Poison Candy: The Murderous Madam (19 page)

SALNICK: You’re certainly a celebrity now, aren’t you, Mr. Dippolito?

PARKER: Objection. Argumentative.

COLBATH: Sustained.

SALNICK: I don’t have any other questions.

In my redirect, I tried to put out a lot of little fires, but most of the heavy lifting had already been done for me. I got Mike to explain that he had discussed the Erik Tal situation with the Boynton Beach PD, and at one point even picked him out of a lineup.

On the subject of the Marlins game that Mike took Dalia and her whole family to at his own expense, which Salnick used as an example of how he had squandered potential restitution money and defied the provisions of his probation, I just let Mike expand on his motivations for a moment.

PARKER: Besides being a Phillies fan, was there another reason you took the defendant’s family to that Marlins game back in 2009?

MIKE: Yeah. I was sitting on the couch at her mother’s house with Paprique, her grandfather, and the old man always watched baseball. And he didn’t speak that great English, but we would talk as best we could. And I asked, “You ever been to a game?” And the old guy, somehow I understood, he says, “No, I’ve never been to a game.” So then I started researching games, and I saw there was a Phillies game, and the old man, basically we took him. It was for both reasons. Basically for him, though. It was a good reason to go to a baseball game.

And on the pretext of explaining his demeanor at the police station, which Salnick suggested proved he knew about the bust ahead of time, I basically just let Mike walk the jury through what he was feeling on the morning his world turned upside down. His response was not especially articulate—it was barely even coherent—but as far as putting the jury inside his head and letting them take that ride, I thought it was pretty close to perfect.

PARKER: Why were you so calm that morning at the police department?

MIKE: I just, I mean, I didn’t really, you know—I was in shock. And, I mean, I was in shock. And also, all of this stuff that had been happening to me in the months prior, it just kind of fell into place with it. But I, you know. ’Cause you have to understand: I thought I was crazy for the longest time. ’Cause I know, it’s just . . . every time I go to the car, the truck, I’m just waiting for something to happen. And then this happens on top of it, that’s why I froze at the door. I didn’t know how to react. And, uh, you know, everybody’s just talking to me, talking to me, talking to me. And I’m hearing ’em, but I’m really not hearing ’em. And I guess I just got quieter. I don’t know. But maybe my reaction wasn’t like everyone else’s would be. I was a little shocked, obviously. And the other part, honestly? At that point, I mean [deep breath] when that happened, after all that’s been happening and all I’ve really been trying to do, I’m thinking to myself, I am just so much in trouble now. And this just even makes it all the worse, that it’s my wife. So my hopes of getting my money for probation obviously were smashed. I realized that that was not going to happen.

PARKER: Okay, how did the incident affect how you thought your life was going to be in the future?

MIKE: It just smashed me. Everything was done. That was it.

Expanding on that, I referred Mike to one of his last lines to Dalia in her jailhouse call to him: “Don’t say [shit]. I just said I’d help you, okay?”

PARKER: Why do you tell her to stop talking?

MIKE: She just keeps lying to me: “I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me. It was someone who looked like me. I didn’t do it. I love you, I love you.” I mean, how much do I have to . . . It’s fourteen pages of it. It’s ridiculous. I’m trying to talk to her and be nice, and she’s just telling me how she didn’t do anything.

For the first time, I noticed Dalia smiling in court. But I also thought she looked like she might cry.

PARKER: In that entire transcript that you just reviewed, did she ever at any time say in the phone call to you that this was a reality show stunt, and you need to come clean?

MIKE: No.

PARKER: I have no further questions.

Salnick opted for a recross, citing a few small points, like noting Mike’s comment at the end of his phone call with Dalia—“I’ll fix it. I’ll help you.”— presumably as a coded reference to the reality plot. But really, I think, he just wanted to get to the following:

SALNICK: And this reality thing didn’t work out the way you wanted it to, did it?

Mike looks confused.

PARKER: Objection, your honor. Beyond the scope.

SALNICK: How is it beyond the scope? It’s the last question she asked you.

COLBATH: Overruled.

SALNICK: (suddenly stern) This reality thing didn’t work out the way you wanted, is that correct?

MIKE: What reality thing?

SALNICK: And this reality thing would have gotten your probation violated because of the way it went down. Is that correct?

MIKE: What reality thing?

SALNICK: And this whole reality thing was actually orchestrated by you, wasn’t it?

MIKE: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

SALNICK: Was your wife ever on a reality show?

MIKE: Not that I knew of.

SALNICK: She never told you about
Jaime Kennedy’s Experiment
?

This was an MTV
Pranked
-style reality series that Dalia claims to have appeared on as an extra, although I’ve watched it half a dozen times and I can’t find her. In the sketch, Kennedy, doing a bad Pacino in
Scarface
, orders a hit on a hapless party guest.

MIKE: No.

SALNICK: Your wife never told you she was on a show that had to do with a fake hit?

PARKER: Objection. Beyond the scope.

COLBATH: Overruled.

SALNICK: And you certainly wouldn’t lie about anything—you’d come clean about everything. Is that right?

PARKER: Objection. Argumentative.

SALNICK: Would you say anything that wasn’t true under oath?

MIKE: No.

SALNICK: Would you say anything that wasn’t true to your probation officer?

MIKE: Yes.

SALNICK: Thank you.

And with that, Mike finally was able to step down.

One thing Mike did during the trial—I still don’t know if it was intentional—was to consistently refer to Dalia as “my wife” rather than Dalia or Miss Dippolito. It made it seem like he was still in love with her, which I guess in some way he must have been. After his testimony was finished, Mike didn’t attend the rest of the trial.

MIKE: I glanced at her, but I didn’t stare. I didn’t mad-dog her or any of that stuff. People were like, why aren’t you in court every day? I’m like, what’s the point—to give her dirty looks? It was just weird. Her reactions were just not normal—any of them. At one point, I’m on the stand talking about how she was acting—“It wasn’t me . . . It was her . . .”—and I glanced at her, and she was laughing. I’m thinking to myself that she was laughing quite a bit in court, and—if I’m sitting there? You wouldn’t see me laughing. I wouldn’t laugh once. What’s comical about any of this?

A
fter three days of Mike on the stand, I put up a series of witnesses who could back up his version of the story, front-loading the line with expert witnesses, individuals in uniform, and physical evidence and documents, following Mike’s experiences chronologically, hoping their cumulative weight would hit a tipping point that would be impossible for the defense to recover from. These were the tacks in the carpet, to hold the story line in place until my major witnesses could document Dalia’s master plan and motives before the defense had a chance to come in and pull the rug out from under all of us.

First up was Sergio Calderon Obregon, the paralegal who met Mike and Dalia on the courthouse steps in Miami to receive legal papers related to Mike’s administrative probation for the lawyer Dalia had so graciously hired for Mike. Sergio was actually a luggage salesman from Columbia living in Miramar who went to Randa’s church. We got his identity by tracing the text number on Dalia’s phone and determined that he lived in Broward County and had a child custody case pending in Palm Beach County. I had him served with a subpoena to appear at the State Attorney’s Office, but purposely omitted my name, Dalia’s name, and the case number in order to preserve the element of surprise. He called wanting to know what this was all about, and my assistant, Terri Bramhall, successfully stiff-armed him, arranging for us to meet at a designated place and time. When investigator Glenn Wescott, Lindsey Marcus, and I met him in Broward at a Dunkin’ Donuts near where he worked, he was convinced he was about to
be blindsided on his custody hearing. I started out by confirming his phone number and then asked him how he knew Randa.

Halfway through my questions, as I was concentrating on how well he knew Dalia (he met her once at a birthday party), he stopped and asked me, “Is that why you’re here?” He’d been living in a media bubble and had no idea she had been arrested. He was so relieved that he was prepared to tell me anything.

According to his testimony, he was contacted first by Randa and shortly after by Dalia in July 2009 asking if he would be available to meet Dalia and her husband on the courthouse steps in Miami and pick up some papers from them—he remembers it as a handwritten letter to a judge. He exchanged a handful of texts with Dalia instructing him to dress professional and where they would meet him. She told him that if questioned he was just there to get the paper to give to the lawyer named Richard. Mike tried to ask him questions during the handoff, but he played dumb—not a stretch, given how little he had been told.

PARKER: And did Randa tell you what to do with the paper after you left the courthouse?

SERGIO: I called her and she told me to just throw it away.

He had no idea who Richard the lawyer was. The fact that he seemed completely in the dark about his role in any larger design worked in his favor on the stand. He just confirmed his piece of the jigsaw puzzle and stepped down.

Next I put up four cops, one after another: Williams, Wilson, Hooper, and Gilbert. Officer Paul Williams was one of the Manalapan police officers who responded to the Ritz-Carlton event. Williams, a thirty-two-year veteran of law enforcement, testified that police received an anonymous complaint from a woman identified only as “Sandy” who gave the license number and a description of Mike’s Tahoe and claimed someone was dealing drugs out of the vehicle in front of the Ritz-Carlton. Sandy never met them in the lobby like she promised. When they approached him,
Mike appeared shocked but immediately gave his permission to search the vehicle.

Palm Beach Gardens Officer Robert Wilson is the officer Mohamed introduced to Dalia in mid-March at his store, Cross Roads Market & Deli. Mohamed repeatedly identified him as ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement), but in fact he belongs to the Tactical Crime Unit, working as an undercover narcotics agent. Although he often wore long hair and a beard and moustache as part of his cover identity, for his testimony Wilson was clean-shaven and kempt. He told me how Mohamed, whom he knew only as Mike, set up a first call with his friend Dalia.

PARKER: When you spoke with her on the phone, what did she say to you?

WILSON: She explained to me a situation she was having with her husband. She said he had a violent temper, he was on probation, and that he frequently brought illegal narcotics into the city of Palm Beach Gardens, in particular the Yard House Restaurant. She then went further to ask my assistance in arresting him for possession of illegal narcotics in Palm Beach Gardens.

The fact that Mohamed put Dalia in touch with an undercover narcotics officer from the appropriate jurisdiction to arrest Mike shows me they were plotting to get him arrested for drug possession and dealing from day one. Wilson met with Dalia in person a week later at Mohamed’s store, where she reiterated vague concerns for her safety but exhibited no signs of abuse. She also continued to offer to pay him if he would arrest her husband, practically guaranteeing he would have drugs on him.

WILSON: Each time she would say that to me, I would explain that it was my job, and that I would not take any money for any type of investigation—it’s part of what I do.

When she continued to offer him compensation over the space of several phone calls, he referred her to the Boynton Beach Police Department,
since that’s where she lived, and severed all contact with her. After he saw her arrest on the news, he notified the BBPD. Wilson confirmed his phone number and the dates and times they spoke. On cross, Salnick noted that in his deposition, Wilson identified Dalia as “a thin woman with blonde hair,” although it didn’t seem to have any impact on the jury.

West Palm Beach Officer Mary Hooper, extremely buff and by the book, was the officer who took pity on Mike during the CityPlace drug search and cut him loose. She had eight years on street patrol, most recently with the weapons and narcotics Quick Response Team, and before that was with the Army CID Drug Suppression Team. Her experience told her the bust was too easy, noting the suspect appeared polite but clearly shocked, while his female companion mainly seemed annoyed, and she used her discretion accordingly.

On cross, Salnick pushed back against the notion that a suspect’s surprise at an officer finding drugs on him was proof of innocence, but Hooper stood her ground.

SALNICK: But he convinced you that he wasn’t aware, correct?

HOOPER: He did not convince me.

SALNICK: Well, he obviously did, because you didn’t arrest him, right?

HOOPER: No, my training and experience convinced me.

She challenged his use of the word “upset” to describe Mike’s state of mind, preferring instead “concerned,” and noted that Mike confided to her that his ex-wife, Maria, might be responsible.

“The call was that there was like a kilo of cocaine under the tire in the back of my truck—not a baggie with a gram and a half in it,” says Mike today. “I mean, I don’t even smoke, and it was stuffed in a cigarette pack … All she had to do was put it in the glove box.” Mike also notes that during the trial, Hooper spotted him in the hallway and confided that the reason they let him go was because they knew it was Dalia. Her reaction had been all wrong.

Finally, Officer Douglas Gilbert of the Boynton Beach Police Department, ex-NYPD, was dispatched to Mike and Dalia’s townhouse on the morning of May 27 after they had discovered the threatening note on their windshield as they were coming out of the gym.

GILBERT: From the moment I met Mr. Dippolito, he was very nervous speaking to me about the occurrences. Looked a little paranoid, troubled, a little anxiety.

PARKER: Who do you think was in charge that day?

GILBERT: Because of Mr. Dippolito’s demeanor, I want to say Dalia was more in charge of what was going on. She was able to communicate the story better to me … She was concerned, but more calm than he was.

Dalia wrote Mike’s statement when he seemed too overwhelmed to do so. Gilbert filed the report as a suspicious incident, but later amended it to phone threats after hearing details of the phone call and the death threats made against Dalia and Mike. Dalia neglected to tell Officer Gilbert that she was the one who had called the number on the note.

Next I called to the stand Meir Cohen, the owner and president of TelTech Corp., based in Toms River, New Jersey. Meir was my expert witness on the phenomenon of “spoof calls,” a term Dalia had used (“it seems like somebody just like spoofed the call”) to describe her phone call from the mythical Detective Hurley during her conversation with Detectives Llopis and McDeavitt on their ride to the police station. A “spoof card” allows the caller to protect their privacy by masking their Caller ID, substituting any other number in its place, which is the spoof part. Although I could have just subpoenaed the TelTech records and admitted them into evidence with a business records affidavit from the custodian of records for TelTech, I needed someone to explain the records and how a spoof call is made, so I flew Meir in from New Jersey. A good-natured, unflappable character on the stand, Meir claims to have been involved with the spoof card’s creation, so I’ll let him do the honors:

PARKER: How does a person go about spoofing a call?

COHEN: So they would buy the spoof card on our website,
SpoofCard.com
, and then they would be provided with an access number and a PIN number. And they would call that access number, very similar to a regular calling card, then they would enter their PIN number in, and they would be presented with an IVR [interactive voice response], which is a whole bunch of automated options. It will first ask them for the number they want to call, then it will ask them for the number they want to appear as a Caller ID, and it will ask them if they want to change their voice, if they’d like to record the call, and then the call will be put through.

PARKER: … Is spoofing illegal?

COHEN: Spoofing is legal as long as it’s not done with intent to cause harm or obtain anything of value. People use it to protect their privacy. Obviously, it could be misused, but if it’s used in the proper way, it is legal.

As an example, I asked him if he could place a call from the phone on the judge’s bench and make it look like it was coming from the White House. He was confident that he could.

During my investigation, once I had figured out who Mike Stanley was, I pulled his phone records to see who he was involved with and what he was doing. The day the records arrived, I started digging into them and was up most of the night. When I compared them against a time line, I discovered that around the time “Richard” (the lawyer) was calling Mike offering to set up administrative probation, Mike Stanley was repeatedly calling a number in Big Sur, California—an odd number with a lot of zeros in it. I thought it might be a business number, so I dialed it at 3 a.m. It picked up immediately and a recorded voice said, “Enter your PIN number.” If it were a commercial business, there would have been some pro forma greeting. It could have been simply a voice-mail service. But when I did a Google search on the number, it took me to TelTech’s “SpoofCard.com” page.

The next day, I contacted Detective Ace Brown and asked him to see what he could find out about the company. He drafted me a subpoena, since phone companies are pretty specific about what they need from law enforcement requests. When we contacted the company, they told us to provide them with the phone numbers in any combination—destination number, spoof number, or number of origin. They got back to us in less than a week with details of an account Stanley had established on July 22, 2009, which he paid for by credit card.

In cross, Salnick continued his campaign to discredit my witnesses, attempting to tar Cohen, his company, and the technique itself as both amoral and ridiculous. After Cohen had explained the company’s extensive safeguards, noting that it keeps comprehensive records and is generally sympathetic to inquiries from law enforcement, he detailed other services the company offered, including a Trap Call app that unmasks blocked calls, a Liar Card that applies a voice stress test that is reportedly over 90 percent effective, and the ability to disguise your voice by gender simply by modulating the pitch.

SALNICK: But you’ve got another one you didn’t talk about. You’ve got a Love Emotion Card, don’t you?

COHEN: That’s correct.

SALNICK: Okay, tell me a little bit about the Love Emotion Card.

COHEN: The
LoveDetect.com
is very similar to the Liar Card: it uses voice analysis to determine different algorithms within the voice to determine different emotions, extract emotions—whether there’s love or passion or excitement in somebody’s voice.

SALNICK: So, wait a minute. If I’m calling somebody up on the phone, they can tell if I’m feeling passionate or excited or emotional?

COHEN: That’s correct.

SALNICK: And who uses that product?

COHEN: Anybody that is looking for love, I guess.

SALNICK: Looking for love in all the wrong places?

Cohen laughed.

Before he was done, Salnick got Cohen to concede that calling a spoof number from another spoof number would render the caller effectively anonymous, making any conjecture as to his identity or intentions moot. (Salnick noted that the spoofer would then become the spoofee, inspiring a rare moment of laughter from Dalia in court.) On recross, I verified Mike Stanley’s phone records with Cohen, which proved that did not happen in this case. There were any number of incidents that spring and summer prior to Michael Stanley reentering Dalia’s life that probably employed a spoof number: the anonymous calls to Mike’s probation officer that he was dealing ecstasy and steroids, the call from “Sandy” that led to the Ritz-Carlton event in Manalapan, the similar tip-off prior to CityPlace, all in March; the call from a neighbor reporting a domestic dispute at their apartment in April; and the call May 1 from the mysterious Detective Hurley of the Boynton Beach Police Department, whose outgoing call registered a unique four-digit extension, even though BBPD calls only show the main trunk number. I subpoenaed TelTech records multiple times with many different phone numbers, but I could never figure out who the callers were in any of those situations.