California mom Sherri Dally’s usual Monday Target shopping trip took an unexpected turn when she was approached in the Ventura County parking lot by a woman yielding a badge.

The woman said she was placing Dally under arrest, handcuffing her and shuttling her into an awaiting vehicle.

But what Sherri, a popular daycare center owner, didn’t know at first was that she wasn’t actually under arrest she was really being driven off to her death, according to Dateline: Unforgettable. 

“For me, the kidnapping at the center of this story reset the bar for brazen,” Dateline correspondent Josh Mankiewicz said in the episode titled “The Life She Wanted.”

The day Sherri Dally was killed

Sherri’s seemingly idyllic life took a tragic turn on the morning of May 6, 1996. 

Much like she had every Monday, Sherri dropped her boys off at school and then went to Target to run her usual errands. 

She was captured on surveillance footage at the store checking out at the register before making her way into the parking lot at 9:22 a.m. Witnesses would describe seeing a blonde woman pull up next to Sherri in the parking lot as she was getting into her van. The woman flashed a badge and put her in handcuffs before escorting her into a waiting car and driving away.

It was the last time Sherri would be seen alive. By that afternoon, Sherri’s husband, Mike, reported her missing to the Ventura Police Department after she failed to pick up her children from school.

“My wife dropped my boys off at school at 8:30 this morning… she’s been missing since,” he told an officer in a recorded phone call. “I’ve called the hospitals. I’ve called the highway patrol. She’s gone.”

Given Sherri’s usual habit of spending Monday mornings at Target, it didn’t take long for Mike’s extended family to find Sherri’s large, unlocked 15 passenger van abandoned in the store’s parking lot, with the keys, her ID and a gift that she’d purchased for her mom still inside the vehicle.

Ventura Detective Matt Harvill and his partner Detective Sean Conroy took on the case after Harvill realized that he knew Sherri and Mike and had gone to high school with both of them.

“Most homicides, I arrive on scene and we have the decedent. I didn’t know the decedent beforehand, so I can’t put a personality, a voice to the unfortunate victim,” Harvill said of what made the case so unique. “Sherri was a different story. You know I can put a voice to it, I can put a smile, I can put a kind word to this person.”

Mike Dally found with his lingerie-clad mistress 

As they began their investigation, Harvill and Conroy went to the Dally’s home to speak to Mike. He told them he had been at work at the time of Sherri’s disappearance, an account that was later backed up by his employer. 

Although Mike had initially insisted that his marriage to Sherri was in good shape, he quickly confessed to detectives that he had a girlfriend on the side, although he claimed he didn’t know the woman’s last name or address. He was able to give the detectives her first name, Diana, and a phone number and told them that they both worked together at Vons.

Using that information, the detectives were able to identify the woman as Diana Haun and set off to speak to her at her Port Hueneme home. When Diana opened the door wearing a short, black negligee they were surprised to find Mike coming out of a back bedroom in his boxer shorts.

“He’s supposed to be at home waiting for the phone to ring, you know, in case a hospital called that they had his wife or just anything, when he’s actually at the very first opportunity spending the night with his girlfriend,” Conroy remarked.

Sherri’s friends told detectives that the mom of two had been aware Haun was having an affair with her husband.

“When she found out she came to me and she was crying and told me what had happened and I just held her while she cried,” her friend Debbie English remembered.

They say despite Mike’s infidelity, Sherri had been determined to hang on to her dream of a happy family and even once confronted Haun to tell her she wasn’t getting her husband or her kids.

After detectives found Mike and Haun together, Mike agreed to drive his mistress to the station, where she told police that she’d spent much of the day Sherri disappeared alone and had taken a long bike ride. When they discovered several scratches on her head, she told them she’d gotten the injuries after falling off her bike.

Detectives track down abduction vehicle

Detectives were immediately suspicious of her claim, but witnesses had described seeing a blonde woman put Sherri in her car while Haun had long dark hair. 

There were several other unusual things about the stop too. Not only had no law enforcement agency had any record of arresting Sherri that day, but witnesses described the person driving a teal sedan, not the usual Ford Crown Victoria that most law enforcement officers drove at the time. The woman also didn’t have any partner with her at the time, something that struck detectives as unusual if an arrest was being made.

Detectives concluded the stop was likely just a ruse to kidnap Sherri and set to work trying to track down the vehicle. After checking with area rental car companies, they found a teal Nissan Altima that had been rented out at the same time Sherri disappeared. Even more ominous, the car had been returned with a missing rear view mirror and there was a large brownish stain under the floor mat in the back seat that looked like blood. Authorities found more blood when they cut open the seat cushions. 

They also found long synthetic blonde hairs. The rental agreement listed Haun as the woman who rented the car—although she insisted it wasn’t her. Detectives brought her in for questioning and placed her under arrest after finding what looked like a family photo in her purse of her standing next to Mike and his two sons.

They also questioned her about accounts from coworkers at Vons who claimed that in the weeks leading up to the disappearance, Haun—who was rumored to practice witchcraft—said she planned to make a “human sacrifice” for a friend whose birthday was coming up. Mike’s birthday had been just weeks away at the time.

Before taking her to jail, they let her speak to Mike, who assured her as he kissed her and stroked her hair that police couldn’t hold her for long unless they had “any real solid evidence.” Mike also reminded her that at this point Sherri was just missing, not dead.

“Diana was almost in a trance. He came in there and he just pumped her up. You can see her almost physically just get pumped up as he’s getting her to focus on him,” Harvill commented of the strange encounter.

Sherri Dally’s body is found 

But it turned out Mike was right. Without a body, the district attorney’s office didn’t believe they had enough evidence to charge Haun and let her go a few days later. 

That all changed on June 1, 1996 when Best and a group of other searchers scouring Ventura County for any sign of the missing Sherri found her sunglasses laying on the side of a road.

“I knew they were her sunglasses,” Best said. 

The glasses were discovered near a steep drop. Several of the men in Best’s group climbed down into the ravine and found a pair of black shorts just like the ones Sherri had been wearing when they disappeared. Her skeletal remains were ultimately recovered from the same site.

Who killed Sherri Dally?

A medical examiner would determine that before her death, Sherri had been beaten and stabbed. 

The case against Haun was strengthened even further after an employee of a wig shop came forward and reported selling Haun a blonde wig before the abduction.

Detectives believed that Haun had used makeup and the wig to disguise herself so well that Sherri hadn’t originally recognized her. 

They theorized that once she was placed into handcuffs and put in the car, Sherri figured out who her captor was, somehow got her handcuffs in front of her and tried to attack Haun, giving her those scratches on her forehead.

“Sherri Dally bravely fought for her life and fought for her family,” Conroy said.

Detectives believed that Haun was forced to pull the car over in the parking lot and kill Sherri in the car before driving away.

There was finally enough evidence to charge Haun with the murder. But she wasn’t the only one to go down for the crime.

Sherri’s friends said in the months before her death, Mike had psychologically tortured her and taunted her about the affair, putting a pillow with Haun’s photo on the bed the married couple shared together and taking their sons to spend Christmas Day with Haun.

“The picture we put together was that it was an extremely emotionally abusive marriage,” Harvill told Correspondent Josh Mankiewicz. “Sherri would get up at 2 in the morning to warm Mike’s shower water. She was more of a role of a servant than a wife.”

Detectives believed Mike had helped orchestrate his wife’s death by providing Haun with details about her schedule and where she’d be that morning.

Other witnesses also came forward claiming that Mike had another secret life selling drugs and sleeping with prostitutes. One sex worker even came forward to report that while Sherri was missing, he drove her to the site where Sherri’s body would eventually be found and had sex with her, while one of his former coworkers came forward to say that Mike had once asked her to kill Sherri during her own romantic affair with him. 

Mike was arrested for the murder in November of 1996. 

Although Haun’s attorneys argued that Mike had been the real killer — noting that Haun was a vegetarian and therefore couldn’t have handled killing anyone — she was convicted of murder, kidnapping and conspiracy in 1997. She was sentenced to life without parole. 

Mike was convicted in his own trial and sentenced to life behind bars without the chance of parole.