in the slaying. “There was murder, it is true, but not by Diana Haun.”

The statements by both attorneys, made before a packed and captivated courtroom, marked the beginning of the most celebrated murder trial in recent Ventura County history.

And the references to witchcraft and human sacrifice by the prosecution made it clear a no-holds-barred courtroom drama lies ahead in the coming months.

The trial got underway quickly in Judge Frederick A. Jones’ courtroom with the chilling testimony of a key witness who told the jury that Michael Dally talked openly about wanting to kill his wife.

Sallie Lowe had a three-year affair with the 37-year-old supermarket manager between 1989 and 1992. She described Dally as a drug user and occasional pimp who felt trapped in his marriage to Sherri Dally.

“He just wanted her to disappear and be gone,” Lowe testified. “He said, ‘If you could never find the body, somebody could never be charged with murder.’ ”

Dally and Haun are both facing murder, kidnapping and conspiracy charges in connection with the May 1996 slaying of Sherri Dally. They could face the death penalty if convicted at separate trials.

Frawley told the jury that Haun and Dally killed the 35-year-old homemaker to avoid a costly divorce and to cash out Sherri’s $50,000 life insurance policy plus a retirement account.

But that was not the only motive in the killing, he said.

“What the evidence will show is that Diana Haun wanted to take Sherri Dally’s place,” Frawley said, showing the jury a photograph of Haun, Michael Dally and his two young boys, Devon and Max.

“The defendant was determined to have Michael Dally to herself,” Frawley continued. She wanted, he said, for Sherri Dally to disappear.

The prosecutor told jurors that Haun purchased a disguise--a blond wig, a tan pantsuit, handcuffs and a security badge--as well as a camping ax, a towel and garbage bags to use during and after the slaying.

On the morning of May 6, 1996, Frawley said Haun waited in a rental car for Sherri Dally to finish shopping at Target.

Haun posed as a security guard, persuading Dally to be handcuffed before stepping inside the car, Frawley said. At some point, Haun fatally stabbed Dally in the face, chest and neck, he said.

Haun then dumped Dally’s beaten and slashed body in a steep ravine off Canada Larga Road north of Ventura.

“Over the next 26 days,” Frawley said of the time it took for a search party to find her skeletal remains, “Sherri Dally’s body did indeed disappear.”

She was stabbed at least 14 to 15 times in the chest, the prosecutor said, speaking in a firm, clinical tone.

The attacker’s knife plunged hard enough to break the under-wire on her bra twice, he told the jury. In addition, a metal chip--a piece of a knife--was found embedded in Sherri’s jawbone, he said.

The jury will hear testimony about the location and nature of the victim’s injuries during the trial and see graphic pictures of the crime scene. And they will hear about the steps Haun allegedly took afterward to cover her tracks--including calling a Camarillo dry cleaning store.

“She asked if they could clean a large amount of blood out of a car seat,” Frawley said.

In addition to the string of circumstantial evidence, Frawley told jurors they will learn intimate details about the love affair between Diana Haun and Michael Dally, and the emotional trauma that it caused Sherri Dally.

They will read a lengthy letter that Sherri Dally wrote to her husband in January 1996 asking him to choose between her and Haun.

They will also read letters that Haun wrote to Michael Dally, calling him “My Wonderful King” and “Okami-san,” an ancient Japanese word meaning emperor, Frawley said.

And they will hear about a conversation that took place between Haun and a co-worker before Sherri Dally’s slaying. During this conversation, Frawley said, Haun told the co-worker she wanted to perform a “human sacrifice” as a birthday present for a male friend.

The statement was made shortly before Michael Dally’s 36th birthday on May 21, the prosecutor said.

The sinister portrait of Haun painted by Frawley during his hourlong opening statement was contradicted by Deputy Public Defender Neil Quinn in his opening remarks.

Speaking in a soft voice, Quinn told the jury that his client was not capable of committing murder.

He described her as a vegetarian who could not harm another person and suggested that she was manipulated and drawn unknowingly into a scheme for murder.

“She was blinded by love for Michael Dally,” Quinn said. “She was duped into Michael Dally’s plan.”

Quinn told the jury that, during the course of the trial, they will discover that Diana Haun is not entirely free of responsibility in the crime. She did purchase a wig and rent a car, Quinn acknowledged.

She did have an affair with Michael Dally and dreamed about having a life together with him and his two boys, Quinn said. And after she learned of the crime, she did lie to police about her role, he said.

“She makes a desperate and wrong decision,” Quinn said. “She clings to her man.”

But Diana Haun did not, Quinn told the jury emphatically, abduct or kill Sherri Dally.

He suggested instead that evidence will show that someone else, possibly a Latino male who used Haun’s credit card at a gas station, was involved in the murder plot.

Haun only came forward about the truth of the case, Quinn said, after talking to a prostitute in jail who told her Michael Dally was a drug user who frequently shared the company of hookers.

“I think you will see that Michael Dally was a manipulative--I hope this isn’t too strong a word--lying user,” Quinn said.

In a manner similar to the way prosecutors vilified his client, Quinn went on the offensive to describe Michael Dally as the antagonist in the story, a cruel man who emotionally abused his wife and seduced women.

Poking holes in the prosecution’s theory, Quinn also said that Haun would not have gained financially from Sherri Dally’s killing--which is the basis of one of the two special-circumstance allegations against her.

Haun collects a sizable monthly annuity as a result of a lawsuit, Quinn explained, and does not need money.

In addition, he said, the prosecution will be unable to prove that Haun carried out the murder plan because there is no direct evidence, no scientific evidence and no forensic evidence linking her to the killing.

“None of it,” Quinn concluded, “connects my client to the crime other than what I have told you. . . . You should vote not guilty because Diana Haun did not know that she was connected to a plan for murder.”

Instead, Quinn suggested, the jury should find Haun guilty of being an accessory to murder.

After Quinn concluded his opening statement Monday afternoon, prosecutors called their first witness: the former girlfriend of Michael Dally, Sallie Lowe.

In a nervous voice, the petite brunet began a two-hour narrative about how she met Dally while working at a Santa Barbara Vons market.

They became friends and, eventually, lovers, Lowe said, and as time went on she began to see a darker side to Dally.

Sometimes, when he spent the night at her Goleta condominium, Lowe said Dally would call his wife and tell her that he was too tired to drive home to Ventura and was spending the night with a co-worker named Ed. Ed was the name of Lowe’s former husband.

“With Michael, there was always a partial truth to his lies,” she told the jury.

During their relationship, Lowe said that Sherri Dally became pregnant with her second child, which made Michael angry and depressed, she testified.

“He felt completely trapped in that marriage,” she said. “He felt she got pregnant again because he wanted out of the marriage.”

Lowe said that at one point Dally considered divorcing his wife, but after talking with an attorney determined that a divorce would create a financial burden.

He later talked about killing his wife, she said.

“He just wanted her to disappear,” she testified. “There were times he talked about stabbing her with a knife, but not only stabbing her--twisting the knife to cause pain.”

At one point, Lowe said Dally talked about pushing his wife off a cliff at Big Sur: “He said he could make it look like an accident.”

Because they became close friends, Lowe said she decided to name Dally as the beneficiary on bank accounts. She became nervous, she testified, when Dally asked her to go to Big Sur with him and became forceful when she refused.

“I became very suspicious and afraid for my own life,” Lowe said.

Dally once asked her if she could kill another person--a remark that insulted her at the time, she said. Later, she interpreted the comment as a solicitation of sorts, knowing Dally’s interest in getting rid of his wife, she said.

Their relationship finally ended when Dally choked her one day and refused to let go of her throat, Lowe testified. “I laid there in fear of my life,” she said. He released her, Lowe said, after she looked in his eyes and said: “Michael, I love you.”

Not one objection was made during Lowe’s riveting testimony, which was observed by one of Michael Dally’s attorneys who sat in court Monday. Defense attorney Robert Schwartz declined comment because of a standing gag order in the case.

Before stepping down from the witness stand, Lowe told the jury that she felt ill when she heard news reports about Sherri Dally’s disappearance last year.

“It ripped my heart into threads,” she said. “It sickened me.”