Doing My Wife!

Florida Woman Charged In Plot To Kill Husband

BY ANDREW MARRA
Palm Beach Post

BOYNTON BEACH — Thinking her husband was dead, a 26-year-old newlywed pulled up to her Boynton Beach town home Wednesday morning in apparent panic. She surveyed the crime scene tape and swarming police officers and began to sob hysterically.

A good act, police called it. Investigators say she was the one planning his death — and they were a step ahead.

The would-be widow was Dalia Dippolito, and since Monday police say an undercover detective posing as a hit man had been planning with her the details of her husband’s demise.

For $6,000, he was to murder Michael Dippolito, 38, Dalia’s husband of six months, police say. “I will be very happy,” she allegedly told the hit man.

The extraordinary moment of truth came 5:30 a.m. Wednesday when she left for the local LA Fitness, expecting the deed to be done by the time she got home.

A somber phone call from a police officer soon summoned her back to the house in the Renaissance Commons community. She arrived to find exactly what cops say she expected to find — a homicide scene cordoned off by yellow tape and populated by grim-faced officers.

With Dippolito’s husband safe in police custody, Boynton Beach police took the extraordinary step of staging a murder scene. Then they rolled cameras to capture her sobs. The TV show COPS, in town to ride with Boynton Beach officers, was on scene with cameras, too.

“We wanted it dramatic,” police spokeswoman Stephanie Slater said. “We wanted her to believe her husband was dead.”

Later, at police headquarters, they showed her her husband alive and well. And they arrested her on charges of solicitation to commit first-degree murder.

It was a friend of Dippolito who tipped off police to her murderous plans, according to an arrest report. The friend put her in touch with the undercover officer, claiming he was a hit man.

“I didn’t do anything and I didn’t plot anything,” she yelled at reporters as she was hauled away to the county jail after an hours-long interrogation.

Her alleged motive wasn’t immediately clear, but her husband — dazed and confused after being awakened that morning by an officer with news of his wife’s murder plot — said he assumed it had to do with money.