128: A Museum Heist & Dalia Dippolito

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Dalia Dippolito was mid-workout when she got a terrible phone call. A police officer informed her that she needed to come home immediately. He wouldn’t say why. Dalia rushed back to the townhome she shared with her husband Mike, only to find their neighborhood swarming with police officers. Caution tape surrounded her home. Fingerprint dust covered her front door. She rushed up to a police officer, who confirmed that Mike was her husband, and delivered the awful news, “I’m sorry to tell you ma’am, he’s been killed.” Curiously, Dalia began wailing before he finished the sentence.

With Brandi out on maternity leave, Kristin’s sister Kyla Pitts-Zevin filled in with a story that was totally NOT Brandi approved. That’s right. Kyla came on the podcast to talk about a museum heist. In November of 2009, a talented young flutist named Edwin Rist broke into the British Natural History Museum at Tring. His mission? To stuff a shitton of rare birds into his suitcase. He left the museum, undetected, with more than a million dollars worth of feathers. Edwin wasn’t a criminal mastermind, but it took awhile for him to get caught.

And now for a note about our process. For each episode, Kristin reads a bunch of articles, then spits them back out in her very limited vocabulary. Brandi copies and pastes from the best sources on the web. And sometimes Wikipedia. (No shade, Wikipedia. We love you.) We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the real experts who covered these cases.

In this episode, Kristin pulled from:
20/20 episode, ““Down Payment on Death”
The Court Junkie episode, “Dalia Dippolito and the Attempted Murder of Her Husband”
“Dippolito mistrial: State vows to try case again,” by Daphne Duret for the Palm Beach Post
“Defense attorneys point to growing mistrust of police for jury deadlock,” by Jane Musgrave for the Palm Beach Post

In this episode, Kyla pulled from:
This American Life episode 654: “The Feather Heist”
Kirk Johnson’s book: “The Feather thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century”
BBC article: “Natural History Museum thief ordered to pay thousands”