ONE-TIME MISTRESS OF DALLY TESTIFIES.

Byline: Don Holland Daily News Staff Writer

A former lover of accused killer Michael Dally testified Tuesday that Dally once asked whether she was capable of killing and that he talked of pushing his wife off a cliff during a second honeymoon.

Sallie Lowe, the prosecution's lead-off witness, testified that during a three-year affair Dally frequently spoke of his hatred for his wife, Sherri Dally.

At times, Lowe said, Michael Dally talked of trying to drive his wife to suicide by emotional means, such as swearing at her and saying she was a bad mother. But at other times, Lowe said he talked about doing away with her or finding someone to make her disappear.

``He wanted to hurt (her) as much as she was hurting him,'' Lowe said. ``He said he wanted to kill her - that he wanted to stab her over and over and over. But he said you don't just stab someone. You twist (the knife) so they feel a lot of pain.''

The 35-year-old Ventura woman and mother of Dally's two sons was abducted and murdered in May 1996.

Lowe, 41, said Dally boasted that he could outwit the Ventura police and would never be charged as long as a body was never recovered.

Three weeks after she disappeared from a Ventura shopping center, Sherri Dally's body, beaten and stabbed, was found in a ravine off Canada Larga Road, north of Ventura.

Michael Dally's longtime lover, Diana Haun, was convicted in September of kidnapping, conspiracy and murder. She was sentenced to life in prison.

Lowe described Dally as a man who disliked his management job at a supermarket. She said he was even more unhappy with his home life.

When his wife became pregnant with their second child, for instance, Lowe said Dally was furious.

`He just became despondent,'' Lowe said. ``He felt trapped. He said he felt like a trapped animal in a cage.''

Dally, neatly dressed in a coat and tie, remained calm and joked affably with his attorneys during breaks.

On cross-examination, defense attorney Robert Schwartz questioned Lowe's accounts and zeroed in on inconsistencies between her testimony and accounts she gave to investigators and the county grand jury.

Schwartz noted that Lowe, in phone calls to police and interviews with investigators following Sherri Dally's disappearance, never mentioned a conversation in which Michael Dally allegedly said he wanted to stab his wife and twist the knife into her.

Schwartz also attacked Lowe's credibility and the accuracy and honesty of her recollections.

In describing her affair with Dally, Lowe said that while his wife was recovering in the hospital from the birth of their second son, the new father was busy making plans to spend time with his mistress at his home on Channel Drive in Ventura.

That night, Lowe testified, she and Michael Dally had sex in the married couple's bed.

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PHOTO Michael Dally

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