Charlie Adelson Trial Day 1 openings: Defense says ex-girlfriend was murder 'mastermind'

The lawyer for Charlie Adelson told jurors during opening statements Thursday that he was innocent — and instead pointed the finger at his ex-girlfriend and her associates for the 2014 murder of Dan Markel.

It was the first time since the murder that Adelson, a Fort Lauderdale dentist who was a suspect for years before his arrest in 2022, has offered an explanation for what happened.

Prosecutors have long accused Adelson and his family, including his sister, Wendi Adelson, and their parents, Donna and Harvey Adelson, of involvement in the murder of Markel, which happened amid a bitter divorce and child custody battle between Wendi and Markel, her ex-husband. The Adelsons wanted Wendi to move to Miami with the two kids she shared with Markel, but a judge had blocked the request.

Daniel Rashbaum, a Miami attorney representing Adelson, told jurors about a “bad joke” his client told many times that he had bought his sister a TV after her divorce with Markel because it was “cheaper than hiring a hit man.”

Rashbaum said Adelson also told the joke to his girlfriend, Katherine Magbanua, who was also aware of a plan the Adelson family had talked about involving paying Markel $1 million so he could move to Miami and commute back and forth to Tallahassee.

“You will learn that Kati heard the hit man joke,” Rashbaum said. “You will learn that she heard the million dollar offer and got some ideas in her head. The state itself has called Katherine Magbanua the mastermind, and that’s exactly what she was.”

Rashbaum said that on the night of the murder, after Charlie Adelson had had a long day working as a traveling periodontist, his mother called to tell him that Markel had been shot.

“He’s shocked,” Rashbaum said. “He’s upset. His first reaction is Wendi and the boys OK?”

Later, Magbanua sat him down and told Adelson that “something terrible has happened.”

“She says a friend of hers had shot Professor Markel,” Rashbaum said. "She tells him over and over that she had nothing to do with it. But ... she had been talking too much and her friend and these people learned about the problems that his family was having with Professor Markel. They learned about the million dollar offer. And they got it in their minds to do this.”

Rashbaum said Magbanua wouldn't tell her who the people were who killed Markel but that he needed to pay them within 48 hours or “one of his family members would be next.”

Earlier in the morning, Assistant State Attorney Sarah Kathryn Dugan told jurors that the evidence will show that Charlie Adelson hired the hit men to kill Markel.

She said the Adelsons desperately wanted Wendi to relocate with the children to Miami. A judge had also denied a request for relocation, which meant she couldn’t move “unless of course something happened to Dan Markel," Dugan said.

Dugan walked jurors through the day of the murder, telling them that Markel was shot the morning of July 18, 2014, after he dropped his children off at daycare, went to the gym and returned to his home on Trescott Drive.

A next door neighbor had seen a silver/green Prius speeding away from Markel’s home after the shooting. Investigators traced the car back to Sigfredo Garcia, the father of Magbanua’s children. They uncovered numerous phone calls between Charlie Adelson and Magbanua and Magbanua to Garcia, who carried out the hit with his close friend, Luis Rivera, a Latin Kings gang leader.

“Dan Markel was a problem this defendant needed to solve for his family," Dugan said.

Dugan walked jurors through an undercover FBI operation called “the bump” in which an agent approached Donna Adelson with a newspaper article about Markel and $5,000 written on it.

Afterward, she said, Donna Adelson didn’t contact police but instead called her son, Charlie, telling him she had been given “paperwork” that involved the two of them and that they need to talk in person.

Soon after, Charlie Adelson met with Magbanua at the Dolce Vita restaurant in Miami, where their conversation was recorded by an undercover agent at a nearby table.

During the meeting, Adelson discussed whether the person who approached his mom was a blackmailer or possibly a cop. He said it would be a good thing if it were the police, because it meant they didn’t have enough evidence to charge them.

“If they had any evidence, we would already be at the airport,” Adelson said.

Dugan also explained how Charlie Adelson kept large sums of money at his house, with $100 bills stapled together in stacks of thousands. She said that the day after the murder, Magbanua paid the hit men $100,000 in stapled bills.

She urged jurors to find Charlie Adelson guilty of murder.

“Dan Markel was loved,” she said. “He was a brother. He was a son. And this trial is his family’s opportunity to see justice done for the person who set up their son’s murder. And at the conclusion of this evidence, you all will be convinced beyond any reasonable doubt that this defendant is guilty.”

Rashbaum, who asserted that Garcia tried to kill Charlie Adelson 17 days before the murder, suggested his client was a victim, too.

“A man’s life is in your hands,” he said. “He’s innocent. Send him home.”

GAVEL-TO-GAVEL COVERAGE: The Tallahassee Democrat will livestream each day of the trial of Charlie Adelson from the courthouse in Tallahassee. Watch on Tallahassee.com and the Tallahassee Democrat's Facebook and YouTube pages. For best viewing experience: Download the Tallahassee Democrat app to watch and receive text alerts on when to watch – from opening arguments to the verdict.

Contact Jeff Burlew at jburlew@tallahassee.com or 850-599-2180. Follow him for court updates on X at @JeffBurlew.

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Dan Markel murder: Charlie Adelson attorney points finger in openings