Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore - Dan Markel and the Family Who Wanted Him Gone

Episode Date: October 21, 2026

On a Friday morning in July of 2014, Dan Markel dropped his sons at daycare, went to the gym, and pulled into his garage in Tallahassee. A neighbor heard two shots and called 911 within two minutes. Because Dan Markel was a law professor in the middle of a custody fight. One his ex-wife's family very much wanted to end. This episode Sabrina and Kaelyn follow the clues: a rented Prius that didn't belong in the neighborhood. A toll record that put it there. A bag of cash that was still damp when it changed hands. And a grandmother stopped at the airport with a one-way ticket out of the country.Head over to our Clues YouTube channel to WATCH this episode: https://www.youtube.com/@CluesPodIf you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Clues to never miss a case! To hear episodes ad-free and released a day early, subscribe to Crime House+. Join at crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. Clues is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios.🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Crime House Originals including Crime House 24/7, Crimes Of Reddit, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Murder True Crime Stories and more wherever you get your podcasts!Follow us on SocialYouTube: @CluesPod | @crimehousestudiosInstagram: @cluespodcast | @CrimehouseTikTok: @CrimehouseFacebook: @crimehousestudiosX: @crimehousemediaClues is hosted by Kaelyn Moore Instagram: @itskaelynmooreTikTok: @heartstartspoundingEpisode Sponsors:With Nutrafol Strand Serum, your length goals are officially in reach. Discover Strand Serum today at https://www.Nutrafol.com Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at https://www.RocketMoney.com/CLUES. Give the gift of Zenni this holiday season, glasses, sunglasses, whatever they need. Go to https://www.Zenni.com/PODCAST and use code PODCAST15 for fifteen percent off, plus free shipping over sixty five dollars. Head to https://www.Talkiatry.com/CLUES to complete the short assessment and get matched with an in‑network psychiatrist in just a few minutes.

I'm Connor Tomlinson from Love on the Spectrum. History is my thing, and I've been waiting my whole life for a show like this one. And I'm Carter Roy, and this is What the Fact. Three facts a week, each with the whole story behind it. The history class you actually wished you had in school. New episodes every Wednesday. Follow What The Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What The Fact Pod. This is Crimehouse.

It's a Friday morning and July of 20. 2014 in one of the quietest neighborhoods in Tallahassee, Florida, when all of a sudden, a neighbor hears two loud gunshots and calls 911. In the house next door, a man is sitting in the driver's seat of his car inside of his own garage, shot twice in the head. Now, it's clear he's been murdered. He didn't do this to himself, but the hunt for the killer would take police on one of the twistiest investigations of their career. Hi guys. Welcome back to Clues, where we sneak past the crime scene tape to explore the key evidence behind some of the most gripping true crime cases. I'm Kailen Moore and I'm going to be the one digging deeper into the timelines, the backstories,

and the court files released on these cases. And once again today, I am so excited to welcome my very good friend and also host of Crime House's newest show, Crimes of Reddit, and co-host of Two Girls One Ghost, Sabrina Deanna Roga. I'm excited to be here. Thank you for joining me. And if you love going down deep dives of Reddit stories as much as I do, I guarantee you'll love Crimes of Reddit. But yes, I'm so excited to be joining you, Kailen, as the co-host, talking about the clues of this case. Also, don't forget to share your thoughts on socials. We love hearing from the community. We're always looking into what you guys have said about these cases.

Also, want ad-free and early access to clues in the rest of the crimehouse lineup. Subscribe to Crimehouse Plus and get at least two bonus episodes from across Crimehouse every month. To join, go to CrimehousePlus.com or if you listen on Apple Podcasts, try free at the top of the clues page. Now, let's get into the case. of Dan Markell and the clues that defined it. So this is a case that really makes me appreciate my mother-in-law. It is, yeah, it's a good conversation starter about in-laws. Yeah, just about family dynamics.

By mother-in-law, Pam, she listens to like every episode of everything that I do, which is amazing. But she's the best. You're very lucky. Also understand that I'm very lucky, and it's not the case for everyone to have in-laws that you love. I do feel like I'm no longer married, but my... previous in-laws were amazing, like delightful humans. Yeah. I think my family is probably the, but not in, and as we'll talk about in this case,

this is like an extreme. Yeah, right. But my family dynamics are just messy. And I think, yeah, I think my parents are the problem. It's, it's so wild. Like, this is one thing I didn't realize until I got married. Like, you are oftentimes marrying that person's family, too. 100%.

They are such a part of everything. And then now having a child, too. I'm really seeing how much you are like. tether it. So you really have to think about all of those things when you're picking a partner. Right. And then sometimes, you know, you can pick someone and you can kind of like avoid a lot of the family mess because most people have messy families. But yeah, no, I feel bad for whoever ends up with me and they end up with my family, which they're great, you know, but it's, they can be a lot. Yeah. Well, as a lot of people are.

Into a story today for the family. That is a lot. And just a reminder, as we get into it, if you're watching this episode on YouTube, you're going to see some pictures, videos, maybe some maps that will help you visualize everything. And if you're listening, you can find all those same things on our Instagram that's at Clues Podcast. And with that, let's dive in. So we're going to start on the morning of Friday, July 18th, 2014, in Tallahassee, Florida. Around 9 a.m., 41-year-old Dan Markell drops his two young sons off at daycare. Then he heads to the gym, premier, health and fitness center, to work off some frustration. So he's been divorced from his ex-wife Wendy for a year at this point, and they are still fighting each other in court. The gym is one of the few people.

places where he can escape it all. And what Dan doesn't notice when he pulls into the gym parking lot is that another car, a Prius, pulls in behind him, and it sits there and it's just waiting. Dan comes out at 1038 a.m. and that Prius is still there. He starts driving home to Benton Hills, a shaded neighborhood of historic houses, but the other car pulls out after him and starts following him back. On the way, Dan calls his mom Ruth, just like he does every day. His uncle is with her, so she puts him on the phone with him to wish him a happy birthday. And then he tells her he has to go because he has another call to make. Next, he calls a music teacher named Stuart Schlazer,

who had taught at the school Dan's son is going to start in the fall. Dan wants to know what his son is going to be learning in the class. And as he's pulling into his garage, it's just before 11. They're on the phone. They're having this conversation. Stewart hears Dan say something that he's never going to be able to forget. But Dan says, can you please hold on for a second? there's an unfamiliar person in my driveway.

Now, before Dan can open his car door, a man appears at the driver's side window and raises a gun. He fires two shots, the window shatters. Dan is hit in the forehead and also in the left cheek, and he slumps over the wheel as the shooter runs off. Meanwhile, Stewart is still on the phone. He's calling out to see if Dan is okay on the other end of the line and he doesn't hear anything.

It's just so devastating because you can tell, from these final moments in Dan's life. He's like a great dad. He's invested in his children's lives and what they're going to be learning in school. It's so sad. No, it's so sad. It's sad, too. I feel like in a lot of these cases, there's a lot of like collateral to, like, someone being on the phone and hearing all of that.

The trauma of that. And they, like, he has no idea what's going on. He just hears two gunshots and then nothing. So we're going to get a little bit deeper into Dan's death, but I want to talk a little bit more about who Dan Markell was in his life. Yeah. Dan was born in Montreal in 1972 to Ruth and Phil Markell. And from the beginning, they knew that Dan was wired differently. He wasn't a focused student, but he could crack these problems that other kids just couldn't. His family moved to Toronto when he started kindergarten. And when he reached the third grade, Dan took an aptitude test and he posted the highest score in the entire school's history. That's unbelievable. Unbelievable. For a kid who like didn't have great focus in school, he just takes his test. He was probably just bored. Yeah, he just knew so much.

Yeah, exactly. So after that, he's like full focus on school. And he also started studying for his bar mitzvah. The Marquels were a conservative Jewish family. And the older Dan got, the more that identity mattered to him. He got into Harvard, double majored in politics and philosophy. And he graduated Magna Cum Laude in 1995. And then he went on to study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

And then a master's in political theory from Cambridge. Collecting degrees. collecting degrees. When he came home, Dan knew that he wanted to pursue law, but not just in the courtroom. He wanted to push boundaries of how we think about laws in our society. So he went back to Harvard for his JD. He graduated in 2001, clerked for Judge Michael Hawkins on the Ninth Circuit, and then he did a stint as a white-collar defense attorney in Washington, D.C. Wow. We love a labor law guy. Yeah. And then in 2005, he founded a blog called Prof's Blog. It's. P-R-A-W-S-B-L-A-W-G-P-Profts blog, which was a gathering place for legal academics across the country.

And thanks to this blog, Dan kept friendships going across the entire legal academy. So around 2004, 31-year-old Dan started looking for some teaching jobs. Like, he really wanted to improve the legal system and, like, raise up the next generation of students. Yeah, when someone doesn't want to just, like, work in the system, they want to also change the system. so they like enter the system to be able to enact change inside. I love that. And also he's like the smartest person in any room he walks into. So if anyone's going to do it, it's Dan. Now, Dan wasn't just looking for teacher jobs. It seems like he was also looking for love. He joined J-Date, the Jewish dating site, and he found a profile that had everything he wanted on it. And that was a profile of Wendy

Edelson. She was a 25-year-old law student at the University of Miami. Her family lived in South Florida where her parents ran this successful dentistry practice. Her older brother, Charlie, had followed them into the business. So when Wendy first read dance message, she was actually sitting next to her mother, Donna Edelson, who looked at his profile with her and approved. Which I understand. I've never... Did you ever do that, like swipe with your parents looking?

I've never confided in my mom with dating. Yeah. I mean, if after a couple dates, like, I'll tell her about it. Yeah, totally. It's like just such like scary garbage on dating app sometimes. Like I wouldn't even want to expose my mom to that. I don't even want to expose myself to it. J date in what was this, 2005 was probably a much safer place than like Tinder of today's age.

Don't get me started on Raya. Are you on Raya? Yeah. I can't even imagine what it's like on. It's got to be scary. So it's kind of fun. Yeah, because like Tom Belton was on there. Would you date?

He didn't like me back though. Oh, I'm sorry. Malfoy was my like first crush ever. Yeah. So it would be my dream. Oh, my God. So if you're listening, he listens to this podcast. Oh, my God. Tom Felon, hey. So the couple started dating in 2004. And then in 2005, Florida State's law school offered Dan a job. And Wendy moved with him to Tallahassee, which is great because now they're all in Florida together. And then on February 26, 2006, Dan and Wendy got married. And while they were planning that wedding, Dan really, it seems like that's when him and his mother-in-law started bumping hits. And I feel like that's something a lot of people can relate to. Yeah, the wedding.

Everyone is on their worst behavior the entire time a wedding is being bland. Yeah. People have different opinions. Some people have too many opinions when it's not their wedding. Well, people do that thing too, of like, well, I'm donating money to this. So like I get a say. And that's when it gets just so. Yeah. That's when like people's claws come out. Yeah. So Wendy ran everything for the wedding past Donna, not just like the venue and the flowers, but also. that decisions Dan thought belonged to just the two of them. There's so many like private decisions in a wedding, you and your husband. Yeah. So for her to be running them past her mom, like, is it okay that we do this? He was starting to get really frustrated. Yeah. The families did split the

cost of the wedding. The Adelson's covered the catering and Dan asked them to make sure the food was kosher. Donna said, of course, this is your one ask, we'll do it. The food was not kosher. Which is so, Like that's such a deliberate. She knew what she was doing. 100%. She didn't care. Especially if that's like the one very important ask of the day. And she just didn't do it.

She didn't do it. She didn't respect that decision of his. On the day of his wedding, some of Dan's family said that they had nothing they could eat. It wasn't just Dan that needed it. Like his whole family needed to eat kosher. And they couldn't eat anything at his wedding. Jeez. Things sort of smoothed over after the wedding.

It seems like everyone forgave each other. or at least moved on from it. Yeah. And for a few years, their life and their marriage was, like, pretty smooth sailing. Dan became one of the most respected legal scholars in the country, writing on the philosophy of punishment for the New York Times, Slate, and the Atlantic. There's articles of Dan's that you can still go read to the state and just see how smart he was.

FSU brought Wendy on to teach as well, though her position was not as prestigious as his was. and the couple had two sons that were born in 2009 and 2010. Now, everyone who knew Dan, Wendy included, described him as an incredibly devoted father. Even having like a really important job, like your writing is being read by everyone. Like he still prioritized his family. Yeah. But as the boys started getting older, the marriage, took a toll on the marriage, it seems. Wendy was tired of Tallahassee.

She was tired of being so far from her family. She also wanted her own career. She didn't think that she could build one in Dan's shadow. She said that he didn't treat her as an equal. She described him as emotionally abusive, controlling the children, including their religious upbringing, and pushing her to stay home rather than to go to work. And I did read a couple, like, you know, people who were close to the couple and the family who said that they kind of just grew apart.

Yeah. And Wendy was trying to. to pursue her own interests. Yeah. Like she wrote a book that I guess did talk a lot about the ups and downs of her relationship with Dan. And she asked him to read it. And then he never read it. It was just one of those things where, unfortunately.

You got to read their writing. And unfortunately, in a relationship, it takes a lot of work. And it just sounds like they started prioritizing work and family rather than their relationship as a couple. So they started to grow apart. Yeah. Which happens a lot. That happens a lot. And like the most important thing you can do for your partner is still.

like read the thing they wrote. Support them. It's just like the little support things like that. Yeah. And after six years of being together, that really was when she decided that she was done. On September 5th, 2012, Wendy began the paperwork for divorce,

but she didn't tell Dan. On September 10th, while he was out of town on business, she filed for divorce, moved furniture out of the house, took the boys, and then left the papers on their bed. You're doing this to a lawyer.

Dan knew the law inside and out. And he knew that she could, couldn't simply just take the children. So he filed to keep the kids in Tallahassee, which really upset Wendy and her family. Her mother, Donna, most of all, in May of 2013, Donna wrote to her daughter saying, quote, Danny thinks he's a very important person, and as always, him and his needs come first. The most important part of your divorce is relocation. On June 20, 2013, a judge did side with Dan, which was what Dan thought would happen.

Wendy would have to stay in Tallahassee so that the boys could be near their father. And her family fought this. They did lose, though. Now, after that, Donna's behavior really did escalate. She threatened to have her own grandchildren baptized as Catholics. It was just really meant to upset Dan. So there are emails that Donna has sent to Wendy. And they're on record.

You can find them. You can read them. In one of the emails, like she talks about how much she hates Dan, and how she basically wants to make him suffer. In one of the emails, she literally says, we should dress the boys, as in Dan and Wendy's two sons, in youth Nazi outfits, and send him a photo and make him not like his kids, essentially.

Yeah, that's going to work. It's so crazy. Yeah, mother-in-law of the year, everybody. And Donna was also saying a lot of really horrible things about Dan to the sons, which is a huge no-no. Yeah. Even if you're getting separated, like, I know people really try, I have friends that really try to still say good things to the kids about their partner and like the parents are involved too. Right.

And Dan learned about those things because the sons were coming home and being like, Grandma said this about you. Which is so sad for the children. They're three and four years old at this point. And after that, Dan tries to get the unsupervised visits with their grandma revoked. He doesn't want them to see her without having like an actual supervisor there. Which is so fair. That hearing was sent for May of 2014, but it got pushed. Meanwhile, both Wendy and Dan tried to move on from this.

Wendy started dating another FSU professor, this guy, Jeff LaCasse, and that same month that the hearing was supposed to take place in May of 2014, she enrolled one of the boys in a new school without consulting Dan. The custody fight had been running for almost two years at this point, the kids very much in the middle of it, and they were still waiting for their day in court. What Wendy wanted was to move. She asked a judge to let her take the boys nearly 500 miles south to South Florida, where her family was. She had a job offer lined up to show that she could support them there.

The judge said no, though. She hadn't met her burden of proof. What Dan wanted on the flip side was by the summer of 2014, more distance from Wendy's family. He had a motion pending about Donna, former mother-in-law, about how much time she spent alone with his sons. And that hearing on the motion was set for May, but it got postponed. Yeah. So it's important to note that, yes, I think Wendy is adding to some of the difficulties here. Yeah. But so much of the negativity is coming from Donna, the mother-in-law.

Yes. She's really making everything so much worse. They were going to have that hearing in May, and that's the one that got postponed. Then on the morning of July 18th, just two months later, someone walked into Dan's garage and shot him twice. So at 11.02 a.m., two minutes after the shots ring out, Tallahassee police got a 911 call from Dan's next door neighbor. James Geiger had heard gunfire, and he assumed that someone was breaking into the house. But when he looked outside, he noticed that there was a car driving away, and he described it as being either a white or silver Prius. Then he goes over to Dan's house. He assumes that the people breaking in are leaving. And that's when he notices Dan's car is in the garage and that the driver's side window was smack.

Dan was inside the car. His head was bloody, but he was breathing. So that's when James called 911, told them to hurry and said, quote, I don't know if someone tried to shoot him or he shot himself. And then the dispatcher made a mistake. So he coded it as man down still breathing, which unfortunately dropped the priority of the response. And we've talked about 911 dispatchers on this show. my father was a 911 dispatcher. I know how hard of a job it is. Yeah. I feel like they get a lot of, you know, a lot of the cases we cover, they make a lot of mistakes and people do like to say like horrible things about them. And we've, we've had a listener write in who is a 911 dispatcher who kind of gave some context as to why they do things certain ways. Right. This was a mistake. This was not how it was supposed to be called in. So do we put it on the botched board? We can put it on the botch board, which I need to start calling my dad and have him like weigh in on some stuff. But. I mean, my dad would tell me, like, he wasn't even allowed to say, like, hold on, honey, like, sweetie, anything to calm down the person. Like, there's really strict rules that you have to follow as a dispatcher. But it's really important that you call things in the right way because that's how fast the response is.

So, seven minutes later, police still are not dispatched to go check on Dan. The 911 dispatcher actually catches the error that he made and he upgrades it to a shooting. ultimately the police didn't arrive at Dan's house until 12 minutes after the call and paramedics took an additional seven minutes to get to him. That is almost 20 minutes after being shot in the head. By the time Dan got to the hospital, it was clear he wasn't going to make it. A few of his friends, you know, got the call and they were able to come over to say their goodbyes. A rabbi was able to come and offer prayers. His parents tried to fly in, but they didn't make it. There was such a short amount of time because Dan unfortunately did die the next morning. And meanwhile, detectives were building a list of anyone

who would have done this, anyone who might have wanted Dan dead. And there was already one name on the top of that list. This episode is brought to you by Rocket Money. Now, if you guys have been following my shows for some time, you know how dedicated I am to research. And in order to do that, I have to sign up for many different publications all across the world. Think the most random newspaper you've ever heard of. And therefore, when I look at my credit card statement every month, I see all of these charges for recurring subscriptions for newspapers that I didn't even know I had. Rocket Money is here for you, if you're like me. The app automatically categorizes all of your transactions across your accounts, which gives you regular reports

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Join at RocketMoney.com slash clues. That's rocketmoney.com slash clues. RocketMoney.com slash clues. The police closed my sister's case in 2019. Last month, her killer commented on my post. On Reddit, true crime doesn't come from journalists. It comes from the victims, the witnesses, and sometimes the suspects themselves. People post the things they never say out loud, anonymous, unfiltered, and completely real.

And every Tuesday, on crimes of Reddit, we read them out loud. I'm Sabrina Deanna Roga from two girls, one ghost. And I'm Alexis Linkletter from the first degree. Each week, one of us brings the most unhinged, true crime stories the internet has to offer. And the other goes in completely blind. No prep, no spoilers. Reacting in real time, same as you. And then we swap. And we pull every thread until the whole twisted picture comes into view. It's dark. It's messy. And the scariest part is that these are real stories, posted by real people.

New episodes drop every Tuesday. Listen to and follow Crimes of Reddit, available now wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is brought to you by Nutraful. Have you ever felt like your hair just gets stuck at a certain point no matter how much care you give it? You're being patient, but your ends are brittle and fragile from daily heat and styling. I used to think that my hair just stopped growing, but it turns out the real culprit was everyday breakage cutting my progress short.

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to keep every inch you earned. With neutral-full strand serum, your length goal, are officially in reach. Discover Strand Serum today at Nutraful.com, spelled N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L.com. That's neuterful.com. Like most murders, the first suspect is the spouse. And here in this case, it's Wendy Adelson, who's the ex-spouse. So truly, within a couple hours of the shooting, Tallahassee PD found Wendy and asked her to come in. And this interview is, it's chock full of clues, but it is our first clue for today's episode. They start talking to Wendy around 2.45 p.m.

About four hours after Dan was shot, they told her what happened, and Wendy burst into tears. And when we say burst. Burst. We mean almost exploded. Sobbing. Sobbing.

Really, like almost, I think to an outsider, it almost looks like crocodile tears. Like she's really trying to push him out. Yeah. There was a shooting at your home or your ex-husband's home at 2116 trust guy. Okay.

Your husband, your ex-husband, excuse me, Daniel, all right, has been taken to the hospital. Um, he's not gonna survive. My God. Okay. I'm alive. I'm here in his footing. What happened?

Well, before we get into everything, I have to establish where you were, and who you were with and so forth. Okay. And then once we've established all that, I can give you more details. Okay. Do you understand why I wanted you to come here before I discussed this? No, I know.

She walked them through her day because they are talking to her as a suspect. Yeah. So she's kind of giving them her alibi. She told them that she had been home all morning waiting on a repairman. A technician from Best Buy's Geek Squad was coming to fix the television in her living room. which she said she made the appointment herself. That's what she said in this interview. Dan was shot just before 11.

So by her own account, she was at home with a repairman in the house when it happened. She then said she left around 12.30 p.m. To buy bullet bourbon for a party that night, and then she had met up with friends for lunch. Through tears, she also tells police that she drove by Dan's neighborhood, and it was all blocked off. And that they really flag in the interview, because they're like, why were you driving past,

your ex-husband's house. And she was like, well, her response in this is that sometimes she, like, kind of gets nostalgic for the, or is like coming to terms with the divorce, so she'll just drive by his house because it's not on her way anywhere. No. It's not far from where she lives, but it's not on her way. Yeah. Yeah. And then she changes her story. Like another time she says, like, oh, I got lost. Yeah, exactly. But, like, one red flag here is if you see police tape off your husband's neighborhood, or your ex-husband, where you know your kids were previously that day, don't alarm bells go off for you? The fact that it wasn't, she saw that it was cordoned off by police and she wasn't like, oh, I should check in with Dan and just make sure everything's good. Just kept going.

Just kept going. Overall, the interview ran more than five hours, and Wendy told them at one point, quote, I'm scared. I don't know why this would happen. And she mentioned she was scared for her kids. Police asked if there was anyone who would want to hurt Dan. and Wendy didn't give them an exact straight answer, but then she did talk about the marriage and said that Dan had a difficult history

that he wasn't treating her well and the two were still dealing with legal issues, which is very true. Okay, so she tells them a couple of really important things. She does say that Dan really meant well, but he rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. So she's indicating that there's potentially a lot of people he might have angered. Then she talked about their marriage and said that they were having a difficult time and their history wasn't great, that Dan didn't treat her well, and that the two were still

dealing with legal issues. So she said, quote, somebody might have done this, not because they hate Danny, but because they thought this was good somehow, which is an interesting thought. Very bizarre thing to say. Then she brings up her boyfriend, FSU professor Jeffrey Lacasse, claiming that just five days ago, things had kind of gotten bad between them because he was really jealous and so she asked for a break so that she could like reassess if she actually really wanted to be with him. Yeah. So she's kind of hinting at maybe he felt like the issues between Dan and I were getting in the way of our relationship. Could he have done it? Right. Right. And then she brings up her brother Charlie saying that he once joked about hiring a hitman to kill Dan, but she's like,

but it was just a joke he would never do anything. But as she's saying that, she's sobbing. It's like something clicked in her head and she's like, that's a horrible thing to say, but I thought it was a joke. And she's like, like truly about to throw up. She's crying so hard this whole interview. Yes. My brother, the one his name is Charlie, the one I'm really close to. He makes a lot of jokes in that taste. And it was a joke he made.

He bought the TV for me this morning that got broken. And I was talking to him about whether it made sense to pay to fix it or whether I should get. a new one and it was always his joke that like he knew Danny treated me badly and it was always this joke he said I you know I looked into hiring a hitman and it was cheaper to get you this TV so instead I got you this TV I mean he would never he's my big brother and he's been taking care of me since I was little but he would never and I said I told that to the repair guy this point right that's I said he asked me how much it cost, and I said they didn't know because it was a gift because my brother said it's cheaper than a hit man.

It was my divorce present. Okay. It's such a horrible thing to say. I'm so sorry. That's okay. After this five-hour interview, she hands over her phone. She lets them fingerprint her and photograph her. They also test her hands for gunshot residue.

So now there's multiple leads for the police to follow. Right, right. And when you feel like the police are kind of coming out of that interview being like, Like, what is going on? There's so much. Now we have a boyfriend, a brother, her family. She's acting strange. Like, now you're just like off on this whole new direction.

Yes. But her alibi did check out. And no gunshot residue was found on her person. So then they're like, okay, well, based on this conversation, let's go talk to Jeffrey LaCasse. He too had an alibi. And he was some 500 miles away during the shooting. But he did in his interview. He made a comment.

He was like, yeah, I was. wondering if you would talk to me because, sure, there were probably plenty of times where I joked about or made comments about wanting to punch him in the face. Like he... Yeah, he kind of owns up to it. He owns up to the fact that he didn't love how Dan treated Wendy. Yeah. And sure, it's definitely suspicious that her brother made a comment like about hiring a hitman, but that's all it was. Just a suspicious comment. They would need more evidence and they would have to investigate into that further. So a little after 8 p.m., police let Wendy go home to her kids. She did not take them to the hospital to visit their father.

Who is dying. Who is dying. Dan was taken off life support the next morning. His memorial was held at his temple the day after that. Dozens of friends, students, and colleagues came. But almost immediately, Ruth and Phil Markell got the cold shoulder from Wendy. I, just like as a side note, though, because now I'm like, obviously we researched a lot for this case.

But the idea that, like, he was still holding on to life, I know that it's, you're probably thinking that it's too dark. for your kids to see. You don't want them to remember their dad like that. But that's, it's so sad. Yeah, like I imagine growing up and I never got to think about it. I know because like he could have still had brain activity. Like you don't know if they can hear you. Yeah. That's really, really dark.

I know. That's so sad. But I do imagine it's tricky. Yeah. Right. It is a really tough situation. I know. I know.

Yeah. On July 22nd, four days after the shooting, Wendy and her two sons moved to South Florida to be near her parents, which remember, that's what she has been wanting. The whole time. This entire time. Her one big ass. Ask, ask, yeah. Before she left, she emptied the couple's shared safety deposit box, including a two-carat diamond ring that belonged to Dan's great aunt who was a Holocaust survivor. In Miami, she cut off Dan's parents entirely and would not allow them to see their children.

Their grandchildren. Yeah, we're right. Her children. They just have lost their son, and they probably are looking for comfort in their grandchildren now. Or to comfort their grandchildren who lost their father. And she says no. She says no. You have absolutely no like parental rights to the kids so you can't see them. And under Florida law at that time, she was entirely within her rights to do so. So Dan's parents couldn't do anything.

Yeah, no legal ability to see them. That September, she enrolled the boys under the last name Adelson, not Markell. And she made it legal the following June saying it was for their safety. This is where I'm so curious to hear from our listeners who anyone, who has been divorced with children in the mix, like, I'm just so curious to get their perspective on all of this because how much do you just try to keep everything normal for the kids? Or like if you have lost a partner and you have kids together, like how much you try to keep things normal for the kids versus how much do you change things? Like, to me, as someone who's never experienced anything like this, it feels so fast and so extreme for two young boys to be like, your last name is different, you're never seeing your grandparents

again. We're moving you to like this other. town away from like your friends. Yeah. But I don't know, but like to me it just feels like a lot. It is a lot. And I also, I mean, I can only speak to my experience. Yeah. But when my parents got divorced or separated, my mom kept her last name the same as mine, which is so like my parents hyphenated their last names when they got married. So Deanna Roga is my mom and dad's last name. Okay. But my mom was like, I have lived so much of my life as Deanna Roga now that like it kind of is part of my identity.

Yeah. And I want the same last name as my children, and I'm not going to change your last name. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Just to like, just to keep it all.

Yeah. Yeah. And to have that connection to you with the same last name. Right. That's interesting. Well, and it just makes me sad for the kids, too, because like, I don't know, after losing your dad, like the one thing that really ties you to him still is the name. I think about that.

I think about that a lot. Yeah. That's what Wendy chose to do. So while the police are following up on these leads that they got from Wendy's interview, they start looking. into another clue. At the scene, detective spoke with the neighbor, who you brought up James Geiger. He had seen someone drive away in either a white or silver, light-colored Toyota Prius, which is our second clue. But that was the whole description. He didn't know the plate. He didn't recognize anyone in it.

Prius, like one of the most common cars in the country. Exactly. And no one else on the street saw anything either. So then they start looking at cameras. And there was a security camera on a city bus that gave them something. And this, okay, actually, I do want to give a Sherlock for this because they start looking at cameras. They can't find anything on like the gas stations. And one cop is like, I bet a city bus caught them. So they go and they look at the city bus routes from that day, the time that the Prius would have

been driving away. And they, sure enough, they found it. So that's a Sherlock. I'm actually giving a Sherlock for someone doing not just the bare minimum. A great detective. Really, really good investigative work. And sure enough, it pays off. A security camera on the city bus did give them something. It showed that a Prius had been following Dan all morning. They narrowed it to a 2006 to 2009 model in a factory color called Silver Pine Micah. It was a metallic almost like green. It had tinted windows and a missing tow bolt cover, which is like the towing thing on the back of a car. Every time something about cars comes up, I have to Google it. I simply know nothing. But they still didn't have a plate or a driver. So five days after the murder, they released a photo of the car and they waited.

Crime Stoppers offered $25,000. An anonymous donor added $100,000. One anonymous donor, $100,000. That's wild. What can we give? That feels like a... Yeah, that's a everyday hero. Yeah. Yeah. Putting that much money on the line. Like, that's... Amazing. Yeah, really showed up for him. Yeah. I mean, he was in... Doing it anonymously. Yeah. Still, though, nobody came forward. So then they're interviewing more people, including, like I said, Wendy's boyfriend, Jeff LaCasse. They ran out of Leeds.

So they go back to the thing that they had, which is the car. They're looking at the car on the security footage they have. And they notice that in the middle of the Prius's windshield, they can make out a toll transponder, which is a sun pass. And the sun pass is our third clue. Because South Florida is covered in toll roads. but Tallahassee itself barely has any of them. So a Sun Pass indicates that the driver's out of town or from out of town and probably also had to pay tolls getting to Tallahassee.

Which all of that stuff is digitally recorded now. So in 2015, about seven months after Dan's death, investigators start going through statewide Sunpass records around the date of the murder. They cross-referenced the Silver Pine Micah Priuses with Sunpass accounts then they cross-reference and check which one of those cars had been on toll roads in the days around Dan's death. By March of 2015, the task force was down to fewer than 10 cars, which again, going back to what you said of how many Priuses there are. I know. Right. Yeah. They were able to like whittle it down to just 10. This is nitty-gritty details. Yeah.

One of those 10 cars was a rental out of Miami. And the record said that the Prius had, had been rented at the time of the murder by a man named Luis Rivera. And he had written down his real phone number on the rental. It's tough because I want to have like a dumbass move category. But people are always like, don't get mad at them for being dumb. Like you don't want criminals to be too smart. But like this is such a dumb move. Like you always hear about people putting down their actual g-mails or actual phone numbers when they're renting a car to commit a murder is wild.

But I mean, they were able to find him so fast. Right. And then also I'm glad that they were dumb. Exactly. Exactly. Right. Right. And it still took a really long time to find this car. True. True. So Luis Rivera had put his actual phone number. And when police look into him, they already know him. He's in the system. Luis Rivera wasn't just anybody. He was a known leader of the Latin Kings, which is one of the largest street gangs in Miami. And he wasn't the only one on the rental agreement of this car. next to his own name, he had, again, not being discreet or hiding anything, listed a second contact Sigfrado Garcia. He wrote him down as his brother, but they weren't actually related. They were just childhood friends. And while Sigfrido wasn't a Latin king, he also was in the

system. He had been arrested at least 20 times. And so with his information, police subpoenaed both men's phone records, and they find out that at 11 a.m. on July 18th, 2014, both of their phones pinged a cell tower near Dan's house. And it does take a long time for the police to get warrants for their arrest, which we'll talk about that soon. But by the time the police had the car and the phones, they had a theory about who was behind us. They just couldn't prove it. So the reality is the police had suspected Wendy's family was involved in Dan's death since Wendy's very first interview. Yeah. Why? Because Wendy had said it herself.

So during that first discussion with police, she told them that she was worried someone in her life had done this for her benefit, that weird comment that we brought up earlier. Like someone probably thought it was for the best. Right. She said that her mother and her brother had, quote, more reasons to dislike Danny than almost anyone else. He hurt their daughter. And even more damning, like you mentioned earlier, but Wendy said Charlie had fully joked about hiring a hitman to kill Dan in the past. So police had no idea what to make of some of these comments, but regardless, they didn't have any proof of anything that she's saying. But what they did have was a lot of circumstantial evidence, including others who said that Charlie was actually not joking when he talked about hiring a hitman.

Because I don't know if you're like me, but if I've had friends who are in bad relationships and I've made a comment like if he hurts you like we'll kill him. Yeah, I see that all the time. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But like if one of those people actually did die, they're going to start looking at you. 100%. Like that's just like the reality of it, you know.

So Wendy's ex-boyfriend, FSU professor Jeff LaCasse said Wendy had told him Charlie looked into every option for what he called the Danny Markell problem, including. hiring a hitman for about $15,000. And Jeff also said that five days before the murder on July 13, 2014, Wendy told him, quote, the only way I would relocate is if something happened to Danny. Now, Wendy wrote that hitman comment off as a joke. And she said that Charlie was just kind of known for being a big personality. Let's talk a little bit about Charlie. In April of 2014, Charlie gave his sister a big TV.

for her birthday. And he told her he'd priced out a hitman, but the TV was cheaper. So he got her the TV instead, which that doesn't make any sense to me. But they keep, like, I watched the Hulu documentary on this. They keep bringing up that comment as if it's just like something that is a funny joke and makes sense. It's like, I got you a TV because it was cheaper than a hitman, but I don't understand how those are the two options for a birthday present. And then also it makes it very very clear that it's not just an offhanded joke. Yeah. It's, it's, you know, it's, He's been thinking about it a lot. He keeps bringing it up.

And Charlie, too, in this family, like, the, like, golden child of the Edelson's. He's very close with his mom. He's also a dentist, like, the family, but he's this total playboy. He's always, like, dating multiple women at the same time. Like, he, and he's that big personality. He kind of reminds me, like, I said it earlier, but it's, like, dumb succession. Like, he kind of reminds me of, like, the succession kids of, like, I just do this job because my parents do it and I like having money and I don't care about fixing people's teeth for real.

Like, you know? Yeah. So that's kind of Charlie. But after they hear about this, the police start pulling the family's emails and phone records because they really want to find what's going on. They found one message that Donna wrote in February of 2014 and it read, quote, something has to be done with this asshole, exclamation point. In March of 2014, Donna and Charlie began discussing a secret birthday gift for Wendy's father. Harvey. Donna wrote, quote, I know you'll come through. On June 8th, 2014, remember, this is a month before the murder, Charlie texted his mother that he was, quote, still working on dad's B-day present.

And on July 11th, now just a week before the murder, Donna scheduled a TV repair appointment for Wendy. She said it for the 18th. Which, remember, in Wendy's interview, she said she had made the, which maybe you misspoke, sure, but she was like, I made this appointment. She specifically said she made the appointment. Again, could have misspoke, but they're already looking at her through a critical lens. Yeah. Now, on the morning of the murder, Wendy, Charlie, and Donna called each other repeatedly. And this is where, like, the two halves of the investigation meet. Because the two men in that Prius, Sigfrado Garcia and Luis Rivera, were not strangers to this family. They had a connection to the Edelson's. Sigfredo had two children with a woman named Catherine, also Katie, Magbanwa. The two of them had lived together.

This is where I feel like I need to start drawing a family tree for everyone. So Sigfredo and Katie have kids together. The two of them live together. But since October of 2013, nearly a year before the murder, Katie had been dating Charlie Edelson. And as like a little extra context, they know Luis Rivera and Sigfredo Garcia. were the ones driving the Prius. Yes. But they're like, why would they kill?

Yeah, they're trying to figure out like why the hell they would have done this. And then they have this aspect of the family being super suspicious. Yes. And they're like, can we tie these two together? And they can. And they can. Through Katie. So investigators pull the call records and they find hundreds of calls between Charlie and Katie,

between Katie and Sigfrido, often just moments apart, all happening in the weeks before the killing. Like the idea that maybe Charlie is calling Katie talking about what their plan is, then Katie is going and calling Sigfrido and updating him on the plan so that he can execute it. But it's clear regardless that all of them are in contact with each other, like leading up to this murder. Now, knowing who called who doesn't prove what they said, which is why before police move on Luis and Sigfrado, they try something else first. It is called the bump, which I love. I didn't know what I didn't know about this. We're going to Sherlock again.

By the spring of 2016, a judge had signed off on a wiretap. An investigators had court authorization to listen in on Charlie Adelson's phone and on Katie McBanwa. To get that order, prosecutors had to prove two things. First, that the phones would carry evidence of murder. And two, that every normal investigative tool had already been tried and come up empty. At this point, they're two years into the investigation, and they were able to do. do both those things. So under Florida law, a wiretap order runs 30 days at a time. So the second it is signed, the clock is running. Yeah, you have to move. 30 days. This left investigators with one

problem. No one had reason to talk about a two-year-old murder on the phone. They're not going to call each other up and be like, hey, remember the murder? Just like reminisce on it. No. So the FBI is like, hmm, let's give them a reason to talk. Which I also love this fun fact. agents called this tickling the wire. You guys want to tickle the wire? Doesn't it give you like a funny, nice feeling? It does, yeah. On April 19th, 2016, an undercover agent walked up to Donna Edelson outside of her Miami condo,

and the bureau called it The Bump, which is our fourth clue. According to Court TV and WCTC, the agent told Donna that he was a gang member with the Latin Kings, and he kind of indicated that he was tied to, or like Luis Rivera's brother. He handed her a printed news article about Dan's murder with a phone number and the number 5,000 written on it. Like, give me money. Yeah, he was kind of doing this to intimidate her to be like, I know what happened. Yes. Time to pay up.

Yeah. I know what you did. Yeah. Pay me or I'll tell people. Yes. They're tickling the wire. Yeah. To see how she'll act.

which so the FBI steps back and they just watch what the family did with that. And every call that followed went straight into a recorder. Donna immediately calls Charlie three times. Then Charlie called Katie an hour or so later. Donna does not call the police. Like if you're being threatened and you had nothing to do with it, wouldn't you be like, hey, this crazy thing happened? Well, also, because they're recording these calls when she calls Charlie, they never say anything about like the murder. they just call it like, not the problem, but they're like, oh, I got something that maybe is about the two of us.

Like that, but that's what she says is the two of us. And the police are like, why would you call Charlie and say this is about the two of us? You know, clearly she's implicating herself. But it's not clear enough. Yeah, right. It's not like, hi Charlie. Like someone approached me about that murder we committed together two years ago. It's so vague. It's very vague. Yeah. I was listening to some of these calls and they're hard to hear. I know. Even though they're recorded, it's hard. to make out every. And the year of our Lord 2026, you'd think that they would have better recording devices? Like, they go to a restaurant at one point and it's just like, the whole time. You can't hear a thing.

Even the prison phone calls later on. I know. They're so hard to hear. So hard to hear. When Donna describes the demand to Charlie, again, going back to like speaking in code, she said, quote, this TV was about five. And this is a common theme. They keep using TVs or like Dad's birthday.

Yes. It feels like they're speaking in code. Yeah, because like, yeah, exactly, exactly. And it almost feels like they use the TV repair, like that timing of Wendy's. Maybe it's like a sick inside joke. Like, they're using like the TV repair man to cover stuff and now they just keep calling it the TV. And also goes back to the one time he made the joke of the TV was cheaper than a hitman. Yeah.

So the next day, April 20th, Charlie met Katie for lunch at a Miami restaurant called Dulce Vita. The FBI, again, recorded. did it. And like you said, the audio is so loud, it's very messy. It's horrible to listen to. So on April 25th, the FBI sent Donna a follow-up letter, kind of making it seem like it's that guy who approached her on the street. And then a text, which said, you are not taking this seriously. Charlie calls that phone number and plays dumb. He denied knowing Luis, Katie, or Sigfredo, which we know to be false. Yeah, right. We know they're connected. On May 3rd, Fifth, Charlie met his parents at their Miami condo. Again, the FBI tried to record the meeting,

but they failed apparently because of the location. The next day, Donna called the undercover agent herself. She denied everything and told him to stop harassing them. And this, the only reason I'm not marking it as Sherlock is because they do start catching on, that it's probably the police. Like, Charlie even says something to his mom, like, this feels like a weird sting operation. Like, I don't trust it. So they're not, that's why they're calling in. starting to like deny everything. That like really compromises the investigation because they know that the police are onto them. And I will say from not to give credit to the criminals.

Yeah. But I do think it's smart to just deny, deny, deny. Yeah. The one maybe smart they did this whole time. Yeah. So yeah, the Bureau decides that the sting had failed and they shut it down. So they're like, okay, we have to go back to the one lead that we know for sure we can follow. The two men in the Prius.

On May 25th, 2016, Sigfrido Garcia was arrested in Miami and charged with first-degree murder. Eight days later, Luis Rivera was also charged. And he wasn't hard to find because he was already in federal custody on an unrelated racketeering case. Both Sigfrido and Luis pleaded not guilty. They were both facing the death penalty. And then, by September of 2016, Luis was ready to talk. Prosecutors offered Luis Rivera a deal. No contest to second-degree murder, 19 years in exchange for the truth.

So he gave police our fifth clue, a confession that starts to tie everything together. Do I give him an everyday hero? Because he could have, like, really held on for the family. But I just love that he was, like, looking out for himself in that moment. Yeah. Sure. I like that he talked. Yeah, I'm glad he talked to.

Let me know if he shouldn't get an everyday hero, Mark. But I'm not sure about. it, but yeah. I mean, he truly gave them everything. Louis said Sigfrido came to him in June of 2014, showed him a photograph of Dan Markell, and told him that they would split $100,000. Louis said he didn't ask who wanted Dan dead or why. He just said, okay. And at first, I guess he thought that they were going to go rob him. According to Luis, what Sigfrido eventually told him was, quote, the lady wants her two kids back. And that is a really, like when police hear that, immediately, who do they jump to? Wendy.

Yeah, because that lady wants her two kids back. Yes. Not grandkids. Like, that lady wants her kids back. Yes. And then Louise told investigators he believed he'd seen her, which I'm guessing is the lady that he was quoted saying, the lady wants her two kids back, near Dan's house the day before the murder watching.

He thought she was there to make sure he wasn't lying. Which pointed police, like we said, to Wendy. Though Louis said that he didn't know. know her name and he couldn't specifically say Wendy. The name that Luis did give to the police was Catherine or Katie McBanwa. He said Katie was the one who hired Siegfriedo for the hit. In his words, he said, Katie is the woman in the middle of everything, which police already assumed or had put together, but they didn't have the evidence. And now here's Luis giving it to them. He said that she used their relationship as leverage on Siegfried, that she told her. She told

him if he wanted her back, he had to do this for her. Because Sigfredo and Katie used to be in a relationship. They have kids together. As for Charlie, Louise didn't have his name. He only knew him as the dentist, which we know Charlie is a dentist. Yeah. So here's the timeline that Luis Rivera gave police. On June 4th, 2014, more than a month before the murder, he and Thickfredo drove up to Tallahassee. They followed Dan for two days, and then they left without doing what they went there to do because Dan was with his children. And Luis Rivera said he would not shoot a man in front of his kids. By the time that Dan was alone, they had lost track of him. So they decided to drive back to Miami.

And for the next month, Luis was like, I don't know if we're still going to do this. Is the job still on? Not sure. And Sigfredo seemed frustrated with whoever had hired them. So Luis is probably asking Sigfredo, like, what's going on? Are we still doing this? And Sigfredo was, like, frustrated trying to figure it out. Then on July 15th, Sigfrato said they were good to go.

At 6.15 p.m., Luis rented the Prius in North Miami, wrote his name down, put Sigfrido's there too. They drove up on the 16th and arrived in Tallahassee on the 17th. On the morning of the 18th, they followed Dan to his gym and back. And at 11 a.m., Luis pulled into the driveway, blocking the garage. Sigfredo got out of the car, walked to Dan's window, and he was the one who fired twice. Sigfredo got back in the car, and then Luis drove them back to Miami. Just that easy. Yeah. An hour and a half later, Sigfredo called Katie and said, quote, it's done. At 1030 the next morning,

Katie and Sigfredo came to Luis's house with the money. And this is like such an interesting little tidbit. The money was cash in stacks of a thousand, stapled at the corner. and the money was damp. What? It was wet. Wet. Which we will reveal, you will reveal why later. Louise's confession gave prosecutors pretty much everything they needed against Katie.

So less than a month later, on October 1, 2016, Broward County deputies arrested Katie and she was indicted for first-degree murder, conspiracy, and solicitation. To which she pleaded not guilty, police knew Katie didn't produce $100,000 on her own. Which brings us to our sixth clue, the money trail. Because Katie McBanwa had recently come into a large influx of cash, and the police certainly noticed. And this is another thing. Police noticed that both Luis and Sigfrado after the murder also, like, went on a spending spree. Yeah. So like, again, not smart criminals.

Right, right. Yeah, just spending the money. Yeah, there's a paper trail. So they're following the money trail here with Katie. And starting in September 2014, Katie began receiving paychecks from who other than, who other, then the Adelson Institute, the dental practice owned by Charlie, who was Katie's boyfriend, and his parents, the Adelson's. Donna Adelson, Wendy's mother, signed the checks out to Katie herself. Mm-hmm. Signature.

Each check was for $407.58, the 10-day pay period written in. There were 44 of them over roughly 20 months. So in the six weeks after, after the murder, Katie deposited more than $17,000 in cash more than she had deposited in the entire previous year. They're like, this is a massive influx of cash. Yeah, something's going on. By November of 2015, that number was over $56,000, which she spent on breast augmentation surgery, among other things. January 2016, the Adelson's also handed Katie a 2001 Lexus that used to belong to Harvey Adelson, the father of Wendy. Way too many things that the Adelson's are giving to Katie.

Yeah. And there is zero record. Like, police were investigating, okay, well, what work did she do for this dental institute? Right, right. None. There is no record. No, she doesn't, like, go into the office and do anything. Also, like I mentioned it earlier, but Charlie's a huge playboy.

Like, they weren't even really dating. Like, they were kind of dating where they were, like, off and on. He's also dating another girl at the time. He didn't know who he was seeing Katie, but he was like, we're not really. releasing each other. She was, like, had her whole thing with Sigfrido going on. So, like, the police are like, why is she getting so much money from them? Yes. Yeah, a lot of articles, it was like ex-girlfriend, current girlfriend, like, no one can tell because Charlie probably wasn't clear with it. Yeah. Katie had explanations of where all this money came from. She said it was all tips from a nightclub job and

that, like, each night she could walk away with upwards of $1,500 to $1,500 in cash tips from this job. She was doing promotional work for liquor brands. And then she said that she had a legitimate job at the dental office. But again, police found no evidence of her ever doing a day's work at the dental office. And yet, the Adelson's kept handing her checks dated for pay periods that hadn't even happened yet. This episode is brought to you by Zany Optical. I've always been the type of person that needs a couple of pairs of glasses, one by my bed, one in the car, one of my bag. And now that I have an eight-month-old, I'm going to need even more.

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Talkhiatry.com slash clues. There are true crime cases that feel like everyone is talking about them. They're in your feed, your group chats. There are the cases that come up the second the conversation turns to true crime. I'm Katie Ring, host of America's Most Invenous Crimes. And now every Saturday, I'm bringing you a new kind of evidence. episode called Headline. Each week, I'm digging into the case dominating the conversation, starting with Micah Miller, whose death became the subject of Netflix's death of a pastor's wife.

You'll get the full story always with the victim at the center. Follow America's most infamous crimes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and listen to Headline every Saturday. Subscribe to Crimehouse Studios for a new headline episode every Saturday. So by late 2016, investigators were certain that the Adelson's were behind the murder, and they said so publicly when Katie was arrested. But proving it still took years. Sigfrido Garcia and Katie Magbanwa were tried together, starting in October of 2019, both pleaded not guilty. Over three weeks, the state laid it out. The autopsy photos, the surveillance footage of the Prius trailing dance car, Sigfrado said that he was actually being framed by Luis Rivera, who he claimed.

who he claimed had done it alone. And Katie said that she knew nothing. While conceding that, you know, based on the evidence, her ex-boyfriend Charlie Edelson was probably involved. And she actually, in a rare occurrence, took the stand in her own defense. Yeah, yeah, she went up there and was like talking about it. Yeah. On October 11, 2019, Sigfrido Garcia was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy.

He got life without parole plus 30 years. Katie's jury was hung and it ended in a mistrary. trial, reportedly a 10-2 for conviction, 10 jurors to two jurors. So she went back to a cell to wait for a second trial. And while she waited, the case against Charlie sat unfinished because the one piece of evidence that could break it open was sitting on a shelf. So now we're going to go back a little bit, back to April 2016, to that lunch that Katie and Charlie had at Dulce Vita that we talked about being like so loud, really hard to

understand. So this recording was the two of them sitting at a counter. They were talking quietly, and the way they had recorded this conversation was there was a man sitting a few seats away from them with a black messenger bag on his chair, and there was a camera and a microphone inside that bag. So this recording is our seventh clue. At the time of the recording, they couldn't get anything from it. Yeah. So the FBI filed it away. Nothing came of it for six years.

It wasn't until 2022 that the Bureau finally contracted an audio forensics' executive. expert who had previously worked for the CIA. His name is James Keith McLean. He describes what he does like this. You treat sound as if it were an out-of-focus photograph, and you teach a computer to bring it into focus. It took him about a month of work with this audio file. And finally, when investigators put their headphones on to listen to this treated audio, they had their case against Charlie. And if you can get in person to confess on wire, and you have something in your charge.

You have a confession. Outside of that, there is no evidence. Okay. And that was the smoking gun that they had been waiting for. Which is so ironic that he's talking about getting a confession on wires. And that is. And that is their confession on the wire. They tickled that wire.

They tickled that wire. On April 21st, 2022, Charlie Adelson was arrested in charge with first-degree murder, conspiracy, and solicitation to which he pleaded not guilty. Classic. So Katie's retrial, which was delayed repeatedly by COVID, began less than a month later. This time, prosecutors had the enhanced audio of Katie and Charlie. And on May 27, 2022, she was convicted on all three counts. She was sentenced to life without parole, plus 30 years each on conspiracy and solicitorial. So she was never going to get out. No, done. She's in jail. Yeah. Charlie Adelson's trial began on October 26, 2023, the day before his 47th birthday, he pleaded not guilty, and he offered the jury a totally different story. In his version, Katie Magbanwa arranged the murder entirely on her own.

Charlie was not involved at all, he said. And then she extorted him for it. He testified that afterwards she demanded a third of a million dollars within 48 hours, or they. kill him, too. He said that he opened his home safe and pulled out, in his words, piles, about $138,000 in cash with the rest to come out of the Edelson Institute. His words on the stand were, quote, I'm not going to be part of this. This is insane. He also said, quote, I thought if I went to the police, they would kill me. I don't know why he thought that, but that's what he says. I did hear a quote where, while Charlie is on the stand, talking about all of this and like turning it all on Katie, Dan Markell's parents had a moment of like, oh shit, we think Charlie's going to get away

with this. Yeah. Yeah. Charlie was so convincing. He is, yeah, and that kind of goes back to just his personality. Yeah, being like a charmer. Prosecutor Georgia Kauffelman blew this whole story, though, apart with one question. She asked him, why would anyone need to murder Dan Markell in order to extort Charlie Adelson,

which was just like, yeah, this. Duh. The state also had nine years of evidence, the hitman jokes, the phone records, the checks, and that Dolcevita tape. They also had Katie Magbanwa, who was at this point willing to testify against him because her life is already over. Yeah. After already being found guilty, she had nothing left to lose, and so she admitted that she had lied at her own trial. At Charlie's trial, she said that Charlie asked her to find someone to kill Dan so that Wendy could have full custody and move home. She also revealed something that if you, this is just like the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life. It tickles me, though.

It does tickle. It is like ticklish. So if you remember, the cash that she paid to Sigfrido and Luis was wet. Like she gave them a bag of wet money. And that's because I'm not kidding, you guys. Charlie Adelson told her his mother had to wash the money. And this bitch literally puts the money in the washer machine and washes it. Like she had no idea that like washing money is like a like have to move it through different.

Yeah. Businesses. Yes. Yeah. It's just like a front. You know, like you cook the books, whatever. But she was like, oh, if we want to wash the money. If you told her to cook the book, she would have put them in the oven.

You would have thrown them in the oven. Like, what is going on at this woman's household? I feel like we could have done a botched board for how bad the criminals are. Yeah, literally, yeah, just for like how dumb this family is. Yeah. And so the cash was wet and it was so damp. It was actually starting to mold, which is wild to me. Yeah.

And the testimony also turned a spotlight on to Charlie's sister. So Wendy was cross-examined about whether Dan's murder was her father's big B-day present that they were all like texting about. Like Charlie's text to their mother saying that he was still working on his father's gift. And Donna answering that she knew he would come through like for the birthday present. Now Wendy said she could not remember what the present was. Okay, whatever, fair, it's been years. And then also if your ex-husband is murdered right around that time, you probably aren't remembering. Yeah.

Details like your dad's birthday present. Yes. On November 6th, 223, after three hours, Charlie Adelson was convicted of first-degree murder, conspiracy, and solicitation. A month later, he was sentenced to life without parole, plus 30 years each on the other two counts. But that was not the end. It was not. But it is wild because when he was found guilty, Charlie's reaction, I think, says it all. He fully believed he was going to get away with it.

Because when the judge reads the, like what the jury found him, his face falls. He puts his head down and he mouths the word no. He is just like the type of man at like almost 40 years old who has just been given everything in his life. Like his parents have always bailed him out. They gave him a sweet job at their like dentist office. Like he never had to work for anything. No. He was like the perfect golden child.

We didn't even get into it as much as like all of Donna's texts and everything explained. But like he was her baby boy. Did you know he has a brother? Probably not because we haven't mentioned him once because the whole family ignores Rob, who's an older brother. Yeah. Like the parents are just like Rob's the Black Sheep. Like Charlie is our golden baby boy. And so she just wanted all the baby boys under her roof and didn't care if they were out committing crimes or whatever.

And so like, yeah, when Charlie literally gets convicted of the crime he committed, he's like, Yeah. How did that happen? Yeah. It's so wild to watch. But yeah, like you said, it's not the end because we have another one last final clue. On November 7th, 2023, the day after Charlie Adelson's conviction, 73-year-old Donna Edelson received a phone call from Charlie from the jail. That call was recorded. It is our eighth and final clue. Donna spent part of this call criticizing the jury for not believing Charlie's extortion. story. Also, it makes it very clear that these phone calls are recorded when you... It literally said when you call the jail, like this is a recorded line. Yeah. Oh, my God. She then tells Charlie she's getting her affairs in order and that what mattered most was making sure her grandchildren were taking care of if something happened to her. She said, quote, Am I suicidal? No. Do I want to go to sleep and not see my son? I do. Literally the most of most, like, toxic mom stuff to ever say.

There are some more quotes and things that she says later on or even before this that are just, she is ridiculous. Oh, my gosh. Just such a narcissist, too, to be like, well, I guess because, like, you messed it up for the whole family. I'm just going to kill myself. Like, oh, my God. Yeah.

And then about herself and her husband Harvey, she discussed the idea of joint suicide saying, quote, we could do it together, leave a note. They'll know when to come get us. She also said, They were her and Harvey, quote, looking for places where there's no extradition. Yeah, good thing you said it on the recorded line, Donna. Like, excellent. Good job. She names places like China, Korea, Vietnam. Anywhere she wouldn't end up, quote, stuck in a third world jail cell if a warrant came. I mean, I don't know how she didn't know, but clearly she didn't know the call was being recorded.

And clearly she was implying she was looking to leave town to somewhere without extradition. That night, she bought two one-way tickets to Vietnam, connecting through Dubai, and on November 13th, 2023, she and Harvey packed up. They went to the Miami International Airport, and who was waiting at the gate for them? The FBI. And there is body cam footage of the arrest, but here are the cliff notes. When an FBI agent went to take her phone because they did have a warrant for a, like, they had a search warrant. Yeah, because she confessed to exactly what she was doing. So they get there with all the warrants ready.

They can just take whatever. So the FBI agent tries to take her phone and she says, no, I don't want to give it to you. My attorney said not to. Okay. Doesn't matter. We have a warrant for it. So then Donna was put in handcuffs and she told them, please, this is insane. Harvey begged the officers not to do this and said they were making a big mistake.

Then officers took Donna's jewelry off of her and walked her back through the terminal in handcuffs. And finally, Donna Edelson was charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy, and solicitation. but Harvey wasn't charged with anything related to the crime because they have no evidence. Yes, right. Tying him to it. So Donna's trial was set for September of 2024, and she's hired her son's attorney, Daniel Rashbaum, who already did a bad job and his client is in jail for the rest of his life. Yep. On the first morning of jury selection, he did withdraw, though.

Roshbaum had represented Donna. He had moved to Charlie. He tried Charlie's case, and then he came back to Donna on a conflict waiver that Charlie had given him verbal. but never in writing. So, like, basically he gave permission. Yes, that you can, like, represent my mom. But the morning of the trial, Charlie revoked his permission. A Nebraska law professor called it a, quote, epic disaster.

Yeah. A Tallahassee defense attorney said Rushbaum had completely mishandled it because a waiver can be pulled at any time. Online, plenty of people think that the timing was deliberate that Charlie's new appellate team engineered it. A month later, Charlie cited the see. same conflict and emotion for a new trial of his own. Donna's trial finally began on August 22nd, 2025, more than 11 years after Dan was killed.

At this point, she's 75 years old. She pleaded not guilty. Her attorney, a former judge, Jackie Fulford, told the jury that Donna disliked, Dan, sure, but she was, quote, a meddler, not a murderer. Then the state called witnesses this family had never had to face before. namely Rob Adelson. Don is a strange eldest son. I want to give an everyday hero to Rob.

To Rob. Yeah, he was treated like the black she of the family, and then he really shows up for justice. Like Batman. He described calling his mother after the hitmen were arrested. And he said, quote, I said, did you hear they got the guy who shot Danny? I repeated it several times.

And there was no response. She told him, instead, to not talk to law enforcement. And that was the last conversation they ever had. So if there's any question on if Rob was tied up in all this, we pretty much have our answer. Like, he didn't really know. He was actually excited when they caught the people. Right. Then there were two women who had been in jail with Donna.

Patricia Bird testified that Donna admitted involvement saying she needed to keep her grandchildren and that it, quote, it wasn't supposed to go that far. And remember the quote where Luis Rivera had told police that that lady. wanted her kids back. Yeah. I do think they're able to later, it was Donna. Yeah. Who said she wanted her kids back. Yeah, they were talking. Yeah, because it was like a game of telephone and he just got it and was like, oh, she wants her kids back. But maybe it was coming from Donna about the grandkids. Yes. So Drina Bernhardt testified that Donna handwrote a script of questions and answers for her to memorize and deliver from the stand as false testimony. And she's

saying this on that stand as her testimony. Which is crazy. If you're innocent, you don't need to write and memorize your answers. The offers, according to Bernhardt, were cash, pills, commissary supplies, $10,000, and a grand piano. She just pulling stuff out of nowhere. And then the state called a handwriting examiner from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. And Kate Butler matched that script to Donna's handwriting with, in her words, the highest confidence. But she matched something else, too. So a 2014 day planner and Donna Adelson's handwriting contained the make, model, and license plate number of Dan Markell's car as if she was making a note of it for the people she had hired.

To follow it. Yeah. On September 4th, 2025, after three hours and 12 minutes, the jury convicted her on all three counts. She gasped, she cried out, and she shook in her seat until the judge told her to control herself. Did you know the most feared pirate in the Atlantic, the man who terrorized an entire ocean for years, may never have actually killed anyone, or that the real golden age of pirates was the most democratic workplace in the Western world? I'm Connor Tomlinson from Love on the Spectrum, and History is my thing. And I'm Carter Roy, and this is what the fact.

Every week we take the most unbelievable true things in history and tell you the whole story behind them. Carter sets the scene? Connor brings the facts. the deep cuts, and the genuine belief that this is the most interesting subject in the world. It is, this is the history lesson you actually wished you had in high school. New episodes every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, music, or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod. It's the most amazing, if you hear the judge.

The theatrics of this family. He is like, I am not listening to you and your dramatics. Yeah. Like, chill. Chill out. Yeah. Like, yes, you did a horrible thing. I'm not going to listen to you cry about it. Also, Donna, after she was arrested, she just like, it just, her priorities are so skewed and messed up. Like, she complained so much about what it was like in jail. And she's like, all I'm eating are carbs. I've gained one third of my body weight. And someone was like, yeah, you're in prison. You're not in, you're not at the four seasons. Yeah. And she, I guess, thought it was going to be more. luxurious than it was. It's prison, Donna. It's prison. Don't kill people. Yeah. Crazy. Literally. On October 13th, 2025, Donna Edelson was sentenced to life without parole plus 30 years. She was 75 years old. She spoke first. She called Dan, quote, a fine and decent man and said that his death was a loss to the whole family. Then she asked the courtroom, quote, where is the evidence prior to the murder? And I've never even gotten a part. parking ticket, and yet I'm being sent to prison for a crime I did not commit.

Markell's parents joined the hearing by video from Canada. Ruth Markell said in her victim statement after the verdict, quote, We have lost a treasure. My son, Dan's life, was cut tragically short at 41 years old. So sad. And since then, the case has kept moving. I can't even imagine what it was like for his parents to watch this, like, stupid, stupid family in all of their theatrics throughout the entire case.

just the strength that his parents must have had. And they're for so much of this time being denied access to their grandchildren. The grandchildren horrible, like absolute torture for them. Now, since then, the cases kept moving. Charlie Adelson appealed on two grounds, one that his trial should have been moved out of Tallahassee, and two, that the jury pool was tainted. On July 1st, 2026, Florida's first district court of appeal upheld his conviction. It found both issues unpreserved,

because his trial counsel never filed the written motion Florida law requires. Donna filed her own notice of appeal on November 4th, 2025, and her motion for a new trial had already been denied. She claims that the jury four person posted TikTok videos about the trial, and another juror appeared on a podcast discussing her courtroom reactions. As of September 26th, the time of this recording, her appeal is stalled. Sigfrido Garcia and Catherine Magbondwa are currently serving life sentences. Luis Rivera finished his federal sentence in June of 2025 and moved to state custody.

And as of today, five people have been convicted of murdering Dan Markell. But there is one person that police and a lot of people who have heard this case believe was involved that has never been charged. Prosecutors have publicly named Wendy Adelson as an unindicted co-conspirator. They've also named her father Harvey, too, but neither of them have ever been arrested. What is actually on the record, we're kind of regurgitating some of the things we've already said, but just to like lay it out. On July 13th, 2014, five days before the murder, Wendy told her boyfriend Jeff Lacasse that her brother had, quote, looked into all options possible to take care of the Danny Markell problem, including hiring a hitman. And Lacasse has testified to that in four separate trials. He said, quote, I found this chilling. It wasn't funny. It made my stomach flip. And she, as in Wendy, was dead serious. Charlie then started talking about hitman in the summer of 2013 and said it out loud to his sister more than once. Wendy also met Katie McBanwa in March of 2014 at dinner with Charlie and Jeff Lacosos. On June 4th, 2014, the day the hitman arrived in Tallahassee for the very first attempt, Wendy met with Jeff LaCos.

at a coffee shop. She canceled a trip they had to California that they had booked together for just a week later. And that apparently that night, according to Jeff LaCasse, Wendy was a wreck, the night that the first attempt

was supposed to take place. Yes. So these are all things that people are trying to tie Wendy to it. On June 15th, Wendy spent time at the beach in Miami with Charlie and Katie. On July 6th,

she texted Dan to ask whether he would be in Tallahassee between the 14th and 18th, which you would do if you're co-parenting. I know, yeah, right. It's hard to say what's what. Yeah. Around then is when Jeff LaCost testified that Wendy's TV broke and something had hit the screen, which is why Donna then booked the repair person for Wendy for the morning of the 18th. On the morning of the murder, Wendy texted her brother, quote, this is so sweet and then deleted it, which no one really knows. Yeah, the context of that. The context of that. Wendy left the house at 1230 to go buy bourbon and meet friends. Both the store, the liquor store and the restaurant were close by, but for some reason, she drove an unusual route that took her to Dan Street, where she even admitted to police, she saw it was blocked off by police tape. Going back to the question I brought up in the beginning, if you see police tape near your ex-husband's house where your children are, why don't you stop? Yeah, or call him to see what's going on. Yeah, be like, hey, is everything okay? Are the kids okay?

Yeah. Instead, she turned around and went to go buy the bourbon. And then Jeff Lacost has come to say that, like, he believes Wendy tried to frame him. Yeah, with that comment she made at the beginning, like, well, Jeff didn't like that. Yeah. But then, so like, this is evidence that police are like, well, maybe she is tied to it. Maybe she is involved. But then on the other side, like you were saying, she sat with police for more than five hours without a lawyer. She's volunteering all of this information.

I know. that it's really hard to know. So there is no evidence fully connecting Wendy to it. And in addition, she hasn't been charged because she has derivative use immunity. So nothing she ever said on the stand for any of the trials. And nothing found because of it could be used to prosecute her. Yeah. Which is not blanket immunity. So she can still be charged on evidence developed independently. Yeah. And if she's found that she had lied on the stand, she could be arrested. there's not been enough evidence to find her guilty of it. I mean, I do wonder if she was involved in the planning, knew about it, and then once it happened, she just had this huge conscience.

Right. Like crisis of conscience and was like, well, maybe I'll just give a little bit of info because I feel bad now that it happened. And I don't want to lie. I'm a lawyer. It's going to look really bad if I'm lying on behalf of my idiot brother, you know. And either way, it does seem like Donna is the puppeteer here. She is pulling all of the strings. She, there are moments of her throughout this case that are on record where like as she's losing this like power over her children, she's going out of her mind.

Yeah. Really, really, really, really. Like, yeah, just to like want that much control over your children in their lives at 65 years old, 64 years old when she committed this crime. Yeah. Is wild. Leave your kids alone. Yeah. Like let them live their lives.

Yeah. So at the end of the episodes, we do like to end with a little bit of activism. And there's actually something really important that happened in this case that is interesting to talk about. So grandparents are not automatically entitled to see their grandchildren. And many states, family courts can weigh a grandparents petition. And in 2014, Florida was one of the strictest in the country. Yeah. So when Wendy cut off contact after Dan died, Ruth and Phil Markell had no standing to even ask a judge for visitation. It's just so sad. They lobbied for years over this, and in 2022, the Florida legislature passed HB1119, the Markell Act, and Governor Ron DeSantis signed it on June 24th. It creates a presumption in favor of grandparent visitation when one parent is found criminally or civilly responsible for the death of the other. It is a very, very specific circumstance. I imagine this does not happen very often in Florida. so there's still a long way that grandparents have to have rights over being able to visit their grandchildren in circumstances where their child dies. Yeah.

But it's at least something. Now, there was a bill to widen it. Senate bill 124 that was filed in December of 2024, but it died in the committee in June of 2025. Dan's parents are still asking to see his kids. After Charlie's arrest in 2022, they were disinvited from their older grandsons bar mitzvah, and they were never invited to the younger ones. ones, what contact they have is completely on Wendy's terms. Ruth describes it as highly choreographed, 15 or 20 minutes on a Zoom for a birthday, and then it ends.

No direct phone calls, no emails, and the boys are now teenagers. Phil Markell has said that if the day ever comes, quote, I will open my arms and be there. Makes me want to cry. It really, really does. Currently, 20 states have similarly strict visitation laws allowing grandparents to petition only after a major disruption like death or divorce. The Grandparents Rights Organization, which was founded in 1984, does offer resources for grandparents petitioning for visitation, and you can visit and learn more at grandparentswrites.org.

I love grandparents. I know. And also they've really seen like such good people who just want to see their grandkids. And also like, yeah, it literally makes me want to cry. But like to lose someone and the grandkids, like they're Dan's children. Like they probably look like him. It's his blood. It's your family.

Like there's just something so cruel about withholding that visitation. I know. It's so sad. And that leads us to the missing person that we want to highlight this week. This week we're going to highlight the case of Gabrielle Patricia Terralong. The FBI's Miami Field Office and Margate Police Department in Florida are asking for the public's assistants and locating missing 10-year-old Gabrielle Patricia Talong. She was reported missing in late October of 20. after it was discovered that the girl's mother had been incarcerated in Florida.

Law enforcement authorities are seeking any information about Gabrielle's current location or condition. Gabrielle is described as having black hair, brown eyes, she was 4'8 and 100 pounds at the time of her disappearance. She's female and black. And the FBI has also noted that the Taralong family has ties to South Florida and may be homeless. If you have any information concerning this person, please contact your local FBI office or the American Embassy or Consulate. And that is all we have for this week's episode. Now we really turn it over to you guys. There's already been a couple of things that I said I wanted to hear from you guys on. Like, I'm sure we have listeners who have been divorced, who have lost partners

and kids are involved. And now I'm just so curious to hear from all of you in your experience. This also makes me want to do an episode on Crimes of Reddit all about in-law crimes. I know. So if you have any stories of like crimes that in-laws, your own personal in-laws have committed? I did one. I want to know. I did one on, I did scary Reddit stories with Annie Elise on like true crime Reddit stories. And there was one that we did where the mom, mother-in-law literally put like latex in their bed because the daughter-in-law was so allergic to latex.

So it was like she was like trying to poison her. It was crazy. It was crazy. She just like bought a bunch of gloves and like opened them up and like put them under her sheet so that she would have a reaction. We had one where a sibling was jealous that like his brother. was spending too much time with this new girlfriend. And the girlfriend was really, really lactose intolerant. And so he was slipping like cheese into all of the food she was eating.

Oh my gosh. Get a hobby. People. Truly. Go for a walk. But let us know if you have stories like that. Let us know if you have stories like that. Like I said, my mother-in-law is amazing.

Truly. Thanks for watching. Pam. Okay. So at Crime House, we value your support. Share your thoughts on social media. And remember to rate, review, and subscribe here on YouTube to help others discover the show. And don't forget, for early ad-free access, subscribe to Crimehouse Plus at

crimehouseplus.com. Or if you listen on Apple Podcasts, you can tap try free at the top of the clues page. We'll see you here next week. Bye, guys. The government gets a bad reputation. But did you know that the roads under your feet, the forecast on your phone, the letter in your mailbox, that's all government too? I'm Professor Lindsay Cormack, and I'm hosting a new podcast called Government That Doesn't Suck, alongside Professor Greg Jackson, who you may know from the hit podcast,

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