She Hired a Hitman And Watched Her Own Sting | Dalia Dippolito

On a humid Florida morning in August 2009, Dalia Dippolito drove home from the gym to find police tape fluttering across her townhouse. Officers told her the unthinkable: her husband, Michael, had been killed. Cameras captured her sobs and shock.

But it was all a setup.
 Michael was alive.
 And Dalia was about to be arrested for trying to have him murdered.

This episode of GBRLIFE Of Crimes goes inside the three-year storm that followed: the hidden-camera meetings with an undercover hitman, the staged crime scene that became viral TV, and the trials that exposed a young woman’s obsession with control, money, and performance.

🎧 In this episode, we explore:
• Dalia’s childhood in New York and early signs of narcissism
• Her whirlwind romance and marriage to Michael Dippolito
• The failed attempts to frame Michael on probation violations
• The undercover sting and the infamous “5,000 percent sure” line
• The televised driveway scene and three headline-making trials
• The psychology of narcissistic and histrionic traits—and why murder can look “cleaner” than divorce

🧠 This isn’t just a murder-for-hire case. It’s about performance, manipulation, and the dangerous belief that you can script reality.

📍 One woman. One plan. A murder that never happened—but shocked the world.

✨ New episodes every week on GBRLIFE.com or your favorite podcast platform.

Chapters

• 0:00 The Calm Before the Storm
• 1:57 Behind the Scenes of a Crime
• 5:17 The Honeymoon Phase Fades
• 6:53 A Dangerous Plan
• 8:26 The Sting Operation
• 9:59 The Trial Begins
• 11:20 The Psychology of Control
• 12:54 The Aftermath of Deception

Transcript

0:00

Palm trees lean into a humid dawn in Boynton Beach, Florida. The sky looks washed in pale gold, and the air smells like salt and wet lawn. Sprinklers chatter across small front yards, while a few early risers pull trash bins to the curb. It feels like any other coastal morning, ordinary and safe. A silver Lexus turns down a quiet street and slows by a beige townhouse. The driver is a young woman in black yoga pants with her hair pulled into a high ponytail. Her voice is low into the phone, casual, and it's as if she is ticking through a to-do list after a workout. She guides the car towards the driveway, but then she freezes. There are police cruisers at the curb. Blue lights flash in the brightness. Yellow tape sways from the porch all the way to the mailbox, and neighbors hover at their windows. Officers move with a purpose, but it makes the air feel heavy. One officer steps forward and signals for her to park. She opens the door and steps out. Her name is Dahlia Dippolito. She's 26 years old and a newlywed. The officer's voice is level and practiced. He tells her that there's been an incident at her home, and he asks her to come with him. But she asks what happened. Her questions tangle. The officer says the words that make people drop to the floor. Your husband has been killed. Dahlia's breath catches. She covers her mouth with both hands. Her knees give out, and she folds towards the pavement. An officer steadies her by the arm. The camera that is there by chance, or fate, records every second. Her voice breaks into sobs. Her hands flutter. The tape continues to sway in the breeze. It looks like the beginning of a homicide case, but it is not. Behind the scenes at the police station. A few miles away, Michael is alive, and he's watching on a monitor as officers act out the script of a murder that never happened. The yellow tape is theater, but the tears are real. The death is not, and the suspected mastermind is the woman crying in the driveway. Welcome to GBRLIFE Transmissions. I'm your host, Kaitlyn, and you're listening to G. Bear Life of Crimes, where we explore not just what happened in crimes committed by women, but why it happened and the psychology behind them. Today, we're going inside the case of Dalia Dippolito, the Florida newlywed whose plot to have her husband killed was captured on hidden cameras and then revealed through a staged crime scene that stunned the internet. This is a story about control, carefully crafted performance, and the way desire can push someone to treat a living person like a problem to be solved. Before the cameras and the crime scene tape, there was a little girl. Dahlia Mohammed was born on October 18, 1982, in New York City, and she was the oldest of immigrant parents. Her parents divorced when she was young, and she spent most of her childhood with her mother and stepfather, growing up alongside a younger brother. Friends from those early years describe her as friendly, stylish, and a little bit dramatic. A girl who loved attention and was always eager, she attended a private Catholic school through middle school. Before moving to public high school. Teachers remembered her as bright, but restless. More interested in social status and the thrill of being noticed than in grades. Not entirely untypical of a teenager, but it was a little bit more than those around her. Nonetheless, she worked part-time retail jobs and she drifted through friend groups, often drawn to older, wealthier peers. After high school, she studied cosmetology and tried small business ventures like fitness training and makeup work, but rarely stayed in one job for long. It was subtle, but Dahlia was already showing traits of narcissism, likely covert. Because to those around her, she seemed like she simply wanted to be a princess. And since Dahlia loved being a princess, when she met Michael Dippolito in 2008, jackpot. He was older, confident, charismatic. But more importantly, he had money from internet ventures. But he also had a fraud conviction. And he was on probation. But that meant nothing to Dahlia. Because he had money. Michael felt like they were clicking right away. And those around said the chemistry was instant and overwhelming. Within months, Michael divorced his wife and married Dahlia. This was more evidence of Dahlia's narcissism, love bombing, which is the action or practice of lavishing someone with attention or affection, especially in order to influence or manipulate them. And this is a classic trait and usually the first sign. So for Michael, the honeymoon was radiant and fast. There was new furniture, new routines, new passions, but also new passwords. Dahlia encouraged Michael to share for convenience and for trust. But for Dahlia, happiness could only be fulfilled when she was getting what she wanted right in that moment. Her need for more would be a continuous requirement, which is why it didn't take long for the honeymoon phase and all the money to fade fast. And for a girl obsessed with luxuries of life and her insatiable desire for having more of everything, that would not work for Dahlia. She needed to figure out how to get that money and lifestyle back. So she urged refinancing of the townhouse. But that's when the red flags soared higher than ever. She pressed for assets and pure cash to be moved into her name. She told Michael that these steps would help navigate the rules of probation and would stabilize their life together. He believed her because that's what you do when you are newlywed and in love and trying to build a future. In the background, though, Dahlia was already making moves that suggested a different goal. Investigators later said she tried to have Michael violated on probation months before the sting by placing a small bag of substances in his car and then calling the police with a tip. And this happened twice. If officers found the substances, probation would be a snap-shut case and Michael would go to prison. But it didn't work. The plan fizzled. So Dahlia looked for what she thought was a cleaner solution. And by early summer 2009, she told acquaintances that she wanted Michael gone. One of those acquaintances had better instincts, more than Dahlia realized, and they went straight to the Boynton Beach Police Department. Detectives listened and decided to run a sting. They introduced Dahlia to a man she believed was a professional killer. He was actually an undercover officer with a hidden camera and a calm face that gave nothing away. The videos are surreal. They're not cinematic. They're ordinary. A meeting in a car in a parking lot with a bit of small talk and then straight talk about murder in the same manner someone might order food in a drive-thru. The officer walks through details in a measured voice. How far are you willing to go? Are you sure? What about the money? The timing? The neighbors? The risk that your husband fights back? Dahlia is steady. She nods and says the one line that would follow her into every courtroom. I'm not going to change my mind. I'm positive. 5,000% sure. The number is so exaggerated that it sounds like a dare. 5,000%. That certainty turned into branding. It tells you as much about her mindset as any diagnosis ever could. This is not a woman weighing options. This is a woman who believes that she can decide what the world will be and it will obey her. With those recordings in hand, detectives built a final act that would secure the case. They would pretend the murder happened, arrest Dahlia, and present her with the reality she thought she wanted. They called the television show, Cops, which was filming with the department. The decision would later feed arguments about spectacle and fairness. In the moment, the producers did not shape the sting. They simply filmed what the police already planned to do. August 5th, 2009. Dahlia left for the gym before sunrise. Officers moved into the townhouse, and placed tape across the door. They positioned patrol cars at the curb, and they staged a scene that would pass a glance test. Then, they waited. When the silver Lexus turned the corner, the stage was set. And you already know how the driveway scene played out. That was only the first reveal. The second happened at the station. Dahlia was led to an interview room. She sat, small, furious, and frightened. A detective entered and calmly told her that the hitman that she had hired was an undercover officer. He told her there was no murder. Then he asked her to explain why she paid for one. Dahlia shook her head. She said she had nothing to do with anything. She insisted there had to have been a misunderstanding. The detective stood up, opened the door, and brought in Michael. Very alive and very real. Dahlia's face dropped for a moment and then recovered because denial is a strong instinct, but not enough to stop her from being placed in jail immediately after. They had a slam dunk case, or so they thought as they brought her into trial. The first trial came in 2011. The state played the recordings. Jurors watched Dahlia discuss price plans, and they heard the 5,000% line, and they watched the staged notification in the driveway. The defense argued entrapment. They said police had pushed and performed. They said the cameras in the show distorted the truth. The jury took it in and found Dahlia guilty of solicitation to commit first-degree murder, and then they sentenced her to 20 years. The case did not end there, because in 2014, an appeals court overturned the conviction because of an issue with jury selection, and a new trial was ordered. And in 2016, the second trial ended in a mistrial when the jury could not agree. That happens sometimes when a case mixes emotion, performance, and questions about police tactics. And in 2017, the state tried again. The third trial brought another guilty verdict. This time, the sentence was 16 years. Later appeals did not undo that result. So what drove Dahlia to choose murder over divorce? Well, divorce is messy in public, and it can be expensive. Murder looks fast and clean in the imagination of someone who is tired of waiting. You see this in cases where money, pride, and control collide. Dahlia had a talent for persuasion. She could convince people to see her version of reality. She convinced Michael to marry quickly and to move assets in ways that benefited her. She believed that she could also convince a stranger to make Michael vanish and that somehow she would walk away untouched. A psychologist who evaluated her during her trial, highlighted narcissistic traits, but it also found that she may have histrionic traits. Both come with a strong need for admiration, grandiosity, manipulative tendencies, the belief that rules apply to other people, not to that person themselves, the sense that emotions are tools to be used, and thrill-seeking behavior. And while there was no documented abuse, therapists have suggested her parents' early split and frequent moves left her determined to control the narrative of her life. There was also a theme of performance. Dahlia moved through different roles with ease. The affectionate newlywed in a restaurant, the efficient planner in a meeting with a supposed hitman, and the sobbing widow on a driveway. Performance is not proof by itself, but the tapes give us more than a role. They give us intent, price, and a timeline. Today, Dahlia is in Florida prison serving her 16-year sentence for solicitation to commit first-degree murder. Appeals have not erased that outcome, and they probably won't because of all of the trials she's already had. But that outcome came at a cost for Michael. He has had to live with the knowledge that someone he loved had drawn up a schedule for his last day. A last day for him, but one of the first for television and the internet. Because this case brought us the beginnings of that thin line between a sting that prevents murder and a production that creates a show. Police knew a person was willing to pay to have a man killed, and they chose a method that would make the case airtight, but also very public. The law could have taken an easier path here. Police could have arrested Dahlia right after the first meeting with the undercover officer. That alone was the crime. Yet they chose the staged scene to make a jury sure of the full sequence of intent. Was that theater? Yes. Was it also a controlled way to stop a killing and lock in proof? Also yes. Those two truths can sit side by side. This has been GBRLIFE of Crimes, part of GBRLIFE Transmissions. And I'm Kaitlyn, reminding you that understanding the darkness helps us appreciate the light. Join me next time as we uncover another case that challenges everything we thought we knew about the criminal mind.