Family Matters

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Speaker 5 From the Creator of Homeland, Claire Danes and Matthew Rees star in the new Netflix series The Beast in Me as ruthless rivals whose shared darkness will set them on a collision course with fatal consequences.

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Speaker 7 Tonight on Datelines.

Speaker 8 Your family had your ex-husband killed to try to help you, didn't they?

Speaker 9 No, that's completely untrue.

Speaker 7 A new twist in this headline-grabbing case as a mother and son are accused.

Speaker 11 You've got this rich Playboy Periodonis.

Speaker 13 My name is Dr. Charlie Adelson.

Speaker 11 And he's been charged with first-degree murder for killing his ex-brother-in-law, Dan Markel.

Speaker 14 My brother, he knew Danny treated me badly.

Speaker 8 Do you think you can talk your way out of this?

Speaker 16 No, I don't.

Speaker 17 I'm not part of a murder.

Speaker 18 My parents have more reason to dislike Danny than almost anyone else.

Speaker 11 Donna meddled in her children's business way more than most parents do.

Speaker 21 You see, Donna is a prime mover in this.

Speaker 22 Yes.

Speaker 23 There's a lot of things that we have to do, and we've got a very tight timeframe.

Speaker 11 They're boarding the plane.

Speaker 25 Looking for places with just no extradition.

Speaker 11 They believe they're about to make their great escape.

Speaker 28 I think the Edelsons became obsessed with Dan Markell, and obsession can make people do terrible things.

Speaker 21 Did you think finally the case has come to the doorstep of the family?

Speaker 22 It was an important new chapter, definitely.

Speaker 7 A murder plot unwinds, and investigators say the trail leads to one family on a deadly mission. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 31 Here's Dennis Murphy with Family Matters.

Speaker 35 It all began like a typical vacation in November 2023.

Speaker 37 A pair of senior citizens setting out for Miami Airport's international terminal.

Speaker 11 It is an Emirates Airline flight that is leaving Miami bound for Dubai. They are ultimately going to connect and fly to Vietnam.

Speaker 40 Harvey was a prominent Florida dentist.

Speaker 41 Donna, his devoted wife.

Speaker 42 They're wealthy and they live a privileged life in Miami.

Speaker 34 Tickets and passports in hand, they check their luggage and headed for the gate.

Speaker 11 The passengers are all getting on the plane.

Speaker 3 They're boarding.

Speaker 43 Then everything changed in a snap.

Speaker 27 I was like, are you honestly kidding me right now?

Speaker 44 A team of federal agents and police officers swarmed the jetway.

Speaker 11 With guns and holsters, they surround this frail 73-year-old woman.

Speaker 46 Officers cuffed Donna and told her she was under arrest.

Speaker 39 They asked her to remove all her jewelry and personal effects, and she kissed her her husband goodbye.

Speaker 49 Then it was off to the Miami-Dade County Jail, where she posed for a mugshot that would blow up the internet.

Speaker 52 Her arrest was accelerated after investigators learned she was trying to leave the country.

Speaker 35 Soon she faced a judge.

Speaker 55 Miss Adelson, please keep your comments to yourself.

Speaker 56 So exactly who was this 73-year-old grandmother?

Speaker 39 Depends who you ask.

Speaker 12 Donna Adelson is like your meddling mother on steroids.

Speaker 11 The only thing Donna's guilty of is being a a loving mother.

Speaker 58 And exactly how did she find herself in a jumpsuit facing a murder rap?

Speaker 35 Do you think that Donna is the great villain in this story?

Speaker 3 I do.

Speaker 1 Donna,

Speaker 22 in my mind, is the architect.

Speaker 60 To get to the truth, we have to take you back to the summer of 2014 and the opening chapter of an epic crime saga in the Sunshine State.

Speaker 61 A tale of bitter divorce, dueling grandparents, twisted family ties, and the custody of two small boys that all started with a tragic and mysterious murder.

Speaker 20 Tonight, you'll hear all the newest hair-raising twists in a case that's full of them.

Speaker 41 The July day had begun routinely as Dan Markell, a beloved and accomplished law professor at Florida State University, dropped off his two sons at school, swung by the gym for a workout, then drove up the driveway into his garage.

Speaker 61 Then, the quiet was suddenly shattered.

Speaker 10 A neighbor heard gunshots and called 911.

Speaker 24 He's inside, the car is running, and he's got blood all over his head.

Speaker 10 Dan Markell had taken two bullets to the head.

Speaker 33 His car window smashed, his eyeglasses broken.

Speaker 1 His assailants apparently pulling away.

Speaker 66 That car was backing up. It was light-colored, white or silver.
I want to say it was the freest.

Speaker 68 It happened so fast.

Speaker 69 Dan's friends and neighbors, Jeremy and Tracy Cohen, didn't immediately realize what was wrong.

Speaker 8 I drove home and I drove by Danny's house and there was a police car in his driveway.

Speaker 21 What did you think had happened?

Speaker 26 I just didn't dream that

Speaker 26 Danny could have been shot on a Friday in our neighborhood. It just didn't make any sense to me.

Speaker 70 Tallahassee authorities reached Dan's parents, Ruth and Phil, that afternoon.

Speaker 74 Shot, that doesn't make sense.

Speaker 3 No. Who would ever want to shoot Dan Markhill?

Speaker 22 For me, it was an out-of-body experience. Like, I can't, you know, even, don't even want to think about it in terms of that.
The moments were so horrific.

Speaker 38 They quickly made their way to Tallahassee, but never did get to say goodbye.

Speaker 73 Dan Markell died overnight in the hospital.

Speaker 77 He was 41.

Speaker 27 It's tough to talk about until now.

Speaker 59 Dan's friend Josh Berman got the call at home in New York.

Speaker 27 I put the phone down. I sat there on the bed with my head in my hands.
hands. I was like, you know, speechless.

Speaker 21 So then the question is who wants him dead?

Speaker 8 Right. And so that's when the theories started to fly.

Speaker 28 There's a lot of moving parts and a lot of different agencies involved in this case.

Speaker 78 Jason Nulan is the chief investigator for the Leon County State Attorney's Office and worked closely with the Tallahassee Police and the FBI on the case.

Speaker 34 They started looking into Dan's life at the university.

Speaker 35 Could it be as simple as a student who got a bad grade or got thrown out of the law school, coming back and taking his revenge?

Speaker 28 All of that was taken into consideration. Was it somebody that got a bad grade? Was it a co-worker?

Speaker 36 So investigators interviewed his students and fellow faculty members and combed through his email to see if there was any suspicious correspondence.

Speaker 41 Nothing turned up.

Speaker 35 With his professional life not bearing any fruit, investigators took a hard look at Dan's personal life.

Speaker 59 Dan had been married to a fellow lawyer and professor at FSU, Wendy Adelson. She hailed from South Florida from a family of well-to-do dentists.

Speaker 6 What do you think the glue was, mutually, the attraction?

Speaker 27 Wendy's definitely a sharp cookie. They had some overlapping interests, but quite candidly, they just seemed to be in love with each other.

Speaker 61 The couple had two sons and began raising them in Tallahassee.

Speaker 22 Dan loved the boys more than anything else in the world.

Speaker 35 But after six years, Wendy and Dan's relationship began to crack.

Speaker 37 The day of reckoning came in September 2012.

Speaker 10 While Dan was away traveling for work, Wendy packed up the kids and left divorce papers on the bed.

Speaker 11 He called it his Pearl Harbor moment.

Speaker 1 Wendy got her own place in Tallahassee, and a War of the Roses-style battle began.

Speaker 53 I think it had been building and building.

Speaker 82 Stephen Webster was a divorce attorney for Dan and became a friend.

Speaker 21 As I understand it, Wendy Adelson wanted to take the children with her and move closer to her family in South Florida.

Speaker 72 Absolutely. Six, seven hours away.

Speaker 53 Was that the question? That was the initial question.

Speaker 21 And family law courts said you cannot do that.

Speaker 53 If the children are here in a stable environment and the father can participate fully with the raising of the children, the law prefers that and should. That motion was denied.

Speaker 53 We weren't going back there.

Speaker 1 Wendy stayed in Tallahassee with the boys as the court required, and her divorce from Dan became final in 2013.

Speaker 67 But the custody arrangement remained a sore point on both sides.

Speaker 72 50-50 sharing arrangement with the kids.

Speaker 53 Absolutely. And he availed himself of every second and quite frankly, you know, wanted some time that maybe she found offensive.

Speaker 70 According to court documents, Wendy was finding Dan's demands unreasonable. So, Dan filed a motion for a hearing to work the issues out with a judge.

Speaker 74 On the scale of ugly, how ugly was this one?

Speaker 53 It was about to go off the Richter scale.

Speaker 73 Dan was killed before that hearing could happen.

Speaker 83 Now, police were about to talk to Wendy, who would be remarkably forthcoming about their bitter divorce and a whole lot more.

Speaker 19 Danny didn't treat me very well.

Speaker 36 Setting the stage for a Shakespearean tale that would rip apart two families.

Speaker 62 Baffle a team of law enforcement agencies.

Speaker 42 You had this connection to the Miami underworld. You just thought, this can't be true.

Speaker 49 And ignite a decade-long search for justice.

Speaker 84 Were you involved in any way in a plot to kill Dan Markell?

Speaker 85 No.

Speaker 8 I believe that the truth has a way of coming out.

Speaker 1 The investigation into the death of Florida law professor Dan Markell was just hours old when his ex-wife Wendy Adelson first spoke to police.

Speaker 87 There was a shooting. Your husband, your ex-husband, excuse me, Daniel,

Speaker 87 has been taken to the hospital.

Speaker 89 He's not going to survive. My God.

Speaker 89 Okay.

Speaker 89 I'm sorry, honey.

Speaker 89 I'm a muscle terror in this morning.

Speaker 89 What happened?

Speaker 89 Well,

Speaker 87 before we get into everything, I have to establish where you were and who you were with

Speaker 89 and so forth.

Speaker 87 Okay. Oh, my God.

Speaker 87 I'm sorry. That's okay.

Speaker 10 Through tears, Wendy told the detective she'd been at her home that day, five miles from the the crime scene.

Speaker 87 Can you tell me what time you left your house this morning?

Speaker 19 Yeah, I was there.

Speaker 18 I didn't leave this morning.

Speaker 14 I didn't leave until noon.

Speaker 87 Okay.

Speaker 14 Oh, my God.

Speaker 18 And I tried to drive up Trescott, and I saw that it was blocked.

Speaker 87 Do you know anybody that would have a beef against your ex-husband? Oh, my God. I hate to ask it now, but I have to do it now.
You understand?

Speaker 18 He always meant well, but he would sometimes rub people the wrong way.

Speaker 14 Okay.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 18 Nani often would do something like this.

Speaker 18 Oh my god, we're poor kids.

Speaker 18 Oh my mom.

Speaker 87 Where's your closest family at?

Speaker 18 My parents are in Coral Springs. Okay.

Speaker 19 And my brother, I have two brothers, but I'm very close to one of them who is in Fort Lauderdale.

Speaker 19 Oh my God, I can't believe this is happening.

Speaker 83 Tallahassee police took photos and swabbed her hands for gunshot residue.

Speaker 59 None was found. Georgia Kappelman is chief assistant state attorney in Leon County, Florida, and would review the tape with law enforcement.

Speaker 8 She told the truth about the status of their relationship.

Speaker 6 That it wasn't a happy marriage in the end, and it was a very bad divorce.

Speaker 3 Correct.

Speaker 8 It certainly was of interest to law enforcement that there was an ongoing nasty divorce and litigation concerning these children.

Speaker 72 That's part of a classic recipe for homicides. Yep.

Speaker 58 But detectives later checked out her alibi and confirmed that she could not have shot her ex-husband.

Speaker 43 Now they wondered if someone she knew could be behind it.

Speaker 19 Danny didn't treat me very well.

Speaker 18 And I'm so scared that maybe someone did this.

Speaker 18 Not because they hate Danny, but because they thought this was good somehow.

Speaker 87 Oh, are you saying that you think maybe one of your friends would have done something like this?

Speaker 90 Why would they do this?

Speaker 87 I don't know.

Speaker 87 That's why you're here.

Speaker 92 Wendy told them she'd been seeing another man after the divorce.

Speaker 76 Jeffrey Lacos, an associate professor of social work at FSU.

Speaker 19 He's been my boyfriend.

Speaker 18 We've been dating since

Speaker 19 end of October. We had like a fight at the end of June and it was weird.
I asked him to just no contact for a week just so I could kind of figure out whether I wanted to be with him or not.

Speaker 87 When did you ask him that?

Speaker 19 Monday night after yoga.

Speaker 79 Just a few days before Dan Markell was gunned down in his garage.

Speaker 10 Wendy said she wanted to cool things off because Jeff had become increasingly jealous.

Speaker 87 Is Jeff a violent person? No. Not at all?

Speaker 24 No.

Speaker 87 Jeff own a gun?

Speaker 19 I don't think so. I mean, he certainly could have a gun and I wouldn't know about it.

Speaker 62 So the Tallahassee Police tracked down Jeff Lacasse.

Speaker 69 Mr. Lacasse, I appreciate you coming in and talking with me here.

Speaker 69 Like I said, we're still in the preliminary stages of this investigation.

Speaker 69 Your name did come up.

Speaker 42 It's pretty clear, even from that initial interview, that the police, you know, they're interested in Jeff's relationship with Wendy.

Speaker 77 Journalist Matthew Scher created a podcast about the case called Over My Dead Body.

Speaker 52 A case that says at least as much about marriage and love as it does about revenge and justice.

Speaker 42 Jeff, by his own admission, is in love, still in love with Wendy at that time. And yeah, look, of course the police must think, you know, Jeff didn't like Dan either, again, by his own admission.

Speaker 87 Have you met Wendy?

Speaker 89 Not personally.

Speaker 89 Very charismatic and very good at,

Speaker 89 I mean, once you take this, great, it's too many things for. I'm not the only man that's been under her thumb in that way.

Speaker 89 I mean, she really has this charisma and this sexuality, and so, you know, you throw yourself in front of a bus for this girl.

Speaker 95 Did you think Lacasse was still head over heels for Wendy?

Speaker 72 Oh, definitely.

Speaker 96 I think he would have loved another chance.

Speaker 60 To police, Jeff Lacasse seemed straight out of central casting.

Speaker 38 The jilted boyfriend, a man who made no secret of his dislike for Dan.

Speaker 89 So we know the Danny Markell and Wendy's story. I've been living through all this court with her for the last nine months, you know.
So Wendy was afraid of Danny.

Speaker 89 Wendy would almost have a panic attack or fun of Danny, which always made me.

Speaker 89 And Wendy's pretty closed off, she doesn't disclose information easily. I wonder if he used to beat her ass.

Speaker 89 I mean, I didn't know, you know, but she seemed as you know out of proportion for a guy who's just kind of a general.

Speaker 61 You know what I mean?

Speaker 10 Given everything Lacasse was saying about Dan, police had to wonder if he might have turned his anger into action.

Speaker 97 And you've never had any kind of physical contact with Danny?

Speaker 89 No.

Speaker 89 I was surprised you guys didn't call me earlier, though, because I probably said a hundred times in public that I like to kick his ass because he kept like really making Wendy suffer and things like that.

Speaker 89 But no, I would never. I'm a professor.
I'm a

Speaker 89 do anything like that.

Speaker 20 And it turned out he didn't.

Speaker 41 He was 500 miles away when Dan was shot.

Speaker 89 Friday, I drove to Tennessee, Harrogate, Tennessee, and I just got back.

Speaker 59 So he's got an alibi that holds up.

Speaker 98 He does.

Speaker 34 Whoever's in the driveway is not him.

Speaker 3 Correct.

Speaker 92 So who was in that driveway?

Speaker 20 Not Wendy, and not her ex-boyfriend.

Speaker 64 It was time for police to find that car seen leaving the crime scene.

Speaker 28 This is the date of the homicide, and you can actually see the Prius pull up to the ATM.

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Speaker 61 Dan Markell's Jewish faith had been deeply important to him, and his memorial service at his Tallahassee Synagogue was packed with friends and family, including Wendy and her parents.

Speaker 21 How did Wendy seem to be taking it?

Speaker 26 I mean, she was, she cried after the ceremony, as you would expect, and she was overwhelmed and

Speaker 28 totally distraught.

Speaker 60 Then just days after the service, Wendy moved back to South Florida with her two boys to be near her family.

Speaker 76 Up in Tallahassee, homicide detectives were stumped.

Speaker 10 Their best lead from the crime scene was a thin one, the possible getaway car a witness had told them about.

Speaker 66 It was light-colored, white or silver.

Speaker 24 I want to say it was the freest.

Speaker 35 The eyewitness was vague about the car's color, but the make and model provided a start.

Speaker 32 Detectives thought that car must have been following Dan that morning, so they retraced his travels and searched for clues.

Speaker 21 So Jason, he's dropped the kids off at the preschool roughly, what, five minutes to nine, something like that?

Speaker 101 Close to that. And then he's driving right down this road to go to the gym.

Speaker 82 Cops found security video of Dan as he arrived at the gym at 9.13 a.m.

Speaker 101 You can see him checking in.

Speaker 28 We didn't see him scan his key card in.

Speaker 56 Then police checked security cameras outside the health club and hit a forensic home run.

Speaker 1 What do you know?

Speaker 56 There was a Prius.

Speaker 37 It resembled the getaway vehicle described by the neighbor eyewitness and it was following Dan when he drove in.

Speaker 101 In the video you see them tail him across this actually this after this road right here and then

Speaker 101 he cuts in and parks in one of these front rows right here and they

Speaker 101 come on around this way.

Speaker 70 At 1034 a.m.

Speaker 35 Dan leaves the gym.

Speaker 36 When Dan drives out of the parking lot, the Prius is 20 seconds behind him.

Speaker 28 He leaves the parking lot here and is headed back towards his house.

Speaker 78 At that point, he is being hunted.

Speaker 72 They're not going to let him out of their sights.

Speaker 102 They're not.

Speaker 59 That's where the video trail stopped.

Speaker 60 Until police remembered, Tallahassee buses have their own cameras inside and out.

Speaker 35 They collected surveillance video from buses driving near Dan's neighborhood around the time he was shot.

Speaker 48 Bingo.

Speaker 64 There at 10.47 a.m.

Speaker 67 on the southbound road Dan took home was the Prius.

Speaker 79 Multiple angles of it driving toward the Markell house.

Speaker 35 And investigators discovered another video from another bus recorded moments after the murder.

Speaker 82 There was the same Prius heading away from the scene of the crime.

Speaker 28 You have a lot of active movements in the passenger seat, which would make you believe there's two people in the car.

Speaker 20 Two killers?

Speaker 37 Forensic experts screened those surveillance videos again and again.

Speaker 92 They couldn't read the license plate.

Speaker 56 but did determine the Prius was a model released between 2006 and 2009.

Speaker 10 Police had spotted one more thing, a SunPass toll tag on the Prius windshield.

Speaker 35 500 miles south, a silver Prius had passed a transponder on I-75 heading toward Tallahassee the afternoon before Dan was killed.

Speaker 36 What's more, the same SunPass dinged the very same turnpike exit in the opposite direction on the day Dan died.

Speaker 70 Time stamped 5.23 p.m.

Speaker 78 The timeline fit the shooting window perfectly.

Speaker 28 It was assigned to a actual business.

Speaker 70 The SunPass business account came back to a small car rental agency in North Miami.

Speaker 30 The renter, one Luis Rivera.

Speaker 20 His true cell phone number and correct Miami address were on the form.

Speaker 73 Also on the paperwork, cops found another cell phone number marked simply, Brother.

Speaker 83 You got one name.

Speaker 6 How do you get the second name?

Speaker 28 The second name came through phone records and a whole lot more investigation. And that's how you end up establishing Sigfredo Garcia.

Speaker 92 Two names known to law enforcement, Sigfredo Garcia and Luis Rivera, both had criminal records.

Speaker 64 Garcia had been arrested for robbery and burglary, and Rivera was a member of the Latin King's gang.

Speaker 44 A little more investigation turned up bank records.

Speaker 28 And they were able to locate a withdrawal from a bank down in Pembroke Pines.

Speaker 26 This is on the day of the date of the homicide.

Speaker 28 And you can see Luis Rivera driving, and he sits forward, and you can clearly see Sigfredo Garcia sitting in the passenger seat.

Speaker 61 There on the day of Dan Markel's murder were their two prime suspects, together in a silver Prius that was a perfect match for the vehicle seen stalking Dan.

Speaker 43 It had taken cops nearly 22 months to make their case.

Speaker 74 Sigfredo Garcia and Luis Rivera were arrested and charged with the murder of Dan Markel.

Speaker 70 Both men pleaded not guilty.

Speaker 44 But it was far from from case closed.

Speaker 70 The arrests only deepened the mystery of Dan Markell's murder.

Speaker 72 Why would two guys from South Florida, who apparently had no contact with Professor Markel, drive 500 miles to kill somebody they don't know?

Speaker 28 That's what we're all trying to get to.

Speaker 73 Nearly two years after Dan Markel was gunned down in his Tallahassee garage, cops had two men in custody.

Speaker 70 The accused, Sigfredo Garcia and Luis Rivera, were occasional Miami construction workers with criminal histories.

Speaker 59 From the moment the pair were arrested, police suspected a larger conspiracy, a murder for hire.

Speaker 21 It was not a random act that they came up here for him.

Speaker 73 Dan's friend, Josh Berman, agreed.

Speaker 27 These guys, Garcia and Rivera, they didn't wake up one fine morning and say,

Speaker 27 we've got two options. We can hang out on the beach and drink, or we can go rent a car, drive, you know,

Speaker 27 to Tallahassee, spend the night, go murder some guy we never met point blank in his garage, and then drive back.

Speaker 27 I mean, the police have called this a murder for hire, and these guys didn't hire themselves.

Speaker 45 Investigators believed if they learned more about their suspects, they'd come closer to figuring out who put them up to the killing.

Speaker 8 Garcia has less of a criminal history than Rivera, but also, you know, pretty bad actor.

Speaker 70 They discovered that right after Dan Markell's death, the two men went on a spending spree, buying cars and motorcycles.

Speaker 58 It seemed they'd come into major amounts of discretionary cash.

Speaker 10 But where had it come from?

Speaker 2 Who was the paymaster with the money, the malice, and the desire to see Dan Markell dead?

Speaker 70 Steimey detectives went back into their notes and delved deeper into the legal filings that flew back and forth during Dan and Wendy's divorce.

Speaker 63 The The documents led the cops down another path, one that took them from the shadiest side of the Miami underworld to a highly respected and prosperous family of professionals, the Adelsons, Dan Markell's former in-laws.

Speaker 42 It had never been a particularly good relationship between Dan

Speaker 42 and Wendy's parents. There was not a lot of love lost between the two families.

Speaker 35 How toxic did it get? Well, cops discovered that in the divorce suit Markell vs.

Speaker 63 Markell, Wendy had a forceful person in her corner, her mother, Donna Adelson. In a series of emails, she encouraged Wendy to go low, fight dirty.

Speaker 20 Hi, honey, it's time for action.

Speaker 49 Let's show this F what will make him absolutely miserable.

Speaker 37 But first, Donna told Wendy the family was going to make Dan a big money offer to back down.

Speaker 35 Investigator Jason Newland learned that even Wendy's brother Charlie was planning to kick in a few hundred thousand dollars.

Speaker 28 There were emails that were collected throughout this process and there was communication between Wendy and Donna about just to offer him a million dollars and to go raise the kids in a certain way.

Speaker 6 Here's a million bucks. Yeah.

Speaker 20 But Dan's tension and ill will toward his mother-in-law was off the charts.

Speaker 61 Three months before his murder, he filed a motion asking the court to prevent his sons from spending unsupervised time with Wendy's mother.

Speaker 72 What's the backdrop of this thing?

Speaker 53 One of the grandchildren said, you know, basically grandmommy hates daddy and had made some other remarks around Danny that suggested that she had kind of preferred to him in a derogatory fashion.

Speaker 72 So he, Dan, does not want grandma poisoning the kids. No.

Speaker 36 Wendy also put her parents smack in the middle of the homicide investigation with a seemingly offhand remark during her police interview.

Speaker 18 My parents have more reason to dislike Danny than almost anyone else.

Speaker 14 He hurt their daughter.

Speaker 74 Wendy's folks harming Dan Markell seemed improbable given their circumstances.

Speaker 32 Her dad, Harvey, was a prominent dentist who, along with her mother, Donna, ran the Adelson Dental Institute in Tamarack, Florida.

Speaker 11 They were a five-star family, as far as I could see.

Speaker 77 Ben Graber is a Coral Springs physician and former state representative.

Speaker 43 He first met the Adelsons in the 1980s and became Harvey's patient.

Speaker 24 Seemed like a very nice guy.

Speaker 5 Got a good reputation, good feelings, and those type of things.

Speaker 11 His wife was very pleasant.

Speaker 80 Donna was a go-getter, too, who charmed the Wheel of Fortune audience when she appeared on the show and solved the puzzle in 1989.

Speaker 104 Meet Donna Adelson from Coral Springs, Florida. I want to hear all about you, Donna.
Let's go.

Speaker 18 Well, I'm a domestic coordinator.

Speaker 104 A domestic coordinator? Yes. I'm responsible for the activities, classes, and lessons of my son, Robert, who is 16, Charlie, who is 12, Wendy, who is 10, my husband, Harvey, who's in the audience.

Speaker 98 I used to laugh. I said, I can't believe she has the guts to do that, you know.

Speaker 59 Her kids were her life, and like most families, things got complicated as they got older.

Speaker 20 The oldest, Rob, moved away and saw the family less and less. The middle child, Charlie, faced disciplinary problems in school.

Speaker 13 My name is Dr. Charlie Adelson, and I am a periodontist.

Speaker 37 He eventually joined the family business and had a lucrative implant practice.

Speaker 13 What I love about what I do is being able to restore people's smiles.

Speaker 81 Dr.

Speaker 20 Charlie was also a flashy figure around the Miami area with some eye-catching rides.

Speaker 42 He lives

Speaker 42 the lifestyle of a single successful guy, right? He's got the sports cars with the license plate that say maestro.

Speaker 61 Donna saw her youngest child, Wendy, as someone who needed protecting, a task Charlie often took upon himself.

Speaker 58 Investigators quickly learned he was Wendy's confidante and had her back.

Speaker 61 She even brought it up in her police interview.

Speaker 14 My brother,

Speaker 19 the one whose name is Charlie, the one I'm really close to, he knew Danny treated me badly and it was always this joke. He said,

Speaker 19 I looked into hiring a hitman and it was cheaper to get you this TV, so instead I got you this TV.

Speaker 19 I mean, he would never.

Speaker 19 He's my big brother.

Speaker 8 According to Wendy Adelson, it was suggested by the brother in the form of a joke.

Speaker 6 But it's a very strange thing to say.

Speaker 3 Very.

Speaker 8 In light of the circumstances, it wouldn't be any big deal if he was alive and well with us.

Speaker 37 It was all very interesting, this smoke gathering around Wendy Edelson and her family of dentists.

Speaker 37 Meanwhile, in Tallahassee, those two suspected hitmen, Sigfredo Garcia and Luis Rivera, sat in prison until one made a deal.

Speaker 43 Rivera flipped on Garcia and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for a reduced sentence.

Speaker 36 He told investigators that Garcia said he had a contract to kill Dan and needed the gangbanger's help.

Speaker 105 I'm going to kill this guy.

Speaker 106 You're going to get paid this much, $38,000, $35,000.

Speaker 105 We're driving.

Speaker 106 He shows me a picture of Markell.

Speaker 103 The night before the murder, Rivera said, they checked into a motel not far from Dan Markell's home.

Speaker 106 Friday morning,

Speaker 106 went to Markel's house. Followed him to the gym, waited in the parking lot for a while.
So when he came out of the gym, I followed him home.

Speaker 106 We met him right in the garage.

Speaker 106 I was like, I'm maybe like

Speaker 106 three, four feet away from his car.

Speaker 106 Gracia jumps out

Speaker 106 and goes around the car.

Speaker 106 I think Marquell was on the phone that day.

Speaker 1 Shot him twice, got in the car, we left.

Speaker 105 Okay, driving.

Speaker 8 I mean, it's as cold-blooded a killing as you can get to drive all the way to Tallahassee and pull up into someone's driveway that you don't know and just shoot them in cold blood.

Speaker 26 We dumped the gun towards a bridge.

Speaker 26 Can't remember that bridge.

Speaker 61 Hard as they tried, investigators never did find the gun.

Speaker 92 So do you believe this guy?

Speaker 28 He's got a bad record.

Speaker 96 A lot of what he tells you can be corroborated with evidence, and that's what you go with. I don't even know that.

Speaker 59 And Rivera offered an answer to the cop's biggest question.

Speaker 43 What was the motive for Dan Markell's murder?

Speaker 106 Because I asked him why you want to go kill this guy. Because

Speaker 106 the lady wants her two kids back.

Speaker 106 She wants full custody of them kids. That's what I want to go kill that man for.

Speaker 35 But how did Garcia know that?

Speaker 106 Katie, I guess Katie told him everything.

Speaker 40 Katie, who was Katie?

Speaker 1 Police were about to hear a lot about her, and what they learned would set the stage for an elaborate undercover sting with an unlikely target, Grandma Adelson.

Speaker 50 Luis Rivera told police that after his partner, Sigfreda Garcia, killed Dan Markel,

Speaker 35 they quickly hit the road back to Miami and Garcia made a phone call.

Speaker 105 He called her and he said, everything is done.

Speaker 106 Make sure you have no money.

Speaker 7 I'm on my way.

Speaker 20 The woman at the other end was Garcia's romantic partner, the mother of his children, Katie Magbonawa, a name the detectives already knew very well.

Speaker 57 Their investigation had turned up some critical details about her.

Speaker 28 She was employed at a couple dental practices. She was employed at a bar at one point.

Speaker 20 A modest income at best.

Speaker 70 Yet in a curious bit of timing, Katie's cash flow and South Florida standard of living suddenly improved after Dan Markell was murdered in Tallahassee.

Speaker 28 Her bank account for the end of 2014 through 2015 went from a minimal low-income bank account to

Speaker 28 $100,000 cycling through in less than a year.

Speaker 63 In fact, on the day after the Markel murder, Luis Rivera says Garcia and Katie personally delivered a bag full of money to his house.

Speaker 28 He says he got $30,000 and that Garcia ended up giving him a cut of his, which ended up putting it at like $35,000, $36,000.

Speaker 59 But where did the money come from?

Speaker 74 Once again, it was Katie's bank account that provided prosecutors with a tantalizing clue.

Speaker 8 She was getting a paycheck from the Abelsons.

Speaker 78 $400 in change.

Speaker 1 Correct.

Speaker 6 Was there any obvious work that she was doing?

Speaker 8 There was no obvious work that law enforcement was able to uncover.

Speaker 71 Yet she's drawing a paycheck.

Speaker 59 Check signed by none other than Donna Adelson, Wendy's mom.

Speaker 51 But it turns out, Katie's connection to the Adelsons ran a lot deeper than a few cash checks.

Speaker 8 Because she is the girlfriend or recent ex-girlfriend of Charlie Adelson, Wendy Adelson's brother.

Speaker 61 So there's your heavy, your hit guys.

Speaker 72 One of them has a girlfriend, Katie McBonawa, who has also been a girlfriend of Charlie Adelson.

Speaker 1 Correct.

Speaker 36 So she's in the middle of these two camps.

Speaker 8 She's clearly linked to the victim's in-laws

Speaker 8 and to the actual killer.

Speaker 6 Boy, that's straddling two worlds.

Speaker 70 A review of DMV documents also revealed that Katie was driving a Lexus that came from the Edelsons.

Speaker 8 She did get a car that was previously in the name of Harvey Adelson.

Speaker 20 Generous, you bet.

Speaker 61 But Jason Newland says Charlie Adelson hadn't finished providing Katie with certain upgrades.

Speaker 28 We were informed at one point that Charlie paid for half of her breast augmentation.

Speaker 21 Done by a guy known in South Florida circles as Dr.

Speaker 72 Bubner. Dr.
Bubner, yeah.

Speaker 29 By the summer of 2016, the investigators believed it all made for a tidy theory.

Speaker 10 That these two criminals gunned down Dan Markell in a hit set up by Katie McMonawa.

Speaker 80 and paid for by Dan's angry in-laws.

Speaker 1 But a theory isn't evidence.

Speaker 28 There's just no communication with anybody that we can find or that anybody will tell us that says the Adelsons are involved.

Speaker 61 So investigators hatched a plan.

Speaker 35 In late April 2016, nearly two years after Dan's murder, they decided to put a squeeze on the family in the form of an FBI undercover sting on Donna Adelson.

Speaker 35 Agents tracked her down as she headed to pick up her grandsons from school.

Speaker 40 Would Grandma Adelson blurt out something incriminating?

Speaker 24 Excuse me, Mrs. Adelson?

Speaker 24 How are you doing? Just want to give you this.

Speaker 8 He's an FBI agent, and he is going to approach Donna Adelson on the street and imply that he is somehow affiliated with Louis Rivera and give her a piece of paper which contains an article about the homicide.

Speaker 8 And written on the letter is $5,000 and a phone number.

Speaker 90 I'm scared.

Speaker 54 Don't be scared.

Speaker 88 Listen, I just want to let you know that we know that your family has been taking care of Katie and the friends who resolved for quite some time. After your problem up north has been resolved.

Speaker 35 Tuto is a nickname Garcia used.

Speaker 8 He says something to the effect of: you're taking care of Katie and Garcia, but you're not taking care of my boy. He doesn't say the name, but the implication is that it's Rivera.

Speaker 88 I want to let you know that my brother, he's incarcerated. He helped your family with this problem you guys had up north.

Speaker 90 I don't know that he.

Speaker 88 Well, this will explain it.

Speaker 104 She had the paper, they're walking away.

Speaker 86 You see, walking down the southbound.

Speaker 67 So, this is an extortion, a blackmail letter.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 98 And it ruffles her feathers.

Speaker 21 Yes.

Speaker 78 And you know that because you're listening to her calls, too.

Speaker 8 Correct. Well, I'm listening to Charlie's calls.

Speaker 98 She calls Charlie.

Speaker 8 She calls Charlie.

Speaker 1 I've got some.

Speaker 15 I've got some paperwork hand-delivered to me.

Speaker 107 Are you being sued?

Speaker 88 No.

Speaker 107 Does it involve me me or other people?

Speaker 90 Well,

Speaker 60 probably both people.

Speaker 88 What's that?

Speaker 24 Probably the two of us.

Speaker 24 So, you probably have a general idea what I'm talking about.

Speaker 107 You think someone's trying to blackmail you?

Speaker 24 Um, maybe.

Speaker 24 It could be.

Speaker 107 No.

Speaker 88 That's crazy.

Speaker 70 After that cryptic conversation with his mother, Charlie Adelson called Katie.

Speaker 93 Hello.

Speaker 93 Hey, what's going on?

Speaker 30 Which, of course, is exactly what investigators were hoping for.

Speaker 107 I don't know what's going on,

Speaker 107 but my mom, she said that someone approached her on the street,

Speaker 107 called her by name,

Speaker 88 handed her an envelope

Speaker 107 with something in it.

Speaker 107 And somebody was, she really wouldn't go into detail. And listen, I don't, I have no idea what this is in reference to,

Speaker 107 but something regarding her son

Speaker 107 something regarding his ex-girlfriend

Speaker 107 and the person asking my mom for some money

Speaker 20 and there was another key conversation it was caught on video in this Miami restaurant called Dolce Vita and suggested this Florida periodontist might have a violent streak though the audio was hard to make out when investigators transcribed it they believe Charlie was speaking with Katie about the blackmailer.

Speaker 70 You better kill him because he's going to be a big problem.

Speaker 48 If you can't do it, I'll have someone else do it.

Speaker 4 He uses the word we'd have to kill this guy, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 It sounded suspicious, but because of the low audio, prosecutors weren't certain about the context.

Speaker 49 All the FBI surveillance produced some intriguing conversations, but in the end, it did not produce any evidence of complicity.

Speaker 42 There is no smoking gun. No one says, I,

Speaker 42 you know, this is exactly how this went down.

Speaker 83 But at least for Katie McBonois, prosecutors believed they had a case they could make.

Speaker 30 In October 2016, she was arrested and charged with first-degree murder.

Speaker 38 She pleaded not guilty.

Speaker 3 Good luck to you.

Speaker 64 Setting the stage for a momentous trial for McBonois and her companion, Sigfredo Garcia.

Speaker 35 And one of the star witnesses would be Wendy Adelson herself.

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Speaker 73 Sigfredo Garcia and Katie Magbanoa had been partners in life and were now alleged partners in crime.

Speaker 49 Their trial began in Tallahassee in late September of 2019.

Speaker 49 Prosecutor Georgia Kappelman laid out the evidence.

Speaker 113 Catherine Magbanoa was hired to solicit Garcia, who in turn solicited Rivera to come to Tallahassee and to execute Mr.

Speaker 8 Markel in cold blood.

Speaker 67 Luis Rivera, who had taken a deal to turn state's evidence, gave his account of the murder.

Speaker 55 Soon it pulled in, Garcia jumped off. He jumped out of the car and went around, went to the driver's side, and shot him.

Speaker 59 He said he got paid $35,000. Prosecutors believe the money came from Wendy's family, who were not to be found in the courtroom.

Speaker 59 But the jury did hear from the Edelsons in the evidence, including the video from that FBI sting operation

Speaker 35 and the wiretap surveillance of Katie Charlie and his mother.

Speaker 107 You know, it sounds like a cop that's fishing that sort of an investigator or someone's playing games.

Speaker 61 In the end, the case would come down to the testimony of the two women at the center of it.

Speaker 76 First up, Wendy, who testified for the prosecution.

Speaker 85 My name is Wendy Adelson.

Speaker 57 She was given some immunity to testify.

Speaker 35 Her statements on the stand couldn't be used against her.

Speaker 84 Were you involved in any way in a plot to kill Dan Markell?

Speaker 85 No.

Speaker 76 Wendy told the jury she'd never met the alleged hitman, Sigfredo Garcia, but she had met Katie.

Speaker 35 The state showed the jury this photo of the two of them on the beach together in June 2014, just a month before Dan's murder. And do you know where the photo was taken?

Speaker 85 I think that's South Beach.

Speaker 8 Close to where your parents were living in the condo?

Speaker 113 Yes.

Speaker 8 And did you say how you know was McBrando?

Speaker 85 She was dating my brother.

Speaker 60 And she had a ready defense for her brother Charlie.

Speaker 113 Did he ever joke about

Speaker 113 he looked into hiring a hitman but buying you a TV as a divorce present would be cheaper?

Speaker 85 He did make that joke. He tended to repeat himself and sometimes he would make jokes that weren't very funny about all kinds of things.

Speaker 80 When it was time to make their case, defense lawyers for Katie Magbanoa and Sigfredo Garcia ignored the Adelson family at first.

Speaker 20 Garcia's lawyer, Sam Zangane, told jurors the state star witness Luis Rivera was a lying snitch who flipped to save his own skin.

Speaker 55 The only person who can tell you that Sigfredo Garcia got out of the car and purportedly shot Dan Martell is who?

Speaker 55 The guy who got the deal of a lifetime.

Speaker 20 Both defendants were offered an opportunity to testify on their own behalf.

Speaker 4 Sigfredo Garcia passed, but in a bold, perhaps risky legal maneuver, Katie Magbonwa took the stand in her own defense.

Speaker 114 Did you have anything to do with the murder of Dan Markel?

Speaker 11 No, ma'am.

Speaker 114 Did you get the father of your children, Mr. Garcia, to commit a murder on behalf of Mr.

Speaker 115 Charlie Edelson? No, ma'am.

Speaker 46 Her lawyer walked her through some of the state's most damning allegations, including the charge that the Adelsons had given her thousands of dollars.

Speaker 36 Katie said no, she supported herself.

Speaker 41 She said she worked as a bottle girl, promoting liquor brands at bars and clubs, and as she told it, tips were good.

Speaker 113 What was a good night for you at the club?

Speaker 115 A good night for me.

Speaker 115 I can walk out of there with $1,000 to $1,500.

Speaker 37 No blood money from the Edelson, she said.

Speaker 35 Not even for that augmentation surgery.

Speaker 20 Charlie didn't pay for that.

Speaker 115 Who paid for your breast implants? I did.

Speaker 114 All right. How did you pay for your breast implants?

Speaker 115 Well, from my cash tips.

Speaker 59 All along, the state had hoped Katie would turn and reveal other figures as the real masterminds of the murder.

Speaker 81 And in her defense, she did point the finger at Charlie, sort of.

Speaker 114 Do you have information that Charlie Adelson was involved in this?

Speaker 115 Do I have information? I mean, based on everything that we've been seeing, but I don't have personal information.

Speaker 114 Based on everything you've seen, do you think Charlie was involved in this?

Speaker 42 Yes.

Speaker 59 In closing arguments, the defense attorneys asserted that Charlie may have been involved, but without the help of their two clients, they were innocent.

Speaker 39 Now it was up to the jurors.

Speaker 57 They were about to stun the courtroom and send the investigation even closer to the Adelson family's doorstep.

Speaker 20 It had been more than five years since Dan Markell was shot in his driveway in one of the most cold-blooded killings Tallahassee, Florida had ever seen.

Speaker 35 Now judgment day had arrived for the couple on trial for the murder.

Speaker 32 Sigfredo Garcia faced a possible death sentence for pulling the trigger, and Katie McBonawa faced a possible possible life sentence for setting it up.

Speaker 59 Dan's parents waited anxiously in court.

Speaker 22 We didn't have a feeling of any guarantees. It was quite tense for us.

Speaker 20 I was very nervous. Jurors in the courtroom?

Speaker 40 After 10 hours of deliberations, the jury came back with a verdict, but for just one defendant.

Speaker 54 State of Florida versus Sigfrido Garcio, the defendant is guilty of first-degree murder.

Speaker 10 And what about Katie?

Speaker 51 The jurors could not reach a verdict.

Speaker 13 As to Miss McBanoa, I will declare this case mistried.

Speaker 20 No.

Speaker 77 Outside court, prosecutor Georgia Kappelman vowed to try Katie again.

Speaker 28 So what's next for you then?

Speaker 8 Regroup and try to do it better next time.

Speaker 41 Phil and Ruth Markell were left with mixed feelings, relieved by Garcia's conviction.

Speaker 22 But the mistrial experience was actually quite upsetting, shocking, and we had to pull ourselves together because it was like really something that we had not anticipated.

Speaker 41 The judge sentenced Garcia to life in prison for murdering her son Dan, setting a retrial date for Katie.

Speaker 40 But as the Markels sought justice, their primary goal was something else, to see their grandsons.

Speaker 22 I'm in love with my grandkids. That's the priority of my life.

Speaker 95 The two grandsons have been living with their mother Wendy in South Florida ever since their father's murder.

Speaker 56 Grandma Donna would frequently babysit.

Speaker 64 After Dan's death, Wendy would arrange time for his parents to come down from Canada to visit the boys.

Speaker 60 But in 2016, that changed.

Speaker 68 Wendy not only put a stop to those visits, she changed the boys' last name.

Speaker 21 They're no longer going to be known as Markel, they're going to be Adelson's.

Speaker 29 She said she did it for their security.

Speaker 21 Does that make sense to you?

Speaker 3 Not at all.

Speaker 4 I could never figure that out.

Speaker 75 If you're going to change their names and hide them from the public, you'd name them Smith or Jones or some other name, certainly not Adelson.

Speaker 75 In my opinion, she just wanted to eliminate the Markell family from their lives.

Speaker 41 Ruth and Phil took action.

Speaker 36 They worked with a legal team and Florida state legislators to pass the Markell Act.

Speaker 22 If the natural parent has civil or criminal charges towards the deceased partner, it gives the grandparent permission to go before a court where they can get visitation.

Speaker 38 In February 2022, the bill passed in the Florida State House and the Markells got an email from Wendy. It would lead to their first visit with the boys in six years.

Speaker 33 By then they were 11 and 12 years old.

Speaker 75 And

Speaker 16 I said, can we give you a hug?

Speaker 116 And we hugged and it was

Speaker 116 unbelievable.

Speaker 27 There aren't words to express the feelings.

Speaker 22 I don't think that it could have been a better visit, you know, under the circumstances.

Speaker 38 During that visit, the Markells had no idea that investigators in Tallahassee had just made a major breakthrough.

Speaker 67 As they prepared for Katie's second trial, prosecutors took that surveillance video of Charlie and Katie in this restaurant, known as the Dolce Vita tape, to an audio expert to see if he could make it easier to hear.

Speaker 35 Stephen Epstein is an attorney and author of a book about the Markell case, Extreme Punishment.

Speaker 11 Keith McElveen, who for for 10 years was working with the CIA, his job was to figure out ways to pick individual voices out of noisy environments.

Speaker 3 I don't clatter of lunch hour at the

Speaker 11 dishes to basically blur out that extraneous noise. And for 41 minutes of the Dolce Avian meeting, he did that.
And there are some priceless gems in there.

Speaker 36 The audio of their conversation is still low, but easier to understand.

Speaker 35 In the first enhanced clip, Charlie tells Katie,

Speaker 38 suggesting, according to prosecutors, that if he really feared arrest, he'd be on a plane.

Speaker 10 And in another moment later in the conversation, Charlie is wondering why this scary character in that FBI sting targeted his mom and not him.

Speaker 11 He just keeps pointing the finger finger directly at himself.

Speaker 72 Is that the best evidence you have tying Katie to this family?

Speaker 8 It's the best evidence we have tying the Adelsons

Speaker 8 into this crime.

Speaker 45 In April 2022, armed with that evidence, prosecutors went went to a grand jury which indicted Charlie Adelson on charges of first-degree murder, conspiracy, and solicitation of murder.

Speaker 39 The FBI arrived at Charlie's house in Fort Lauderdale a little before six the next morning.

Speaker 11 This is a residential neighborhood, and they surround it in every way. And one of the officers gets caught on either barbed or razor wire because Charlie had it protected like a fortress.

Speaker 11 So they call Charlie. No answer.
They call him on a cell, no answer. They try calling him one last time before they storm it.
And this time, Charlie answers and they tell him to come out.

Speaker 11 He walks out, shields his eyes, and what they see is a guy wearing only a pair of boxer shorts.

Speaker 11 And he looks at everything going on. He says, Am I under arrest?

Speaker 35 How'd you hear Charlie was busted?

Speaker 67 They'd taken him down.

Speaker 27 Oh, I probably got five texts at once. And,

Speaker 21 you know. And you said what?

Speaker 27 Something profane.

Speaker 27 Like it's about

Speaker 27 having time. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 95 Charlie Adelson was transferred from Miami to the Leon County Jail.

Speaker 51 And just a month later, he got more bad news.

Speaker 80 In her second trial, Katie was found guilty of first-degree murder, thanks in part to that new and improved Dolce Visa tape.

Speaker 55 The defendant is guilty of first-degree murder.

Speaker 91 Do you swear?

Speaker 37 And Katie's time on stage wasn't over.

Speaker 35 She would come to Charlie's trial with a new story.

Speaker 8 Who came up with the idea to kill Dan Markell?

Speaker 47 Charlie.

Speaker 17 You may see.

Speaker 61 Wendy would return to court, too, and face much tougher questions about Dan's murder.

Speaker 8 Your family had your ex-husband killed to try to help you, didn't they?

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Speaker 102 Hey everybody, Ted Danson here to tell you about my podcast with my longtime friend and sometimes co-host Woody Harrelson.

Speaker 102 It's called Where Everybody Knows Your Name and We're Back for Another Season.

Speaker 102 I'm so excited to be joined this season by friends like John Mulaney, David Spade, Sarah Silverman, Ed Helms, and many more. You don't want to miss it.

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Speaker 10 Dan Markell's parents, Phil and Ruth, found themselves in both familiar and unfamiliar territory as they entered a Leon County courtroom in October 2023 for the trial of Charlie Adelson, the accused mastermind of the plot to kill their son.

Speaker 22 When you actually walk in a courtroom and you recognize the offender, who he's from, and the family, that was a really different experience.

Speaker 36 Dan's family listened intently as prosecutors Georgia Kappelman and Sarah Dugan presented their case against Charlie Adelson, often using his own words against him.

Speaker 55 You may take your seat.

Speaker 59 Jeffrey Lacasse, Wendy's ex-boyfriend, testified that Charlie had bragged to him about having contacts in the criminal underworld.

Speaker 35 He also told the jury an explosive story.

Speaker 37 Wendy confided in him that Charlie had gone much further than merely joking about a TV being cheaper than a hitman.

Speaker 118 In a very serious tone of voice,

Speaker 118 told me that Charlie had investigated all possible options to take care of the problem of Danny Danny Markell, including hiring a hitman.

Speaker 8 So definitely not the to be confused with the TV joke.

Speaker 118 No, I'd heard that joke repeatedly. This was something very different.
It made my stomach flip. I found it disturbing.

Speaker 64 Prosecutors laid out all the electronic evidence they'd gathered over the years.

Speaker 61 Phone calls, text messages, and wiretaps that drew a link from Charlie to Katie to the killers.

Speaker 10 But that evidence took a back seat when a familiar witness took the stand.

Speaker 17 Do you swear or affirm the testimony you're about to give will be?

Speaker 38 Wendy Adelson, the sister of the accused, again testified for the state under an immunity agreement, but that wouldn't protect her from a withering direct examination.

Speaker 8 Your family had your ex-husband killed to try to help you, didn't they?

Speaker 9 No, that's completely untrue.

Speaker 8 Were you involved in any way in the plot to kill your ex-husband?

Speaker 9 Absolutely not.

Speaker 8 Did you know what was going to happen, but maybe not know the details?

Speaker 9 I knew nothing.

Speaker 12 In some of the earlier cases, they treated her more as just a witness.

Speaker 33 David Lack went to college with Dan Markell and has reported on the case extensively for his Substack original jurisdiction.

Speaker 12 And as more evidence has emerged, they do seem to believe that Wendy was involved, and their trial presentation reflected that.

Speaker 95 And in fact, prosecutors referred to Wendy in court documents as one of the co-conspirators to the murder, who had the motive, and along with her mom and brother, initiated the plot to kill Dan.

Speaker 8 How did the killers in this case know that Dan Markell was planning to leave town the day after the killing?

Speaker 9 I have no idea.

Speaker 8 You knew he was planning to leave town the next day, didn't you? I did, yes. Did you convey that information to anyone?

Speaker 9 Absolutely not.

Speaker 41 But if she knew nothing about the murder, the prosecutor pressed, why had she driven past the taped-off crime scene on the day Dan was shot, despite having no reason to be in his neighborhood?

Speaker 36 Something investigators had long felt was suspicious.

Speaker 8 Did you attempt to call Dan Markell when you encountered the roadblock?

Speaker 9 No, I didn't think anything of it. I didn't think it was related to the house.

Speaker 1 Wendy remained adamant that neither she nor Charlie was involved in the murder.

Speaker 8 Did your brother ever mention hiring a hitman to kill Dan Markell? No.

Speaker 37 But Kappelman reminded Wendy that she had named Charlie as a possible suspect the very day Dan was shot.

Speaker 19 He knew Danny treated me badly and it was always his joke, you know, I looked into hiring a hitman and it was cheaper to get you this TV.

Speaker 9 While I was talking with law enforcement for six hours, terrified out of my mind, I offered them every possible idea I could come up with.

Speaker 8 Right, and one of the possible ideas was that your brother could have murdered your child's father.

Speaker 9 I didn't really believe that was possible.

Speaker 8 Was part of the plot for you to be able to have plausible deniability about this?

Speaker 85 Absolutely not.

Speaker 21 When she stepped down from the stand, could you still believe that she was held inside these fire doors and knew nothing about what had happened?

Speaker 11 It's impossible to believe that Wendy has known all these years nothing about what's happened.

Speaker 64 Prosecutors clearly wanted the jury to view Wendy's testimony skeptically.

Speaker 8 Let's not ready for their questions.

Speaker 36 But when the other woman at the center of the case took the stand, prosecutors had a different goal.

Speaker 16 Please raise your right hand.

Speaker 59 And here comes Katie McBanawa again.

Speaker 11 So she comes into court this time around as a state's witness.

Speaker 58 Katie had twice sat in this box and sworn under oath that she had nothing to do with the murder of Dan Markell.

Speaker 61 But now she was testifying as a convicted killer, serving a life sentence.

Speaker 8 Were you in the middle?

Speaker 71 Yes, ma'am, I was.

Speaker 51 After years of denials, Katie finally admitted her involvement in the murder, and not just hers.

Speaker 8 Who came up with the idea to kill Dan Markell?

Speaker 24 Charlie?

Speaker 21 The question for the prosecutors, how do you rehabilitate this person in the jury's eyes so they'll believe her?

Speaker 11 With details. She described very specifically what Charlie did, starting with planting the seed in her mind.

Speaker 37 It was a seed planted in earnest nine months before the murder with a simple question.

Speaker 8 What was the question?

Speaker 71 Do you know anybody that can harm someone?

Speaker 8 And did you know anybody that could harm someone?

Speaker 71 Yes, ma'am, I did.

Speaker 8 Who was that?

Speaker 71 Sigfredo?

Speaker 92 Sigfredo Garcia, the convicted trigger man in Dan's murder and the father of Katie's two children.

Speaker 77 And the person Charlie wanted hurt.

Speaker 8 How How did the defendant refer to this person, if not by the name Dan or Danny Markel?

Speaker 71 Wendy's husband.

Speaker 44 Katie says she convinced Sigfredo to commit the murder, but felt he wouldn't do it if he knew it was for Charlie, because he saw him as a romantic rival.

Speaker 58 So she didn't tell him.

Speaker 35 She explained to the jury how she passed the instructions from Charlie to Sigfredo without the two having to meet in person.

Speaker 71 He had a manila envelope that was sealed. He told me, Katie, do not open it.
do not touch it, do not look inside it, and basically relate, you know, give that paper to

Speaker 71 the other person.

Speaker 8 Did he express any concerns about fingerprints being on the envelope or the contents?

Speaker 71 Yes, ma'am. He said he wore a glove so that there's no fingerprints on it.

Speaker 8 And what about licking the envelope?

Speaker 71 And that he didn't lick the envelope.

Speaker 36 Katie testified that after the murder, she went to Charlie's house to get the payment.

Speaker 50 Charlie Charlie had the money packaged up for her, stapled in stacks, she said.

Speaker 80 And something else about the money was odd.

Speaker 36 It was damp.

Speaker 71 I believe his parents or his mom

Speaker 71 might have washed the money.

Speaker 8 You mean like physically washed the money?

Speaker 71 Yes, ma'am.

Speaker 32 Katie believed Charlie's mom did that before dropping the money off at his house, her husband Harvey, in tow.

Speaker 71 He was always adamant about telling me he didn't have any money in his house. And he told me that his parents had just stopped by right before I got there.
So all of a sudden he had money to put

Speaker 71 in the trunk of my car.

Speaker 57 Katie had just put Donna Adelson, Charlie's mother, smack in the middle of the conspiracy.

Speaker 29 She also said her payment for the killing included those checks from the Adelson Institute signed by Donna.

Speaker 8 Did you perform any job at the Adelson Institute?

Speaker 71 No, ma'am, I did not.

Speaker 51 And finally, Katie explained to the jury exactly what was going on in that now infamous Dolce Vita tape.

Speaker 71 What he was speaking of was probably the FBI

Speaker 71 or Tato blackmailing.

Speaker 8 And by Tato, you mean River

Speaker 71 Rivera, yes, ma'am.

Speaker 21 Is this finally the unvarnished truth from Katie McBono?

Speaker 11 It's certainly a lot closer to the truth than what we heard from her before, which was that she knew nothing. This version is a lot more believable.

Speaker 56 But according to Charlie's attorneys, the real, unvarnished truth about Dan Markell's murder was something nobody, not even the prosecutor sitting at the next table over, had heard before.

Speaker 15 On that day,

Speaker 119 two crimes occurred.

Speaker 16 The first one the state knows about, the other one

Speaker 52 they don't know about.

Speaker 119 They're about to find out like you,

Speaker 17 but before we get there, I like cliffhangers.

Speaker 59 So do we, and you won't believe the story you're about to hear from Charlie Adelson himself.

Speaker 71 But this was Charlie basically saying this the whole time.

Speaker 10 Charlie Adelson's ex-girlfriend, Katie Magbonawa, was unswerving in her testimony against him.

Speaker 46 But Charlie's attorney says she did plenty of swerving in the years leading up to this appearance on the stand.

Speaker 108 She's told more than two versions. She's lied when she was arrested.
She's lied in the first trial.

Speaker 119 She's lied in the second trial.

Speaker 108 And then her story changes again when she's on the stand.

Speaker 56 You said you never saw.

Speaker 32 So in his cross-examination, Dan Rashbaum attacked Katie Magbonawa's credibility.

Speaker 71 I told you, I lied in my first and second trial to save myself.

Speaker 56 Just like you're lying here to save yourself, right?

Speaker 71 I'm not saving myself. I'm telling the truth this time.

Speaker 119 Right, because now all of a sudden,

Speaker 56 after

Speaker 17 eight years,

Speaker 119 you have developed a conscience.

Speaker 60 What happened after that was a high-stakes gamble for the defense.

Speaker 17 We called Charlie Adelson.

Speaker 56 Charlie Adelson himself took the stand with a brand new version of events.

Speaker 16 And this guy gets out of the car.

Speaker 48 Starkling, jaw-dropping, and totally out of the blue.

Speaker 59 He claimed two crimes had been committed.

Speaker 81 The murder of Dan Markell and the extortion of Charlie Adelson.

Speaker 21 When you heard it, you know this case so well.

Speaker 6 What did you think?

Speaker 11 My jaw dropped open.

Speaker 119 Did you cause the death of Professor Dan Markell?

Speaker 16 Absolutely no.

Speaker 35 Charlie told the jury his own nightmare began the very day Dan was murdered. Katie came over to his house that night and she was in a panic.

Speaker 16 She said, listen, this is all my fault, but I had no idea anything was going to happen, but this is totally my fault.

Speaker 16 I spoke in too much detail about your family's personal problems, about your sister, Dan Markel, and the million-dollar offer.

Speaker 37 That would be the million dollars the Adelsons talked about giving Dan if he'd let his children move to South Florida.

Speaker 119 What did you say?

Speaker 16 I'm like, what are you talking about? And she's like,

Speaker 16 she's like, my friend killed Dan, and he wants to be paid a third of a million dollars.

Speaker 119 What happened next?

Speaker 16 I stood up and I started cursing it. I'm like, what the f ⁇ ? Are you kidding me? And she's like, no.
I'm like, who did this? Who's your friend that did this? And she's like, I don't want to say.

Speaker 16 I can't say.

Speaker 1 But it it was clear they were talking about Sigfredo Garcia.

Speaker 16 And I'm like, Katie, I'm not going to be part of this shit. Like, I'm not going to be part of paying for a murder.
This is insane.

Speaker 16 And she's like, look, if you don't pay in 48 hours, they will kill you.

Speaker 16 And I said, Katie, I feel like I'm getting extorted now.

Speaker 119 Did she tell you that they would just kill you or they would also kill other people?

Speaker 16 She said he'd come after you. He'd come after the family.
Like, Charlie, you don't have a choice.

Speaker 57 just pay the money.

Speaker 20 He testified he didn't have that much money, but he did have $138,000 in his safe.

Speaker 16 She put it in her purse

Speaker 16 and she asked me, she goes,

Speaker 16 How can you get the rest?

Speaker 10 Charlie said he couldn't ask his parents, they'd go right to the police.

Speaker 16 She asked me, she said, well, can you pay like

Speaker 16 $3,000 a month?

Speaker 15 And

Speaker 16 I said, yeah,

Speaker 16 I can do that.

Speaker 56 And while most killers don't agree to installment plans, these guys apparently did.

Speaker 119 Now, at this point in time, did you have any idea that she was part of the extortion?

Speaker 24 No, no.

Speaker 16 She kept saying it was all her fault and that she didn't know any of this was going to happen.

Speaker 61 Charlie's version of how much money was involved and how it changed hands didn't always square with what investigators learned.

Speaker 64 But he added more details, telling the jury that a few weeks after the killing, Katie seemed to be looking for a cut of the $3,000 monthly payment.

Speaker 16 She said, can you do me a favor? I need to get health insurance for my kids.

Speaker 56 According to Charlie, Katie suggested he peel $1,000 off the extortion payment each month and put it in a payroll check to her.

Speaker 16 I said, I'll do it for you.

Speaker 17 No problem.

Speaker 16 I mean, I wanted to keep her happy.

Speaker 29 Charlie said his mother did the books for the dental practice, so she set up the payments for Katie to go through the company payroll.

Speaker 16 And she's like, well, what's Katie going to be doing? And I go, oh, she's just going to be helping me out with some stuff and different things.

Speaker 117 As for the key evidence, that new and improved video that helped pave the way for Charlie's arrest, he had an explanation for that too.

Speaker 119 Why didn't you specifically mention the word extortion in Dolce Vite?

Speaker 16 I was being real careful when I spoke to Katie. I would never say the word extortion to her.

Speaker 35 Charlie Adelson's explanation of how he got sucked into a murder extortion plot was convoluted. Some just called it crazy.

Speaker 68 What did you think?

Speaker 27 Yeah, I couldn't believe it. I thought these guys were out of their mind.

Speaker 68 Even his attorney admits at first, it sounded like a stretch.

Speaker 108 So when I hear it the first time, I think it is, I think it sounds crazy.

Speaker 61 You've got a very complicated theory, which addresses all the dots and T's that need to be crossed.

Speaker 76 But what about the fact that these guys are strangers to Dan Markel?

Speaker 73 I mean, that doesn't seem to make sense.

Speaker 45 We're going to kill this guy and then hope we get 300,000?

Speaker 108 But that's the same exact thing in the murder for hire theory, too, because the testimony is clear that they didn't get paid before the murder.

Speaker 108 So they're doing a murder for hire, according to the state, with the hopes of getting paid later.

Speaker 57 It doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 65 Attorney Rashbaum spent more than a day questioning Charlie about his alleged ordeal.

Speaker 36 But Charlie's time on the stand wasn't over.

Speaker 77 Prosecutor Georgia Kappelman was about to get her shot.

Speaker 8 Do you think you can talk your way out of this?

Speaker 24 No, I don't. I'm not part of a murderer.

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Speaker 73 Welcome back to Listen to Your Heart.

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Speaker 37 Inside the Leon County Courthouse, a lot of people watching Charlie Adelson's murder trial thought his defense, that he was in fact a victim of extortion, was just ludicrous.

Speaker 16 She said, ask me if I could pay $3,000 a month.

Speaker 41 But Charlie was detailed, thorough, and ready with an answer to every one of his attorney's questions.

Speaker 21 He had to come up with an answer for every text mail, intercepted phone message.

Speaker 35 Charlie seemed to be able to speak to all of that stuff.

Speaker 21 Did you worry that he was going to find one juror to believe it?

Speaker 27 Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 37 Right, but as you say, if Prosecutor Georgia Kappelman was worried, she didn't show it.

Speaker 35 In her cross-examination, she didn't even try to hide her disdain.

Speaker 8 Doctor, have you ever heard the saying that the simplest explanation is always the most likely?

Speaker 17 Have you heard that? I've heard that theory before, yeah.

Speaker 8 Do you agree that the only problem with having an explanation for everything is that there's just so many explanations?

Speaker 16 There's no explanation. I explained what happened.

Speaker 37 She zeroed in on one big overriding question.

Speaker 35 Why would these alleged extortionists even want to kill Dan Markell?

Speaker 8 Why did Garcia and Rivera, or whoever did it, need to kill someone to extort you?

Speaker 16 You gotta ask them.

Speaker 8 You could have gotten extorted for life just by the threat of death by Latin King, couldn't you, Doctor?

Speaker 16 This was as real of a threat as you get. I mean, these guys aren't messing around.

Speaker 33 But she asked, did he see any evidence that gang members were waiting outside in the dark, ready to kill him if he didn't pay up?

Speaker 8 Were you led to believe or told that the bad guys are outside, right outside your apartment or your residence?

Speaker 16 No, but I was led to believe what they did to to Dan, they were going to do to me.

Speaker 8 I heard you say that, but my question is, did she say, like, the car is running, I'm going to take the money out there to him right now?

Speaker 16 No, she never told me that they were waiting for me outside my house.

Speaker 8 In fact, she stayed the night with you, didn't she?

Speaker 16 Yes, she did.

Speaker 8 And didn't exit your house with your $138,000 until the next day, right?

Speaker 15 Correct.

Speaker 36 According to the prosecutor, nothing Charlie did was consistent with someone who was a victim of extortion.

Speaker 35 She asked Charlie about his cozy relationship with Katie, which continued even after she brought so much danger into his life.

Speaker 8 Did you offer that she could use your Range Rover anytime?

Speaker 16 I said she could borrow the car, sure.

Speaker 8 Did she talk about getting a boat and you offered to help her get a boat?

Speaker 16 I never offered to help her get a boat.

Speaker 17 I offered to help her look for a boat.

Speaker 8 Did you pay for the breast augmentation? No. So when she's saying at the same time, she's the day of the breast augmentation, can I just put it on the credit card?

Speaker 8 Is she referring to something else, some other expense?

Speaker 16 I have no idea what she's referring to, but I did not pay for her voo job.

Speaker 59 Kappelman addressed that all-important surveillance video, and how it seemed to reveal a tight, ongoing connection to Katie following the murder.

Speaker 8 What's the purpose of keeping Katie happy?

Speaker 8 Was she gonna sick the Latin Kings on you if you made her unhappy?

Speaker 16 She was protecting me. I didn't know what would happen.

Speaker 8 Do you think you can talk your way out of this?

Speaker 8 No, I don't. I'm not part of a murder.

Speaker 20 Prosecutor Kappelman's cross-examination was detailed, but to some observers, like Dan Markell's old college friend David Latt, Kapelman failed to land a knockout blow.

Speaker 12 I thought she was just going to really body slam him here, and that didn't happen.

Speaker 103 But her closing argument was certainly hard-hitting.

Speaker 56 She argued that Charlie's story, even with all those details, still did not make sense.

Speaker 8 Please think about that. These two dudes,

Speaker 8 with no connection at all to Dan Markell, and without two nickels to rub together, rented a car and paid for gas to come to Tallahassee in order to kill someone that this defendant hated.

Speaker 1 And for what?

Speaker 8 To maybe get money. Why not just kill and rob him if what you're after is money and there's no hired hit.

Speaker 36 And through it all, the prosecutor made it clear that this deadly conspiracy didn't end with Charlie and Katie and the two hitmen.

Speaker 92 Kappelman alleged that Donna Adelson and perhaps even Wendy also played roles in the crime.

Speaker 8 Wendy appears to be the weakling of the pack. She needs to be protected.
Donna is the overbearing matriarch and this defendant fancied himself the savior of this family.

Speaker 8 Equal parts black sheep and mama's boy, he would often try to help Wendy at Donna's bidding.

Speaker 35 For its closing, the defense encouraged the jurors to look closely, objectively, at each detail in the case and consider the possibility that the simplest explanation is not always the truth.

Speaker 119 That proposition that the simple answer is the preferred answer is the exact opposite of what our criminal justice system is about.

Speaker 119 Sometimes things aren't so simple and that's what we have in this case.

Speaker 20 Charlie's attorney argued he had no motive to kill Dan Markell.

Speaker 119 Charlie Adelson had a good life.

Speaker 16 His business was booming.

Speaker 119 He was supportive of his sister but he didn't wake up in the morning thinking about Professor Markell.

Speaker 88 Good night, everyone.

Speaker 20 With the end of closing arguments, the trial of Charlie Adelson was over.

Speaker 36 Now it was the jury's turn to decide the nature of Charlie's role in this deadly conspiracy.

Speaker 73 Was he victim or mastermind?

Speaker 49 By the fall of 2023, Charlie Adelson had transformed from suave Miami bachelor to disheveled defendant, facing a life sentence.

Speaker 20 All that remained was to hear from the group of jurors who were deliberating his fate.

Speaker 6 So what are you thinking?

Speaker 3 I mean, you're out there in the gallery.

Speaker 78 Did you think you had it this time?

Speaker 22 We knew we had a good chance.

Speaker 41 But as the Markells waited, one question nagged them.

Speaker 79 Would Charlie's testimony that he too was a victim, extorted in the plot to kill Dan Markell, sway the jury?

Speaker 22 We've already been around this stuff a little too long, like we're over nine years now.

Speaker 22 So you know that nothing is and nothing closes in a second so the deliberations are just a very very worrisome time everyone can be seated but word came much sooner than the markells anticipated the jurors had reached a decision

Speaker 22 definitely surprised at like the three-hour mark totally surprised

Speaker 55 Has the jury reached a unanimous verdict?

Speaker 16 Yes, Your Honor.

Speaker 61 It had taken nearly a decade to bring Charlie to trial, but this jury's verdict was clear.

Speaker 113 The defendant is guilty of percentaging murder.

Speaker 36 Thousands were live streaming the verdict, including author Stephen Epstein.

Speaker 11 I think Charlie thought he was about to walk out of the courtroom a free man.

Speaker 56 Three hours later, he wasn't.

Speaker 11 No, and you could see his reaction. It was a look of surprise, of shock.

Speaker 11 His head sank to the table, and he mouthed one word:

Speaker 73 no.

Speaker 22 In the moment, it's like a feeling of relief, almost celebration. It's a good feeling because you were waiting for this to happen.

Speaker 78 And yet you can't really celebrate because you have this stark, awful moment of grief in your life that this is all about.

Speaker 22 Yes.

Speaker 57 Prosecutor Georgia Kappelman had never let her foot off the gas when it came to proving Charlie's involvement in Dan's murder.

Speaker 57 She and her team never stopped investigating, especially when it came to key evidence like that enhanced Dolce Vita recording.

Speaker 21 That's important.

Speaker 72 If she hadn't pursued that technology, you might not have ever gotten Charlie.

Speaker 22 Yeah, so I have like a lot of compliments to Georgia.

Speaker 39 Kappelman spoke to reporters after the verdict.

Speaker 50 She took a quick victory lap, then hinted that Charlie's conviction was not the end of the case.

Speaker 44 Is this the last prosecution we're going to see in the Dan Martell murder, or will there be others?

Speaker 8 I don't know the answer to that question yet. So stay tuned.

Speaker 35 As Kappelman left the courthouse, Charlie Adelson settled in behind bars.

Speaker 21 And when they put him away, there's a telephone there.

Speaker 1 There is.

Speaker 20 And who's at the other end of the line?

Speaker 11 Same person who's been at the other end of the line throughout his entire life, through all the wiretaps, his mama, Donna Adelson.

Speaker 11 I don't even know what to say. There's nothing to say.
There's nothing to say.

Speaker 92 Charlie spent many hours on the phone with his mother, Donna, and Father Harvey.

Speaker 93 This is a free call from Charlie,

Speaker 22 an incarcerated individual at the Leon County Jail. This call is not private.

Speaker 93 Hey.

Speaker 66 hey, Charlie,

Speaker 66 Charlie, how are you guys?

Speaker 93 Okay, okay.

Speaker 45 And commiserated over the verdict.

Speaker 93 I can't believe it's reality either.

Speaker 93 We just can't believe it.

Speaker 93 This is what happened. But there's no out of this.

Speaker 93 I can't believe this.

Speaker 95 Charlie was especially critical of the jury. These people hated me.
I mean, I,

Speaker 95 you know, they they looked at me like,

Speaker 95 you know, like a guy that's making five million dollars a year.

Speaker 95 I want

Speaker 59 Donna agreed they weren't impartial. They didn't give you a chance.
They had their minds made up, you know, walk out for three hours.

Speaker 107 No, trust me, they didn't.

Speaker 117 They simply couldn't believe he'd be behind bars for life. There's very few explainable emotions to go from like thinking you're getting out

Speaker 117 You're all set.

Speaker 117 I took a whole bunch of clothes from

Speaker 117 a couple of weeks ago. I packed up the suitcase for you.
So when you came, I had it ready for you to go to a hotel with it. I had everything ready for you for the child.

Speaker 77 Charlie said the trial played out like a particular TV show.

Speaker 47 You know the one. It was like sitting in the courtroom watching daylight.
Like it deviated from being a trial to being gay out.

Speaker 90 When they realized they were losing, they had it turned it into Dateline.

Speaker 90 Nobody watches Dateline without coming away with their own thinking they figured it out.

Speaker 61 Pretty soon the conversation turned from complaints about the trial to plans for the future.

Speaker 11 And they are just going back and forth and back and forth trying to figure out what do we do now? What do we do now?

Speaker 93 Gonna have to talk

Speaker 93 when we have a moment about

Speaker 25 things that that we need to take care of, okay?

Speaker 11 And Donna reveals all kinds of stuff that she plans to do.

Speaker 73 And oh, what a plan she'd hatched.

Speaker 23 There's a lot of things that we have to do, and we've got a very tight timeframe.

Speaker 57 In the week after his conviction, Charlie and Donna Adelson were in constant communication.

Speaker 15 We've got to take care of things, Charlie. We got to take care of things.

Speaker 80 But one Adelson was notably absent on those calls, Wendy.

Speaker 68 On one call, Donna was talking to Charlie, but his side of the call dropped.

Speaker 1 But she kept talking to her husband, Harvey, and others in the room, maybe not knowing she was still being recorded.

Speaker 29 She read them a text she said she sent to Wendy after the verdict.

Speaker 33 I wrote this last night.

Speaker 25 We know you never asked anything about your brother, but we just got off the phone with him, and the first thing he asked was, How's Wendy holding up?

Speaker 25 I didn't have the heart to tell him that you never called us or asked about him. I just said, We weren't up to phone calls right now.
Everyone looks to protect you.

Speaker 25 I bet you've got a lot to think about.

Speaker 25 But then she answered.

Speaker 81 Eventually, Wendy, an experienced lawyer, replied.

Speaker 36 And Donna read that message out loud, too.

Speaker 23 I'm not responsible in any way for Charlie's situation. I am not guilty because I did not do anything wrong, and I was not involved in any way with Danny's death.

Speaker 35 Donna seemed to realize she was losing her grip on her adult children.

Speaker 93 I said to Harvey, I swear to God, a family was cursed.

Speaker 20 But Donna also seemed to have an ulterior motive for wanting Wendy on her side.

Speaker 35 Something she expressed on this same recording.

Speaker 23 I have to stay here. I want to give her pose.
We're going to be gone.

Speaker 25 I want her to have all this information.

Speaker 15 Gone?

Speaker 1 Where?

Speaker 25 We've been looking it up over and over because things change if there is extradition from Vietnam.

Speaker 25 Because we've looked at all the places, I mean, I could go to Korea and China, but there's no extradition. But we're looking for places where there's no extradition.

Speaker 10 Donna seemed to be planning to flee for a country like Vietnam, which has no extradition treaty with the United States.

Speaker 29 That means she wouldn't necessarily be sent back to Florida to face prosecution.

Speaker 23 If the plane crashed, no one's going to know where anything is or who belongs to what. So I would like her to come up here so she could see it.

Speaker 23 I don't think that's asking too much.

Speaker 51 But of course, she said all of this on a jailhouse phone line, which is monitored.

Speaker 1 Authorities learned Donna and Harvey had booked one-way tickets to Vietnam the day after Charlie's conviction.

Speaker 11 One week after Donna watched her son Charlie be convicted of murder, and they were literally boarding the plane on the jetway.

Speaker 20 As Donna and Harvey made their way toward the plane, Tallahassee FBI agent Pat Sanford leading a team of officers pounced.

Speaker 11 They're boarding the plane. They believe they're about to make their great escape, but Pat Sanford is there.

Speaker 11 And literally sees the phone in Donna's hand and grabs for it because he has a search warrant. Donna yanks it away from him as if she's got control and power.

Speaker 11 And the next thing you know, she's got her hands behind her back cuffed.

Speaker 11 cuffed, and she's marching in the opposite direction off the jetway with a gaggle of officers surrounding her and Harvey utterly helpless to do anything.

Speaker 41 Harvey was sent home without being charged.

Speaker 47 When did they issue a warrant?

Speaker 15 So what happened is...

Speaker 95 Donna, seen here sitting in the back of a police car, was driven straight from the airport to a Miami lockup.

Speaker 41 Almost a decade after Dan Markell's murder, she was booked into the Miami-Dade County Jail, charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy, and solicitation of murder.

Speaker 35 Lawyer Dan Rashbaum, who represented her son, is now representing Donna.

Speaker 108 At the time when Donna Adelson went to get on a plane, she didn't do anything wrong. There's no warrant for her arrest.
She was a free citizen like you and me.

Speaker 35 But on those many jail calls, Donna sometimes mentions Dan Rashbaum's name in relation to her plans.

Speaker 93 I don't know if we'll make it out in the plan. I really don't.
But Dan said,

Speaker 12 you might.

Speaker 73 What's going on?

Speaker 79 Are you helping her with the fleet to a country with minimal extradition?

Speaker 108 The short answer to that is no.

Speaker 108 But the short answer is I'm limited in what I can say because I'm also representing her.

Speaker 61 For Ruth Markel, Donna's takedown was yet another unexpected twist, even after years of them.

Speaker 6 It's an event with a lot of exclamation points.

Speaker 22 Oh, it's amazing.

Speaker 6 Where are we now? They've gotten Donna, the mother.

Speaker 21 And where does she fit in the grand scheme of things, do you think?

Speaker 1 Donna,

Speaker 22 in my mind, is the architect.

Speaker 20 But Donna denied that accusation in court.

Speaker 55 How does she plead?

Speaker 85 Not guilty, Your Honor.

Speaker 45 The Markels continue their visits with the grandchildren.

Speaker 59 In 2022, Ruth released her memoir, The Unveiling.

Speaker 37 She hopes the story of how her own grief motivated her to become a grandparents' rights activist can help others too.

Speaker 48 But she knows another trial is coming.

Speaker 21 That means a fourth trial for you.

Speaker 22 A fourth round. Yes, it is.

Speaker 83 Can you do it? Are you up for it?

Speaker 22 Well, I didn't expect it to come so soon. That's like, obviously you have to do your fitness for the Olympics, you know.

Speaker 22 I guess we'll be ready.

Speaker 35 And of course, there's one last lingering question when it comes to just who was involved in Dan's murder for hire plot.

Speaker 4 Wendy, your opinion.

Speaker 30 Do you think Wendy should be worried?

Speaker 22 I think everybody should be worried.

Speaker 43 It's been nearly 10 years since Dan Markell's murder.

Speaker 1 But for those who loved him most, his spirit is never lost in the barrage of headlines.

Speaker 40 His longtime friend, Josh Berman, even made Dan a part of his own family in a way.

Speaker 27 You know, my middle son is named after him. The Hebrew name is identical to Danny's Hebrew name.
And someday I'll tell Theo why... He has that name.
I think he's only six, almost seven.

Speaker 27 It'd be a lot to tell him now. But yeah, that sort of sums up how much Dan meant to me and to all of us.

Speaker 27 I see myself sitting talking to you as a representative of Dan's incredible network of friends here in Israel on the professor circuit in Florida, like wherever the guy went.

Speaker 22 He was such a phenomenal father. I mean, the best thing about Danny, everybody, you know, he's a scholar, he's internationally acclaimed.
That all counts.

Speaker 22 But the biggest, biggest factor was the kind of father that he was.

Speaker 7 that's all for this edition of Dateline, and check out our talking dateline podcast. Dennis Murphy and Josh Mankiewicz will go behind the scenes of tonight's episode.

Speaker 7 Available Wednesday in the Dateline feed wherever you get your podcasts. I'll see you again each weeknight for NBC Nightly News.
I'm Lester Holt for all of us at NBC News.

Speaker 4 Good night.

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