Poison Candy: The Murderous Madam (27 page)

I started out my cross-examination of her by clarifying some of her bona fides. I established that her PhD thesis consisted of five separate studies of the effects on children ages eleven to fourteen of viewing “indirect aggression” (manipulation, gossip, verbal cruelty) on television, and that she had never done a study on the effect of reality TV on individuals— presumably her highlighted area of expertise. That expertise came exclusively from
reading journal articles and researching on the Internet. Although she had testified on the reality casting process in direct, she admitted that she had never been to an audition, never interviewed anyone about the audition process, or even so much as looked at a reality show application.

Expanding on her earlier testimony, I keyed in on those examples of public behavior designed to establish notoriety that Salnick cited in his opening statement, presumably Mike’s inspiration in whatever scheme he had concocted.

PARKER: Let’s talk about the Balloon Boy Incident. That was a couple trying to gain notoriety to land a reality show.

COYNE: Yes.

PARKER: The son who was thought to be in the balloon actually said that the couple told him they were doing this for the show.

COYNE: Both of the parents were actors. They had been on
Wife Swap
.

PARKER: Did you know they were actors, though?

COYNE: No.

PARKER: Did you know they had a production company?

COYNE: No.

PARKER: That they had been on a reality show two times previously?

COYNE: The father had been on
Wife Swap
twice.

PARKER: That the husband had pitched a reality show idea to TLC?

COYNE: No.

PARKER: That they actually had a show in development with the producer of
Wife Swap
at the time of the Balloon Boy incident?

COYNE: No.

PARKER: Did you know that the Balloon Boy incident actually occurred on October 15, 2009?

COYNE: No.

PARKER: And that was after the defendant in this case was arrested?

COYNE: Yes.

PARKER:
Jersey Shore
. Are you familiar?

COYNE: A little bit. I watched twenty minutes.

PARKER: A little silly . . .

COYNE: Yes, a little over the top.

PARKER: And isn’t it true that
Jersey Shore
didn’t actually air until December 3, 2009, after the defendant was arrested?

COYNE: Sure, I’ll believe you. Yeah.

Although I didn’t bother to point it out at the time, Salnick’s third example of a successful reality show stunt—the so-called White House Crashers, Tareq and Michele Salahi—made their first unauthorized appearance at a state dinner in November 2009, also long after Dalia was taken into custody. At the time, they were already filming
The Real Housewives of D.C.
, which aired in 2010.

As she readily admitted, Coyne had never interviewed a producer or any crew member working on a reality show, had never been on the set of one, and had never talked to a single reality show contestant, either actual or aspirational. On the material she reviewed from the Dalia Dippolito case (the surveillance tapes of Dalia and Mohamed and Dalia and the hit man; the crime scene video; Dalia’s police interview), she admitted she had heard no references to reality TV, and she had never talked to any of the principals, including the defendant. Like all expert witnesses, she was being paid for her time—in this case, $175 an hour. By the time I was finished with her, I felt like there was very little left.

Salnick did come back on redirect and try to undo some of the damage, but in a way that I thought further undercut his witness:

SALNICK: This is the first time you’ve ever done this, is that correct?

COYNE: Yes.

SALNICK: It’s not like you testify for the government or for the defense or the plaintiff or the defendant—this is the first time you’ve been in a forensic setting, is that right?

COYNE: That’s right . . .

SALNICK: The prosecutor asked you about how much you’re getting paid. Do you wanna hang out here in South Florida?

COYNE: Not so much.

SALNICK: Do you have children?

COYNE: I have three little kids.

My objection as to relevance was sustained, but the gist of it was that she was ready to get back home. To salvage the Balloon Boy reference, Salnick asked if Balloon Boy’s father went to jail for falsely reporting a crime. She said she thought he did. Neither of them really seemed sure.

Once Salnick finished his questions, the Judge unexpectedly inserted himself into the proceedings, asking Coyne from the bench what the most popular reality shows were. She told him
Dancing with the Stars
and
America’s Got Talent
.

COLBATH: Reality TV: bane of society or benign entertainment?

COYNE: (laughs) I’m still thinking about it. Let me research it for the next five years and then I’ll let you know.

Salnick also called his own computer forensic expert. It’s not uncommon for opposing sides to engage their own expert witnesses in a criminal trial, since especially with the advent of new technology, so much of the evidence is open to interpretation. But in this instance, exactly why the defendant couldn’t have simply volunteered her own search history remains unclear.

Carol Peden is a Senior Computer Forensics Analyst with Global CompuSearch in Spokane, Washington. Unlike Dr. Sarah Coyne, Peden
does
testify in jury trials for a living—“consultation and litigation support,” in
her words. Analyzing the same cloned hard drive from Dalia’s PC that Pete McGovern had, she found the same funeral home searches on August 3, as well as searches that revealed a tip sheet on how to beat anabolic steroid tests and companies that train and sell attack dogs. She also testified she found web searches on May 13 for “VH1 Castings,” “Castings Reality TV,” and “Castings Reality TV in Florida,” as well as related websites accessed on May 26, June 2, and June 17 with names like
AffinityModelsTalentBlogger.com
and
WelcomeToRealityTVCasting.com
.

On cross, I focused in on the funeral home searches. I would save the reality TV searches for my closing argument.

PARKER: And did you find a specific part of the website for A Cremation Service of the Palm Beaches?

PEDEN: I know I saw a website for South Florida Cremation. I don’t remember it specifically.

PARKER: My question to you is, did you find a specific visit to the website A Cremation Service of the Palm Beaches? And I can give you the defense exhibit if it will help you look at the name . . .

PEDEN: I do not recall seeing that particular service.

PARKER: Do you not recall, or it’s not on the computer so you couldn’t see it?

PEDEN: I can’t say it’s not there, but I didn’t see it.

She also denied seeing any specific information related to the business in question or its pieces. On redirect, Salnick had Ms. Peden identify A Cremation Service on a fragment of a web page, but failed to disclose that it appeared in a list of companies and was never singled out for further viewing.

And then—nothing.

This was where Dalia would have taken the stand, and where all this loose-flying debris of a ramshackle construction site could have been nailed down once and for all. There were promises Salnick had made in his opening
statement—“The evidence will show . . .”—that there was no other way to prove than if Dalia testified. And I was ready for her; my cross-examination questions alone ran to thirty-two pages. I would have forced her to admit that if we were to believe her reality show defense, her plan involved lying to the police, wasting their resources, reporting a nonexistent crime, and obstructing an investigation. I would have confronted her with every piece of evidence in the case that makes no mention of this alleged reality show plot, including the phone records, her calls from jail, and her statements. I would have walked her through every single lie she told the police—just as Sergeant Sheridan and Detectives Moreno and Anderson did before, but with everything we know now—and watched her wriggle, pinned there by her own treachery. That way, in the closing statement, I could refer to her as an admitted liar.

As a member of the Florida Bar, Salnick was ethically prohibited from putting on perjured testimony, and yet the defense he had been insinuating—which we only had in flickering images at this point—required a suspension of disbelief, one that would prove short-lived if I got the chance to dismantle the defendant under oath. The defense he had built, a castle in the air, needed Dalia to document its provenance, yet we had all seen her acting skills on conspicuous display. If he called her as a witness, it would turn the entire courtroom into a bunch of drama critics, comparing this latest appearance to her signature role. And so the defense rested.

Suddenly, my side was up.

I
n closing arguments, the State has what we refer to as “The Sandwich”: we get to make the first statement, but also to offer a rebuttal after the defense has presented its closing argument. This allows the prosecution to put things back on the rails if the defense wanders too far afield in its allegations or conjecture. I wanted to give my co-counsel Laura Burkhart Laurie an opportunity to participate on a larger scale as we neared the end of the trial, since she did a stellar job handling some of the direct examination of witnesses. So we decided that she would get up first and address the basic facts of the crime itself, the law that applies, and how we had met the burden of proof. Then after Salnick had his final say, I would rebut his reality show defense and whatever dark-hearted tributaries his argument led him into, and then try to reshape the evidence in the image of Dalia, and the considerable lengths she went to in order to commit the crime she did.

Laura first addressed the jury by restating the crime Dalia was accused of: Solicitation to Commit First-Degree Murder with a Firearm. In order to find the defendant guilty, the State had to prove two related facts, which we call elements of the crime: that Dalia solicited Widy Jean, in his role as the contract killer, to commit first-degree murder with a firearm. And that during the solicitation, Dalia “commanded, encouraged, hired, or requested Widy Jean to engage in specific conduct, which would constitute the commission of first-degree murder with a firearm or an attempt to commit first-degree murder with a firearm.” As Laura explained to the two men and four women of the jury, to solicit means to ask earnestly or to try to
induce the person solicited to do the things solicited. Dalia herself need take no other action in furtherance of the crime in order to be convicted of it.

This solicitation began on July 31 when she asked for Mohamed’s help in killing her husband, the inciting incident that set her arrest and prosecution in motion. It continued on August 1 when Dalia and Mohamed met in the parking lot of a Mobil gas station and discussed the terms of engaging a professional assassin to realize her plan. In this conversation, Dalia argued the logistics of how such a plan might be carried out, proposed an alibi (demonstrating intent), provided photos of the intended victim, instructed Mohamed to wipe her fingerprints off the pictures, and made it easy on the jury by telling him to smile, in callous disregard of the circumstances.

Two days later, she met the hit man in the parking lot of a CVS, where at first she appeared nervous (indicating she understood the consequences of her actions), and discussed the setting, time frame, and murder weapon. She didn’t flinch when he described the victim’s fate in graphic detail. She conspired with him to approach her husband when she knew he would be carrying a large amount of money, in effect having him finance his own murder. When the hit man asked her for a key to her house, she later complained to Mohamed, fearing she would be robbed. And when the hit man allowed her an out, she assured him she was tougher than she looked, nailing it shut with a million-dollar tag line: “I’m 5,000 percent sure.”

“During what should have been the honeymoon phase of her marriage, she was sleeping with three different men, blowing through her husband’s money, and planning Mike Dippolito’s murder. She got herself in too deep, and the only way out was murder. Without a second thought, she planned her husband’s murder as though it was as simple as making a dinner reservation.” At every stage of this presentation, Laura augmented her statement with video clips of Dalia, which put the jury directly into her mind-set.

Salnick began the defense’s closing statement with his signature gesture: staring at the ceiling for a long moment, as if to collect his composure. He opened with some larger observations on the still-evolving role of reality TV in society.

“Our culture is so dominated in today’s world by film and by television’s reality that sometimes people are not even aware of how blurred those lines
become. You might remember a few weeks ago, there was a horrible series of storms in St. Louis, and they blew the windows out at the airport—it was on the news. It was terrible, it was devastating, and the person who was there described the event this way: ‘It was very real; it was like being in a movie.’ We’ve reached a point in our society when people evaluate real experiences against the constructed realities of the movies and TV.”

He quickly moved from the general to the specific.

“Mike Dippolito thought he lived in a movie. He had a beautiful wife. He didn’t have to work very much at his company—MAD Media kept the money rolling in. He went to the fitness center every day. He was a regular at the tanning salon, and he talks about going to Starbucks as if it was his private club.” Salnick lavished special attention on the tanning salon as a custom-built metaphor—here in South Florida, where unfiltered sunlight is both a marketing hook and our natural bounty. “The fake tan of the salon is more in keeping with the celebrity status that Mike Dippolito likes,” in keeping with “his appearance, his vanity, his bulking up, his braces, his liposuction.”

“Mike’s dream is money,” says Salnick: “Money without working for it, and status with no skill or talent to earn it. His obsession with his status, and his constant pursuit of get-rich-quick money schemes, certainly makes him the exact profile of the type of person that would be drawn into reality TV, to YouTube, into some sort of concocted event . . . that ultimately goes—what was the term—‘viral.’” He attributes this to “the lure of the media spotlight and how it can cause anyone to make a bad judgment or overlook things of critical importance that impact somebody’s life. The notoriety that a police department can gain from its moment in the spotlight, the opportunities that individuals can avail themselves of from their moments in the spotlight of the media is something that we have to talk about. The seduction of the media as a means to the end.” And not just Mike Dippolito, but Mohamed Shihadeh, Sergeant Paul Sheridan, and the Boynton Beach Police Department as a whole. “I believe that this case proceeds along two different lines,” he says, “that are
inextricably intertwined
” (there’s that phrase again): “the desire to create a media event that would result in notoriety, and Mike Dippolito’s constant, calculated efforts to avoid paying the restitution that
was required as a condition of his felony probation.” In his estimation, the money trail was confusing for a reason; the “best proof” that Dalia wasn’t stealing from Mike was that her bank account was overdrawn at the end of every month. The money he gave her in $6,000–$7,000 increments was what financed their lavish lifestyle. He used her to front for him—implying that she was laundering his cash, filling out police reports for him, holding his house in her name—which would allow him to shield his assets from creditors and allow him to keep a low profile. “The prosecution has attempted to portray Mike Dippolito as somebody who is deaf, dumb, and blind,” he says, reminding the jury that he lied to his probation officer, wrote checks he can’t explain, and has been through five sets of lawyers and still can’t manage to pay off his debts. And, Salnick adds, he called me a parrot.

“There’s an old saying: You can’t scam a scammer. And Mike Dippolito is a convicted felon and scam artist. That’s his talent . . . [But] what Mr. Dippolito told us with his words, and showed us with his body language and through his demeanor, is a message that he said he learned from one of his treatment programs: Nothing changes. Nothing changes. If an individual doesn’t make a change in their lives, then their lives don’t change. Mike Dippolito hasn’t changed one bit since he got arrested and sent to prison.”

When he asked Stephanie Slater why she released the videos to You-Tube, “She said that it had all of the moments of a great media event; it was a great story. But she attempts to justify her action by saying, ‘Well, those records were going to be public anyway.’ But we also know that she wasted no time making sure that her chief was on the
Nancy Grace
show a very short time after Ms. Dippolito was arrested. Now, the investigation in this case was compromised the moment that these tapes were released to the entire country . . . Releasing that video resulted in the investigation going in one direction that justified first impressions.”

He moves on from Slater to discredit Sergeant Paul Sheridan. “Sergeant Sheridan was in charge of the investigation, and he did an unbelievable job of trying to cover up the lack of judgment that he showed when he kind of got sucked into the
COPS
whirlwind.” Sheridan admitted “he lied to Ms. Dippolito with respect to the
COPS
waiver,” and then makes it worse when he writes in the report, “‘I also asked if she would mind if the
COPS
TV show could record her. And she agreed and signed a release card that had been supplied to me.’ [But] that’s not what he did. So the State says, ‘He’s a good guy. He owned up to it. He made a mistake.’” Salnick raises his voice for emphasis. “In a case of this nature,
shame on him!
He botched the investigation, and he tells you that, too. Does that make it okay? Does that make it any fairer, or better for Dalia Dippolito?”

“And according to Miss Slater, it was Paul Sheridan’s idea to feature this case on
COPS
. And he said that it was his idea to stage the fake crime scene. And he tells us that, when he was at Mike’s front door, and he broke the news to Mike that his wife tried to have him killed, he goes on, ‘Mike fell backward. He was in shock!’ Now that’s as sensational as anything else. Sheridan takes over this investigation so he can be the one on camera, and in the footage that makes it to national television. He stages a face-to-face meeting with Ms. Dippolito when she is in the police department with what? With the so-called hit man. Well, we also know at some point that a camera from
COPS
peers into the room.”

According to Salnick, “Frank Ranzie told you that’s not real life . . . This is a twenty-five-year veteran. He disagrees obviously with people in his agency, and he tells you that essentially the Boynton Beach Police Department was doing things that are just not normal procedure . . . You heard what he said, and you heard what he talked about, and you saw how upset he was at the idea that the media had entered the realm of law enforcement. And he was honest enough to tell you that he balked about the idea of
COPS
, and he said because of what’s happening now. I think that’s how he ended his testimony. But what’s happening now”—he walks over to stand in front of Dalia and points at her—“is that this lady is on trial for an offense that, number one, didn’t happen the way it’s alleged, and number two, is fraught with so much inconsistency and so many things that don’t make sense . . .”

And then there is Mohamed—Salnick calls him “an opportunist,” “a liar,” and “the uncontrolled informant” who “was lying from the moment that he met Detective Brown,” and spends a great deal of time highlighting the contradictions in his testimony: The police kept him waiting two hours, or was it three? He knew Mike or else he didn’t. He had been lovers with
Dalia for a decade, but he couldn’t remember her last name—even though it was Mohammed. The incident with the gun occurred in early March or late July or both, at the Mobil station or a clothing store in Riviera Beach, in the Range Rover or the Lexus, while he was buying an energy drink or smoking a cigarette with his cousin. Or maybe “there’s no evidence that Ms. Dippolito ever touched a gun, other than his word . . . I don’t know if Mohamed really owns guns like he says he does.” He’s just “going with the flow . . . saying what he has to say.”

Salnick questions his motives: “‘I want to get my friend help, so I’m going to get her turned in to police on a major felony charge.’ That makes no sense. What Mohamed really wanted was a sensational story to tell the police, and to get them to react.” He “couldn’t wear a wire” on account of the “disgusting . . . episodes of oral sex” he was used to receiving from the defendant. “Of course Mohamed didn’t want to wear a wire—that certainly reduces a lot of his opportunity to communicate.” He points out the seventy-five calls and texts with Dalia during Mohamed’s one-week stint as an undercover operative, the vast majority of them not monitored by police. Showing a text on July 28, 2009, at 8:37 p.m., in which Dalia says, “Stop by when you get out,” he peddles it to the jury as a clear invitation to come by the house, as well as incontrovertible proof that Mohamed and Mike were acquainted, even co-conspirators. And he reminds them that Mohamed was once a “part-time/very slight-time actor.” And he notes that “there isn’t one question that the prosecutor ever asks Mohamed Shihadeh about reality TV, about any plot, about any scheme, about any ruse. Ask yourselves why. Did the prosecutor forget? Well, if the prosecutor forgot, we’ve got that citizen over there who’s on trial. If the prosecutor didn’t ask, that’s something you have to factor in. Ms. Parker and I had ample opportunity to talk to him. The defense doesn’t have the burden of proof.”

(Forget that we took Mohamed’s testimony months before the trial, when Salnick’s vaunted reality defense was even more opaque than it was now. I have always found it an act of desperation when defense attorneys attack me during the trial, and apparently juries often agree with me. But since he’s attacking me personally: I had a burden of proof to prove Dalia
Dippolito’s guilt, not to disprove whatever crazy idea the defense attorney gets in his head. If it was the other way around, we might still be there today.)

“The believability of the State’s case is tied to the character, behavior, and truthfulness of Mohamed Shihadeh,” states Mr. Salnick. “And I would submit to you that, from the evidence, he fails miserably on all three points.”

And Salnick questions the evidence against Dalia. “She didn’t give Widy Jean any money, and she knows that there’s a camera—she’s looking at the camera . . . Widy Jean says that a number of things he did weren’t real, and she knew that. He says she can pay him later. That’s absurd. You’re dealing with a hit man. Says he’s got to make a phone call to the police to see how long it takes for the police to respond. He says he’s got to get other people involved.” Salnick claims that Dalia did nothing illegal as revealed in her texts with Michael Stanley: “[T]here’s no text about her planting the drugs. Their discussing them in the context that they did isn’t a crime . . . There’s no talk about killing Mike. There’s no talk about hiring a hit man . . . They texted, they sexted—does that mean a crime was committed?” Even their alleged extramarital affair may have been a put-on, if you read all the way to the end: “There’s that one little line in the evidence where it says, ‘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.’ So what is it? Is she manipulating him with sex and sexting and all these things, or are they just talking?