Charlie Adelson found guilty in Dan Markel murder-for-hire conspiracy. Everything you need to know

C. A. Bridges, USA TODAY NETWORK - Florida
Updated ·13 min read
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UPDATE: Charlie Adelson, the former son-in-law of Markel who reportedly masterminded the hit-for-hire, was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.

In July of 2014, Florida State law professor Dan Markel dropped his two boys off at preschool, hit the gym, and then came home to his Tallahassee home where he was shot twice in the head in his car, execution-style, at point-blank range. He died 14 hours later.

Since then the sensational case of his shocking murder has involved years-long investigations by Tallahassee police and the FBI, hitmen, a gang leader who flipped on his friends, wiretaps, family members accused, recorded conversations in crowded restaurants, three trials, four convictions and a COVID delay. It was the subject of a popular true crime podcast and continues to make national news, with features on Dateline and 20/20.

On Monday, Markel's ex-brother-in-law, periodontist Charlie Adelson, accused of being the ringleader behind the hit, became the fourth person to be found guilty in the conspiracy to murder a man. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Here's what happened up to that day, and in the years afterward.

Who is Dan Markel?

Daniel Eric Markel, 41 at the time of his death, was a Canadian-born Florida State law professor, author and prominent legal scholar.

He was married to fellow FSU professor Wendi Adelson and they had two young sons, but they separated in 2012 and battled through an extremely acrimonious and bitter divorce in 2013.

How it all began: FSU law professor dies in shooting

A search for justice: After a year, still few clues in Dan Markel killing

How was Dan Markel murdered?

Dan Markel's car, still parked in his Trescott Drive home's garage, where he was found July 18, 2014, with two gunshot wounds to the head. Markel was slumped over the steering wheel when first responders arrived.
Dan Markel's car, still parked in his Trescott Drive home's garage, where he was found July 18, 2014, with two gunshot wounds to the head. Markel was slumped over the steering wheel when first responders arrived.

On July 18, 2014, Latin Kings gang leader Luis Rivera and his childhood friend Sigfredo Garcia, who had driven up to Tallahassee from Miami in a rented Toyota Prius, stalked Markel as he left his sons at Creative Preschool, spent an hour and a half at Premier Fitness, and then returned home returned to his home on Trescott Drive in Betton Hills, according to testimony from Rivera.

"As soon as we pulled in, Garcia jumped out and went behind his car to the driver’s side and shot him,” Rivera told prosecutors during his murder trial after he flipped on his partner. “Twice.”

A neighbor saw Markel in his garage and called 911, but due to an initial prioritization error by the dispatcher, an ambulance didn't arrive for 19 minutes. Markel was transported to Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare where he died the next day.

Investigators used cellphone records and surveillance video to track the Prius and identify Rivera and Garcia.

Rivera, already in federal prison at that point for an unrelated racketeering case, initially denied being in Tallahassee but changed his story when shown a photo of the two men in the Prius. Garcia was arrested in May 2016.

Rivera later admitted it was the second attempt to kill Markel after a previous try in early June 2014 when they followed him but "lost him."

Dan Markle killing response: Ambulance arrived at Markel's home 19 minutes after 911 call

What was the motive behind Dan Markel's murder?

A photo of Dan Markel and his two sons is shown on the screen in the courtroom as his mother, Ruth Markel, gives her victim impact statement during sentencing for Sigfredo Garcia in 2019.
A photo of Dan Markel and his two sons is shown on the screen in the courtroom as his mother, Ruth Markel, gives her victim impact statement during sentencing for Sigfredo Garcia in 2019.

For the shooters, cash.

Rivera testified that he and Garcia were paid $100,000 in a murder-for-hire plot. They received the money in stacks of stapled hundred dollar bills the next day and they split it with the mother of Garcia's children, Katherine Magbanua, who Rivera said set up the deal and was the first person Garcia called on the ride back to Miami after the shooting.

According to prosecutors, Markel's murder “stemmed from the desperate desire of the Adelson family” for Wendi and the two sons to move to South Florida. In 2012, while Markel was away, Adelson had moved out of their house with the children and most of the couple's possessions and left divorce papers on the bed, according to court filings. Markel won 50/50 custody and an order prohibiting Adelson from moving them away in the divorce and the two parents battled in court for months over every detail of their children's lives.

In 2014, Markel filed motions claiming Adelson had misrepresented her financial assets and had taken a 2-caret ring belonging to Markel's great-aunt, a Holocaust survivor. He also filed a motion to prevent Wendi Adelson's mother, Donna, from having unsupervised time with the children after hearing about disparaging remarks she was making about him to the children.

Murder milestone: 5 years after Dan Markel was gunned down, journey to justice continues

Who hired the men to kill Dan Markel?

In the 2016 arrest affidavit for Sigfredo Garcia, Wendi Adelson's brother Charlie Adelson and their mother Donna were implicated in the contract killing, although they were not charged at the time. The document said that Donna Adelson wanted Wendi to "coerce" Markel by offering him a $1 million deal or by threatening to enroll the children of the devoutly Jewish Markel in a Catholic school.

Charlie Adelson was arrested in April 2022 and charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and solicitation of murder. He was found guilty in November 2023.

Through their attorneys, the Adelson family has consistently denied all connections to the killing and called the theories "fanciful fiction" in 2016.

Who is Charlie Adelson?

Wendi Adelson's brother Charles, 47, was a periodontist at the Adelson Institute in Fort Lauderdale, a dentistry practice he shared with his father. Emails uncovered in the investigation showed that Charlie Adelson didn't like his ex-brother-in-law.

The day after Markel was shot, Wendi Adelson admitted that Charlie had joked that buying her a TV was cheaper than hiring a hitman. The TV became her alibi when she set up a Best Buy appointment to have it fixed at the same time as the murder.

A former boyfriend of Adelson, Jeffrey Lacasse, told investigators that Charlie Adelson had "looked into" hiring a hitman for $15,000 in the summer of 2013.

"She said Charlie had explored all options to take care of the problem and Charlie suggested having Professor Markel killed," Lacasse testified. In Charlie Adelson's trial in 2023, Wendy Adelson denied ever telling Lacasse such a thing,

According to prosecutors, Charlie Adelson found a solution through Katherine Magbanua.

Who is Katherine Magbanua?

At the time of the murder, Adelson was dating Magbanua, who was working on and off at the Adelsons' dental practice. She also was the mother of the children of Sigfredo Garcia, the man who killed Markel.

When Rivera testified against Garcia, he said Garcia had told him “we were going to kill the man for some kids” for "a lady because the lady wanted her kids back.” Rivera told jurors that he knew Wendi Adelson was paying for the hit and that "it was all Katie" (Magbanua) who connected them.

Investigators also tracked multiple phone calls in the weeks leading up to the murder, and again immediately after it, between Magbanua and Charlie Adelson, between Magbanua and Garcia and between Charlie and Donna Adelson. After the murder, Rivera and Garcia purchased several cars and motorcycles at about the same time that Magbanua began receiving paychecks from the family's dental practice. Investigators also found that Magbanua deposited more than $41,000 in cash and more than $17,000 in checks from the Adelson Institute into her bank account between July 2014 and Nov. 2015, mostly through ATMs in increments of $300 to $2,000. The checks were signed by Donna Adelson, who also worked at the family practice.

Magbanua maintained her innocence both in Garcia's 2019 trial, where the jury deadlocked on whether to convict her as well, and in her own 2022 trial when she was found guilty of being the go-between in the murder-for-hire plot. But she admitted that Charlie Adelson may have been involved, and the next year in Adelson's trial she testified that the hit had been Adelson's idea and had brought up the idea to her in 2013. Adelson denied this.

Tale of the testimony: Walkthrough of witnesses making the case for, against Charlie Adelson

What is the Dolce Vita recording?

The key piece of evidence against Charlie Adelson is a conversation he had with Magbanua in 2016 at the Miami restaurant Dolce Vita about how to deal with someone they believed to be either a blackmailer or the police.

Earlier, an FBI agent had approached Donna Adelson, posing as Rivera's brother, and handed her a news article about Markel's murder with "$5,000" and a phone number written on it in a sting operation known as "the bump." The FBI was hoping to get suspects in the conspiracy talking among themselves. It worked.

During the more than 40-minute video recording, Adelson allegedly suggested making a one-time “charity” payment to the so-called blackmailer or else killing him. "And so help me God, if they f--k with my family, it's gonna be, like, f--king that Nazi sh-t because this will be done. You know what I'm saying? I mean, Katie, I don't care what I spend. Okay? I swear to God, Katie. Katie, the person doesn't know."

Evidence from the recording led to Magbanua's conviction, and a software-enhanced version of it provided enough evidence for Adelson's arrest on April 21, 2022. He was charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and solicitation of murder.

What was Charlie Adelson's defense? Double extortion

During the eight-day testimony portion of the trial, prosecutors painted Charlie Adelson as a wealthy and arrogant "playboy" who thought he was smart enough to get away with murder.

Adelson, who took the stand in his own defense, told jurors that Magbanua came to him in a panic the night of the murder and said she knew the people who killed Markel and that they wanted a third of a million dollars within 48 hours or “one of his family members would be next.”

He testified that he was too scared to go to the police and the next morning gave Magbanua a purse filled with stapled-together cash totaling $138,000, with additional payments to her of $3,000 a month. In his trial, Adelson called Magbanua the "mastermind" behind the murder plot. The prosecution wasn't impressed.

“He’s a criminal,” Assistant State Attorney Georgia Cappleman said in her closing arguments. “He’s wealthy. He’s smart. And he’s successful. But he’s a wealthy, smart successful murderer.”

What's up with the stapled-together $100 bills?

Assistant State Attorney Georgia Cappleman questions June Umchinda about her former relationship with Charlie Adelson, Oct. 27, 2023.
Assistant State Attorney Georgia Cappleman questions June Umchinda about her former relationship with Charlie Adelson, Oct. 27, 2023.

Rivera testified that he and Garcia were paid in stacks of $100 bills, stapled together, inside a paper bag.

Another of Charlie Adelson's ex-girlfriends, June Umchinda, told investigators and confirmed in Adelson's trial that he kept a large amount of cash in his safe, stapled together in bundles of $100 bills.

“There was a staple on one of them,” she said in Rivera's and Garcia's murder case in 2019. “They were hundreds. I don’t know if they were stacks, but there was a staple on them.”

Who has been found guilty of the Dan Markel murder?

  • Luis Rivera: Rivera pled guilty in 2016 to second-degree murder in exchange for a 19-year sentence to run concurrently with a federal sentence on an unrelated case for his statements and cooperation with prosecutors. In 2019 he testified that he was with Garcia when Markel was murdered.

  • Sigfredo Garcia: A judge in Leon County, Florida sentenced Sigfredo Garcia to life in prison in October 2019. Jurors found the defendant guilty as one of the men who killed Florida State University Law Professor Dan Markel.

  • Katherine Magbanua: After her potential conviction as part of Garcia's trial was ruled a mistrial, Magbanua was tried again in 2022 and was found guilty of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and solicitation of murder. She is currently serving life in prison.

  • Charlie Adelson: A 12-person jury deliberated for three hours on Nov. 6, 2023 and found Adelson guilty of first-degree murder, conspiracy and solicitation to commit murder. Leon Circuit Judge Stephen Everett ordered a pre-sentence investigation at the defense’s behest, something that could take a month to complete. He set a conference hearing for Dec. 12 at the courthouse.

  • Donna Adelson: A week after Charlie Adelson was found guilty, his parents Donna and Harvey were stopped in Miami International Airport trying to board a flight with one-way tickets to Vietnam, a country that does not have an extradition agreement with the U.S. Donna Adelson was arrested. She has pleaded not guilty.

Has Wendi or Donna Adelson been charged in relation to the murder of Dan Markel?

A week after Charlie Adelson was found guilty, his mother Donna Adelson was arrested on an out-of-county warrant. No mention of charges has been released.

Neither Donna nor Harvey have sat for an interview with prosecutors or police about the murder. An attempt to require them to take the stand at their son's trial met with resistance, leading Leon Circuit Judge Stephen Everett threatening to hold them in contempt of court if they failed to comply, but the request was dropped and their names removed from witness lists for both sides.

What is the Markel Act?

Wendi Adelson had her sons' last name changed to Adelson and cut off the Markel family's visitation in 2016 after Garcia's arrest affidavit named members of the Adelson family as co-conspirators in the murder. Under then-Florida law, Markel's parents had no recourse even to petition the courts to seek visitation.

In 2020, the boys' grandparents Ruth and Phil Markel began pushing for legislation to give grandparents in Florida more rights to visit their grandchildren after the death of a parent. Versions of The Grandparents Visitation Rights bill, also known as the Markel Act, failed in 2020 and 2021 but HB 1119 passed in 2022 and was signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Chronicling every day of the Charlie Adelson trial:

The Tallahassee Democrat, which has covered the case closely since Markel's murder, had three journalists in the courtroom. Here is a collection of their coverage.

Contributors: Karl Etters, Jeff Burlew, Elena Barrera, Tallahassee Democrat

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Dan Markel murder: Charlie Adelson found guilty in Florida conspiracy