True Crime Campfire - Stung: Two Failed Murders for Hire

Episode Date: May 21, 2021

There’s an old saying that if you want something done right, you better do it yourself. But for some people, DIY murder just isn’t right for them. Maybe they’re afraid to get their own hands dirty, maybe they know they’d be the prime suspect if their target were to meet with an unfortunate incident—there are any number of reasons why a prospective killer might turn to a hitman. But as we’ve said before on True Crime Campfire, there are some real pitfalls to contracting out your murder plots. We’re about to tell you two stories that illustrate that in vivid technicolor. Sources:https://www.browardpalmbeach.com/news/dalia-dippolito-may-have-tried-to-kill-him-but-michael-dippolito-is-no-saint-6343534https://www.jacksonville.com/news/20170722/16-year-sentence-follows-emotional-grueling-dalia-dippolito-hearing/1https://cbs2iowa.com/news/local/official-murder-for-hire-coralville-inmate-died-of-heart-diseaseABC's "20/20," Episode "Down Payment on Death"Oxygen's "Murder For Hire," Episodes "Crocodile Tears" and "All or Nothing"Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]: https://shop.spreadshirt.com/true-crime-campfire/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers, grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. There's an old saying that if you want something done right, you better do it yourself. But for some people, DIY Marathon. murder just isn't right for them. Maybe they're afraid to get their own hands dirty. Maybe they know they'd be the prime suspect if their target were to meet with an unfortunate incident. There are

any number of reasons why a prospective killer might turn to a hitman. But, as we've said before on true crime campfire, there are some real pitfalls to contracting out your murder plots. We're about to tell you two stories that illustrate that in vivid technicolor. This is Stung, two failed murders for hire. Case 1. The con man, the yard man, and the hit man. So, campers, for this one, we're in North Liberty, Iowa, June 2016. Detective Randy Lamb got a curious call one evening. Apparently, a local con man named Ron Roby had contacted the Johnson County. Sheriff's Office with a bombshell of a story. He claimed that an acquaintance of his, a local

landscaper named Justin DeWitt, was trying to find a hitman to kill a dude who'd screwed him over at work, and not just the dude himself. DeWitt wanted the guy's wife taken out too, and their two children. Now, here's the thing. This tipster, Ron Roby, the guy had a rap sheet as long as your arm. He'd been a thief and a scammer his entire life. If this guy told you it was raining, you'd want to double check, even if your shoes were already filling up with water. He'd never done anything violent that they knew of, but he was certainly not a man to be trusted. So, Detective Lamb's first reaction was, oh, I've got to hear this. He figured whatever was going on here was probably going to be interesting, and there was

probably going to be a lot more to it than Ron Roby was saying. There might be some shenanigans afoot. So on June 13th, they invited Ron to come in for an interview. Ron launched into the whole story, and this is hilarious to. me. He started by making sure that the detectives knew that this guy, Justin DeWitt, was not a friend of his. He said, he considers himself a very close friend of mine, which he isn't. He'd met the guy when he and his wife hired him to do some landscaping work on their yard, and once he hired Justin DeWitt, he had a hard time shaking the guy. Roby told the Oxygen Show murder for hire, quote,

instead of just coming over for landscaping, craps, he came over for coffee, and it was obvious he was trying to make friends with me, like, a lot. Apparently, he didn't have any male friends. This just cracks me up. I love that Ron Roby's, like, look, what I need you to understand is how big of a loser this guy is. And, like, when you meet this guy and see what an utter knob he is, don't think I was, like, friends with him or anything, okay?

Because I'm not. He's just, like, obsessed with me or something. Like, that was the most important thing to Ron initially is he just didn't want Justin DeWitt's loseriness to diminish. his mystique, apparently. Settle down, Ron. We get it. You just hired the guy to mow your yard. He's like a middle school mean girl. Like, come on, Ron.

Very much so, exactly. So, Ron Roby told the detectives that one afternoon, out of the clear blue sky, Justin said, Hey, I want you to do me a favor. I want you to kill this guy and his family. Ron figured Justin must have found out about his checkered past, and figured, you know, a couple decades of white-collar scams and the slaughter for hire of an entire family, basically the same thing. So Ron says he was horrified and also worried that if he just said, you're insane, fuck off, then DeWitt would go find somebody else.

Somebody whose moral compass was a little bit more flexible. So he told his wife Sherilyn about it, and Sherilyn was like, well, with your history, they're not going to believe you unless you can prove it. And he knew she was right. So he went over to Justin's place, record on his cell phone and got Mr. DeWittless to lay out the whole thing. Ron asked him why he wanted these people dead, and DeWitt said the guy, whose name was Chad Williams, had cost him a big account, a customer he'd had for years. Guy had put some

kind of weed killer and fertilizer down and burned up two acres of land. And now DeWitt was going to have to go in and do the whole job over and eat the cost. Now for this, apparently, in his mind, this man deserved to die. And for some reason, so did his wife. and two small children. We need to start keeping a list of weird-ass murder motives, because this is another one where you're just like, what? You want to ice an entire family, including two children, because of a burned-up lawn? It's bananas, I know.

Good grip, you freak. God. On the recording, DeWitt asks Ron Roby how much the job would cost, and Ron says, about 8K with the kids. and when he played that part for the investigators, their jaws dropped. None of them had gone into this interview taking Ron very seriously. They figured this was just another instance of a lifelong criminal trying to bank some goodwill with the cops. But when they heard the recording, the whole mood in the room shifted.

This family was in danger. Shit just got real. Now, I don't know how familiar y'all are with the murder-for-hire-sting operations. At first glance, you might think that the record, Recording Ron Robey provided would be enough to put the habeas grievous on Justin DeWitt, but that's not how it works. Right. See, it's not really illegal to have a conversation like the one that Justin had with Ron. I mean, no money changed hands or anything. So if they tried to arrest him just on the strength of that recording, DeWitt could just say, I was joking or I was just fantasizing. I wouldn't have actually gone through with it.

And that might really be true. I mean, people joke about murder all the time. I joke about murder all the time. And I can't even kill both. Yeah, it's just, it's basically thought crime. Like, you can't convict somebody for having a thought. So if they were going to get Justin DeWitt, they had to catch him finalizing the deal. Money needed to change hands. Maybe a picture of the targets. They needed as much evidence as they could get that this guy really intended to go through with the hit. They asked Ron Roby if he'd be willing to call Justin up from right there at the station.

Get him to talk more about the plan with the investigators' list. listening in. Ron said, sure, but it quickly became clear that Justin Dewitt was feeling squirrelly. He didn't want to talk about it over the phone. Damn it. Was our boy starting to suspect that his buddy Ron had ratted him out? See, the scary thing about these situations is that you never know if your suspect has more than one iron in the fire. If Justin decided he didn't trust Ron anymore, would he move on to somebody else? Somebody who'd actually take the job? Or would he just decide to do the murders himself and save the $8,000? Those are scary possibilities. The other issue for investigators in a case

like this is whether to warn the intended victims. On the one hand, I mean, if somebody had put out a hit on you, you'd probably want to know, right? I'm pretty sure I would, yeah. But on the other, it's real hard to predict how somebody's going to react to a thing like that. They might decide to burst and adjust into Witt's office and have an angry confrontation. That could be bad on a couple of levels. One, it could escalate to violence, and even if it didn't, it would warn DeWith that the cops were onto him. For somebody reckless enough to take out a hit on an entire family for such a petty reason as ineffective lawn care, that might not be enough to stop him from carrying out the murders.

But it would be enough to stop him from dealing with Ron Roby, thereby cutting the investigators off and giving them no way to know what he was planning. Either way, it could end in all kinds of badness. So after much deliberation, they decided not to tell the Williams' is just yet. God, it's so creepy to imagine that poor family just going about their business, totally unaware that this evil piece of shit was trying to have them all killed. Like, their lives had become a bad made-for-TV movie, and they had no idea it was happening.

It's like Schrodinger's hitman. Yeah, right. So Detective Lamb and his partner, Sergeant Ross, told Ron Roby to keep stringing DeWitt along, and they wanted to do this right. The DA was concerned that a defense attorney might be able to argue that Ron Roby had manipulated and trapped or intimidated DeWitt into all of us. Yeah, that's always a concern because that is usually what a defense attorney will argue when somebody gets caught trying to hire a hitman.

Oh, I was just complaining about my ex-husband, and this guy started talking about murder, and I was scared not to go along. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Dumb? Yes. But juries can be persuaded of just about anything, so investigators have to be careful in cases like this. And especially in this case, because Ron Roby did actually have a long criminal history. And if Justin DeWitt thought that he was the kind of guy who'd be willing to murder an entire family for cash, or even find him somebody who would, then it might be possible.

possible that Ron could intimidate him into going through with the hit, even if he did decide he didn't want to do it. It could be that Ron Roby was trying to use this whole scenario to his own advantage, set DeWitt up so he could look like a hero and get brownie points with the cops. Those could come in real handy the next time he got caught scamming somebody. So this was a concern. That means they had to give DeWitt a way out, a chance to change his mind. It was a delicate situation and it'd be really easy to screw the pooch, especially for a civilian with no training, like Ron. So the best thing was to get Ron Roby out of it as soon as possible

and bring in an undercover detective as the quote-unquote hitman. Enter Doug Hurley, a special agent with the Iowa Department of Public Safety. Hurley had a long history of undercover work, mostly in narcotics. He'd never gotten to play a hitman before, and he was super stoked about it. He told the show Murder for Hire, it's a bucket list for a narcotics agent, to be honest with you. He's excited about it. And he definitely looks the part, big, broad-shouldered dude with a bushy beard and a shaved head,

like right out of central casting for Hitman. Ron introduced Justin to him over the phone on June 23rd, just 10 days after his first meeting with the detectives, and from then on, it was Hurley's case. He and Justin made plans to meet up the next day in a shopping center parking lot, and it was on. On like Donkey Kong. Now, it's a big deal in these cases if the suspect actually shows up for the meeting. Sometimes they'll come to their senses, and then that'll be the end of it. So when Agent Hurley, posing as Doug the hitman, saw Justin DeWitt pull up beside his truck in the Menard's parking lot on June 24th, he knew this case was the real deal.

Doug the hitman. I like it. It's not quite as good as Jeff, but I guess it'll do. You know, if I were posing as a hitwoman, I think I'd want to use a name like La Elegante or something. Or like Mrs. X. something was just a little bit of panash, you know. And while we're on the subject, by the way, why is it always a hit man? Like, come on, it's 2021, for God's sake.

Let's mix it up a little. Hashtag feminism. You're telling me that if you were trying to set up a murder for hire, you wouldn't have the absolute pants impressed off you by like a perfectly groomed red lipstick bitch and dark sunglasses with like a posh British accent who told you to call her Mrs. X. I can see you're surprised to see a woman I assure you I'm quite competent

12 years with MI5 until the British government and I came to a bit of an impasse Okay I'm done You can see I've thought about this All I'm saying is it's time to smash that contract killer glass ceiling And I would be a kick-ass undercover hit woman So hit me up detectives I'll knock it out of the park

Anywho DeWitt showed up for the meeting all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, clearly just pleased his punch to finally found somebody to carry out his little dirty deed. As the hidden cameras captured the whole conversation and plain-closed detectives posted up in unmarked cars nearby to listen in, DeWitt filled Doug Hurley in on what he wanted done. He repeated his story about the burned-up lawn and the lost contract, and then it was time to talk turkey. Hurley said, So you want the kids dead, too? Picking at his goatee, Justin DeWitt thought about it for a second

and then said, might as well do them all. I mean, is there any point of fucking killing him and her and not them? Any point? Hmm, well, I would think if you asked them, they'd probably prefer to live, asshole. That's

the point. Unfucking believable. I guess he's just being economical about it. Four, for the price of two. Buy one, get one? Oh, and by the way, when Hurley asked him for the names of all four targets,

DeWitt didn't even know the names of these two kids whose lives he was talking so casually about snuffing out. Hurley said, okay, he could do the two kids too. He said, so you don't care if I walk up and shoot him right in the face and then do the same thing to the kids and the wife? See how he's laying it all out there, like leading DeWitt into confirming exactly what he once done? That way, it's all on tape and there's no ambiguity in court later. Justin said, I don't care how you do it. I just want them dead.

Agent Hurley later said he felt sick to his stomach the whole time, listening to the sub-human scuzz bag. Talk about murdering a whole family in the same tone of voice that you'd used to order lunch at Quiznos. It really was. Yeah. He told DeWitt he'd need eight grand to carry out the head, and he needed an address and a picture of the targets.

Once he had the money in hand, all four of the Williams'es would be dead within 24 hours. At this point, like undercover is usually do in these cases, Hurley gave DeWitt another chance to realize the magnitude of what he was doing and come to his senses. He said, They're going to be dead and they're not coming back. You understand that? Justin was amused. He chuckled and said, I never met anybody that was dead and came back. He said he'd get right on the picture in the cash and they'd be good to go. As he left Harley's truck, he gave him a casual fist bump.

Just two bros stock in business. No big deal. Oh my God. If the investigators had had any doubts about whether this guy was really serious about killing this family, they didn't have him anymore. They had almost everything they needed for the unrest now. All they were missing was the money. A couple of tense days went by with no word for him to wit, and the investigators all bit their nails down to the worrying that maybe he'd found somebody else to do the job cheaper. But finally, he texted Agent Hurley, aka Doug the hitman. He did a little snag, he said.

He didn't think he could come up with $8,000 in time. He could get $1,000 now, though, and pay Doug the rest later. And campers, I swear to God, this man texted his hitman, quote, Hey, my word is my bond. my father raised me that way. We can put it in writing if you want to. We can put it

in writing if you want to. This man is offering his hitman an IOU. I didn't know you could do a promissory note for contract killing, but that's good to know. Very,

very convenient. And of course, Agent Hurley can't believe his eyes. This is like Christmas morning. So he texted back, hell yes, he wanted it in writing, and they made plans to meet again the next day. Well, you know, Justin, my daddy raised me not to put my criminal intentions in writing and sign my name on him. So I guess my daddy's better at this than your daddy. Yeah, our dads could beat up your dad, Justin. Especially if it was two on one. Right. So Justin showed up all revved up and enthusiastic to the second meeting with Hitman Doug, and they got right down to business. Hurley said, all right, I go in there, I'm going to kill the kids

first, then I'm going to kill her, and then I'm going to bring Chad out, and he's going to see him all lie in there dead. And as Hurley was describing this horror movie scene of a terrified father being forced to watch his wife and children murdered in front of him, Justin DeWitt got a look on his face, like the people in those car commercials at Christmas, you know, taken off the blindfold to see the brand new beamer with the big red bow on top. Just delighted. Oh, he's such a creepy, makes my skin crawl. So then, still grinning ear-to-ear, Justin handed Hurley $1,000 in cash. I owe you seven more, right?

Right. And as Agent Hurley watched in total disbelief, DeWittless made good on his promise to write it all down in an IOU. He signed it, Hurley signed it, Hurley folded it up and put it in his pocket real quick. You know, so DeWitt couldn't grab it away from him and, like, eat it or something when the cops grabbed him a minute later. And then Hurley gave him one last chance to back out. You're sure you want to do this. All four of them. Dead.

Justin said he was sure. And he looked happier in a kid at Chuckie Cheese. He got to enjoy that happiness for about 15 seconds. And then, swarm, swarm, swarm. Detective swooped in from all directions, pulled our boy out of the truck and handcuffed him. Hurley said he almost threw up, just from all the tension and disgust of having to be in the same truck,

breathing the same air as this shit. stain. He had to kind of hold on to the side of the truck for a second and gather himself. But he did, and then he walked over to DeWitt and told him to look up and smile. There was an officer standing there, pointing a camera at the two of them. DeWitt asked why, and

Hurley said, because I'm a hunter. And today, you're my trophy. Now that is a badass thing to say to a guy, you just nailed on a murder for hire. Yeah. Dang. And I think Mrs. X, formerly of MI-F. would deliver that line beautifully.

Now, y'all, if there's one thing true crime campfire should have taught you by now, is that there is no limit to human dipshittery, especially when it comes to murder. So if you were thinking this story was about to wrap up, sit back a minute. Because we're not even close. We have not even begun to unravel the threads of the fascinating tapestry that is Justin DeWitt. So he got arrested. They tossed him in the Muscatine County Jail to wait for trial. Everybody's getting their ducks in a row for that.

And then a few weeks later, Agent Doug Hurley got a call from one of the officials at the jail. Apparently, our boy Justin's a slow learner. See, the whole hitman thing went so well for him the first time around that he decided to have another go at it. Sure. Now, he was trying to find a fellow inmate to help him take out Agent Hurley. And not just him. Justin also wanted Ron Roby and his wife, Sherilyn, taking care of. See, it's never just one person.

It's like, I want this guy and his entire family, including second cousins twice removed. Like, it's everybody. Unbelievable. So he figured if those three people weren't around to testify against him, his case would get dismissed. And he'd be back to mowing lawns in no time. Weren't there, like, six or seven other detectives listening in while he was in the truck with Agent Harley, like in real time? Yeah. Yep.

And couldn't those people testify to what they witnessed just as easily as Agent Hurley could? And also, didn't they have a recording of the whole thing? I didn't say he was bright, KT. Okay? Look, Justin's a big picture kind of guy. He doesn't like to get bogged down in details. That's just how his daddy raised him. This was the plan.

And he was sticking to it. Gotcha. Just checking. just checking. So now I'm sure feeling like they'd suddenly been thrust into an episode of Reno 9-1-1 or something, the investigators had to set up yet another hitman sting to nail Justin DeWitt. Deja vu. Thank God the inmate he'd gone to first about this nonsense had immediately ratted him out.

Because it's probably not that hard to find somebody in jail who's dumb and desperate enough to actually carry out a plan like this. Mm-hmm. So here we go again. This time, the role of Hitman number two went to another special agent, a friend of Doug Hurley's. He said a reference, I'm assuming. And they decided to add a little spice to the story on this one. They had Hitman 2.0 tell him that he worked for a powerful guy on the outside, an organized crime kind of guy who ran these kind of operations.

His name? The wolf. Oh, of course. What else could it possibly be? And because Justin DeWitt apparently had worms in his brain, he fell for this. Met with Hitman 2.0 in the visiting room, despite the fact that there are cameras and mics everywhere in there. And every move they made was being recorded. Oh, bless his heart.

Oh, Whitney, it gets better. After the initial meeting where Hitman 2.0 told him it was going to cost him 25 G's to take out Agent Hurley and the Robies. One of DeWitt's fellow inmates took him aside and told him, dude, that guy you were talking to in the visiting area, that's a cop. And Justin didn't believe him. I think that's my favorite part of the whole thing. Jesus Jones. Oh, my God.

Yep, just went right on with the plan, calling up his brother to help him get the money together for the hits. Justin, you are a card, my dude. I mean, in his defense, the wolf, that's way too convincing to be a lie. Everybody knows organized crime guys who set up murders for hire are always called the wolf. You're right. It's airtight.

So, of course, once they had enough evidence on tape, not just DeWitt's meetings with Hitman 2.0, but also his phone calls to his brother about money. They hauled Justin into an interrogation room and confronted him. His first reaction was, Nuh, I'm not trying to have anybody killed. I wouldn't do something that stupid again. You'd think.

But of course, once they broke the news that every conversation he'd had about the plot had been recorded, you could see it dawning on our guy that he was caught. At one point, he said, kind of quietly, oh, they record the visits? I thought it was just the outside phones. Yeah. Not so much, bud. Sorry. And at that point, it seemed like the fight sort of went out of him.

When the detective said, so you wanted these three people dead so they couldn't testify against you, Justin just nodded. One of the detectives asked him, so what do you think should happen to you? And I swear to God, DeWitt was like, nothing. Nothing. Well, you know, of all of the things he is, he is honest, right? This guy is such a freak. Justin, buddy, it's not the purge, okay? You can't just plot a murder anytime somebody rubs you wrong.

And I love that he thinks, like, he doesn't even feel the need to be socially acceptable about it and say, well, I guess I should be punished. Like, nothing. Just let me go. Justin, what the hell, man. Like the detectives would be like, oh, well, in that case, here are the keys for the handcuffs. His initial plan was to plead. guilty, but you can't keep a man like Justin down for long, and by the time his court date came around, he decided he wanted to go to trial. Plead not guilty. Good luck with that, bud. The jury

took 12 minutes to find him guilty. He was sentenced to 80 years in prison for the murder for higher plots, the one on the Williams family, and the one on Ron Roby and his wife, and the one on agent Hurley. I think the weirdest and most disturbing thing about this case is the apparent lack of any real motive for murdering these people in the first place. When the police finally clued Chad and Angie Williams into what was going on, they were completely baffled. Yeah, Chad was like, I don't know what the hell he's talking about. I never burned up a client's lawn. Right. Just total confusion. Nothing had ever happened that bore any resemblance to the story Justin had told the undercover hitman. So clearly the thing about the burned-up lawn and the lost contract was just

totally fabricated. So what the hell was going on? Like, why did he want these people dead? Chad Williams had bought DeWitt's landscaping and lawn care company not long before all this went down and he allowed DeWitt to keep like a 5% ownership stake. So one theory is that the dude just had like sellers remorse. Like maybe he just wished he hadn't sold his company and he just resented Chad for it. Maybe he thought he'd like magically get it back if the dude was dead or maybe he just didn't approve of how Chad and Angie were running the place. I don't know. And neither just Chad. You know, especially since according to Chad, they barely knew each other. Right. My question is this. Is if you're going to lie to a hit man about your motive, would you not try to make it, and hear me out, would you not try to make it a little more convincing than he burned up a lawn with chemicals?

This is what I'm saying. This man is a freak. It's like. He is such a weirdo. He groped my wife or something or like, oh, he stole money from me. Like, no, he burned up a lawn. Grass grows again. You can just grow more grass. It's fine. Very weird.

He is a weird man. So weird. Yeah. And he literally, they barely knew each other. Yeah. Like, he wasn't even around the company much. And when he was there, he and Chad just had kind of a nodding acquaintance. Like, it wasn't like there was this seething feud between the two of them.

There was nothing. like that. So whatever had created this like deep, fuming rage had apparently only existed in Justin Dewitt's fevered brain. Now, Justin is no longer with us. He died in prison in 2020 of heart disease. And he was only 39, too. So he must have some kind of genetic predisposition or something. But I suspect the Williams's and probably the Robes too, breathed a sigh of relief when they got the news. Because obviously, this was a guy who was not above trying to solicit murder from behind bars. Sure. And I think those are the scariest people, the ones that are still. trying to murder, even in prison.

So at least everybody can move on with their lives now and hopefully feel safe. And honestly, good for Ron Roby, for doing the right thing for once in his life, you know? And that's actually what he said on The Oxygen Show. I'm 67 and I've done the right thing once. You know? Well, Ron, maybe now that you've tried it, it'll stick, huh? Stop scamming people, bro. So that was bonkers, right?

One of the most thoroughly banana pants cases I think I've ever seen. So, moving on now to case, so moving on now to case two, we're calling on now to case two. This one, reality show, the attempted murder of Mike DiPolito. I bet some of y'all have heard this one already. So, for this one, campers were in Boynton Beach, Florida. August 5, 2009, a little after 7 a.m. 26-year-old Dahlia DiPolito was finishing up a workout at L.A. Fitness when her cell phone rang. It was a call nobody wants to get.

Ms. DiPolito, this is Sergeant Ranzi with the Boiton Beach Police Department. He told her it was urgent that she'd come home right away. It involves your husband. There's been an incident. Sergeant Ranzi wouldn't tell her anything more than that. Just get home now. So Dahlia raced back to the condo she shared with her 38-year-old husband, Mike, and when she got there, holy shit. There were police cars and cops everywhere, flashing red and blue lights, crime scene tape across the condo door. I mean, my heart drops just thinking about it. As Dahlia walked into the fray, Sergeant Ransy, the one who just called her and told her to come home, introduced himself.

He said, he was sorry to have to tell her this, but her husband, Michael, had been shot and killed. Dahlia started wailing before the sentence was all the way out of his mouth. And as she sobbed and hyperventilated, Sergeant Ransy led her over to a squad car. They were going to need to talk to her, he said. They needed her help to figure out who did this to Mike. Dahlia, of course, agreed to go with him to the police station and off they went. It was all very intense, very dramatic. But not everybody involved in the drama had all the facts.

Somebody was about to find out that nothing about this scene was what it appeared to be. But let's put a pin in that for now. Although Dahlia's defense attorney contests this, the general consensus is that she met her husband, Mike, when he booked her as an escort on Craigslist. He was married at the time, by the way, so real nice, Mike. But, you know, it could have been a Hollywood movie if it had worked out, Richard Gere and Julia Roberts.

If Dalia had been pretty woman instead of shitty woman, that is. I'm so proud of myself for that. It's a good one. Mike was, in Dahlia's own words, charming. Big guy, Jim Rat, with a megawatt smile and a great tan. He was in marketing, self-employed at the time with his own company, and he was 12 years older than Dahlia. He drove a shiny silver porch, had a nice new condo, and he seemed to have plenty of cash on hand. As Mike would soon find out, that meant he was singing Dahlia's favorite song.

Just a few months after Mike first booked Dahlia on Craigslist, he filed for divorce and put a ring on her finger. Talk about a whirlwind courtship. Dang. Mike fell hard for Dahlia, and she seemed to feel the same way. She liked to leave him little love notes on post-its around the condo. This is the happiest I've ever been. Stuff like that. Can we say love bombing? There was one small fly in the Chardonnay, though. Mike had a little bit of past on him. In fact, he was a convicted felon, out on parole. Years earlier, he'd done time in prison for scamming investors, cold calling him, talking him into investing in the foreign exchange market, and pocketing their cash. According to an article in the Broward Palm Beach New Times, Mike lived pretty high off this con for a year or so, taking about $200K and spending it on designer clothes, jewelry, fancy hotels, phone sex.

This was 2001. And I swear to God, pay by the minute psychic hot. lines. I think that's my favorite detail about this entire case, actually, the fact that Mike DiPolito was into the psychic friends network. Yeah, a lot of good it did him. Miss Cleo didn't see Delia coming, did she, Mike? You know, what good is a psychic if they can't warn you off the girl who's going to steal your heart and then try and hire a hitman to kill you, for God's sakes? You know, if I wanted some wishy-washy bullshit, like, I see change in your future. I'd just go see a therapist. I need details. Damn it. Preferably lottery numbers, but details.

About as detailed as a fortune cookie. Despite the lovey-doveiness of their early courtship, the Diplito's brand-new marriage didn't take long to hit the skids. I, for one, am shocked, aren't you? Before long, Dahlia was texting her friends about how much Mike irritated her. She thought it was gross that he'd gotten liposection on his love handles. She thought it was boring. She thought he was shallow. Yeah, that one's rich coming from Dahlia, as y'all will soon see. Dahlia's about as deep as a puddle.

And by the way, she was very fond of cosmetic surgery herself. So hypocrite. Yeah. Deep as a puddle and a drought, maybe. And she hated Mike's mom, called her psycho trailer trash, according to the New Times article. So things were a little bit tense. And then there were the finances. One of the conditions of his probation was that he make restitution to the victims of a scam.

He owed almost $200 grand. Shortly after they got married, Mike started moving money from his account, Dahlia's, under her maiden name. He ended up moving about $100K over to her, a few thousand at a time over the couple of months. Mike said he was doing this because he wanted to pay off his restitution in one big swoop so he could be free of his probation and really get on with his life. Dahlia had told him that she thought this was a great idea, and she offered to pay half the amount for him. So, when Mike transferred that $100K over to Dahlia, his understanding was that she was going to add $91,000 of her own money to it and pay off his restitution in full. Dahlia was working at a high-end real estate agency at this point, so this seemed plausible.

But Dahlia didn't pay off shit. She kept Mike's money for herself. One morning, a neighbor called the police to report a screaming argument coming from Mike and Dahlia's condo. They told the officers that they were fighting about money. Rout row. And it wasn't just money causing stress in the DiPolito house. Within months of their wedding, all sorts of weird stuff started happening. One time, they went out to Mike's car to find cops milling around it.

They'd gotten an anonymous tip, they said, that Mike was selling drugs. They had a warrant to search the car. They didn't find anything, but it was unsettling. Who the hell would call the cops on Mike and try to get him in trouble? A few weeks later, damned if the same thing didn't happen again. Cops showed up, said they'd gotten a tip that there were drugs in Mike's car, and this time the tipster had been specific about where they should look. The drugs were under the spare tire, they said.

And when the cops searched the car, lo and behold, there were two little baggies of Coke, just where the caller had said they'd be. Mike told him, look, I think somebody's setting me up. He told them about the previous incident and said he suspected his ex-wife was behind it. And he must be a pretty smooth talker because they let him go. No arrest, no nothing. Not long after that, Mike found a creepy note on his car. It said, and I'm quoting here from Lisa Robb's article in the New Times,

Bring $40,000, 9.30 a.m. Back to this parking space and put it under the car parked behind you. Do not tell anyone, especially your wife. I will tell you all that has happened to you is happening. happening to you and will happen on Friday. Tell no one. Come alone. Signed someone who will help you. Now, Mike, as you can imagine, was freaked out. And he called the police about the note. He was afraid for his life. He said so much so that he was coming unraveled a little bit. He said he almost wished whoever was tormenting him would just get it over with and shoot him already.

Poor dude. And he told the cops he had an idea of who might be behind the note. See, years ago, before he struck out on his own as a con man, he'd run scams with a couple guys who had ties to the mob. The Manano crime family, specifically. He wasn't sure why, but he thought maybe they were behind this, trying to scare him, like maybe pissed off that he was trying to go straight. The cops figured he was probably right. But, as Yellow had probably figured out by now, he wasn't. This had nothing to do with the mob. The danger Mike was in was a lot closer to home.

enter a guy named Muhammad Shahadi In late July of 2009 Muhammad called the Boynton Beach PD with a heck of a story He said that a friend of his He called her Delilah Was plotting to have her husband murdered And she'd asked him to help her do it

He said he and Delilah had a history together They hadn't been boyfriend and girlfriend Exactly more friends with benefits But he knew her pretty well After a few years have seen each other off and on Muhammad had gotten married, and he and Delilah had lost touch. She'd gotten engaged to a wealthy architect, squeezed a new luxury car and a $40,000 engagement ring out of the guy, and left him.

This was a pattern with Delilah, Mohammed said. She liked money. Other peoples. Now, she was married to this new guy, Mike, and recently she'd reached back out to Muhammad. Sweet talked him, told him she'd been missing him. And after a lot of flirting back and forth, she'd asked him if he knew anybody who could kill her new husband for.

her. Her motive? Money. Delilah told him she'd already taken about 200k of Mike's money, and he was starting to suspect her. So far, she'd been able to hide the theft, but she didn't think she could hide it much longer. Muhammad said she'd told her husband she was pregnant to kind of distract him from the money issue, but she wasn't, and she had no desire to be. So there was an expiration date on how long that little trick could work. Plus, Mike was connected. He'd worked for the mob years ago? What if he found out she'd stolen his money and got some of his mob friends to come after her? Now this part was weird since Delilah had originally told him that Mike was this really sweet, kind of annoying nerd. She made it sound like his sweetness was actually part of what

bugged her about him. So he didn't sound like the kind of dude who'd sick his like mob friends on her. Muhammad figured the real truth was that Delilah just wanted Mike out of the way so she could take everything he had left, money, condo, etc. Now, Murder hadn't been Delilah's plan A, by the way. And of course, Delilah is Dahlia, of course. I'm not sure why Mohammed called her Delilah, but he did. Before she'd started talking about hitmen, he said, Dahlia had tried getting Mike arrested for drugs. Yep. Remember those anonymous calls about cocaine in Mike's car? There you go.

The first time the plan had fallen completely flat because the cops hadn't found the drugs Dahlia had stashed in the gas tank. the second time they'd found the Coke right where she told them it would be, but Mike had managed to talk his way out of an arrest. She was pissed about that one. Even more pissed when Mike's mom and a few of his friends told them they suspected Dahlia was behind the whole thing. Mike didn't believe it, said, no way, she'd never do me like that. Oh, Mike. You poor dope. If true crime has taught me anything, it's yes, they will. would, do you like that? Yes, they would. Muhammad assured the police that this murder stuff was not idle talk. This woman was

serious. When the planting drugs thing didn't work, Dahlia had started researching poisons. She told him she'd put antifreeze in Mike's tea, but he said it tasted gross and spit it out. Soon after that, she'd asked Muhammad to buy her a gun. He said no. Later, he came back to his car after running into a gas station for a soda to find Dahlia swiping his gun out of the glove box and trying to slip it in her purse. God. Muhammad was starting to freak out. He didn't want any part of this noise, and he knew if he didn't call the police, this

Mike guy wouldn't be around much longer. If Muhammad didn't come through for her on this and he had no intention of doing so, she'd find somebody else to do it for her. Yeah. Dahlia was good at getting men to do things for her. It was one of her superpowers, he told them. She has like a two-faced personality. Like, if she doesn't have it her way, then it's the highway.

Hearing all this, the Boynton police detectives asked Muhammad if he'd be willing to help them with a sting operation to catch Dahlia red-handed. He agreed to wear a wire and have a camera installed in his car. The camera captured their conversations. Muhammad sounding like he'd rather be literally anywhere else on earth than having this conversation with Dalia. and Dahlia acting like she was just planning a birthday party or something, casual as can be. At one point, Muhammad asked her if she was worried that Mike's mom might suspect her after the murder. Dahlia said, come on, nobody's going to be able to point the finger at me. She figured the police would assume Mike's shady mafia contacts had done them in.

And if they didn't, she'd make sure they did. Before she left, she gave Muhammad $1,200 to hire the hitman for her. And this is unreal. Right before Dahlia left Muhammad's car, she started getting on his case about looking so serious. She's like, can you smile? You haven't smiled in like forever.

Muhammad, who I'm sure could not believe what he was hearing, said, what do you want? You're plenty of murder. That ain't easy to smile about. Right. Interesting little interaction, isn't it? See, for Dahlia, this was no big thing. She couldn't understand why her middleman

was being such a Debbie Downer about it. God, Muhammad, cheer up. Enter the faux hitman. Dahlia met with him in a drugstore parking lot with a hidden camera catching the whole thing. She told the undercover, I'm a lot tougher than I look. I know you're thinking, oh, what a cute little girl. But believe me, I'm not.

Yeah, I believe you. She's like one of those girls that, like, goes up to a dude and is like, look how big your hand is compared to mine. That is Dahlia's personality. Yeah, definitely. Like fake hitman always do, the undercover tried to give Dahlia an out, a way to change your mind. Are you sure you want to do this? He's going to be gone. And once he's gone, you can't take it back. Dalia seemed impatient with the question. She said, I'm sure. I'm 5,000% sure. And then handing him a stack of pictures of Mike and their condo, she said,

wipe my fucking prints off those fucking pictures. Ooh, cold as ice. They agreed that Dahlia would be out of the house on the morning of the hit by 6 a.m. She'd go to L.A. Fitness to work out where plenty of people would see her. The hitman would enter the condo and shoot Mike in the head. Make it look like a botched robbery. Dahlia said that all sounded fine. And two days later, it was showtime.

The detectives, who were clearly committed to the theatrics of the whole thing, waited for Dahlia to leave for the gym, then had what I can only assume was the world's most awkward conversation with poor Mike DiPolito, drove him to the police station to keep him out of sight and set up the whole fake crime scene. And then Sergeant Ransy called Dahlia at the gym. There's been an incident involving your husband. We need you to get home now. In that moment when Dahlia gets the news from the detective at the crime scene, by the way, y'all can hear the air quotes in my voice, right?

When they tell her Mike's been murdered and she starts to wail, I swear to God, the noise she makes is the most ear-bleedingly annoying sound in the entire history of sound. And every time I hear it, it makes me want to harm things, like preferably her and her flipping vocal cords that are making that horrible sound. And by the way, she started crying before he even finished the sentence. Like before he said your husband is dead, she was already crying. So smooth, Dalia, well play. They always do stuff like that. At the station, they plunked Dalia down in an interview room and started asking her if she could think of anybody who wanted her husband dead. And she didn't list anybody by name, but she did talk about how a lot of people were pissed that Mike had gotten probation in his case,

implying, of course, that there were any number of potential killers out there with a grudge against Mike. And then suddenly, the detective flipped the script on our girl. You wouldn't want him dead yourself, would you? Dahlia didn't flinch. Just said, no. Everything was going great in their marriage. She said, no problems whatsoever. Yeah.

Lyer, liar, yoga pants on fire, Ms. Dahlia. And, of course, Mike was watching all this on a closed circuit TV in the next room, just shaking his head. Like, can you even imagine what that poor bastard was going through? I cannot. Mm-mm. And then, in a moment I wish I'd been there in person to see, the door to the interrogation room opened,

and in-walked a couple of deputies with a handcuffed detective, whoever, the undercover hitman. I love how much they were obviously loving, like the amateur theatrics here. It's just so funny. Like, they marched the hitman into the room and barked at him to raise his head up

and look at Dahlia. And the detective said, Have you ever seen this man, Ms. Dippolito? Dahlia, of course, shook her head. I've never seen him before in my life. And one of the deputies holding on to the hitman's arm said, you know this lady? Put your head up.

Look at her. And, of course, he shook his head. No. Well, then what were you doing coming out of her house? Huh? Eventually, they shuffled the guy out, and after a couple more minutes of whiny denials from Dahlia, I didn't do anything. Then they finally dropped the bomb. That hit man you spoke to earlier? That was an undercover detective. We have you on tape, Mrs. Dippolito, the whole thing. Five thousand percent sure. Remember saying that? But I got to hand it to her, our girl, Dalia. She wasn't admitting to anything. Just I didn't do anything. I don't know what you're talking about.

And then they really dropped the hammer. They brought Mike into the room. And Dahlia immediately turned on the waterworks, like, Mike, oh my God, come here, come here, please. And Mike, who had just found out that his bride of six months had been trying to have him killed, just stood there like, what? No! And then, of course, they just marched him out again. Later that night, Dalia used her phone time to call, who else?

Mike. She wanted to know if he could do anything to help her make all this horribly unfair, senseless persecution go away. Like could he give her some money or help her get an attorney? And I've heard this call and it's so funny, you can just hear the disbelief in Mike's voice as he's talking to her. Like he just cannot believe the audacity that this bitch is calling him for help. And Dahlia, for her part, seems genuinely shocked that he's not willing to help. It's just completely bonkers. Dali's defense, I shit you not, was that the whole thing had been Mike's idea. It was just a publicity stunt to help them get a reality TV show. You know, like you do. I swear to God. She said that she and Mike had been watching a ton of reality TV like Real Housewives and The Bachelor and they'd come up with an elaborate plan to get a show of their own. As Dahlia told 2020, we look better than those people.

If they can do it, why can't we? Ego much? I don't fully understand the story here, probably because it's impossible to make nonsense, make sense. But basically, she claimed that they were going to set up this hitman scenario and then, I don't know, get arrested and then say it was all a joke. Call the media. I literally have no idea. I don't know. Like, sike, we're just kidding.

Detectives, let us out now. That being said, I would watch the shit out of that show. I'm just saying. I'm not proud of it, but. And you're not going to believe this. The jury didn't buy it. Get out. No, it's just shocking.

Despite that ironclad defense, they found dogs. Dahlia guilty is charged, but I guess given the circus the story has been from day one, it shouldn't surprise us to hear that the road to justice for Mike has been a little bit rocky. Dahlia appealed the guilty verdict. Her attorney argued that the jury pool had been tainted, that one of the jurors had seen the newspaper article that mentioned Dahlia trying to poison Mike with antifreeze and a Starbucks drink and brought this juicy little tidbit up during deliberations. Now, jurors are only...

allowed to base their decisions on evidence presented at trial. They can't bring in stuff they saw on TV or read in the paper. So the appeals court threw out Dahlia's first conviction. So time for round two. The prosecution was feeling pretty good. I mean, they got a conviction the first time. They had the recordings. I mean, have you ever seen a more cut and dried case of murder for hire? I haven't. But Campers, this was Florida. Yeah, and as we've seen before, Casey Anthony, Florida juries,

they can be a scoge unpredictable. This one couldn't reach a consensus about Miss Dahlia. They hung, 50-50. Unbelievable. And as Dahlia and her attorney flounced out of the courtroom looking smug, the prosecutors told the press that they fully intended to try

Dahlia a third time. When her attorney got wind of this, He found the nearest bouquet of microphones and thumped his chest like a pissed off little gorilla in a tailored suit. They want a round three? Bring it on. Oh, settle down, Brian. Your client ain't being persecuted here, bro. She's guiltier than hot buttered sin and you know it. Talking about her like she's Joan of Arc.

And speaking of Joan of Arc, Dahlia worked pretty hard to try and rehab her reputation in between trials. She did a nauseating interview on 2020 where she cried and showed. off her ankle monitor, she was on house arrest, talked about how hard it was to watch everybody else go about their normal lives while she was stuck inside, robbed of her freedom. She talked about how her face was what got her through the long days. The 2020 cameras captured her praying at the dinner table with her mom, listening to Christian Rock. Oh my God. You need a barf bucket yet? Yeah, me too. Fortunately, though, in Dahlia's case, the third time was the charm. At trial Number three, the jury found her guilty after a quick 90-minute deliberation and the judge sentenced her to 16 years in prison.

About damn time. It should have been worse, if you ask me. By the time she finally got sentenced, she'd been on house arrest for eight years. Not freedom per se, but certainly a lot freer than she deserved to be. Now, she's finally serving her time, and I, for one, am 5,000% sure she's right where she belongs. So, Camper's a bit of advice. If you want something done right, I'm kidding. You shouldn't murder anybody. But if you're going to, and if you're going to hire a hitman, consider helping us break that glass ceiling and hiring Mrs. X. She's on Craigslist now, I hear. So that was a wild one, right, campers?

You know we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And we want to send a shout out to a few of our newest patrons. Thank you so much to a. Anasia, Amber, Joni, Alma, and Sadie, one of our youngest campers, who we here had a bit of a collision with her twin and got a black eye for her trouble. Sadie, girl, it's just going to make you look like the badass that you are, so put some ice on it. We hope you feel better soon.

The trick, Sadie, is to tell people, you should have seen the other guy. Anytime they ask what happened. And, like, you don't need to explain further than that. Exactly. And y'all, if you're not yet a patron, you're missing out. patrons of our show get every episode ad free at least a day early sometimes more plus an extra episode a month and once you hit the five dollar and up categories you get even more cool stuff a free sticker at five dollars a rad enamel pen while supplies last at ten virtual events with katie and me and we're always

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