Murder for hire
Did trouble with the in-laws end with a man being killed?
When Daniel Markel and Wendi Adelson’s marriage broke up, things got nasty. Wendi acrimoniously filed for divorce in September 2012.
After that, the former couple bickered over the financial settlement.
Dan accused Wendi of hiding money and assets.
Mostly, the couple argued over their two young sons.
Though they shared custody, Wendi was determined to take the boys from Tallahassee and move 400 miles away to Miami.
Her parents, Harvey and Donna Adelson, lived there, running the family’s successful dental practice.
Wendi’s brother Charlie Adelson was in Miami, too, and was also a dentist.
But Dan blocked her request to relocate.
The two battled it out in court, where Dan, a brilliant lawyer and talented professor at Florida State University, was winning.
The judge wasn’t on board
with letting Wendi move the boys away from their loving father.
So he sided with Dan. It wasn’t a popular decision amongst the Adelson clan.
The dispute rumbled on. Until Dan was shot and killed in his driveway.
On the morning of 18 July 2014, after dropping his kids, then 5 and 4, at preschool, he’d run errands and gone to the gym.
Shot in the head
But as he arrived home and pulled into the garage, a stranger followed.
Two shots blasted out, before a silver Toyota Prius sped away.
Neighbours found Dan, 41, sitting in the driver’s seat, groaning.
There were shards of glass everywhere, and a bullet hole in his head.
Blood poured from the wound and he was raced to hospital.
Sadly, Dan died later that evening.
But who would slaughter a loving father in broad daylight?
Following the former couple’s ugly custody battle, the police were suspicious of the Adelsons. But they had no proof. Then, in May 2016, detectives found CCTV of the mystery Prius tailing Dan to the shops, the gym.
Police traced it to a rental agreement with a man named
Luis Rivera.
Rivera quickly confessed that he’d been paid to drive from
Miami to Tallahassee to murder
Dan.
And a critical link was unearthed. Rivera, a member of the Latin Kings gang in Miami, was lifelong friends with a man called Sigfredo Garcia. And at the time of Dan’s brutal murder, Garcia’s long-term on/off girlfriend, Katherine Magbanua, was also dating another man… Charlie Adelson. A murderfor-hire plot unravelled. Rivera pleaded guilty to seconddegree murder that year, and was jailed
for 19 years.
Magbanua and Garcia were later convicted of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and solicitation. They were jailed for life. But what about the Adelson family?
On trial at last
They continued living their privileged lives in Miami, bringing up Dan’s sons. Denied all connections to the killing, calling hitman theories ‘fanciful fiction’. Until April 2022, when Charlie Adelson was arrested for conspiring to murder his brotherin-law.
In November 2023, an Adelson finally stood before a jury. Charlie, then 46 years old, denied firstdegree murder, conspiracy and solicitation. The prosecution said he was the mastermind of the brutal killing. Hiring the two hitmen, who drove from Miami,
stalked then killed his brother-in-law for $100,000 (about £77,000).
‘Back in 2014, the Adelson family had a big problem,’ prosecution lawyer Sarah Dugan said.
‘That big problem was Dan Markel and the solution to that problem was this defendant because he had a girlfriend with connections to the type of people who are willing and capable of pointing a gun at a stranger and pulling the trigger.’
She told the jury Wendi’s mother, Donna, hated her former son-in-law and was desperate for her daughter and grandsons to move to Miami.
‘The defendant was the person that Donna Adelson relied on to solve her problems, and this was a big, big problem for Donna Adelson,’ said Dugan.
‘She made it the defendant’s problem to solve.’
Within days of Dan’s murder, Wendi had relocated to Miami.
And within months, she’d legally changed her sons’ last names from Markel to Adelson.
‘Just like that, their father was just effectively erased from their lives,’ Dugan said.
‘The Adelson family’s big problem had been solved.’
There was also a paper trail linking Charlie to payments made to his convicted girlfriend.
But defence lawyer Daniel Rashbaum insisted Charlie was innocent.
Told the court that the case against him was supported by guesswork and unreliable claims made by the actual killers.
Blood money
Rashbaum went on to claim Charlie was actually a blameless victim.
That the Latin Kings gang, via his girlfriend Katherine, heard the Adelsons hoped to pay Dan a million dollars to move to Miami.
So they took it upon themselves to shoot Dan.
Then extort Charlie for the money themselves.
‘Charlie Adelson didn’t have a motive to upend his life,’ said Rashbaum.
‘Charlie Adelson had a good life.
‘His business was booming. He was supportive of his sister, but he didn’t wake up in the morning thinking about Dan Markel.
‘Crazy ideas? Yes. An upset mother? Yes. Pushing each other’s buttons? Yes.
‘But all of that is a far cry from murder.’
The prosecution ridiculed the defence lawyer’s extortion theory.
The Latin Kings, they said, wouldn’t have to murder anyone in order to extort money.
‘Why couldn’t they just come put a gun to your head and say give me all of the money in your safe?’ the prosecution asked.
By this time, nearly a decade had passed since Dan’s brutal, coldblooded murder.
Was Charlie bang to rights at last?
It was down to the jury to decide his fate.
Guilty or not? Turn to find out