Dateline NBC - The Sting

Episode Date: September 18, 2021

Newlywed Dalia Dippolito returns home from the gym to the awful news that her husband has been killed. In a case where almost nothing is as it seems, investigators want to know: Was Dalia diabolical or an unwitting pawn in a hoax gone wrong? Dennis Murphy has chosen this episode as one of his most memorable classic episodes. 

Hi, Dennis Murphy here. This one is about husbands and wives. In this case, Dahlia. Dahlia DiPolito, the Black Widow, one of the most eye-rolling defendants to ever enter a South Florida courthouse. If there is a manual on how to murder your husband, Dahlia must have missed that chapter, cautioning not to hire an undercover police detective as your hitman. Whoops. So anyway, she put out the bid to do away with husband Michael and returned home on the appointed day to a crime scene at her front door. Yellow tape, flashing lights, TV crews. The cops told her they had bad news. It was Michael, but of course it was all staged. Dahlia had walked into a sting. When they took her downtown, who should pop up in the interrogation

room but her not-dead-at-all husband? As she sputtered, she was charged with solicitation to commit first-degree murder. And because this was Florida, where sometimes everything skews wacky, her defense at trial would be that she was only auditioning for a reality TV show. Dahlia, I could go on and on, but you really need to check this out for yourself. Here's The Sting. There has not been a story like this ever in Palm Beach County history. Is she the villain? Is she the victim? Who knows? That is what makes her riveting.

And she is infamous and probably will be forever. The mesmerizing story of Dalia DiPolito with a fittingly preposterous ending begins in a place where conspicuous consumption and the envy index are as high as the humidity. Palm Beach, Florida. It is the winter wonderland of the wealthy. You can drive over the bridge and immediately feel the rarefied air, the mansions and the hedges that hide the mansions. And of course, now Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump's winter home. Palm Beach Post senior editor Jan Tuckwood says some mainlanders can't resist the wannabe allure of Palm Beach. Most people on the mainland are influenced that richness is right there,

and how can they get a piece of it? Over the bridge, past the interstate, newlyweds Dahlia and Mike DiPolito lived in a quarter-million-dollar condo in high and dry Boynton Beach. Not exactly the same zip code as Palm Beach, but perfectly fine for two up-and-comers. Dahlia and Mike had big dreams like any couple young and in love, aspirational at the very least. She had a $20,000 diamond engagement ring. He had a Porsche in the garage. Their story for

public consumption, the G-rated version, was love at first sight. Mike was an internet entrepreneur and Dahlia the businesswoman he fell head over heels for. Three months after their first meeting, marriage was inevitable. There was a teensy problem in their paradise. Mike DiPolito was married. Lawyers Jason Brody and Josh Friedman arranged a quickie divorce so the ballad of Mike and Dahlia could begin. He fell in love with her. He thought she was the end-all, be-all. He felt as though

this was it, and I'm going to have a family with her, and we're going to grow old together. He thought she was the real deal. They hit it off right away. They had a lot of things in common. They enjoyed the same things. Dahlia has a real estate agent. Yes. And that's what attracted him to her, was that she was successful on her own and didn't need him. Are we talking about sexual attraction or is there more going on here? Oh, there's sexual attraction.

Absolutely. With a divorce in hand, Mike and Dahlia dashed to the courthouse to marry and soon fell into comfortable routines. Morning workouts at the gym, steamy date nights at five-star hotels, and love notes on the fridge. He seemed to be Dahlia's dream guy. And three months into the marriage, according to Michael, she told him she was pregnant. He was thrilled. Life was good. But early one morning in August 2009,

it all came to an end for the two, with a finality as certain as crime scene tape strung across the front of the condo. Dahlia had been located at her 6 a.m. workout by the Boynton Beach Police. This is Sergeant Frank Ramsey, Boynton Beach Police Department. Is everything all right? Ma'am, I need to talk to you. It's very urgent when you come home. It involves your husband. There's been an incident. She was instructed to get home right away.

When she arrived, she saw police cars out front, everything that spells disaster just ahead. It just so happened a camera crew from the TV show Cops was there, filming an episode with Boynton Beach Police, when Dahlia got the awful news. Mr. Perito? I'm Sergeant Ramsey. I'm the one that called you. Thank you for coming. I'm sorry to call you. Listen, we had a report of a disturbance at your house. The officer was direct with Dahlia.

He said there'd been an intruder in the house and several shots were fired. Is your husband Michael? Okay, I'm sorry to tell you, ma'am. He's been killed. He's been killed, ma'am. I'm sorry. No!

Please take care of him. I can't let him in, ma'am. We have to do our job. man he's been killed he's been killed man michael dipolito her husband of six months gunned down in their townhouse the cops were telling her but she would not be allowed to go inside to see the body if you want to help your husband you need to go to the station with these gentlemen and tell us everything you know about who he knows, who he's connected to. The investigation was only minutes old, and the officers told Dahlia they'd need her cooperation in understanding what had happened. We're going to do everything we can, okay? But we need your help.

We need to get your husband's killer, ma'am. Dahlia was whisked off to the police station, where she'd soon find out that the detectives thought they knew much more about the details of the crime than they were letting on. This case was about to get very complicated. Oh, yes. The questions begin. It seems that undercover agents had their eyes and hidden cameras trained on Mrs. DiPolito. Hey, what's up? Dahlia DiPolito had been called home from the gym to be told by police out front that an intruder had murdered her husband, Michael. Is your husband, Michael? Okay, I'm sorry to tell you, man, he's been killed. He's been killed, man. Dahlia was rushed to the Boynton Beach Police Department for the start of interviews.

She began by telling the detectives that Michael, her deceased husband, wasn't exactly squeaky clean. He's been trying to get off probation. And it's just been nothing but problems the whole time that he's been trying to get off. Mike DiPolito, she said, was a convicted felon, a swindler who'd bilked thousands of dollars from gullible investors by selling them phony currency securities. It was for taking money. It was like, he had a smiling boiler room,

kind of, where they would take money from people. In other words, her murdered husband was a guy with enemies. When he was released from prison after seven months, he was still looking at more than 25 years of probation. He'd been ordered to make restitution to the victims he'd fleeced, an outstanding IOU of $191,000. People weren't happy that he was getting off probation because it's a lot of money he's got to pay back. Find out who he owed, suggested Dahlia, and you'll find the killer. The cops listened, but changed the focus of their questioning to the couple themselves, Dahlia and Michael, the newlyweds of six months. We are fine. Like, there's nothing. There's no problems between you guys, no financial problems, no...

I mean, with your family, you and him. No, there's nothing. I mean, we've, you know, we're going through... His business has slowed down like anything, you know. But the cops were toying with Dahlia, holding back their best cards. They thought they knew so much more about the newlyweds. Did they ever. Let's freeze the action in the interview room for a sec and roll everything back a few days. That's when a man walked into the Boynton Beach PD with a lurid

story to tell. His married lover, he said, was shopping for a hitman. Detective Alex Moreno didn't know what to make of this walk-in. At first, when he's giving you this information, you don't know what to think. You know, here's a guy who's claiming that he's sleeping with a guy's wife, and now she's trying to get somebody to kill him. It's a pretty juicy story. Exactly. Detective Moreno had the tipster run his story down from the top. The man was named Mohammed, and he said he was a part-time actor who worked at a convenience store. As he told it, he'd been friends with benefits with a woman for years. They'd met for the occasional casual sex.

Then she asked him for help in finding a hitman to kill her husband. He says, you know what, yeah, I'm sleeping with this guy's wife, but at the same time, I didn't want this guy to be killed. And that was his concern. He couldn't sleep with that whole idea that this guy was going to get killed. But the detective wondered if he was being sold a cock and bull story, since this Mohammed guy didn't seem to even know very much about the woman he claimed to be sleeping with. The detective challenged him. All the information he had was her

first name. He didn't know where she lived. He didn't even know who her husband was. While they debated whether or not the tipster's story was credible, they knew that a life may be on the line. So the detectives took it to the next level. They enlisted Mohammed as a confidential informant and gave him a story to tell his part-time lover that he'd found a hitman who could pull off the job. Two things could have happened. Either this guy was lying to us or it was true. We hadn't validated the information yet until he actually makes contact. Mohammed the tipster set up an assignation with the woman for the very next day. The car that he drove to the gas station meeting point

had been rigged by police technicians for pictures and sound. Undercover agents nearby would be watching the whole time to find out who this woman was, where she lived, who her husband was, and just what the heck was going on. She came down the street, came into the gas station. Immediately we picked up the car. And not only are we watching her, we're also hearing what's going on in the informant's car, live. Hey, what's up?

I love you, too. Yeah, me too. Running down the license plates and registration yielded the name of a 26-year-old woman, Dahlia DiPolito, the same woman who would later be seen on that videotape as the grieving widow. Police officers didn't have to wait long before the informant's story was confirmed. This woman in the car really appeared to be in the market for a trigger man. Less than a minute or so, she begins talking about hiring somebody to kill her husband. Unprompted. He's not doing dental work

to get the story out of her. Which, you know, shocked us. Honestly, you've worked seriously on killing all that much money. It's not even over the money. Like, you don't get it. Like, it's not even about the money. Like, you know that money.

We'll spend it like a blink of an eye. The meeting seemed to be all business. Dahlia produced photos of her husband for Mohammed to hand over to the hitman. Dahlia brought something else the hitman had requested. Cash to buy the gun that would be used. She turns the money over? Yes. Is are you going to give him the money and ****? Today. He's going to buy a store. She turns the money over? Yes.

Is that a crime, detective, at that moment? It's not enough yet. We didn't have enough yet. We want to go a little bit further with this case. The police were about to test Dahlia to see if she was determined to have her new husband killed. Another undercover sting, and a plan is set in motion for a deadly house call. With the help of a confidential informant, the Boynton Beach Police Department had apparently confirmed that a woman named Dahlia DiPolito wanted to hire a hitman to kill her husband.

And it all seemed to be caught on tape. You're sure that it's like, like a solid? No, this guy's a professional. It's not, you know, he does it, get it done, that's it. Right. All he does is get it done, and that's it. Right. All right, good. So the police instructed their informant, a man named Mohammed, to help set up another meeting with Dahlia. This time, it would be with the hitman,

who would be, of course, an undercover police officer, an agent. Same drill again. A meeting place outside a store, and a car wired for video and audio. Hey. Hey. We're staying in Paris. All right. Yeah, yeah. Okay. And he looks good. In that meeting, they began making plans. She also tells our hitman where they live.

She provides a schedule where her husband goes and comes and goes in the morning where he's going to be the next day. She shows her intent. And the fact that here she is meeting with a complete stranger who she believes it's a hit man. She actually goes as far as saying, hey, I'd rather if it happened here. How are we going to do it? We've got to do it at the house. How do we do it? She just wants it done. and the sooner the better. Does your agent give her a door out at this point?

Yes. He asked her more than once if she was sure if this is what she wanted done. And she laughs about it and says, yeah, once I set my mind to do something, I do it. The pretend hitman told her he'd use a gun, give him a tap-tap. He gets to her in the head. That's it, you know. Our undercover agent tells her, hey, I'm going to put two in his head, meaning two shots to the head, and doesn't even face her. No remorse. Dahlia and the hitman, who was really an undercover cop,

seemed to agree that he would kill her husband in two days' time. He told her to be prepared to go to the gym early that morning. By the time you get back to the gym, you're going to find two things. A dead body in the house, all right, or nothing. All right. The day before, he called Dahlia with further instructions. Tomorrow morning, you've got to be up by 6. Okay.

Doesn't hesitate, doesn't change her mind, none of that. She just says, okay, and that's it. The next morning, everything was going according to plan. Dahlia left for the gym, undercover cops tailing her. One of our sergeants makes a phone call while she's at the gym, and they inform her that something happened at her house, and she needs to get to the house fast. She doesn't know details. She just knows something has happened. Get home quickly. Yes. And she shows up at the house. And once again, she makes contact with our sergeant and she's informed of her husband's death, that he's been killed. I'm sorry to tell you, he's been killed. If you look at that video, she begins to react before she's even told the whole story.

According to that sergeant who was actually making contact with her, he didn't see any tears. And when they brought her to the police station, investigators were curious to see how far Dahlia would push her scenario, blaming the murder on one of her husband's former enemies. The detectives were carefully watching her interview on a TV monitor in a nearby room. People weren't happy that he was getting on probation because it's a lot of money he's got to pay back. She mentions how he had enemies, he was on probation. She didn't even bother to ask how it happened. To their experienced eyes and ears, Dahlia was making a few mistakes in how she was telling her theory of the crime. But they wanted to push her some more, see if they could get her to confess to her suspected murder plot then and there.

Would she be obviously rattled when they let in a familiar face, the person she believed to be the hitman? Bring this guy in here. Get over here. Get over here. You know who this guy is? No. You've never seen him before? I've never seen him before. Ever. The man before, actually the undercover police officer,

was presented to Dahlia here as someone they just nabbed for the killing of her husband. Do you know her? Put your head up and look at her. Put your head up. I've never seen her. The detectives finally put their cards on the table. They told Dahlia that they knew this was the supposed hitman and that the meeting where they planned to kill her husband all recorded on tape.

That's an undercover police officer. We filmed everything that you did, recorded everything that you did. You're going to jail for solicitation of first-degree murder on your husband. I didn't do anything. Did you hear what I just told you? I heard what you said, but I didn't do anything. Everything, listen to me. Everything has been recorded.

You were photographed in the convertible when you sat in his car in the front of CBS. What do you want to do? Rock steady to all appearances, Dahlia swore up and down she had nothing to do with the death of her husband. But the police had another surprise for her, truly a humdinger. They were about to walk a ghost to the doorway of the interview room. Oh my God. She's alive. Someone is back from the grave. Imagine for a minute you're Dahlia DiPolito. Homicide detectives in a police interrogation room

are accusing you of plotting your husband's murder. Dahlia didn't know it then, but her husband, Michael DiPolito, was still very much alive and was about to come face to face with his wife of six months, who seemed to want him dead. I'm thinking in my head, I'm lucky, I'm lucky, but I'm like, I'm so screwed right now. The worst day in the world. Before waking up that day, Michael DiPolito was clueless. Police thought his wife of six months had hired a hitman to kill him. Instead, he believed he and Dahlia had begun a loving new chapter together. They were about to start a family. She told him she was pregnant. Dahlia

was at the gym when police knocked on Mike's front door. We said, hey, listen, this is what we're doing. We've been conducting investigation. He says, your wife is going to have you killed today. You have to come with us. I just looked at him and I'm like, I mean, it hit me. You don't hear those words every day? No. The officers told Michael he had to come with them right away to the Boynton Beach police station before his wife got back from the gym. So grab your stuff, get in the car,

we're out of here. Yes. Meanwhile, outside his townhouse, the police were starting to stage dress a phony murder scene, all to trick Dahlia into thinking the hitman she'd apparently hired had successfully completed the job. Boynton Beach police recorded those moments, as did the crew from the cop's TV show. But the murky involvement of a TV show would later complicate accusations against Dahlia. At the station, the detectives queued up their own surveillance videos, showing Mike the husband Dahlia's two meetings as she seemed to shop for a hitman. Then the police allowed Michael to watch his wife's real-time police interrogation going on in another room. Dahlia, who had no idea her husband was alive, told her police interviewer

she had nothing to do with whatever had happened to him, even after they brought in the undercover cop who posed as her hitman. I'm watching. I'm just watching. And I'm waiting for her to give it up. And you know what? The girl never gave it up. Dahlia was arrested and handcuffed. And cameras were still rolling when police walked a very much alive Michael into the doorway of the interrogation room. Oh my God. He's alive. And they say, you know this guy? And I'm standing there probably from twice the distance of us. Come here, please.

Come here. You can't fix this. Why not? I didn't tell you they can. I heard you. Mike, come here, please. Come here. And that's when she says, come here, I love you, I love you.

And I told her, I said, look, I can't. You know, I said, you can't fix this. Now it was Michael's turn to tell the police his story warts and all, correcting for the record that love at first sight fairy tale. I can tell you I didn't meet her in a church. She's actually an escort. That's how I met her. She came to my office one day.

Dahlia denies she was an escort. And though Mike describes ordering her up from an escort service, he claims even now there was a mutual attraction that went far beyond that initial transaction. When I met Dahlia, we seemed to connect instantly. We hit it off right away. It wasn't just bad? No, it was everything about it. We just clicked, you know, be it our sex life, be it just our spare time,

be it the things we liked, all that. And it just happened. Three months after they met, Michael divorced his first wife and married Dahlia that same week. I had just purchased a home, and we're going to start a life together. And we talked about traveling and doing things, you know, and we had like a future planned. But there was a hitch to Michael's future. The terms of his probation prevented him from leaving South Florida. So the couple consulted a lawyer, and his advice was,

pay off that $191,000 you owe in restitution, and you have a fair chance of getting the probation lifted. So that was your ticket to freedom. Pay back the money and, yeah, and get my freedom. You know, and Dahlia said she would to freedom. Pay back the money and yeah, and get my freedom. You know, and Dahlia said she would help me with some of the money, about $90,000. And I'm like, absolutely, let's do it. Michael says he and Dahlia agreed that they would pool their money to pay off DiPolito's debt. This is great. You know, she's pushing me forward too. I thought like, okay, I'm going to get off probation. It's very exciting for me.

Then the plan to get Michael out of Hawk changed again. According to Michael, another lawyer said to him, look, you own your townhouse free and clear. Why not just turn the title over to Dahlia? Then she can do money things for you, no problem. So Michael gave her the deed to the townhouse, as well as $100,000 cash, his part of that payback of the

restitution debt. The money was supposed to go to his attorney, but it never got there. I'll tell you where it unraveled. As soon as I got Dahlia, that $100,000 is where it went downhill. Andy says after Dahlia got that nice-sized chunk of change, he started to have a string of run-ins with the police, including one night after dinner out with Dahlia. They left the restaurant to find the police swarming Michael's vehicle. After a search, they found cocaine stashed beneath a spare tire. I actually started crying to this cop. I'm like, look, man, I haven't done anything in five and a half years. I don't know how, why, or what happened. They let me go. I couldn't even believe

it. And you would have gone back to prison because you'd violated probation? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Now, he didn't want to think that the light of his life could be behind something as nefarious as getting him thrown back in prison. But the idea was there. Maybe Dahlia. I said to her, I said, you know, only when I'm with you. My life isn't this exciting. In five and a half years on probation, I didn't have one run-in with the police. I'm with this girl six months, and the whole police department knows me. I might as well glow fluorescent. So you're looking at her sideways.

I'm just like, I'm doing the best I can to be a good husband, give her a chance. No reason to believe she's faking it with you. No. I mean, she may have been a bad actress the day they caught her on camera, but as far as with me, she was an Academy Award winner. He says Dahlia also seemed to be playing the role as an expectant mother. There never was a baby, was there, Michael? Never was a baby. Another thing Dahlia was not expecting was the formal charge being filed against her.

Solicitation to commit first-degree murder with a firearm. Hello? Hey, it's me. But even after her arrest, Dahlia phoned Michael from jail, pleading with him to get her an attorney, claiming the cops had gotten it all wrong. What they're saying is not true. You said you wanted to have me killed.

I heard that. That's not true. That is not true. How is it not true? They're charging your ass. Don't you get it? I didn't do anything. She won't give it up. I didn't do it. I didn't do it. Why aren't you helping me? You know, I love you and over and over. And I'm like, are you kidding? I said, well, what do you want me to do? I need an attorney, please, so I can talk to you.

Even though she would later be released under house arrest, while still in jail, Dahlia begged the guy she was accused of trying to kill to help her find a lawyer to beat the charge. Michael saw the phone call as an opportunity to play, let's make a deal. I said, get me my house back, less of all the problems and legal bills. I said, and I'll get you a lawyer. So listen, sign my property back to me, and I'll help you. Okay?

I'm not signing anything. So I can't help you. And because of Florida's strong open records law, her jailhouse phone calls and all the police surveillance tapes made by the Boynton Beach cops would become public. They were out there viral on YouTube. Those images of Dahlia boo-hooing online would be seen by thousands of viewers who lambasted her in the comments section. But the people with the only opinion that mattered

weren't convened on YouTube. They were in a West Palm Beach, Florida courtroom. What would a jury of her peers make of Dahlia and Michael? The case heads into court and out come more secrets. It was like something out of a movie. It was unreal. Dahlia's defense seemed unreal, too. Was this whole thing a hoax? What started as a tentative police sting operation was now being argued in front of a jury in the West Palm Beach, Florida courthouse. 28-year-old Dahlia DiPolito was accused of solicitation to commit murder in the first degree.

Conviction could get her up to 30 years in prison. She pleaded not guilty. Lead prosecutor Liz Parker would introduce a trove of evidence, photographs, audio recordings, and videos, including that sting in which Dahlia tells an undercover cop posing as a hitman that she wanted her husband, Mike DiPolito, dead ASAP. I'm positive, like, 5,000 percent sure. It was unreal. It was like something out of a movie.

Dahlia had already spent almost two years under house arrest in her mother's home by the time the trial began in April of 2011. They say love is blind. In this case, love was blind, deaf, and dumb. The jury would hear the prosecution argue that the six-month marriage of Michael and Dahlia was a fraud from the beginning. She made him believe that this was an amazing marriage. He never wanted to believe that his wife,

the person that he loved more than anything, wanted to have him killed. The prosecutor said Dahlia was juggling two lovers on the side and was trying to enlist each of them in getting her husband bumped off. She's playing all of these guys. They're all thinking they're the one and the only person that she cared about was herself.

Detective Alex Moreno read back text messages Dahlia wrote about her husband to her lovers. I really hate him and want to see him rot. Just want my life, WU, let's get this arrested. To the prosecution, her scheme was apparent. Plant drugs on Michael, tip the cops, and get him busted back to prison on a parole violation. She tries for months to have him arrested. The alleged motive, greed. Prosecutors said she wanted to keep Michael's condo and his money all for herself. But when the schemes didn't work out, argued the prosecution, Dahlia settled on the fatal solution.

She'd simply have Michael killed so everything would be hers. The prosecution's case looked airtight with all those mesmerizing tapes of Dahlia plotting out a murder and also that video from the cop's TV show with her looking unglued as she learned of her husband's murder. What no one could have predicted, though, was Dahlia's defense. We live in a world where people seeking their 15 minutes of fame lose all sense of judgment and common sense. Dahlia's defense attorney, Michael Salnick, said this whole crazy story was in fact all about Dahlia's husband's vanity and his thirst for fame.

It was Mike who was really behind the faked murder, its mastermind, just so he could be known beyond Boynton Beach. Mike DiPolito's hoax to orchestrate his own murder to achieve fame and fortune was a bad prank. It was never anyone's intention to harm anyone. The defense argued it was all a TV pitch, Michael auditioning for his big break. The evidence will show that the plot for the contract killing of Mike DiPolito was never real. Mike DiPolito hoped to capture the attention of someone in reality TV. The defense attorney argued that Dahlia was in on the reality show idea the whole time. That scene out front of Dahlia wailing, acting, said the defense.

Dahlia knew that Mike wasn't harmed, and hers is a fake reaction to a fake event. The defense pushed Michael DiPolito hard on cross-examination, accusing him of dragging Dahlia down with his stupid idea of being a TV star. This whole reality thing was actually orchestrated by you, wasn't it? I don't know what you're talking about. The silliest thing I've ever heard. I mean, completely made up. All right, let's bring in our jury, please. And after two weeks of trial testimony, the jury agreed. We find the defendant guilty of solicitation to commit first-degree murder. In the end, the judge sentenced her to 20 years and gave Dahlia a piece of his mind before sending her behind bars.

It was weeks and months that you continued with these different schemes to try to rid yourself of your husband, it was pure evil. But that wasn't the final note in the ballot of Mike and Dahlia. In a move that surprised the prosecution, just three months after sentencing, the judge who called Dahlia pure evil allowed her to post a $500,000 bond. She was released from jail and was again placed under house arrest while she appealed her conviction. Fast forward three years and Dahlia won her appeal for a new trial. The judge in her first trial failed to properly filter jurors for potential bias and exposure to pre-trial publicity.

Brian Claypool was one of Dahlia's new lawyers. Some of the jurors said she was guilty in front of the entire jury pool, which contaminated the jury pool. And so, more than seven years after Dahlia DiPolito was charged with hiring a hitman to kill her husband, she would go on trial again. When she heard the news that she had been granted a retrial, she was extremely overjoyed because she felt like

she would have a second chance to have the truth be told. She would speak exclusively to Dateline. And oh, what a story she'd tell. This real housewife of Boynton Beach. So much better than reality TV. They just started manufacturing all of these things. Did you want to have your husband Mike dead? No. Murder for hire or audition for television? Dahlia DiFalito was used as a pawn by the Boynton Beach Police Department to manufacture good TV. A cliffhanger of an episode is coming up.

And now the season finale of the Dahlia and Michael DiPolito show. More than seven years after Dahlia's outburst went viral, and five years after Dahlia was sentenced to 20 years for hiring a hitman to kill her husband, she was back again in court on the same charge, facing a possible 30-year stretch. Good afternoon, Ms. DiPolito. Good afternoon. First, at a pretrial hearing as they tried to get the entire case dismissed, Dahlia's new team road-tested a new reality TV defense. That she and her former lover, the informant and a sometime TV extra named Mohammed,

had been planning a TV presentation to be posted on social media. Those in-car meetings, she said, weren't about arranging a hit. They were all about that TV presentation. The purpose of meeting him was to discuss the presentation and, you know, taping what was going to be on there. She claimed she'd wanted to back out of the purported TV project, but she insisted Mohammed was having none of that. And at that point, he lifted his shirt and showed me his gun. And he threatened me. He threatened to hurt me. He threatened to hurt my family. Mohamed, the informant, denied threatening her or participating in a reality TV production.

The reality TV defense seems to play into this whole story. Palm Beach Post senior editor Jan Tuckwood says Dahlia's defense was weirdly appropriate. It just seems to make total sense because the whole story doesn't make sense. So you just throw in that angle. I want to be famous. So let's do this stunt. If it was a stunt, it just adds to the weirdness. The story didn't fly with the new judge, and the motion to dismiss was thrown out.

And so in December 2016, Dahlia showed up at the Palm Beach County Courthouse once again. New trial, new jury. We're going to have the opening statements by the attorneys. Prosecutor Craig Williams' version of the 2009 events was the same as ever, though a skeleton of the full story. It is based 100% on Mr. DiBellino's words, her actions, and her intent. 100%. We have it all on tape, he said. Dahlia hiring a hitman to kill her husband. For $4,700, she wanted two bullets put in her husband's head for nothing. Then it was Dahlia's turn, with her defense presented by Los Angeles attorney Brian Claypool, saying the police entrapped Dahlia in a reality TV production for their own 15 minutes

of fame on the cop's TV show. You can't break the rules and then be rewarded by breaking the rules, and that's really what this case is about. Everybody is entitled to a police investigation that has integrity. This never really was a credible police investigation. Rather, Dahlia DiPolito was used as a pawn by the Boynton Beach Police Department to manufacture good TV for the cops' TV show. Dahlia's attorney said Boynton Beach police undermined its own investigation when the public information officer had the video posted online. And you knew at that time that there was a pending criminal investigation of Dahlia DiPolito, correct? Correct. In the end, Dahlia's team

contended Boynton Beach PD had violated Dahlia's constitutional rights. Jurors, they said, look at the motives of the men running the surveillance video and find their target, Dahlia, not guilty. A police department can't toss a client's constitutional rights under the bus to make good television. As Dahlia waited for a jury of six to decide her fate, flanked by her attorneys, she spoke exclusively to Dateline. For the past seven years, I mean, this has been a complete nightmare. She told us her nightmare began after she complained that she'd been the victim of domestic abuse,

an accusation her now ex-husband Michael strongly denies. She said she was used by the Boynton Beach police. We're here because they turned what should have been a complaint and getting me help and, you know, questioning me and stuff into this big production for a cop's, you know, TV show deadline that they had. And they just started manufacturing all of these things and creating these scenarios and putting me in these situations that look horrible. The police say they did not ignore a domestic abuse case. They were trying to stop a murder-for-hire plot. And those cops' TV cameras didn't change the substance of their investigation into Dahlia.

Did you want to have your husband Mike dead? No. Were you soliciting his murder as you were charged with in this courthouse? No. After nearly 10 hours of deliberation, half of the jury seemed to agree. To the judge, we, the jury, after further deliberation, still cannot reach an anonymous verdict. The judge was forced to declare a mistrial. Meanwhile, Mike DiPolito was glued to the TV beside himself.

I'll be honest, I was watching and I'm like, what? And I'm thinking to myself, what do these people need to see? You know, she's on video saying she wants to have me kill the two different people, one being a police officer. He said he believed the jury was distracted by defense team hocus pocus. So what I'm saying to you is everybody in the world, sad to say, she's basically beat the legal system twice now. Do you think she should do a hard time?

Honest answer, I'd like to see her go and taste it. Under house arrest, Dahlia went home again to her new baby boy, a child fathered by a man with an extensive rap sheet. And so in June 2017, she went on trial again for the third time. This time, the prosecutors who'd come up short in the previous trial with their shorthand account of the case presented the full Shakespearean version of Dahlia's story. A murder of her husband in full blood and two bullets put in his head. And this time, the judge admitted testimony previously not presented, that Dahlia had once tried to poison her husband. She told you that she researched something on the Internet about some kind of antifreeze that's odorless,

doesn't have a smell, doesn't have a color, and she put it in his tea. And that she had previously tried to hire a hitman to kill her husband before the murder-for-hire plot that was caught on tape. I'm so horny for you. And lurid text messages were read out between Dahlia and her lover, in which Dahlia discussed framing Mike by planting cocaine in his car and then alerting the police. We need drugs in the car, and it will put him away for a while.

This time, Dahlia's defense wasn't strong enough for that onslaught of evidence. After just 90 minutes of deliberation, the jury returned its verdict. We find the defendant guilty of solicitation to commit first-degree murder. Dahlia was taken away, her family sobbing. And the following month, after a crushing victim impact statement from Mike DiPolito, The girl tried killing me probably three or four times, handed me an iced tea with antifreeze in it, smiled at me. The judge sentenced Dahlia to 16 years in state prison. A month later, she was back in court again, her lawyers arguing the trial wasn't valid because the testimony about Dahlia trying to poison her husband should never

have been allowed. But by now, she was cooked. Perhaps her last ray of hope for freedom came in a petition to the Supreme Court of the United States, but her case was denied. And so Dahlia DiPolito, the real housewife of Boynton Beach, who became a worldwide reality TV sensation, is now simply Florida inmate W42222. Yes, really.