Jury Told Haun Bought Wig to ‘Play a Trick’

Two days before Sherri Dally was kidnapped, Diana Haun walked into an Oxnard beauty shop and purchased a short blond wig “to play a trick on somebody,” a store employee testified Wednesday.

“She asked me if she looked like she had authority,” Sandra Acevedo told jurors in Haun’s murder trial, recalling how the remark--at the time--sounded odd. “That’s not really a question a person asks when they buy a wig.”

Acevedo’s brief testimony was one piece of a large puzzle of circumstantial evidence that prosecutors have began trying to connect in Haun’s trial.

Earlier in the week they focused primarily on establishing the character of Haun, 36, and her lover Michael Dally, 37, who is also charged with murder and related offenses in his wife’s killing.

But Wednesday, Deputy Dist. Attys. Michael Frawley and Lela Henke-Dobroth began to solicit testimony from several witnesses on items that Haun allegedly bought before the slaying.

The purchase of handcuffs, a wig, a camping ax and other items are listed among 11 overt acts in Haun’s indictment--at least one of which must be proven to support the conspiracy charge against her.

An overt act is generally defined as a step taken by a conspirator to advance a plan to commit a crime--in Haun’s case, murder.

The first witness to testify about the grocery clerk’s shopping trips was a cashier at Uniforms Etc. in Ventura.

Hector Mayer told jurors that he sold a security badge and handcuffs to a nervous-looking, dark-haired woman in May 1996.

From the witness stand, Mayer looked squarely at Haun and told jurors she was the woman who paid cash for those items, which prosecutors believe were used during Dally’s slaying.

The testimony was significant because Haun has denied purchasing a badge or handcuffs, though she has admitted to buying other items.

During an intense hour of cross-examination, however, Deputy Public Defender Neil Quinn took issue with Mayer’s memory of the alleged sale.

How could he be sure, Quinn asked Mayer, that it was Haun who bought the items, particularly when police showed him a photo of just one possible suspect--Haun.

And wasn’t it true, the lawyer asked, that Mayer initially could not remember ringing up the sales when first interviewed by detectives?

“When police officers came in,” Mayer acknowledged, “I could not remember if there was a purchase made the first day.”

It was not until he saw receipts with his name on them and a photograph of Haun, Mayer told Quinn, that he remembered selling her the badge and handcuffs.

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Still, Mayer said, it was his recollection that Haun was the slender woman who made the purchases just days before Sherri Dally was killed.

“There was nobody else in the store at that time,” Mayer said. “So it was easy to remember.”

Mayer’s boss, Paula Thompson, also testified. She checked the store’s records, which showed a badge and handcuffs were sold separately on May 2 and 3, she said. She could not determine from the receipts, however, who had bought the items.

The third overt act suggested in Haun’s case is buying a wig. Moving through the various overt acts chronologically, prosecutors next called Acevedo to the witness stand.

Frawley immediately asked the wig shop employee if there was anyone in the courtroom she recognized Wednesday.

“Yes,” Acevedo replied, pointing at Haun. “The lady in the red top.”

Shortly before closing the store on the afternoon of May 4, 1996, Acevedo said, Haun walked into Oxnard Wig and Beauty Supply on Saviers Road wearing a short green tank top and a floral skirt.

“She was looking at the wigs,” Acevedo recalled. “I asked if I could help her. She had two wigs that she wanted to try on.”

Acevedo asked why the woman wanted a wig, and she said Haun told her “she wanted to play a trick on someone.”

“She asked me if I [knew] her would I recognize her. . . . I told her, ‘No,’ ” Acevedo said. She added later, “She did look different with a wig.”

Haun bought a short blond hairpiece that day and wrote a personal check for $100.12, Acevedo testified. Acevedo said she verified the check with Haun’s driver’s license, noting that the addresses on each were the same.

When she looked in Haun’s wallet, she testified, she noticed a picture of Haun standing next to two young boys and a man described as her “boyfriend.”

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In court Wednesday, Frawley showed Acevedo an enlarged photograph of Michael Dally and his sons with Haun. Acevedo said it was the same photo as the one in the wallet.

About two weeks after she sold Haun the wig, Acevedo said, she saw Haun, a Port Hueneme resident, in a news broadcast about the disappearance of a Ventura woman named Sherri Dally.

That is when she called the police, she said.

When officers arrived at the store, Acevedo showed them a similar ash-blond wig. She identified that hairpiece Wednesday as being the same one displayed in the courtroom on a mannequin.

The wig testimony was not disputed by defense attorneys, who told the jury in opening statements that Haun did indeed purchase a blond wig May 4.

They have taken issue, however, with the prosecution’s claim that Haun wore the wig and used a badge to disguise herself as a security guard, enabling her to persuade Sherri Dally to get into a rented car at a Target parking lot.

Some information on that car--a blue-green Nissan Altima--was discussed Wednesday.

Irene Hanna, who lives next door to the Dallys’ Ventura home, told the jury that she saw a blue car parked on her street early on the morning of May 6. A blond person was sitting in the driver’s seat, she testified, but she could not determine whether that person was a man or woman.

When she drove down the street later in the day, Hanna said, the car was gone.

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A service manager for Budget Rent-A-Car earlier told the jury that on May 12, 1996, a Nissan Altima was sent to the company’s Van Nuys repair shop because of a broken rear-view mirror.

A financial planner from Tarzana, who rented a blue-green Nissan Altima from Budget, told jurors that when he picked up the vehicle in Van Nuys on May 14 it smelled strange and the steering wheel was covered with a sticky substance.

“My hands literally stuck to the steering wheel,” Richard Stefanec testified.

After driving to his house, Stefanec said he immediately washed his hands and wiped the steering wheel with a damp towel.

When he pulled the towel away, he said it was dirty and covered with a dark substance he could not identify. “It was a strange color,” he said.

Stefanec said he also noticed a stain on the floor of the back seat and found dirt and bits of weeds in the trunk.

It is the prosecution’s theory that Haun rented the same blue-green Nissan Altima the week before Stefanec, and that she used the car to kidnap and bludgeon Sherri Dally before dumping her body in a ravine north of Ventura.

Defense attorneys say Haun was--at most--an unknowing accomplice who bought items used by Dally and another person to abduct Sherri Dally.

They contend Haun was manipulated by Dally emotionally and physically into being his instrument for murder.

So far in the trial, attorneys have played up testimony about Michael Dally’s alleged womanizing and unsavory personality.

They have piggy-backed on several prosecution witnesses, such as Michael Dally’s sister-in-law and his former girlfriend, to illicit testimony on how he allegedly mistreated and psychologically abused his wife of 14 years.

Before Wednesday’s testimony began, attorneys argued over a district attorney’s motion to admit a letter sent to local newspapers during the homicide investigation that they believe was written by Haun.

The letter claimed Sherri Dally’s killing and the disappearance of two other Ventura women were the work of British nationals. The prosecution wants to show the jury the typed letter and other evidence to suggest that Haun was the author.