In the last 24 hours, Palm Beach Post reporters Andrew Marra and Michael LaForgia have had some terrific scoops on the Dalia Dippolito murder-for-hire story: that a recent deed transfer revealed Dippolito had a financial motive to hire a hitman to kill her husband, and that it was Dippolito's paramour who told police of Dippolito's allegedly murderous plot.
The paramour is this story's newest character, and this morning I read the words devoted to that character with rapt attention. Which is why I was stunned by this paragraph:
Police records show that last Friday, the day Dalia Dippolito received sole ownership of their Renaissance Commons home, was also the day that cops received a call from a concerned friend of hers - purportedly the lover referred to in the lawsuit. The friend said she feared Dalia was planning her 38-year-old husband's death.I added the bold text, to show you what caught my eye. Clearly, it says the friend was the lover and that the lover was a "she." Boy, talk about burying the lede! Did Dalia have a plan to kill her husband so she run away with a woman?
This twist would have sent a story that's already a tabloid sensation into orbit. Alas, it proved to be a false alarm, as you'll see after the jump.
Actually, when I went back to check the story later this morning, I saw that the clause "purportedly the lover referred to in the lawsuit" had vanished from the online version of the paper. (Which is why you won't find it in the story I linked earlier.)
This made it even more mysterious. I called lawyers of the case, begged a Palm Beach County clerk to read the complaint and tell me the names in it. And I finally called a person at the Post who I thought might shed some light on this. But for all that, it came down to a simple typo. The reporters wrote "she" when they meant "he." Dippolito's lover was a man.
Shortly after I got off the phone, the story had been changed online. And now what had been a paragraph that promised all kinds of crazy is a little more sane:
Police records show that last Friday, the day Dalia Dippolito received sole ownership of their Renaissance Commons home, was also the day that cops received a call from a concerned friend of hers. The friend said he feared Dalia was planning her 38-year-old husband's death.Damn. The Sun-Sentinel has more about the affair from Michael Dippolito's attorney.
