Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Valentine’s Special: Love gone bad

Episode Date: February 14, 2017

When Cupid’s arrow misses the mark, a loveless spouse might seek a hit man with deadlier ammo. Nancy Grace and Alan Duke explore the cases against Jeff Lytle and Dalia Dippolito, who are each accused of plotting to kill their spouses. But thanks to the alleged incompetence of these unhappy lovers, no one dies in this episode. Happy Valentine’s Day! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Instead of sending it to someone named Shane, detectives say Lytle sent it to his former boss. This is Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Dahlia DiPolito walking out a free woman after a judge declared a mistrial in her murder-for-hire retrial. She was accused of trying to hire a hitman to kill her husband. I'm Sergeant Ramsey, and we had a report of a disturbance at your house, and there were shots fired. Is your husband Michael? Okay, I'm sorry to tell you, ma'am, he's been killed. No, no, no, no! He's been killed, ma'am. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Listen, right now, what do we do? We need to get you to a police station. We need to get you to a police station. I want to see him. I can't let you in, ma'am. We have to do our job. You want him to find his killer, okay? We need you to calm down. I'm going to need you to go with these detectives. It's Valentine's Day, and today of all days is a time to celebrate love in all its many forms. Now, why is it that it's always said that there's such a thin line between love and hate? You know those little signs of Cupid? He's shooting an arrow. But today, we're going to talk about love gone bad, and that's no arrow that's being shot. It's a gun. Happy Valentine's Day. Love gone bad. I mean, the only thing that could be better is if they actually tried this on Valentine's Day.

Now, as far as Mr. Little is concerned, these are all just allegations. He has not been proven guilty in a court of law. Now, for Dolly DiPolito, she's headed back for round two, a rematch. What says I love you more than bringing your loved one their very own Starbucks chai tea? Laced with poison. I want to pause and thank our sponsor who is joining us today,

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check out SimpliSafe online. There's also SimpliSafe.com slash Nancy for another 10% off the already low $14.99. Thank you, SimpliSafe, for making our podcast possible. Can you imagine a happily married couple with a four-year-old little girl, absolutely gorgeous young girl, when his boss, the husband-slash-father's boss, gets a text from dad who says that he, quotes, wants to take him up on his offer to kill his wife. Yes, you heard me right.

The boss gets a text message from employee, former employee Jeff Little, a 42-year-old husband and father of a gorgeous four-year-old little girl. The text says that Little wants to take him up on his offer to kill his wife and little girl. Why? Could it have anything to do with a 1.5 million dollar life insurance policy? I'm talking about 42-year-old Jeff Little. Hello, this is Crime Stories with Nancy Grace and joining me, crack investigative reporter, Alan Duke. The Duke is on the case. Listen to this, Alan. A murder plot devised by a dad was exposed. Let me enjoy laughing for one moment because nobody is dead and nobody's dismembered. That's what I always say to the children in the car. Okay. For instance, this morning when I took the children to school,

Lucy did not wear tennis shoes and she has PE today. And I'm like, Lucy, nobody's dead and nobody's dismembered. You go into school. I'll go back and get your tennis shoes. I'll bring them back. In this case, Alan, nobody's dead and nobody's dismembered and I could not be happier because this guy is so busted. The whole thing comes to light when he accidentally texts his boss instead of the hitman, say court documents. It's Jeff Little of Monroe, Washington, who intended to text what we think is a hit man named Shane.

Prosecutors believe he hired the man to kill his wife. Now, this is really making my blood boil. And his four-year-old little girl for a $1.5 million life insurance policy. What about that? I tell you, this guy is too dumb even to be a criminal i mean you know criminals are dumb but this is too dumb except for the fact that i do the same thing sometimes i've got two iphones i've got two computers you plan to kill your wife and your four-year-old little girl no no no no i've i accidentally text the wrong person and i have to play it off i've never done

this when planning a murder. Never and never will. Not yet anyway. No, of course not. So I'm not going to identify the wife. She has been identified on social media, but let's leave her out of this for right now. And I certainly am not going to identify the little girl. But the text message about the evil plan was sent to the boss who then takes it to the police. And it allegedly reads, and I'm quoting Alan, Hey Shane,

how's it going? You remember you said you'd help me kill my wife. I'm going to take you up on that offer. It's like he's trying to do a deal over, you know, and he used parking and he used car lot. Now this is according to K I R O channel seven. Now the 42 year old dad allegedly agrees to split the money 50-50 with Shane, the hitman,

and even goes so far as to tell him, the hitman, when his wife usually gets home from work at Walmart. So here the man, his wife is making the living, not judging, and he's going to kill her for a $1.5 million life insurance policy. And he wants their deaths to be staged as an accident or quote, a robbery gone wrong. You know, they used to drive me crazy, Alan, when people go, would say, it was a robbery gone wrong. I'm like, well, when was a robbery ever right? So how can it be a robbery gone wrong? But the pictures of this mom, and she's like out in the snow, playing with the little girl. Just a beautiful family.

You'd think, right? But so then when he was interviewed by police, he says his four-year-old daughter might have sent the messages. Yeah, I mean, how do you play that off? Well, my little daughter likes to use my iPhone to watch the YouTube videos. And I guess she just accidentally sent that. She's such a smart little kid. She's a pretty good speller because Shane spells his name with a Y-S-H-A-Y-N-E.

So first he blames the four-year-old daughter. Maybe they have a dog he can blame next. He also says, oh, this is a big boobie right here. He then says he only sent the messages to, quote, vent and did not intend to actually go through with the murder plot. Did he put a smiley face emoji on there? A little hee hee. You've got a whole variety of them. Yeah, I know.

Okay. Ever since my son discovered the one that's, you know, a poop emoji, he puts it on everything. Here's the thing. How do you feel about that? I mean, when I was nine years old, I don't care. If I had done anything like that.

Put a poop sign on a text. You're kidding. No, if I had said that word, I would have. I did. I remember having my. You couldn't say poop. My mom was pretty strict. She did not like poop.

Are you serious? We have no cursing in the house. Absolutely not. I had to put my husband in timeout the other day because Lucy ratted him out for saying a bad word at the refrigerator for some reason. But absolutely not. Whoa, whoa. Let me just get off the hit man for a moment. The twins came home.

Who told on who? They love to throw each other under the bus. Okay. I think it was John David said, Mommy, Lucy said the S word. I'm like, what? He goes, yes. I said, what S word? And he says the S H word, mommy. I'm like, Lucy, did you say the S H word? And she said, mom, she almost starts crying. She's really, she can cry whenever she wants to. She goes she goes mom i almost said the sh word but then i stopped halfway through i said how can you stop halfway through and she

said i only said shut i never set up oh good grief and oh john day was all over her for the sh word and then okay one ran the other one out for the S word. Okay, who said the S word? Where did you even hear that word? They said, we heard it on TV. I said, TV? I said, how do you spell the S word? This was on another occasion.

They said, S-T-U-P-I-D. That was the S word. Then they said they've ratted each other out. No, no, they ratted another little girl out on the playground for saying the F word. Okay, I nearly did a backflip on that one. I said, who said the F word? John David, and it was Lucy told me who said the F word. And John David said, I actually think you spelled that with a P-H.

P-H-A-T, not F-A-T. Can you believe there, to them them the f word is fat yeah that's a four-letter word ph a yeah yeah so we don't say fat stupid or shut up or of course not a curse word in the house so well those are the bad words those are the bad words. Those are the bad words. And of course, nobody can say, oh, gee, no, no. We say, oh, my stars. And oh, my goodness. That's so, you know, I hope it lasts. All right. Now, can we get back to the hit man, please?

Please. See, his big problem is going to be changed his story. If he had stuck with his daughter wrote it, Of course, nobody would believe it. But it could be believed that maybe somebody else could have sent it. You might get one juror on that. But Alan, when he says he sent them to vent, that ruined it. He's changed his story. It's over. Right.

I guess you got to pick a story and stick with it is the moral of that. How about don't plan to kill your wife? How about that being the moral? duke how about that instead of stick with it pick one story and stick pick with one pick one lie and stick with it we should just do a podcast on tips for stupid criminals please don't please don't one tech tip is don't text your crime details because those texts are out there and can be found. They're on a computer. They're in the cloud. Why even write it? You know, why even put it in writing? That's so wrong. Lazy. That's why. These are lazy criminals. Actual court documents say investigators. But what's really getting to me,

I understand when people are angry in their marriage and, you know, they want out of the marriage, not to the point of murder, but to drag the four-year-old little girl. I mean, in writing, hey, Shane, how's it going? You remember you said that you would help me kill my wife. I'm going to take you up on that offer. Dot, dot, dot offer dot dot dot dot dot he writes life insurance is worth one million and if you want a bone if you want eight bonuses

you can kill the little girl I'm not even going to give her initials he writes her initials her life insurance see her life insurance is 500,000000. Now, wait a minute. So she, the little girl, is going to write about her life insurance and use her initials? I mean, what's the worst that can happen? What's the maximum penalty this guy could get? We all know what it might should be. Well, life, usually an attempt in a lot of jurisdictions is half of what the sentence would be. So I guess life would be a sentence for murder. So half of that is usually termed out somewhere between 15 and 40.

Now, listen to this. He goes on. If you can make it look like a robbery gone wrong or make it an accident, she works at Walmart. She gets off at 11. I'll split everything with you 50-50. I'll split everything with the insurance 50-50. What about that? Then he sends it to his employer by mistake. You know, I've heard of people accidentally calling up the police chief in order to plan a crime or some wrong number like that,

but this is going to happen more because people are texting so much and to so many different people it's really hard to keep up with who you're texting at the moment the way the little screen is okay Alan I don't know about you but I really don't have a problem keeping up with who I'm texting I do so maybe I'm just texting enough but you know that little reading thing you learned in elementary school that's all you got to do just look who you're texting now alan well some of us busy yes i'm not busy um what about this leads me to think of dahlia dipolito do you remember her she's gorgeous she was a an escort okay hooker and she meets the husband well let me rephrase that i'm not sure exactly how they meet how does a man meet a hooker but let's not make this about him because according to his lawyers first she tried to kill him with poison in a starbucks latte or chai tea or

something didn't work then she hires a hitman and she is busted on video i covered her i don't know how many times because it's on video so it would give my viewers something to look at they get her on video when she is told by police that her husband is dead and she bends over and starts wailing you've got to pull up that video. You've got to pull it up, Ellen. She's bent over double in her quotey pain, quotey screaming and crying that her husband is dead. Man, she can fake hyperventilation so well. You know, I never get tired of listening to this. Go on, Dahlia. Go on, Dahlia.

I wish you guys could actually see the video that goes with this. All the cops are just standing there staring at her. One is looking away. One's scratching his head. Well, she's caught on video planning his murder and saying, I'm 200%, not just 100, but 200% sure I want him dead. Can you believe that there has been a mistrial, even when she's caught on video, and she's on house arrest at her mom's house. Somehow on house arrest she got pregnant.

Now, I don't know how that happened. So she's sitting back lounging at her mom's house after planning to kill her husband, waiting for a new trial. What about that? That's all you've got to say is chuckle, chuckle. What if it had worked? I was just looking at this and thinking about you don't want to meet your wife the way that Michael DePolito met this woman. He met his wife when he hired her for sex. Oh, you're going to trash him.

Okay, go ahead. Get it out of your system. Church. Why not church? Where not to meet your future wife? A, on Craigslist for sex. Well, speaking of church, her house arrest conditions only allow her to church, the doctors, and her lawyer's office and court. Somewhere in there, she got pregnant.

Don't know how that exactly happened, but it did. I imagine she's going to use the baby as a prop to get another mistrial or an acquittal of some sort. So that's what I'm looking at. And she's on video. Her defense is, I hope you're sitting down you know what you better lay down for this one her defense is that in that jurisdiction they came and shot an episode of cops that police planned the whole thing to frame her and get her on video for a episode I mean and the sting went on and on They've got her on video after video after video,

phone calls, the works, arranging his hit. And it's still ongoing. In fact, it's been back in court in the last few days because the prosecutor wants the defense team reprimanded for trying, allegedly trying to taint the jury pool. I talked to the defense many a time. It's Brian Claypool. He's a pretty good lawyer. They want him reprimanded. They want him thrown off the case because they claim he's trying to taint the jury pool.

He's saying no, so forth. I'm just waiting for it to go back to trial. But she wanted him dead. Dead, Alan. So it was a mistrial because it was deadlocked three to three. So you had three jurors on each side. Yeah. And that's with the video.

With video. Her on video. They bought into that bogus, bogus claim. So it seems like more and more when you hire a hitman, you're actually talking to an undercover police officer. Especially at that price. I mean, it was like, what, $10,000 or something like that? Yeah. If it's hiring a hitman for $10,000, is that real?

Do people really kill somebody for $10,000? I don't know. Alan, they kill for a lot less than that, for Pete's sake. I remember I had one murder over a $5 debt. I sure did. Actually, the victim's mother became a very dear friend of mine. Yes, that was over $5. So $10,000, sure. But remember, it's not just what you're paying a hitman. It's also the money involved, like a life insurance policy. I was just thinking about Dr. Teresa Seavers. I don't know if you remember that case, but it's like, I hear you pouring coffee.

I can hear you, okay? I hear what I want to. It's something stronger than coffee. He told me to sit down. Okay, then, espresso. I can hear when I want to sit down. Okay. Then espresso. I can hear when I want to Alan. Okay. But back to Dr.

Teresa Seavers, the day she was killed, I knew right then it, this just was not a burglary, dare I say gone wrong because she had a home alarm system and it didn't go off. And I knew right then something was way wrong with that picture. Also, Dr. Seavers had gone out of town that weekend for a trip planned by her husband with her daughters. She leaves the husband and the daughters and comes back early alone.

And that picture just didn't seem right with me. So she could go to work the next morning. Just something was way wrong with it. And it was, I believe, a hit for money. So the husband, Dr. Seaver's husband, and his longtime childhood friend that lived in another state and a third wheel are all now indicted in her murder you know as i was just mentioning i've covered so many cases of people that do not

have home alarm systems and it's so upsetting because i know people believe they cannot afford a home alarm system simply safe has the answer to that It's $14.99 a month, and if you go to simplisafe.com slash nancy, you get another 10% off. I have a home alarm system, and I am glad that I do. I can tell you that much. So these hits, I mean, you leave such a trail when you do, when you try to murder by a hitman, Alan. I mean, it just goes to the old saying, if you want something done, you've just got to do it yourself, Alan. Another tip to stupid criminals. I'm sorry, we can't use that S word, can we?

Yeah, I'm just saying. But another thing that you mentioned about this guy sending the text to his boss, how stupid was it? I've even heard that defense in court, not just on air with a bunch of talking heads, but in court where lawyers argue this was too stupid to be real. Stupid is not a defense under the law, Alan. It's just not. No. If stupid were a defense, the jails would be empty practically because so many of them there are stupid. How many people don't get caught because they're not stupid? Oh, gosh.

You know, people are always talking about the innocent person getting convicted. And, yes, it does happen. I think it's rare. But I'm just telling you that you can't catch all the guilty people. It's like drinking from a fire hydrant. There's too many to catch, especially if there are any smart ones. So we'll see what happens with Jeff Little's case. I'm just thankful that his former boss went to police with these texts

because if he could have passed that off and gotten away with it, it would be a matter of time before his wife was killed and the four-year-old little girl. In addition to finding this and other stories at CrimeOnline.com, if you have a tip, information, or a question, That is 909-49-CRIME, C-R-I-M-E, 909-492-7364. Nancy Grace, Alan Duke, signing off from Crime Stories. Goodbye, friend, and happy Valentine's Day. This is an iHeart Podcast.