A former escort on Friday was convicted of trying to hire a police officer to kill her newlywed husband to get control of his money and their town house.
Dalia Dippolito teared up as she turned to look at her sobbing family when the jury announced its verdict after deliberating for only an hour-and-a-half.
She faces up to 20 years in prison when sentenced on Wednesday.
This was the third trial for Dippolito. A 2011 conviction and 20-year sentence were thrown out on appeal, while a trial last year ended with a hung jury.
Dippolito, 34, was arrested in 2009 after she was videotaped soliciting an undercover police officer posing as an assassin.
Prosecutor Laura Laurie told jurors during closing arguments that Dippolito was a liar and manipulator who used two lovers to get her husband, convicted swindler Michael Dippolito, either sent back to prison or killed, because she wanted his money and their house.
Defense attorney Brian Claypool countered that it was Boynton Beach police who manipulated Dippolito and their informant so that detectives could become famous through the television show Cops, which filmed much of the investigation and turned it into a special episode.
“You will find no question that that woman lied and manipulated for her own gain,” Laurie told the three-woman, three-man jury during her closing arguments. “She couldn’t stand her husband, so just kill him.”
Claypool told the jury that Boynton Beach detectives pursued fame, not justice, during their investigation in the summer of 2009.
They manipulated the case by violating their own department rules, lying and playing to the Cops cameras, Claypool said.
“They had no desire to solve the crime,” Claypool said. “Get her on tape for the whole world to see... Does that sound like a police department looking to get justice in this case, one that’s determined to stop her from blowing her husband’s brains out?”
Last year, prosecutors focused heavily on a 23-minute video in which Dippolito tells undercover officer Widy Jean, who was portraying a killer for hire, she was “5,000 percent sure” she wanted her husband dead and appeared to agree to pay him US$7,000.
She also discussed various plots before Jean said he would kill her husband at the couple’s home, making it look like a botched burglary while she was at the gym.
This time, while the tape remained a key piece of their evidence, prosecutors also called Michael Dippolito, who testified that his now ex-wife stole US$100,000 from him shortly after they got married in February 2009.
He also said someone had twice planted drugs in his car and called police, which could have landed him back in prison for violating his probation.
He thinks it was his wife.
According to the Palm Beach Post, prosecutors also read for the jury explicit text messages Dalia Dippolito exchanged with a now-deceased lover, Mike Stanley, in 2009 after she got married.
She had Stanley impersonate a doctor to help her hide the theft, and later a lawyer, to make her husband wrongly think he had completed probation, prosecutors said, adding that she hoped that if he stopped visiting his probation officer, he would be found in violation.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in