Featured Image Credit: ABC News
Emily Brown
A Florida woman was sentenced to more than a decade behind bars after making a key mistake as she attempted to hire a hitman to kill her husband.
Dalia Dippolito was convicted in 2017 of solicitation of first-degree murder after claiming she was '5,000 percent sure' she wanted to her husband Michael Dippolito, who she had only recently married, to die.
The conviction came almost 10 years after Dippolito attempted to hire the hitman in 2009.
When Dippolito met up with the man she believed she would be carrying out the murder, she discussed various plots as to how it could be done.
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The hitman then suggested he would kill her husband at their shared home and make it look like a burglary gone wrong.
On August 5 2009, Dippolito came home to find what she thought was a real crime scene of her then-husband’s murder.
Little did she know, she'd made a key mistake when it came to finding the person who would end her husband's life.
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Unbeknownst to Dippolito, instead of a hitman, she had told an undercover police officer that she wanted her then-husband Michael Dippolito murdered.
The interaction was captured on camera - as was Dippolito's reaction when she arrived at the fake crime scene and officers told her that Michael was dead.
In reality, he was very much alive and had simply been removed from the home.
The footage of Dippolito's interaction with the undercover officer went viral after it was made public, and Dippolito even attempted to cover up what had happened by claiming it was a stunt for reality TV.
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In the video, she could be seen calling for her husband of six month's death and agreeing to pay the supposed hitman $7,000 to do it.
After Dippolito was caught, circuit Judge Glenn Kelley said she acted in a 'cold and calculated manner' and cited additional evidence that she may have been manipulating two other men to this end.
"This particular crime was committed not in an unsophisticated way, but in a sophisticated way in a calculated fashion," Kelley said.
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"There was a plan put in place by Dalia Dippolito to kill Mike Dippolito."
Prosecutors speculated that Dippolito wanted her ex-husband dead so that she could receive his assets and savings.
Craig Williams, a prosecutor, described her as 'a master manipulator' and said she had to be locked up for the good of society.
While it was initially argued that Dippolito should have received a 30-year sentence, it was reduced to 16 years due of her good behavior while she underwent house arrest.