Poison Candy: The Murderous Madam (31 page)

In a long, rambling, somewhat jumbled soliloquy, Mike presented a heartfelt and, for all its disjointedness, really quite eloquent dissertation on where this experience had left him, and what he hoped to salvage from it for the remaining future.

MIKE: How my life is affected? I don’t have my freedom. You know, for two years [now], I should be a free man. The difference between me and what’s going on here: I went to prison. You know how I got there? I said I did it. Yeah—I did it; let’s get this over with and handle it. That hasn’t happened here . . . And believe me, I don’t want to get up here and be nasty, but the reality is, I sit up here and listen: Even today, we’re talking about a retrial? Retrial for what? What is it we’re doing? Who doesn’t understand what happened here? I still don’t hear her admitting anything happened. “It’s all good, let’s get out of here, it’s fine.” I’m not okay. You know, my father died. I was supposed to be able to travel to see him. I didn’t get to see my Dad. You know, my Dad’s dead, and that was part of my plan: get off probation, go see my family, spend time with my father. That didn’t happen; it’s not gonna happen now . . . These people [the victims in his case] didn’t get paid. I’m a nervous wreck. I’m not working, practically. My business has failed. My life is ruined. I walk out of here today, Judge, what is it—2032 I get released, if I pay the money? I didn’t commit a violent crime, and I got thirty years. That’s not a joke.

Mike summarizes the remaining consequences of meeting Dalia: His mother had a nervous breakdown. He was under the impression he was starting a family, even if he wasn’t allowed to talk about it in court, and that was ripped from him in the same moment he lost his wife, lover, only remaining friend, public reputation, and future. Yet here he is again, a short two years later—pilloried, pitied, and forced into the public eye.

MIKE: If she would have owned it like a normal person, and would have owned up to something—I would have respected that. But
when I get to court, I hear that I want a reality television show? Not only is she saying that, but her lawyers allow it? It’s ridiculous. You should have just said space aliens landed and they did it. That would have been a better defense . . . If she wanted to steal my money and leave me, she should have got a divorce. What was I gonna do—cry? You know. Who does this? This isn’t a wholesome person. This isn’t a person that has any regret, any remorse. As soon as we walk out of here, they’re filing for an appeal. You know why? Because they think everybody in this room is stupid, that’s why. They think we’re all stupid, and they’re smarter than us, and nobody did anything . . . I’m just a fool, I guess.

When he was finished, Salnick got to take one last crack at Mike on the stand, a fraught dynamic that had dominated a large portion of this trial. Salnick started out by trying to make a joke, but all it did was fall flat—coming as it did immediately after the soul-baring moment preceding it—and reignite the tinderbox.

SALNICK: You’re not gonna call me a parrot today, are you?

Mike tells him no, clearly not amused.

SALNICK: Did anybody along the way, Mr. Dippolito, advise you that through me, Dalia Dippolito was willing to pay you back the money that she owed you?

MIKE: No deal is in front of me.

SALNICK: No deal. But did anyone—your lawyer, Ms. Parker, anyone involved in the case—tell you that we made that offer?

MIKE: No.

SALNICK: Did anyone tell you that we wrote a letter agreeing to do that?

MIKE: No, I never saw a letter. Do you know that I’m still on probation today? You understand that, right? And I still don’t have my house. Do you get that? Do you understand what’s going on here?

SALNICK: I get that.

MIKE: I just want to make sure
we’re
clear.

SALNICK: I get that.

MIKE: Nothing in my life is good. It’s all bad. Trust me.

SALNICK: All right. Tell me when you’re ready.

MIKE: I’m ready.

Salnick continued hammering away at the same point—picking at the same scab—until I finally had to object.

SALNICK: Was it communicated to you that Ms. Dippolito was willing to give you back your house?

MIKE: Uh, it was communicated to me, but I said that wasn’t acceptable because I still needed to pay my victims back. And then it was communicated to me that any money she has is going to go toward her appeal. Because, God forbid she pays any of my victims. Because this is all nonsense here! This doesn’t count, right?

By now, Mike was furious. Salnick tried to steer the argument around to the deed for the house, and by extension, what such a concession might still be worth in this much-diminished market.

SALNICK: Okay. Did you become aware that I wrote a letter to your personal lawyer offering to give you back your house, no strings attached?

MIKE: You’re gonna give me back something that I already own? That’s mine? [incredulous] You’re gonna give me back something that’s mine?

SALNICK: You need it back legally, right, Mr. Dippolito?

MIKE: I’ll get it back legally. In the other court—trust me.

SALNICK: I appreciate that, but you’ve got to answer my question: Did anyone—was it communicated to you that Miss Dippolito signed a quitclaim deed and, no strings attached, was willing to give you back the deed to your home?

Mike recounted how before his eyes the deal had changed, curdled, until once again it was all just game playing. As he spoke, Salnick left the lectern and approached the witness without asking permission—a violation of courtroom etiquette and a slight to both the witness and the court—before tossing the quitclaim deed into Mike’s lap.

SALNICK: This is the deed to your home. We want nothing in exchange. This was offered to you last week [as] it was months ago. If you want it, there it is. I don’t want anything in exchange.

MIKE: Wow! Thanks for giving me back my own house! You did me a solid. I already own this house. I paid for it.

SALNICK: It’s now in your hands.

On redirect, I talked Mike down off the ledge a little bit—he looked like a man who had been put through the wringer for longer than he could remember.

PARKER: Mr. Dippolito: The conversation of that deed to your house—do you remember when that issue even came up?

MIKE: Friday.

PARKER: Last Friday? Right before this sentencing?

MIKE: A little convenient, yes.

I also made the point that regardless of what the defense maintained or seemed willing to do in these last few moments before judgment was rendered, they had never placed Mike’s money or property in a trust account,
where its power as a bargaining tool would have been beyond debate. When we were done, Mike addressed the bench directly.

MIKE: I’m sorry. I’m a little upset, Judge. I just, like I said, I meant it when I said it. If this had gone a different way, I would have had a completely different attitude. It just hasn’t—and I’m a liar, and I’m a reality show guy, and all these things that, you know what? I’m not. That’s the only reason why I’m upset, and I apologize—even to everybody here. Like I said, I don’t want to be here. I wish this didn’t even happen.

JUDGE COLBATH: There’s no need to apologize. It’s an emotional time, it’s an emotional place, and for visitors here, it’s a strange land with strange rules. So anyway, thank you very much.

In my closing comments to the court, I called Dalia “an unsuccessful murderer.” Had she been successful, then she would not only have been charged with murder, but would have been eligible for the death penalty for such aggravating factors as the Florida Supreme Court has upheld are relevant: if the crime was committed “for pecuniary or financial gain” (Dalia wanted the house free and clear without a mortgage, and Mike’s restitution money to spend at will); “while an accomplice in the commission of a robbery” (she enticed Widy Jean to target Mike when he was leaving his Boca Raton bank with a promised bounty of $10,000); or “in a cold, calculated and premeditated manner” (she is seen on video laughing as she plots her husband’s murder, tries to hire thugs and mercenaries to carry it out, and plots her alibi days ahead of time). She was married to a man who adored her and gave her everything she wanted. And the proposed restitution that Mr. Salnick repeatedly alluded to was irrelevant from a legal standpoint, in that Dalia was never charged with grand theft, since Mike gave her his money willingly, if extremely unwisely.

“She blamed the Boynton Beach Police Department for what happened to her. She blamed Mohamed Shihadeh. She blamed Mike Dippolito. And now she’s coming into court and shifting the blame onto everyone else,
including her father. We request the court to hold the defendant accountable for her actions and sentence her to thirty years in the Department of Corrections. Unsuccessful isn’t a reason to mitigate a sentence, or to be lenient. The defendant is an unsuccessful murderer, and should be treated as such.”

Salnick led his closing statement with a rebuttal of this idea of aggravating factors, which he felt should be restricted to first-degree murder cases. Putting her in prison until she’s fifty-eight years old, he went on, serves neither justice nor the principals in this case. If his life changed dramatically after he met Dalia, as Mike Dippolito attests, the opposite could also be argued: Dalia had no criminal record until she met Mike and was seized by his seductive lifestyle. If she doesn’t appear remorseful here today, that’s merely to protect her appellate standing.

As for his defense strategy and the willing suspension of disbelief it never quite achieved: “Notwithstanding what’s been suggested by the State, I still submit that it’s no coincidence that, on a computer seized that Mike Dippolito told the police to take, there are numerous things that deal with reality TV, casting calls, and a way to gain fame and fortune . . . When this case is over, and the lights go out, and the media moves on, and
20/20
has aired their story, and
48 Hours
has profiled the trial, and Nancy Grace has criticized the defendant for the umpteenth time, and the TV show
COPS
is finally giving the Boynton Beach Police Chief the attention he was seeking, what we finally have left is a young girl with no criminal history convicted of a crime that carries with it a maximum sentence that is as good as a life sentence for Dalia Dippolito.” Whether the irony was intentional or not, he asked the court to sentence Dalia to something consistent with the guidelines (the minimum sentence was four years) in home confinement, “followed by twenty-eight years probation.”

Judge Colbath thanked him for his statement and addressed the defendant:

JUDGE COLBATH: And, Ms. Dippolito, do you want to make any statement? You don’t have to, but I feel it’s incumbent on me in the circumstances to ask you.

The courtroom drew a collective breath, me included—even Salnick seemed to want her to say something on her own behalf. He leaned in, entreatingly, his hands open and apart. But she shook her head no.

Before announcing his sentence, Judge Colbath conducted a leisurely tour of both the range of sentences available to him—no more than thirty years and no less than forty-eight months—and the factors he took into consideration in arriving at his decision. These included deterrence (“to say ‘don’t do that again,’ and they won’t do that again because they have been punished”), as well as general deterrence (“everyone else watching a sentence imposed”). There was rehabilitation: “How do I rehabilitate you for what you have done? And I think that’s a function of spinning your moral compass. I think your moral compass is askew. I think it’s something that—it’s not like getting an addict off drugs or an alcoholic off alcohol—but rehabilitation, I hope that occurs as part of this sentence.” Most conspicuously, there was the act of punishment (“to punish bad behavior, criminal behavior”) shading into retribution (“giving society the vent, the outlet, the sense of ‘that person got what he or she had coming’”).

JUDGE COLBATH: So I consider those factors and try to figure out what weighs most in tailoring a sentence for you. And it has to do with the facts of the case, and it has to do with who you are and what you were thinking. And here’s the way I see it. I think a lot of it is: What were your motivations? What were you doing? What were you thinking? What was going on? And I’ve just come to the most obvious conclusion that you were motivated by greed, by avarice; that you were motivated by lust for another person; that you were motivated by your desire to be free of your husband, and it all started manifesting itself after two or three months after y’all were married. And the sad thing for me is, there is absolutely no moral justification for your conduct. There is no evidence that you were being beaten and you were defending yourself, that you were a battered wife, that you were an alcoholic, that you were a victim of child abuse, that you were somehow acting in defense of yourself, even under a misguided notion. There’s none of that
here. All of your conduct was just for self-indulgence, and taking just every bit of money that you could get ahold of so you could go on with this fast life.

Now, Mr. Salnick tries to allude that you had this lifestyle before you met Mr. Dippolito that was pristine and moral, and maybe so. I don’t know about your behavior before you met Mr. Dippolito, but I think it’s a folly to suggest that you somehow were pure of heart on the day that you met Mr. Dippolito back in October 2008, and then somehow being exposed to him for two months caused you to plunge into some moral decay that caused you to become a would-be murderess. I just don’t buy that. I think that was—notwithstanding everything your mom and your family tried to give you—that was who you became, who you were, and it manifested itself within these horrible acts. You met and married a man, and shortly after the honeymoon, you set him up, trying to get him arrested for violating probation. Trumping up charges, planting drugs on his car, having others call the police, trying to get his probation officer involved in it. In as early as March, you began this relentless campaign to get rid of your husband. First, you’re thinking, “Well, I’ll just get him sent off to prison, and that will be good enough.” You used guile and sophistry to dupe others into your web of deception. You were the puppet master that was pulling all the strings. You weren’t acting at the direction of somebody else. You weren’t under the influence of somebody else. You were the one calling the shots, and you were engaged in a course of conduct, not over some momentary lapse of good judgment—this wasn’t like, “I ran a red light, I shouldn’t have done that,” or “I had the gun in my hand and I shot him because I was angry.” It was weeks and months that you continued with these different schemes to try to rid yourself of your husband; that was something out of a novel, and it was horrible to watch it unfold as the trial testimony came out. It was pure evil. You were taking advantage of a guy that was gullible and that was in love with you, and you contrived these elaborate
plans and cajoled others to assist you in these efforts that were unwitting participants in your plan, and they didn’t work.

When the Manalapan Police Department failed to find the drugs you planted, you tried again, and you planted them again. And the West Palm Beach Police Department found it so preposterous that law enforcement—not known to give drug dealers who are on probation a break—
they
didn’t buy it. It was so ludicrous what was going on that they let your husband go at that point. Still, it goes on. And Mr. Dippolito looking for a guard dog: I don’t know how Mr. Salnick is trying to make that seem offensive. Mr. Dippolito during the trial was going, “I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know who is trying to get me. I don’t know who is planting drugs on my car.” I don’t know that he suspected you at that time, but that seemed kind of reasonable. You put the alarms on, and he was trying to protect himself any way that he could. After those attempts to have your husband taken out of the picture by having him sent back to prison for a long time, and when you learned that it wasn’t good enough to have the house in your name—if you wanted to sell the house, you still needed his signature—that’s when it started to turn to more sinister behavior. That’s when it was that the plot to have him killed started to take form.

During this time was when your husband was trying to make restitution, and I don’t think he was motivated because he was pure of heart—he wanted some quid pro quo, he wanted to get assurance that “if I give this money up, I’m gonna get off probation.” Not completely unreasonable, but for self-interest and not some altruistic desire to help the victims. But I think that’s when you saw nearly $200,000 of assets close to leaving your clutches. That’s when things started heating up, and that’s when Mohamed Shihadeh entered, trying to help you get someone to kill your husband initially, and that’s when things started getting out of hand and Mr. Shihadeh realized that he’d be on the hook for being part of this murder, and that’s when he contacted Boynton
Beach Police. And so, fortunately, through no help of your own, the Boynton Beach Police Department came in and collected the evidence of your true intent, and that was to have your husband murdered. And the State is right—Ms. Parker is right: if it had been successful, this certainly would have been a case where the death penalty would have been a
real
possibility. And so to that extent, the fact that you were caught and Mr. Dippolito was not murdered, one, and two, you’re not facing life in prison or the death penalty. So those are some of the factors that I’ve considered.

A couple of other things: I find it disingenuous that it was always your desire to give the house back. The videotape when you got caught, the telephone calls where you were saying, “Get him out of
my
house,” and turning over the quitclaim deed here in court is grandstanding. If you wanted to give him the house back, then give him the house back—long, long ago. You didn’t need anything other than someone helping you to understand how to fill out a quitclaim deed, like you had participated in before. But if it was truly in your heart, all you had to do was give him the house back. Your attorney giving it back seems appropriate, and maybe Mr. Dippolito was right that he was going to get it back no matter what happened.

Mr. Salnick indicates that saying you’re sorry or being remorseful really doesn’t mean anything. I disagree. I think that Mr. Dippolito—still your husband—I think that “I’m sorry,” “it’s my fault,” “I did it” would have gone a long way—not only with his healing, but it perhaps would have suited your own purpose. I haven’t heard an ounce of remorse when confronted with the obvious facts, the testimony, as to who you are. When you were in the police station and your husband walked by, you said, “Tell them this is all wrong.” And then later when you were on the telephone and he was confronting you with the evidence—“I saw you tried to have me killed”—and you just cold-bloodedly said to him, “I saw what you saw, and I’m telling you that’s not true.” It was astonishing. [He gazes down at her sternly.] Come on!
A cold-blooded denial you were willing to go [to] to avoid the obvious.

And so, you are different people to different people. You have a facet of who you are to your mom, sister, and brother, and they see the good in you—as siblings and parents should. But who you are when no one is looking, other than a camera in a police car, is quite different, and I think that peers deeply into your soul and speaks volumes in the way that you were presenting this, and it was quite chilling to witness that. Based on those factors, I will accept the verdict of the jury. Miss Dippolito, I adjudicate you guilty, and I’m sentencing you to twenty years in the Department of Corrections, including the time you’ve been on house arrest, from the day of your arrest. And I wish you well, and I hope things turn around for you, and hopefully you will take the time to make the most of what lies ahead of you. I don’t think restitution is appropriate. There is enough of a nexus between the crime and Mr. Dippolito. My heart goes out to him. I think he was fleeced, but I’ll also impose the mandatory court costs.