Crime Weekly - S3 Ep174: Dan Markel: Gang Members and GPS (Part 4)

Episode Date: January 19, 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. Zocdoc.com/CrimeWeekly - Download the Zocdoc app for FREE! 2. Text WEEKLY to 64000 - Get 20% off ALL IQBAR products and FREE shipping! 3. EmbracePetInsurance.com/CrimeWeekly - Protect your pet today! 4. ZipRecruiter.com/CrimeWeekly - Try ZipRecruiter for FREE! 5. FactorMeals.com/CrimeWeekly50 - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY50 to get 50% off!

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So today we're diving into part four of the Dan Markell series, and it's getting good. It's getting in there. We have a lot to go over today. But before we dive into that, I know Derek wanted to touch on CrimeCon, which is coming up. I mean, it's like technically going into the spring and summer, but we already have our code. And we know that most of the VIP tickets are already sold out. The standard badges are still available. It's going to be in Nashville, May 31st through June 2nd. It's going to be a great time. We talked about this a little bit on Crime Weekly News if you watched it, but it's in Nashville at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel, which is where Derek and I stayed when we went to Podcast Movement, what, like a couple of years ago at this point. And it was such a cool hotel. There's so many restaurants and bars. And, you know, the great thing about CrimeCon is during the day, you're going to get all of this cool true crime knowledge. You're going to get to hear some of the foremost experts in the true crime field speak. And you're going to learn so much. And then at night, we're just going to have some drinks, have some food, have fun, get to know each other, relax. And it's just a great time. So if you've never been to CrimeCon before and you want to make it to this

year's CrimeCon, you can use our code CrimeWeekly. And how much are they going to get off? I have no clue. I have no clue what the discount is, but there is a discount. There is a discount. Somebody in the comments, if you mention it, I'll pin the comment. But there is a discount there. There is an advantage to buying them earlier.

You're going to get a discount and you're going to get to hang out with us and you're going to get to see us and so many more of your favorite podcasters and people in the true crime community. It's going to be a great time. I'm really excited for Nashville because it's a great city. I'm sure you guys know. Yeah, it's awesome. And yeah, come and see us. Yeah, the big advantage for me from a business angle, when you use the Crime Weekly code, it obviously punches out on the CrimeCon end. So I get an idea of how many of you are coming, which allows me to figure out logistics as far as how much coffee to bring, merchandise, all that stuff. So you're helping me out as well. I really appreciate it.

And speaking of coffee, we want to talk about criminal coffee really quickly. We haven't really talked about it in 2024 that much, but we are still selling the coffee. We have whole bean, we have ground, we have K-cups. All of that is still there. Check that out. If you haven't tried criminal coffee before, re-up if you want to. Do we want to give a code for them? Because we haven't done that in a while. I mean, we can do a code if you want. 2024. Yeah. Let's do 2024 and let's do 10% off. Anybody who uses code 2024, you'll get 10% off your criminal coffee order.

Derek and I are also working on a way that we can meld the. Oh, it's happening. Yeah. The coffee and the merch so that you don't have to go to two separate sites and get two separate packages delivered. So that will be coming along here very shortly. And as far as criminal coffee goes, we're working on something else that you guys have been asking for. It's in the works. We're doing it and it's going to be out soon. And as soon as it's out and ready, you will be the first to know. Yeah, I'm actually putting in my phone right now code for criminal coffee. And like you said, we're working on it. It's 100%

happening. We're already behind the scenes working on it. I hate it. I'm merging the sites. We just got to figure out logistics as far as the fulfillment and shipping out, but I'll get there. We'll be good to go. But yeah, go to criminalcoffeeco.com. We got everything there. Continue to support the coffee, what we're doing. Albert Frost, we had a big spike after that and we already got enough money for the next case. If you go to the fight crime tab, you can actually see how much money that you guys have helped us raise so far. So keep an eye on it. We're doing good things and we're going to keep it rolling.

I would say within the next few months, we'll be identifying what our next case will be. And we'll be starting to work on that and funding that as well so we can talk to you guys about it. I'm ready for it. I mean, we already have the money for the next case. We already have more than enough to fund the next case. It's just picking the right one. So that's a little bit of a process, but we're going to get there. And again, we couldn't do it without you guys, so thank you very much.

Just wanted to hit that. I know I hit it on Crime Weekly News, but not all of you listen to Crime Weekly News or watch Crime Weekly News. So we hit it here. CrimeCon, Criminal Coffee, and now Dan Markell. Yes, let's dive in. So I'm not going to do much of a recap because I know everybody's really following this case very closely. I see you guys in the comments on YouTube. I see you in the comments on Instagram. You're transfixed by this as I am. I mean, I can't pull myself away from this case. So let's just dive right in. When we last left off, Dan Markell had been shot in the garage of his home. They had identified a Prius that they believed was connected to his murder.

They'd brought Dan's ex-wife, Wendy Adelson, in for an interview. And a few days after they interviewed Wendy, they also spoke to her ex-boyfriend, Jeffrey LaCase, and he had a lot of stuff to say. And we're going to kind of pick up with that because he's not done. And he's going to talk about Wendy, but he's also going to talk about Donna Sue Adelson. He's also going to talk about Charlie Adelson. And we're going to learn a little bit more about the individuals who were in that Prius who ended up being responsible for Dan Markell's murder and what was really fascinating to me about this case is what really happens from this point forward, right? We have the crime occur. We've kind of laid the foundation. You're very well familiar now with Wendy and Dan and Donna

and all the characters in this story. Now we're going to get into how we get from this assassination to law enforcement tying this all together. Which is very cool. It wasn't just there on a silver platter form. They had to work. So this is one of those cases where we get to kind of give law enforcement their flowers a little bit because they did a really good job.

Like this case is a ready to go movie, honestly. What did I say to you when we were talking? I was like, this is a movie for sure. They could just take it exactly as it happened change nothing dramatize nothing and it would be a riveting movie or like a limited series or something so it will be at some point yeah because it's just bizarre but all right wendy's ex-boyfriend jeffrey lacase he would speak to the tallahassee police three times the first first time being on July 21st, just a few days after Dan Markell's murder. Now, at the time of the shooting, Jeff LaCasse was hundreds of miles away in Tennessee visiting a friend, but he had his own theories about who could have been behind the crime.

Let's do a quick recap with some added context for what the relationship between Wendy Adelson and Jeffrey LaCase looked like. Jeff and Wendy began dating in the fall of 2014, and at that time, Jeff was aware that Wendy was seeing other men besides himself. After Christmas, the couple had a conversation about being more exclusive, and by March 1st, they were officially boyfriend and girlfriend, which Jeff took to mean that Wendy would no longer be dating other men. Jeff described Wendy as being almost like a siren, irresistible, someone who put a spell on men, including himself. During his interview with investigator Corey Hale, Jeff LaCase said, quote, Once you date this girl, you'll do anything for her.

I'm not the only man that's been under her thumb in that way. I mean, she really has this charisma and sexuality. And so, you know, you'd throw yourself in front of a bus for this girl, end quote. But Jeff also seemed a bit resentful of Wendy's power over him, describing to police how she would post photos of herself on Facebook for attention. And he said she had a big mouth and would have no problem telling him how other men worshipped her. Once they were officially dating, Jeff spent a lot of time with Wendy and he would spend the night at her place every time she didn't have her sons with

her. But from March through May, Jeff and Wendy only spent two weekends together because of the large amount of time that Wendy was spending with her family in South Florida. And while she was there in South Florida, Wendy behaved differently. Jeff would have a hard time getting in contact with her. She was unresponsive and not available to talk as much, and she claimed that it was because she was busy with her two boys. But Jeff didn't really believe that because Wendy had built in full-time daycare when she was with her parents in Coral Springs, and sometimes she would be MIA late at night when the kids should have been asleep.

This led Jeff to suspect that Wendy had someone else in South Florida that she was spending time with. In May, Jeff and Wendy began fighting, and the main focus of their arguments was another Florida State University professor named Daniel Sack. Wendy and Daniel Sack had dated previously, but Wendy had told Jeff that their romantic relationship had ended the previous fall, and after that they'd remained friends who would sometimes get together to catch up over a cup of coffee. However, Jeffrey Lacase didn't believe Wendy. He said he had a good indicator for when people are lying, and when he asked Wendy if she'd been in love with Daniel Sack, she refused to answer, saying that she was offended by Jeff's lack of trust in her. A week after he and Wendy argued about Daniel Sack, Jeff walked into All Saints Cafe,

only to find Wendy and Daniel sitting at a table together. Jeff said that he didn't like the looks of the situation. Wendy was giggling too much and twirling her hair, and he almost walked over to confront them, but then he decided against it because he didn't want to get arrested. Instead, Jeff went into the bathroom and Wendy followed him, crying and trying to explain. She said that her friend Daniel Sack was moving to Massachusetts the following day. They were just meeting one last time before he left Florida. crying and trying to explain. She said that her friend Daniel Sack was moving to Massachusetts the following day. They were just meeting one last time before he left Florida. By June, Daniel Sack was gone, and Jeff LaCase remembered that Wendy completely changed towards him, saying, quote,

Wendy became the best girlfriend all of a sudden. It was really interesting. All of a sudden, I had this new girlfriend, like she was attentive and everything, end quote. But Jeff did not believe that Wendy's change of heart was genuine, and he still had a nagging feeling that there'd been something more between her and Daniel Sack while Jeff and Wendy were dating exclusively. So he started searching through her things, trying to find evidence. In Wendy's calendar, Jeff found information that she had been spending more time with Daniel Sack than she had been spending more time with Daniel Sack than she had let on. Jeff LaCasse said, quote, they're going on dates in public and stuff. They went zip lining. They went to the Tallahassee Museum, end quote. At first, Jeff did

not reveal to Wendy that he had this information. But when Wendy and Jeff went to Gainesville together so that he could teach a class, they had a huge fight about it. Jeff confronted Wendy with what he knew, and he claims she broke down crying. And he told the police, quote, she's very fragile emotionally. She just lost her shit. So we had the most awkward drive ever from Gainesville to Tallahassee the next day, end quote. As we know, Wendy and Jeff would eventually break up not long before Dan Markell's murder. And when Jeff LaCase was interviewed by police on July 21st, one of the first things he asked was if he could tell the police some stuff off the record. And when they finally allowed him to do that,

the floodgates were open and Jeff spilled the tea on Wendy, her brother Charlie, and even their parents, Harvey and Donna Sue Adelson. Okay, so that's my question before you get started. Is this, I'm sorry, is this on the record? Does that give you the opportunity? Yeah, it's on the record. Is there any opportunity to talk off the record? That's not possible.

No, it's possible. Okay, we do on the record first, and then I have a couple theoretical things that I want to be quoted on. Sure. Okay. I mean, you'd have to tell me what it was, and I would have to say, okay, is this something that can be excluded from the report, or is it something that's inculpatory? Is it something that— Maybe I can? Is it something that—

Maybe I can just make it simpler than that. Maybe I can just say, I would be investigating Charlie Adelson. Okay. Maybe it's that simple. What makes you say that? He's very angry about Dandy. And if you met—I know he's down there, you can't get in front of him yet, but you're an experienced investigator—if you got in front of this guy, he'd set off your radar.

I set off mine. I used to do juvenile justice. I used to do forensic psychiatry. He set off my radar a little bit. He's a weird guy, strange guy. He's a cognitive disorder kid, and he hates Danny. Let's see if I can put it a little vaguely. This is enough to be useful here.

Let's not put it vaguely. Let's go with what you know specifically. Wendy had reported to me that Charlie had considered all the options possible to take care of this problem. Put it that way. Okay. And when she said it.

When did she disclose this to you? I don't remember when. But she said this is—it was chilling, because she said, Can I tell you something confidentially? And I said, Sure. She said, I think Charlie kind of looked into some options, like literally saw how and why, and how you would do this if you did it. I think this was— this was last summer, when she had her petition to locate, relocate, denied. That family wants her back there so

bad. If you remember— This is when she disclosed this to you, was it last summer? No, no, no. This is when— This is when he— Charlie had been examining all the options. Okay. He's a very successful dentist, but he reeks of antisocial behavior. I could be 100% wrong, but I wouldn't want to miss that if I was investigating it.

He's got a close friend who's an ex-special forces guy, an ABCO or something he's out with all the time. What did she say to you specifically? I mean, when you say all options? She said—I can't remember exactly, but it had something to do with the amount of money it would cost to have someone killed. And what did she say? Something like, Charlie would do now, how much it would cost to have someone killed.

Something like that. Some statement like that, I can't remember. Did she give you a dollar amount? Did she- But that's the other thing. He's a dentist, but he's an independent businessman. He has a bunch of practices, and he's a Ferrari. I think he's a millionaire, and all this kind of stuff.

So he has a lot of resources. And, uh, wow, this might screw them. Um, I got a—from me talking to him, myself, in the hot tub one time. I remember a few things Wendy said. When was this? March 15-ish. I was there for the one day with him. I stayed at his house. Of this year? Yes. Wendy and him were talking, I'm just listening. I just met him an hour earlier. We were sitting in the hot tub having a beer. It was a really nice house. I'm not trying to play cop here, but I do know one thing you'd be looking for is a lump sum of money moving around and some kind of crazy stuff happened. I think there's a really nice house. And I'm not trying to play cop here, but I do know one thing you'd be looking for is a lump sum of money moving around

and some kind of crazy stuff happened. And I think there's a lot of financial irregularities. I think there's a lot of tax fraud kind of stuff, affording stuff in different people's names and moving money around. And there might be CAD. I don't know exactly what, but he's not doing anything on the up and up

on his finances. It was pretty clear. He was pretty open about that. So I thought about it. I don't know if you guys do look into it. I don't know that... How did the exact conversation in the hot tub go? It was pretty open about that. So I thought about it. I think you guys do look into it. I don't know that... What happened to the exact conversation in the hot tub guy? He was just talking about, you know,

I put that in dad's name. I put that in mom's name. And it was just clear that... Hiding resources. Yeah. Yeah. Monetary resources. Yeah. So if you have to do an investigation, that's something you guys should know. Because I think there's a lot of... I don't know if it's illegal, but I know there's a lot of... He plays the system. You know? Alright, I have a lot of, I don't know if it's illegal, but I know there's a lot of, he plays the system, you know.

All right. I have a lot to say about that clip because it also bleeds back into the previous episode where we discussed Wendy's involvement or potential involvement. So let's take our first break. We'll be right back. All right. So I just want to kind of go over that clip that we just watched really quick before you give your take on it. Yep. That's cool. So Jeff Lacase says basically right after like minutes into the interview, I'd be looking into Charlie. He said Wendy's brother, Charlie, he's a really weird guy. He was, you know, had conduct disorder as a kid. He reeks of antisocial behavior. And then Wendy had made that comment to Jeff saying like, oh, can I tell you something in confidence that her brother,

Charlie, had been looking into seeing how much it would cost to have someone killed. And Charlie had done that the previous summer right after the court had forbidden Wendy from relocating with her two sons. Jeff also mentions that he was with Charlie in his hot tub. And this is March 15th. Wendy and Jeff had gone to South Florida and they kind of met briefly with her parents and they mostly hung out with Charlie at his house, which Jeff is letting us know is a really nice house. He's got lots of money, lots of nice cars. And Jeff and Wendy are also going to go to dinner with Charlie and his girlfriend, Katie.

And we're going to get more into this in a minute. But basically, this is the first time, the first time that Jeff has met Charlie in person. And Jeff is kind of stunned at all of the things Charlie is just openly talking about in the hot tub. He's talking about, you know, moving money around, doing some sketchy financial things that Jeff thinks the police should look into. Yeah. So there was a lot in that take. And there's a couple of things you can take from it. First on the surface, when we're talking about Jeff, from a detective's perspective here on this, if you're listening to this or watching this, we all are, you can see that Jeff, although he has his quirks, he's a pretty

credible guy in the sense where he has a little skin in the game as it relates to Wendy. But overall, he's pretty well put together. He's a smart, intelligent, observative guy. And he's someone who comes off as very credible as far as his ability to regurgitate things that he's heard in the past. And he's got a pretty good memory of it. Like you just said, the detective asked him, when was that around? March 15th. He gives him the exact date. That isn't always the case. And let me tell you from experience, that isn't always the case. It's hard to get narrow people down to a specific week, nevermind a date. So this guy's intelligent. He has a little bit of a psychiatric background as far as his opinions and his evaluations of different players, as far

as their, their, their psychological state. I don't think the detective gives a shit too much about that. He's more concerned with what was said and he's in the detective said it a couple of times. Tell me what you know. Yeah. Don't't tell me don't tell me like obscurely just like yeah just what can you know that i can prove and how many things how many times have i said that to you over the years don't tell me what you think tell me what you know it's not that's all i need it's not about what you if you've always said it's not about what you know it's about what you can prove yeah well that's yeah from the from the from the investigative perspective going forward, yes. But even from a witness perspective, I don't want you speculating or putting the pieces together.

Let me do that. Just tell me what you have personally seen and heard and who it was from. That's all I need from you. So to dive in to what Jeff said in this, it goes back to the conversation that you and I had last episode and a lot of people engaged with on YouTube specifically regarding Wendy's interview where she's initially told that Dan Markell has been shot and is not going to survive. And you've made your opinions known. I was more so playing devil's advocate for the sake of trying to stay as objective as we can as we go through this, but also with what was just said by Jeff. And I think I said it last episode, correct me if I didn't, but I'm pretty confident that I suggested that even if Wendy wasn't

involved in the actual plan to kill Dan Markell, there were numerous instances in her behavior that suggested she was very concerned immediately when she heard that Dan had been shot, that her family was involved. And at minimum, at minimum, when she made that call to her mother, Donna, she was concerned at how donna was going to react and what she was going to say not for the sake of oh she might incriminate me but more so like she might incriminate herself yeah based on the conversations i've had with these people i wouldn't put it past them that they that they went through with it. And as far as criminally liable, I guess that would be a

question for a lawyer, but I guess the question I can pose to you guys is where is the line, right? If we're to believe Jeff, and I do, that Wendy disclosed to him in quote unquote confidence that her brother didn't just make an offhand comment while putting, you know, buying a TV, that he had actual conversations with Wendy discussing the possibility of having Dan Markell killed. Where does her culpability fall on that? Does she have a responsibility to go to the police? It's not a crime to not report it, but does she become an accessory to some degree? I get morally without a doubt. Could she have prevented this if she

would have disclosed this information to law enforcement earlier? Of course. But I guess I want your opinion on that as well, because I know where you stand on it. I know you've given your opinion as far as you don't believe her. And a lot of the commenters agree with you. They're not buying the interview at all. But where do you stand on it? Is there a possibility in your world where when she gets told that Dan's been shot, it's not necessarily because she's like, oh man, they found out about me. Or she's like, I already know who did this. I already know who did it. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like, it's not that I don't believe her that she wasn't involved. I don't believe her that she wasn't involved. I don't know. I just don't believe that she's this innocent doe in the woods and she has

no idea about what's happening. And like, oh, I'm so blindsided. Who would do this? Who would do this? My family absolutely hates him and wishes he would burn in hell, but they wouldn't do this. You know, like, I don't believe this little innocent girl act at all. She's a grown woman. She knows exactly what she's doing. I have I apparently have more respect for her and her intelligence than she wants other people to have for her because she wants people to think she's just like, I have no idea. Like, officer, what was I speeding? I didn't know. Like, it's just really I hate when women do this, by the way. But I will say, did she have an obligation to tell the police? Listen, I would not want to be in this woman's position if she had nothing to do with this and her family who appear to be very controlling

and have their hands in everything in her life. If they're talking about this, I wouldn't want to be put in her position where it's like, damn, like they might really do this. Do I have to go to the police and say this to them and like possibly, you know, compromise my family and kind of like turn my back on them because I am genuinely worried that they're going to do this. So she goes to Jeff, right, her boyfriend. She's like, I got to tell you this. Like, I just got to get it off my chest. And maybe she's waiting for somebody like Jeff to say, you should go to the police. And maybe that doesn't happen. But what I will say is a lot of all of this that came out about Charlie and

Wendy talking about having someone killed, they're going to pose it in court. Charlie and Wendy are. It was just a joke. We were just joking. In my experience, this happens a lot when people say things that are offensive or like hot takes or whatever. Then they'll be like, I was just joking. I was just joking, you know, because it's easy to say that, you know, it was just flippant. It was just a joke. But I found that a lot of people say the truth. And then when there's a bad reaction to the truth, they're like, oh, my bad, JK, JK, lol, you know, and they're saying what they really mean. But then when regular society is like, they're like, it's just a joke. That's funny. It happens like brutally honest people, they'll say something to you. And you'll be like, ouch like, it's just a joke. That's funny. It happens like brutally honest people,

they'll say something to you and you'll be like, ouch, like that was offensive. And they'll be like, oh, so I was just joking. But they weren't. They weren't joking. They were just they were waiting for your reaction to see how you would, you know, react so that they could know how far they can proceed with you. So it's very easy for Charlie and Wendy now to be like, oh, that was all jokes. But the fact of the matter is Dan Markell ended up shot to death so was it a joke or are you just trying to make us think that it was this like flippant like yeah we're just talking about having somebody killed in a professional hit like i don't know no there's there's two things there first off if it's a joke that i don't think wendy and wendy genuinely took it that way i don't think she goes and makes

a serious conversation with Jeff. She was concerned. She was absolutely concerned. And secondly, and I'll just speak for myself. I've definitely heard or made comments where I'm like, yeah, I wish that person would take a long walk off a short cliff. Like, it's a joke. Like, you know, it's, it's, you're're not you don't actually hope that something bad happens to that person. But I think the conversations between Wendy and Charles were much more serious than that. Charles had made direct quotes that he allegedly that he knew people who could kill people. Right. Like there was no like he had a means motive and an opportunity to do it.

He had the resources to actually carry out what he was implying. When you're actually looking into it, it's not a joke anymore. Yeah. I think if he sits Wendy down and goes, yeah, you know, I talked to my connections and it would be about 40K to kill him. So it's just too much money. I'm not going to do it right now. I'll buy you a TV instead. That's not a joke. But even that comment could have been a joke, but it sounded like there was something else where he was like, yeah, you know, we could do it this way. We could, you know, keep, we could offer him a million dollars or we could just pay someone a million and have him killed. Yeah. You

know, like, I feel like those conversations were happening. And if they were, that's where the ethical dilemma comes in that, you know, Wendy could say something. Or it's like, we could pay him a million dollars, but he doesn't want that. And you know what? That's fine because it's going to be way less than a million dollars to pay somebody to kill him. Exactly. So like I said, I'm not defending Wendy at minimum. When that detective told her that Dan had been shot, there's not a fiber in my body that doesn't think her first reaction was they finally did it. I know what happened. Yeah, they did it. And by what happened, yeah. They did it.

And by the way, that's not even a leap. Like, that's not like some detective keep deep look. She literally vomited at the mouth and was like, hey, my brother has said he was gonna hire a hitman and they've made comments and I really hope- My family really hates him. They really hate him. Like, you don't understand.

They really hate him. Yeah, and she was like, I'm concerned what they're going to say. I mean, she was already processing it out loud. So it's not a big leap to say that's what she was thinking about when she initially heard. So fascinating stuff. Fascinating stuff. The fact that we're sitting here now, you know, and where the case stands as far as who's been charged, who hasn't.

It's interesting. And a lot of people in the comments said that they believe when she called her mother, one of the first things she said was, I'm at the police station because she wanted her mother to know where she was so that Donna wouldn't say something incriminating. Yeah.

And it wasn't even, you know, for me, it would have been like, if I'm Wendy calling my mom and I know my mom extremely well, I would obviously try not to get her in trouble by saying, hey, I'm at the police station. But for me personally, knowing my mom extremely well, I would obviously try not to get her in trouble by saying, hey, I'm at the police station. But for me personally, knowing my mom so well, I would be looking for how she responded because I would know instantly if she was involved or not

just by her response. You know what I mean? Like you call your mom and you ask her something. She may say one thing, but she's feeling another way and you can sense it. So I'm sure that's what Wendy was looking for as well. When she calls her mom like, hey, Dan was shot. He's not going to survive. And, you know, Donna's like, oh, oh, my God. And maybe Wendy's inside going, holy shit. Yeah, because the way I saw it was she was like, Dan's been shot.

And Donna's like, what? Oh, no. But like if you saw her, like if you saw her. And Donna's like, what? Oh, no. But like if you saw her, like if you saw her, she'd be like, what? Oh, no. This is horrible. And she's like punching the air and dancing, you know. So Wendy knew that she didn't know necessarily, but she sensed that they could have been responsible.

I don't even think that's up for debate. You know, it's like this with what she had heard in the past. And that's why I keep saying at minimum, because I'm sure other people feel very differently as far as her level of involvement. But at minimum, based on what she said to law enforcement that day on record and what she's told previous, you know, relation, you know, what she told Jeff, there's no disputing that anymore. She was aware that Charlie was contemplating having Dan Markell killed. And now I know the defense is that it was a joke later, but again, just to reiterate, if it were just a joke, she wouldn't be confiding in her boyfriend at the time about this comment that was made if she wasn't really concerned about it. Yeah. I have an older brother who's protective of me. And he has said in times when I've been in bad relationships, like, oh man, I'd like to kill this guy. But if somebody brought me into the police station and was like, your boyfriend was killed, I wouldn't be like, oh, my God, it was my brother. That would not be the first thing.

And I would absolutely say there's no way. Like, yeah, my brother's mad about it, but there's no way he did this. I'm not even considering it. I know my brother inside and out. He's not capable of murder. And she did not have that reaction. So let's move on. Because when Jeff was talking to the police at the time, he didn't remember exactly when Wendy had made that confidential statement to him about Charlie looking into the price of a hitman. But he later, he goes through

his texts, his calendar, and he goes back to the police and lets them know that she said this to him on June 14th. So this is just about a month before Dan Markell was killed. This guy's so inappropriate. We're sitting, please don't write this down. He's so inappropriate. We're sitting in the hot tub and he starts talking about sex acts with his girlfriend that he did to punish her for bad behavior in front of his sister. I'm like, this is the... And I didn't know what to do. I just met him.

I talked to him with my girlfriend. This is just so weird, you know. It's like this guy's social radar is way off. His sense of right and wrong, just norms, is just off. He set off my radar. Now, I don't know if he did this. But if you're looking at somebody, don't miss him. He takes sex tourism trips to South America to have sex with underage prostitutes.

He's- Wait a minute. Back up a second. Yeah. He takes sex tourism trips to South America to have sex with underage prostitutes. Sex tourism? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, South America. I'm kind of a shelter guy. Well, I was shocked not only that he would tell people he did that, but that he would tell his younger sister. That was strange to me. Very odd. And there's this odd dynamic between them. The whole family is real weird.

He talked in the hot tub about punishing a girl by anally violating her in front of Wendy and I, like bragging about the fact that he'd hurt this girl because she had got him in an uncomfortable situation. So he came off like an offender to me. He came off like a kind of sociopathic, like this is strange. He just met me and he's telling me this. It was really, really weird.

Yeah, Charlie's talking about punishing girls through anally violating them in front of his sisters. Just, just- Is it braggadocious? Yeah. Yeah, because she got him punched out at a wedding. Her Korean girlfriend then brought him as the only white guy to 400 Korean people and just him.

Some of the men took offense and he got punched out. Charlie did? Yeah. So the way he handled that was to anally violate her and then brag about it the next day. I mean, it was really, really weird. That had happened the day before y'all got in the hot tub? No, not the day. I misspoke there.

It was pretty recent. It wasn't that day, but it was last month, last couple weeks, something like that. So he goes to a Korean wedding as the only Anglo. Yeah, exactly. And some men took offense because he was a date for one of the Korean girls that was Anglican? Exactly. And he got punched. And he probably opened his mouth or something. He says he got soccer punched,

but I don't know. Okay, so he gets... and so his way of getting retribution is the girl that brought him to the wedding is to rape her? It was not rape. It wasn't rape. It was consensual sex, but he was bragging about the fact that he made it hurt a lot and that kind of stuff. And that was anal penetration issues he's bragging about. And it was 20 minutes after I met him. So I'm just like, this is not normal. This is strange. Guys will talk to their guy friends, although I've never said anything like that. I've never heard a woman.

So it just struck me as very, very odd. And I could also see him doing this without ever telling Wendy he didn't do it. I could see Wendy being innocent, puzzled, and Charlie did. I could totally see that. So yeah, he's very protective of her. He's also really cocky and arrogant and narcissistic. I wish you had him in front of you because I think he'd set off your alarm bells. Not as many did it, but he's aggressive, he's argumentative, he's focused on himself

completely. He's got three girlfriends at a time, which some people do that, I know, but no qualms about it, you know. So you think he may be good for it? Assuming this isn't a botched burglary or something like that, he's the first—a trolley popped into my head within twenty seconds of hearing this. I mean, there's all kinds of—just to give you some context, it may be helpful. Last summer, they were trying to figure out how to manipulate this divorce, or work the divorce, I guess, so they could get, you know, that bad fight, all this kind of stuff.

They were talking about Wendy converting the kids to Christianity just to annoy Danny. I mean, this has been a pitched battle, you know. I mean, she said it in a dead serious, chilling, uncomfortable kind of way. Not like I jolted around and liked to kill kill a dead Mark Carlisle sick of his shit. That's different. You know, this was like, she said confidentially. The family is so unhealthily enmeshed. So completely enmeshed.

That Wendy is not really an adult. When she drives to South Florida, every single time, those two parents drive up here and drive up there down. They don't trust her to drive from Tallahassee to Miami. They're just, it's not a normal family. It's not like she's a 35-year-old and has two kids and come down to see us. It's a complete omission. It's a matter of, they didn't pantalize her. She's considered the baby still. She's 35 years old. Probably protects her. So in that clip, we heard Jeff LaCase talk about how Charlie just says inappropriate things, talking about punishing his girlfriend sexually, how he participated in sex tourism, had sex with underage prostitutes.

You know, he also touches on the dynamics of the Adelson family, how they're so enmeshed. He said unhealthily enmeshed. And they don't treat Wendy as if she's a grown adult with children. They still treat her like the baby and they all protect her, especially Charlie, right? Now, this whole sex tourism thing, by the way, has been confirmed by friends of Charlie's, people who knew him. So why does this so badly remind me of Lori Vallow and Alex Cox? Alex Cox did the same thing, dude. Remember, he went to like different countries and hooked up with women who were in the sex industry.

He protected Lori at all costs. They were a little bit too close. People speculated on what their relationship actually was. The fact that Jeff is just blown away that Charlie is speaking about what he did to his girlfriend as far as like anally, you know, and violently, you know, having sex with her because he was trying to punish her for what had happened at this wedding. And he did this in front of his sister. Jeff is like, I don't even understand how this like who would talk about this stuff in front of their sister, much less somebody they just met 20 minutes ago. This is so weird. And to me, it just shows that Charlie Adelson is one cocky bastard, right? He's cocky. He's proud of these things. These things that normal society would look on as kind of like the whole moving money around, not being honest, talking about getting people killed,

sex tourism, what he did to his girlfriend after the wedding to just show her that he had power. This is like sociopath stuff because they're proud of it. They want to talk about it. They want to relive it by telling other people about it, even if you just met this person. And there's no shame there. And it's almost like I'm above the law. I have money. I have influence. I have power. And I can do all of this stuff and nothing is going to happen. No one's going to stop me. That's what it comes off to is me just very cocky and arrogant. And like Jeff said, really no social awareness about how bad it's making him sound, because in his head, he thinks like, I'm the man for doing this stuff. Aren't I cool because I'm

able to do this stuff? Aren't I powerful? So it's just really kind of disturbing. It is. And I think when you have someone like Charles and you talk about Alex from Lori Vallow's case, the reason you're seeing those similarities, because more than likely, if you were to analyze their brain under a microscope, it probably see some similarities there because they're both sociopaths in their own way to be able to do what they've done. And I mean, obviously Alex was, was even worse. He was carrying out the murders himself. Um, but, but yeah, everything you said, I, I, I second, obviously Charles has a lot of money, very successful, feels like he's untouchable, feels like the laws don't

apply to him. Those rules are not set for people in his position. And he has no problem bragging about that and letting everyone else in his circle know that. And that's how these guys get caught, right? They feel like they're untouchable and they're talking to the Jeff Lacasses of the world who don't see things the way they do. And although at the time they're trying to impress, uh, Wendy, so he's not going to say anything. If something like this happens, he's not going to defend you. He's not going to protect you. He's the, the floodgates will be open and he's going to be implicating you every extent he can in every way he can. And that's what he's doing here. And it all makes sense. It all adds up. It all sounds like a guy who, when someone tells him no, he can't handle it. And that's

when he escalates the level of force being used, which in this case was to have Dan Markell killed. Yeah, I agree with you. And I think like what you said about looking at their brains, Alex Cox and Charlie Adelson is probably spot on because what you'd probably see is an underdeveloped amygdala. Your decision making would be affected. Your impulsiveness would be, you know, higher because you don't have that that control over yourself. And Jeff Lacase says, you know, Charlie's a dentist and he's well respected and he's very wealthy, but he has friends on both sides of the tracks. And we're going to find out more about Charlie and how he viewed himself. I mean, this dude called himself the maestro. He felt like he was just here, like the king of the empire who has, you know, his mercenaries and then his subjects. And he's just pulling all the strings from his ivory tower and making things happen with his money and his power and his friends all over the place and people who are just like there to serve him. that he feels he can use regardless of what situation pops up. Is it a situation where it's

like a high society thing and he needs to get somebody to donate money or he needs to, you know, have somebody who's in a similar position of power help him? Or is it a kind of like other side of the track situation where it's like, well, I got to have someone killed or I need drugs or I need this done. And he's got people he can pull from to do all of these things for him. And this is exactly how he saw himself. Now, we're going to take a quick break. But when we come back, Jeffrey LaCase is going to continue his speculation with the Tallahassee police detectives. So, OK, we're back. So here's Jeffrey LaCase continuing to talk to the Tallahassee Police Department.

I don't think Charlie would have have done it by the way but uh he's one of these he's a real rich guy but he's got friends on both sides of the tracks and uh he's real street smart he's always trading and stuff like that and got this buddy that's in the special forces and so he's like a dentist but he's hanging out with guys that different social class actually and got anti-social impulsive angry fiercely protective of Wendy and I've heard him say I like to kill that motherfucker I mean I've heard him say that so many times I said that out loud do and I didn't do it but something different about Charlie he reminds me of my guy and I saw Charlie's an older brother yeah she's the baby girl She's the baby girl? She's the baby girl. Yeah. Out of Charlie, mom, dad, who else is there? It's just

Charlie, mom, dad. That's it. That's it. Alright, out of those three, you're saying Charlie would be would be the most volatile to do something. What would he do? He gave his buddy in the Special Forces to do this or he get some seedy guys down in the Cuban neighborhood or something like that. That's what he would do. Something like that. I guess the point is that Charlie doesn't just hang out with other dentists. He hangs out with all kinds of people, so it's not like he's some snobby dentist.

It's not going to happen. Damn. Jeff was on the trail there, Jeff. Maybe you should have been in law enforcement. That's why they call him Sherlock Holmes, because he like fucking nailed it. He's like maybe some guys from the Cuban neighborhood. I mean, he's like, hey, you want to look into this guy?

That's the guy I'd have right in front of me right now. This is how I think he'd do it. I mean, damn. Yeah, and that's what I'm saying. Like when I looked at the comments from last episode, there was people, a couple people, not many, but they were like, I don't really know how I feel about Jeff. Like he seems to be kind of like salty about Wendy. And yes, like, of course, because he definitely is. Yeah. He was manipulated. Right. Two things can be true, though. Yeah. He thought that she was like in it like he was. And then he found out she wasn't. And then he started to see who she really was. And he started to he so he always saw it, but he started to like accept it. And now he's like kind of pissed. Yeah. that he and Wendy had made plans to go to California to see his parents July 11th through the 17th, but Wendy canceled these plans on June 4th, stating that she was worried she would not be home for the boys on July 18th, which didn't make any sense to Jeff at that time because the boys were scheduled to be with their father that weekend and Wendy wouldn't have them, so why would she have to be home for

them? Now, the notes that were made from this conversation are as follows. Quote, in speaking to LaCase, he believes that Wendy Adelson may be indirectly responsible for the murder of her ex-husband, Daniel Markell. When I informed him that Wendy was not a suspect, he stated, well, she should be. End quote. In March, Jeffrey LaCase was back for another police interview, and he wanted to talk about how he'd really been thinking about things in hindsight, and he was feeling unsettled about Wendy. Danny had been describing Wendy as a pathological liar and a mentally ill narcissistic sociopath in a semi-joking manner.

But to you? To other people. I just got to the grapevine. Because people said, be careful with Wendy. She's a little unbalanced. And I said, well, she seems upset about her divorce be careful with Wendy. She's a little unbalanced. And I said, well, she seems upset about her divorce, but I don't know if she's unbalanced. I didn't take it seriously at the time.

That sounds extreme, right? I thought he's stupid, having a nasty divorce, he's calling names. I thought it was totally out of line. It's one of the reasons I was upset with him. Because you've seen the court documents. He got sick of her and went after her legally in a really aggressive way, not knowing the background. I thought it was inappropriate.

I thought it was taking things too far, trying to disbar your ex-wife. One impression I'm left with is—I don't think I said this before—in December and January, I thought that was totally out of line. By May—I don't know if those are technically the correct words—but by May, I knew exactly what he was talking about. This is a very troubled person, Wendy Adelson, deeply troubled person. At first, she's gorgeous, she's smart, she's funny. I might have fell for this girl like Quintana Briggs.

Most men would. I mean, that was one reason I stuck around too long. But just the overall impression of her,and Danny says this in court documents—actually a very manipulative person, a pathological liar. Wendy was an alcoholic while I was with her. She drank her dinner most nights. Extremely fragile, extremely depressed. Many, many nights sitting.

Hated Tallahassee so much that—I thought we were a bunch of country bumpkins and we liked Tallahassee so much that I thought we were a bunch of country bumpkins and we liked Tallahassee because she's from Miami. Didn't hide that fact. Thought it was bizarre that I moved here from Phoenix. And the two conversations that we had every single day for nine months were, Danny is an evil monster, and Tallahassee is the worst place in the world to live, and I can't believe I got stuck here because of Danny Markel. And she was obsessed with those two concepts. So I got really tired of hearing that, but I heard that every day for nine months. Wendy's very manipulative in that she plays the victim very, very easily.

Whenever we got into a confrontation, she'd pour me. But she just wasn't stable even in the fall. And able to cover it up here or there. One of these people, first 100 hours, you spend with her, you think she's amazing. 101, you're like, shit, what did I get myself into here? This person's kind of crazy. So we are going to come back to Jeffrey LaCase as we go through the series because he's going to testify a lot at the trial. But first, let's return to the days and weeks following Dan Markell's murder and the status of the investigation. All that law enforcement really had to go on was that the Prius that was

seen in Dan's neighborhood at the time of the crime and that they'd gathered surveillance video showing that the same vehicle had been following Dan all day. So police put their main focus on identifying that vehicle and who was driving it. On July 23rd, the Tallahassee Police Department released a photograph of the Prius, hoping that someone would recognize it and call in with a tip. But that did not happen. A subpoena was then sent to the Florida Department of Transportation requesting the sun-passed toll records on Alligator Alley I-75, which is west of Fort Lauderdale. And they requested that for July 16th and 18th of 2014. While they waited for that information, detectives also performed a tower dump, issuing warrants to the four phone carriers that owned towers in the city, and they were able to isolate all of the phone numbers that had

connected with towers near Dan Markell's home, his gym, and his children's preschool on July 18th. What is important to know is that by this time, the police were already working with a theory that someone in the Adelson family may have hired one or more people to kill Dan Markell, and this was not based only on interviews with Wendy and Jeff LaCase. Pretty much everyone the police talked to mentioned how much the Adelsons hated Dan, how mean they were to him, how contentious the divorce was, and how they didn't want to believe it, but they felt that someone in Wendy's family may have orchestrated this hit. The detectives assumed that if there was any truth to this, one of the Adelsons would have been in contact with their hired hands in the weeks and days leading up to the murder. Now, Sergeant Chris Corbett of the Tallahassee Police Department had

received specialized training in analyzing tower dumps, and he used software to compare phone numbers in the Adelson's records to numbers that had connected to towers along the route Dan took the morning of July 18, 2014. One phone number emerged from the search. Not only had this number connected to the T-Mobile tower near Dan's gym at 9.36 a.m. and 9.58 a.m., but that same number was found on Harvey Adelson's cell phone records from July 1st, 17 days before Dan Markell's murder, and Harvey Adelson is Wendy Adelson's father. Police traced this cell number back to an individual named Sigfrido Garcia, a Miami resident who had ties to the Latin Kings. From there, the police got a warrant for Garcia's cell phone

records so that they could see if any of his contacts had also been in Tallahassee on July 18th, and they discovered that one of Garcia's most frequently used contacts had also pinged at an AT&T tower near Dan's gym on the 18th. This cell phone also connected to a cell tower near Benton Hills on July 17th. The police traced this cell phone number to a man named Luis Rivera, who also lived in Miami and also had ties to a Miami gang called the Latin Syndicate. When the SunPass toll records were finally sent to the Tallahassee police, they discovered that only one Toyota Prius with a transponder fit the bill. It had arrived in Tallahassee on July 16th

and left the evening of July 18th. This allowed police to follow the transponder number to a rental car company in North Miami, and from this company's records, they found a July 15th rental agreement for the very same Prius under the name Luis Rivera. Sigfrido Garcia's name and number were also on this rental contract, listed as brother. The owner of the rental car company, Darren Schwart, also informed the police that he had GPS units installed in all of his cars. And this showed detectives that the specific Prius had been in Tallahassee at 1226 a.m. on July 18th, parked at the roadway in less than three miles from Dan Markell's Baton Hills home. From there, everything was pretty easily put together.

Rivera and Garcia had been in Tallahassee the previous night as well, checking into a budget inn at 1 a.m. on July 17th, and Rivera's bank records showed that he'd withdrawn money in Broward County just before 7 p.m. on July 18th. Surveillance video from the drive-thru ATM at that bank showed the same exact vehicle seen on surveillance at Premier Fitness and from the city buses, and in the driver's seat, there was Luis Rivera, while in the passenger seat next to him sat Sigfrido Garcia,

and you can clearly see this in the ATM camera. Now, Luis Rivera had been a member of the Latin Kings since the age of 10, and he was first arrested three years later for shooting another kid in the head with a BB gun. Diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder from a very young age, Rivera would remain on the radar of Miami law enforcement being known for his gang affiliation and his involvement in drug trafficking. Sigfrido Garcia was Luis's childhood friend. They'd grown up in the same neighborhood with the same challenges, and they considered each other to be as close as brothers. Even before he joined a gang, Garcia was having brushes with the law. He was arrested for the first time when he was only six years old, and he was once again arrested for setting fire to a house six years later,

so he was 12 when that happened. Garcia used weed and alcohol from a very young age, and by the time he was a teenager, he had upgraded to cocaine, and he was selling drugs so that he could afford to buy drugs for himself. At 17, he spent six months in jail after being caught breaking into a car, and at the age of 20, he was convicted for selling drugs and for witness intimidation. When Sigfrido Garcia was 21, he fell in love with a neighborhood girl named Catherine Magbunua, but he felt that she was out of his league. Catherine, or Katie as she was called, she was kind of a good girl. She got good grades in high school.

She didn't do drugs or take part in illegal activities. And while Katie was a student at Miami Dade Community College, she and Sigfrido lived together and she discovered that he was selling drugs and walking on the wrong side of the law. After dating for two years, Katie broke things off and moved to Orlando, where she majored in health services administration at the University of Central Florida. But she would find her heart softening towards Garcia when he was shot in December of 2005, almost losing his life. Sigfrido Garcia and Katie Magbuenua got back together and began living together in Orlando, and within a year, Katie had given birth to their first child, Ethan. When Katie graduated from college in 2007, the couple and their son moved back to the Miami area where Garcia kept out of trouble and tried to live a life on the straight and

narrow. Their second child, Kaylee, was born in 2012. And from all reports, Garcia was a good father. He didn't use any drugs or substances in front of his two children, and he wanted to be a better role model than his own father had been. But after more issues with the law and Garcia's drug and alcohol use ramping up after he was laid off from work in the summer of 2013, any effort the former bad boy was making to be a good man fell away, and when Katie found out that he'd been bragging to his friends about having sex with other women, she ended things for good. For Sigfrido Garcia, this was not going to be acceptable, because he loved Katie and he wanted to be a family with her and their two children, so he spent the next several years trying to get

her back. Katie had made her mind up, though, and she knew that there was better for her in the world. She focused on working so that she could support herself and her children, and in late 2013, she was employed at SoFi Dental Care and Orthodontics in South Beach, where she met Charlie Adelson, who at that time was a traveling periodontist. Charlie was smitten with Katie, and when she saw that this well-respected man who clearly had money and wasn't too hard on the eyes wanted her, she allowed herself to be taken in by Charlie and all of his charm. All right, so I want to go back to what you were saying a little while ago.

I don't want to skate over the investigation here or how they initially got onto Sigfredo. Obviously, we're going to talk about a lot, but before we do, let's take our break. We'll be right back. This is starting to, and you laid it out very succinctly. So there's,

I think everyone kind of followed you, but just to kind of recap here, because although you laid it out very seamlessly and it seems pretty simple, what was done here to link this all together? Not easy. And it probably took a lot of work, a lot of manpower, and a lot of analysis to put this all together, to get to the point where now you're talking about the background of Sigfredo Garcia because everything else was just done so perfectly, at least on the surface, the way it was written up in the affidavit. It was obviously spelled out very clearly for a judge, for a jury, et cetera.

One question I had for you was, and because I can't remember, you had mentioned that one of the cell phone records came back to Harvey Adelson in the beginning. Did it come back to Harvey Adelson's phone or a phone registered by Harvey Adelson in the beginning. Did it come back to Harvey Adelson's phone or a phone registered by Harvey Adelson? Harvey Adelson's phone. Okay. Interesting. The only reason I asked that, because I was uncertain of whether or not, because you just got into it before the break, where Katie started working for the practice. Not the Edelson's practice. She worked for another dental practice, but at that time, Charlie was traveling. He was a traveling periodontist. So he would basically just go to all of these other practices wherever he was needed. And that's where he met her. I

think she was working as a receptionist at that time. So I'm going to break my promise a little bit here and foreshadow. Eventually, Katie for and you're going to I'm sure you're going to get into it doesn't she work for Harvey's practice the family practice yeah I thought you had told me that but from what I could tell she never actually did but she was getting paid by them she was getting paid by them okay so that's still that's still up for debate if she was actually there working for him I don't think she was she was getting she was never physically there yes okay because I thought maybe they had gotten her a phone and that's why it was under Harvey's account.

But regardless, it doesn't really matter too much for the sake of this story. So to recap what you said there, as far as this vehicle, they use the tolls, they track this car, but simultaneously they're getting the phone dump from the towers. They start to cross reference the numbers based on where the cell phone towers were used in conjunction where Dan Markell was throughout that day, where he lives. And obviously, they start to find commonalities with certain numbers. And think about it. I don't know what came first, but based on how the affidavit was done, they're doing

two investigations here, right? They're doing a cell phone analysis, a cell phone investigation to see if anything is revealed during that angle of approach, right? And they come up with these names. They come up with Sigfredo Garcia. They come up with Luis Rivera. Okay. We have these names, maybe a nothing burger, maybe something. However, then like you said, they get the data from the Prius. They find out that it was a rental. They find out who rented that rental car. And sure enough, it's Alfredo Garcia. Well, now where there's smoke, there's fire. That's how these investigations happen. And I can tell you,

it's such a euphoric moment for an investigator because a lot of the times you'll find one angle that leads to a certain person, but then the other part of the investigation completely rules that person out. And then you got to go back to square one. But when it comes together like this, when you have, and it might've been multiple investigators working this, where they're following one lead, you're following the car lead. They come back to you with the cell phone lead and say, Hey, I got this name. And I go, Oh, I got this lead. They come back to you with the cell phone lead and say, Hey, I got this name. And I go, Oh, I got this lead and I got this name. And it's the same name. That's a high five moment. I can tell you right now. And then add that we're going to probably

have it up here. We can show it again. Add that to what you said about the ATM, where there's actually a photograph where you see Luis Rivera and Sigfredo Garcia in the vehicle driving it, which is important because it's one thing to say their cell phone was there. It's one thing to say they rented a car that was in the area, two plus two equals four, but they could still make a defense that, oh, someone's framing me. Well, yeah, now you got their faces on camera. So good luck ruling that one out inside the suspect vehicle, by the way. So just and by the way, this isn't the only part of this investigation that was done well. They're just getting started.

But they were off to a great start with some really great police work. But Sigfrido and Lewis, in that same vehicle, seen all over that surveillance, came into Tallahassee on the 16th, left the evening of the 18th after Dan Markell's murder. That ATM in Broward County was actually, you know, in the Miami area because Broward County is in the Miami area. So now they can put this vehicle coming from Miami, arriving in Tallahassee, leaving Tallahassee, driving back to Miami. And so it shows this route that they took. They came there to kill somebody. They did it. They went home. And now they've got like every step of the way. They have some sort of proof and evidence that these two men were the ones in that Prius scene in Dan's driveway. And these were the ones who killed him. Yep. And that's obviously a big piece of the puzzle, right? They know the who, they know the how, but now they got to figure out the why. What's the connection to these two individuals and Dan Markell? And that's where, again, just to keep saying it, that's where

the real, the genius comes in and the great investigative work comes into play. But they weren't trying to make a connection between those two individuals and Dan Markell because they were already suspicious of the Adelson family. So now that they'd identified these two hitmen, the next step was going to be establishing the link or the connection between Rivera and Garcia and the Adelson family. And this might have seemed like a difficult task since the Adelsons really didn't seem like the type of people who would associate with known gang members. But the Tallahassee police were sure that they were on the right path. The answer would once again be found in the cell phone records, where it was discovered that Sigfrido Garcia had almost 3,000 communications with Katie, who would be the key connection to the Adelsons. When investigators found the link between Garcia and Katie Maguonawa,

they also found the link between Katie and Charlie Adelson because her number appeared in Charlie's phone records more than 900 times between May and mid-July of 2014. On July 18, 2014, Katie was on the phone with Sigfrido Garcia at 12.01 a.m., and directly afterwards, she got on a call with Charlie that lasted from 12.07 until 12.14 a.m. Even though it was the very early hours of the morning, Charlie got off the phone with Katie and then called his mother, Donna Sue Adelson, at 1.02 a.m. And right after that,

he got on the phone with Katie again for 20 minutes. At 8.09 a.m., Donna called her daughter, Wendy. And Wendy also spoke on the phone with Charlie between 9.19 and 9.37 a.m. This is on the morning of July 18th, the same day that Dan Markell is killed. Charlie was then on the phone with Donna again, and just an hour before Dan Markell was shot, Charlie spoke to Katie Magmonawa another three times. Later that day, Charlie spoke to his mother from 11.22 to 11.29 a.m. This is right around the time that Dan Markell is going to be murdered. And then he called Katie and stayed on the phone with her from 11.31 to 11.36 a.m. I almost wonder if he did this specifically to give himself an alibi so that nobody could come and say like, oh, you did it. You were there. He's like, I'm on the phone with my mom. I'm on the phone with my girlfriend or, you know, I'm on the phone in general and nothing's happening because this is good. It's a good theory. I think honestly, they were just going over details, but you know,

it's, it's right around the time of the murder. So like what details have to be worked out besides maybe her saying like, okay, they're there. Are they doing it? Are they doing it? Where are they? Yeah. You know what's going on? I think at that moment, unless he's done this before, it's probably an adrenaline packed moment where he's about to have someone killed with his funds. Yeah, an adrenaline-packed moment that I have no doubt he enjoyed, by the way. I'm not saying you're wrong. Katie also got a call from the father of her children, Sigfrido Garcia, at 12.30 p.m. This is after Dan Markell's killed. This call lasted under a minute. Now, what do we know about these types of calls that last under a minute? This is the it's done call, right? Yeah. Police believe that

Rivera and Garcia had powered down their cell phones while they waited outside of Premier Fitness for Dan to finish his workout class. And the call that Garcia made to Katie at 1230 p.m. took place within minutes of his phone being turned back on. Police also believed, based on the transponder data, that the two hitmen were back in Miami by 7 p.m. because Garcia was on the phone with Katie at 7.10 p.m. and 8.05 p.m., and each of these calls were just one minute long. Katie then spoke on the phone with Charlie Adelson for three minutes at 8.36 p.m., and she was on the phone with Garcia an additional three times between 8.40 p.m. and 9.22 p.m. Between 9.22 and 10.22 p.m., Katie spoke to Charlie twice and Garcia once. And just after getting off the phone with Garcia at 10.22, cell tower data showed that he and Katie were at the

same location, and then there was no calls between them until 3 a.m. when Sigfrido tried to call Katie three times, but she didn't answer any of these three calls. So basically, at 10.22, they believe Sigfrido Garcia went to Katie's apartment and basically spent the night there. And then he left early in the early hours of the morning. And then that's when he started calling her, but she didn't pick up, most likely because she was asleep. And this same pattern of calls and communications also applied to the days leading up to Dan Markell's murder. On July 15th, Charlie Adelson and Katie Maguanawa had dinner together and then spent some time at Katie's apartment together before Charlie left just after 12.30 a.m. After Charlie had left, Katie called Sigfrido Garcia five times between 12.48 a.m. and 2 a.m. On July 16th, Luis Rivera rented the Silver Pine Micah Prius around 6.15 p.m.

And right after this, Charlie and Katie were having a phone conversation that lasted from 6.29 p.m. to 6.40 p.m. Between 8 p.m. and 9.30 p.m., Katie and Sigfrido Garcia had 30 separate calls and texts between them. When Garcia and Rivera drove from Miami to Tallahassee, Garcia and Katie spoke on the phone three times. They also texted each other. And the following day, July 17th, Garcia and Katie spoke on the phone nine separate times. According to the arrest warrant for Catherine Maguinawa, quote, cellular records show numerous contacts between Catherine Maguinawa and both Charlie Adelson and Sigfrido Garcia. On one occasion, telephone records show contact between both Garcia and Maguinawa's cell phone

and a cellular telephone registered to Harvey Adelson, Charlie's and Wendy's father. Specifically, on July 1, 2014, telephone tower location records show a flurry of communication between the alleged conspirators. On that day, Charlie and Magbunawa's cellular telephones were in the vicinity of Charlie's residence between 10.04 a.m. and 1.20 p.m., possibly indicating they were together. At approximately 11.47 a.m., Magbunawa's telephone began attempting to contact Garcia's telephone. Over the next five and a half hours, Maguinawa attempted to contact Garcia approximately 48 times. At 5.05 p.m., Maguinawa made contact with Garcia, and they appeared to have a conversation lasting 6 minutes and 22 seconds. Approximately nine minutes later, at 5.20 p.m., Garcia's cellular telephone attempted to contact Harvey's cellular telephone. The cellular

records indicate this call went to voicemail. There is no known reason for Garcia to call Harvey Adelson. Over the next two hours, there were several more contacts between the suspected conspirators. Mag Bonawa's telephone attempted to contact or did contact Garcia's telephone over 30 times. Then Mag Bonawa's telephone called Harvey's telephone at 7.43 p.m., which also appeared to go to voicemail. At 7.44 p.m., Meg Bonawa's telephone contacted Garcia's telephone with a call duration of 4 minutes and 33 seconds. At 8.29 p.m., Meg Bonawa and Charlie's telephone had contact for approximately three minutes. Immediately following this call at 8.33 p.m., Meg Bonawa's telephone again contacted Garcia's

telephone. At 9.07 p.m., Meg Bonawao's telephone again contacted Garcia's telephone. At 9.07 p.m., Mag Buonao and Charlie's telephones had contact for over 36 minutes. And at 9.44 p.m., they again had contact for over 13 minutes. At 9.58 p.m., Charlie's telephone attempted to contact Harvey, which appeared to go to voicemail. Throughout the remainder of the evening and night, there were numerous other contacts between Mag Bonal's telephone and Garcia's telephone, as well as Mag Bonal's telephone and Charlie's telephone, with all the calls ending just after midnight. At 1243 a.m. on July 2nd, 2014, Charlie's telephone contacted Harvey's telephone with the duration of 11 minutes and 42 seconds, end quote. So that's a lot of information. What do you take? What are you taking from that information?

Well, I mean, I can't go over every single detail, but it's obviously the pre-setup, the post-setup, during setup. You're showing a collaboration between the same people, and they're probably confirming facts, checking out facts, deciding on how things are going to occur, transactions and money, how it's all going to go down after the fact. And at the core of it all, you have Katie. Katie's the bridge between the Adelson's and Sigfredo Garcia, right? That's the whole bridge there. That's the common denominator. And I don't want to get too far ahead, but are you going to talk about the dynamic between Katie and Charles and Katie and Sigfredo and how that all kind of plays into this? Are we going to go, can we do that right now? Or do you have something

blocked off? I mean, we can, we can touch on that right now. I think we should take a quick break and come back and talk about that because I also want to ask you a specific question about that whole cell phone communication. Yeah, let's do that. All right. We're going to take our last break. We'll be right back. So we talk about the dynamics. I want to ask you about Harvey Adelson. So what we have here is Sigfrido Garcia calling Harvey. Looks like the call went to voicemail. Then we have Katie calling Harvey. Yes. Looks like the call went to voicemail. Charlie calls Harvey on July 2nd and has an over 11 minute conversation with him. Now, Harvey Adelson has not been charged with anything. And even Derek and I have kind of speculated, like, was he involved? Could he have known? It seems like Donna and Charlie were

trying to keep things from him. But also we have Katie and Sigfrido Garcia calling him. And then Charlie calls right after and has a lengthy conversation with him. So maybe it was Charlie calling to be like, oh, sorry, those people called you. I don't know what they wanted. Or or was he calling to be like, hey, those people called you for this reason and this is what's going on. But you don't need to know anything else for your own protection. What exactly was happening there with with Sigfrido and Katie both trying to get in contact with Harvey Adelson of all people. Well, this goes back to the question I was asking you earlier, and we're going to have to look into

it because I'm pretty confident that although the phone was registered to Harvey, it wasn't Harvey receiving those calls. Well, in the affidavit, it says they it does say a cell phone registered to Harvey, but then later it says they contacted Harvey, contacted Harvey's phone. So they're, they're making it, they are being very specific when they're saying this was not just a telephone number registered to him. It was Harvey's phone. They said that more than once in the affidavit.

I'm not disputing it was Harvey's phone. I'm not disputing that one bit. If it's Harvey's phone, it's Harvey's phone. It's registered to him. It's his phone. He owns it. But my, my thing is, I don't think it was him picking up. I don't think it was him using the phone. So who was Charlie having an over 11? You think he was, well,

why didn't he just call Donna? It's her husband's phone. Yeah, but they specifically distinguish between Donna's phone and this phone. I totally get it. Totally get that. But she could have been using both phones for that reason. I don't know. Obviously, I can't get into the mind of it. Totally get that. But she could have been using both phones for that reason. I don't know. Like, obviously, I can't get into the mind of it. From my understanding, and you've obviously gone a lot deeper than what I researched for Crime Feed, but my understanding, and this is hard to talk about without going ahead in the story, so I'm just not going to do it. it but there's indications based on what occurred after this as far as who was arrested that is indicative of this not being harvey having these communications with these individuals at this point um and that's all i'll say because i'm trying really hard not to spoil it but it's not hard to believe that donna because there's all of these interactions there's really not a lot of communication with donna's cell phone which leads me even more to believe that it's more than likely Donna on Harvey's phone communicating with Charlie and communicating with Katie. I don't think Harvey

was part of these calls. Now, I'm not saying Harvey wasn't involved. And in fact, there's someone in our YouTube comments, a couple of people were saying that there's been new information that's been released about Harvey and we'll get there. We got a lot to go. There has been, yes. There has been, and we're going to get there. But to where we are right now, I'm under the impression that although you're saying Harvey's phone, Harvey's phone, you're not wrong, but I am under the impression that it was donna on the other end of those calls that's my that's my thought yeah but so so but but again that's that's where i'm at on it but overall to take away from it i mean think about these calls think about how many are occurring and we said we could talk a little bit about the bridge you hit on it sigfredo has two kids with

katie yes from my understanding from what i was, Sigfredo still wanted to be with Katie. He was aware of Charlie Adelson. He was obviously not happy about it. Yeah, he was aware. Not happy about it. And I feel like there was some indications by Katie that if he had done this for her, they would be able to get back together. Like Charlie was going to be the money man, but ultimately this would allow them through the money they were going to get from this to go

on and live their life together. And I feel like that's why, cause you're asking yourself probably at this point, why is Sigfredo helping out a guy who's having sex with the, you know, the mother of his kids? Like why, why would he help him out? Well, there was a carrot being dangled in front of him by Katie. Katie obviously still has feelings for Charlie. She's not going to tell, she's not going to tell Sigfredo that. So she's trying to make Charlie happy while also getting Sigfredo to do the dirty work. It's a really, really shitty situation. I don't know what other way to put it, but it's a really crazy situation. And again, it just goes back to the theme of this could be a movie for

sure. Yes. And yeah, we will talk more about it, but it is important to understand that when Donna tried to flee the country and go to a country that did not have extradition with the United States, a one-way flight, Harvey was there with her. So at some point, he's going to have to ask questions or he's going to have to be told something by Donna or Charlie where it's like, yo, we gotta get out of here and I'm buying a one-way ticket

because we're not coming back because we could be arrested. And at that point, like, is he just going along with it? Is he like just completely blinded to what's happening? Or does he know a little bit to the point where he's going to be like, OK, let's pack and let's go and we'll and I'll get the details later, you know, because if my husband was like, we're out, we got to go into a non extradition extradition country, I would be like, well, I'm not going nowhere with you until you

explain to me what the hell's going on. And then at that point, if he told me, oh, we we had somebody killed for Wendy, we had Dan killed, I'd be like, no, I'm not going with you. I'm not going to implicate myself in this. So why would you go with her and implicate yourself at all if you had any idea what was going on? But why would you just go with her if you had no idea what was going on? Does that follow? Does that make sense? It makes sense. And I remember bringing this up and I'm glad I'm glad you kind of got to it because that's the that's what I was trying to allude to. So she was trying to flee from Miami Airport International Airport to Vietnam, which does not have an extraditable an extradition treaty with the United States. Correct. Yes. And she had talked about this in the past. Like I was she was either going to kill herself or flee to a non extraditable country. So this is all in line with it. And you're right. When they were trying to flee the country, when she was apprehended, Harvey was with her. Now I'm, I can't even begin to tell you the conversations that are happening between them. I completely agree with you. It might've been something last minute where she's

like, Harvey, I love you. Been together forever. I did something. I did something bad. We got to go now. I'll explain it when we get there. And maybe as a husband, he's like, yeah, I love you. Been together forever. I did something. I did something bad. We got to go now. I'll explain it when we get there. And maybe as a husband, he's like, yeah, I love you. Whatever we got to do, we're out of here. I'm leaving my whole life in the practice. I've spent my life building just on your word alone. She probably said, I'm sure at that point she might've said, again, I'm playing it on the, you know, the softer side of here. She might've said, I I'm involved, Dan, Mark, you know, Dan, we were, we're responsible. We got to go. And I'd be like, have a nice flight. Have a nice flight, Donna, because I am not going to tie

myself to you, lose everything because you did something stupid. And now you want me to look like your co-conspirator in this? Pass. I'm with you, but I will point out, because now that you've mentioned it, which is what I was getting to, although there's been new information we're going to talk about, it's important to know that when the law enforcement agents stop them at Miami International Airport, they arrest Donna Adelson, not Harvey Adelson. And so we can talk about it. We can speculate about it, which we should, but that's even more of a reason what I was kind of alluding to as far as the transactions, the calls. There's obviously a lot of work being done by law enforcement. And you don't think for a second that if there was something that indicated Harvey was in on it as well, they wouldn't have slapped

the cuffs on him also. And that maybe behind closed doors, they already believe he's involved, but they just don't have enough. That's probably all on the table, but that's what leads me to believe. And thank you for saying it. So now I can kind of bring it into my, my assessment here. don't have enough, that's probably all on the table. But that's what leads me to believe, and thank you for saying it so now I can kind of bring it into my assessment here. That's what leads me to believe more than likely the phone calls from Harvey's phone were more than likely made and received by Donna Adelson. And that's why at that point, at least, he wasn't arrested. Yeah. And I mean, there's people who speculate online and they think that there's some sort of like domino thing happening, like arrest one person after the other. And maybe they are

working with Harvey behind the scenes to get more information. And they're kind of like, listen, you're not like totally involved with this, but you're involved enough where we can make your life difficult. So like, tell us what you know that could be happening. We don't know what's happening behind the scenes. I also know that, again, there's new information, but there were points and indications throughout this investigation because obviously you're going to get into all of it. The Adelson's were being surveilled. They were recording. FBI was recording everything. You know, there were numerous calls and communications between Donna and Charlie that suggested they were trying to keep at least some of what they were doing

away from Harvey. They didn't want him to know about what they were carrying through with. So there is some separation there, but I'm with you though. I don't know how this all happens and Harvey's not aware of what's going on. He's obviously not a dumb guy. Yeah. And then she's like, we gotta go. And he's like, all right, I'm with you. No, it's kind of the same argument with Wendy too, right? Like, they're such a close-knit family. Everyone's talking about how tight they are and it's almost uncomfortable and weird. But yet we're supposed to believe that Wendy and Harvey had no clue what Charlie and Donna were doing. And that's tough to swallow. And I will say, we'll get more into this later, but it seemed Wendy was being a little bit more

careful. She was not necessarily doing all of her communications through her cellular device. There you go. She was using WhatsApp, which is encrypted. So maybe think about it. Again, not saying it's smart, because by the way, it's not. It's still your husband's phone. But she's thinking, Oh, I don't want my number to be the consistent number that keeps popping up. So this phone's nearby. It's within reach. Let me grab that one and make a couple of calls to kind of diversify and spread where the numbers are going in and out of. So if law enforcement does look at this, it just looks like Charlie's talking to his dad and his

mom, not just his mom all the time. That could have been the thought process. Who knows? But I know when you're giving that whole layout and if you followed everything she said right there with all those phone numbers and dates and times, God bless you because I was struggling there, but we got through it. We got through it. I mean, I think the basic thing to take away from that is around the time of the murder, there was a ton of communication. Yeah.

Amongst people that don't really know each other. Yes. And in that July 1st to July 2nd time period, just a few weeks before the murder, there was also an uptick in their communication. And that's going to make sense in a little bit because I believe that at that time, that's when they were sort of like planning all of this. So can I say one more thing that's important as a detective that calls all the history

that you're talking about? They're very important, very significant for the obvious reason of it seems like something's going on, but it's also important when comparing previous history. What I mean by that is you could argue that these calls happen all the time like this. These people just talk to each other a lot. So investigators are going to go pull their cell phone records from the weeks prior to this incident and see the type of communications that were going on between them to see, does Charlie talk to his mom like this all the time?

Does him and Katie talk all the time like this? Is this pattern of behavior consistent with the previous history, the previous phone communications? And more than likely, that was not the case. More than likely, these types of calls, this consistently were not happening. So seeing this anomaly amongst all of that communication over the previous months makes that series of calls between those individuals that much more significant. Yeah. And just look at what it means, right? So you'd have instances where, once again, Katie, the bridge, Katie talks to Charlie,

gets off the phone with Charlie, immediately calls Siegfriedo. Katie's talking on the phone with Siegfriedo, gets off the phone with Siegfriedo, immediately calls Charlie. She's transmitting the information between these two men. She's the middleman. So that there's no connection between them. But she's the connection between them, which I don't think they thought about. They're like, we're so slick. Katie, you're going to be the messenger. And that way there's no calls between Charlie Adelson

and Sigfrido Garcia, between Charlie Adelson and Luis Rivera. There's no calls between them. How could Charlie be responsible? Dude, it's no calls between them. How could Charlie be responsible? Dude, it's clear what happened here. You talked to Katie. Then Katie hung up with you, called Sigfredo to relay the information that you just said. She's the bridge. She's the connection. And you guys didn't think that. You thought you were too smart. You thought you were too cool for school. Charlie's probably thinking at that point, well, they're not going to be able to connect it because if they look at my phone records, they're going to see I was talking to my girlfriend or my ex-girlfriend. He could probably think he can say like, oh, this is just, you know, this just looks bad.

But I didn't know what they were planning. They were planning this. And I'm the patsy here, you know, and I didn't realize. They thought by hiring someone from Miami, someone from far away, law enforcement would never be able to tie these individuals back to Charlie. What they would have done if they were smart is have Sigfrido Garcia and Luis Rivera like go into Dan's house and like or steal his wallet at least or steal his computer or take something. That way it doesn't look like a personal hit. It looks like, oh, maybe some some guys in a gang saw Dan Markell and they were like, oh, he's a good target. Let's rob him and follow him home. And then they stole stuff from

him. And now Charlie can be like, I don't know what they were. They were just robbing him, like maybe because I was talking to Katie about Dan and my sister's marriage and they knew that Dan had money. And then maybe they just took it upon themselves to follow him because they knew he would be an easy mark. And I don't know what happened, but the fact that they didn't take anything and they just went there specifically to kill him. It looks bad. It looks bad. Yeah.

Yeah. And I mean, it's I'm sure Charlie and everybody else didn't think, including Sigfredo and Lewis, they didn't think that the police were going to be able to catch him on camera and do the research and track it all down and kind of reverse engineer everything. They're stupid because if they did, they wouldn't have done it that way. Right. Like, hey, that's why I keep saying when we cover these cases and it's a great thing for all of us. It's getting more and more difficult to commit a crime like this and get away with it with the digital data, the amount of surveillance cameras that are on everybody's house, bus stop camera, bus, you know, buses, cameras.

And if the law enforcement officers do their job and they really dig deep and they get creative, the resources and technology are out there to go back and look at what happened that day. They really are. And like I said, as more and more time goes on, the window of opportunity for these criminals is slowly shrinking, which is a great thing for everybody. Not the criminals, but for us. Yeah. And these stupid guys, Sigfrido Garcia and Luis Rivera, they were like, this is going to be great. We're going to rent a car. Nobody's going to be able to tie this car back. You're an idiot. Not only is there a rental agreement, but a lot of these rental car places do put GPS trackers. You dumbass, you would have been better off hot wiring a random car on the street using that,

getting rid of that shit, setting it on fire or breaking it down for parts, and it would never be tracked back to you. But you have a rental agreement with your name on it, you dumbass, and a GPS unit that's following your every move. And did you not think to ask, is there a GPS unit in here? Like they thought that they were like slick. If criminals were smart, they wouldn't get caught. Bingo. That's not an insult to law enforcement.

That's just we as detectives look for the mistakes. That's it. The less mistakes you made, the less opportunities for us to catch you. But when you have something like this where you make an abundance of mistakes, it makes the job pretty easy.

It makes it fun. Well, the GPS unit in that rented Prius that Garcia and Rivera had used to drive from Miami to Tallahassee, it showed that on July 15th, the car was located in the parking lot of Katie Magbuenao's residence in North Bay Village at 1025 p.m. And on the 16th, the Prius was traveling on I-10 in Jefferson County, Florida at 1130 p.m. And an hour later, the Prius was on North Monroe Street in East 6th Avenue in Tallahassee. On July 19th at 126 a.m., the Prius was then located at the address of Jessica Rodriguez. This is a previous girlfriend of Luis Rivera's and the mother of one of his children. So you've got them coming back late at, you know, around 7 p.m.

They're traveling from Tallahassee to Miami. Now they're in Miami at 1 o'clock in the morning. And the same Prius that they used to drive to Tallahassee and kill Dan Markell is at the residence of one of Luis Rivera's girlfriends. But that wasn't all because further investigation revealed that this had not been the first time Sigfrido Garcia and Luis Rivera had driven from Tallahassee to Miami. They had made that same trip six weeks prior on June 4th. The two left Miami at 3.13 a.m. and arrived in Tallahassee at 12.38 p.m. Sigfrido Garcia had rented a Hyundai Sonata from the Miami airport, and the GPS tracker in that vehicle showed that the two men and their rented car were in Winthrop Park. So this is one of the two parks in Benton Hills. And this specific park was within walking distance of Dan Markell's

Trescott Drive home. On June 5th, the car was once again in the Benton Hills area before it traveled back to Miami. So the investigators believe that this was sort of like the first attempt to kill Dan Markell and something happened. We're going to get more in depth in that, that prevented them from doing this. And of course, the investigators had to follow the money. And this will become a more detailed conversation later. But here are the basics, because it didn't take long for Rivera and Garcia to start throwing around some newly acquired cash. On July 26, 2014, Sigfrido Garcia purchased a 1984 blue Chevy Monte Carlo. On August 6, he purchased a 2000 Nissan Maxima. And on August 22, he bought a black and yellow 1997 Hyundai motorcycle. Luis Rivera purchased a 2003 Suzuki motorcycle on July 28, 2014. And by the way, they're posting this stuff on Facebook. Okay, so they're posting it on Facebook. Catherine Magbunawa began receiving regular checks from the Adelson Institute for Aesthetics starting in September of 2014, and they continued at least through January of 2016. The checks were usually in the amount of $407.58, and they were handwritten and signed by Donna Sue Adelson.

An investigation into Katie's bank accounts also showed an increase in cash deposits after the murder of Dan Markell. In the year leading up to July 18, 2014, Katie made cash deposits totaling approximately $15,000, with approximately $10,000 of that deposited in the last four months. In the year following the murder, Katie made cash deposits totaling approximately $44,000, and these deposits were made primarily through ATMs in increments between $300 and $2,000. From the time of Markell's murder through November of 2015, the total amount of cash that was deposited in Katie's account that police were able to track was over $56,000. On top of that, it was revealed that Katie had been driving around a 2001 Lexus LS430 sedan, which was registered to Harvey Adelson and had previously been driven by Charlie Adelson. On January 23, 2016, the title of that Lexus was transferred to Katie,

and motor vehicle records indicate the car was sold to her for $1,700. However, none of her bank records show a withdrawal for that amount, and the minimum retail value for that specific car was at least $6,000. The arrest warrant also states that pictures from Katie's Facebook page before and after the homicide show images of Katie with, quote, obvious breast enhancements following the murder, end quote. She got a boob job. Using all of this information, investigators concluded that after Wendy and Dan's divorce, Wendy's parents and brothers were determined to relocate her and the boys to South Florida. But after exhausting all efforts to force or compel Dan into agreeing to let Wendy and his sons move, Wendy's parents and brothers realized any hope of a legal situation to their problem was futile. Once they accepted this, the Adelsons arranged and paid for a professional hit on Dan Markell using Charlie's lover, Katie Magbonawa, as a

go-between. The theory was solid and had plenty of evidence to support it, but law enforcement needed something more concrete. And that is when they came up with a very clever and aggressive plan to get the co-conspirators panicked and talking to each other. And that's where we're going to pick up next time. And I know that you're very enthused to speak about this because this is where they brought in the FBI. This is where they started to get very creative. And the way that they get Donna and Charlie to start panicking and talking is brilliant, honestly. And it worked like a charm. Yeah, it worked like a charm. It's a common move we use as an investigative tactic. It doesn't always work out.

Actually, I would say probably it's a coin flip most of the time. Worked here. It's a totality, right? Like it's not only what we're going to talk about next week, which you definitely, we have video to support it. Don't go look it up. We're not just going to tell you about it. We're literally going to show you it. We're going to show you how this all came to be as far as, because at this point now there's a lot of surveillance footage being taken of the Adelson's, but it's in totality of where we are.

And the fact that law enforcement is able to do what we're going to talk about next week, because of the brilliant investigative work that's been done up to this point, they've been able to put all of this together just by that Prius, just by cell phone data, right? It wasn't like someone came forward immediately and said, Hey, here's what happened. Although Jeff did put some stuff in their ears. But I would argue that more than likely, even if Jeff hadn't come forward, they still would have gotten to this point. I don't think that Jeff's testimony or interview was like, oh, man, I guess we better look into Charles. I think they were talking to a lot of people and getting a lot of similar stories.

And then it's just a common sense. Like everybody, everybody, dude. Everybody. And it's just a common sense. Like everybody, everybody, dude. Everybody. And it's also just common sense, right? I mean, you can, as an investigator, you're going to look into the dynamics of the person who was shot. You're going to see who their enemies

would potentially be. And it's going to become very apparent quickly that obviously Wendy and Dan were in a very bad situation. And upon talking to Wendy and people that know her family, they're going to learn very quickly as well that as we've said throughout this episode,

the Adelson's despise Dan Markell. And so, yeah, that's a motive right there. That's your motive. So, and you're going to already go down that path regardless of who else comes forward. And as soon as they get the cell phone dump, as soon as they get a potential suspect vehicle, and it goes back to an episode or two ago where someone's watching that video surveillance footage of that gym parking lot and is monitoring all the vehicles

going in and out of that parking lot at that time, making note of every vehicle being seen. And they're comparing it to the witness testimony of the neighbor who saw the suspect vehicle fleeing the area. This is all done by human beings like you and I who have to put in the hours, who have to put in the work to create this narrative that we're now discussing with you guys. It's not an easy task to do. We shouldn't take it for granted. We see all the bad police works that that's done. We cover it a lot um this is one of the good ones so yeah i'm gonna talk a lot about it and i'm not gonna i'm not gonna hold back this episode this is good this is a good thing for me yeah i think i think it's and there's

so much still to talk about oh yeah 100 we're just getting we're just scratching the surface they basically warmed up here yeah they basically know at this point what happened why it happened but now they got to build the case what happened why it happened but now they got to build the case for the jury it's not about what again they could they could go in there and with just what they have and maybe maybe get a conviction but it'd be weak and a defense would probably rip a lot of it apart they need to leave no doubt and after you start hearing these next couple episodes i think it'll all be put together for most of you. There's not much left up to speculation at that point.

Yeah, exactly. Except for like maybe Wendy's part in it, Harvey's part in it, et cetera. Yeah, Wendy, Harvey. Yep, absolutely. But everything that Charlie and Donna Sue did and Katie and Luis and Sigfrido, it's pretty much laid out. And we're going to get into all of that. Absolutely. We appreciate you guys being here.

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Pocahontas. Yeah, I knew it. It sounded familiar. It sounded familiar. We appreciate you guys being here. Honestly, we have fun doing this. We hope you're enjoying these episodes, even though it's a tough topic to cover. There's a lot we can take from it, a lot we can learn from it.

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