The one thing I’ve learned in this job is that anything is possible. People will do anything. And if you have $80,000 to throw around, you can absolutely find someone in Los Angeles County to kill your wife. This story is definitely ripe for a made for TV movie where you have the ex-model turned housewife with the millionaire husband who is cheating on his wife and tries to hire a hitman because he’s not winning his divorce.
Monica Olsen used to be a model and she ran her own skincare company. Dino Gugli was a successful businessman in Los Angeles. He was the lead singer of a rock band, but he would pay to have the rock band play at the House of Blues, and he would tell his employees that they were required to go to his shows. Monica and Dino, they were married for about 7 years, and it looked to be a pretty happy marriage.
They had two really beautiful children. What Monica didn’t know was that there wasn’t a time that he wasn’t cheating on her.
“She was in love with this man,” an associate noted.
“Yeah,” another replied.
“And had no clue what was going on behind her back,” the associate added.
Dino wanted too much. He wanted the hot model wife and his kids, but then he also wanted everything on the side. And I think he wanted Monica to be a certain person or to just follow whatever he said and do whatever he wanted her to do and control her. But he couldn’t do that. Someone like Mr. Gugli when they don’t get their way will do whatever they need to do legal or illegal to get their way. And ultimately he decided that he wanted to end it not through the legal proceedings but he wanted to kill his wife. And he wasn’t going to do it himself. He was going to get somebody else to do it.
“He wanted her dead,” the associate said. “He didn’t care how it was done. Beat her up, cut her head off, put her in a ditch.”
“My name is Richard Ferman and Dino Gugli hired me to murder his wife,” Ferman stated.
Tonight, 48 Hours, appropriately set in Los Angeles, is a twisted tale of greed and murder that at times may seem like a Hollywood blockbuster. Like any good thriller, it’s one part romance, two parts Hitchcock, but in the end, it’s all true. It wasn’t a joke to him. It was very serious. Get it over with. Be bloody. Be bad about it. And end it.
Meet Rick Ferman. In 2012, millionaire Dino Gugli asked him to kill the mother of his children.
“Did you ever say, ‘How would the children feel if they lost their mother?'”
“More than once.”
“And what did he say?”
“He would say, ‘You’ll be much better off without her. I will find them a good mother and I’ll even have you check her out first and make sure she’s great and make get your approval.'”
Just 9 years earlier, this horror story was a love story. Monica Olsen, a small town girl from Canada, made it big as a New York fashion model and then moved to Los Angeles to try her hand at acting.
“Monica was working very hard towards it, being successful in modeling and acting,” said her close friend, Ola Bernard.
“She was beautiful,” Ola added. “I mean, she’s very photogenic. If this whole thing wouldn’t happened, we would see her on the big screens right now. Definitely.”
Ola says Monica wasn’t in Los Angeles for very long before she was swept off her feet by Dino, a charming farm boy from a big family in Walla Walla, Washington.
“We all grew up in the same house where my parents live currently,” his brother Gino Gugli says.
Gino says his brother Dino’s first love was music.
“He’s always been a musician, very very interested in music.”
Dino dropped out of college and moved to Los Angeles to be a rock star. But that’s not how he would make his fortune. Living in the land of health and fitness, Dino saw a need and capitalized on it. He started making and distributing vitamins and other dietary supplements.
“There’s nobody in the world doesn’t want to live longer,” Gino noted. “And so he parlayed that into a great business.”
Dino would eventually build the hugely successful multi-level supplements and skincare company, Creation’s Garden.
“Dino was a young successful man with a lot of money and a lot of power,” the associate said. “And when he met Monica, he wanted her and he knew how to get her.”
6 months after they met, Dino flew Monica to Italy and proposed.
“It sounds like a fairy tale in the beginning because he proposed to her in Venice,” the associate remarked. “I mean, there was a love at first sight. You don’t hear those stories happened.”
The couple was married just 3 months later and Dino’s brother Gino Gugli attended the lavish wedding.
“It was pretty fancy for me the whole thing,” Gino said.
Gino says Dino’s model wife seemed to complete his baby brother’s transformation from farm boy to mogul.
“He had a successful business. He had nice cars. I think that just added to the image.”
“What were your impressions of Monica?”
“I didn’t care for her. I thought she was a gold digger and had other motives. I don’t know what it was. Something about her I didn’t really care for. She wanted her lifestyle that wasn’t sitting at home. You know, her lifestyle was to go to Hollywood and whatever they do in Hollywood. They had nannies, people with the girls, you know, all day long. So, he probably spent more time with them because when he’d come home from work, sometimes she wouldn’t come back till later in the evening. I think she was a great wife and from what I saw of their life, I mean they were perfect together.”
But Gino lived with his brother and Monica for 6 months early on in their marriage and says he saw trouble from the start.
“Just two people with the same kind of egos and I think she really wanted to have a career and I think he wanted her to be a mom.”
Ola says Monica was a great wife and mother, but when she wanted more, their relationship changed, and so did Dino.
“Monica was at home taking care of kids for a couple years, and it was time for her to be more independent. I think Dino was scared of losing control off of Monica, started being more aggressive, more controlling towards her.”
By the time Rick Ferman came into the picture, their marriage was in its final act.
“I knew that he was dating all sorts of girls because he liked to brag about it,” Rick Ferman said.
Rick and Dino were in business together, supplying vitamins and supplements to the military. Rick had served as an enlisted man years earlier and had contacts and says that impressed Dino.
“You two became friends,” the interviewer stated.
“Close,” Ferman replied.
And the closer they got, the more Dino confided in Rick.
“Dino told me that Monica was a very bad mother, always gone all the time and slept around with men, women, drank too much, did drugs.”
Dino filed for divorce and Rick says he became consumed with the thought of losing half his assets and custody of his children.
“Dino is, for lack of a better word, a complete control freak and a game player,” Rick said. “He had to be one step ahead of everybody. He had to win at the end of the day.”
Rick says when Dino was ordered to pay a whopping $55,000 a month in alimony, he hatched a plan to have his Canadian-born wife arrested and deported. And he turned to Rick for help.
“With my military background, Dino thought I was perfect. He would like me to plant drugs in her car, follow her around, and call the police when she’s driving erratically to see if she can get pulled over. I had Monica’s house keys, Monica’s car keys, Monica’s credit card statements showing me everything that she’s done, every place that she’s been.”
Dino filed papers showing his company was in trouble and the alimony was reduced to $25,000, but Rick says it was still too much.
“What was the final straw for him?” the interviewer asked.
“He got an email from his own attorney to him stating that he was just better off to give her the $25,000 a month and the credit card and just leave it alone and that to him he just lost. His own attorney said, ‘Dude, you just lost. Give it up. Just pay.’ It’s like asking him to stop breathing. He can’t do that.”
“So, what were his instructions to you?”
“This has got to end. She’s got to go. Get it done. If I wasn’t going to do it, he was going to find somebody to do it.”
Rick told Dino he would take care of Monica, and he did, just not the way Dino wanted.
“Why are you still alive?”
“You know, I think Rick had did the noble thing,” Monica Olsen replied.
“Monica Olsen,” the narrator said.
“Remarkable,” Deputy District Attorney Emily Cole added. “Monica is really lucky that Mr. Gugli picked the wrong guy, otherwise she’d be dead.”
“I remember the first time I saw him, he was smiling at me,” Monica said of Dino.
When Monica Olsen married Dino Gugli, she was sure he was her happily ever after.
“He was persistent. He was charming.”
She never dreamt their story would end so tragically.
“You don’t think that the person that you’ve created a life with can want to harm you and make you suffer.”
Monica is very intelligent and has a master’s degree in international finance, but she says that like a lot of women, she was blinded by Dino’s charm and the spoils of his riches.
“We went out on a date and he said, ‘You know, I have two plane tickets and I want to take you to Paris.’ Throughout our marriage, he spoiled me.”
But Monica says things began to change in 2008 when she decided she wanted to go back to work and asked Dino to help her create a skincare line called Skin by Monica.
“That was kind of my baby.”
But Dino took charge.
“Everything was kind of under his control and I was kept out of the loop. Don’t ask too many questions.”
Monica says the more questions she asked, the angrier Dino became. So, she worked on reigniting her modeling career, but that just made Dino furious.
“There was a change in his personality,” Monica said. “Huge. He went dark. I mean, it was as if he was possessed.”
Monica says she was never the one sleeping around and doing drugs; Dino was. And at the height of that madness, he created his heavy metal rock band.
“Dino dyed his hair and polished his nails black and told Monica it was all for show. But she says she became terrified of him and started documenting his behavior.”
“Everything that’s going on, she’s recording on a cell phone,” an associate said. “When Dino started behaving really badly, Monica would record him on her cell phone.”
“Come on, let’s go. Let’s get your backpack,” Dino is heard saying in a recording.
In this incident, Dino fired a nanny who his children loved.
“You don’t understand. You can’t be here, Anna,” Dino said, because she was too loyal to Monica.
“You can’t do that,” Monica protested.
“Look, it’s not a choice,” Dino replied.
After Dino filed for divorce, he had refused to move out. What Monica didn’t know is that while Dino was living in the guest house, he was already planning to get rid of her by paying his friend Rick Ferman to do it.
“How did he want Monica killed?”
“Now, it depended on the day.”
Rick says he tried to keep Dino happy and stall him through the divorce, hoping it would all end when there was an agreement, but things just kept escalating.
“She was definitely putting him through the ringer and he wanted her to suffer. So, I came up with this idea of letting him know that she was infected with AIDS and then just a matter of time, Dino, it’ll all be over. Don’t worry about it. And that worked for months.”
“How did he react when you told him that you infected Monica with HIV virus?”
“How big can you smile? Is that a joke? I mean, literally, how big can you smile? ‘Cause this was pretty big.”
Rick made it clear he never actually infected Monica with the virus. It was just a lie to stall Dino. But meanwhile, things at the Gugli home were about to spiral out of control. It was the night of January 16th, 2012.
“He was getting in my face right then and there in front of the kids. My first thing was to get the kids removed.”
Monica says she rushed the children into her room and locked the door. But before she could dial 911, Dino once again beat her to it and accused her of assaulting him.
“He said that she wrapped her hands around his neck and it caused scratches and that she hit him,” Emily Cole said.
Monica was arrested and Emily Cole was assigned to the case.
“The story was corroborated somewhat by their daughters. So, the case was filed as a misdemeanor domestic violence case.”
“So, there was evidence that she had struck him,” the interviewer said.
“There were pictures,” Cole replied.
“He showed me a picture that his daughter or one of his friends took or something of this itty bitty little cut and I basically said, ‘Man up. I’ve cut myself worse shaving,'” Ferman remarked.
Still, Dino was able to get a restraining order against Monica and was granted full custody of their daughters.
“I’m being given a restraining order to stay away from my kids, to stay away from the house, to stay away from my business.”
“It all sounds too familiar to this woman,” the narrator said.
“Do you see parallels between your story and Monica’s?”
“This is the same story almost,” said Leysa Divine, Dino’s ex-wife. “At any given moment, he would do anything to make me lose my kids. That was his goal.”
Leysa says during their divorce, Dino accused her of doing drugs and being abusive and then took everything: their daughter, their home, and the business they started together, Creation’s Garden.
“The Dino I married was a caring and compassionate guy. The guy I divorced was callous, mean, calculating. The best way to describe it is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
“Looking back in hindsight, this is exactly what he did to his second wife. He brought up domestic violence charges and he was able to get custody of their child then and that’s exactly what it looks like he was doing with Monica.”
Monica lost custody of her girls for 13 months and then charges were finally dropped for lack of evidence. But that’s when Dino pushed Rick Ferman to execute the plan.
“The pressure was on to kill her. Three, five, seven, 10 times a week. Phone calls at 4:00 a.m. in the morning. ‘When’s this going to end? Are you sure you can get it done?'”
“There’s always problems. Even in normal divorces with couples that fight over certain things, but you somehow make it work for the benefit of your children,” the associate said. “There is no such a concept in his mind. It’s all or nothing. It’s the Hunger Games. It’s kill or be killed.”
Monica was about to find out how right she was. Rick Ferman couldn’t stall Dino any longer and says he’s no killer. So, we decided to visit Monica’s divorce attorney and spill the beans.
“We had quite a detailed discussion.”
“And you told him everything that Dino wanted Monica dead?”
“Absolutely.”
“How did your husband want you killed?”
“I mean, in a horrific way. He wanted to make it look like a drug killing. Like I had been kidnapped in Mexico and he wanted me raped and he wanted my head cut off.”
Monica’s lawyer took Rick Ferman’s information to the district attorney’s office and the case of attempted murder was assigned to none other than Emily Cole.
“I didn’t automatically recognize the Gugli name. It was his daughter’s names that I recognized from the domestic violence case. That’s what clicked in my head that I’d met this guy before.”
But before Cole could make an arrest, her investigators needed solid evidence.
“The detective said, ‘Would you be willing to wear a wire?’ And I said, ‘Sure.'”
On October 1st, 2013, he did just that.
“You’re positive?”
“That what?”
“You wanted her dead?”
“Um, 100%.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
On the afternoon of October 1st, 2013, Rick Ferman and Dino Gugli did something they’d done many times. They were just going to have lunch and this is where they usually went. But prosecutor Emily Cole made sure that this time the tables were turned.
“The detectives in this case from the sheriff’s department major crimes, they were sitting here watching Dino and Ferman have their lunch.”
“There’s no going back when we get up out of this seat,” Dino said.
“Oh no.”
“So what did Ferman have to get out of Dino?” the interviewer asked.
“Well, first of all, he needed to give him an opportunity to say no, to back out at all times,” Cole said. “But he needed for Dino to understand that at the end of this conversation, by the time they walked out that door, that there was no way that Dino was going to be able to stop what he would put in motion.”
“I’ll be happy when it’s all over,” Dino said. “That’s when I’ll be happy.”
In a moment Rick calls typical, Dino is heard justifying his desire to have Monica killed because she lied during a deposition in the domestic violence case against her.
“She went into her deposition and lied and said that I scratched myself to set her up. I mean, she never touched me. And all those scratches came from me going into the bathroom and scratching myself and she looked me straight in the eyes and I knew then that I wanted her… that I could never ever trust her or anything… anything came out of her mouth. And I knew then that she would do anything to hurt me.”
“I ask you a simple question. You’re positive?”
“They’re what?”
“You want her dead?”
“A 100%.”
“Are you sure the girls are they’re fine?”
“They’re totally fine.”
“All your daughters are their dad,” Dino said.
“So, this is significant because it was a clear declaration that he wanted his wife dead no matter the consequences,” Cole said.
“It’s like a dream come true, seriously,” Dino said. “She’s tried so hard to hurt me for so long and done so much, you know, evil things.”
“Three or four times I gave him the way out,” Rick said. “‘Are you sure you want her dead? When I get up out of this seat, it’s done. It’s over.'”
“But what are the kids going to do for a mother?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll find a good one.”
“By the time we’re out at lunch, it’s already done,” Dino said. “You just need to figure out how to pay me.”
“Oh, I’ll pay.”
Rick says that in earlier conversations about killing Monica, Dino made it clear he wanted it done while she was traveling abroad. So Rick told Dino that while they were at lunch, Monica was away on vacation in Mexico where she would die that day.
“Are you telling me it’s going to be done today? Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
Rick convinced Dino that a hired assassin in Mexico would kill Monica before they had time to digest their lunch.
“I don’t want to know anything,” Dino said. “I’ll read about it in the paper.”
“Yes, you will. Mexican paper, maybe.”
Painfully aware of the sting operation, Monica was hiding out in a hotel room in Beverly Hills. That night, Dino went home to his daughters, presumably thinking their mother was dead.
“The following day, the recording was brought to me. We listened to it and then I filed the case.”
Dino Gugli was arrested at his home in Valencia, California in front of his daughters and charged with attempted murder.
“The girls were taken into protective custody and Monica had to pick them up at the jail.”
“What I don’t understand is why the hate, the deep-seated anger and hatred towards you?” the interviewer asked.
“Um, that’s a question for him.”
One I would eventually get to ask him over the phone.
“You have a prepaid call from an inmate in California,” the automated voice said.
“Hello, Dino.”
“Hi, Charlie.”
“I just want to remind you that you are being recorded.”
The only way I could ask Dino Gugli why he wanted his wife Monica killed was via telephone.
“My first question to you is what mistakes did you make? What are you guilty of?”
“Well, I would say I’m probably, uh, I could say that I’m guilty of allowing myself to be betrayed and manipulated. I’m guilty of working too hard. I’m guilty of trusting too much.”
Dino says he is the victim here. He calls Rick Ferman a master con man who convinced him they could make millions selling vitamins and supplements to the military. When that con started to unravel, Dino says Rick set him up for attempted murder.
“You’re not taking any responsibility for this?”
“No, I’m… no. I asked Ferman: Why did he do it after two years and a manipulation on a military contract? Why did he do that? He didn’t have to. I wasn’t going out trying to find somebody to knock off my wife.”
Prosecutor Emily Cole confirms that Rick did indeed con Dino into thinking there was a big contract coming his way.
“Rick forged Department of Defense documents to lead Mr. Gugli to believe that there was some big business deal and Mr. Ferman explains that he did that in order to keep Mr. Gugli happy because a happy Dino doesn’t want to kill his wife.”
“Our investigation brought forward the information that Mr. Ferman only spent a year in the military,” Cole added. “He had a very basic military background. He was honorably discharged on injury. Rick Ferman is a chameleon because he’ll be whatever you want him to be.”
But while it was obvious that Rick Ferman was a phony, the conspiracy to kill Monica was very real.
“I’ve listened to the tape and it’s very clear on the tape. You wanted your wife killed and you were willing to pay $80,000 to make it happen,” the interviewer said to Dino.
“Well, the whole money aspect had come up numerous times about him wanting money and needing money,” Dino replied. “I’ve been paying him money for a long time. I think in total I paid him probably $50,000 to secure the military contract. By the time the hour and a half lunch was up and he asked me those questions, I wasn’t… was it about killing somebody? I really didn’t think anybody was going to be dead. I know what the tape appears to be like, but I didn’t take any of it seriously.”
Dino claims it was Rick Ferman who wanted to get rid of Monica because she was trying to sabotage his military contract.
“He convinces me that Monica is calling them and trying to kill the contract. So he’s like, ‘You know, I want to get her out of the country. I want anything I can do to get rid of her.'”
“Are you saying to me, Dino, that Rick Ferman was the one who proposed killing Monica all the time?”
“Yeah.”
“And you never said that?”
The more I pressed Dino about what he said on the tape, the more he blamed Rick Ferman and the less his story made sense.
“Well, on the tape, it’s very clear that you understood that once the lunch with Rick was over, there was no turning back, that he was going to kill Monica,” the interviewer pointed out.
“He said that to me many times. There’s no turning back once this happens. I didn’t take any of it seriously. I mean, it was normal protocol for him to talk like that.”
But we listened to the whole tape and there is no mistaking what Dino and Rick were discussing. Even Dino’s brother agrees.
“Did you hear the recordings between your brother and Rick Ferman?”
“Yes.”
“What did you make of it?”
“The recordings kind of speak for themselves that they had a conversation about killing Monica.”
“Dino made it clear more than once that he wanted her dead?”
“Yes.”
“And he was willing to pay $80,000 to have it done?”
“Yes, he did.”
“Does that surprise you?”
“Yes, it does surprise me. And I truly believe though the whole situation snowballed out of control. I believe in my heart that maybe you know how guys talk, everybody gets mad. You say things and whatever. He could say ‘I wish she was gone.’ Somebody said ‘I can get rid of her for you if you want.’ The guy was a real blowhard. And I could see the situation where he’d say ‘I can take care of that. No problem. I can do that for you.'”
“I’m not lying. I’m telling you the truth. Yeah, I fell into a military contract where I was blinded by that. I just kind of ignored it because that was my focus. And that was wrong. It does show a weakness in me being greedy. I should have recognized what was going on and I’ll never forgive myself for that,” Dino admitted.
But to Emily Cole, this wasn’t about a phony military contract or Rick Ferman. This was a clear-cut case of murder for hire by Dino.
“There was just one problem. Cole’s star witness was an alleged con man.”
“Were you concerned about putting Rick Ferman on the stand?”
“To an extent.”
“Why?”
“He had his own credibility issues and that was brought forward in the preliminary hearing. There were a lot of things that the defense attorney brought up that didn’t make him look great.”
Cole knew that would happen again if Ferman was called as a witness in front of a jury.
“But the case wasn’t Mr. Ferman. It was the tape.”
9 months after Dino Gugli was caught on tape and charged with attempted murder for trying to have his wife killed, Emily Cole was preparing for trial.
“When Mr. Ferman tells him that when he leaves this room, he can’t change the fact that Monica is going to be killed. And Mr. Gugli agrees to that, that is Mr. Gugli pointing the proverbial gun at Monica.”
Cole had solid evidence on that tape, but she also had a big problem: Rick Ferman himself. Just before trial, she decided she wasn’t going to take any chances and made a stunning decision. She offered Dino a deal: plead guilty to attempted murder in the second degree, and serve only 9 years in prison.
“He had never spent a day in jail previous to this incident,” Cole said. “He didn’t have a record. Mr. Gugli didn’t commit violence on anyone either, and I think this was a fair sentence.”
“I think my life is worth more than that,” Monica replied. “To me, the intent shows the criminal mind. So, if I try to kill you and the bullet misses you by half an inch, am I less of a criminal because I don’t have a good aim?”
“Did you want this to go to trial?”
“Yes, absolutely. I was shocked. I remember calling asking them, ‘Why are you offering him a plea?’ What I got back was, ‘Don’t worry about it. He’ll never take it. Don’t worry about it. He’s going away for life.'”
“Why did you take the deal?” the interviewer asked Dino.
“I didn’t want to. And, you know, I went all the way till the last second before I took the deal. My whole family pleaded with me to take the deal. I wasn’t going to. I thought the one to five chance was really worth taking the risk. I didn’t think a jury was going to find me guilty, but after my mom said ‘Please just take the deal,’ I took the deal.”
“He will get out angry. He will get out vengeful,” the narrator said. “And he will get out thinking that the game still needs to be won.”
Despite suspicions that Rick Ferman is a con man, he has not been charged with any crime. His biggest fear is when Dino is released.
“That’s what’s scary for me. There isn’t any doubt in my mind that my life would be in danger.”
And Monica fears for her safety as well.
“I know that my husband’s very resourceful. He may have asked Rick, but he could have asked many other people, too. He had a lot more than $80,000 at his disposal to have me killed.”
“So, do you believe money will be waiting for him when he’s released?”
“If he has control over it from prison, then absolutely he’ll have access to several millions.”
Dino’s brother, Gino, insists there is no money left.
“She claims that there’s $4.5 million overseas. Okay, go find it. His second wife, ‘Oh, there’s $20 million overseas. Go find it.’ How come nobody’s finding it? Seriously, where is it?”
“Do you have any sympathy for Monica?”
“No, I think she pretty much brings on all of her misfortune herself, but I didn’t like her before, so I’m certainly not going to like her now.”
“What if your brother was actually associating with a real hitman? Monica could be dead today.”
“I guess by the tape it’s probably true, but I believe that my brother in his business world probably knew more capable people if he wanted something like that done than Richard Ferman. That’s why I think it was just something said between two guys that spiraled out of control.”
“Does Monica have any reason to fear for her safety after you are released from prison?” the interviewer asked Dino.
“Of course not. I just want to take care of my kids. I want to pay child support. I want to be a good providing citizen and a good providing father.”
But Dino might have a hard time with that. Monica is proceeding with the divorce, fighting for the house, whatever money is left, and she has full custody of their daughters.
“How do you explain something like this? And how do you make them adjust to a new life knowing that their father’s alive? Knowing that their father is in prison.”
“Do they know why he’s in prison?”
“Yes. They saw him being arrested.”
But Dino still claims he is the victim.
“I’ve been criminalized, which has just destroyed my life. And I don’t get it. I don’t understand why everyone wants to attack me and this guy set me up.”
“Monica is lucky because in the end, Rick Ferman is not a killer,” Cole said. “He’s someone that might bend the truth or omit the truth, but he’s not a killer. And that’s what saved Monica.”
Monica’s main concern now is her children.
“I know his intention is to reunite himself with the kids and take those children away from me.”
“Is that one of your greatest fears?”
“Do I think about it? Yes. Am I going to live in fear every day? No. I’m not going to allow this man to do this to me. No. I intend on really making something of my experience and not shying away from what happened because I think that if somebody can look at my life and what I’ve been through and learn from it, then I’ve done something right.”
“Anything else you want to say?”
“Um, you know, it’s 15 minutes of fame has turned into 30 seconds of fame. I can only describe it as evil. Something horrible.”
