FSU professor Dan Markel's killing: Everything to know about the murder-for-hire case
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Over nine years after Florida State University law professor Dan Markel was murdered in his garage and the hired killers and a woman found guilty of facilitating the hit have been sent to prison, the accused mastermind behind it all — his former brother-in-law — was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.
The complicated, sensational case involving lengthy investigations by Tallahassee police and the FBI, a confession, wiretaps, recorded conversations, four arrests, three trials, and a COVID delay has made national news, features on Dateline and 20/20, and has been the subject of a popular true crime podcast.
Here's what you need to know.
Breaking it down: Walkthrough of witnesses making the case for, against Charlie Adelson
Dan Markel murder: The latest from jury selection in Charlie Adelson trial
GAVEL-TO-GAVEL COVERAGE: The Tallahassee Democrat livestreamed 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.
Who was Dan Markel? How was Dan Markel murdered?
Daniel Eric Markel 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.
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 dropped the boys off at preschool, hit the gym, and 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. “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. Markel was 41.
What was the motive behind Dan Markel's murder?
For the shooters, cash.
Rivera, already in prison for an unrelated racketeering case, testified that he and 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.
In the 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.
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, who turns 47 next week, 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. 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.
According to prosecutors, he found one 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 Adelson's dental practice. She was also 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 phone calls in the weeks leading up to the murder between Magbanua and Charlie Adelson, followed by phone contact between Magbanua and Garcia and between Charlie and Donna Adelson. Immediately after the murder, Donna Adelson talked to Charlie on the phone for seven minutes, and then he made two calls to Magbanua with one lasting five minutes. About an hour after that. Garcia called Magbanua, investigators said, the first call he made after shooting Markel.
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 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 prosecutors linked her to Adelson both in the 'brutal act' itself and in repeated efforts to cover it up afterward.
Dan Markel murder: 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.
When was Charlie Adelson arrested?
Adelson was arrested on April 21, 2022, and charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and solicitation of murder. He was taken into custody at his home by the U.S. Marshals Service.
Was Charlie Adelson convicted?
Charlie Adelson was found guilty on Nov. 6, 2023, after the jury deliberated for three hours.
Who has already been arrested/convicted of this 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. On Dec. 12, 2023, he was sentenced to life in prison.
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 Harvey Adelson been charged in relation to the murder of Dan Markel?
While he has been under investigation, no charges have been filed to this date.
Neither of Charlie Adelson's parents have ever sat for an interview with prosecutors or police about the murder before Donna was arrested. 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.
Contributors: Karl Etters, Jeff Burlew, Tallahassee Democrat
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Florida murder-for-hire: Brother-in-law Charlie Adelson trial to begin
