A Very Floridian Crime Story

If you’re ever feeling optimistic about humanity, Florida news headlines serve as a reminder that evolution still has a long way to go.

“Florida man insists syringes inserted in rectum aren’t his”

“Pet alligator on meth breaks into Orlando convenience store”

“Florida woman named Crystal Metheny arrested for firing an offensive missile into car”

It is only fitting, therefore, that Florida is the state that brought us the Dalia Dippolito story- a fascinating tale of failure, karma, and gaslighting taken to an astonishing extreme.

Not to be confused with that other Dahlia, the tragic victim of a gruesome and horrific murder 74 years ago, this newer, h-less Dalia is most definitely not the victim of this criminal case, despite the protestations from her legal team.

During the summer of 2009, Dalia Dippolito tried to hire a hitman to kill her husband. She famously told her would-be assassin that she was “5000% sure” she wanted her husband dead. In addition to being terrible at math, she was also inept when it came to hiring killers. The person she recruited was a cop and the hiring interview was recorded on camera as part of the undercover sting. The department also staged the crime scene in an effort to catch an acting performance by the aspiring black widow that they felt would assist in an easy confession.

Being incompetent at killing your newlywed husband is hardly headline material in a state known for violent brawls over fast food sauce packets and shooting bullets at hurricanes to quell the storm. This aborted kill-for-hire scheme was able to successfully capture the continued attention of the news media thanks to all of the outrageous elements connected to the story. The story of Dalia Dippolito is an elaborate one of many flawed people making awful choices who were eclipsed by a more terrible person doing really terrible things.

The Dalia Dippolito Saga begins in October 2008 when a bored Michael Dippolito decides to seek out some excitement while his wife is out of town. He finds it, perhaps more excitement than he’d bargained for, when he put in a request (and his credit card number) on an escort agency website. The beautiful and intriguing Dalia Mohammed answers the call and what follows is a whirlwind romantic disaster of Floridian proportions.

Prior to meeting the woman who would so negatively impact his life, Michael Dippolito had already lived a complicated life. As the child of alcoholic parents, he became one himself at a very young age. He quickly progressed to dependencies on other substances. He started dealing drugs to finance his habit and had several run-ins with law enforcement both as a minor and adult.

He moved to Florida from his hometown of Philadelphia to try and clean up his life and start anew however the new setting brought him other problems. Loose family connections to organized crime offered him employment in the commodities fraud sector. He excelled at operation and soon branched out to launch two telemarketing operations of his own which scammed investors in a foreign currency scheme. Instead of investing their money, Mike used to cash to finance an ostentatiously lavish lifestyle, along with more than $6000 on pay-by-the-minute phone sex chatrooms.

Around this time in 1998, Michael was involved with a lovely woman named Maria Luongo. When Michael was inevitably arrested, along with his business partners, for their fraudulent business dealings, it was Maria who assisted him by selling her car to pay for his legal defense.

In 2002 he went to jail and served seven months of a two-year sentence. He was also given 32 years of probation to make full restitution to his victims. Jail seemed to have a positive effect on the former fraudster. He hated it there and decided he would do everything he could to never return. He earned his GED and started focusing his routines and compulsions on fitness and working out. He again joined treatment programs for his addiction and remained sober despite some minor setbacks.

Maria stood by him through all of his legal woes and the years that followed. They were married in 2007 after nine years together. She noted that Michael truly turned his life around once he left prison and never had anything negative to say about him, even after they divorced.

Maria’s loyalty and their commitment to each other were quickly forgotten less than a year later when Michael succumbed to the spell of Dalia Mohammed, a woman who also had a knack for getting other people to pay her expenses.

(Maria will end up having the last laugh in this twisted tale and it’s important to remember that Michael is the one we need to reserve our sympathies for.)

Five days after his divorce to Maria was finalized, he and Dalia tied the knot and moved into Mike’s new townhouse in Boynton Beach. To their friends and family, it seemed as if they were incredibly happy and in love, disgustingly so. It should be noted that during their entire relationship, she had never fully let go of a few ex-lovers who continued to provide Dalia with financial assistance and services on occasion.

Michael was starting to do well financially at this time. He had gone into (legitimate) internet sales and was good at it. He could be forgiven for not initially seeing Dalia for the gold-digger that she was. He had reason to believe that Dalia was financially independent. She was a real estate agent and had her own escort agency and massage parlors in California and she seemed to be able to pay for expensive things, like breast implants.

Despite her occupation as a prostitute, Dalia had a serious distaste for Michael’s status as an ex-con. Unlike her husband, Dalia had grown up in a stable, and by all accounts happy, middle-class family, and perhaps she thought her family wouldn’t approve.

Almost immediately after they were married, Dalia offered a deal to pay off Michael’s restitution all at once so he could get off of probation. She offered to give him $91,000 if he paid the other $100,000 that he still owed. Michael had the money. It was hidden in a safe deposit box, accumulated during his previous illegal enterprises. (Keep in mind that the victims Michael was paying restitution to were usually receiving $10 checks each month or less.)

Dalia proposed that Michael give cash to her in small payments under the radar of any regulating or monitoring agency. She would put the money into her account with the $91,000 and when the entire amount was there, she was supposed to wire the money to his lawyer.

Michael loved the idea as much as she did. Unfortunately, the money never made it to his lawyer. When Michael started questioning where the money was, probation officers started appearing in their lives.

About a month into their married life together, Michael Dippolito was visited by his probation officer for the first time ever. He was told that several anonymous tips had been called in alleging that Michael was in possession of illegal steroids and other drugs. A warrant was presented to search the home. If any had been found, Michael would have been sent back to the place he vowed to never return to, for more than 10 years.

To take Mike’s mind off this unsettling event, Dalia suggested a spur-of-the-moment getaway at the Ritz-Carlton in Palm Beach which ran about $1200 a night. After they checked out the next day, they found police officers waiting for them at the car. Another set of anonymous tips had been called in alleging that Mr. Dippolito was selling drugs out of his car. They searched the vehicle but found nothing.

A few days later, Michael went to fill up the gas tank of his car. When he opened the cover, he found a plastic bag filled with a small quantity of recreational drugs. Michael remembered the incident at the Ritz-Carlton and recalled the officers had not checked the gas tank. If they had, Michael would have been arrested. He started to become anxious and paranoid, worried that he was being set up.

Two weeks later the police were on the tail of the Dippolitos once more. The couple had enjoyed a night out, and while they were leaving to go home, were confronted by a new set of anonymous-tip-receiving officers who had a drug-sniffing dog with them this time. The dog was able to find a small cache of drugs hidden in the spare tire.

Michael had a mental breakdown on the scene. He knew he hadn’t put the drugs in the car, he had never even seen the spare tire before. It had remained tucked under the trunk’s floor covering ever since he’d purchased the SUV. The idea of going to jail again for something he didn’t do but couldn’t prove was almost too much for him to handle. He started crying hysterically, trying to explain to the officers how he had been set up and how this had occurred several times prior.

The officers were taken aback by his behavior, possibly because it contrasted so starkly with the cool and collected demeanor of his wife. They noted that the small amount and form of the drugs they’d found was extremely minimal, not for distribution, and not something that would have been normally hidden the way it was in the tire. They collectively decided to believe Michael and let him go.

Mike Dippolito was still shaken up when they got in the vehicle to go home. Dalia was driving as Michael ran through all the scenarios in his head, trying to figure out how the drugs could have gotten into his vehicle. He was a little slow putting two and two together but he finally reasoned that Dalia was the only person who knew where the couple would be that night, the night at the restaurant, and the night at the Ritz-Carlton. She was also the only person who had access to the SUV. He began thinking out loud and asked Dalia if, perhaps, she had put the drugs in the car, for some reason that she may have forgotten.

Dalia became outraged at the suggestion she floored the gas pedal. She was furious that the man she loved would have such a horrific opinion of her. She got the SUV up to 190 mph before Michael was able to talk her into slowing down by apologizing profusely for even thinking about the most logical conclusion to the scenario.

The episode had apparently given Dalia a taste for murder since it was afterward when her ideas of ‘getting rid of him’ took on more permanent connotations. As for Michael, it had given him enough PTSD to never consider that Dalia was anything other than the doting wife she told him she was.

Dalia knew Michael’s fear response would only go so far and she needed a more enduring distraction. The next morning at breakfast she surprised him with the exciting announcement that they would be having a little addition to their happy family.

The ploy worked and Mike was ecstatic. He seemed to completely forget about almost dying in a fiery crash just hours earlier. The two of them went out and bought baby books, looked at baby furniture, and considered the first round of baby names for the fictitious child Dalia said she was carrying.

Dalia could breathe a little easier for a time. She knew Michael would ask about the money again at some point and she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to arrange his death before that happened. Telling the truth about spending it all on clothes, jewelry, and a Range Rover for an ex-lover who she sometimes kept in touch with was out of the question.

One of her sometime-lovers was contacted to assist with a scheme to put the house in her name. Under the intoxicating influence of her lady-bits, an ex named Mike Stanley called up Mike Dippolito posing as a lawyer friend of Dalia’s. He told Mr. Dippolito that it would be helpful to his restitution case if he put his assets in his wife’s name. Incredibly, Mike Dippolito took the advice of this unknown man who he’d never met and who seemed to have little understanding of community property laws.

Dalia also engineered a plan to convince Mike-her-husband to give pretend-lawyer-Mike money with the promise of getting a bigger amount later. It probably speaks to the amazing rehabilitation and reform capabilities of the Florida penal system that any ideas connected to victimizing people had been erased from her husband’s memory. Dalia’s ploy was one of the oldest scams in the scam manual and with Mike Dippolito having served time for conducting a similar scam, you’d think he would have recognized it.

Dalia used the money to open an account in the Cayman Islands. Now that Mike Stanley had fulfilled his usefulness to Dalia, she cut him off with barely a text acknowledgment. Dalia wanted to kill Michael and she didn’t think he was the man for the job. She had someone else in mind.

Mohamed Shihadeh was the ex-lover to who Dalia had gifted the Range Rover. He described their arrangement as one of a friends-with-benefits situation that had gone back for many years. She arranged to meet with him at a clothing store owned by one of his friends and ostentatiously inquired about getting a gun. There, she cried on his shoulder about needing protection from her unstable husband who was prone to ‘roid-rage’. He was reluctant to provide the woman he knew to be “kinda crazy sometimes” with a weapon. Equally frustrating for Dalia, he didn’t seem to grasp the psychological steering she was attempting by not offering to take care of the problem for her himself. With limited time on her hands, now that her empty uterus was becoming noticeably not-noticeable, she may have made some hasty missteps in her standard manipulation protocols.

When Mohamed refused, Dalia went outside to chat with a band of local street toughs who hung out near the store. They called themselves the Buck Wild Gang and they were known for some dangerous criminal activity. Mohamed and his friend were cautiously familiar with the gang and warned Dalia against interacting with them. But one of the gang members, a man named Larry Coe, was interested in her proposal.

Dalia loaded up the hooligans into her car and took them around her neighborhood so they could work out the logistics of the plan. It was not long before Dalia dropped the men off and they went into the store to tell Mohamed that they’d decided against the murder-for-hire arrangement. Larry told him that in the limited amount of time he had spent with Dalia he could tell that she was ‘batshit crazy’ and didn’t feel comfortable with the arrangement. He also let Mohamed know that Dalia had offered up Mohamed’s Range Rover as one possible payment option for the transaction.

I can’t imagine the blow it must have been to Dalia’s self-esteem to be denied her request by two healthy, heterosexual males in such close succession. In addition to being unable to kill her husband, she had to confront the possibility of fading sex appeal. It surely added to her desperation.

While Dalia was regrouping, she took matters into her own hands and attempted to poison Mike by putting anti-freeze in the chai beverages the two enjoyed together. Mike started having severe gastric issues and open sores in his mouth but he never drank enough of the tainted brew to cause his demise. Dalia became more and more frantic.

She went back to Mohamed to try a new tactic. They met in a parking lot and spoke in his car at length about her need to kill her husband. (Mohamed had already traded in the Range Rover for a different car, one that had no financial connection to Dalia.) At one point, Mohamed briefly got out of the vehicle and when he came back, Dalia left to put something in her car. Mohamed quickly figured out that she had stolen the gun he kept in his glove compartment and confronted her. She returned the gun with a contrite apology and they parted ways.

Mohamed, who seemed to understand Dalia far better than the man she married, started to worry. The gun Dalia had taken had his fingerprints on it. He had no difficulty believing that Dalia was capable of implicating him if it suited her end-game. He decided to go to the police.

Boynton Beach PD took Mohamed seriously even though he didn’t know her married name or where she lived. They had him sign an agreement that made him a confidential informant and wired up his car. Mohamed was given a script and he contacted Dalia to tell her that he found someone who might be able to help her carry out her murder plans. Dalia was delighted.

Dalia met up with Mohamed so they could discuss the professional assassin. In the recorded conversation they discussed the reasons for the death contract. Dalia explained that she couldn’t divorce Michael or he would “come after” her and take all of her money and assets, like the house which was in her name. Mohamed put a great deal of effort into stressing the gravity of the situation. Taking a man’s life was not to be taken lightly. He reminded her that the hitman was a professional and there would be no turning back. Dalia never expressed any reservations whatsoever and seemed excited to start the process.

Mohamed decided to bring up the issue of his Range Rover being offered as payment to a street gang in the earlier meeting. Dalia admitted, in the recording, that yes, she did offer it as payment for killing her husband but she was just babbling about giving away the Range Rover and didn’t really mean it. She very much did, however, want them to kill her husband and had given them several ways to go about doing it.

They also discussed whether or not Mike’s family would suspect Dalia’s involvement in the assassination. Dalia quickly brushed off any possibility by stating that she’s a sweet, innocent girl. No one would ever connect her to something so heinous.

Dalia’s next meeting was with her would-be hitman. They too met in a parking lot and talked in his car, which was also wired with several recording devices and cameras. In the video, it appears that Dalia has her suspicions. She looked directly at one of the cameras 17 times during the interview. But despite any apprehension about being set up, Dalia comfortably explained what she wanted done to her husband and tried to haggle down the original price.

The cop, posing as a hitman, explained that once they parted ways there was no turning back. She would have no way to contact him to call it off if she changed her mind. It is at that point that she utters her famous quote about being “5000 % sure” she wanted her husband dead.

The plan for the murder involved Dalia going to the gym to establish her alibi during the incident. The killer would pretend to break into the house and be surprised to find Michael home. He’d kill him and it would appear to be nothing more than an interrupted robbery.

While Dalia was at the gym, the police went to her home. They knocked on the door and informed Michael that his wife had planned to have him killed that day and requested he come to the precinct. The police intended to stage a crime scene and film his wife’s reaction.

Dalia provided them with exactly the overly dramatic acting performance that everyone was expecting.

She began crying even before the officer had finished telling her what happened. She begged repeatedly to see her husband but was advised against it. She was instead steered toward a police car where a far more composed widow-wannabe chatted amicably with the officers during the ride to the station.

At the time, a reality TV show, called Cops had been invited to follow around the Boynton Beach police force. The show typically spent a few weeks with different law enforcement agencies, recording live action in their day-to-day shifts. The Dippolito murder-for-hire case was unfolding at the start of their temporary partnership. As a result, the show participated in recording the staged crime scene and the distraught reaction when Mrs. Dippolito is informed of the fake tragic circumstances.

In a questionable decision that didn’t involve the TV show, the department released footage of Dalia’s acting debut to the media only a few hours later. The sensationalism of their dramatically staged interaction was judged to have been done solely for entertainment purposes. In their defense, the footage made for incredibly watchable television, even if it wasn’t such a smart legal maneuver.

More acting continued at the police precinct where the pretend scenario was still being continued. Dalia was asked about any enemies her husband might have had and she offered that he was “on probation”. She also volunteered that his previous business partners would also be good candidates for investigation.

Shortly after, Dalia was let in on the ruse. They informed her of her rights and arrested her for solicitation of murder. The police explained to her that it had all been a setup. They thought she would confess. She did the opposite.

Far more enthralling, in my opinion, than the fake tears over the fake death of her husband was everything that followed. Dalia insisted that what had happened, hadn’t happened.

Dalia found out that her husband was alive and she cried out in relief! She wanted to see him, she wanted to talk to him. They told her he wanted nothing to do with her. She insisted anyway.

She was allowed to call her mother, and in the call, she pushed all emotion aside to ask her to secure her house which was in her name. She repeated this for clarity.

Then, she was finally given an opportunity to speak with her beloved husband. If you don’t know the definition of gaslighting please listen to this conversation.

“I was there! I heard what you heard, and it’s NOT TRUE!”

Michael Dippolito should be given some extra kudos for the empathetic and civil way he responds to the woman who tried to end his life.

What is really incomprehensible about this case is that it took THREE trials to finally secure a conviction for Ms. Dippolito. THREE! She is heard clearly on tape and on video over and over again begging for assistance in killing her husband. You would think the evidence overwhelming. But it took three trials.

This was Florida, after all.

Her first trial found her guilty and sentenced her to 20 years. That conviction was overturned over allegations that her jury shouldn’t have been allowed to hear that she had tried to poison her husband with anti-freeze. She remained under house arrest until her second trial.

Her second trial took gaslighting even further. They used the participation of the Cops TV show as proof that Dalia was acting. Well, we all know Dalia was acting. No, her lawyer argued, she was doing it professionally. No one else seemed to know they were trying out for roles on television by doing the staged performance except Dalia and her lawyer.

The prosecution, believing they had such an airtight case, after all, she was recorded numerous times trying desperately to get someone to kill her husband didn’t think the “reality show try-out defense” would be all that compelling. They seemed to provide a less than vigorous argument and the result was a mistrial.

The third time was finally a charm and Dalia was convicted once again after a short deliberation by the jury.

Dalia is spending the next 16 years at the Lowell Correctional Facility in Marion County, where she is considered a model prisoner, and looks forward to visits with her young son, who she gave birth to during her house arrest. She also hopes a judge will grant her another trial.

Michael Dippolito has moved on and is engaged to another woman. I feel that this case shows his path to redemption for his earlier crimes. If you listen to his testimony at the trials, he sometimes provides excellent comic relief in his statements but for the most part, he sounds very much like the ‘nice guy’ everyone describes him to be. In many of his statements, he says good things about the woman who tried to kill him; he wishes her no harm.

The police department was harshly criticized for excessive sensationalism by way of the reality television contract, the released footage, and the staged crime scene. I think in fairness, they were excited to bring the outrageous aspects of this case to light and they, like many of us got a little enjoyment out of it.

The Dalia Dippolito case a rare situation where the end result was successful in a case involving a murder plot. It took a little while, but justice was served, unlike the outcome for that other Dahlia so long ago. We are inundated with sad and devasting headlines about our often violent world every day. (If you’re in Florida, you get even more to contemplate when you peruse through daily events.) The shocking headlines associated with this case had a satisfying result: The evil villain was caught before she could follow through with her evil intentions. I think that deserves to be celebrated and yes, maybe even gloated over.