Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Charlie Adelson’s Sister Will 'Likely' Be Arrested Now That Mom is in Custody: Dan Markel’s Lawyer

Episode Date: December 20, 2023

Jail calls between Charlie Adelson and his mother, Donna Adelson, uncover their shock over testimony from his sister, Wendi Adelson, at his trial for the murder of Wendi’s husband, Dan Markel. Wendi revealed she drove by Markel’s house after he was gunned down in his driveway and left to die. The Law&Crime Network's Angenette Levy talks with Stephen Webster, who represented Markel in his divorce proceedings with Wendi, about the bombshell jail calls and why he think’s Wendi’s arrest will likely be next.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 and crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Your husband, your ex-husband, excuse me, Daniel, has been taken to the hospital. He's not going to survive. Wendy Adelson breaking down nearly 10 years ago in the interrogation room after she's told her ex, Dan Markell, has been shot and won't make it. Would you ever ask someone to do something like this?

Prosecutors call Wendy and her father unindicted co-conspirators. Her mother, Donna, is in jail awaiting trial on charges in the conspiracy to murder Markell. Her brother Charlie now serving a life sentence for his role in the conspiracy. We've painted the picture. The problem is it's all a false premise. Dan Markell's divorce attorney is here, telling all about the divorce and custody battle prosecutors say was the motive for the murder. I'm Anjanette Levy, it's Wednesday, and this is

Crime Fix, Law and Crime's look at the biggest stories in the world of crime. We've been combing through the jail calls between Charlie Adelson and his mother Donna that were recorded after the jury found him guilty of his role in the conspiracy to murder Dan Markell. The jury found Charlie Adelson guilty of paying two hitmen through his ex-girlfriend to kill Dan Markell. One thing Charlie Adelson and his mother discussed several times on those jail calls was the fact that prosecutor Georgia Kappelman brought up in her closing argument that Wendy Adelson drove by Dan Markell's house after he was shot. It looks crazy.

It looks... The ex-wife was out of her way to drive by the murder scene right after hitting him and coming to her husband, ex-husband. After she talked to her mother and brother. Yeah. Like, you just painted a picture of the definition of conspiracy. You hear that, and everyone wants to know, why haven't they been arrested? They just painted the picture. The problem is, it's all a false premise.

At first, I didn't even think she was there. I thought it was s***, but she actually was there. Yeah, I know. It's crazy. Back in 2014, right after the shooting, this is what Wendy Adelson told detectives about driving by the house that day. What road did you say? I went down Trescott. I saw a police car there, and I just thought it was blocked, so I just turned around and drove.

I went down the rest of Centerville, went up Benton to Benton across, went to ABC Liquors, bought the bourbon. I'm a little confused. You're up on up on Centerville Road. What's your purpose of driving down Trescott? It's usually the shortcut to get to Monroe. To get to Monroe? I usually take it as a cut through to get to Thomasville or Monroe. Okay all right so you. I don't know why I said Monroe. I was thinking Mosaic Monroe, Thomasville. Okay so when you come down into town on Centerville? I almost always cut through Trescot. Trescot and just drive by your old house? Well, I do it as a way of, like, coming to terms with a divorce.

But yeah, sometimes I drive there. If I'm too sad, I drive around. Okay. If the kids aren't home and I know they're not home, I feel better about driving by the house. But yeah, it's shorter and I just usually drive by. And this is what Wendy Adelson said less than two months ago at her brother's trial. Did you go to the crime scene or very near the crime scene on your way from your residence to, I guess, to lunch or to wherever you were going next? No, I did not.

So you never turned on Trescott Drive that day? I went to turn on Trescott Drive, but I saw that it had been blocked off by some tape. And so I just kept driving on Centerville. Okay. And when you had to turn around at the tape, right, to go back out? I think I tried to turn right and it couldn't turn. So I would have made like a, that kind of turn, like a K turn and kept going. Was there a roadblock there? There was tape. The detective also asked Wendy about who might hurt Dan. Do you think someone would do this for your benefit without asking you?

No. What good does it serve? I made my brother, his name is Charlie 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 his joke that like, he knew Danny treated me badly. And it was always his joke. He said, I, I, you know, I looked into hiring a hit man and it was cheaper to get you this TV. So instead I got you this TV. Um, 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. Adelson also talked about Danny as everyone called him being abrasive and whether anyone would want to hurt him. I know a lot of people didn't really love him, but I don't know anyone who would do something like this. Well, we're still trying to determine, you know, what happened and how it happened. But he wouldn't do this to himself. Emails from Donna Adelson to Wendy shown during the trial show that Donna could not stand Dan Markell. She called him gibbers

and gave Wendy a plan of action to get under his skin. It included Wendy telling Dan she was going to have their boys baptized in the Catholic church. Dan Markell was a devout Jew. Joining me to discuss Wendy Adelson, Dan Markell, and their divorce is somebody who knows it frontwards and backwards. He is Stephen Webster. He's a partner in Webster and Baptiste, and he represented Dan Markell in his divorce from Wendy Adelson. So welcome to Crime Fix, Stephen. Thanks for coming on. Thank you for having me. Stephen, on a scale of one to 10, how contentious was this divorce? We already know it was bad. I hate to use a 10. You know, you kind of set that out there as

never to be used, but it was a 10. It was hot and it was about to get hotter. I mean, that was the whole reason why I got involved is because Dan realized he was going to have to have a trial and it was going to be contested, heavily contested. What were the major issues here? We already know that child custody, the relocation, Wendy wanted to move down to Miami with the boys. Dan wasn't having it. I think all parents can understand that, that you want your children close to you. But aside from that, what were the major issues? Well, at that point, by the time Dan had reached out to me, the child relocation issue was dead. It was dead. I had no concerns about that. The real thing was Dan had not paid some money to Wendy that was part of the

dissolution agreement that was owed and some attorney's fees. But he didn't pay those monies because he had realized and learned that Wendy had withheld assets that she didn't disclose on her financial disclosures. So there was a monetary component of the fight that was going to go back and forth. And Danny was alleging that of the fight that was going to go back and forth. And Danny was alleging that Whittier committed fraud on the court, essentially. But the real main issue for Dan was parental alienation. He heard Donna Adelson refer to him as stupid on a Skype call when she was summoning the children to the call. She said stupid's on the phone and he heard that and he was very upset about that.

That was really where the battle line was drawn for Dan. Yeah, because these are his boys, you know, the apples of his eyes. And whether or not you're getting divorced or not, you know, I know, I remember my parents were divorced and they made sure that they never spoke ill of one another in front of us. You know, they tried their hardest not to do that. So that is a very that is very bad. I mean, I can understand why he would be concerned about that. So was Donna having an influence and an impact on the boys that he could see? Was she turning them against him at that point?

I don't think he saw that yet, but he was certainly convinced that that's where she wanted to go. I think when she didn't get her way of relocating the children, I think her plan B was just to try to destroy the relationship to the point where it was almost that Dan would just kind of relent. And Dan was not going to have that. That was a fight he was going to fight. Do you feel that Wendy was on board with that? We've seen the emails where, you know, Donna has this plan of action. She's calling him gibbers. She's saying, tell me you're going to get the kids baptized in the Catholic church.

They're going to Catholic school, take pictures of them in front of a Catholic church. Did you feel that Wendy was like, yeah, let's go, let's do this? Or do you think it was Donna just pushing all of this? You know, my sense at the time was that it was more Donna. I still kind of feel that way, but Wendy went along with it. You know, I don't, she certainly didn't stand up and stick up for Dan. She did not like Dan at all. She hated him. I mean, she put that in messages that she hated Dan. So, and you know, gibbers was certainly a derogatory moniker that she had assigned to Dan

and that she used regularly. She had him stored on her phone that way. So, you know, Wendy, I saw her testify and at the last trial, and she tried to suggest that there really was no animosity, ongoing animosity between the parties. And it's ludicrous and totally false and fabricated testimony. In Wendy Adelson's police interview, you saw she was asked whether anyone would hurt Dan. And she told them that joke that Charlie made about the TV and the hitman. This is Stephen Webster's take on that. It's really interesting now. You know, looking at it now, I almost wonder if that wasn't

somewhat of a insurance policy for Wendy, that if it went sideways and if the truth came out, that she would be able to hide behind that and say, look, I wouldn't have pointed the finger at Charlie right away if I was involved in it. You know, I was just genuinely trying to help the law, the police figure out who did it. But I know Charlie, he seems to have a lot of animosity towards Wendy at this point, if you listen to his jail phone calls. And I'm sure that's part of it.

Prosecutors say she's an unindicted co-conspirator, as is her father, Harvey. I mean, for all we know, there could be sealed indictments sitting around somewhere. Do you think that eventually the prosecution, do you think they're just going one by one, you know, just kind of dismantling the conspiracy, like knocking kind of one pin down at a time? Or what is your feeling and your thought on that? You're in Tallahassee, you travel in these legal circles, you've been attached to this case for so long. So do you believe she will be indicted? I do more so now than ever. Why? You know, I just get a sense that, that the strategy that the state attorney's office has employed has worked. And there are major fissures now in their house, their defense. Charlie being sentenced to life.

Donna in the Leon County Jail. Like you said, Wendy identified as an unindicted co-conspirator. And I feel as though that there is going to be additional arrests made. And I'm not sure if it's both or one or the other, but I do believe there are more arrests coming. Wendy Adelson has always maintained that she and her family had nothing to do with Dan Markell's murder. Do you think that that arrest of Wendy, if it indeed happens, do you believe that it will come after Donna Adelson's trial or before? I mean, I'm sure they can do more than one thing at a time. I mean, it's the same case, basically the same evidence,

with I'm sure some differences here and there. That was my belief when Donna was first arrested. But I'm starting to lean towards the possibility that momentum is picking up faster. You know, the search warrants that have recently been served, we don't know what they were for. But, you know, we know that they got electronic devices from Donna. All of the jail phone calls. It just feels as though there is real momentum right now in this case. And I think it's a distinct possibility that the state makes another arrest before Donna's trial.

And there are more than one defendant sitting at that table. Really? So you think there's a possibility that Donna and Wendy could be tried together? I do. I think it's a possibility. I didn't believe that two weeks ago, but I just get the sense that with what's happening, with the momentum that's picking up, with the search warrants, with the electronic devices, with the phone calls, you know, it's just the release of the phone calls,

with Donna being where she's at. That there is that their whole earth is shaking underneath their feet right now. And the state has worked this perfectly up to this point. They've utilized each trial to kind of pull out, call out some more information, pull some more information out. Wendy is locked in to some to some really bad testimony. Her testimony at the subsequent trials where she had use and derivative use immunity, that's not going to be used, but unless she gets on the stand and says something different, then they can use it to impeach her. But her original statement to law enforcement was that she drove up to the crime scene. That's in evidence. That can be used

against her. That was not obtained under any grant of immunity. So that testimony is damning and she can try to spin it any way she wants. That was my comfortable route. That's the way I like to go. But nobody in Tallahassee is going to buy that. No juror in Tallahassee is going to buy it. Even though Charlie Edelson is maintaining his innocence and this is all just a big misunderstanding. And yeah, it looks weird. It looks crazy. And I can see how you would think this, but it's not what happened. You know, nobody was hiring hit men. We didn't do this. This was double extortion. Do you see a world in which he said, he said on the jail calls, all I ever wanted was to be a dad. And we hear this sweet little child on these jail calls.

It's horrible. His son, is there a world in which he flips because he hopes to get out of jail someday to be with his son? It doesn't seem likely to me. He is so arrogant that even as as difficult as prison will be. And, you know, in the finality of it, realizing that his life is is over, as he said in the jail phone call, certainly life as he knew it. I just don't believe that Charlie will ever humble himself enough to come out and say, you were right all along. Everything you said about me was correct. And I really am this terrible guy that did these

terrible things. So, you know, that's why to me, he's almost trying to continue to convince himself and his mom and anybody that'll listen that he's innocent because it's kind of the only thing he can hang on to from the perspective of his ego. So I don't think he'll flip. I want you to tell me about Dan Markell. I mean, what did you think of him and tell us about him? And we've heard from his mother about him. But you are another lawyer. And I've heard from a lot of people that he was a genius. He was a brilliant legal mind. He was. And that was kind of a given before I met him. But what my real takeaway from Dan was, and that was kind of a given before I met him. Uh, but what my real takeaway from Dan was, was my first takeaway was he wasn't a bitter, angry guy. Um, in spite of the,

all of the animosity and acrimony between him and Wendy and the divorce, he really was affable and kind of easygoing, with the exception of the comments that he heard Donna, when she referred to him as stupid on the Skype calls. He showed some real, he showed some fire on that. But he was really an easygoing, likable person. He was funny. But what the real main thing with Dan, and it was before his murder, I was amazed at what kind of father he was. And he genuinely made me look at the the role I play as a father to my children and rethink it. And that's true. I'm not saying that just because I'm on a podcast here 10 years later. You know, he he would go to have lunch with his boys at daycare, take lunch to them.

If he was spending time with them and I called, he would not take my calls. He would not, he wouldn't lose a second with his boys when he had that precious time. And it's really kind of eerie now looking back that, that he almost sent something that his time might be short with his boys because he, he literally treasured those seconds as if he knew. I'd never seen anything like it. And still to this day, I haven't. I have never seen a father like Dan Markell. Well said.

Stephen Webster, thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it. Thank you. That's it for this edition of Crime Fix on this Wednesday, December 20th, 2023. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. We will see you tomorrow. Have a great night.