Crime Weekly - S3 Ep172: Dan Markel: The Professor and the Prius (Part 3)

Episode Date: January 12, 2024

In July of 2014, Florida State University professor Dan Markel dropped his two young sons off to preschool and made a quick stop at the gym before heading to his home in Tallahassee, Florida. Within minutes of arriving home, Dan Markel was shot execution style in his garage. In the aftermath, a lengthy investigation would follow that would include financial and phone records, surveillance cameras, wiretaps and a FBI sting operation, and what this investigation would uncover would shock everyone. In the case there have already been three criminal trials, four murder convictions and a fifth arrest, but new details and allegations are emerging every day, suggesting that there may still be more that we do not know about the shocking and tragic murder of 41-year-old Dan Markel. Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod ADS: 1. HelixSleep.com/CrimeWeekly - Use code HELIXPARTNER20 for 20% off mattress orders and 2 FREE pillows! 2. Talkspace.com/CrimeWeekly - Get $80 off your first month! 3. DailyHarvest.com/CrimeWeekly - Get up to $65 off your first box and & FREE shipping! 4. Prose.com/CrimeWeekly - Get your FREE in-depth hair consultation & 50% off your first subscription order, as well as 15% off & FREE shipping on every subscription order after that! 5. AloMoves.com - Use code CRIMEWEEKLYVIP for your FREE 30-day Alo Moves subscription!

Did your last vacation house for the whole crew leave you wishing there was a better way to stay together? Like with bedrooms that are all great, so everyone thinks they got the best room? Whoa! This is amazing. A full bathroom in every bedroom? Hey, mine's got a bathroom. A beach around an epic, clear bay big enough for swimming, rope swinging, and even kayaking? All next door to Walt Disney World?

Next trip, share a house at Evermore Orlando Resort. You won't believe what you resorted to before. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Levasseur. So today we are continuing on with the Dan Markell series, and we're going to dive into that. But first, do you want to say anything? No, I was just saying to you before we hit record, two things. On Crime Weekly News this week, I mentioned this flannel.

We were joking about it. And in fact, I want to make sure I get it right. It's actually from one of our sponsors. How do you say it again? Quince? Quince. Quince. Yeah, Quince. So shout out to them. They're not even sponsoring this week's episode, but this is pretty comfortable. So we actually do rock the stuff that we talk about on here. And secondly, I mentioned it on Crime Weekly News as well. New background. Let me know what you guys think in the comments. It's not done yet.

I got more I want to do. But let me know if you like it better than the old background that was in here. I can't imagine you wouldn't. But who knows? Maybe some of you are going to be like, it's terrible. And then that'll suck because that's all glued up there. So not really much I can do about it. There's nothing you can do.

If you don't like it, tough shit. But I still want to hear your opinions on it. If you have any ideas, I'm going to add some can do about it. There's nothing you can do. If you don't like it, tough shit. But I still want to hear your opinions on it. If you have any ideas, I'm going to add some more stuff to it. Shout out to Ashley, my assistant. She helped me with everything. We still have more to go, but we're getting there. So for the new year, wanted to start with a new background. We're upgrading things around here on Crime Weekly.

Let's, you know, making it happen. New year, new background. Yeah. And if you're listening on audio,. Let's, you know, making it happen. New year, new background. Yeah. And if you're listening on audio, this means nothing to you. But you should look on YouTube and see. Go check it out. Go comment. Yeah.

And if you're on audio and you can't see it, just comment. You like it anyways. But that's all I got. I know we got a good episode tonight. We got a lot of B-roll for you guys this evening. So we can get right into it. And by the way, I've read the comments. They don't want me to spoil shit. So I'm going to really make a conscious effort to do that tonight because I know this case and people

like Derek stop. So I'm going to, I'm going to do that today. Are you capable of that? I don't know. That's why we got to learn. We got to see where we're at. You guys will surely let me know in the comments, but I'm going to try to do a better job of not kind of foreshadowing what's coming. All right. Well, I don't mind your little foreshadowing because to me, I know also what happens and I get excited. I'm like, yes, we're going to talk about that, but I get it. Yeah, I get it. So quick recap to where we are in the case so far as we enter part three. Florida State University law professor Dan Markell went through a bitter divorce with his wife, fellow college professor Wendy Adelson, starting in September of 2012 when he came home from a business trip to find Wendy and their two sons gone and signed divorce papers waiting for him on his bed. For a while, Dan didn't know where his wife and children were, but he eventually learned that Wendy had taken the boys to Coral Springs, where her parents lived. When Wendy Adelson filed a motion to relocate with her children from

Tallahassee to South Florida, she was denied permission to do so by Leon County Circuit Judge Hobbs, the same judge who granted the divorce on July 31, 2013. There's a plethora of evidence showing that Wendy's family, especially her mother Donna Sue Adelson, wanted Wendy and the boys to live in Coral Springs with them, and Donna Sue suggested to Wendy that there was multiple tactics she could use to convince Dan Markell to allow this to happen. Donna Sue suggested offering Dan $1 million. She also came up with a plan to have the Markell boys baptized in a Catholic church, something that Dan, who is deeply devoted to the Jewish faith, would have been very upset about. Donna Sue had pretty

much made Wendy and her two sons her entire world, and there was nothing that she would not do to get them closer to her and further away from Dan, who Donna Sue described as a religious zealot and an emotionally abusive husband. Not long before his death, Dan filed a motion to enforce parenting issues, and his main gripe was with Donna Sue Adelson, the grandmother of his two sons. Markell asked the court to prevent Donna Sue from having unsupervised time with his sons because he had discovered she'd been making disparaging comments about him to the kids. Before the court could decide on this motion, Dan Markell was dead, shot execution style in the garage of his Tallahassee, Florida home. By the way, that's another thing. Listen to the comments. People are very,

they're wondering why we're saying Donna Sue. I'm going to start saying Donna this episode because apparently that's how she refers to herself, Donna, not Donna Sue. But I was like, it technically is her full name. I mean, that's going to be. That was the other thing. Yeah. I mean, that is how the court papers and everything. Yeah.

Refer to her as Donna Sue. Refer to her. Everyone's like, I think I responded to one person where they were like, why are you guys referring to her as Donna Sue? And I said, well, that is her legal name. That is her name. And she said, none of the other podcasts do. And I said, you're just proving the point. That's why you listen to different podcasts, because we all have different perspectives. Not saying one's more right than the other. But yeah, I do remember that she does refer to herself as Donna. I mean, do we really care how she refers to herself,

considering what type of person she is? No, I kind of want to keep calling her Donna Sue in the hopes that it will agitate her. You know, kind of like she tortured Dan Markell. I kind of want to, you know, do a little torturing myself. Yeah, we had a lot. We had a lot of engagement on these last two episodes. We had a lot of people who were responding about the reading of your significant other's book and also my questioning of the fact that Wendy decided not to change her name. Most people were constructive. They're like, hey, listen, I didn't want to change my name

because I was a doctor or I had degrees or whatever. And honestly, that all makes sense. Totally get it. Then you had some people who go a little further where they're like, oh, I'm not conforming to this tradition of becoming of becoming extension of my husband it wasn't that deep for me personally it was more so just but it may have been that deep for wendy right it may have been that deep for wendy which is why i brought it up to you which was why i was i was perplexed by it because it seems like in their tradition that would have been the the choice that they would go with where she would the she would take his name. Yes. But the fact that she didn't and it was even mentioned, I believe by you, that in the write up of the wedding announcement, it was spelled out in there that the Wendy would retain her last name.

And to me, that may be just insignificant to most people, maybe a practical reason like your job or, again, it's your father's name. Your identity. Yeah. Yeah. You want to keep it, period. No explanation needed. But I feel like in this situation, which is why I brought it up, there's probably more to it.

There was probably more to it just based on what we know about the Adelsons now. But I wasn't necessarily saying that because it was that case in this situation, it was for everybody out there who hasn't changed their name. Really, I'm indifferent about it. I could care less. But I know that some people were commenting about that as well. Yeah, I think when we pose questions like that in these episodes, we're posing them in the contextual texture of the case we're talking about. The people we're discussing.

Yeah. texture of the case we're talking about right the people were discussing yeah so i think when you had asked like why would why would someone do that it was more of a like let's speculate on why wendy would have decided to keep her last name you know like why in this specific instance would wendy have made that decision and it could have been something as simple as oh i'm a you know i'm a professional and this is how people know me. Or it could have been deeper like, well, I don't want this man's last name. I don't identify as part of his family. I identify as part of the family I came from, which will always be my top priority and whose opinions I will always defer to over that of my husband. So that's kind of where I think that question came. You made a great point too, because you brought up your own situation and it can be as simple as you joking about it was funny. I was lazy. You were just like I was lazy and it wasn't

a cool name. It's like that. I mean, that makes sense. You know, like you don't want it. So I think for everybody, it's I think for everybody out there, which was the main sentiment in the comment section was everyone has their own reasons and they don't even need to give their reasons. They just, one person who obviously was upset about it was like, maybe because I just didn't want to. Yeah. Some people got a little.

No doubt. Do you think girl? You know what I mean? Like I'm all for it. But, um, but in this case, like you said, contextually with this case, I do, I don't think it was that simple i think there was more meaning to it which again it's with what we know now about the adelson's i don't think that's a far stretch i 100 agree with you there was definitely more to it in in

our opinion now we could be completely off base but we're just we can only tell you what we think based on what we know for our opinion so yeah here we are with the opinion. So Dan Markell was shot on July 18th, 2014, and his neighbor, James Geiger, called 911 at approximately 11 a.m. telling the dispatcher that he believed Dan Markell had been shot, which seems to be a detail that would make this 911 call a top priority. Yet the Tallahassee Police Department did not arrive until 15 minutes after that call was made. It took Leon County Emergency Medical Services 19 minutes to arrive, and the fire department did not pull up to Dan Markell's Trescott Drive home until 24 minutes after the 911 call. A later investigation into this very delayed first responders' response time revealed some human and technological errors

that had been made after James Geiger called 911. According to the Tallahassee Democrat, quote, a neighbor called 911 at exactly 11 a.m. and said the professor may have been shot, but the call taker never understood the reference as an actual condition. So he classified it as priority three rather than a priority one, which would have prompted the nearest ambulance, fire truck, and Tallahassee Police Department cruiser to rush to the scene as soon as possible. But it appears the CAD system also allowed an incorrect address to be put into the system that morning, causing EMS crew to head to another address instead of in the direction of Markell's Trescott Drive home. Within 90 seconds,

the call taker realized the address was incorrect and that the situation was more dire than he had originally thought. When he tried to relay that corrected information to dispatchers, it did not happen. Tim Lee, the executive director of the dispatch agency, claims this was due to a software-driven error that ultimately sent first responders to the wrong address. And because of this delay, Dan Markell did not arrive at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital until 30 minutes after the 911 call had been made. And the following day, Dan would pass away from his wounds. Yeah, I'm not going to go too deep on this because you explained it perfectly and there's no justification or no, it's not right. But just like any profession, mistakes can happen, whether it's technology, whether it's human error.

And I'd be lying to you guys if I said that things like this, maybe not this significant, happened in my own career, just like they've probably happened in your career as well for the people listening and watching out there. The problem is, is what's at stake when it comes to firefighters, rescue workers, you know, first responders and general police officers. The margin of error is very little when you're dealing with human lives. And so we can't have those mistakes, although even though that's what we strive for, the reason it's called a mistake is pretty self-explanatory. It's not intentional. So it's unfortunate. Could it have made a difference for Dan? I mean, it's possible he survived to the next day. I'm not a doctor. Who's to say? So it's very

unfortunate when you think about how one little mistake can change the outcome of a story in a situation where if he had gotten there faster, who knows? Maybe Dan Markell is still here to tell his story. They said that they had done an investigation into that and they didn't think that it would have made much of a difference. I mean, Dan did survive overnight. He didn't die till the next day. When we talk about where he was shot, I think it's pretty difficult to walk away from that, no matter how quickly you get to the hospital. But I agree. Still, we would like for that to not happen again. Let's not make it part of the story. You know, let's have it just be. Yeah, I agree completely. Let's not make it part of the story. But yeah, he was shot. I mean, his glasses broken half. So it's it was a high

likelihood he was going to die from his injuries anyways. But when I get when something like this happens, it just brings into question, which is not a bad thing because there's always room for improvement. And unfortunately, in a lot of cases, the biggest changes happen when something like this occurs. So that's good. So it seemed like there was actually a few issues with this system. With the CAD system? Yeah. And Dan's situation kind of shone a light on that.

And then they were able to do an internal investigation and fix things and move things around. So, you know, hopefully a positive thing for any future emergency calls. Yeah, absolutely. When Officer David Sims of the Tallahassee Police Department first arrived on the scene, he noted that Dan's black Honda Accord was in the garage and still running. The side window was shattered, and Dan was alive but unresponsive. He was slumped over the passenger seat, breathing rapidly, and he still had his iPhone in his hand. In Dan's lap

lay his glasses. They were broken at the bridge and missing a lens, which was later found on the driver's seat. Joanne Maltese, a forensic specialist, would also be on the scene, and she took photos of Dan's car, including the window with a bullet hole in it. Maltese also collected DNA swabs, which would be sent to the crime lab for testing, but ultimately these swabs would not produce any useful evidence. There were no bullet casings found at the scene of the murder, which led law enforcement to believe that the murder weapon used on Dan Markell may have been a revolver. And Elizabeth Ritchie, a firearms analyst with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, she analyzed the two fired bullets and found them both to be.38 caliber, and they had both been fired from the same weapon.

Upon his arrival at the hospital, Dan was treated by surgeon Shelley Blank, who worked to save him from the gunshot wounds. He had one bullet that had went through his cheek and another in his forehead, which did end up being his cause of death. It was also discovered during Dan Markell's autopsy that his head and cheek wounds had soot deposits in them, which was also consistent with a revolver being used in his murder. Dr. Anthony Clark, the medical examiner, concluded that both the bullets had been fired only 18 to 24 inches away from Dan's head. But that's not the worst of it, because according to the book Extreme Punishment by Stephen Epstein, quote, the bullet

that penetrated Dan's left cheek was lodged in the soft tissue just below his ear canal. The medical examiner felt certain Dan was still conscious after being struck by that first bullet and surmised that he reflexively raised his left arm when the bullet and glass fragments struck his face. That explained why gunshot residue was found on his left arm, likely deposited when the gun fired a second time. In Dr. Clark's opinion, the wounds from the first gunshot wound, though serious, weren't fatal. The second bullet, which blasted through Dan's face just above his left tear duct, had burrowed through his brain and was found in the back of his skull. Dr. Clark concluded that the second bullet initially struck the bridge of Dan's glasses, flattening its tip milliseconds before penetrating his face. The deformed nature of the projectile increased the damage it was inflicting as it plowed through the law professor's brain, causing massive hemorrhaging. It was that hemorrhaging, Dr. Clark determined, that ultimately ended Dan's life, end quote. So yeah, in a situation

like that, in my opinion, I'm not a doctor, obviously. You guys know that. The bullet burrowed through his brain and was in the back of his skull. So even if he did survive, he's not walking away unscathed. There's going to be brain damage. He might never wake up. You know, I don't think that an extra 20 to 30 minutes at the hospital would have performed a miracle. Right. Yeah. And I mean, if you think about it now, knowing the ballistics and the way it went in, as the doctor had said, the first one strikes his cheek. And at that point, Dan realizes something's going on coming from his left side. So he turns, puts his hand up, and that's why the second round goes through the front of, you know, through the bridge of his glasses first. And with it's so it's hard to explain over, over YouTube or even on audio, but the projectiles, when they hit anything at that speed, it deforms them instantaneously. It doesn't

take much, even just a pair of glasses. And believe it or not, the thinner, the bullet is the, the, the higher likelihood that it could be a through and through meaning going through the front side of your body or the backside and coming out and causing the less damage. Least damage, yeah. What you don't want is like it's describing here is a flat bullet. We in law enforcement have bullets that actually they're hollow points. So when they're fired, the tip actually expands like mushrooms. Yeah.

And the reason is for stopping power and to increase, unfortunately, the damage, right? To make sure that whatever the officer is shooting at, but it's not only officers that use hollow points. A lot of people do.

It causes more damage internally and it's less likely to go out to be an exit wound. It's going to stay inside and it definitely causes more damage

to whatever it's striking. So in this case, that flattening of the bullet would have slowed it down and again caused a bigger entry wound, but also a bigger exit wound if it had gone through. It didn't go through the backside, right? No. Right. So it stayed inside his skull.

Yeah, it's tough. It's definitely difficult. Probably because that deformity of the bullet sort of slowed down its progress, right? At the end of the day, of slowed down. Yeah. It's progress, right? At the end of the day, or it would have gone through. But is another reason you would use hollow bullets like that or hollow point bullets like that so that there is no exit wound and you don't have a chance of like someone else getting hit in the crossfire, like that bullet going through that person who it was intended for and hitting somebody behind them? That's an interesting point.

I've never heard of it that way. I know when we were doing entry, like SWAT stuff, like we weren't called SWAT, we're called CERT, but we would use frangible rounds. Do you know what that is? No. Okay. So we would use, with an AR-15, we would use.223 rounds,

like the big rifle rounds that we refer to on the show sometimes. Those rounds, those frangible rounds, anytime refer to on the show sometimes, those rounds, those frangible rounds, anytime they hit something, they will disintegrate. They'll like explode. And the reason for that is, is with a regular AR-15 round, a regular 223 round, it'll go through the person, the drywall behind them and, and other things. It could hit someone in the next room over because of how fast it's traveling the feet per second. So by using frangible rounds, they're more likely to disintegrate upon impact. So I wouldn't say it's, although it could be an added benefit to not hit other people

that are in the surrounding area, more so, I wish I had a better way of saying it, because I know some people are going to be pissed about this, but the reason you use a hollow point round is because it inflicts the most damage. That's really what it comes down to. So in this situation, they're talking about a revolver being used. Do they just mean a handgun? They just mean a handgun, but a revolver in the sense where it's not a pistol. So it's going to be chambering around, and, but a revolver in the sense where it's not a pistol. So it's going to be chambering around and obviously it's revolving around the chamber. And it's, you know, if you look it up, we'll probably have something on the screen here and you can have six to eight

rounds. And as one round gets fired, the chamber turns and then the next round goes into the, into the barrel. And that one's fired after that with revolvers. The reason why you'll have a situation with the revolvers is with a, with a handgun, like a Glock or a SIG or something like that. When you fire the gun, the round is extracted through a claw. It pulls it out and the shell casing of that bullet will be thrown onto the ground nearby. So usually you'll have shell casings with a semi-automatic pistol like a Glock or Sig Sauer or Smith & Wesson. But when somebody is using a revolver, the shell casings, the bullets are loaded into the round, into the gun manually. And when the round is fired, the shell casing is not extracted.

That's why you have to open it and dump them out. That's why you have to open and dump them out. Like an old school, like Western, right? Yes, exactly. You have to rack it onto your hand. Yeah. So it's like, you'll have six rounds in there, let's say. And basically as soon as you fire the chamber, the actual, whatever that part's called, will just twist and the next round will be loaded. But the shell casing itself, you can still see it from the back of the gun. And so that is a benefit to using a revolver because it won't leave those shell casings behind. But with a revolver, I will say you can't see it to the human eye. You can see the cloud, but under like a special camera lens, the plume of smoke and gunpowder that is formed around a pistol when it's fired, even just a normal Glock, is large. Now, over a revolver where there's more areas for the gun residue, the gun powder to escape, it's even larger. So with a revolver like that, you would have a large

plume of smoke after the gun is fired, where you're going to get it on Dan's arm, the car, his face, et cetera. You're going to have it on the shooter's hand and arm and his chest as well. And this is speculation on my part. But with this particular incident, what I believe is the suspect fired the first round. And without being too graphic here, it's instantaneous as soon as it hits. You know where that round hit. And it would be very obvious to the shooter that when he fired that first round, he struck him in the cheek. Let's just put it that way. And it wasn't where he wanted to shoot him. We'll just leave it at that. It would be very obvious based on the damage that would

occur in that moment where the bullet hit. And at that moment, he probably realized, oh, I hit him in the cheek. Let me move the gun a little bit to the right. And then obviously Dan turned around, so he's able to shoot him right in the cheek. Let me move the gun a little bit to the right. And then obviously Dan turned around so he's able to shoot him right in the face. And they knew that both bullets had been fired from the same gun. So initially they're thinking at least one shooter, but they're going to get information later on that's going to lead them to believe there was two people present at the death of Dan Markell. And let's take a quick break and we'll talk about that when we get back. The investigation started with Detective Craig Esom taking the lead. Now, to the police, it was clear that Dan had been the target of a personal attack. He still had cash in his wallet, which was located in his car, along with a stack of credit cards in the glove box,

and Dan's laptop computer was in the back seat. The house showed no signs of forced entry, and nothing was missing. The crime scene was roped off with police tape, and detectives got right to work tracking down leads, the first of which was provided by Dan Markell's neighbor, James Geiger. Now, remember that James had been in his living room next door sitting with his wife while they worked on their iPads, and he'd heard a loud popping noise. Because there'd been some robberies in the neighborhood, James looked outside his window, which faced the road, at which point he observed a small, light-colored car at the end of Dan's driveway. The car sped off in the direction of Benton Road, and this suspicious vehicle and its suspicious behavior was what caused James Geiger to go over and check on his neighbor Dan. Based on the description of the vehicle seen on Trescott Drive, investigators began retracing Dan Markell's steps the morning of his murder, and they started pulling surveillance videos from the places he visited as well as roads along his path. We know that Dan dropped his sons off at daycare before heading to Premier Health and Fitness, where he arrived at approximately 9.12 a.m., and surveillance video showed a silver

or light green Toyota Prius enter the fitness center parking lot right after Dan. While Dan was inside, the Prius remained in the parking lot, moving to different parking spots until Dan left the gym at 10.30 a.m., at which time the Prius followed him out of the parking lot. Video from the Star Metro City bus system was also collected into evidence. Video captured from two different buses driving on Thomasville Road in Tallahassee showed what appeared to be that same exact Prius following Dan home and driving in the opposite direction after Dan was murdered. All right, what is this vehicle in the opposite direction after Dan was murdered. him coming down north to south from Village Square Boulevard in the parking lot. And is that him pulling into that parking spot behind the flag?

It is. All right, does he exit his vehicle immediately? No, it takes a couple minutes. This is what's being determined is the suspect vehicle. And does the suspect vehicle turn into the parking lot behind Mr. Markell? Not directly. The suspect vehicle goes all the way up Village Square Boulevard to McLeay and then comes in the main entrance of Premier. So is that the suspect vehicle driving past the victim?

Correct. And that's Markell exiting his car. And is the time on this correct, 9-12 a.m.? Yes. Here's Mr. Markell entering the front doors. And what does the suspect vehicle do while Mr. Markell's in the gym for approximately an hour, a little better than an hour? The driver of the suspect vehicle moves to different locations within the parking area, off to one end, and then moves again, and then ends up behind trees. But as far as you can tell, stays in the parking area?

Oh, yeah, yes. So Markell's already entered, and now the car's driving past by again. All right. What's happening now? Mr. Markell is now exiting the building from there. And at what time does he exit? 10.39. So are we going to see Mr. Markell pull out of the parking lot here? Yes.

And the suspect vehicle will follow behind? Correct. That's Markel's car heading back the way it came in. The circle is indicating where the suspect vehicle is coming from in the back. Alright, let's talk about the bus. Are there cameras mounted on our city buses here in Tallahassee? There are. Alright, and did those buses capture some of the route from where these two vehicles went after they left Premier Gym that morning? Yes, a good deal of it. Where did Mr. Markell head when he left the gym that morning?

He went out to Village Square Boulevard to Thomasville Road and then southbound on Thomasville Road towards his neighborhood in Benton Hills. If you could tell us about bus 505 what does that show us? Bus 505 is pulling up here the buses the buses traveling east on McClay Commerce Drive it comes up to this intersection and that is what appears to be Markell's black Honda southbound on Thomasville. So he's left Premier, gone to Thomasville Road, and now he's southbound. That's what appears to be the same Prius, the new Prius that was in the Premier parking lot,

is following in the direction that Markell went. This same bus turned off of McLeod Commerce Drive, went southbound, and caught up to a similar Prius here at the intersection of Metropolitan Boulevard. Is the route we're seeing the Prius take in this portion of the exhibit consistent with heading toward the Markell residence? Yes. Does this bus catch up with the Prius again before he turns off toward the Markell residence? Yes. Right there where the circle is, that appears to be the same Prius in the left-hand turn lane for Benton Road. The Prius is making the left-hand turn onto Benton Road. Right. And at what time does the Prius

make that left-hand turn? I don't have the exact time. Does 10-51 sound right? Yes. Okay and do you have an idea of when Mr. Markell was murdered? It was before 11 a.m. All right and then was there additional surveillance video from a city bus that captured this Prius after the murder? Yes. All right and was that bus 707? It was 707. It's northbound. It stopped on Thomasville. It's northbound. It stopped at the light at Armistead. Is this the same bus? Yes it's just another angle as the camera's mounted up on the front part of the bus. Prius is passing in the left-hand lane. And the 707 bus video occurs at approximately 10.55 a.m.? Yeah, I have 10.55 where it's at the stoplight.

So then the murder, that puts our time of the murder between 10.51 and 10.55, is that correct? Correct, yes. And do you know what time the 911 call came in from Mr. Geiger? 11.02. Okay, so I know you're going to weigh in on more details about this video, but just quick observations. That's my first time seeing that video. Could be wrong. Just a hunch from my experience interviewing and working with a lot of detectives. I could tell this detective knows his stuff. I could tell he's like an old school, probably done this a lot. Newest stuff.

Again, very small clip, but just my initial impression. I feel like I got a pretty good read on the good ones and the bad ones. And this guy seemed like, what do you know his name, the detective for this one? I believe that that was the detective who was assigned to the case initially, which would have been Detective Craig Eason. He's the same person who we're going to see in a few minutes interviewing Wendy Adelson when she's brought in that night. Okay. So just on the surface, sounds like he knows stuff. Could be wrong.

Just an observation. But as far as the video, this is only the second time in my experience, I know it's been done before, where I've seen bus camera footage used in a case. And the other one was one that we covered, Jennifer Dulos with Fotis, where they used the footage to track that vehicle as well to where the truck had been dropped off. So the SUV, I believe it was. So it's one of those things where thinking outside the box, but one of the common themes you're going to see me harp on throughout this series is how good of a job I felt law enforcement did in this case. A lot of it is like, you just follow the evidence. But again, it's not like there's a playbook for

anything. You got to use your brain and to think, oh, let's look at the bus routes for that day. Let's look at all this. Let's go to the gym. These are all things that you would commonly do. But I will tell you, and we've seen it here before, not all officers are created equal, even though it seems obvious to us. They don't do that. They don't go the extra step. They don't go the extra mile and they don't gather all this evidence so that when you get to court, like we're seeing here, anybody could look at this video and understand what they're seeing, right? We don't have enough for a murder conviction yet, but I don't think there's a person out there who's watching on YouTube right now, who's watching that clip and not saying, yeah, I get it. I don't know where this is leading, but I know somehow that Prius is involved, right?

So that's the point here is to break it down. I mean, it has to be, right? You can't say, and when they released the information about the Prius, like, has anybody seen this? They were like, very careful to say, listen, this is just a vehicle of interest, blah, blah, blah. But when you look at it laid out that way, it's like this this person or persons followed Dan all throughout that morning. And then you see them driving towards his house before the murder and driving away from his house after the murder. So, you know, put two and do together kind of thing. And a relatively small window of time, right? Very small window. They're seeing the car on camera around 1051. The murder occurs right before 11 a.m. And then obviously, I think he said 1102. Between, they said 1051, 1051 to 1055 is when they believe the murder happened. And 1102 is when the call came in, the 911 call. Right. So it's, they're not saying

anything, but they're just laying it out for you and you're able to come to your own conclusions based on that. And it's put in a very systematic way. Which is an obvious one. Yeah. the picture. And it's not all simple stuff like this. So just overall, a great job from a case where there was a lot of things done in order to avoid apprehension or detection. They thought they were. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I mean, had there not been those cameras on the buses, et cetera, et cetera, like the gym, you may we may have missed that. We may never have found these people. I also think Geiger's, I mean, being a good witness. Yes.

Seeing initially a light colored car describing it, right? That gave detectives something to go off of where they're like, okay, Geiger seems pretty sure about this description of this vehicle. Let's start in the morning. Let's see what we can find. Police don't know when they watch that video, they're going to see the killer's vehicles. They don't know that. Yeah. They just, they're just looking at it and they have to watch all the footage and they say, okay, here's our victim. What stands out to you in this video? Well,

now in hindsight, it stands out that Prius, but they were watching all the cars and all the people in that parking lot, going over it with a fine tooth comb, making notes and seeing if there was a pattern with the next video footage from the bus. They had to connect those dots. Somebody was sitting in front of a computer at the police department and was watching that bus footage and said, okay, here comes my victim's car. There's a couple of cars after it. There's a blue car. There's a red car. Oh, there's a light colored car. Oh, it's a Prius. Hey, you know what? I think I saw something similar on the gym footage. Let me go back to that real quick. And then they start to make the connections. That has to be done. It's not there for you. So I'm not making light of it. It's hard to do. And you've got to be aware of your surroundings and understand when you see certain things that stick out to you and remember those things to start to connect the dots. So again, great, great job by law enforcement on this one to be able to do that. And I think that when you see James Geiger,

the neighbor who like I love, I love Jim, he's awesome because when he's on the stand, he looks like an he looks like a very elderly man. I mean, he's in the 70s, but he's sharp. He's paying attention to what's going on around his house and his neighborhood. He's listening to things. He's got his ear out. And he walked to that window to look outside, which a lot of people may not have done. Like, whatever, I just hear noises. He walked to look outside. And if he hadn't been able to give the description of the vehicle seen at Dan's house at the time of his murder, they may never have put those pieces of the puzzle together. I completely agree. That's why it's like that little piece might have been what had them. They were starting to look for a light colored vehicle in that other video footage

because they probably put it together that more than likely this car had been following him for some period of time. They didn't know how long. It wasn't until they went and looked back at the footage that they were able to figure that out. Okay, so we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. In these videos, if you're watching on YouTube, you were able to see them as the police officer was describing their movements in these videos. I strongly recommend checking them out, too. Yes. If you can. You can't see the driver or a passenger or license plates on the car, but there were some clues that would eventually help law enforcement identify the vehicle and its two occupants. Firstly, the driver's side bumper was missing a tow belt cover.

The passenger side mirror was black, while the other mirror was the same color as the body of the car. And a toll transponder could be seen in the center of the front windshield. Additionally, another eyewitness saw a Prius that morning. Heath Leland, who worked at the preschool where Dan dropped his sons off that morning, he noticed a light-colored Prius in the parking lot outside the daycare center. Additionally, a resident of the Ashford Club Apartments, which is located at 2055 Thomasville Road, they reported seeing two men park a bluish silver Prius in the southwest corner of the complex parking lot. This reportedly was seen during the week before Dan's murder. The residents saw the two men get out of the car, and the two men began walking down a park path behind the apartment complex. Reportedly,

this path runs parallel to a large storm drainage ditch, and that same drainage ditch happened to be directly behind Dan Markell's home, with the apartment complex being within walking distance of Trescott Drive. The witness described the driver of the Prius as being tall and slender, lighter complexion, wearing a baseball cap. The passenger was a shorter, stocky man with dark hair and a darker complexion, wearing a baseball cap. The passenger was a shorter, stocky man with dark hair and a darker complexion. And the two men returned to the Prius about 10 minutes later, at which time the resident observed that the shorter man was carrying a black object in his hand, and he was also completely wet, as if he'd fallen into the drainage ditch. The taller man

was also wet, but it appeared that he was just wet on his pants up to the knee area. The surveillance videos and eyewitness sightings would provide police with enough information to start searching for this Toyota Prius. They identified that the color of the vehicle was called Silver Pine Mica. It had darkly tinted windows and police believed that the Prius could have been made between 2006 and 2009. However, it would be that toll transponder on the windshield that would eventually give detectives a clue on where they could find this car. And we're going to talk about that. But first, let's return to the hours after Dan Markell was shot because police were already taking quick action to get to the bottom of it. On June 18th, just hours after Dan Markell was shot twice at close

range, his ex-wife Wendy Adelson sat down with the Tallahassee police for the first time in an interview that lasted roughly five hours. Wendy had been experiencing a busy day. She had allegedly been waiting at her home that morning for a geek squad tech to come and fix her broken television set. She had been doing some work on her computer, writing some papers that she'd been trying to complete. She'd also left her house in order to run to the liquor store before meeting up with friends for an impromptu lunch date, which is where she was when the police picked her up and brought her into the station.

At the time when she was brought into the police station, Wendy wasn't told what she was there for. But before Detective Craig Easam enters the room, Wendy gets a voicemail from a friend that causes her some concern. I just listened to my voicemail. What'd you hear? Who was your voicemail? It's from Lisa Carey, who is my real estate agent,

or who I had gone with to find a house she just said she was going driving around town she heard there was a shooting on Trescott yeah that's what this is about I'm sorry you had to hear it that way I'm sorry I didn't know if I should that's alright just leave it there is it still on it's right there you want to just hit play again for me? Sure. It's Lee Security. It is Friday, and I feel like an idiot doing this, but I just heard that there was a shooting over on Trescott, and I promise I'm not trying to be dramatic or even nosy. I just, I don't know, just checking on you, my friend.

I hope all is well. I hope your sweet boys are well. And if there's anything you need, let me know. Just checking on you, my friend. I hope all is well. I hope your sweet boys are well. And if there's anything you need, let me know. It just ran a chill down my spine when I opened it. There was some going on on Tresca. All right. 212-3083. Hope all is well.

And I will talk to you soon. Bye. There was a shooting at your home or your ex-husband's home at 2116 Trescott. Your ex-husband, Daniel, has been taken to the hospital. He's not going to survive. Oh, my God. Okay. Okay. Oh, my God.

I've been watching her in the study. What happened? Well, before we get into everything, I have to establish where you were and who you were with and so forth. Okay. 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 don't.

I'm sorry. That's okay. You don't have to be sorry about it. I just don't understand. How did this really happen? Let me get over this hump, okay? Can we do that first? Alright. Can you tell me what time you left your house this morning?

Yeah, I was there, I didn't leave this morning, I didn't leave until noon. Okay. Oh my God, and I tried to drive up Prescott and I saw that it was blocked. It was blocked at some point. I'm not sure what time it was blocked. I just thought, oh, there's maybe some trees down or something, sometimes- Oh, you're saying that you drove down

which one of the side roads? When I, I'm going to a friend's party tonight and it's a, it's a, it's a, oh my God, what am I even talking about? I needed to buy, it's a stock the, stock the shelf engagement party and so I went to buy, it's a stock the shelf engagement party, and so I went to buy bourbon. So I went to drive from my place up Trescott to get to ABC Liquor, and it was blocked, so I just turned around.

I was on the phone at the time. I wasn't paying a lot of attention. So I just turned around and drove up the other way. I just thought, oh, sometimes when I lived there, there were electrical things that would happen. So before I say anything, I want to say that Wendy Adelson has not been arrested or charged with anything. But there are a lot of people, including members of law enforcement, that believe she was involved in what happened to Dan in some way. And I'm sure that we will see eventually that they continue this investigation. They try to find something that they can sort of connect her with. I think in just in my research, I have found things that, yes, are circumstantial, but still very much look bad for Wendy.

And her interview with police is one of those things, in my opinion, I don't believe her. I don't believe. Oh, interesting. I don't believe that she's truly and genuinely crying. She pulls out of it very quickly when he's like, it's OK, you're doing great. She immediately like flashes him a smile and she's like, thank you. And she's just very, I don't, I don't believe her, her, her, her tears. She got, I don't even know if there were tears initially and which is why for the first few minutes that she's crying, you see that she has

her hands over her face. And I think only when she was able to actually get, you know, tears going, did she finally remove her hands and look up at Detective Issam? So that's just my opinion. And that still doesn't even mean that she was connected or involved. She could just hate this person, right? They had a horrible divorce. He said horrible things about her. She said horrible things about him.

A true resentment and hatred built between these two people over the course of this lengthy and contentious divorce. So it could just be like, well, I'm not really sad, but I have to act sad or they're going to suspect me kind of thing, right? I know that we have some people who only listen to the audio version, but in this clip, you can clearly hear or see, or if you're watching on YouTube, you can clearly see that Wendy does seem to be very upset when she receives the news that Dan's been shot. And she does spend a good amount of time. I had to cut this clip because there was a lot of crying. She spends a good amount of time crying and trying to grapple with this new and seemingly unexpected news. But in this clip, you also heard Wendy say a few important things.

She claims that she had to stop at a liquor store. She had to stop at this liquor store to pick up some bourbon for a party that she was attending later that night, and she wanted to go to ABC Liquor. So she attempted to turn down Trescot, which is the road or the street that Dan lived on that she used to live on. She attempted to turn down Trescot in order to get to the store, but she noticed it was blocked, and so she had to turn around. She attempted to turn down Trescott in order to get to the store, but she noticed it was blocked and so she had to turn around. Now, this offhand comment that she says in this interview

is going to turn into a problem for Wendy for a few reasons. Officer Bill Brannon with the Tallahassee Police Department had been at the scene of Dan Markell's murder that morning. And once a perimeter had been set up around the crime scene,

he was basically assigned to guard the north end of that perimeter. As part of maintaining the crime scene perimeter, is crime scene tape put up across the road? Yes. And did you participate in doing that? I believe so, yes ma'am. And I think you said it was a couple houses down in each direction is where the tape was placed? Yes. And where were you physically positioned? My patrol car was blocking the roadway.

All right. Were you closest on the side of the scene closest to Centerville Road or closest to the other side of Trescott? Closer to Centerville. All right, so can you explain for the jury where the roadblock was that you were positioned out of the crime scene? So that blue dot right there is the victim's residence. I would have been somewhere right in that area. And can you show us in relation to that where Centerville intersects with Trescot? Over here. Alright so if you were to turn on to Trescot from Centerville can you just kind of show us with your light the route of travel from Centerville to the roadblock? Comes around here up and back around. Okay. Would you have been able to see the roadblock from the intersection of Centerville and Trescot?

No. If you had just started to turn onto Trescot and then rerouted back onto Centerville, would you have been able to see the roadblock that way? No, you'd have to go a considerable amount around. Okay. And from the roadblock where you were positioned could you see the crime scene? Yes. Can you describe what sort of activity was happening at the Markell residence when you were at the

perimeter? Basically the investigators and the crime scene techs taking care of their portion and the crime scene tech vehicles are marked police and have lights on them and stuff. All right. So would it have been obvious to someone approaching your position in a vehicle that there was activity, law enforcement activity going on at that residence? It seems likely. Do you recognize this vehicle?

It appears to be a vehicle that I saw approaching the scene that day. All right. And this vehicle, are you familiar particularly with the make and model of this particular vehicle? Yes my wife drove a two well we still have it my daughter drives it now 2006 Honda Odyssey. So at the time you had in your family this same type of vehicle? Yes. And did you know at the time that Wendy Adelson drove this type of vehicle? Yes. All right so you noticed this vehicle or a vehicle identical to this one approach your position? Yes ma'am. What did the vehicle do when it approached your position? Just stopped

pretty quick and turned around and headed back in the other direction. Did the driver stop and inquire of you what the activity was at the Markell residence? No. Do you know what time of day that was that you observed this vehicle approach the roadblock? Sometime a little afternoon, probably around closer to one. And just to clarify, were there any other roadblocks between where you were positioned and this vehicle and the Centerville intersection? No. So here's the issue. First of all, from Wendy's home on Aqua Ridge Way, there were multiple liquor stores that she could have stopped at. There were also multiple liquor stores near the restaurant on Market Street where she was

meeting friends for lunch, yet she drove south many miles out of her way to go to the liquor store near her ex-husband's home on the same morning that he happened to be shot twice, execution style, in his garage. Wendy also told Detective Easam that she had assumed a tree was down or there was some electrical issue and that's why she couldn't get down Trescott. But Officer Bill Brandon testified that the secured scene, which was clearly centered around Dan Markell's house, would not and could not have been mistaken for a simple electrical problem or a fallen tree. There were several marked law enforcement vehicles, an ambulance, police lights were on, and crime scene tape was up. Seeing this kind of activity around a home that Wendy had previously lived in, not only that,

a home that she knew her ex-husband still lived in. And considering that she also knew her two young children were in Dan Markell's care that weekend, right, that her kids were living or residing in that house that same weekend, it didn't make much sense to anyone that she wouldn't have stopped and asked one of the police officers at the scene what was going on. It also doesn't make sense why Wendy would not have attempted to call Dan's cell phone to see if he was okay or call the preschool that her sons were enrolled in to make sure that they were okay, that they'd arrived to school that morning and there was no issues. Later, Wendy Adelson would testify that she had not driven by the crime scene at all. When you drove to ABC Liquor, you tried to go through Trescott. Is that fair to say? It was blocked. There are other ways to go to ABC Liquor, right?

You could have gone down other roads. I don't have the best sense of direction, so when I find a route, I just kind of keep using that route. We retraced Wendy's route that day. She would have been coming from Centerville Road, a more commercial street, and she left Centerville to pass through Benton Hills on Trescott Drive, a much more residential road with several caution signs. Then it takes us another two and a half minutes after leaving Centerville Road to get close to Markell's home on Trescott.

Wendy testified to something different. She said she barely made it onto Trescott before she saw police. 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. There was tape. Yeah, and an officer was there? I didn't see an officer, but I did see a car. A law enforcement-marking vehicle?

This is around where that police roadblock would have been, according to the officer on the scene's testimony. Wendy claimed she couldn't see what was happening at Markell's house from her car. It's the one you see there with the brick mailbox. It's about two houses from that speed hump sign. And the road winds out to where it's more visible to see that mailbox.

But you can't make out exactly because of the trees the actual house building. If the roadblock was set up where Officer Bill Brandon recalled, between three and six houses away from the scene, it appears emergency vehicles parked along this narrow road would have been visible and obvious to drivers, but the car where Markell was ambushed, it would have been out of sight. I just assumed it was weather or maybe a tree fell. Did you attempt to call Dan Markell when you encountered the roadblock? No, I didn't think anything of it.

So basically, Wendy made it seem like the entirety of Trescott Drive had been blocked off, and she never made it past the intersection of Centerville and Trescott before she had to turn around and find a different route to ABC Liquor. However, as the testimony of Officer Brannon shows us, Trescott Drive was not completely blocked off. The perimeter had been set up around Dan Markell's house and had continued to basically two to three houses on either side. And Wendy would have needed to drive about two and a half minutes down Trescott before she was able to see that there was some sort of police presence or some sort of barricade set up,

which brings up the question of why she was not completely honest with police or during her trial testimony. And we also have to ask ourselves, why was she there on that day of all days? An incredible lack of curiosity and that little drive with the police. I mean, I know there's activity from time to time in Tallahassee, right? I get it. But that's pretty close to your ex-husband's house where your children spend a lot of time.

No curiosity whatsoever. Yeah, Vinny. And the liquor store where she could have purchased the gift or the item was right near her house. She had to go way out of her way to get to this particular liquor store right near her ex-husband's house, Danny's house. So that has raised a lot of eyebrows. Why would you go all the way out of your way to buy a bottle of liquor? Now, she's saying that she was having lunch, but still, it really is a big question. Along with the question you just brought up, no curiosity, you don't call. I have a lot to say. We just covered a big chunk there, but before we do, let's take a break.

A lot to unpack here. And I was kind of letting you set the stage because we talked about the interview and then you obviously have this whole situation with the road being blocked off really close to Dan's house. So first off, the interview. I said, oh, interesting when you said you didn't think she was telling the truth. I'm not even playing devil's advocate. Or not being genuine, I guess. Not being as genuine about her emotion as she wants Detective Isom to believe. Not telling the truth, but. That, hey, listen, you're entitled to your opinion. I mean, that's your observation. I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but just to give a different perspective on it, because I'm sure some people will not agree with you, right, as they watch it. For me, it wasn't something overt, but it

usually isn't if you're trying to avoid apprehension. I felt like she seemed genuinely surprised by it. And I liked what Detective Isom did there where as soon as she started reacting to it, he is giving her a moment out of respect, but make no mistake about it. He's also giving her a moment because he's sitting there marking down and identifying every single involuntary involuntary movement that she makes at that moment. And he's closely recording in his head what she doing, how she's doing it and what she's saying. And one thing that really saved her there where I felt like she wasn't going to ask is she said, what happened? You know, because some people do make this mistake. If you see other interrogation videos or other interviews where the person is involved, they never once ask what happened. They just, oh my God, I can't believe it. And that's because in their head,

they already know what happened. So they forget to ask. So that in no way suggests that she's not involved. It just may have been, she was well-prepared, but just to give that different observation. Because we've seen people in interrogations that are involved also ask what happened. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. Like people can ask, but it's one of those situations where I think you can make a reasonable argument either way that she's being genuine or non-genuine. It's just a matter of observation. I don't think there's anything that overtly stands out there that would suggest she was involved, but I can absolutely see your perspective and how people would look at that and say, it seemed a little contrived. Now, as far as the roadblock and all of these other things, again, in no way, shape or form suggesting that I feel one way or the other, because without getting too in depth here, because we're going to talk about it at the end, I think the problem for most people with this case, when they hear all the facts, is the idea

that this family, the Adelsons, they're so close, most of them, with the exception of Robert, who has kind of gone and done his own thing. But Charles and Wendy and Donna and Hart, they're all close. Some of them work together. They are all very tight knit. And as they're having conversations through email and text, Donna and Wendy were discussing a lot of what was going on with Dan. And there was a lot of personal conversations happening that weren't intended for everyone else's consumption. The point I'm trying to make is that Wendy knew who her brother was, knew who Donna was. And it's hard to think that she's familiar with all of this, but she would have no clue that this was going on. That being said, if Wendy was involved, major steps

were taken to avoid her being connected to it, right? Because let's for the hypothetical situation say Donna, Charles, and Wendy were all involved with this. They're going to obviously come to the conclusion that, hey, Wendy, you can't be anywhere near this because you're going to be prime suspect. Number one, right? You're going through a tumultuous divorce. They're going to be looking at you day one, which they did. That's why he brought her into enter to talk to her. So the common sensical approach would be, Hey, listen, me and mom will handle this. You stay out of it. We don't want you anywhere near this situation because you're going to be, Hey, listen, me and mom will handle this. You stay out of it. We don't want you anywhere near this situation because you're going to be, you're going to be already on in

their sites, right? In their crosshairs. So if that were the case, if that's the scenario that we're looking at, why the hell, if you know what's happening, would you drive by that location? And I know what you're going to say. Well, she wanted to see if it actually happened. Well, that would completely defeat the whole point of keeping you out of this. If that was the original plan was to keep you as distanced away from this as possible so that you couldn't be connected to it any way, shape or form. Maybe they felt it was obvious and they shouldn't have to tell her to stay away. And so they shouldn't have to tell her to stay away. And so they didn't. And then, but it wasn't obvious to her because why would she go to that liquor store by Dan's house when there was a dozen other liquor stores she could have gone to? Why was she in that area when it was nowhere near where she lived or where she was going for lunch? Right. And that's the problem.

That's the other side of the coin, right? So I'm giving you the argument as to why it's almost, if she is involved, why the hell would she drive by there? But then the other argument is everything that we just laid out in these videos and that you've discussed, which I'm not going to repeat. I'm not going to be repetitive here, which I sometimes do. That is the other side of it. There's things that don't add up. So again, depending on where you lay on this one, where you land, you could make an argument for both sides as far as like, hey, I look at the same situation. And to me, it suggests involvement where someone else may look at it and go, Hey, you know what?

I see exactly what you're seeing. But based on my interpretation, I believe it means that she wasn't involved. And that's, what's so fascinating about this case. Listen, they, these, the Adelson's right in arguably just with, with every objective lens, these are intelligent people. They're educated. They're smart. They're successful. However, are they criminal masterminds? I would say that the fact that Donna Sue and Charlie have both been arrested for this would show that they're not.

They thought they were. At least Charlie thought he definitely was. But they're not. They thought they were. At least Charlie thought he definitely was, but they're not. So the whole reason they're getting caught up is because of all the mistakes that they made. And if they had done this in several different ways, nothing would have led back to them. But there's money trails and there's cell phone trails and you got the car on the surveillance videos and Wendy's driving by. So I think that they think, oh, no one's going to know it was us. So they're behaving sometimes in ways that to the average person looks suspicious, like what Wendy's doing. But she's not going to think it's suspicious because she's going to think everyone's going to look at me and say, how could she have anything to do with this?

I'm so charming. I'm so beautiful. I have such a megawatt smile that everybody always talks about. I mean, in this interview, and you guys should watch it, but it's like five hours. She starts talking about how the clerk at the liquor store told her she had pretty eyes. And I mean, she's talking about all this extraneous stuff after she finds out her ex-husband has been shot. And what really stuck out to me is at the beginning, somewhere in this interview early on before she knows anything, she says to the detective, Craig Issam, I couldn't tell from the way you were talking to me in the car if I was a suspect. I couldn't tell from the way you were talking to me in the car if I was a suspect. She was not informed that Dan had been shot until she was at the police station. So why would she think in the car on the way to the police station that she would be a suspect of anything if she didn't know something had happened? Maybe she didn't know exactly what happened. She didn't know if he'd been shot or beat up or,

you know, had his death to be set up to make it look like a suicide or something. But she clearly in the car before she found out Dan had been shot felt like she might be a suspect of something. Or why would she feel like, oh, am I a suspect or not? I didn't know from the way you were talking in the car. So I think sometimes people who are not criminal masterminds go into these interrogation rooms and they're like, well, I'm just going to be honest. Right. But they're almost a little too honest sometimes. And they say things that can then be doubled back to and point to and asked, why did you say that?

If you had no idea anything happened. Yeah. No, I agree. I mean, I think and again, we can it can go around, around, around on this thing. It's it's one of those situations where as of right now, if we're to believe that there are good investigators on this case, which I believe there are, there is clearly at this point no evidence beyond something that might be like this roadblock or spontaneous utterances that have been connected to Wendy because they would have absolutely charged her at this point. I think that's important because if we're to say- It's all circumstantial, very circumstantial, very circumstantial and can be explained away. We may not believe the explanation, but it can be explained again. We don't have to say,

oh, you know, that's a that's a reasonable excuse. Right. Like as you're saying about the liquor and stuff. But it's possible. Yeah. But it's absolutely possible. It's absolutely possible. And listen, I will say to be transparent, I'm hoping that's the case. I'm hoping she's not involved. I think we all are because there's two little boys involved here and they've already lost their father. They, the relatives are gone and I'm hoping Wendy's not involved because she's going to have to raise those two boys. Um, and so worst case scenario would be that Wendy is involved. And if she is, she should be held accountable.

And she's going to go away. And these boys are going to grow up with someone else. I don't know who that would be at this point. But most likely Dan's family, right? Because almost everyone from Wendy's family is behind bars now. Ruth and Phil would be his parents. So yeah. And the weird thing is that I found out Dan's family was not very engaged in Dan's children's lives. He didn't see that.

They didn't see those kids often. I mean, they did live in Toronto, but they weren't a constant presence like the Edelson family was for those two little boys. And I almost wonder if there was some reason for that. Like, maybe they didn't feel welcome in Dan and Wendy's home because of Wendy and her family. Because like Donna Sue and Harvey, they'd be there at Wendy's house all the damn time, you know?

So maybe the Markells, especially after what happened at the wedding with the non-kosher food and everything, maybe they were like, these Adelsons, man, they don't like us. We don't like them. We're going to keep our distance. Yeah.

So let us know in the comments. I'm very curious to see what did you think about Wendy's reaction when she was told about Dan's death? Did you find it to be genuine? Did you find it to be maybe a little played up? What did you think about Wendy's overall demeanor? What do you think about her being at Trescott Drive shortly after Dan's murder? I'm not. Yeah, I'm interested in what you say. So Wendy's police interview continues with Detective Isom, and he asks her the standard question, who would want to do this to Dan Markell? And what Wendy ends up saying might raise an eyebrow or two or several thousand, because

it raised my eyebrow. Do you know anybody that would have a beef against your ex-husband? He's, um, oh my God. I hate to ask it now, but I have to do it now. You understand, right? I understand. I understand. Um, he, I he even he had friends he was he always meant well

but he would sometimes wrote people the wrong way but not do something like this He was money to me. He was money to you? But not me. Okay. All right. Oh my God, what a poor kiss. 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 what you know, what happened and how it happened. But he wouldn't do this to himself. He was a very positive person. Okay.

No one that you know of or that he's spoken to recently that he's had some type of problem with or that he was concerned about? No, no one that he was had some type of problem with or that he was concerned about? No. No one that he was concerned about. I mean, we've been separated for two years, so I don't know, like, you know, if he had something going on, I wouldn't know about it.

But I know a lot of people didn't love him, but not anyone who would, like, hate him. He met well. everyone that knew him. He knows what he means well, but he can be a little argumentative. Right. But not—he didn't owe anyone money. He didn't do anything except work and take care of his kids. He wasn't involved in anything bad.

I can't believe this is happening i know i don't know who would do this okay well it appears from from what we've seen so far that someone intentionally hurt danny okay intentionally okay i don't think no and i don't think i'm after the boys i don't think that's going to be i don't think... You don't know who it is? No. And I don't think... I didn't think about Drew the voice. I don't think that's going to be... I have no indication at this time that that's a threat. Okay. You have friends.

I do. What I meant by it is that Danny didn't treat me very well. And I'm so scared that maybe someone did this. Not because they hate Danny, but because they thought this was good somehow. Oh, are you saying that you think maybe one of your friends would have done something like this? Who would do this?

I don't know. That's why you're here, and that's why we're talking. Would you ever ask someone to do something like this? Not in a million years. Okay. Do you think someone would do this for this? Not in a million years. Okay. Do you think someone would do this for your benefit without asking you? No. What good does it serve? I made my brother, though his name is Charlie, the one I'm really close to, he makes a lot of jokes and bad taste. And it 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 He said I 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 morning.

Right. It's okay. He asked me how much it cost and I said I didn't know because it was a gift, because my brother said it was cheaper than a hitman. It was my divorce present. Okay. Such a horrible thing to say. I'm so sorry.

That's okay. But even my family, who felt like I had been mistreated, would never do something like this. Never. OK, so Wendy says something about a broken TV and a TV repairman. And trust me, we're going to come back to this because the TV ends up being very important. But she also comes out with the speculation. What if someone did this because they thought it would be good for me?

You know, she says, Danny didn't treat me very well. And my worry is, you know, what if somebody did this because they thought it would be a good thing? So she kind of introduces that angle. Yeah, I think that's important. It is very important. And she says something about Charlie specifically. He's my big brother. He's been looking after me since I was young, but he would never do this. Right. But here's my thing. And I know we just talked about it a couple of minutes ago, but to me,

I think that would suggest a higher level of not being involved because it's one thing to drive by if they didn't tell you not to drive by if you were involved, like you had said in the previous segment, like we were just talking about. But to introduce the idea that maybe someone would kill Dan or Danny, as she refers to him as, for her benefit to the police, either she's an absolute moron, which I don't think either of us think that. She's definitely well-educated. She's an intelligent woman, or she's having these thoughts, which a lot of people do. Like she's learning about this in the moment. She may be genuinely in shock and she's thinking out loud and she's thinking out loud in front of the detective. And she says like, she's probably thinking in her head, like, oh my God,

could someone have done this? And I would even go as far as saying, knowing her brother, she might actually be saying internally, oh, he absolutely would do something like this for me. But then she regret, she pulls back when she realizes that she's bouncing these ideas off of the detective in charge of the case. And she's going, no, no, he would never do that. But why? If you knew your brother was involved, would you throw out some trivial detail, which she obviously said to the repairman? But why would you throw out some trivial detail like he has said to me before it was cheaper to buy your new TV than hire a hitman? Like, I don't think she would have said that if she knew right then in that moment that Charles was involved. All right. So let me ask you a question because you were a cop. So you think like a cop. I was at some point. And we know that Wendy

is a good actress. Her mother said, I know you can act. I've seen you do it. Pull it out in court. I don't know if she's a good actress. Pull it out in court. Well, you don't think

she's acting technically. So how would you know? I don't. So we know that she's a good actress and we know you think like a cop. How do you know she's a good actress? Because her mother said it multiple times in the email.

I tell my daughters and I hope they never hear this. But your daughters are children. But they're not. But your daughters are. They're not good singers, but they are children. Your daughters are children. That's what you do for children.

You don't do that to a grown woman in her 30s when you're trying to tell her she better pull out her best acting job in court to make sure that Dan, you know, doesn't get to keep those kids in Tallahassee. You know, she can do it. You know she's capable of it. And everyone who knows Wendy says the same exact thing, that she can turn on the charm and she can, you know, put on a mask and wear it for as long as she needs to. So maybe she said that because she figured and assumed that the cop would think in the exact same way that you, a previous cop, are thinking.

Why would she say that to me if she was involved at all? Why would she? Well, maybe she's trying to save her own ass and she's not coming directly out and being like, oh, they did this. But she's also doing things that make her look more innocent and distancing herself from the situation at hand. So it could be that she's just she is smart. She's a law professor. Right. She knows the law. She's a lawyer. So she's smart. She's intelligent. She knows the law. She's not an idiot. She's not just going to say anything in that in that interview room with that cop that she doesn't want to say. She's not thinking out loud. She would never. She's a lawyer. She knows better than to do that, especially with an attorney not present. I think I think hearing that your ex-husband's been assassinated may change your mind because I don't know if anybody knows how they're going to react in that moment when it happens. And I'll also say that it's one thing to say she wasn't speaking out loud, but it's another thing to say that she just was pulling some reverse psychology. I will say this, and then we can keep moving on with it. But there's a big difference between having an idea who might be involved because of conversations that have gone on behind closed doors. Like there could have been a moment right when she heard this that she said, I know

my family's involved with this. I know it, right? Because of conversations they'd have off the cuff behind closed doors, right? Where they've talked about this maybe just in passing, but never definitively came up with a plan. But when she hears this, she knows, oh my God, they went through with it. There's a big difference between that and her being directly involved, which is what I think we all care about, right?

Because ultimately we're trying to determine whether or not or I guess investigators are not even us. But we're trying they're trying to determine if this woman had some criminal responsibility where she was involved directly or indirectly with the the blessing of this assassination and maybe financially contributed to it or if she played a role at all. Because I will say, and I'm not going too far down the path here, but we know that Harvey, Wendy's father, the dentist, was also very close with Donna and Charles. They were all very close. And as far as we know at this point, Harvey wasn't involved. And there were conversations where they would say like, hey, don't say anything in front of the big guy. They didn't want to involve him were conversations where they would say like, Hey, don't say anything in front of the big guy. You know, like don't say they tried, they didn't want to involve him. So although they're tight knit, there have been things where they've done certain things behind others without other backs, without saying anything.

So is it impossible that Wendy wasn't involved with this when it all went down? No, it's not. It's not impossible. They could have decided collectively, we're going to do this for her. But I do think it would be a stretch based on how close she is with her brother and her mother in this moment when she hears that her ex-husband's been killed based on what some of the conversations she's had with her brother that we know about for it not to run through her mind like, oh my God, I hope he didn't do this. I hope he didn't do this. But if she genuinely thought there was a chance that anyone in her family could have done that, would she have said it out loud? Absolutely not.

Right. Absolutely not. But that's why the fact that she did, I feel like, I know you're giving her credit. She's a lawyer, all these things like in that moment realizing he's dead or gonna be and he's not gonna make it again i guess she could be a genius where she's playing oh i'm gonna actually give them we know she's a genius basically we went over her credentials she's not a dummy i think it's a it's a big risk to go into a room with a detective and say you know what i'm so smart is it a risk because she's not under arrest but she doesn't know she's gonna be at that But she doesn't know she's going to be at that point. She doesn't know what they know,

but she's going to say, she's going to say to herself, my, my strategy here is I'm going to go in there and I'm going to give them the answers to the puzzle, the keys to the castle. I'm going to tell them exactly what happened in order to remove myself. I just think,

I guess it's, I always say it's possible, but what a risk. What a risk to go in there and roll the dice with that one. Okay. We have more to talk about in regards to what Wendy said during this interview, but we're going to take our last break and we'll be right back. So Wendy tells detective Craig Eason that when she and Dan got divorced, her brother, Charlie gave her a TV as a divorce present. And then he made a joke telling Wendy that he'd looked into it, and it turns out that it was cheaper to buy had a large crack in the screen, and Wendy claimed this crack had been put there when one of her sons threw a large and heavy object at the TV screen. But then

she circles back, and she makes sure that Detective Isom knows that no one in her family would ever do this, even though they knew how badly Dan treated her, and they didn't like it. However, Wendy would make further insinuations about someone she knew, someone who was close to her, being involved somehow in the death of Dan Markell. I can't help but feeling like this is all my fault. Why do you feel that way? Why would somebody do this, right? Like if I had been still married to him, then there wouldn't be anyone that was angry, right? Like there wouldn't be any kind of disgruntled.

It wouldn't be Amy's husband. This can't be a random act of violence. This has to be on purpose. Someone did this for a reason. Yes. So she actually says, I can't help but feel responsible for this because if I was still married to him, this wouldn't have happened. That is a weird thing to say. And literally seconds after saying this, Wendy is concerned with her plans for that evening and she's making small talk.

I want to send some text sort of canceling my plans. Like I'm actually at 630. I was supposed to be at a party by now. So let me tell the person throwing it works at Beavis Funeral Home. Okay. My friend Elizabeth is a mortician. She's the prettiest mortician I've ever met. Now, this person that Wendy is speaking

to is, um, she's a victim's advocate. Are victim's advocates technically police officers, or are they, like, social workers? They are not. They are not. Which is interesting that they're already in the room with her, but they might be having someone sit in there with her so she's not alone. But make no mistake about it.

They didn't turn off the recorder. So her interview started around like 2.40 p.m. And this is almost 7 p.m. So we're pretty far in the interview. It's been hours. And Detective Issam, he asked Wendy, can I have your phone so I can bring it to the Celebrite and extract data from it? And that's where he was at this point when she's sitting in the room with this victim's

advocate and just sort of chatting and making small talk and talking about like, oh, I have to cancel my plans. I think it's weird when you find out your husband's been your ex-husband's been shot, the father of your children's been shot, that you're concerned at all with reaching out to friends and like canceling, you know, like you're you're worried that your absence there is going to be dramatic where you have to like rectify that. To me, that's a little strange, but people are different. So while Wendy's chatting about parties and her pretty friends, Detective Isom has her cell phone. He's extracting the data. And when he returned to the interview room, Detective Isom told Wendy, call your parents.

And she acts super weird about it. Like it takes her, because I've cut this up, this clip that you're about to hear and see if you're watching on YouTube, I've cut this up, but it takes like a good 15 to 20 minutes of her hemming and hawing about calling her parents before she actually does. Call your folks. Okay. I really don't want to make that call. I know, but you can wait if you want to. I feel like I was holding you up.

You were, and I... I was, okay. No, I want them here. I don't want to tell them what happened and what's going on because they're very emotional. Well. They're not driving. Well, that're not driving. Well, that's the thing. It's like,

they're going to now get in the car for eight hours and come up. And, um, and they both very emotional. It's one more emotional. My mom's more emotional. My dad's more of a straight shooter.

Again, you know, we're all doing different things. So I may have missed something, but I'll double check. Okay. Yeah. I don't,

I don't have the keys. I'm going to call my parents. Y'all spoke with Ikson? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, he said that's okay, right? All right. I don't know how to tell them this.

I think you're going to be upset. They're very angry with him, right? This isn't like it's their son, but he's the father of my kids. And this is a very, part of my language, fucked up situation. Don't. Okay, I'm going to call my parents. I have no idea what to say because I don't even know that he's dead. I just know that he has

been shot. Um okay so I just want to tell them what happened and that I need them here and they're gonna be fine. Okay. No I just like I think it's shock reaction You know right shock reaction. Yeah. Oh, and I'm gonna I'm a shaker when I get upset. So yeah, you should shake I really don't Okay, here it goes. This is This is the worst day of my life Mom I need you to sit down. I am fine. The boys are fine. Um, I need you to sit down. I am, I'm fine and the boys are, and the boys are fine. Danny has been shot. And I don't think he's gonna make it. And so, I know. So I found this out around 1 or 2 today and I'm at the police station and I'm trying to help them figure out who may have done this. In his house. I know. I know. So I just need

you to calm down before you get in the car, okay? Okay, so and um, and it's, you know, it's evening, so if you want to come here tomorrow, I have a lot of people that'll, you know, be here with me and, you know, we'll have a lot of support, so I want you to take your time and just be safe. My mom handled that pretty well. Could you hear her? Yeah. Oh my god. Well, my parents sounded really surprised, so it's at least a relief. I was trying to think of who would be angry enough to do something to him. My parents would be angry, but they're not capable of this. Thank God. I really couldn't handle that right now.

Yeah. So once again, I mean, you heard Donna, Donna Sue Adelson on the phone. She's shocked. She sounded completely surprised. Maybe good acting runs in the family because we know she has been arrested and she has been charged and she has been found to be complicit in what happened to Dan Markell. So she's shocked. And then Wendy's relieved that she's shocked, relieved because it seemed like Wendy genuinely was afraid to make that phone call. Yep. But was she afraid?

Was she afraid to make the phone call because she was afraid of what her mother would reveal to her? Or was she afraid to make the phone call because she was in the police station and she knew that probably Donna's reaction could be picked up by the very same cameras that were recording her at that moment and she was worried that's the million dollar question yeah because that's you just nailed it not saying it again that's it in a nutshell she's clearly nervous the question is is she nervous for a or is she nervous for B? Now, real quick too about this person in the room, because it's bothering me a little bit, I'm going to have to do some research and figure it out. In my experience, and by no means am I like the all-knowing detective, but I've never had a victim's advocate in a room with a potential suspect because at that point, she's a person

of interest at minimum. That's why she's there. She's helping them, but don't get it twisted. She's a person of interest. That's why she's there. And so I wouldn't as a detective have a victim's advocate in the room because she's not technically a victim at that point, but maybe it was a strategy to lower her guard. But this person doesn't seem trained. They don't know her. You can tell because they're like, oh, I'm a shaker when I'm nervous. So they're clearly not familiar with each other, but then she reaches over and touches her. That might just be her approach. I don't know who this person is, but I will say if this person had asked her a question on camera like that, she is acting as an agent of the state and she can still, and it's still admissible in court.

And that person is no longer independent. She is working for the police department, even though she's not a sworn officer. And we would never put our victim's advocate in that position. We would only bring them or usually bring them in for domestic violence victims, where we know this person has just been through an ordeal. We want to get them away from people in uniform and get them with someone who can handle this specifically who's trained to do so. Very weird situation here. Different tactic. I don't know who this person is. Maybe they're a detective. I doubt it though, based on their approach. She was described as a victim's advocate. Was she? Yeah.

Interesting. I mean, it's possible because there was another woman who came into the room. You could see that sat down for a second and walked out. I'm assuming she's some type of law enforcement capacity. Yeah, she was trying to get Wendy's keys to her vehicle. Her keys. So she could be a police officer, detective. So this person may well be just a normal person who, I don't know who it is. I mean, she basically didn't say much, right?

Not yet. Yeah, but she's in there. They're putting her in a bad position. The whole time basically didn't say much, right? Not yet. Yeah. But she's in there. She put her, they're putting her in a bad position. The whole time she didn't say much. Wendy was left to talk. Do another talk. And Wendy did talk and talk and talk and talk and chat and chat and chat. So I thought it was funny when Wendy was like at the end where she was like, oh, that's a relief.

That's a relief. The girl's like, uh-huh. Uh-huh. All right. So give me one second here. Please just give me this. Listen, I know you. We've been working together for three years, okay, which you were quick to remind me of.

I said two years before we started recording. You're like, no, it's been three. I'm like, damn, it has been three. So I know you pretty well. And we're entitled to our opinions here. And I think it's clear to say at this point, your opinion is that Wendy knows more than she's conveying. You made no bones about that. Yeah, I do believe she not that she was involved necessarily or actively.

She knew. Yeah. What was going on? Would you at least give me this by saying, like, that's a really dumb thing to say? Like, well, that's a relief because she I think that leans more towards the idea that like she was nervous that when she called Donna, like if we're going to go that scenario where Donna was going to be like, well, I got something to tell you. Yeah, he's dead. I did it.

Or like, or she says like, Dan's been shot and you hear, instead of hearing what you hear, like cheering in the background, you know, like where, like, it felt like she was like, I'm going to make this call. And I may be incriminating my own mother right here on camera. Like, I'm nervous about making this call. I'm not saying that's what you believe, but you can at least acknowledge that her saying, well, that's a relief because she was like, I know my mother hates this man. Yeah. And I'm sure there were conversations that happened between them that expressed how much she hated him.

Yeah. Like maybe Donna said something like, man, I wish he was dead. I wish he was dead and all our problems would be gone. Right. They could even bend more conversations where Charles was around and it's like, Charles knows people. We can, we can end this real quick. He doesn't want to push me. He doesn't want to try me because I know people and I have money and we can end the situation really fast if he doesn't want to work with us. They offered him, as you said already, they offered him a million dollars. He turned it down. So they were running out of options.

So anyways. These people only know how to use money or force, honestly. Especially in that position where you're used to never hearing the word no. Well, when you're used to getting your own way and always winning, yes. So they don't like that. When you're used to always getting what you want, it's hard to accept when someone says no. Don't you think Wendy would know that about her family, though? And kind of even before it happened, she might worry about that.

And in that case, if she was worried that it could happen, should she not have warned Dan or, I don't know, done something? Well, that's a whole other thing as far as culpability. But everything you just said, I agree with. Like, she knows her family. She knows how they felt about this. And I think all that's running through her mind during this interview. Like, they really, like, no, no, no. I know you guys as officers hear how parents and wives and ex-husbands don't get along

and they don't like each other. But this is really bad. This is really bad. And my brother has made comments about killing him already. And my mom didn't say, don't say that. So I'm concerned that something happened here. And I think there may be some indications of that. If you're in the camp of Wendy knew her family and knew what they were capable of, but may not be directly involved. Or as you have said multiple times, this could be just one big act yeah where

she's making it look like even though i know they're involved i just want to this is self preservation i'm separating myself from the situation yep yeah and and i mean if that's the plan it worked flawlessly right because she's so far she's out and about uh you know i think it was just a few weeks after dan died, she changed the boy's names, her sons, from Markel to Adelson. I don't believe she's in Tallahassee anymore. I think she's in South Florida. So Wendy got everything she wanted, but has, you know, has also her freedom, which her

mother and her brother do not have at this point. So that's right. OK, so during this interview, Wendy also mentions that Dan Markell would not have done this to himself, which I don't think anybody was thinking that he did or else why would she be there and be questioned about her alibi? You know, at the beginning of the interview, Detective Isom is like, I want to see where you were today. If Dan did this to himself, I don't know why they would be asking her those questions. But well, at that point, he had only said there was a gunshot, that he was shot. He didn't say he was shot by someone, which is, again, a nice trick by him or a nice move by him.

She could be just playing the game where she's like, oh, he wouldn't do this to himself. But yeah, I get what you're saying. Well, she says, listen, Dan, we're not doing this to himself. He's a very positive person. He even has a new girlfriend. And this new girlfriend is a law professor from NYU named Amy Adler. Now, in fact, both Dan and Wendy had moved on. They were both dating other people or seeing other people after the divorce. And Amy Adler, Dan's girlfriend, was a big deal in the Big Apple. And she seemed to have a list of credentials that matched those of Dan Markell and Wendy Adelson. She's very successful, well-known, and it seemed also that Wendy may have been feeling that she had left her husband only for him to end up with someone that she may have had some envy towards. Maybe Wendy was hoping that Dan would end up with somebody less impressive than she was, and he ended up with somebody probably on their same level. And there is evidence that Wendy had done some Googling before Dan's murder and had looked up Amy Adler multiple times. So she's obviously knowing about

Amy. She's interested about her. She wants to know more about her. And you could say that's just because this woman's going to be around your kids. Sure. And she says something in this next clip we're going to play you that definitely comes off as kind of salty. But then she'll she kind of covers it up with like a compliment afterwards. Because remember, at this time, Wendy Adelson is, you know, in her mid 30s. And she mentioned something about Dan's new girlfriend, Amy, and Amy's age. You don't have a number for Amy. You do not have a contact number for her. But, you know, she's a professor at NYU.

You know that her and Danny have been seeing each other and that she stayed here from the end of June to the first of July. Just 28 days. At least two days maybe. Yeah. And she met the children. Yeah, she met a few friends in town too. And you don't know anything about her ex? No. I know she was married. Right. And she has children? She has a son. In New York? In New York. Okay.

She has a son. I think he's 14. Okay. Do you know how old Amy is? She's 50. She's 50? Yeah. She doesn't look 50.

She's very beautiful. Not that you can't be beautiful at 50, but she looks really young. She's very pretty and accomplished. Do you know her date of birth? I only know that she is 50 because I was looking her up one time. Oh, okay. Okay, so she's 50. she goes by Amy Adler. Her middle initial is M.

M, okay. So that, like if you looked her up, oh my God. If you looked her up on the law school website, you'd find her that way. Okay. Her brother's famous, he's like a famous fashion designer. So I think they spend a lot of weekends like in the Hamptons.

And she lives in the city and lives like, you know, good life. You're so hard. You really are so hard. Like I just watched that clip and I was so set up to see something a certain way. And I watched it and it was totally innocent. But if I. Is it totally innocent you don't know women man

you don't know women and we have a mainly female audience and I would like them to weigh in right now tell me that what she said weigh in

what she said oh she's 50 and then he's like she's 50 and she's like mmhmm and then she realizes she's being catty

and she's like but she doesn't look 50 she's beautiful not that you can't be beautiful at 50 but like and then she starts talking oh they summer in's like, but she doesn't look 50. She's beautiful. Not that you can't be beautiful at 50, but like, and then she starts talking. Oh, they summer in the Hamptons. She lives in the city.

She lives a good life. She sounds jealous. Like, I'm stuck here in Tallahassee because that's where Dan wants to be. But the woman he ends up being with ends up wanting the same life, the same big city, glamorous life that I wanted. But I'm stuck in Tallahassee with this bitch, you know, kind of like that. Like you don't understand women and the passive aggressive way that they will try to tear each other down.

Like you just don't get it. So you look at that's completely innocent. And I do not believe that it was. She was scoping her out because obviously she wanted to know who he was with. You can look on the law school. Yeah, she knew exactly where to go. She's like, if you want to do this, her middle initial is this. She's like, can look on the law the law school yeah she knows she's like if you want to do this if you her middle initial is this she's like i looked her up once no you didn't you looked

her up more than once my friend all right the brother she ain't got no problem throwing her family under the bus but she's trying to make it sound like i just looked her up one time she doesn't want herself to look bad she doesn't want herself to look like an insecure jealous ex-wife and yet i think she still may have been pause Pause the video and way down below. Yes, please. Okay. But Wendy, Wendy shouldn't have been jealous technically because she had also started dating another man who happened to also be a professor at FSU. He was a social work professor and his name is Jeffrey Lacasse or Lacasse. I think it's LaCasse. But Jeff's name was brought up during Wendy's police interview, at which time Wendy claimed

that she had taken a one week break from LaCasse because they fought often due to his jealousy. Now, Jeffrey LaCasse would be interviewed by the police on three separate occasions. And it feels like every time he talked to them, going into his testimony during the trials, he became more and more aware of how strange his relationship with Wendy Adelson was, how strange Wendy was, and how suspicious things had happened. That at the time when they were happening, they didn't raise a ton of red flags. But after Dan Markell was murdered, he began putting the pieces together. And I loved, I loved listening to Jeffrey LaCasse's interviews and watching him testify during the trial because he's there. He's ready to spill all the tea and understand that this person is educated, not only educated in general, but in psychology, right?

This is his whole thing. And he's aware of how things present, like as far as personality traits present to an outside eye. Jeffrey Likas claims that he and Wendy began seeing each other in the fall of 2013. And by September of 2014, she was officially his girlfriend. But it also felt like it was a lot of work for him to get her from point A to point B. Like he wanted to settle down. He was sprung with Wendy from the minute he met her. It was like obsessed. He loved her. He wanted to be with her. He saw no one else.

But she was a little slower in warming up and actually committing herself to him. And she was seeing other people. The official relationship between Jeff and Wendy would be short-lived, ending less than a year later in July of 2014, the same month Dan Markell would be shot and killed in his garage. I find Jeffrey Lacase to be a very interesting individual. His testimony is some of the most interesting and riveting throughout the trials. Wendy and Jeff had been set up through a mutual friend. They'd bonded over their shared trauma of marrying the wrong people. Make no mistake, Jeff LaCase was absolutely head over heels for Wendy Adelson, but he never quite felt like she was being honest and upfront with him. And this would eventually lead to some issues. Jeff said that he and Wendy really did enjoy each other's company.

But for nine months, Wendy was wrapped up with her divorce. It was all she could talk about. In addition to talking constantly about how much she hated Tallahassee and how much of a monster Dan Markell was. She never, you guys know the background? She never wanted to be here, ever. I mean, she came here with Markell. They're supposed to be here a year, then move on. He had a job in Miami. He was an asshole, so he lost it. He said, no, go back to FSU and stay there. They're stuck here. So he's doing great. He's the Dillon Bart you know sandy dumber professor of law and all that stuff

lindy gets a shitty job that she doesn't really like doesn't like the area let's do her best to make it work she hates it never wanted to live here never thought she lived here this is all from her right yeah it's all straight from right you can't be on her boyfriend trying to convince her this is a great place to stay get a new attitude this is a daily conversation you know i'm like i love to have moved here on purpose so it's a daily conversation like look like i was pretty you know and her whole thing is no i don't i still don't because i'm trying i'm trying but it's you know i never i didn't choose it okay i didn't choose it and that makes it hard i heard that she loves miami she just loves her but we're down she just lights up. It's a whole different thing.

The reason for their divorce, how did she get to this point? Oh, Danny was, I'll give you a couple examples of Markel. They would drive from here to Miami as a family, or just before they had kids even, but even as a family, both. And Danny would work on his computer, he had one of those converters so he could plug your laptop in when you were required to drive. Anyway, Markel's rule was, you may not speak. From Tallahassee to Miami. From Tallahassee to Miami. And she said she would be like, Dick, shh, I'm working. Just a total control freak, emotionally abusive, controlled the finances, just ran her shit. And I don't know if he hit her or not, but I can tell you, if he just rings her voice like that, she flinches like she's got her ass kicked yesterday.

I've wondered about violence. I don't know. She says no, but people lie. Wendy lies a lot. So he was pretty mean to her. And as she went to get married, every friend she had was begging her, don't marry this guy. He's the biggest asshole we've ever met.

And she got caught up in the Harvard Law and elitism and all this kind of stuff. And she was in a bad place, made a bad decision, got married to a guy. So it was a bad marriage from day one, I mean, pretty much, according to her. By the second year, it was awful. And then having kids will fix it, you know, people try that. So he was also an absent father. I mean, he came home at 9 o'clock every night, she claims, and that was the kids for 10 minutes. That was it. People try that. He was also an absent father. He came home at nine o'clock every night, she claims, and that was—played with the kids for ten minutes. That was it.

She did everything, kind of like a house slave. And then when he went to go get divorced, he tried to get 100 percent custody of the kids. So if you read these legal documents that he's filed, they'll keep that information about him, but they give you insight into like, he's pretty crazy. I haven't had the time, but I will. yeah yeah it's a lot of lunacy shines through um but i'm sure he had his side of it too i'm sure he did and i'm uh well that's what i wonder about is with all the stuff i talked about with lindy with me uh i mean he was controlling well maybe he's trying to keep his wife in control i don't know you know anything did she ever tell you anything

uh concerning any incidents when when uh danny and charlie were together or danny and any other family i mean was it kind of like hey you know damn danny you sleep over here in dog house or something you know no no it's more like uh hated him. This is why she introduced me to her parents. She said last time it was so awkward, because it went so badly, because they all hated Danny. Charlie hated Danny. Her parents hated Danny. You know why? Um, he is a—in person, he is so arrogant. He is so—he was so unlikable. He would just talk down to people. He was one of these Harvard guys. Oh, good. And it was just like, when I met him in that awkward meeting, it was so early. I was late, he was early.

And we met for the first time. He insulted me three or four times. Really? In ten sentences. Just in subtle, like, haughty, snobby kind of ways. Like, oh, are you a lawyer? You know, and just little comments here and there, you know. So, he was passive aggressive about it.

He wasn't in your face. He wasn't yelling. But he had so much respect for you. And he was so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, kind of way like oh are you a warrior you know and just little comments here and there you know so he was passive-aggressive about it wasn't your face was he yelling but he insulted he would just tell you say you're stupid okay I mean that's just how he thought he thought he should do it. Basically subtly insulting you the entire conversation? Yeah yeah he did I mean as far as Wendy and him he

did all kinds of little things to intimidate her. I don't know if he knew he was doing it, but she was scared of him. I would go with her to function, so he was at to kind of reassure her, run interference, because she would get heart palpitations and stuff around him. And it seemed completely out of the scope of normal. I got an ex-wife, I could get in front of her, not a big deal. For her, it was like, will you please come with me to soccer practice or whatever it was. Swim lessons two weeks, three weeks ago. Will you come with me to swim lessons? Because Danny's going to be there. And it just, you just freak out.

Did you go? I did go. Was he there? Yeah, he was there. Was everything okay between you and him? Well, yeah, everything was fine. We kind of moved through a phase where first we were real friendly, shaking hands, and then we got like, like hey you're definitely going to shake your hand we're on different sides of this thing you know that kind of thing but it was always reasonably

friendly she introduced you to him as your boyfriend your current boyfriend no no right i don't remember what she said this is jeff i think that was a point of character tension between us she didn't call me her boyfriend, though, very recently. I think she might have had other ones. I think that might have been the issue. Maybe Dan Sack was also But what you need to understand is this is Jeffrey LaCasse's first police interview. And it's just a couple of days. It's July 23rd. So a couple of days after Dan's killed. And he's saying, well, Dan was a monster and he was this and he did this. And he was definitely emotionally and verbally abusive to Wendy. But you have to understand is he's getting all of this from Wendy. So we don't know what, you know, or if Dan was abusive in any way at all. This is just what he's getting from Wendy. And even Jeff says in this, Wendy lies a lot. He says, oh, you know, she maybe maybe there was physical abuse,

but she never said there was. But people lie. Wendy lies a lot. But even when he's talking about Dan being a monster and he admits that like, oh, according to her, he doesn't say Wendy could be lying about this because at this point, he's still very much under Wendy Adelson's spell. But you'll see as his interviews progress, he will come back and he'll be like, you know, on second thought, now that I think about it and now that I've talked to a lot of people that actually did know Dan and were involved in his life, it seems like everybody really loved him. And I don't even the person that I'm hearing from everyone who Dan Markell was is not the person that Wendy described him to be.

So now I'm all like for clumps because I don't even know what what what I've been told is the truth and what's a lie. So right here, he's going hard. He's only met Dan personally a handful of times. And he says Dan talked down to him, passive aggressively insulted him. That could just be Dan's personality. It seemed many people said that about Dan. Yeah, it could also be that he's sleeping with his now soon to be ex-wife.

And it's like, well, we're not going to be best buddies. You know, we're not going to be best friends. Yeah. And then, yeah, there's just a weird iciness between them because it's like, we aren't on the same side, right. But as I was listening to that interview, I'm glad you said it. That's what I'm saying. Like he doesn't experience any of these things that he's describing. It's all from Wendy. So you have to take that into account when you're you're listening to this, because if you were to take it at face value, you'd say, wow, Dan's a horrible person.

And I'm not saying it's not true. But what I am saying is that all of this, it doesn't seem like Wendy was sharing a lot with Jeff, only what she wanted him to know. In fact, you could see some passive, there was some passive aggressiveness in his interview as well, where he would throw a jab, like it looks like she had other boyfriends as well. You know, so it seems like he was kind of in the dark and maybe Wendy was more using him for what she needed. Hey, I need you to come to swim lessons. I need someone there. Maybe it's to make Dan jealous. I don't know. But it doesn't seem like he was really in the know. He only knew what Wendy wanted him to know. And so obviously her perspective on things is going to be different than others. So Jeff, I believe Jeff's marriage ended, you know, a few years before Dan and Wendy got divorced.

So he's been single for a little while. He's been dating. He hasn't found anybody that he connects with until Wendy. Wendy's separation was still fairly fresh. So to be fair to Wendy, Jeff does a lot of talking about how she didn't want to commit, about how she wasn't always being upfront with him, about how it took a lot to get her to call him her boyfriend. But she was also freshly out of a marriage that it didn't seem she was super happy.

And so she probably was a little reticent to settle back down right away and to get into something. I can't blame her. Can't blame her at all for that. But he, Jeff, is like, I'm in love with this woman. This is all I want for the rest of my life. Why can't she see it and why can't she be on the same page? And this frustrated him. Jeffrey LaCasse said he felt that he and Wendy were living their lives together and moving forward in a committed relationship. He'd met

her children. He spent most nights at her house. He'd met some members of Wendy's family. She was going to fly to California with him in July to meet his parents. And of course, Wendy often confided in Jeff about the issues plaguing her personal life. During the time that you were together with Ms. Adelson, did you become aware of her recent divorce? I did. On our first couple of dates, that was the topic of conversation. That's in the fall of 2013. All right. And did you get an impression as to what type of divorce that was or how it would be characterized? An extremely contentious divorce. All right, and during the time that you dated her, were you aware of any specific ongoing litigation with her ex-husband?

I was, particularly in February of 2014, because Ms. Adelson would react badly as that litigation proceeded. All right. And what specific litigation was the topic of discussion in your relationship with her? Can you restate that point? Was there a specific litigation that was the topic of discussion? I recall a motion filed in February of 2014 where Danny had made some accusations that seemed serious and Ms. Adelson reacted poorly. As a matter of fact, every time he filed something, she tended to react poorly. Specifically, did you have knowledge through your relationship with Mrs. Adelson about her,

about a motion that had been filed by her ex-husband that was requesting that her mother not have contact with the children unless it was supervised. Yes, I do recall that. All right, and was that one of the items that she was really upset over? Yes, there were many, but that was one for sure. Okay, so fair to say she took that litigation or that filing very seriously? Yes, she took every filing and every point and every motion very seriously was my impression. What about her mother, Donna Adelson? Do you have any personal knowledge as to how Donna Adelson took that particular filing

about her having contact with the kids? No, I do not. Did you know Dan Markell? I didn't know Dan Markell. I met Dan Markell on a handful of occasions for a few minutes on each occasion. Any issues between the two of you? No. He was my new girlfriend's ex-husband, so I was listening to Wendy Adelson describe him in terrible terms regularly. But in terms of us having an actual conflict, no, ma'am, never.

No negative words ever spoken between us. Oh, no, we were always very polite and cordial to one another when we interacted. Were you specifically aware of the litigation concerning Wendy Adelson's desire to relocate to South Florida with her children? Yes, that was a big topic of conversation on our first couple of dates, because it had just been denied a few months previous. Okay. Why, if you know, did Wendy Adelson want to relocate to South Florida? She despised living in Tallahassee and wanted to live in Miami. And what was in Miami? Well, her parents, well, there's multiple reasons.

Chief among those reasons would be the fact that her parents and brother were down there. How would you characterize her relationship with her parents and brother? Extremely close. And of course, Wendy also had to tell Jeff the funny hitman TV joke. Did Wendy Adelson ever make a joke in your presence about her TV? Yes, ma'am, she did. In October of 2013, the first time I had went to her house on Aqua Ridge, and we were going to watch a movie, she made a joke, which she characterized as her brother's

joke, but she was the one telling it that, you know, her brother had looked into hiring a hitman, but a TV was cheaper. And I heard her repeat that joke on a later occasion. All right. So you heard that joke a couple of times? At least twice. Yes, ma'am. But then things in the relationship began going downhill, mainly because Jeff felt that Wendy was not being faithful and she was involved with more than one man. And this left Jeffrey the case with a not so positive image of Wendy Adelson. And honestly, he didn't have a very positive image of her family either. zero she lies I mean it's been a lot of men since September so so I just wonder if there's a guy in South Florida she always drops out of sight when she's

down there phone calls not return voicemail did you go down there she's let me go that's why I think there's a guy down there okay I've been seeing a therapist since about don't have any major mental health problems but just to try to deal with Wendy, I was seeing my therapist. I used to see him when I was going through my divorce. So I was thinking about what we talked about in there, and I spent like $2,000 on therapy trying to figure out how to deal with Wendy.

She's been really hard to handle. And I realized I never put it together, but he for months has been concerned that she's a sociopath and I didn't tell you guys that before I love I still love Wendy I was under her spell she called me tomorrow I go back to her but there's a lot of stuff that as I look back it was really strange to give you a couple examples well I guess one of the things I worry about is when he has this public persona and she's a very good actress straight charismatic and all this kind of stuff. And she knows a lot of

people. Everybody in Tallahassee knows Wendy. You probably discovered that already. I mean, she's in every social circle. She's very social butterfly-esque and out there and stuff. But in terms of people that know her intimately and spent a lot of time with her and seen behind the curtain, I think it's Markel, me, and maybe that sack guy in the last 12, 13 years. She doesn't—you know what I mean? So some of the stuff I had seen was pretty crazy stuff. No sense of guilt, no empathy, hypersensitivity to criticism. When I said, hey, you cheated on me, that's fucked up, she would not apologize.

She would not say she felt bad. she would not say she made a mistake she's a total pathological liar and I feel bad saying all this because I still love her she has his flaws and I would have stayed with her but if you look back at Markel's legal documents he's constantly talking about her systematic pattern of deception how she lies all the time and she told me once I have a really hard time telling the truth when it's inconvenient or unpleasant. I lie all the time. She said that to me. I don't know that many people that know her that well. You see behind the curtain, she's a total train wreck. My psychologist was saying, man, she just meets the checklist of a narcissistic sociopath.

Go down the list. Obviously obviously she's already a person of interest and all that kind of stuff but I thought you should know that my, I'm a mental health myself. So I never saw that when I was under the spell but I've had people trying to convince me for three or four months you're dating someone who has real severe sociopathic tendencies. So high functioning and attractive but still you know that, that. Yeah. So that's something I just thought I should tell you. So we have this big fight in Gainesville.

I really confront her, I'm really hard on her. I'm pissed because I feel like I've been conned because she's been calling me her boyfriend and all this kind of stuff. And I don't know exactly what the relationship was with Sac, but I found out enough that it was very clear that she was busted, that she was juggling two guys in some form or fashion. I don't know the details. I got the impression I was boyfriend number two is why I was pissed. I mean, there's no picture on the Facebook page.

I noticed there wasn't even a picture of me in her house. And that's when I got really, really upset. I was like, come on, we've been dating nine months. This is bizarre, you know? So I had it out with her in Gainesville. Then she went to South Florida for 14 days. The whole time she's down there, she's miserable and not that available. But we're talking about future-oriented stuff.

We're talking about trying to get back together and desperate to see each other. It sucks that we're separated in this bad situation. I can show you the text, like, I can't imagine my life without you. God, I fucking miss you. I mean, these are like exact quotes, you know. She gets back to town. We go on a date. And I said it was awkward, but we're holding each other.

We're holding hands. There's a future orientation still. We're going to spend a lot of time together and work this out. That's what we had decided to do. And that was last Monday. It gets really strange from there. And it makes me suspicious. Maybe I'm just paranoid. But then on Tuesday, she called me at 2 or 3 in the afternoon.

She said, I walked out of my house. We were going to see each other that night. I say, okay, you walked out of your house. What are you going to do? I try to get a key, but I probably need a locksmith. I said, oh, well, I'll come out, and we'll just hang out on your front porch and have our date there. She's like super sweet and friendly. It was like everything was okay actually.

She was like, I would love it if you would come keep me company, see in a little bit, call each other baby, this kind of stuff. When I showed up to yoga, and it ended up that she got into our house and we went to yoga together instead and we just met there.

When I showed up to yoga at seven, something was completely different. She was gone, I mean. And that might have been just her talking to her friend and says, dump him, and she decides it, and that's it. It may have nothing to do with her case. But I would be really curious to know if I was who she talked to between three and seven, because something happened where I seemed to be irrelevant all of a sudden. This is after 15, 16 days of her wanting us to you know

let's just work this out it just turned in a second and it gets a little stranger from there actually so yeah he said a lot of things right he said pretty much what detective as his therapist yeah i mean he spent two thousand dollars on therapy just to like figure out how Wendy had like completely, you know, brainwashed him. But he says, listen, she's she's got a public persona. She's a very good actress. But if you know her, if you see behind the curtain, you know, she's a train wreck. She feels no guilt. She has no empathy, hypersensitive to criticism. She's a pathological liar. He says she told me once I have a hard time telling the truth. And he's going through all of this. And he's almost like realizing like, oh, what the hell did I get into here? And he says something specifically that we're going to go

deeper into next episode, which is a specific day, very shortly before Dan Markell was murdered. Wendy got locked out of her house. Jeff comes over to keep her company. She gets back into her house. This is around three. Everything's fine. She's calling him baby. They're being very sweet to each other. And then he sees her at seven for yoga. And it was as if he was a completely different person and she had completely turned off. And he's like, I would like to know who did she talk to between three and seven. Now, remember that because that is going to come back up. So what happened with Jeff and Wendy and this other person he's talking about, who's Daniel Sack?

Jeff went to get coffee one day and he found Wendy there with another man. This was Daniel Sack. Wendy told Jeff they were just friends and he was like, don't see that guy anymore. Now they fought about this and then Wendy went to South Florida for two weeks. So Jeff and Wendy are separated for 14 days while she's visiting her family in South Florida. And

during that time, they're texting back and forth about missing each other, making plans to work through their issues, focusing on the future. Wendy comes back to Tallahassee. They've got two dates, one at a coffee shop, and then they went to that yoga class together. And Jeff describes this as being super awkward because as they were leaving the yoga class, Jeff told Wendy that he loved her. And then she responded, I know. And then two hours after leaving yoga, Jeff received an email with a no contact order. And this order told him that he could not call or see Wendy for seven days. This happened on July 15th, just three days before Dan Markell was murdered.

At what point did she send you the email? That was that night. Tuesday night. Which I suspect was already in her head. Well, that may have been when she came to a finalization that she was going to do that. She may have. She may have. I don't want to make this all about me. There's bigger things here.

But I did notice some things. I mean, so she's done with me, right? Okay. I'm it's not right something's wrong here i walk out to the car and it's really awkward small talk you know i can tell she thinks she's done but she asked me if i was going to be here this weekend now she's done why did she give a if i'm here friday she asked me directly are you going gonna be here Friday? I Said maybe it's up in the air and I wasn't up in the air I just didn't want to see desperate and I'm just gonna stay here and I take my trip if what he was willing to see Me is what that was about But she said she was very interested. Oh, why is it up in the air? Oh

Okay And this was prior to her sending you the virus who sent me the sending me the email, and the last thing I ever heard from Wendy. The last words I exchanged with Wendy were, are you going to be here Friday? I just thought you should know that. It made me nothing, but it was kind of strange to me. Then the no contact order was also kind of strange to me. Usually you would just send someone an email and say, hey, I need some time to think. She was very strict about that no contact thing. It was almost like she didn't want to be in front of me.

You know, I just busted her. We probably didn't want you to try and talk her out of it. Maybe. I don't know. That's my thinking. Maybe. Or maybe she knew something was going to go down and didn't want me in front of her because I read her pretty well. And I just busted her out in a whole host of lies, you know. So Jeff says that she had asked him, Wendy had asked him, are you going to be around on Friday?

And he had plans to go out of town and see some friends, but he told her, I don't know, it's up in the air still, like I'm not sure. And he's wondering now in the aftermath, because Friday is the day that Dan Markell is murdered. Why did she want to know if I was going to be around on Friday? Why did she want why did she give me this no contact order that just happened to cover the time that Dan Markell would be killed? Because did she not want me around her? Did she not want me to see? Did she not want me to hear conversations? He's wondering these things now. But the real meat and potatoes of Jeffrey LaCasse's statements would come when he began discussing what could have possibly happened to Dan Markell, who could have possibly killed him.

And when he started talking about, you know, what had transpired between himself and Wendy, what had transpired between himself and family members of Wendy. And he basically said, I think that you should look at these people, specifically Wendy's brother, Charlie Adelson. So Lacasse had a lot to say about the Adelson family dynamics and his suspicion that not only could Charlie Adelson have been involved with Dan's death, but possibly Wendy could have as well. And that's what we're going to pick up next time. Yeah. It's a great episode. It's a long episode, so I'll keep it tight at the end here. A lot to unpack, a lot to digest. I'm sure a lot of you have many opinions on this case at this point. That's why we wanted to cover it. And

I'm glad to see a lot of you in the comments are responding positively to us going back to the minutia of these cases. Not that we got away from it, but I really feel like this series is in line with the true Crime Weekly fashion, what we do. And it's long, but this case deserves it. There's so many layers to it. So we'll continue on. I'm not going to give any foreshadowing, any spoilers. I'm not going to give any spoilers. I'm not going to take any heat. Obviously, it's a new year. Happy to be back. And we're ready to go. And by the way, also, probably should have said at the top of the episode, but Criminal Coffee has just been

doing amazing. Like you guys have been, I saw your t-shirt that just made me think of it. It's been absolutely incredible from a data perspective, how, and obviously through the holidays, how sales have increased, which is allowing us to raise even more money. We're already in conversations with laboratories for the next case, just so much going on for 2024. Can't wait to get started. We're excited. And we will be back next week with Crime Weekly News on Wednesday, and then obviously part four of the Markel series on Friday or Sunday, if you're watching on YouTube. Any final words from you, Stephanie Harlow? You haven't talked a lot tonight, so I figured you

might have a couple things to say. Are you being sarcastic about me now? I'm saying in a good way. You've done a lot of the talking. There's so much exposition here. I I've weighed in on the things I can and all that, but like you're, you're carrying a lot of the, what you're talking a lot, you're having to narrate the story. So no, I'm saying it in a complimentary way. I mean, I think we just really need to listen to the people who are closest to Wendy. I think what Jeffrey Lacase says. Because they support your opinion. Well, my opinion is based on the, my opinion is based on not only what they're saying, but just like, you know, if you have- Jeff is a little biased too, though, at this point. You have to admit that.

I don't think Jeff LaCasse even knew where he stood when he was talking to this police. I hope his name is LaCasse, because you called him LaCasse, LaCasse. Whatever, listen. I think it might be LaCasse, LaCasse. Listen, either way, Jeff over here. Jeff. Jeff, Jeffrey, I think that you will see because we're going to go more into what he has to say in the coming episode. And as his interviews progress and he starts thinking about things and he's going back in his phone, he's reading things and he's looking at dates.

He's putting it together. All right. There's people out there on the Internet calling him like the Sherlock Holmes professor because he's putting things together and he's got like this murder board in his head and he's got like the yarn and it's going from one picture to the next and it's like falling into place. And I think he becomes like progressively almost annoyed with himself that he was so sprung for this girl because he's like, how did I not see it? Like people warned me, you know, people, people warned me. My therapist thinks she's a high functioning sociopath and I'm over here. I'd still go back to her. And so he's frustrated for sure. And you could tell they weren't in the same, but they weren't in the same page. They weren't even in the same book when it came to

what a relationship was. Wendy really didn't want to be tied down. All Jeff wanted was Wendy. And so this is going to cause issues, even if she wasn't stepping out on him, the difference in energies that they're bringing to the relationship. Definitely a different dynamic there. One wants to not go on their business trips to stay with them. The other one's following no contact orders, restraining orders. Right. And the timing of that no contact order was very interesting, as Jeff points out. Considering it was against him, it would be interesting now, wouldn't it? I mean, why? Why would you go on a date with somebody, go to yoga with them, and then a few hours later send a no contact order via email? I think he said something that could be also used against them because it's true for everyone. He's judging Dan Markell based on the narrative that that Wendy Adelson was painting.

Right. Well, we're judging Wendy Adelson on the narrative that that that Jeffrey Lacase or Lacas or his painting of her based on hearsay coming from his therapist, according to him. Well, we're not completely judging Wendy based only on that, right? Solely on that. No, no, you're judging her on a lot, obviously. I mean, I'm looking at things in a totality. Yeah. And I do say, like, was she involved with Dan's murder or not?

I couldn't tell you, right? I could not tell. What I can tell you is something about her rings inauthentic. It bothers you big time. She's inauthentic. It bothers you big time. She's inauthentic. She's manipulative. I'm just going to play the other side and say I like her. You see the way she switches things up when she's with the police officers.

And then when the victim's advocate comes in, she chameleons to appeal to whoever is sitting across from her. And this is a very valuable trait to have for a woman, for a human being. But she does it in a way that seems so seamless as if she just doesn't know how to walk around without wearing a mask of what she thinks another person wants to see. That can be concerning. Once again, it doesn't mean she knew of the murder or took part in it. Absolutely not. It doesn't mean that. But it means that maybe she's not the most upfront, honest, transparent person in the world.

That's all I will say. That's fair. I mean, we're about halfway through this series, right? Would you say maybe six parts for this one? Yes. So coming to the halfway point where I stand right now on this one, it's pretty straightforward. I don't necessarily think that she's just walking around the world oblivious. I think she knew her family very well and she knew what they were potentially capable of, especially based on what they were saying to her behind closed doors and text messages and emails. And I think at minimum, when she got the news about Dan Markell, her first thought was, oh my God, I think my family's involved with this. Now, obviously she's not going to say that outright to detectives, but at minimum, that's where I

stand on it. Now I'll be interested to see where I go for these next three or four parts, because being complicit isn't a form of defense. Like if she knew what they were about to do, and they were planning to do it right in front of her, and she just pretended that it wasn't happening so she could play this angle, that doesn't mean she's not responsible in some way shape or form as well to get to the point where she was pulling the strings or planning the what was going to happen and helping and assisting in that is a much different conversation yes and so we'll see where it goes we if you guys are here for the ride we're here to go on it with you. We're on the ride regardless, man. I mean, we're here.

You're stuck. Yeah. Hey, the doors are locked. You're seat belted in. All right? Stephanie's in the back seat with you in a headlock while I'm driving. You're not going nowhere. You're driving?

Yeah, you're not driving. You're driving the ride? Oh, yeah. It's probably better if I don't. I got to be careful, though, with the dynamic. You know, you could be driving. You are right. If it's your car and you want to drive.

Women can drive. You can drive. I never want to drive, man. I know. You just want to be chauffeured around, for sure. If anything, like, ever happened with me and my husband, I would just hire a driver. I don't want to drive, ever. I want to be driven.

I want to be in charge of the radio. I want to be able to scroll through social media while I'm traveling to my destination or do some work or answer emails or whatever. I ain't trying to drive unless I have no place to go and I just want to drive and listen to music. And then I love to drive. But if I have a destination that I have to be at, I don't want to drive. So you go and you drive. All right. I'll drive. All right, guys, we appreciate you being here. Everyone stay safe out there. We will see you next week. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Bye.