Poison Candy: The Murderous Madam (28 page)

“Let’s talk about Dalia Dippolito. You’ve seen her in the video, you saw her in the police station, and what’s most telling are the things that Dalia says when she’s in police custody. She wants to go home. She doesn’t understand what’s happened here. She didn’t have any idea that she had done something criminally wrong. She wants to talk to her husband. She wants to talk to her mother . . . What does she say to her mother— remember those jail phone calls? ‘They did this to me.’ She wants to tell the police what really happened: ‘Is it gonna change the outcome?’ She even tells Mike he was never going to be a dead victim.” And then there’s her phone call with Mike from jail. “When she first calls, it’s like nothing’s wrong: ‘Hey! What’s up?’” He tells her he called her mom: “Why is he going to do that
if she’s really trying to kill him?” It’s simple: “[H]e knows the phone calls are recorded . . . He’s been in prison. So he’s being careful, but he’s trying to tell his wife what’s going on here . . . And on the phone, he says, ‘I’ll fix it.’ He’ll fix it. He’s the only one who does what he says he’s gonna do. Keep your mouth shut. Say nothing . . . We know how cunning he is, but he’s certainly trying to get a message to his wife.”

Which brings Salnick to the concept of reasonable doubt. “We believe that you’ll look carefully at that evidence, and where there’s a lack of evidence and unanswered questions, you’re going to have a reasonable doubt . . . We’re confident when you look at Mohamed and Mike and the police tape and what the police did, that you’ll look at it and you’ll understand there are a lot of questions here.” (This said as Dalia wipes away a carefully orchestrated, nonexistent tear.) “You don’t even have to articulate or explain your doubt to anybody.

“Dalia Dippolito is now appealing to your better judgment,” Salnick says in closing, “and asking you to let her wake up from this nightmare and finally move on with her life. We’re asking you to return the only verdict possible based on the evidence that’s presented to you. And that’s ‘not guilty.’”

This is, to be charitable about it, chock-full of what we in the legal world refer to as red herrings, although I prefer the term of art “chasing chickens.” Take as many disparate notions as you can carry at one time, target those parts of the prosecution’s case that are the most complicated or confusing, and then toss an armful of them into the proceedings, where they’ll run every which way at once. None of them will fly—they’re far too bulky and misshapen—but with all the squawking and flapping of wings, they can easily pitch the proceedings over into chaos. A prosecutor must stay focused on proving the crime as charged; even if you spend the entire trial chasing those chickens down, one by one, you merely confirm the defense’s core belief that by acknowledging them, you grant them power, which is more than half the battle.

To be fair, Salnick was saddled with a client who was caught dead to rights on videotape—repeatedly. There was very little conjecture in the
story I had to sell to the jury. On the other hand, he’s got
COPS
lurking about and the Boynton Beach Police Department arguably playing to the cameras, doing B-roll while they’re setting up a fake crime scene. He has Mohamed somehow involved, who not only looks shady—owns and carries guns, half the time he’s on the nod—but he actually can act, at least well enough to play a terrorist on television. He’s got Mike—image-conscious, a bit of a dandy, a weakness for the fast lane, and a convicted criminal and ex-con. And he’s got incidental evidence in computer searches and the like that he can use as filigree for his story. He couldn’t say she didn’t do it, and he couldn’t argue mistaken identity. So it was either “they made her do it” or “she did it, and here’s why.” He used a variation on both. What other choice did he have, really?

But anyone who has ever bothered to watch a reality show rather than pontificating about them would know that there is only one possible role that Dalia ever could have fit into comfortably:

The Villain.

Her pillowy lips, luxuriant lashes, saucer eyes, and Barbie doll physique, not to mention her terror-baby persona, make her a shoo-in for the part of the home wrecker, hussy, or hell on heels: the devious, put-upon Tierra LiCausi or bad girl Vienna Giardi on
The Bachelor
; shit-stirrers like cutthroat Danielle Staub or table-flipping Teresa Giudice on
The Real Housewives of New Jersey
; quick-tempered Angelina Pivarnick, whose dustups with Snooki and JWoww fueled the first season of
Jersey Shore
; or Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth from
The Apprentice
, whose relentless ambition and no-holds-barred methods were anathema to viewers. In the reality TV universe, to those obsessed with being famous, cancellation is the punitive equivalent of a long prison sentence, proving that behavioral standards still do exist, even if it takes some digging to reach them. If a career as a reality star really was Dalia’s goal, or even Mike’s goal for her, then the virtues and skill set that could have cinched one for her are the same ones that would seal her fate as a defendant. Either way, she was living on borrowed time. Some monsters are too scary, even when you’re just playing one on TV.

I
had two hours to complete my closing statement, minus the time that Laura had taken to present hers. In it, I set out two goals: to prove the crimes that Dalia was accused of by demonstrating how the evidence created a seamless pattern of guilt, and to disprove the alternative history the defense had attempted to erect in its place. That theory, balanced on the precarious fulcrum of reasonable doubt, urged us in shadows and insinuation and specious logic, over and over again, to ignore one simple organic truth: Connection does not imply causality. Saying so doesn’t make it so. I walked to the podium and addressed the jury.

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave

When first we practice to deceive.”

This is the famous summation from the epic Scottish poem
Marmion
by Sir Walter Scott, published in 1808. The aphorism has survived the play, but Lord Marmion himself didn’t fare so well either: Working with his corrupt mistress (a fallen nun), he framed a rich woman’s fiancé for acts of treason, forcing him into exile. When he ruthlessly cast the mistress aside, she went to the local authorities (the abbess of her convent), who informed the victim of the plot against him, which he had been totally oblivious to. Before the wheels of justice could sufficiently turn, Lord Marmion died at the Battle of Flodden Field in 1513. Then as now, their tangled web encompassed lies and manipulation, sex as a weapon, greed, lust, and most of all, the unhinged certainty that all of the above was somehow justified. Having just listened to an elaborate justification from Mr. Salnick of similar events that seemed
to explain themselves, I asked the jury, “Were we sitting through the same trial over the past two weeks?”

A simple but effective metaphor I often use when first instructing a jury, which I reprised here, was to think of the trial as an Oreo cookie: The opening statement and the closing statement, those are the chocolate wafers; they screw the contents into place. The white stuff in the middle, the good stuff, that’s the evidence. And the evidence in this case, I assured them, was overwhelming. The defendant solicited Officer Widy Jean to commit first-degree murder with a firearm. She was caught on phone calls to confidential informant Mohamed Shihadeh. She was caught crying (or not crying) to Sergeant Frank Ranzie. She was caught by the detectives in the interviews she did in police custody. And she was caught on those final, desperate phone calls she made from the Palm Beach County Jail. The evidence is in photographs and documents and bank records and safety deposit boxes and electronic texts, and in the money that changed hands. The defense claims this was all a hoax, a reality show stunt. Mr. Salnick’s suggestions tell a great story but they are nothing but innuendos. Where is the evidence? Not one document, not one phone call, not one video, not one statement, not one word—not one word was uttered during this investigation, not one word was uttered to the detectives, not one word was captured on the phone calls about this being a reality stunt, not by the defendant or anyone else.

Dr. Sarah Coyne, the so-called reality TV expert, conceded that every reference Mr. Salnick could cite in his opening statement that might have enticed Mike Dippolito into this reality TV circus—the Balloon Boy,
Jersey Shore
, the White House crashers, and their stint on
The Real Housewives of D.C.
—all occurred sometime after the defendant’s arrest on August 5, 2009. Ms. Coyne testified that after reviewing the evidence in this case, she found not one single mention of reality television in any of the material she reviewed. Carol Peden, the defense’s computer expert, found evidence of Internet searches on the defendant’s computer outlining how to get on a reality TV show. What those instructions conveyed is that participants are chosen almost exclusively through casting calls and the audition process. So the defendant would be the very last one to pull some crazy publicity stunt if that were her actual intention. Stunts are, well, for amateurs.

What the defense presented was the hoax. The evidence shows the exact opposite. This was a plan, a plot, a calculated procedure for murder.

At one point, I address the topic of reasonable doubt; I made the following statement:

PARKER: The defense wants you to speculate, to think, could it have been possible, maybe—could it have been true that this was a stunt for reality television? But again, where is the evidence? Where is the testimony? Where is it?

Salnick objected and asked to approach the bench. In a sidebar, he took exception with what he took to be my veiled suggestions regarding his client.

SALNICK: Judge, I read the case law that’s presented and that comment, zealously said, when you look right at Ms. Dippolito—‘Where’s the testimony?’—could not be any more clear a comment that she didn’t testify than I have ever seen. I am going to move for a mistrial. That has clearly vitiated the fairness. If the words were “Where is the testimony?”—that is not like she said she didn’t tell the police this or didn’t tell the police that. That was an absolute direct comment on her failure to testify.

In my mind, he had his motions for mistrial spring-loaded in his arsenal and was merely looking for a pretext to use them. I took this as an encouraging sign. Judge Colbath denied the motion, and I finished my thought.

PARKER: Where is the evidence, ladies and gentlemen? That’s what they want, they want you to speculate, because there is no evidence. We talked in jury selection, and the Judge instructed you that it is not a possible doubt, it is not a speculative doubt, it’s not an imaginary doubt. Your doubt has to have a reason. It can’t be forced. And if you are sitting in your chair right now after listening to Mr. Salnick talk, when he was speaking and you’re thinking to yourself, “
Maybe it happened, maybe what he’ s saying
is possible
.” Based on the law, what is your verdict? Your verdict is guilty because your doubt can’t be a possible doubt, speculative doubt, a forced or imaginary doubt. Mike Dippolito loved his wife. In his case, love wasn’t just blind, it was blind, deaf, dumb, and sensory-challenged. He trusted her so much that it was inconceivable she had manipulated him. What the defendant loved was the lifestyle: how Mike showered her with gifts, spent money on her he didn’t have, treated her family like royalty; bought her a quarter-million-dollar house, nice furniture, expensive jewelry; financed her endless shopping sprees, a New Year’s trip to Vegas while he was still on probation—every little thing her heart commanded. His friends, his first wife, his father who died, and a mother who eventually had a breakdown—everyone else got washed over the side in the wake of this new and terrible force in his life, and still his feelings remained resolute. A week after his divorce was finalized, on February 2, 2009, they were married.

Dalia kept two cell phones on her at all times, allegedly for her real estate business (not to mention the escort work she met Mike through and continued to broker for others, although I was prohibited from telling the jury that). She seemed successful, and had her own money. Yet she only ever sold one house and collected a commission—Mike’s. Although it wouldn’t have occurred to him at the time, this was also the perfect cover under which to mount an orchestrated campaign against him. So when, mere weeks after they were married, and three months after she met him, the defendant suggested a plan that would pull Mike clear once and for all of his debilitating twenty-eight-year probation—one for each year she had been alive—and the prohibitive restitution demands crushing down on him, it seemed like she had been heaven-sent. On February 18, he began depositing what would eventually total $100,000 in Dalia’s bank account, six or seven thousand dollars at a time, so as not to attract attention. She would add $91,000 of her own and convert the total to a cashier’s check for $191,000, his final restitution tally, and he would be home free.

The defendant had known Mohamed since she was eighteen, when she picked him up at the convenience store he was managing. They had continued to see each other off and on, even after he met the woman he would marry (and divorce, and marry again, and then divorce again). At some point before her marriage (he’s hazy on the details), the defendant ran into him after a several-year hiatus and they renewed their friendship. She had a fiancé, she seemed happy; everything was looking up. Sometime in probably early March, she called again, wanting to meet. Her new husband (not the same fiancé) was abusive, threatening; she was afraid for her life. Maybe he could help. The next morning, she swung by his house to seal the deal, bearing gifts.

March 6 marked the last of the payments for Mike’s restitution money, which the defendant dutifully deposited in her bank account. Also in early March, at her behest, he added her name to the title of his townhouse, listing her as co-owner. Both of these transactions were completed by March 11, when an anonymous call was placed to David Banks, Mike’s probation officer, alleging that he was dealing steroids out of his home. A second call a day later expanded his alleged product line to include ecstasy. Late that night, Officer Banks showed up at their townhouse for the first of many unannounced searches. Any illegal drugs would have automatically violated Mike’s terms of probation and returned him to prison. According to his log notes, Banks received approximately twenty such calls over the ensuing months.

On March 15, the defendant called and made a last-minute reservation for a night at the Ritz-Carlton in Manalapan, paying for it out of the checking account that held Mike’s hundred grand and the ticket to his future. The next morning, as they were checking out of the hotel, they were stopped by local police who searched Mike’s vehicle based on an anonymous tip that he was selling cocaine and Xanax—a drug that Mohamed held a prescription for and was frequently under the influence of. On March 17, Mike discovered a plastic bag full of pills and powder taped
inside the well of his gas tank, which he disposed of immediately. That same day, Mohamed brokered an introduction between the defendant and Palm Beach Gardens Police Officer Robert Wilson, whom she told that her husband would be carrying drugs if he was pulled over within the city limits. They spoke three more times between March 19 and 23; each time, the defendant offered Officer Wilson money if he would arrest her husband and violate his probation. Wilson ultimately terminated the relationship.

As March dragged on, it became apparent that what should have been a simple clerical task had failed spectacularly, and the defendant’s $191,000 cashier’s check to pay off Mike’s restitution to his fraud victims would not be forthcoming. Unbeknownst to Mike, a fifth of it, nearly $40,000, had gone to purchase Mohamed a brand-new Range Rover on March 18 in exchange for his unspecified help. In his later testimony, Mohamed claimed that the defendant told him she wanted the title to Mike’s house in her name and was getting it switched over, that she needed to borrow $200,000, that she’d taken Mike’s money and couldn’t pay it back. She asked Mohamed to help her create a fake wire transaction. On March 23, according to her phone records, the defendant had a blank wire transfer form faxed from a bank in the Cayman Islands, which she forged as proof that the money had been wired to a third party—even though the date she used on the form, March 3, was several days before Mike had paid her all the money.

On March 29, with the defendant present, Mike’s vehicle was searched a second time by local police at CityPlace mall in West Palm Beach, based on another anonymous tip. This time, a drug dog discovered a small bag of cocaine improbably wedged beneath the spare tire. Police who responded remained unconvinced that Mike was responsible and released him. The next day, another anonymous call was placed to Mike’s probation officer, this time by a female caller citing the event at CityPlace, claiming that Mike was selling steroids. Ask yourself this: Who else
would know about that except for the officers and the defendant? In both the Manalapan incident and the incident at CityPlace, as well as when the defendant approached Officer Wilson in Palm Beach Gardens, special care was taken to contact the police department in whose jurisdiction the alleged crime took place.

The evening of March 30, the defendant finally produced a cashier’s check in the amount of $191,000, drawn on the account of Erik Tal, the husband of a friend, and plans were made to meet with Michael Entin, the attorney handling Mike’s restitution in Fort Lauderdale, the following morning. At that meeting, on March 31, the defendant demanded that Mike replace her $91,000 contribution with his own money, and he was forced to drive an hour each way to his safety deposit box to acquire that much cash. When he returned, gave her the money, and completed the transaction, the cashier’s check he received in return was now mysteriously in the amount of $191, causing his attorney to throw them out of his office and Mike to seize the money from Erik Tal, who he discovered waiting at the car with his wife. On the drive home, with the defendant driving, there was a moment when he thought she was going to kill them both.

Following the debacle at Entin’s office, and now facing another meeting with his probation officer a month after he believed the matter resolved, Mike gave the defendant an ultimatum to produce his money or else he would leave her. The next morning, April 1, Erik Tal called and offered Mike a deal to get his money back—a loan for $50,000, the amount he still needed to make restitution, for a 10 percent fee. They drove to Tal’s bank, where he withdrew a cashier’s check in the full amount of Mike’s restitution in exchange for $141,000 in cash. Mike took that check immediately to his attorney, only to find that the deal was now complicated by a lien document on Mike’s house that Tal’s attorney had faxed moments before. Entin refused to have anything more to do with any of them and severed all remaining ties. By the time Mike had secured a new attorney on April 2, Tal claimed
his funds had been frozen, the check was now worthless (made out to Entin, who refused to accept it), and Mike was out almost a quarter of a million dollars.

Most probably at the same time Mike was meeting with Erik Tal (the dates are unclear), the defendant went with Mohamed to his cousin’s clothing store in Riviera Beach. There, through a chance encounter, she attempted to engage Larry Coe and members of the Buck Wild gang to kill her husband—disappearing with them to go case her house, and at one point, suggesting they could have Mohamed’s Range Rover in the bargain. Mohamed later testified that the only regret she ever seemed to feel was over showing these known thugs where she lived. The next day, the defendant placed thirteen calls to Coe’s cell phone, most of which went unanswered. Mohamed discouraged Coe from pursuing her offer, claiming a police officer was already looking into her allegations. He also returned the Range Rover to the dealership for cash shortly afterward, fearing Coe might make some claim on the vehicle. That evening, April 2, an anonymous call reported a domestic disturbance at Mike’s townhouse, and again, that he was dealing drugs out of the house. Police responded and determined there was no cause for further action.

And then—things seemed to settle down for a while. Although I was prevented from telling the jury, I believe this was when Dalia told Mike she was pregnant. Whatever problem she represented, now she was his problem. They entered counseling together, and she begged him to take out a life insurance policy for him in her name, for the baby.

On May 1, a “Detective Hurley” called them from the Boynton Beach Police Station claiming he knew what the defendant was up to, and demanding she confess to her husband. When she reported this to the police, they determined it had been a “spoof call” made by a third party from another number. From May 11 to June 20, Mohamed was visiting his family in the Middle East and out of the picture. On May 14, as part of the terms of his
probation, Mike testified at the trial of some of his former associates in the boiler-room operation—the same people who, Dalia suggested, might now be behind some of the recent craziness. On May 27, Mike discovered a note on his windshield at the gym demanding $40,000 in exchange for information about his wife. The defendant called the number and spoke with the blackmailer in Mike’s presence, claiming he threatened both of their lives, and they later reported this information to the police.

Beginning July 9, according to the text record, the defendant rekindled her relationship with Michael Stanley and began conspiring with him to once again try to have her husband’s probation violated—alerting his probation officer, the IRS, the Treasury Department, and anyone else they could think of to Mike’s imagined indiscretions. (She also suggested planting cocaine, ecstasy, and Xanax on his vehicle.) On July 19, after Mike spent $3,000 to rent a private box at the Marlins-Phillies baseball game in Miami, inviting Dalia’s whole family as his guests, including her dying grandfather, Stanley anonymously reported the incident as a violation to Mike’s probation officer, since he had traveled outside the county unannounced. On July 22, the defendant told Mike a lawyer friend could help him get “administrative probation,” whereby he could be free of the constraints posed by his current legal status. Posing as an attorney, Stanley instructed Mike to bring signed documents to the Miami courthouse steps and give them to his paralegal—in reality, a friend of Dalia’s mother’s from her church. On July 30, Dalia successfully had the deed to their house placed solely in her name. The lawyer who oversaw that transaction, Todd Suber—like Officer Wilson and Michael Entin before him—testified that the defendant seemed to be the one in charge. He also informed them that, despite documents to the contrary, the house was a marital asset and, under Florida law, shared equally between them. (In late July, Dalia attempted to poison Mike’s Starbucks iced tea with antifreeze, although again, I was legally prohibited from telling the jury.)

The next day, the defendant tried to steal Mohamed’s gun from his parked vehicle, and, after some soul-searching, he brought the matter to the police, agreeing to work as a Confidential Informant. On August 1, he met with Dalia at the Mobil station—on camera, it turns out—to arrange for a prospective hit man and receive $1,200 payment for the murder weapon (technically, the crime she was charged with). She called Mike Stanley both on her way to and leaving that meeting. On August 3, the day she met with the hit man to seal Mike’s fate, again on video, she had an especially busy day:

•  7:36 a.m.: A forty-one-minute phone call with Mike Stanley.

•  8:32 a.m.: Three more calls with Stanley, totaling seventeen minutes, during which she also fields a text from her husband and tells him she loves him.

•  9:55 a.m.: Several business texts concerning upcoming meetings, which she pushes until after Wednesday the 5th, the day she anticipates the contract hit on her husband. (Although I couldn’t spell it out for the jury, these were escort clients looking to arrange private sessions.)

•  11:31 a.m.: She calls Mohamed, followed by a three-minute call to Stanley.

•  2:47 p.m.: She receives a call from “hit man” Widy Jean informing her that he is on his way.

•  2:48 p.m.: She calls Mohamed in a panic that the hit man has requested she bring a key to her house.

•  3:08 p.m.: She immediately calls Stanley and speaks to him for nearly half an hour. Overlapping with this call, she takes a seven-minute call from Mohamed on her second phone.

•  3:46 p.m.: She searches for local funeral homes and cremation services.

•  4:07 p.m.: Over the next two hours, she calls Mohamed four times, Stanley three times, the hit man three times, and Mike once; she receives two calls from Mohamed, one from
Mike Stanley (for thirty-six minutes), and five from the hit man, at which point she meets him in the CVS parking lot at 5:55 p.m.