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[Music] a young woman walked out of this department store got into a rental car and was never seen again
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the signature on the rental car agreement was a forgery forensic scientists hoped that either
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the handwriting or the ink from the pen would solve the mystery [Music] [Music] [Applause]
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[Music] nestled in the hills 60 miles northwest of los angeles lies ventura california
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[Music] may 6 1996 started like most other days for 30 year old sherry dally as she
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dropped her two children off at school but on this morning she went shopping before work
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[Music] sherry was expected home by noon but she never returned 911 dispatch my wife brought my wife
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8 30 this morning and she's been missing what is her first name sherry dallas
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sherry's van was found in the parking lot of a local store it was unlocked with her purse and items
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from the store still inside at this point we're still trying to figure out where did she go
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thinking that she might be with a relative or there might be she might have gone off with some
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friends for some reason we didn't know detectives asked the store employees if
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they had seen anything suspicious a security guard recalled seeing sherry in the store earlier that morning
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she stopped and spoke briefly with a friend of hers who was head of security of the department store at that time
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[Music] then she went about her business and did some shopping checked out she walked out of the the
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department store and walked over towards her van the surveillance camera shows that cherry
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left the store at 9 22 a.m i mean sherry's the backbone of our family and now she's missing today we're
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going to try and do the base of ventura river bottom friends and family passed out flyers throughout the community
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[Music] television and radio reports asked citizens for information one volunteer
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says today reminds him of the day they found another ventura county missing woman
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many knew sherry dally and her husband michael since they both grew up in the area he was the
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first real boyfriend she ever had she was just so much in love with him that she
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could see nothing else i mean the sun rose and said in mike sherry and mike had been married for 12
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years and had two small children mike worked as a manager at a grocery store a background check revealed the couple
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had a history of marital problems we know that he represented to her that he wanted to make a go of the marriage
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but his actions did not coincide with his expressed reason for going back to the home
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why friends said michael had a lover a woman he worked with who was a former model
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diana hahn he did not keep it a secret his co-workers knew about it family members knew about it and of course
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sherry dally actually learned about it as well the day after sherry's disappearance
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investigators decided to question diana hahn at her home she answered the door in a skimpy outfit obviously obviously
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been in bed and behind her was michael dally just wearing a pair of shorts naturally police were suspicious
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i wouldn't expect a concerned husband to be at his girlfriend's house while his wife is gone has disappeared
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soon a witness came forward claiming to have seen sherry dally in the parking lot and said she appeared to be in some
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distress just a few days after 30 year old sherry dally disappeared an eyewitness told
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police she saw sherry in the store parking lot and it looked as if she was being
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arrested she was seen by eyewitnesses standing at her van door opening it and a woman approached her
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sherry turned around spoke with her briefly just exchanged some words very briefly
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whereupon sherry turned around the woman placed handcuffs on sherry walked her over to the car
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put her into the back of the car as a police officer would the person was described
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as a female wearing a tan pantsuit blonde hair and sunglasses this didn't resemble diana han who was
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michael dally's lover han was a brunette and she didn't own a car like the getaway vehicle
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the description was a teal colored car that to me wasn't a common car color to be seen on
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the road so my attitude was it's got to be a rental detective burt and his partner visited
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all of the local car rental agencies in the area skip was asking the lady behind
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the counter did michael dally uh rent a car from you folks and so she gets on the computer and nothing comes up from
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michael dally and he asks well what about a diana han and lady goes to the computer and lo and
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behold she says yeah diana hahn rented a car on the 5th may 5th may 5th was the day before sherry
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disappeared we looked at each other and it was like diana hon denied renting the car
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claiming the signature on the rental agreement wasn't hers furthermore no one at the car agency
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could positively identify han as the person who rented the car the rental car had recently been
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returned we looked in you could just look inside the back windows and you could see on
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the rear floorboard a brownish color in the carpeting forensic scientists performed tests on
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those brownish stains in the back seat a phenolphthalein test was positive it's a
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chemical reagent that turns red when it comes into contact with the hemoglobin content of blood
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it appeared as though this was an area in which blood had pooled or puddled an individual sitting in the passenger
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back seat had been leaning forward and bleeding producing blood running and dripping into this area on
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the floor investigators then used luminol to look for blood that may have been cleaned
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from the car and trunk what we were told by the crime lab is that when they luminal the inside of
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that car it lit up like a candle i mean there was blood everywhere on the door panels up in the headliner
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everywhere with blood samples from sherry's parents forensic scientists concluded that the
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blood inside the rental car was that of sherry dally i knew something seriously was wrong
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because i knew she would never leave her children i mean she would never ever have left her children on her own
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free will and scientists found something else in the back seat of the car were five
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long pieces of what looked like human hair when i examined them microscopically i
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found that they weren't hairs at all there were unusual arrow head shaped designs on the shafts
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an infrared spectrometer identified the molecular structure of the strand not as
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a hair but a fiber the type used to make wigs was it possible that the woman who abducted sherry dally
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was either in disguise or wasn't a woman at all [Music] 25 days after sherry dally's
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disappearance from a store parking lot search volunteers found some bones off of a remote road
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just three miles from where sherry was abducted they called about 5 30 that saturday evening
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i want to tell you before it hits the six o'clock news because it's going to
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hit the news that we have found the remains of a woman and he said kristen is with sherry's
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friends kristen has positively identified the clothes as being sherry's sherry dally's dental records were
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already on hand for identification purposes the correlation between the dental x-rays i felt at the time
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sufficient enough to tell the investigators that even without me taking x-rays of the
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human remains at the other remains were of sherry dally and forensic scientists were also able
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to determine the cause of death forensics experts at the crime lab were able to map out the different stab
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wounds different tears in sherry's shirt indicating that there were multiple stab
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wounds more in fact than were located in the bones sherry suffered a devastating attack
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there was in the right jaw area a piece of metal that was embedded in the bone that was
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removed by one of the forensics experts at our crime lab jim roberts roberts analyzed the metal fragment
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using an electron microscope which produced a three-dimensional image and a picture he could identify
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after some study on the microscopes we became convinced that it was part of a serrated knife blade actually
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the tip of one of the teeth of the serrations sherry's husband michael was one of the
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two suspects in the murder he said he was at work at the time of her abduction everything pointed to diana and we knew
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mike was at work so he has the alibi of not being the hatchet man michael's mistress diana hahn
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was the other suspect the car used in cherry dally's abduction was rented by someone who signed diana
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hahn's name han denied it was her signature and insisted someone else had rented the car
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and forged her name jack harris is a forensic document examiner who specializes in handwriting
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analysis so if anyone is going to forge your name they're going to try to make it look
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like the signature on the driver's license and yet this had a very visible difference
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the capital letters on the rental car agreement were noticeably different than diana hahn's known signature sample and
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the writing also had a different slant it's a common way of first step in in disguising a signature
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often times the question signature on the budget rental agreement had the little letters and then it went
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straight out to the right harris then compared the signature on the car rental agreement to signatures
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diana hans signed 10 years earlier and in those signatures harris found a surprise
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diana hahn's signatures of a decade earlier were strikingly similar to the signature on the rental car agreement
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sure enough every so often she went straight out to the right and didn't curl back again
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i concluded that in my best judgment she signed the rental agreement and initialed
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the agreement harris believes that in signing the rental car agreement han thought she was
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creating a forgery but she was unknowingly using her writing style that she had used years
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earlier and investigators found more forensic evidence a lady that worked at a wig store in
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oxnard recognized diana hahn as a person who had purchased a wig from her just shortly before sherry dally's
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abduction han had paid for the items with a check detectives searched tom's records and
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found other checks written shortly before sherry's disappearance the checks were interestingly written in
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green ink not too many people carry a green ink pen in their purse when diana hahn was arrested she she was
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found in her purse a green ink pen detectives sent the checks and the green pen to a forensic document examiner who
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specialized in ink analysis first tests that i perform are non-destructive in nature and they're
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intended to evaluate the ink formulations not the pen but the ink formulations the most common technique in ink
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comparison is to use a video spectral comparator what this instrument does is evaluate
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inks in the ultraviolet visible and infrared portion of the spectra the theory is if it's the same ink
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formulation it should react the same under all conditions examined infrared lighting can identify if two
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ink samples are the same or different the spectral comparator showed that the ink on the checks was from the same ink
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batch as the pen in diana hahn's purse and diana han's checkbook revealed
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she had made some other unusual purchases based upon who those checks had been written to the detectives followed up
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went to another department store and did in fact learn that diana han had purchased
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an ax lighter fluid matches sunglasses various items that would have been used during the abduction
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diana hahn was arrested and charged with sherry dally's murder the question now
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was michael dally involved narcissistic egotistical sociopath total lack of conscience
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despicable disgusting human being witnesses told police they saw a blonde woman abduct sherry dally from a
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department store parking lot the prime suspect diana hahn was a brunette in a search of her home investigators
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found evidence that han was a master of disguises when we executed a search warrant in her
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room we found all kinds of photographs showing her in different get-ups and wigs and
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makeup as she posed for its modeling agency we asked diana han's mother if she could
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pick out her daughter in any of these photographs and her mother started shaking her head no that this wasn't her
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daughter and han's telephone record showed something curious diana and michael spoke by telephone
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numerous times immediately before and after the abduction based on the telephone calls and the
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forensic evidence prosecutors say diana hahn rented the car under her own name because rental
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agencies require a valid driver's license to conceal her identity han attempted to
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forge her own signature a forgery detected by the forensic experts han followed sherry dally to the
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department store parking lot han was wearing a blonde wig and sunglasses to mask her identity
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when sherry left the store han may have posed as a member of law enforcement because witnesses say sherry
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was handcuffed and placed into the back seat at some point sherry inevitably recognized diana and knew her husband
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and his mistress were going to kill her [Music] the forensic evidence shows that diana
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killed sherry in the back seat of the rental car threw her body down the deserted ravine
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put the murder weapons in the trunk and drove to ventura marina there she changed out of her bloody
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clothes and called michael from the pay phone to say the murder was done from there
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han drove to a car wash and attempted to clean the blood from the back seat and trunk
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but she was unsuccessful luminol phenothalene and dna testing confirmed the cherry daly was brutally
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attacked in han's rental car the five wig fibers confirmed the disguise forensic handwriting and ink analysis
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also revealed that it was han's signature on checks used to purchase the wig and the axe
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you have to be maniacal you have to be evil you have to have something inherently vicious inside of you
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to be able to do what she did to sherry dally and to leave those two young boys without their mother
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the telephone calls han placed to michael dally before and after the murder was evidence of his complicity
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the night that we arrested michael we did a search warrant on his home and on the bed where he and his wife had slept
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was a full-length pillow that you can get probably through some company where you can actually take
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somebody's photograph and have it actually printed on this pillow well guess whose
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face was on the pillow diana hans and that pillow was there while sherry was still alive
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i still got hurt for the betrayal i think he betrayed us and he betrayed sherry in the worst possible way
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and the fact that she loved him and he used that love we the jury in the above entitled action
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find michael anthony dally guilty diana hahn and michael dally were both convicted of first degree murder and
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sentenced to life in prison [Music] church life and upbringing tells me that i should be able to forgive him
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unfortunately god is going to have to forgive me for the fact that i will never be able to offer that forgiveness
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to him can you describe sherry and diana's relationship not good people hated each other
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they both wanted me big fat eagle and he sat there and said i can't help it if two women love me
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it's not my fault that two men women love me um and i think it was an eagle trip
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i think he knew exactly what he was doing throughout this whole case it's just
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unfortunate fortunate for him that he was [Music] stupid one thing that i'll never forget about
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this case is ken guess saying when sherry and michael got married i walked cherry down the aisle
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and i left her there and gave my daughter to this man and this was the man that killed my
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daughter and that's something that i'll always remember him saying and i'm sure it's something that he will
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never forget though the forensics in this case was very vital the handwriting analysis on the checks
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that diana hahn wrote to purchase the items and the implements that she used to murder sherry that was key
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we hadn't found sherry dally's blood in the car that diana hahn had rented
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i don't see how we would have solved the case [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music]
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you