Dalia Dippolito

Meet the Dippolitos

Today’s case is one that is pretty well known throughout the true crime community.  Basically because it’s batshit crazy.  And to start, we are going to take a look at our two main players and how they met.  Dalia Dippolito’s father was of Egyptian descent and her mother was Peruvian.  She was born as Dalia Mohammed.  Growing up, they were a religious, very close knit family.  When Dalia was 13 years old, they moved to Boynton Beach Florida in Palm Beach County.  Now, Palm Beach County is home to some of the wealthiest families in all of Florida.  According to a Smart Asset study in June of 2023, Palm Beach County is the fifth richest county in all of Florida, out of 67 total counties.  People say that Palm Beach county is more of a glitzy county.  It’s home to Mar-A-Lago, the home of Donald Trump and the resort that he had constructed there.  

About 15 or so miles from there is Boynton Beach, Florida, which is just a typical American suburb.  Boynton Beach is more of the middle class part of Palm Beach County, with lots of blue collar families.  This is where Dalia grew up, in a gated community.  As we mentioned, they were close knit, and they were constantly doing family activities, whether that be family vacations or just having big Sunday dinners with each other. 

Dalia became a real estate agent when she got older, but that was never really her thing.   Anyone who met Dalia said that she was much more the kind of person who would prefer to take the easy road when presented with different paths to take.  They said that she wasn’t afraid to try to make a quick buck when the opportunity arose.  Dalia’s also attractive, and she was not afraid to use her looks to get what she wanted.  And that’s how she met Mike Dippolito.  Mike said that when he met Dalia, it was from a website for sex workers.  He wanted company for a weekend and Dalia showed up. 

Mike Dippolito has his own checkered past.  He and Dalia had the same wants and desires in life. They both longed to live that lavish lifestyle that we see portrayed all over reality TV nowadays, the best example would be the Kardashians.  Now that lifestyle is out of reach for 99.9 percent of us, but that just gives you an idea of the image that they were trying to portray to the world.  They both yearned for the finer things in life.  Mike was a muscular guy who liked to work out and show off his body.  Dalia said that from the start, he was very charming and that drew her to him.  He was engaging, and she felt a strong connection right from the start. He wasn’t afraid to be vulnerable.  Mike said that when he first met Dalia, she was very sweet and was almost naive to the world.  Very quickly, they got together and got to know each other more.  They did lots of outdoor activities and loved watching movies together.  

Mike had a rocky upbringing which left a sense of wanting to belong and just feel loved as he grew up.  He said that when he met Dalia, it made him feel what he had been missing almost all his life, someone was there for him.  But, there was one small… big… larger than life problem about Mike and Dalia getting together… Mike was married.  Dalia says that Mike told her that he was in the process of getting a divorce.  Which, we’ve heard in several cases so who knows what is actually true?  And we will skip over the vulgar descriptions and just say that it was a hot and heavy affair from the start.  

We mentioned Mike’s checkered past.. Well, Mike actually served time in prison.  He ran what is known as a boiler room stock scam.  Similar to the 2000 movie “Boiler Room” or more recently “The Wolf of Wall Street” about Jordan Balfort and his penny stock scams.  Basically, they would call up older people and push these worthless stocks on them.  Oftentimes they were making promises that these penny stocks were primed to make a huge jump and it was basically a guaranteed profit.   These kinds of operations prey upon older people by using threatening sales tactics, sometimes going as far as to tell people that they can put a lien on their homes and just causing more confusion just so the people will say yes.  And they always present it as the most urgent thing in the world, like “You don’t want to miss this opportunity, but it will be gone when I hang up the phone.”  These scams make money by either not buying the stocks at all or charging an insane fee for handling the transaction.  But most of the time, they are not just a small operation, they have dozens if not hundreds of people making calls and the amount of money they scam people out of really adds up fast. 

Soo, Mike was running one of these scams.  Eventually, Mike was found out and arrested.  He ended up pleading guilty to running an organized scheme to defraud people, unlicensed telemarketing, and grand theft.  He served two years in a Florida prison, followed by 28 years probation, and was ordered to pay one hundred and ninety one thousand dollars in restitution.  Wowza..

After meeting, Mike and Dalie were married within 6 months at the local courthouse.  This was a complete shock to Dalia’s family, and they were not happy at all.   But, from the outside looking in, they were the perfect, happy couple. 

August 2009

Now we are going to August 5th, 2009.  Mike was recovering from a recent surgery.  Normally, he and Dalia went to the gym pretty much every morning.  But he was in no shape to work out.  So Dalia was planning on going without him. She told him bye and gave him a kiss before saying she would bring him a coffee home from Starbucks afterwards.  Off she goes and at around 6:20 AM, she had a missed call from Sgt. Frank Ranzie of the Boynton Beach PD.  He left a voicemail saying who he was and asked her to call him back as soon as she could.  A few seconds / minute later, she called the number back, and Sgt. Ranzie asked her to come back home.  She asked if everything was okay and he told her that he would explain everything when she got there. 

The street was mobbed with police cars and crime scene tape everywhere.  There were crime scene technicians taking pictures of their home (I believe it’s a condo or an apartment).  There were cameras everywhere, and Dalia is captured walking up to talk to Ranzie.  He tells her that they had a report of a disturbance from the neighbors and shots were fired.  He confirmed if Mike was her husband and told Dalia that he had been shot and killed. She screamed and collapsed into Ranzie’s arms.  She was screaming and kept saying “No” over and over. Everyone had the same question, “Who would want to kill Mike Dippolito?” The neighbors were concerned with whether or not it was a random act, was it someone who might come back? 

Ranzie told Dalia that they needed to get her to the station to go over any details she might be able to provide to help them find who did this to Mike.  She kept saying she wanted to go in, but he told her no, that if she wanted to help Mike, she needed to go with them and tell them everything she knows about who he knows and who he’s connected to. They put her in a police car and she was driven to the police station.  

At the station, they put Dalia into an interrogation room to talk with Sgt. Paul Sherida.  Almost immediately, she told him she didn’t want to be videotaped, but he told her that she was being videotaped, that was all part of the process.  

The police are talking to her and trying to figure out who would have a big enough problem with Mike to do this.  As they talked, Dalia told them about Mike’s probation and the stock scheme.  She talked about the possibility that someone he defrauded might be wanting revenge.  She said that Mike had been trying to get off probation, something he could have done if he paid back the almost $200K in restitution that he owed.  

Dalia goes on to say that people weren’t happy that he was going to be able to get off probation.  When asked who these “people” were, she said it was a little bit of everyone. Some were people or family of people he had defrauded, some were people he had worked with who were mad that he was going to be “free” and they wouldn’t be.  Just sketchy characters from his past.  It was all very vague, and Dalia didn’t provide detectives with anything substantial.  When they asked for any names, she mentioned “Pasquale,” but again, nothing of note.  

Next, Dalia starts talking about how Mike was a recovering alcoholic and had substance abuse issues with drugs as well, particularly crack.  Mike was very regimented and stayed on a schedule to help in his sobriety, so every morning it was up and to the gym, then coffee and a meeting.  She says that they go to the gym every morning at 5AM, but because of his recent surgery, Mike was at home.  Sgt. Sheridan scoffs and says “You’re lucky.  You’re lucky you were at the gym.” He told her that Mike had been shot in the bedroom, twice in the head.  Detectives thought it was odd that in the hours after he was murdered, Dalia chose to talk with them and bring up every negative detail about his life that she could think of.  

Sgt. Sheridan excuses himself and says he’s going to talk to the officers on the scene and see if the house had been burglarized and leaves Dalia alone in the room.  She begins to question why this happened and cries.  Sheridan comes back in and asks if they had any financial problems, and Dalia paints a rosy picture of their marriage, saying they had no problems or drama in their lives.  

At one point, Sheridan almost jokingly says “You wouldn’t want to kill him, I hope?”  And she says that they were fine, that there was nothing in their lives that would make her want him dead.  This is where things take a turn, and Sgt. Sheridan takes a more aggressive approach with Dalia.  They bring in a man in cuffs and ask her if she has ever seen him and she says “I’ve never seen him.” Then he asks the man why he was coming out of Dalia and Mike’s home.  He doesn’t respond.  Then Sheridan tells officers to take the man out.  

Next, Sgt. Sheridan drops a bomb on Dalia.  And now we are going to play an audio clip of Sheridan talking to Dalia:    Dalia starts to repeatedly say that she didn’t do anything, while Sgt. Sheridan tells her that she is going to jail.  Then they open the door to the interrogation room and standing there is Mike Dippolitto.  Sheridan says that he’s alive.  Dalia starts begging Mike to come into the room and talk to her, and he just says he can’t.  Then Dalia is taken away in handcuffs. 

So, anyone who knows this case knows what happened, but we’re going to go back and go through what brought us to this point….

How Did We Get Here?

Dalia knew a man named Mohammed Shihadeh (He has since passed away).  He was a Jordanian businessman in that area of Florida.  He lived the same lifestyle that Mike and Dalia lived / wanted.  He loved to play poker and often traveled to Las Vegas to play.  He owned a chain of gas stations, and that’s how he met Dalia.  He was in one of his stores when she walked in.  He was immediately attracted to her, and the two struck up a friendship very quickly, bonding over them both having a middle eastern background.  Their friendship spanned around 15 years, so she knew him far longer than she did Mike. Their relationship was very flirtatious and on again / off again.  When Dalia needed something, she would come to Mohammed who would help her out.  

That brings us to July of 2009.  Dalia was married to Mike, and Dalia reached out to Mohammed.  She told him that Mike was physically abusive and controlling, and that she needed to get out of the marriage ASAP.  She tells him that a divorce isn’t going to be enough and that she wants Mike gone.  They met up at a gas station where she told him that she wanted Mike killed.  Mohammed is like nah, I don’t know why you’re asking me about this and told her he couldn’t help her.  But afterwards, he got very nervous because if something did actually happen to Mike, who’s to say that Dalia wouldn’t try to link him to it somehow.  

So, Mohammed made a call to the Boynton Beach Police Department and told them that Dalia was trying to solicit someone to murder her husband.  They brought him in and went over everything with him.  Mohammed says that Dalia approached him and asked if he knew of someone who could kill Mike and he told her no.  She went on to talk about how Mike was the nicest, sweetest nerd, but she couldn’t stand him.  Mohammed couldn’t give them an address or even her last name, so they asked him to wear a wire and talk to Dalia to get her to outline her plan to have Mike killed. 

Mohammed agreed and set up a meeting with Dalia.  Officers were around, recording everywhere alongside the wire and cameras that were installed in his car.  Dalia got into Mohammed’s car and she immediately started talking about her plan to kill Mike.  As they talk, Mohammed tells her that the guy he knows is a professional and that all he’s going to do is get it done and it will be done.  The conversation continued with how the whole thing would work and Dalia mentions that no one would ever believe that she had anything to do with Mike’s murder.  Dalia gave him $1200 to give to the hitman and left.  

Two days before Mike was “killed,”  Dalia was called to set up a meeting with who she thought was a hitman, but he was actually an undercover cop, Widy Jean.  The same undercover cop that Sgt. Sheridan brought into the interrogation room to see if Dalia recognized him.  They met in a CVS parking lot in Boynton Beach, and Jean had two cameras setup in his car.  He parked and Dalia got into his car.  She immediately asked when they could get everything going and he told her that was up to her.  She quickly and easily talked about having Mike killed, like it was just another errand she had to run. Jean gave her a breakdown of what he had done so far including buying a gun and paying other people off.  She asked about the $1200 she paid and he said that was long gone, he had blown through that just getting his gun, a burner phone, and the car they were sitting in and that he was in fact coming out of pocket already, so she would owe him much more.  

Officers watching were stunned that the murder for hire plot was real and how nonchalant Dalia was about everything.  Jean asks her if this is really what she wanted, did she want to kill Mike? He told her that once they put this plan in place and she stepped out of that car, it was a go.  She had no way to reach him to call it off.  That’s when Dalia said “I’m positive, like 5000% sure.” Jean said that he was shocked with how open and adamant she was in making sure it was done.  He told her that on the day in question, by the time she got back from the gym, Mike’s dead body would be in the house. Dalia says okay and leaves. 

While all of this is going on, the Fox TV show Cops was actually in Boynton filming.  So, this was a huge thing for them.  They were filming everything, which is why there is actually so much video out there about this case.  You can find it on YouTube if you want to give it a watch!

On the morning of the murder, Dalia left like she told the hitman she would.  And as soon as she was away, Boynton Beach police swarmed and banged on the door.  Mike came to the door, still half asleep and was in complete shock at what was happening.  They told him that Dalia had tried to hire someone to kill him, and they took him to the local police station to go over everything with him.  They played some of the audio they had recorded of her, including the 5000% sure line.  Mike says that really stuck with him.. It wasn’t like “Oh, kill him softly, make it painless.”  It was like “Just blow the guys brains out and.. Can I get a cheese sandwich with that?”  They staged the crime scene and made the call to Dalia. 

From there, we know what happened. 

Trial(s)

Leading up to Dalia’s trial, speculation and rumors swirled.  One thing that came out was that when Mike was trying to pay off his restitution, Dalia said she could help him.  In the eyes of the courts, the money had to come from a “clean” source, and since Mike had been convicted of financial crimes, pretty much any payment he made could have been looked at as “dirty.”  Their lawyers said that Dalia could be that clean source, so Dalia told him that he could give her the $100k that he had saved, she would throw in the additional $91K and wire it to the lawyers to pay everything back, then he could make a case to get off probation.  Mike gave her the money, but it never made it to the lawyers.  She spent it.  

After the incident with the money, Mike noticed odd things happening.  He said that after he was released from prison, he never had a run-in with the police, but after he met Dalia, he had run-ins with the cops more than he ever did in his entire life.  One such incident was when he and Dalia were going to have a quick getaway together.  He was pulled over and the officer said that they had received an anonymous phone call that he was dealing drugs out of his car and asked if they could search it.  He said of course because he had nothing to hide.  The search didn’t yield anything, but the next day we stopped to get gas and he found a bag of pills.  That’s when he realized that someone had planted them in his car, but the cops just didn’t find them.  He asked Dalia if she put drugs in his truck, but she adamantly denied it.  He knew at this point that Dalia had stolen the $100k from him, but he stayed in the relationship, hoping that she would eventually pay him back.  

Dalia called Mike from jail and asked him to come visit her, which he obviously refused.  She didn’t apologize or anything, just asked him to get her out basically, and asked for his help in getting an attorney.  Mike said he wouldn’t help her, but did offer her some advice for while she was in jail, since he had experience.  He told her to just keep her head down and go with it, keep to herself and not really talk to anyone.  

The prosecutors, while talking to Mike, also tell him how lucky he was… because he had already survived one attempt on his life.  Mohammed said that Dalia told him about when she tried to poison his iced tea one day.  Mike said that one day, Dalia came home from Starbucks with a tea for him and he took a sip and it tasted like the worst thing ever, so he spit it out and dumped the rest out.  He said that he only took a small sip and he was sick for two weeks… Dalia had put antifreeze in it, something her attorney denied. 

When the trial started, the prosecution felt confident because they had witnesses… and the hours of tapes and audio.  They called Mike to testify, and he was great on the stand.  He came across as very likable, even when he was talking about his past criminal activity.  He owned it and made sure to talk about how he’s changed his life and served his time.  He said on the stand that he is a convicted felon and he reports to his PO every month, but he still holds his head up as high as he can.  When the defense cross examined him, at one point he made a joke, calling the attorney a parrot because he kept using the word probation in every question, “Did you do that on probation, were you on probation, probation, probation, probation.”  The courtroom laughed and Mike said, “I mean what are we doing here? We’re not here because of me.” Mike has since remarried and fully paid what he owed.   

The prosecution also called an ex-boyfriend of Dalia’s who testified that he had a conversation with Dalia about planting the drugs in his truck.  This conversation was in the form of text messages, which a detective had to read in court.. And they were very sexual in nature.  He laughs about it now and says that reading those texts wasn’t his best moment.  

When it was time for the defense to take their turn… They said that it was all a setup by Mike to get the eye of someone in Hollywood so he could get his own reality show.  It was never a real plot to kill him.  They said that Dalia was acting the whole time, and that she knew that she was being recorded when talking with the undercover cop.  But they insisted that it was all a hoax.  On the stand, Mike denied this theory over and over.  

Everyone was waiting to see if Dalia would testify, and she said that it was changing every day.  One day she was going to and the next her lawyers told her she wouldn’t be put on the stand.  Ultimately, Dalia didn’t testify. 

The prosecutor at the time said that she has never had a case that was so strong, but with Mike’s past and with just how overwhelming the evidence seemed to be, you never know how a jury is going to take things in the courtroom, especially since it was such a bizarre defense to everyone. 

Dalia was facing up to thirty years in prison, and the jury deliberated for only three hours to find her guilty of solicitation to commit first degree murder.  The judge gave her 20 years in prison.  In an interview afterwards, Mike said that he wished they were never there but he was 5000% happy with the sentence. 

Case closed.. End of episode..

Not really.  In 2014, the appeals court granted an appeal on the basis that there was a problem during jury selection.  The appeals court ruled that the judge at the time didn’t do enough to ensure that the jury was sequestered from pre-trial media and publicity.  The appeals court found that the judge should have questioned the jurors individually, rather than as a group, regarding how much they knew about the case.  It also found that the judge should have dismissed the entire jury when one prospective juror revealed she had read about Dippolito’s attempt at poisoning her husband.  So she walked free (on house arrest) and was getting a second trial.  

Dalia’s second trial would be 2016.  This time, she hired two new high profile lawyers.   They kinda stuck with the reality show defense and claimed that Mike, Mohammed, and Dalia were all in on it, acting on the recordings.  In a pre-trial hearing to try to get the case thrown out, Dalia was allowed to take the stand and testified that she was acting and it was all going to be put up as a portfolio on social media.  The prosecutor asked where the script was and where the production notes for this project were.  He asked her if it was for social media and exposure, why wasn’t there a clear shot of her in the videos and she says she wasn’t’ the one taping it so she didn’t know. The motion to dismiss the case failed, and the trial started on December 1st, 2016.

In the second trial, the prosecution stuck to the videos.  They didn’t call Mike to testify, they felt like they would be able to go with a more toned down version of their case and get the conviction.  They said that her words on the video proved the crime she was charged with. 

The defense abandoned the reality tv defense and instead focused on the Boynton Beach Police Department, claiming that because Cops was filming, they wasted taxpayer money by putting on a fake crime scene for the show.  They said the presence of Cops created a frenzy in the department to manufacture good TV, and Dalia was thrown under the bus.  Dalia’s lawyer was making his closing argument, and he mentions that the jury should allow her to go back home to her family and her infant son….. That was a shocker to everyone, because no one knew about this child.  It turns out that an appliance repairman came to the house while she was on house arrest, they talked and fell in love, she got pregnant, and they had a son.  

The jury was unable to reach a unanimous decision and was deadlocked.  A mistrial was declared.  

The prosecution immediately got to work on a third trial.  They said that there was no thought in their mind about letting her go free.  

The third trial was in June of 2017.  This time the prosecutors went back to their original strategy, and called Mike to testify.  They tried to humanize the victim and give more context to everything as a whole. 

When the case was turned over to the jury, they deliberated for only 90 minutes and Dalia Dippolito was found guilty.  She was given 16 years in prison.  Her current release date is in 2032, and if she serves the whole sentence, she will be 49 years old when she’s released.  

Dalia’s attorney’s have tried time and time again to get the case thrown out.  Florida’s Fourth District Court of Appeals upheld her conviction in March 2019, and the Florida Supreme Court rejected her request to review the 2017 conviction.  Dalia’s appeal to the US Supreme court was refused in February of 2020.