Bond Given To Boynton Beach Woman Convicted Of Murder-For-Hire
PALM BEACH COUNTY (CBS4) – A $500,000 bond was issued to a Boynton Beach woman who tried to hire a hit man to kill her newly-wed husband on Tuesday.
Dalia Dippolito and her attorney lobbied for the bond as an appeal to overturn her conviction and sentence is pending.
Dippolito, 28, paid a hit man $3,000 to kill her husband, Micheal, in August 2009. But the hit man was an undercover Boynton Beach police officer who captured the exchange on tape.
Convicted by a jury earlier this summer on solicitation to commit murder charges, Dippolito was sentenced to 20 years in prison by Circuit Judge Jeffrey Colbath.
Her attorney, Michael Salnick, hoped for a bond no more than $150,000 and offered to relinquish both Dippolito and her mother's passport in exchange for her release. However, Colbath opted for the half-million dollar bond after Assistant State Attorney Laura Burkhart Laurie asked Colbath to deny bond altogether or place it at $350,000.
Last May, a jury convicted Dippolito of plotting to kill her husband Michael in August 2009. She was caught on a police surveillance tape telling the hit man, who was really an undercover Boynton Beach police officer, that she was sure she wanted Michael Dippolito dead. She offered him $3,000 to do the job.
Dippolito's defense was that she was acting for a reality TV show.
Michael Dippolito denied her claim.
"If she would have owned it, like a normal person, and would have owned up to something I would respect that," he said. "Instead, when I get to court I hear that I want a reality show. Not only was she…her lawyers alone… it's ridiculous. You should have just said space aliens landed and they did it. That would have been a better defense."
During her trial, prosecutors said the claim that she was doing this to appear on a realty TV show fell apart when she didn't respond properly when police set up a fake crime scene and told her that her husband was dead.
"If this was a reality show stunt, when she was told by Sgt. Ramsey that her husband had been killed… her real reaction would have been, 'What do you mean, how was he killed? This was a stunt! He can't really be dead!'," prosecutor Elizabeth Parker told the jury in her closing argument.
According to court records, Dippolito had tried twice before tried to kill her husband. One time, she allegedly tried to hire a Riviera Beach man to kill her husband but he later reneged. She also allegedly spiked her husband's drink with odorless anti-freeze. He reportedly spit out the drink after commenting that it tasted like gasoline.
Dalia Dippolito and Michael Dippolito are in the process of getting a divorce, CBS4's Ted Scouten reported.
