Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Charlie Adelson and Mom's Jail Calls Reveal Plan to Flee, Implicate Wendi in Markel Murder

Episode Date: December 14, 2023

In the days after a jury found Charlie Adelson guilty of being part of a plot to murder Dan Markel, newly-released jail calls reveal his family felt the pressure to flee. Charlie Adelson spoke to his parents, Donna and Harvey, about taking care of his son and fleeing to foreign countries. And Donna may have accidentally implicated her daughter, Wendi, in the conspiracy. The Law&Crime Network's Angenette Levy and Deep Dive True Crime's James Waczewski break down the jail calls in this episode of Crime Fix - a daily show that delves into the biggest stories in the world of crime.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law & Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. The Adelsons, in shock, the walls closing in around them after Charlie Adelson was found guilty of conspiring with his family and three other people to murder Dan Markell. We have the jail calls just released that reveal a whole lot, including plans to flee. Talk of suicide and how the jury just got it wrong. I'm Anjanette Levy. It's Thursday and this is Crime Fix. We've got the jail calls between Charlie Adelson and his parents, Donna and Harvey Adelson, in the days after the guilty verdict. The Adelsons were freaking out. There's really no other way to

put it. Listen to this. This is from right after the jury found Charlie Adelson guilty for his role in Dan Markell's murder in Tallahassee back in shock. Yeah. All in shock. I had a feeling, though. So it's not like, listen, I've been up in Tallahassee for a year and a half. I mean, I got a taste for how big this case was. I had no idea. Donna and Harvey Adelson and their daughter, Wendy Adelson, were all named as unindicted co-conspirators during the trial. Listen, these people didn't deliberate. We know what happened. They were decided before they went back,

filled out their papers, and came out. That's not a deliberation. It was a couple things. They got on it. They probably ate for an hour. And they talked about some stuff. Went through this paperwork, filled it out. Now, after the verdict, Donna Adelson knew the heat was on.

She was talking to Charlie's lawyer, Dan Rauchbaum, about it and that she was living on borrowed time. She said it was worth the risk to try to get out of the country. We're going to make a decision at some point. So after speaking to Dan this morning and knowing what they're thinking up there, I don't know if we'll make it out in time. I really don't. But Dan said, you might. Or you might do all of this, get to the airport, and they'll stop us.

And that could happen. It could happen. I don't know. But it's worth a try. Now, Donna Adelson, of course, was arrested about a week later as she tried to board a flight to Vietnam with Harvey. Then it appears Donna Adelson didn't realize she was being recorded any longer when she was on the phone with Charlie and the jail call dropped. Donna was actually implicating her daughter, Wendy, in the murder of her ex-husband, Dan Markell. Donna was reading from a text that Wendy had sent to her.

I am not guilty because I did not do anything wrong, and I was not involved in any way with Danny's death. How about that? If I were Wendy Adelson, I think I'd be pretty worried after that. Also, the other day in court, Donna Adelson scoffed when it was suggested that she spoke about taking her own life. She also had a phone call with her son, who's obviously in jail here. 25-minute phone call. I personally listened to it.

She very clearly spoke about a plan to kill herself using sleeping pills. One moment, Ms. Adelson, please keep your comments to yourself. Let your lawyer argue on your behalf. But she indeed spoke about possibly taking her own life with her husband. It really sounded like she was venting to her husband. I'm not doing that. I'm fine. Will we see the boys tomorrow night? No.

Am I doing fine? No. Do I want to go to sleep and not see my son. I do. Joining me is James Byszewski. He's a lawyer in Tallahassee who's also known as Mentor Lawyer on his YouTube channel, Deep Dive True Crime. James, thanks for joining us here on Crime Fix. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. James, you know, they drop this cache of calls on us. You know, we request these calls,

we start listening to them, we start going through them. What are your thoughts after kind of going through some of them and just hearing the family dynamic here and hearing how the Adelson's interact with each other? Yeah, a lot of the jail calls, I think, give us a good insight into what was going on on Camp Charles Edelson. It gives us an idea of how they perceived their performance at trial, the hope that they had that they were going to get a non-guilty verdict and basically exonerate the entire family. And then of course, these jail calls come right after they realized that the whole plan to in essence escape any liability for this murder didn't work out. And you hear Charles being extremely dejected and Donna and Harvey also extremely dejected a lot of crime a lot of rationalization for what

happened and blaming the system blaming Tallahassee blaming the people of Tallahassee, blaming the prosecutors blaming everything but the wrong evidence against Charles Yeah, they weren't too happy with the jury it was the jury.

It was the jury. It was the media. It was podcasters. It was bloggers. There was no way, no way he was getting a fair trial, according to him. So let's play clip one. We're going to listen to what Donna said to Charlie after the verdict. What did you say? You got shafted is what happened. You got shafted. No, I didn't know it. After the verdict.

So, James, what do you think he means by that? I should have gone with my gut. I mean, what does he mean like that? I was having a hard time understanding what he meant by that. There are a couple of thoughts that came to my mind. Maybe the first got would be that perhaps before he was charged, he was anticipating the possibility of being charged and of not getting a fair trial and therefore trying to flee the country himself. He had a lot of trips out of the country to countries that don't have extradition treaties with the United States, and he kept coming back, maybe on advice of counsel, maybe on advice that,

hey, listen, if they ever charge you, you'll never win this case. It's going to be impossible for them to convict you. Maybe some of his own self-belief and confidence in the fact that he would be able to exonerate himself at trial. So that's one possibility. And then another possibility may have been taking a different approach about the defense. But I think that the strong likelihood is that he was talking about an escape plan, perhaps. That's really interesting because it seems like it's everybody else's fault. And they talk about coincidences, how there's all these crazy coincidences, but how coincidences in life happen.

But there are so many coincidences in this case. And they're talking about all of this on jail calls. They know they're being recorded. Do you have any idea why they would feel the need to do that? Is that just to keep up appearances? What are your thoughts on that? Well, the complacency may be one of the reasons why they did this. The fact that we have been attempting, I have been attempting, for example, to get jail calls for a long time

and was not able to. The state attorney's office was holding them, saying that those jail calls are not public record. There is Florida case law at the appellate level that says that they are not public records. They are private conversations between him and his family. So that may be one of the reasons. I understand, of course, that they're being monitored, but I don't think that they thought that this was going to come out to the public, first of all. And then second of all, there's also, of course, the shock that they had about what just happened. And it's kind of hard to contain yourself.

The only way that they were communicating was via those phone calls from the tablet in the jail. So they obviously needed to process what just happened, Charles. Part of me wonders if Donna realizes and Harvey, they realize we're unindicted co-conspirators. We've been called out in this trial. They obviously watched the trial because they're talking about it on jail calls and they're trying to have recorded statements saying we didn't do this. You know this. You got shafted. You know, this, you got shafted, you know, this happened, and that happened. Also, though, these are now evidence in Donna's case. I mean, this is evidence that's cited in a probable cause affidavit for her arrest. So maybe that's why they're public,

because it's part of the discovery in her case. Yeah, they became public because of that, because they are now evidence. So the collection of jail calls that were released became part of the evidence in the criminal case, and now they became a public record. And then I guess I'm trying to, I understood better your question. So your question is more like, why are they saying all these self-serving statements? So I think that they were, for a very long time, able to escape charges, liability for this crime, right? So Charles was only charged in 2022. In a sense, the reason why they keep blaming the system, that they got shafted, and the prosecutor, they claim that the prosecutor lied or misled the jury, that they got shafted, that the prosecutor, they claimed that the prosecutor lied or misled the jury, that sold them a story, is because they lost, first of all, right? So

if you look at the trial, if you analyze the trial from the very start, who was the one that was putting on a show? Who was the one that came up with a huge surprise on the first day of trial? It was Charles Adelson's side. It wasn't the prosecution, it was Charles Adelson that revealed this whole extortion story. But there is a big difference between being innocent and being found not guilty. And I think that they all truly believed that Charles was going to be found not guilty and was going to, in essence, exonerate the entire family. And so they felt that the system worked against what they perceived was going to be the result that should happen.

Obviously, we know that the evidence was super strong. They made admissions at the very beginning of trial that, in essence, made this a case of whether the jury would believe Charles Adelson's story because they admitted pain for the murder. They claimed that it was under extortion. And if the jury just didn't believe Charles, case is lost. And they should have realized that. There's a ton of evidence against them. And they put it all on Charles' testimony. I guess they were super confident that he did well and that he was going to get a fair result as a not guilty, which is what they hoped for. But the fair result was what happened in this case, a guilty verdict, in my opinion.

Not only was it extortion, the thing that confounded me was it was double extortion. I mean, he said that I felt like it had to have been 100 times while he was on the stand. And it just seemed so absurd, a double extortion. I'm not saying it couldn't happen. I mean, I'm an open-minded person. I sat there and I watched Charlie Adelson testify. But when you put it up against the bump and the Dolce Vita recording, it just seems a little bit too out there. James, one of the people that they love to blame in this case is Georgia Kappelman, the lead prosecutor on the case.

And Charlie Adelson talks a lot about her on these jail calls and what she did in her closing argument. So let's take a listen to that. But it's like what Kappelman did for her closing with all the lines and the made-for-TV drama of like of all of what she put up like there will never be another outcome with what she did

up there with the pictures being left up there for five, ten minutes at a time. She dumped it down and put in a bunch of lies. She dummied it down for a bunch of dummies and it flew. Yeah.

That's who was buying it. She put on her Palo Alto show and put on some emails written by somebody else and took seconds of the text messages out and then twisted everything around and shoved

Wendy's, you know, the white successful girls, both that she wrote that she was so proud of while she was visiting Tallahassee. All right. So Donna is now going to trial. And her lawyer said in court the other day that she will go to trial quickly. It sounds like they are not going to waive speedy trial. So she's basically calling the jurors who found her son guilty dummies. This is what she thinks of the people of Tallahassee and Leon County. Your thoughts on that?

Well, she also, of course, they were saying a lot of things about Georgia Kaepernick. So, but I'll tell you this about Georgia Kaepernick and the closing arguments. Dan Rochefam is a very, very experienced criminal defense attorney. He may not have done any murder trials as a defense attorney, but he has done murder trials as a prosecutor. He's got a ton of trials under his belt. And if you watch the closing argument from Georgia Kaepernick, you're not going to see, I don't think that there was any objection from the defense. There may have been one or two, but I doubt it. Really, it was a clean closing argument. Everything that was argued was proper, was based on the evidence presented at the trial. There's always the complaints from defendants about the prosecution, especially when they lose, showing the photos of the autopsy, this is a murder trial, right?

He's being charged with a murder. So long as the prosecutors don't abuse that and don't make it a feature of the trial and don't try to seek the jury to vote in their favor due to the sympathy instead of the evidence. I think that Georgia stayed very well within the rules and that it was a very clean closing argument and that then Rashbaum did not object or if he did object, it was maybe once. But I don't recall any objections about any of the things that Charles Adelson was complaining in that phone call.

And of course, I don't think that the jurors got it wrong, and I think that they got it right. And after they lose, after the jury found Charles Adelson guilty so quickly, they start to blame everybody else but the evidence, and that includes the jurors, and the fact that they came to a result so quickly in their opinion. But like I said, I think that the fact is that by admitting that they paid for the murder and making this a story of, well, we only paid it because we, you know, Charles says, I only paid for this because I was being extorted. Now it becomes an issue of credibility. And if the jury doesn't believe that story, they have his admission that he paid for the murder with staple money from his safe in the house. So it became an easy case, in a sense, once the, if the jurors had an agreement,

we don't believe Charles Adelson, it's over for Charles. One of the things that when Donna Adelson was in court the other day, she, she really scoffed at the idea that she ever discussed taking her own life. And really, that's what got her arrested on November 13th was this statement that she made on jail calls, according to prosecutors, that A, she was going to flee the country for Vietnam, and B, that she was contemplating taking her own life. So let's listen to that clip. want to go to sleep and not see my son, I do. Specifically, honest, I do. We'll do it together. We don't know when to

come together. And we'll do it together. We'll be looking it up over and over. Because things change if there is extradition from Vietnam. Because we've looked at all the places. I mean, I could go to Korea and China, but there's no extradition. But we're looking for places where there's no extradition.

To have all this information. I have the cemetery property. I want her to see all that. I want her to have all these papers and the wills. I want her to see all this. So, James, she's talking about going to sleep, doing this together,

extradition, wills, and things like that. I mean, she's setting up trust for Charles' son, Charlie's son. She's doing things to take care of the other grandkids. So that's pretty explicit on there. How does she scoff at that in court when it's all on tape? Obviously, she might not know that it's on tape, or she thinks it's being taken out of context. I don't know. Well, I mean, she was having a conversation, a very emotional conversation. So she may not recall half of the things that she said

to Charles on the days, on the first two days after the trial. That's number one. Number two, she also does say in the same phone call, I'm not suicidal. So it is difficult to understand exactly what she's talking about at that moment. Is she really talking about committing suicide while at the same time talking about making plans to leave to a non-extradition country? So I don't think that the description in the probable cause affidavit was unfair or unfounded. I do believe that there was a lot of vagueness in that conversation. You can say, well, one interpretation is they're talking about the possibility of self-harm. But it's not 100% clear.

So it is very possible this part of that conversation had to do with Wendy Adelson. They were talking about perhaps writing an email to Wendy. And in part of this conversation, to talk about this whole issue, but she does mention in the same phone call, I'm now suicidal. So it is really hard to interpret and that's what I'll say about that. So it's not a hundred percent clear that she said that she was suicidal. It's possible, but it's really hard because the conversation is very vague and strange. And that's just one of the possible interpretations, but not the only one. Because like I said, she does say, I'm not suicidal as well.

But she does discuss it. She's in a state, you know, she's in a state. So as they say, well, James Vyshevsky, a mentor lawyer, really, we really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for coming on. We hope you'll come back sometime and we appreciate it. I should mention Charlie Adelson has been moved to a prison within the Florida Department of Corrections. He was sentenced earlier this week to life in prison without the possibility of parole. And on those jail calls, he talks endlessly about working on his appeal. I'm Anjanette Levy. This is Crime Fix for you Thursday, December 14th, 2023. We will see you back here tomorrow. Until then, have a great night.