Poison Candy: The Murderous Madam (13 page)

Now Mike was making her take part in a “reality stunt” designed to gain him instant notoriety: In concert with their actor friend Mohamed and his unnamed contacts inside the Boynton Beach Police Department, Dalia would pretend to solicit a professional hit man to murder her husband; when
the ruse inevitably unraveled, they would use the media spike to—well, it was never clear. Books, movies—maybe get their own reality series. Fame is like rising water; it lifts all boats. All based on what was essentially a prank.

“He’s, from what I understand, pretty savvy with the Internet,” Stanley explained. “Whatever his plan was, I mean, it worked.”

So by his own admission, over the next several weeks Stanley began calling various official entities, always anonymously, making complaints against Mike Dippolito, trying to provide proof that he had violated the terms of his probation in the hopes that he would return to prison and this long nightmare would boil off like the morning’s dew. At Dalia’s behest, Stanley called the Treasury Department and reported that Mike had funds for restitution but refused to comply, had paid cash for his house, and should have his accounts frozen. He repeatedly called both the Justice Department and the IRS, but failed to get through to anyone willing to take an interest. He called the State Attorney who’d prosecuted Mike’s fraud case in Broward County, alleging violence in his marriage, only to discover that she was out of the country on a two-week vacation. He called Mike’s probation officer with accusations of fraud and drug dealing, possibly of illegal steroids. He even reported that Mike had violated his probation by leaving the county to take Dalia’s whole family to the Marlins-Phillies baseball game in Bro-ward County, including her dying grandfather who had never been to a baseball game before, renting them a luxury suite at the stadium to watch the game for $3,000.

Stanley also claimed to have a personal reason for waging his procedural jihad, aside from taking revenge on the man who stole his wife-to-be and rescuing the woman of his dreams from imaginary dragons: when Dalia left California, somehow Stanley’s Eye, Inc., corporate documentation inadvertently left with her, and now she claimed Mike was illegally using it for tax purposes.

“My phone calls were general phone calls so the authorities could conduct their investigations as they see fit,” claimed Stanley. “I was not calling and making direct and slanderous accusations. I was calling to let them know that they may want to look into this because there may be these potential issues.”

Of course, in all his concentrated efforts to derail Mike’s celebrity juggernaut and return him to prison for violating the conditions of his probation, Stanley never once thought to pick up the phone and call the FBI, the DEA, the Sheriff’s Office, the Producer’s Guild, Stone Phillips, or anyone else, to say, “This sociopath plans to hijack world attention with a fake murder plot; that can’t be legal.”

Stanley claimed he thought nature would take its course: “They would say this is a joke and go from there.” I dared to point out that we were now two years into this thing and this was the first we were hearing about it. Stanley became defensive and claimed that his address and phone number was the same as it had always been, and that he was willing to speak to anybody. (Nancy Grace’s producers reached out to him after the release of the texts, but he refused to comment.)

There was also no mention of this elaborate hoax in any of Stanley and Dalia’s private text messages, even though they didn’t display any qualms about discussing even the most intimate or furtive matters. On July 18, after missing Stanley on a lunchtime call, she writes:

DALIA: Just tried cllg got vm just wantd u to know i love and miss u and cant wait to fuck ur hard cock love u im crazy about u

On July 27, after his second daylong junket to see her in Florida, Dalia writes at 8:24 p.m.:

DALIA: Im so attracted to u lovd fucking u it blew me away i love having ur hot cum in me

On July 17 at 8:35 p.m., there appears this exchange:

DALIA: So how much do you want me

STANLEY: Dalia, i have always wanted u, ir my unicorn . . .

DALIA: What u said was beautiful i startd crying ur the man of my dreams my prince charming

On July 24, in anticipation of his imminent arrival, she asks at 5:19 p.m.:

DALIA: What time will u be here i want us to start baby making

And a day later, while apparently standing him up at the Blue Martini, where they first met (he goes to see
The Hangover
instead), she texts at 7:11 p.m.:

DALIA: Soulmates is what we r we r meant to be together do u know i have baby names pickd out i want ur child in me

That’s not to mention those moments that might sound collusive or insidious if viewed in the wrong context, such as these, all from July 27, the day after their second illicit rendezvous:

DALIA (1:38 p.m.): The sooner his shit gets fuckd up the better

DALIA (1:55 p.m.): The sooner he gets jammed up the sooner we can be in paradise island baby

DALIA (5:38 p.m.): I love u just want my life w u lets get this mother fucker arrested im so tired of his shit

DALIA (5:50 p.m.): He has some here at the house too but i want to put x pills and coke in the car and xanax

DALIA (7:45 p.m.): Me too lets get this shit handld and well have it all i really hate him and want to c him rot

DALIA (8:32 p.m.): Then lets put his lying ass back in jail

But it turns out Stanley had an explanation for this, too. Along with his domestic threats, incorrigible criminality, deceptive finances, and casual business betrayals, Mike was also a sexual deviant and tyrant. Dalia confided that “he’s very sexually demented in nature, and he thinks it’s hilarious to fuck with my ex-boyfriend.” Since they shared a phone, “Some text
messages are going to come from him and some are from me, directed by him. You need to understand they’re not real. It’s part of this charade, this game that he wants play.” Dalia said that Mike had been “arrested for prostitution or excessive credit card use and sex calls.” Soon Stanley began receiving inordinately provocative texts from Dalia—gratuitous, sordid declarations that would have been totally out of character for her. Often when he would call the number back, Mike would scream obscenities at him, or there would only be room sounds or music. Once, a strange woman answered and said, “No, Dalia’s not here, why don’t you talk to me,” which he found both amusing and embarrassing, and which quickly devolved into the preliminary stages of phone sex.

By carefully going through all forty-nine pages of Dalia’s MetroPCS phone records and having Stanley designate who he thought each text was coming from, I was able to determine the following: Whenever the text messages appear casual or benign, they are from Dalia. When they reveal emotion, but are still platonic, they’re also from Dalia. When they are sexual but respectful in tone—“I want you”; “You always spoiled and romanced me and I loved it”—they’re most likely from Dalia, but with Mike there directing her. And if it was overtly prurient—“sexting”—it would be Mike in the throes of his particular mania. Quickly triaging his incoming messages, Stanley would merely respond in kind. Through this elaborate and seemingly inscrutable ruse, Mike sought to lure Stanley in, keep him close, and study him, as he would any rival or mark. A secondary benefit of Stanley’s system is that it completely exonerates him of illegal behavior.

This is most problematic in the final days leading up to the planned murder. On Friday, July 31, at 2:16 p.m., Dalia reports:

DALIA: Did the tranfr but he said because were married i cant sell it w out his signature even though its in my name

This sends her into an apparent spiral: throughout the afternoon and evening, she sends Stanley a number of fraught, increasingly desperate messages:

DALIA (3:19 p.m.): I want my life w u rite now wed be gettn our party weekend startd

DALIA (7:01 p.m.): I love u ur my world help me figure this out love of my life we have alnt of catchn up to do

DALIA (7:04 p.m.): Im so unhappy and empty w out u i cant stand being here u should be here not him

DALIA (9:27 p.m.): I cant stop crying

DALIA (9:34 p.m.): Im upstairs and i cant stop im falling apart w out u

DALIA (9:42 p.m.): I love u im such a mess rite now i lockd mysf up here

This is the day she tried to steal Mohamed’s gun, inadvertently sending him to the police. Stanley appears increasingly distraught at his inability to console her.

STANLEY: . . . need to cleen up ur mess baby life is waiting

The next morning at 10:53 a.m., after a phone call between them, Stanley declares:

STANLEY: Baby I was blown away, stars are lining up for us love!!!!

That evening at 6 p.m., after Dalia has met with Mohamed to arrange for a hit man—and after Dalia and Stanley have spoken by phone before and after that meeting—there appears a brief text exchange between them in faux gangster-speak, with a kind of forced merriment grating at the edges:

DALIA: Wud up dawg lol does that sound impersonal

STANLEY: Yo yo chillin, tierd heading to ct, lol

DALIA: Tell yo peeps holla lol

Then just fifteen minutes later, at 6:21 p.m., comes the following:

STANLEY: Hey thanks for the service my confidence is so much better and I think I may start seeing somebody very serious I talk to girls so much better now :)

DALIA: No problem im glad the roleplaying has helpd u good luck and stay in touch

STANLEY: Thank you I feel more comfortable expressing myself now

Despite Stanley’s elaborate explanation of the role-playing protocols governing these text messages, with Mike Dippolito the unseen puppet-master governing everything for his sexual gratification, this appears to be a new category of messages between them: as part of her escort outreach services, Dalia has been texting with Stanley—including intimately—to build his confidence and bolster his self-esteem. Any implied intimacy between them, even emotional intimacy, is merely situational and contractual (“good luck and stay in touch”). Dalia hasn’t been sexting with Stanley; she hasn’t even been pretending to sext with him—she’s been giving him sexting lessons.

Michael Stanley’s deposition lasted roughly nine hours. At one point near the middle, I had to excuse myself and leave the room to keep from laughing. I told Salnick during one of our breaks, “I
hope
you put him on the stand—I’ll have him up there for days.” By the end, Salnick looked absolutely defeated. Perhaps he had thought Stanley was going to be his star witness. But once I had the witness locked into these answers under oath, if he diverged from them during the trial, he would be impeached with his prior statement. Everything Stanley testified to was based on what Dalia told him—he had no independent knowledge of anything. The legal term for this is hearsay—an out-of-court statement repeated in court and represented as the truth. If reproduced during the trial, it would be self-serving hearsay on Dalia’s behalf in its most obvious form. I ended the deposition by asking him if he knew what perjury was. He had come to Florida voluntarily for
this deposition, only to expose himself to possible criminal prosecution. Such is the power of love.

And the law says a lawyer cannot knowingly put on perjured testimony; if a witness plans to perjure himself, you are forbidden to ask them questions, leaving them to testify in the narrative. Meaning Salnick would be hard-pressed to carry forward with this. If these were Stanley’s answers— and they were clearly the answers Dalia wanted him to give, since she was the only one who stood to benefit from them—I think he was worthless as a witness the second he sat down across from me. My belief is that this deposition knocked Michael Stanley off the playing field, and it kicked a leg out from underneath the defense they had planned.

In the end, I chose not to call Michael Stanley to the stand. My focus was on proving Dalia guilty of the crime of Solicitation to Commit First-Degree Murder with a Firearm. Although he may have been integral to the motive behind it, I never saw any direct evidence that Stanley was involved in that crime, and in fact, when Dalia suggested he call the Treasury Department and pretend to be Mike in order to trip him up, Stanley refused to commit fraud. The best I had was circumstantial evidence linking him to efforts to frame the victim, or possibly misrepresenting himself on the phone. I felt at this point his presence would only make the trial more of a circus than it already was.

Stanley denied that Dalia had coached him or influenced his answers in any way. “Dalia is very sensitive about the case, so we don’t speak about it,” he said. He visited her after the arrest and sent flowers, and freely admits he gave Randa several thousand dollars that she would logically have applied to Dalia’s bond. “Her mother is going through a trying time right now and she needs the support of her friends,” he says. “I’m happy to help her.”

Stanley’s plight brings to mind Charles Dickens’s
A Christmas Carol
. If Mohamed Shihadeh is the Ghost of Dalia Past, the one who saw through her opportunism and sexual bravado from the outset and thought she would stop somewhere short of the edge, until she didn’t; and Mike is the Ghost of Dalia Present, someone who even through the hard rains of adversity believed he had found his destined love, and is now paying the price; then
Michael Stanley is the Ghost of Dalia Future, who in spite of all logic and proportion to the contrary, still believes he’ll be the one to take the prize home from the fair. I fear he is in for a rude awakening.

On the same day as the Michael Stanley deposition—April 8, 2011—the judge in the case, Judge Jeffrey Colbath, granted my Motion to Introduce Evidence of Prior Bad Acts as Inextricably Intertwined Evidence with one exception. I was not allowed to talk about Dalia’s fake pregnancy in any capacity. In most trials, previous criminal acts, or uncharged bad acts are not admissible as evidence of a crime charged. Otherwise, every accused repeat offender might automatically be found guilty just based on their history—if they did it before they would do it again, or that they are a dishonorable person. That would be prejudicial to a criminal defendant. So we as prosecutors work within the parameters that all cases should be tried on their own merit, and plan our strategy accordingly. But sometimes one’s past actions are necessary to explain a motive, provide context, or otherwise inform the crime at hand. In the state of Florida, you can introduce evidence of prior bad acts in certain situations, such as if it’s intertwined, or inseparable from the crime charged. With Dalia, calling or directing others to call the IRS, Treasury Department, Inspector General’s Office, or Mike’s probation officer, trying to plant evidence on him, engaging the Buck Wild gang, stealing a gun, serving him antifreeze, and the rest of it, while certainly prejudicial, were necessary simply to make sense of her crime. Otherwise I would be trying the case in a vacuum.