Four months after meeting Mike Dippolito as a client, former escort Dalia Dippolito (Mohammed) married Mike Dippolito in 2009. Within 6 months of their marriage, she hired a man to kill her husband. Fortunately, that man was a police officer. Another man Dalia Dippolito was seeing reported to police that he was afraid something was going to happen to either Mike or Dalia Dippolito and the investigation began. Many phone calls were recorded along with a video of Dalia in the undercover police officer’s car stating that she was “5000 percent sure” that she wanted Mike Dippolito dead and agreed to pay a $1200 deposit.
After the police staged a crime scene at her house and told her that her husband was shot and murdered, she was taken to the police station for what she believed to be an informal interview. When asked if she knew anyone who would want to harm her husband, she told a story about “guys” involved in organized crime being mad that Mike Dippolito was using money he owed them to pay off his probation. After she was finished with this story, the interrogators told her about how they found out through their investigation that Mike Dippolito opened the front door and was taken upstairs where he was shot twice and killed. She argued this, saying he would not have opened the door because they had cameras. The investigators exited the room and pretended to have someone call to see if the house had been burglarized before coming back and telling her that they knew she hired the hitman. The investigators brought in the man she hired in handcuffs before telling her that he is actually a police officer. She denied “doing anything” despite video and audio evidence. The video and transcript of this interrogation can be found here.
There have been 3 trials for Dalia Dippolito’s case. In 2011 she was convicted and sentenced to 20 years, but this was overturned on appeal. The second trial in 2016 ended in a hung jury, and in 2017, a third trial ended in a guilty verdict. She tried to get a fourth trial, but her conviction was upheld. Dalia Dippolito claims the police department set her up to impress the reality TV show, “COPS”.