Poison Candy: The Murderous Madam (21 page)

Next I put up David Banks, Mike’s probation officer since February 2009, or roughly the duration of his marriage and beyond. So much of Salnick’s efforts to impeach Mike’s credibility rested on his failure to comply with the terms of his probation that I felt I needed to reinforce what those terms actually were: there was no condition he must pay restitution in full if he could, merely that he make the stipulated payments; he was free to travel with the approval of the court. Banks had been some form of probation officer for over thirty years and seemed by the book. When Mike went to see him on August 10, five days after Dalia’s arrest, Banks informed him that on four separate occasions in as many months, he had received anonymous phone calls alleging that Mike was dealing ecstasy or steroids, that there was a steady stream of kids in and out of his garage. According to his testimony, this is what inspired the late-night raid on the evening of March 12. Officer Banks made about a dozen visits to Mike’s house between February and August. (On July 28, corroborated by his phone records, Mike Stanley called Banks to report that Mike owned a business he was not reporting the profits from; Stanley was even considerate enough to provide the business ID number.)

In cross, Salnick itemized Mike’s lies to his P.O.: that Mike owned his own business, the considerable proceeds it generated, all the exotic ways
Mike could think of to spend his money, how his Vegas junket was hardly a business trip at all. I didn’t think much of it stuck. At the end of his testimony, Banks shrugged off these new armor-piercing assaults on Mike’s character. As he noted, “I’ll be Mike Dippolito’s probation officer until 2032. He’s gonna be with us for a while.”

A
nd then we put on Mohamed to round out the first week.

When Mohamed first approached police on July 31 and agreed to go undercover to meet with Dalia—whom he called by her Arabic name, Delilah—he signed the standard Confidential Informant agreement guaranteeing that police would make every attempt to safeguard his identity. In his mind, that meant that the case could proceed without him and his participation would never be acknowledged. And, in fact, the police protected his identity all throughout the arrest and Dalia’s first appearance in court—leaving his name out of the probable cause affidavit, not identifying him to Dalia during her initial interview, or to Mike in his subsequent police interviews, and shielding him from the street and the media. Contrary to popular opinion, the police did not release the surveillance tapes of Mohamed and Dalia negotiating a hit man, or Dalia and Officer Widy Jean arranging for Mike’s early dispatch, both of which went viral. (Once they were given to the defense, the news media was entitled to copies, and publicized them accordingly.) As the chief prosecutor, I knew his identity, but I intentionally kept my distance and didn’t make him part of my initial strategy, in accordance with his wishes and expectations.

Generally, a source is kept confidential so that the person who is charged cannot identify them or attempt to dissuade them from testifying. In a typical drug case, for instance, a CI might be someone in a privileged position to know the details of a drug buy, someone privy to the word on the street, or someone looking to extricate themselves from their own bad bust or a
professional snitch looking to advance in their profession like anyone else. Here, Dalia knew immediately who the confidential informant was, because Mohamed was the only one she had discussed her intentions with in depth. Even Michael Stanley, her would-be paramour and last-ditch collaborator, was given an elaborate set of justifications that diverged significantly from reality and applied logic, which he took at face value. Mohamed was the one person she had known the longest, the one who could call her on her nonsense, and the one around whom she eventually dropped all pretense about her true plans. It’s only when those plans threatened to sweep him into the pit along with her that he was forced to take action.

Dalia Dippolito on her way to the courtroom.

In Florida, we have a very broad public records law that says that any document, regardless of physical form (tape, recording, photograph, or film), made or received by an agency in connection with official business is available for copy or personal inspection by any person. According to the statute, documents or evidence related to a trial not considered a work product is a public record. With the release of the staged crime scene video by the Boynton Beach Police, media interest was already on high alert, and every imaginable print and broadcast outlet had their requests pending. I was not obligated to provide them with material until I formally released it to the defense attorney under the rules of discovery—I had thirty days from when the defense filed its motion—and I was getting in new documents almost daily. In the back of my mind, I never thought this case would go to trial, since the evidence was so overwhelming: a great deal of it is captured on surveillance video, in taped phone calls, bank records, and text messages. If you’re suitably wired, you can watch it unfold practically in real time. I thought that Dalia would have no choice but to throw herself on the mercy of the court and accept responsibility for her actions, so I tabled the discovery as long as I could in order to keep Mohamed out of the mix. But once it became evident we were going to trial, my hands were tied. Although I probably could have tried the case without him, Mohamed was an integral part of my case.

I released everything on November 16, 2009, including Mohamed’s name as a witness, where he showed up in Dalia’s phone records and text messages; her bank records that showed the purchase of the Range Rover with Mike’s money; and particularly, a discovery CD with all the audio and video elements I planned to enter into evidence. Once the defense was in possession of this material, I also had to provide copies to every media outlet that requested it. The videos were uploaded to YouTube almost immediately, igniting a second media firestorm, and Mohamed’s world changed overnight.

Mohamed was adamant that he had been promised anonymity. Although he knew he was wired for sound, he had not been told a camera had been placed in his car prior to his meeting with Dalia, and his first clue to that fact was when he viewed himself online. Even though the contract
he had signed authorized police to record his actions in the service of their investigation, they chose not to complicate the moment by burdening him with their decision. Legally, he had no realistic expectation of privacy, but it was no less a body blow when the world came down around him. Now, not only was he a public figure—and I would characterize the media attention in South Florida as radioactive—in his world, he had just committed the one unpardonable sin. Here was a person who had two guns and a concealed weapons permit, spent much of his time reporting stolen checks to the IRS, and by necessity kept one foot in the world of ballers and bad men; and through his actions, gang members and street thugs were in danger of getting dragged into a crime they didn’t commit. Larry Coe, whom he had identified to police, confronted Mohamed at his store the day after Dalia was arrested, called him a snitch, and threw the newspaper in his face. For someone like Mike Dippolito, sudden notoriety had been disconcerting and more than a little embarrassing. But for Mohamed, it could actually prove fatal.

When I contacted Mohamed a year and a half later, after Salnick made plans to take his deposition, he was less than thrilled to hear from me. Contrary to the defense’s claims that Mohamed was a failed actor who craved the public spotlight, he could not have been more reticent. He declined all media requests for interviews. And he was livid that, in his eyes, the cops had given him up—he called them and screamed at them for having filmed him surreptitiously. When I finally met with him, I told him I was sympathetic to his plight, but that Dalia had refused to take a plea, she didn’t think she had done anything wrong, and although I was asking him nicely, it wasn’t really an invitation. If I had to go to extremes, I would have held him in custody as a material witness until trial.

Mohamed traveled on his own dime from California, where he was then living, to Boca Raton, where he had business to attend to, and we conducted the deposition at the State Attorney’s Office. Mohamed showed up with an attorney, Ian Goldstein, who had once been Salnick’s law partner, which created a minor wrinkle. The deposition lasted for six hours, and it was brutal—Salnick kept hammering at him incessantly. By the end, Mohamed was exhausted, but I couldn’t take the chance that he would disappear
back to California and not show up for the trial, so I had him served with a subpoena for trial before the deposition ended. I felt bad, but he seemed fine with it, although he informed me there was a chance he would be out of the country at the time of the trial. His mother was quite ill, and he was considering returning to his native Jordan indefinitely to work in the family business. A week later, I contacted Mohamed to find out what his status was for trial. He told me he was certain that he would be out of the country on April 25, 2011, with no return date.

After some deliberation, I filed a motion to perpetuate his testimony, which means that if a witness is unavailable for trial, their testimony can be prerecorded and played for the jury at a later date. The session is set up exactly like at trial: The witness is sworn in and a court reporter takes down the proceedings. Both sides make objections as they would before a judge, the witness goes ahead and answers the question, and then prior to trial the judge rules on each objection and the video testimony is edited accordingly.

The motion was granted, and testimony was taken a month later, on March 7, 2011, in the training room, a big room in the State Attorney’s Office. We were seated at a long table, Mohamed posed against a gray back-drop with Salnick and me both just inches away from him on either side. Both our co-counsels were in attendance, as was Dalia, who had the statutory right to face her accuser, and whom Mohamed had not seen or spoken to since her arrest. This was the first time that Dalia and Mohamed had seen each other since her arrest. Dalia wore a tight low-cut white blouse and sat close enough for him to reach out and touch her, and the heat was palpable. I thought she was flirting with him. He would look over at her and giggle, especially when he had to describe something graphic, like her giving him a blow job. I could tell it must be excruciating for him, but it was also funny, just because the situation was so absurd. There were also times when he couldn’t look at her because he felt bad about the things he was saying. He hadn’t wanted to hurt her. He’d honestly believed he was helping her, and now he was driving the nails into her coffin. I believe he genuinely cared for her. Whatever else, they had history together.

The problem with prerecording testimony is that you have to formulate your questions before you’re fully ready to go to court. The last few weeks in
any major trial are crucial because everything is just coming together. You’re finally seeing the pieces that don’t fit, and these often show you the flaws in your strategy or inspire a new understanding of the facts. Questioning him a good month early, I didn’t know where he fit with my physical evidence or my lineup of witnesses, nor did I have a clear picture of how he fit into the defense strategy, or even what that strategy might be. I thought if I had interviewed him in court live before the jury, in real time, it might have gone more smoothly. But there was a ragged hole in Mohamed’s story—the privileged conversation he’d had with Dalia at the Chili’s across the street from the Mobil station immediately before she met with the alleged hit man. That conversation wasn’t recorded because the surveillance equipment failed, and I had visions of the defense linking Mike and Mohamed in some sinister plot, portraying Mike as coercive or having threatened Dalia into compliance, all of which hinged on this suspicious half hour of silence. It was my eighteen-minute gap, or the motorcade passing behind a sign. If Mohamed was out of the country and couldn’t answer such charges, it could blow up on me. So I forged ahead the best I could and tried to do some preemptive triage.

Once we were closer to the trial date, I checked with a contact at ICE, who provided me with a copy of Mohamed’s travel itinerary. These showed the dates he flew to Tel Aviv and then Jordan, with no return flight. He told me he would be in Jordan indefinitely. He did call me a week before our trial date to say he’d be willing to return to testify if we paid for his flight. I contacted Salnick, who agreed to pay for his return flight, but ultimately Mohamed changed his mind. Once we knew he wasn’t coming back, Sal-nick and I met and agreed to what portions of his video testimony should be redacted, based on previous court rulings, a little give-and-take and the law, and Judge Colbath wasn’t forced to rule on our objections.

I played Mohamed’s prerecorded testimony in court on the Friday of the first week, after the lunch break. It ran a little over four hours. We had a projector screen set up right in front of the jury box with a special sound system; it was like he was sitting there facing them. On videotape, Mohamed appeared casual—drinking soda, chewing gum, smiling on occasion. On paper, his comments often seem confused or slightly flustered, but he has a
natural magnetism that somewhat counteracts that in person. A jury could see him and Dalia as a natural couple, which hopefully would emphasize the price he was paying for following his conscience. It was also obvious he didn’t want to be there.

Mohamed testified that Dalia had initially told him she was in an abusive relationship, that Mike beat her and she was scared of him, but that quickly gave way to a more benign version: Mike was “a nice, nerdy guy” and she could “pretty much do whatever she needs to do to him”; she had inadvertently spent his probation money and “needs to replace it”; and more precisely, “She doesn’t like him and she wants him to go to jail.” Mohamed had the distinct impression that “she can’t stand him and she wants him violated.” He was “a musclehead,” had OCD, and “he wouldn’t let her out of his sight.”

Besides asking if he knew “an officer or someone” who could help get her husband’s probation revoked, “she wanted to know how to transfer money or get a fake receipt showing that the money got transferred into Western Union or a bank account” (he declined to help, since he was audited by the IRS virtually every month). She also asked to borrow $200,000 and gave him details about a Cayman Islands account that he remained sketchy on. As noted previously, she also confessed that she had lied about her pregnancy, repeatedly called the police on Mike, admitted she tried to poison him with antifreeze, and, on more than one occasion, expressed her desire to have him killed. In fact, Mohamed claims that after he had inadvertently introduced Dalia to the potential hit man Larry Coe and his crew from the Buck Wild gang, they called him repeatedly trying to determine if she was “legit.” By his account, he may have saved Mike’s life more than once: