Haun Jury to View Letter Blaming British

A judge ruled Friday that jurors can see copies of a letter allegedly forged by murder suspect Diana Haun in which British extremists claim to have killed Sherri Dally to embarrass Ventura County law enforcement.

Superior Court Judge Frederick A. Jones is also considering the admissibility of statements by co-defendant Michael Dally that prosecutors say help prove he conspired with Haun to kill his wife.

Prosecutors allege Dally made several such statements to friends about his wife’s disappearance around the time her body was found, hacked and bludgeoned to death.

“To hell with all of ‘em,” police wiretaps overheard Dally saying to a friend, just 17 hours after learning Sherri’s body was found on June 1, according to court documents. “Gonna bury her and call it even, let everything go.”

But the bulk of Friday’s hearing was taken up by arguments about letters allegedly written by Haun.

Jones ruled that jurors can see the four typewriters that detectives seized from Haun’s home, one of which has the same Prestige Elite type as the so-called “British letters” sent to police and local newspapers.

The misspelled letter taunts police as “ignorant, lazy, gullible [people] who can not see past the tips of your noses.”

It proclaims, “We successfully terminated another girl whom your journalists call the Ventura Mother of Two.”

And the letter brags, “If we had tried these capers back home we would surely be caught. But here in America, it is all too simple . . . Don’t worry we will out of your county. We grow bored with it. we will continue to make fools of your American police system and prove that the British are Superior.”

But Jones also ruled that prosecutors cannot show jurors evidence of other letters that Haun allegedly wrote to her ex-boyfriend’s wife, Ann McGinty.

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Unlike the British letters, the McGinty letters do not match the seized typewriter, he said. The connections between the two sets of letters--and connections between Sherri Dally’s murder and allegations that Haun followed Ann McGinty--are too tenuous, he ruled.

The judge also blocked a prosecution bid to tell jurors that Haun left boxes of old clothes and broken toys--including a beheaded rubber duck--as evidence of some sort of veiled threat against McGinty.

Jones said prosecutors could introduce such evidence in their rebuttal case to buttress character evidence against Haun, “depending on how the defendant is portrayed to the jury in terms of her relationship to others.”

“The McGinty evidence would include several things, such as the contention that the defendant followed the wife [of ex-boyfriend Chris McGinty] on several occasions,” Jones said.

But so far, there has been no evidence of that, nor have prosecutors shown evidence to back up their contention that Haun made numerous hang-up calls to the McGinty home after her relationship with Chris McGinty broke up.

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In other rulings, Jones decided that jurors will be allowed to hear part of a polygraph officer’s interview with Haun, including statements she made before taking a lie-detector test.

But jurors will not be told anything about the polygraph itself because lie-detector test results are not admissible as evidence, Jones ruled.

The interview took place May 16, 10 days after Dally was abducted from a Target parking lot in Ventura. She was bludgeoned and stabbed to death and her body was dumped in a ravine.

In that interview, Haun blamed a bicycle accident for leaving scratches on her face--wounds that prosecutors said she got during the struggle with Sherri Dally.

Jones also ruled that the Haun jury can hear evidence that Michael Dally reported his wife’s disappearance to Ventura police, but changed his story.

Dally told police desk officer Rick French he last saw Sherri Dally alive at 1:50 a.m. on May 6, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Schwartz.

But Dally later told police he left home at 2:45 a.m. and arrived at work at 3:09 a.m., to cover up a meeting he had with Haun, Schwartz said.

However, Jones held back rulings on other Dally statements that prosecutors say bolster their conspiracy theory.

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According to prosecutors, Michael Dally suggested to a friend on May 24 the manner in which his wife was killed, saying, “. . . either like a, like a slash across the throat or, um, uh, a shot through the head,” the motion says.

Twice on May 28, police wiretaps recorded Dally referring to “my wife, who has just recently died.”

And the prosecution motion says Dally told his sons that he will go to the electric chair “. . . only if they can prove I killed her.”

Jones may take up those matters again Monday, when the trial resumes with testimony by Haun’s co-workers about her alleged dabbling in witchcraft.

Before the trial resumes, Jones said he will examine books seized from Haun’s home with titles such as “Encyclopedia of Witchcraft” and “The Supernatural.”