Criminology - Dan Markel

Episode Date: November 26, 2023

On July 18th, 2014, 41-year-old Dan Markel was stalked and killed inside the garage of his Tallahassee, Florida home. There were very few clues early on in the investigation, but someone had seen a green Toyota Prius in the area. The authorities were certain Dan had been targeted for murder. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the murder of Dan Markel. It didn't take long for the authorities to focus on Dan's ex-wife Wendi and her family. As everything unraveled, the scope of those involved was shocking. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Listener discretion is advised. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 284 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Morford, how are you? I'm doing great. He just had a really nice Thanksgiving. How was yours? It was really good. We had a lot of people over. You and I are taping late on Friday because of Thanksgiving. So it's the day after people are out shopping, but we got to get it done, man. Yeah, it's hard to do when you got a little bit of that turkey juice in your system still

and you got to get that energy. We'll get there. We'll get there. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shoutouts. We had Alexandra Walsh, Callie Joseph, and Brittany Kaye Hobson. So that's a lot of great new support. We really appreciate it. Yeah.

Thank you so much to everyone that supports the show. it really helps us out. And for anyone else that would like to go to patreon.com slash criminology to sign up. All right. Let's go ahead and jump into this episode. And this week's case has been in the news many times. The victim's family has been waiting for justice for almost a decade.

Just weeks ago, days after a trial wrapped up and someone was convicted, another arrest came. And the case was making headlines again. There had been three trials. And now it looks like there will be at least. least another in the future. It's a complex web that investigators are still working to untangle for potential jurors. We are discussing the murder of Dan Markell near Tallahassee, Florida. On July 18, 2014, 41-year-old Dan Markell dropped off his kids, two sons, at Creative Preschool. Afterward, he went to work out at Premier Health and Fitness Center, and then he went to his home

in the Benton Hills neighborhood of Tallahassee. As he pulled into his garage, he was on the phone with a private school asking questions to see whether it would be a good fit for his sons. It was a totally normal day until 11 a.m. when he arrived at home. He told the person on the phone that he saw a car he didn't recognize pull into his driveway. Moments later, inside the garage of his house on Trescott Drive,

someone shot him twice in the head. One of Dan's neighbors heard the gunshots and went over to check on, Markell, but spotted him, injured inside his car, and called 911 for help at 11.02 a.m. Sadly, there was a 19-minute delay in first responders getting to Dan because the dispatcher made a mistake and prioritized the call incorrectly. An ambulance transported him to Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare, but it was too late and Dan Markell was pronounced dead the next day on July 19th. authorities were immediately sure that Dan had been specifically targeted for murder. There were very few clues in the early days of the investigation.

A light green Toyota Prius was spotted in the area at the time of the murder. Investigators also saw this Prius following Dan into the parking lot of Premier Health and Fitness Center. While he was inside the gym, the Prius parked in various spots at 10.38 a.m. When Dan left the gym, the Prius followed him out of the parking lot. So before we start diving into the murder of Dan Markell and just who was responsible, we need to talk a little bit about his background. Daniel Eric Markell was born in Canada. In 2001, he graduated from law school.

In 2005, he began working as a law professor at Florida State University. His wife, Wendy Adelson, was also a professor at FSU. The two were married on February 26, 2006, at Congregation Benai Israel in Boko-Raton, Florida. They had two young sons together. But after a decade of marriage, Wendy dropped a bomb on Dan. She filed for divorce on September 10, 2012, while Dan was away on business trip. And he didn't find out until he returned home to find his house empty. Wendy and their two sons, and most of the items that had been in the home, were gone.

One thing that was still there was the divorce papers left behind on a single crib mattress informing Dan of what was going on. Cruely, the papers were dated before he had even left for his business trip. Apparently, Wendy had been planning this for a while and it really blindsided Dan. This divorce was a long legal battle. In June 2013, Wendy filed a motion requesting to relocate the judge. children to Coral Springs, but on the 20th, it was denied by a judge. The two locations were about 600 miles apart, and the judge didn't find it in the best interest

of the children for them to have to travel six hours to see the other parent. By all accounts, Wendy was reportedly bitter about the judge's decision. She wanted to move the children to South Florida. To be with the rest of her family, there was also a job at a law firm waiting for her that would pay her more than her teaching position. So it sounds more, and we don't have every single detail, but as though,

you know, these two individuals that fell in love, they were pretty successful. They had two children. And then 10 years in, Wendy makes the decision that she wants out of the marriage. It happens. We know it happens.

And we don't know how long, you know, she had been planning, this, but it did seem to really blindside Dan. He just comes home from a trip. Everyone's gone. So my thought is, without having all the details of what was behind it, she had been planning it for some time, but he had no idea. Yeah, he must have been shocked when he came home to an empty house and not just the kids, but the belongings. I mean, try and put yourself in that situation, walking to a house and finding that, it's got to be pretty disturbing. You know, obviously,

we know relationships are different people are different people handle situations in different ways. But to me, it seems like that's not the norm. I think most couples that have been married 10 years and have kids together, if there's any problems, if one of them's thinking of leaving, I think there's usually a conversation, some kind of hint that, hey, this isn't working for me. I'm thinking about leaving, some kind of hint. but in this case it really seems as if if dan really was caught off guard here yeah i'm i'm with you i think that's that's one of the the thoughts that i had as well it's not an unusual scenario

with the exception that i do think by and large most often both parties are kind of in the loop that things aren't going well there may even be counseling but there's probably a a bunch of discussions about it. And that just doesn't seem to be the case here. A month later, on July 31, 2013, the divorce was finally resolved by a marital settlement agreement and granted by a judge. Of course, this wasn't the end of the disagreement between the two. There was still a matter of custody. Until the kids turned 18, Dan and Wendy would have to see each other and cooperate. They shared 50-50 custody and had to co-parent the boys. Dan had to pay Wendy $120,000 and $8,000.000. $8,000.000, $841 monthly for child support. Of course, an agreement on paper didn't mean that everything went

smoothly in practice. On February 14th, Valentine's Day, 2014, Dan filed a 14-page motion claiming that Wendy had filed misleading information with the court, misrepresenting her financial assets by over $240,000. And according to tallahassee.com, Dan had alleged that Wendy had stolen over $600,000 in cash, liquid equities, and other assets upon separation. On March 26, Dan filed a 16-page motion, this time asking a judge to enforce the parenting rules they had agreed to in their divorce settlement. The motion by Dan mentioned parental alienation efforts by Wendy's mother, Donna Adelson, according to tallahassee.com. Dan's kid said things like, Grandma says you're stupid.

and she says you're trying to take her sunshines away from her. On May 15th, 2014, a scheduled hearing was postponed. The hearing was regarding Dan Markell's motion to require that Wendy's mother, Donna Adelson, was supervised when they had visitation time with the children. He wasn't trying to stop her from seeing the kids, but wanted to prevent them from hearing her disparaging remarks. But then Dan was killed. So the hearing would not need to be rescheduled since the petitioner, Dan Markell, was now dead.

So we said that, you know, the divorce and the custody and all of that was contentious. And I think that's probably maybe a little bit of an understatement. It had major issues about finances. And then you have this motion by Dan basically saying that Wendy's mom was saying all these bad things about him to the point where he wanted her visitations to be supervised. I don't know how many grandmas would take that well. But again, we don't know what she was really saying, feeding the boys, if that was true. That's obviously not the best way to handle it.

Yeah, I think that's one of the ugly parts of divorces sometimes is you've got family members that get brought into it. then there's a bunch of he said, she said, or, you know, I heard this, and then there's bitter feelings. So it seems like this was really turning into an ugly situation. Yeah, no doubt it was. And then you have to look at it in the context of Dan's death, which obviously we're going to do. Naturally, Wendy was one of the first people police wanted to question when her ex-husband was murdered. The split hadn't been a good one. Wendy seemed cooperative when detectives questioned her, about Dan's murder. Whether she meant to her or not, she immediately implied that someone had killed her ex-husband for her, even though she had never asked for it to be done. She admitted to them that her

brother, Charlie, had once joked that a TV he was gifting to her was all he could afford. The hitman was out of his price range. One of Wendy's ex-boyfriends, Jeffrey Lacos, said something similar, according to the Tallahassee Democrat. In the summer of 2013, Charlie had looked into finding a hitman for just $15,000. Jeffrey LaClaas said it was a chilling statement, and I didn't give it a lot of thought at the time. Wendy also told investigators that her parents were extremely angry with Dan over the custody issues.

She seemed to be throwing out multiple people for police to look at. Well, we know that police are going to want to talk to Wendy. It's natural. She's the ex-wife. What I did think was very strange, morph, was that very quickly, it's almost as if she started throwing her. her own family members under the bus.

Yeah, this isn't a case of her throwing out people. She doesn't know that well. She doesn't like or maybe some shady, sketchy type characters that she, she's aware of. This is her own family, her own sibling and parents. In February 2015,

as the murder of Dan Markell continued to be investigated, a grand jury found that the delay in paramedics getting to the scene was unacceptable. It was due to human error. They weren't too far away or responding to other emergencies at the time. The person taking the call simply made a mistake that she just can't make when your job can mean life or death. As a result, the dispatcher who answered the call was reassigned. And part of their new duties didn't involve handling 911 calls.

It's not clear whether or not immediate medical attention would have saved Dan, but it was deemed. unacceptable. Later that year on July 17, 2015, the Tallahassee Police Department released new information to the public. In Dan's case, in hopes of renewing the public's attention after a year with no lease, authorities now believe that the Prius may not have belonged to the killer. A $100,000 reward for information was offered by an anonymous donor. By February 2016, authorities had released more information about the crime scene, including the fact that Dan Markel's keys were still in the ignition of his car when investigators secured the scene. The house was still locked. This was clearly no robbery. This key bit of information explains why

investigators immediately believe that Markel's murder was a targeted killing and that he was the intended victim. And more if I know, I've talked about this before, either on this podcast or my others, but that job of being a 911 dispatcher, I've talked with a number of people who do that job. You know the stress level is high. And I'm sure whoever this person was didn't do this on purpose. But this mistake obviously was huge. And I just said, we don't know if it would have saved Dan's life or not. But, you know, how bad would this person feel? And would they carry that with them for the rest of their life?

Yeah. And as you mentioned, they didn't do this on purpose. But at the same time, I can see why they took action to make sure that this person wasn't in charge of those situations where this could happen again because, you know, that's just something that you can't have when you're in that line of work. Well, there's a lot of jobs where you can make errors. and it's not going to affect anyone's life. Okay, you get fries instead of onion rings. You're not going to be happy, but you're not going to be in peril. And that's why, you know, there are just some jobs where,

unfortunately, you can't make a mistake. It's not clear how they came on to police radar, but investigators were looking at a man named Louis Rivera, a Latin king's gang member, and a woman named Catherine Magbanua. for possible involvement in Dan's murder. On April 19, 2016, an undercover FBI agent walked up to Wendy's mom,

Donna Adelson, outside of her condo in Miami, scaring her. He pretended to be Louis Rivera's brother and asked Donna for money. The entire interaction was captured on a nearby hidden camera, as well as a hidden microphone worn by the agent. He handed her an article about the case and written on it were a phone number and $5,000. The agent also,

mentioned that he knew that Catherine Magbenua, who went by Katie, was being taken care of financially. So this whole sting by the FBI was part of an operation called the bump. Investigators hoped that by pretending the Latin Kings were looking for more money, one of the Edelson's would talk. They did. Donna immediately called Charlie, not knowing that the line was tapped and being recorded. She told him that she had received some paperwork, as she called him. She also mentioned that she didn't want to discuss it over the phone, saying that a meeting the next day would be wonderful.

Before they hung up, she warned Charlie to bring cash to their meeting. Prompting him to ask her, is someone blackmailing? Well, she said, that is always a good possibility. The next day on April 20th, Wendy's brother, Charlie Edelson and Katie Magmanua went to the Dulcea Vita restaurant, where FBI agents recorded them. The restaurant was busy and loud, and there was a lot of noise from blenders and coffee grinders, but still, authorities were able to enhance the recording. According to the FBI transcript, Charlie said, If they had any evidence, we would have already gone to the airport.

He was partially right. Investigators had evidence, just not enough to guarantee a conviction yet. They kept building their case as their suspects in the Aedelson family grew more confident. The case got even more attention when it was featured on 2020. The episode, which aired on September 17th, discussed Dan Markell's murder and the Edelson's family connection to the case. So the one thing you would have to say is that authorities locked on to the family very quickly. And I'm sure that it had a lot to do with Wendy's comments that she made during her initial talks with police. She implicated her family.

Okay. Next thing you know, the FBI's involved. They're running a sting operation. They've got phone lines tapped and they're following people to restaurants. It seems whatever investigative leads they had to work must have panned out to get the FBI involved that quick and get this sting set up. Although there were no useful tips from the general public that resulted from the show, a huge break would come later in September. Luis Rivera turned on his childhood friend, Sigfrido Garcia, and implicated him in the murder of Dan Markell. He also named 34-year-old Catherine Magbanua

as the connection between them and Wendy's brother, Charlie Adelson. Katie and Charlie were dating at the time of Dan's murder. Sigfrido, who Luis Rivera implicated, is the father of Katie's two children. and Rivera was a mutual friend of theirs. Cell phone records showed that Rivera and Garcia traveled together from North Miami to Tallahassee on July 16, 2014. There's also surveillance video that shows the two together.

They arrived at their destination in Tallahassee near Dan Markel's home just after midnight on July 17th. Around 1 a.m., they checked into a motel on West Tennessee Street. An anonymous witness whose identity is being protected by law enforcement has admitted that they rented a motel room on North Monroe Street for Rivera and Garcia on the afternoon of July 17th. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder which emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved. until new technology allowed investigators to do

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This gripping new play. is filled with enough twists to leave even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, guessing what happens next. Sherlock Holmes at the Shaw. For best seats of best prices, go to Shawfest.com. The two men stocked Dan Markell through town the next morning, following them around from a distance in their rented Prius. At 10 a.m., they turned off their phones. At 12.29 p.m., Garcia's phone was turned back on.

He immediately called Katie. GPS put him in Lake City, Florida at the time of this call. At 6.46 p.m. Rivera used an ATM on the way back to North Miami. Surveillance footage from the drive-through ATM shows Rivera driving the Prius and Garcia sitting in the passenger seat. The case was really being solidified. Louis Rivera admitted that he, Katie Magbenua, and Garcia were paid $100,000 for the murder. They received it in cash that was stapled together. Garcia got $40,000. since he was the triggerman.

Rivera got $35,000. And Katie got the remaining $25,000. The two men didn't keep their windfall a secret. Both immediately went out and bought cars and motorcycles. So definitely the evidence was starting to come together. And we have something that you see in a lot of cases, especially where people are paid money to hurt someone, to kill someone.

They go out and they start spending. lavishly. They draw attention to themselves and they also kind of create a financial record of purchases that are going to have to be accounted for, right? At some point, where did you get that money? And it does seem to be the downfall for many people in these types of scenarios. It seemed like this development in the case, spooked Wendy Edelson. She changed the last name. of the two sons she had with Dan from his last name to hers. She also refused to let the Markell family

see the boys after the information from Garcia's arrest warrant was made public. Under Florida law, there was nothing that Dan's parents, Ruth and Phil, could do to force Wendy to let them see the children for any kind of visitation. According to the Markell's attorney,

Orrin Snyder, they have been denied any relationship with Dan's two young boys. their beloved grandsons since the death of their only son, which he calls an unimaginable cruelty. Investigators worked fast after Rivera's confession in September. Katie was arrested on October 1, 2016 in Broward County, Florida. She was charged with first-degree murder. Three days later, Louis Rivera pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.

He received the sentence of 19 years in prison. This sentence will run concurrently with his 12-year federal racketeer. sentence. Only seven years of his time will be exclusively for the murder. Prosecutors called his deal a necessary evil. Just one week after this, a jury found Siegfriedo Garcia guilty of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison. Rivera admitted to running the Prius, driving, and buying the 38-caliber revolver saying, I bought it on the corner. But it was Garcia who actually pulled the trigger. Rivera pulled the Prius into the driveway, and Garcia got out, rushing behind. Dan's car to make it to the driver's side. Rivera said that Garcia agreed to kill Dan for a lady

because the lady wanted her kids back, but that he hadn't been aware of this until they spoke in the car on the way to what Rivera thought was going to be a robbery. This lady, desperate for her kids that he referred to was Wendy Adelson. The green Toyota Prius used in the murder was run it on June 15th in North Miami. This was exactly one month after that supervised visitation had been scheduled. Katie Magnaua was simply their middleman. And I want to go back to, you know, these two sentences. We'll talk about Katie's in a little bit. But Garcia got life for, you know, being the trigger man.

Luis Rivera was already in deep water, I guess, with a 12 year sentence. And so he only got seven extra years. And you said it morph, but prosecutors called the deal a necessary evil. And I think you see this in a ton of cases where somebody did something they shouldn't have done. Now, in this case, it's not thought that, you know, he pulled the trigger, but he was involved. But to get other people convicted, there are some times where authorities give one or more individuals a deal. And I think that's where the necessary evil part comes in. Yeah.

And I think it's also interesting to see these people start, you know, these people are in a alliance together until it's time to save their own skin. And then all of a sudden they start spilling the beans. Well, this person did this. And, you know, this person was our middleman. And you start to see the dominoes fall when these people are trying to save their own hides. Yeah. Well, at the end of the day, you can talk about loyalty all you want, whether it's friendship or it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, blood, family. People tend to, when their backs are against the wall, look out for number one.

I mean, that's just a fact. Phone records backed up Katie's involvement in the murder. About 10 minutes after Dan Markell's murder, Charlie Edelson called Katie. They talked for just five minutes. An hour later, Garcia called her. This was his first call after turning his phone back on. A jury was unable to come to a unanimous decision in Katie Magbenua's trial and the judge declared a mistrial. A new trial was scheduled for April 2020. But due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was rescheduled so many times that it eventually had no planned date. In 2020, Ruth and Phil Markell backed the grandparents' visitations rights bill, also called the Markell Act. hoping that other families in their situation would not be helpless in the future.

The bill failed to pass the House in 2020 and 2021, but in 2022, Governor Ron DeSantis signed it in the law. On April 21st, 2022, Charlie Adelson was finally arrested in charge with first-degree murder, as well as conspiracy to commit murder and solicitation murder. Less than a month later, Katie Magbinuah's retrial finally began. And I did kind of want to talk about this grandparents visitation issue. You know, it really kind of hit me that how tough of a situation that would be. You know, when I think about my own life with my kids and we had our family here very close the entire time that they were growing up.

So there was a lot of visits to different grandparents' houses. and they were and continue to be very active in my kids' lives. I just wonder what it would be like to be that grandparent. You're so invested in your grandchild's life. And then all of a sudden, you are prohibited from having any contact whatsoever with them through no fault of your own, right? You haven't done anything wrong. And a lot of times in these situations, kids need their grandparents, you know,

help them get through what's going on between their own parents. So, you know, it can really turn into an ugly situation. And many times the grandparents sort of get a fallout. And unfortunately, that we see that a lot. On May 27th, 2022, after about eight hours of deliberation, a jury found Catherine Magbenua guilty of conspiracy, solicitation of murder and first degree murder. Just two months later, she was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. By September 2003, Catherine was ready to talk. She was now witness for the state against Charlie Edelson. She told the court, I believe that the truth needed to come out now so that the family can get some type of closure. According to Katie, the plan to kill Dan Markell began on October 31st, 2013.

the last Halloween that he would see. And you really have to take a look at this sentence that Catherine received. I mean, life in prison without the possibility of parole. And by all accounts, she was the middleman in this whole thing. She may have had less of a role, it sounds like, than even, you know, Luis Rivera, who got a very minimal sentence. So it's just the way that it, it, kind of plays out. Sometimes in the judicial system, whether somebody plays ball, whether they

decide to talk, be a witness up front, timing, right? Sometimes the first person to come forward and agree to a deal is the one that gets the sweetheart deal. And the people who hold out ultimately get, you know, very long sentences. Yeah, I think it just goes to show that if, you're connected to a crime, even if you're not the person pulling the trigger, driving the car to go there, they hold you equally accountable. It's sort of like the old saying, if, you know, if somebody robs a bank and you're the getaway driver and they get caught, you're just as guilty, you know, so they didn't want to see Katie get off here without the fullest extent of a punishment that she could receive. On October 23, 2003, Charlie Adelson's trial finally began. Judge Stephen Everett

threatened Wendy's parents, Donna and Harvey Aedelson, with contempt to try to get them to testify, but eventually they were dropped from the witness list for both the defense and the prosecution. On the stand, Charlie Adelson claimed that he too was a victim. He told the jury that a terrified Katie Magbenua had come to him that night, warning him that Dan had been murdered and that Charlie himself was next if he didn't come up with a third of a million dollars in the next 48 hours. By morning, he had stapled together $138,000, his entire life savings, and given it to Katie to put into her purse. He claimed he took an entire Xanax bar and fell asleep with her.

In the morning, she left the home with the cash. According to Charlie, she accepted that amount because he also agreed to pay her an additional $3,000 every month. Charlie says he didn't contact authorities because he was afraid he would be killed if he didn't comply with the instructions. he said in court, I thought about it, but I thought I would get killed. It's not going to bring Dan back. So I don't know what you make of this more. You know, we do see in a lot of cases where defendants, they're backed into a corner. You know, the state has evidence, the prosecution has evidence against them.

Well, how are they going to wiggle out of it? And in this case, Charlie claimed that, no, I was really a victim and that the money, I wasn't paying to have Dan killed. I was paying because I was told I was next. And therefore, obviously, I couldn't go to the authorities because I would be killed. It seems like a pretty far-fetched story. And, you know, I think it's clear here he took the stand in his own defense. where most murder defendants, their attorneys tell them not to do that. But I think here he had to do a hell mayor of some sort and tell the jury, this is what really

happened, you know, hoping that it would work. Assistant State Attorney Georgia Kaplanman scoffed it Charlie's claims, jokingly calling it extortion layaway. Katie Magbenua was getting paychecks from the Edelson Institute signed by Donna Adelson. she deposited cash and checks worth over $58,000, starting in July 2014. The family claimed that this money paid to Katie was not extortion, though. It was payment. Katie was employed at times at the Edelson Institute where Charlie was a periodontist.

She and Donna both worked at the front desk in the office. So it was a perfect way to move the money. A third of a million dollars seems like a lot. really weird amount. Charlie Aedleson claims that he and his family came up with an idea to pay Dan Markell $1 million so that he could move to Miami with his sons and be near Wendy. The money could pay for a place to stay, as well as flights back and forth to Tallahassee for work. Supposedly, Dan agreed to pay a third of the million dollars to help Wendy out. Because he and Katie were dating, Charlie discussed his plan with her, which is how she knew to extort him for that very specific,

very odd amount. So again, now I'll ask the same question. I mean, you know, how much sense does this really make? They're going to put together a package for Dan Markell of a million dollars just so that he'll move to Miami. Wendy can move. Wendy will be happy. They don't like Dan. We've talked about it. It just seems so strange that they would be willing to put together a million dollars for him. And then, you know, at some point, Charlie said, Dan agreed to pay a third of the million to Wendy. And that didn't make any sense to me. Yeah, I think this is all the result of Charlie just trying to save his own hide and throwing out one lie and then spinning it a little bit to explain why he's giving money. And I think that's what happens in this kind of scenario when you start lying and the lies get out of control.

And then they don't, they don't make any sense when you listen to them later, the way it doesn't make. sense to you. When asked if he caused Markell's death, Charlie Adelson replied absolutely no. He also explained that the comment about buying a TV instead of a hitman was just a joke. It was the stupidest thing I ever said in my life. No matter what he said, the jury had the secret video recorded during the sting operation and it was damaged. It seems that Charlie thought his reputation would save him, even if the men he hired turned on him. him, he figured he could eliminate that weak link by simply killing them if they talked. In the recording, Charlie said, guess what?

When the fucking police show up and there's a doctor, there's an oral surgeon standing there with a dead gang member in his driveway. They're not going to come down too hard on me. In that same recorded conversation that was played for the jury, Charlie told Katie, there's cameras everywhere. It was damning to the jury. In the video, he looks over his shoulder and says, how many cameras are in here? Five?

Explaining, they'd better be going in a place where there's not a chance that someone doesn't have a camera pointing at them. All of this was recorded on a camera that he failed to see concealed in a messenger bag on a nearby chair as he looked around, rightly paranoid. One of the most damning pieces of evidence regarding the conspiracy is Charlie Adelson's own words on that secret tape from Dulce Vita. He said, they didn't mention my name, which makes me think that these people only know part of the story. Katie was immediately suspicious of the entire thing. It seems like she was much more street smart than any of the Edelson's when Charlie described the man who approached his mother as well-dressed. She felt like something was off. She seems to be the one who wonders if the man could have been a cop.

Charlie responded, I wish that it was a cop playing games, adding, if they thought I had something to do with it, they would find me and they'd talk to me. Charlie was very adamant that authorities, quote, have to put. Fresh air, longer days, a chance to reset. This season let therapy be part of your spring cleaning. Clearing mental clutter, shaking off stuckness, and building something better. Grow therapy helps you get there.

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Growtherapy.com slash book now. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. Put you at the scene at the date to charge you. He felt that he and Katie were safe from prosecution. When he considered paying this blackmail, he told Katie, I don't have a problem helping the community out, but I don't want this community to come back next month. He also tried to skirt around the issue while telling Katie he was going to play hardball,

saying, if you're blackmailing somebody who potentially had the ability to get something like this done, you've got a fucking set of balls because they may make you shut up real quick, he warned. Katie Magbenu was very clear on the stand that she had wanted to protect Garcia, the father of her children, when asked why she didn't come clean about Charlie Edelson, and her only reason was that she would have to implicate Garcia and the murder too. Katie tried to claim that Garcia wasn't even at the scene of Dan's murder,

despite having driven down there for the job. She says he was high on drugs at the hotel and that Luis Rivera was the one who shot Dan. But that's exactly what you might expect her to come up with to try to cooperate with police, but protect her children's father at the same time. In November 6, 2003, after around three hours of deliberation, the jury found Charlie Edelson guilty. Dan's sister, Shelley Markell, told tallahassee.com, there's a real sense of relief today. Of course, the big question now was whether or not we would see any more arrest. At trial, there was a diagram shown.

It's a circle with photos of the people involved in Dan's murder. On the right as Dan, a line goes from Dan to his killers, Garcia and Rivera. From them, a line goes to Katie Magbenua. And from her, a line connects four of the Aedelson's, Charlie, Donna, Harvey, and Wendy. Back to Dan. When asked about the diagram and if more arrests could come, Assistant State Attorney Georgia Kaplanman told tallahassee.com, I don't know the answer to that.

So stay tuned. Though it may seem obvious to some people that other members of Charlie Aedelson's family, We're involved in Dan's murder. You only have one chance to prove that to a jury and you can't make any mistakes. Assistant State Attorney Kauffleman said, I don't take lightly charging somebody with murder and I'm only going to get one shot. So I want to make sure that it's our best effort. And I think this is a very astute comment because I don't think we should be charging people without the evidence.

without the evidence to back it up. Now, does that mean that a conviction is assured? No, it never means that. But I'll tell you what, man, in some of these cases where people are convicted and it later turns out that they didn't do it, when you go back and you look at the evidence, it was thin, it was flimsy.

And you could definitely make the argument that they never should have even moved forward. forward with what they had. But yet they were somehow able to get a jury to convict someone. Yeah. And the worst thing would be to see, you know, this whole group of people involved in this murder and they somehow convict all of them but one because they didn't have the right evidence for that one person. So I could clearly see why they would want to be safe here and make sure they've got everything they need, that when they do bring charges and they go to court, that they're not going to slip through the crack somehow.

As it turned out, people didn't have to stay tuned for very long. Just after 10 p.m. on November 13, 2013, 23, 73-year-old Donna Edelson was arrested trying to flee the country with her husband, Harvey. When she was found at Miami International Airport, she had a one-way ticket to Vietnam, that she had booked the day after Charlie was found guilty. There's no extradition treaty between Vietnam. in the United States. Authorities were forced to move quickly or lose her chance of getting complete justice for Dan Markell. Detectives were ready to move because Donna had accidentally tipped them off

to her plans by discussing them with Charlie on the phone after he was convicted. All calls with inmates are recorded, capturing Donna as she informed Charlie that she was thinking of taking her own life, or alternatively, of flying to a country that she couldn't be extradited from. She also talked to Charlie about setting up trust for the grandchildren, implying she wouldn't be around to take care of them financially. Interestingly, if Donna had testified at Charlie's trial, anything she said at trial would not have been used to prosecute her in the future, but she refused to testify or even sit for an interview with prosecutors.

This arrest, the fifth related to the murder, came just eight months short of the 10-year anniversary of Dan's murder. Donna now faces charges of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and solicitation of murder, identical to her son Charlie's charges. If you want to know how much knowledge Donna had of plans to murder her former son-in-law, consider this. When looking at Donna's phone records, Charlie called Donna right after Dan was murdered. They spoke for seven minutes before he called Katie Maggiore.

Benua. Now, we don't know exactly what was said on this phone call, but it's really hard to believe that it didn't have something to do with Dan's murder, the timing, the fact that, you know, he called Donna before he called Katie. And it came so quickly after the murder. I think you can really kind of read between the lines on that one. A grand jury was scheduled to meet in Leon County, less than two days after Donna tried to flee to Vietnam. In order to secure a first-degree murder charge, prosecutors must first hold a grand jury. I guess this only sped the inevitable up.

Donna Edelson is being held without bond at the Miami-Dade Turner-Gilford-Night Correctional Center. At her first hearing, she appeared in an anti-self-harm suit. Although he wasn't arrested with Donna, Harvey Adelson didn't fly to Vietnam. He's one of the two remaining pictures on that diagram of connections shown at trial. The circle went in order. Rivera, guilty, but will one day be free. Garcia and then Magbenua, both serving life sentences. Charlie, guilty. Donna, arrested, Harvey, and then finally we have to assume that the last piece of the puzzle is Dan's ex-wife, Wendy. We should point out, Wendy Adelson has not been arrested or charged. And her ex-husband, Dan Markell's murder, she maintains her innocence and has always said,

She does not believe her brother was truly capable of something like this. Unlike her parents, she took the deal to testify, and nothing she said on the stand can ever be used against her. If charges are coming for Wendy, it won't be from anything she told the jury. The state isn't going to decide to arrest me. She testified with a smock. Charles Edelson will be formerly sentenced in December. It's likely that he'll join Katie and Garcia,

and receive a life sentence. It's entirely possible that only Rivera, who gave information on the other key actors in this case, will one day walk free. If Wendy is involved at all, her silence may have paid off. We'll have to wait and find out if authorities decide to charge her. It's already been almost 10 years.

I'm sure after a decade, the Markell family is ready for justice. Yeah, I'm sure they are. You know, as we wrap this one up more, there is a lot going on here. and you have a number of people involved, essentially a lot of those people pointing the finger at others. And this is an interesting case from the standpoint that,

you know, there has been resolution involving some of the participants. But there's still some things left to be decided. We still have to wait to see what sentence, Charlie receives, we know what we think it might be. And then Donna's trial is still yet to come. But for me, it's really hard to believe that Wendy didn't know anything about what was going on. Now, that could be the case. It's just hard to believe. And, you know, you said something about her silence paying off. And I think that may be absolutely true. You know, a lot of times. we talk about how, you know, people really trip themselves up by talking. And it's why defense

attorneys tell people from the start, don't talk. Don't say anything if, if, you know, I'm not present or or anything like that because most often bad things result from people talking. You go back to that whole conversation about people trying to work their way out of a situation. And how many times does it happen? They're not smart enough to out with the authorities in most instances. They can't keep their lies straight from one lie to another. And again, I'm not saying that Wendy is involved. What I am saying is that it's hard to believe that, you know, her,

brother, her mother, all of these individuals would go through all of this for her, and she would be completely in the dark. Yeah, it's mind-boggling that if she is involved, this would truly be a family affair. And it's just shocking that not one person in the family would say, wait a minute, this is a bad idea. Somebody would, would, you would think, would come to their senses and say, okay, this isn't going to work. This, we're all going to. to go to jail and this is very serious. There's got to be another way, but that didn't happen here. And, you know, if it, if it turns out Wendy is involved, then it'll be a complete family conspiracy to commit Dan's murder. Yeah, and I love my family and I close to them, but I can assure

you that if one of them ever came up with a plan that says, hey, I think we should try and take out so-and-so, I'm going to be one of the persons that's going to say, no, that's not going to happen. Well, it's one of the things in some of these cases that I just will never understand. Because you can picture someone starting that conversation, right? Everybody is sitting around. Someone has to be the first person to bring it up. And then everyone else has to, in their mind, think, yeah, that seems like a good idea. And I just can never understand that.

You had to not have one person be the voice of reason out of multiple people. It's just, it's mind boggle. No, it really is. So some things are known, some things will be known in the near future. And then there's still a little bit of unknown. Number one, the outcome of Donna's trial. And then I think number two, will authorities ever put enough together to implicate Wendy? And, you know, it's been, what, almost 10 years now, but things have been happening recently.

So it's, it's not out of the question. Yeah, one thing that I think gets lost in this whole case is Dan's kids, because now they've got multiple family members they've lost that are going to be in jail. The grandparents, a lot of kids are very close to their grandparents. Their grandmother looks like she'll be going to jail. And then they've got suspicion now, or they'll have suspicion, possibly that their mom was involved in Dan's death as well. So you've got to feel for these kids at the end of the day. Yeah, absolutely. We have no idea what their feelings are on it. Are they,

you know, staunchly behind their mother? Are they suspicious? Will they one day become suspicious of her? You just don't know. But the one thing you can say for sure is that there's no way. All of this happens within a family and it doesn't affect. those kids in some way it has to and it's going to be negative the facts are going to be negative but that's it for our episode on dan markell if you love the show but you haven't done so yet take a minute go out give us a five-star rating you can leave a review also keep telling your friends that word of mouth about the criminology podcast really helps us out if you want to find us on social media, we're on X with a handle at Criminology Pod. Or you can find us on Facebook at

Facebook.com slash criminology podcast. And you can join our Facebook discussion group, criminology podcast discussion and fans. So that's it for another episode of criminology. But Morp and I will be back with all of you next Saturday night with a brand new episode. So for Mike and Morph, we'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.