Guilty verdict ends third Dippolito trial
Murder-for-hire charges were first filed in 2009
Dalia Dippolito, the South Florida woman whose 2009 arrest on a murder-for-hire charge made international headlines, was found guilty by a jury for a second time of hiring a Boynton Beach cop posing as a hitman to kill her husband.
A jury on Friday convicted Dippolito in her third trial, following a guilty verdict in 2011and a mistrial last year.
Circuit Judge Glenn Kelley ordered deputies to take her to the Palm Beach County Jail to await her sentencing on July 21, denying a request from her lawyers to let her remain on house arrest until then.
Asad-faced Dippolito turned her head to look at her loudly weeping mom several times after the verdictw as announced after 90 minutes of deliberations. Paramedics were called to the West Palm Beach Courthouse to treat her for hyperventilation.
The 34-year-old mother of a year-old boy — she had a child last year while confined to her mother’s home — now faces up to 20 years in prison. That was her punishment
after her first trial, in which a different judge called her “pure evil.”
Michael Dippolito, the former husband who has praised police for keeping him alive, said he was satisfied with the latest conviction in the case.
“Obviously the jury could see throughthe defense’s lies and antics,” he said in a statement released through his attorney. “I am 5,000 percent happy to see that justicewas served once again.”
Michael Dippolito’s statement echoed one of the most-cited pieces of evidence in the case: A recording of Dalia Dippolito telling the fake hitman she was certain she wanted her husband to be eliminated.
“I’m positive, like 5,000 percent sure I want it done,” she told Officer Widy Jean in the video played for the jury.
Within minutes of the verdict, state Attorney Dave Aronberg credited the efforts of his assistants, Craig Williams and Laura Laurie: “We are pleased that the hardwork and perseverance of our prosecutors and staff have led to justice for this victim.”
But defense attorneys Brian Claypool and Greg Rosenfeld told reporters that while they were disappointed, the verdict will be appealed.
“We have not given up fighting in this case,” said Claypool, who asked the jury to acquit Dippolito and disregard her recorded comments because of claims that police tried to create a crime for the benefit of reality TV show.
“This was not about carrying out justice,” he said in a post-verdict news conference.
The attorneys attributed the defeat, in part, to the judge’s ruling Thursday that allowed prosecutors to tell the jury Dippolito allegedly tried to poison her husband before connecting with the undercover cop. The allegation that she spiked her spouse’s iced tea with antifreeze, which he spit out, was not permitted in the first two trials.
In fact, the conviction after her first trial was thrown out because the jury pool overheard a comment about the poisoning allegation.
The defense also said they were hamstrung because the jurors heard about other allegations, called “prior bad acts.”
Prosecutors showed the jury evidence that before connecting with the fake hit man, Dippolito allegedly tried for months to get her husband arrested and thrown in jail for a parole violation, spoke with a potential Riviera Beach hitman named Larry, attempted to get a gun, faked a pregnancy, and exchanged racy text messages with a lover about her intentions to “destroy” her husband.
Her motive: To get her hands on his money and the deed to his town house so she could move on to another lover.
“They made her seem like a horrible person from the get go,” Claypool said of the claims that were not included in the second trial last December that resulted in a hung jury thatwas split 3-3.
Attempts to reach jurors after Friday’s verdict were unsuccessful. A man who answered the phone at one juror’s home said the juror declined comment.
In his closing argument Friday, Claypool conceded that his client was “no choir girl” but said all of the police work in the case was tainted because of how the investigation began.
It was Dippolito’s onagain, off-again boyfriend, Mohamed Shihadeh, who called Boynton Beach police on July 31, 2009, to report tha the was concerned either Dippolito or her husband would wind up dead.
Shihadeh testified that he was pressured to work with police as a confidential informant, and faced arrest if he didn’t help. The evidence in the case included recordings of conversations between Shihadeh and Dippolito.
In one meeting, Dippolito discussed her desire for the death of the man she married six months earlier. She handed over $1,200 that was to be used for the hit man, actually the undercover officer, to buy a gun and cellphones for the job. Dippolito also gave Shihadeh a few photos of Michael Dippolito.
At one point, Dippolito is heard asking whether it was really going to happen.
“How sure do you want?” Shihadeh asked. “You're planning amurder, c’mon!”
The jury also watched the most famous video in the case, a clip of a police staged crime scene that went viral all over theworld.
In the footage, now former Sgt. Frank Ranzie meets Dippolito outside the couple’s home.
“Listen, we had a report of a disturbance at your house, and there were shots fired,” Ranzie told Dippolito when she arrives outside her townhome. “Is your husband Michael?”
“OK, I’m sorry to tell you, ma’am, he’s been killed,” Ranzie continued, placing his hands on her shoulders while she shrieks on the morning of Aug. 5, 2009.
Yet another video of Dippolito is froma police station interrogation room the same day when another officer told her that her spouse was alive and her discussions with the undercover officer/ fake hit man had been recorded.
Jurors did not hear from Dippolito in the courtroom. She elected not to testify in her defense.
But her lawyers argued all of the recordings were engineered to “script a good television show” for the “Cops” TV program.
“Hold this police department to higher standards,” Claypool told the jury. “This is trash evidence. This is a garbage investigation.”
When Michael Dippolito testified, Claypool tried to discredit him as a convicted felon, who until recently was serving a 28-year probation sentence on a 2003 Broward County fraud conviction. He admitted luring investors, many of them elderly, into a foreign currency scam.
Dippolito, who now works as an Internet marketing specialist, testified on direct examination hewas manipulated by his former wife to give her $100,000, as she promised to help him get off probation at the time by making full restitution. He said he never sawthe money again.
Claypool insisted that if police believed Michael Dippolito’s life was in danger they would have arrested her right away.
“They knew she never intended on killing her husband,” Claypool said.
Ranzie testified as one of the defense witnesses and said the department mishandled the case. Also, a police practices expert who worked as a Los Angeles detective, said the entire investigation was corrupted by the way Shihadeh was pressured to be an informant.
In his rebuttal, prosecutor Williams pointed two fingers at Dippolito and said, “The cops are not on trial. She’s the only person on trial.”
The prosecutors described Dalia Dippolito as a manipulative seductress motivated by greed — stealing more than $100,000 from Michael Dippolito and taking the title to his townhouse.
“Greed and manipulation is a lethal combination that leads to lies, deceit and betrayal for one person’s personal satisfaction,” Laurie said. “She used sex to manipulate men to give her what shewants.”
In his final words to the jury, prosecutor Williams said “the evidence doesn’t lie.” He pointed at Dippolito and said, “That woman is as guilty as anybody who has ever been in a criminal courtroom.”