Grand jury indicts Donna Adelson in Dan Markel murder two days after Miami airport arrest
Donna Adelson, the matriarch of the South Florida family suspected for years in the hired killing of Dan Markel, was indicted in his murder on Wednesday, two days after she attempted to flee the country to Vietnam.
A Leon County grand jury returned an indictment charging her with first-degree murder and conspiracy and solicitation in the death of her former son-in-law — the same crimes for which her son, Charlie Adelson, was convicted last week.
Adelson, 73, was arrested Monday night as she and her husband, Harvey Adelson, attempted to board a flight out of Miami International Airport with one-way tickets to Vietnam, which has no extradition treaty with the United States. The couple booked the flight the day after their son was found guilty.
Read Donna Adelson arrest warrant: Talk of fleeing, suicide and 'getting things in order'
She is being held without bond in the Miami-Dade Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center but will be transferred within a couple of weeks to the Leon County Detention Facility.
Donna and Harvey's travel plans were interrupted by law enforcement agencies including the FBI. She had discussed the possibility of fleeing to a country with no extradition treaty in monitored jail phone calls with her son, according to the arrest warrant.
Her attempted flight came two days before a scheduled meeting of the grand jury, which hands up indictments in first-degree murder cases. It's unclear whether the grand jury meeting played a role in Adelson's apparent decision to run, something prosecutors intend to use against her.
Her son, Charlie Adelson, a South Florida periodontist, was convicted Nov. 6 in the murder of Markel, who was a noted law professor at Florida State University. He was shot July 18, 2014, in the garage of his Betton Hills home and survived another 14 hours before dying the next day at a Tallahassee hospital.
Arrest records say Donna Adelson conspired with her son and others to carry out the murder after her daughter and Markel split in 2012 a particularly nasty divorce and continued feuding over custody of their two sons. Shortly before he was killed, Markel had asked a judge to bar Donna Adelson from unsupervised visits with her grandchildren because of disparaging comments she'd made about him in front of the kids.
During Charlie Adelson's trial, prosecutors introduced into evidence numerous exhibits involving Donna Adelson and her communications with her son and daughter, from wire-tapped phone calls to texts and emails.
After an FBI agent posing as a blackmailer approached her in 2016 outside her Miami condo, she called her son to say she had been handed "paperwork" and that it involved “probably the two of us. So you probably have a general idea what I’m talking about.”
As office manager of the family's dental practice, she also wrote and signed thousands of dollars in checks to Katie Magbanua, the mother of Garcia's children, in the months following the murder. Magbanua was never actually employed at the office.
The grand jury, which operates in secret and routinely takes up first-degree murder cases, began meeting early Wednesday morning at the Leon County Courthouse in Courtroom 3G, where Charlie Adelson's trial was held. At one point late in the afternoon, State Attorney Jack Campbell huddled outside the courtroom with Assistant State Attorney Georgia Cappleman, the lead prosecutor in the Markel case, and investigator Jason Newlin.
The grand jury indictment says that on July 18, 2014, Donna Adelson "did unlawfully kill a human being, Dan Markel, by shooting with a firearm, and the killing was perpetrated from or with a premeditated design or intent to effect the death of Dan Markel." As noted by prosecutors during Charlie Adelson's trial, a conspirator doesn't have to pull the trigger to be charged with first-degree murder.
The indictment also says that Donna Adelson "did agree, conspire, combine or confederate with Charles Adelson and/or Katherine Magbanua and/or other persons to commit first-degree murder" and that she solicited her son, Magbanua and/or others to carry out the crime.
Contact Jeff Burlew at jburlew@tallahassee.com or 850-599-2180.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Donna Adelson indicted in Dan Markel murder two days after airport arrest
