The Murder of Dan Markel: Inside the Adelson Family Conspiracy
By Trinity Barnette
Act 0: Before the Trial
Before the courtroom fireworks and wiretaps, this story starts with Dan Markel.
Dan wasn’t some shady figure caught up in the wrong crowd. He was a beloved Florida State University law professor, a brilliant mind in criminal law, and, most importantly, a devoted dad to his two young sons. By all accounts, he cared deeply about raising his kids and staying present in their lives.
But his personal life was messy. Dan married Wendi Adelson in 2006, and while they seemed like an academic power couple at first, things went downhill fast. In 2012, Wendi filed for divorce. What followed was a bitter custody battle that became the spark for everything that came later.
Wendi wanted to move with the kids down to Miami, where her parents (Donna and Harvey) lived. Dan refused. He wanted to keep his boys in Tallahassee, where he worked and where he believed they belonged. A judge agreed with him and denied Wendi’s request.
That ruling meant one thing: Wendi and the kids were staying in Tallahassee, much to the Adelson family’s fury. Donna, especially, could not stand the idea of her daughter being “trapped” there while Dan kept control.
On July 18, 2014, everything came crashing down. After dropping his sons off at preschool and hitting the gym, Dan returned home. As he pulled into his driveway, he was ambushed and shot in the head. Neighbors heard the bang, saw a car speeding off, and soon found Dan slumped over in his car. He died the next day in the hospital.
At first, the murder of a professor in his own driveway seemed shocking and senseless. But as investigators dug deeper, one theory rose to the surface: this wasn’t random. This was a murder-for-hire plot, born out of the custody battle and fueled by the Adelsons’ obsession with keeping Wendi and the boys in Miami.
Author’s Note
I watched the Charlie Adelson trial footage on the Law&Crime Network YouTube channel, So yes, I have the receipts—this isn’t just gossip, it’s straight from the courtroom.
Act I: Inside the Courtroom
Before we dive into the chaos that is the Adelson family, let’s start with how the two sides told the story in court.
The Prosecution’s Story (Sarah Dugan)
Motive: The Adelsons hated Dan Markel. Wendi was stuck in Tallahassee, Donna wanted her daughter and grandkids back in Miami, and Charlie was the fixer son willing to act.
The Murder: Sigfredo Garcia and Luis Rivera drove a Prius from Miami to Tallahassee and shot Dan in his driveway on July 18, 2014.
The Connection: Garcia’s girlfriend Katherine Magbanua just happened to also be Charlie’s girlfriend. Small world.
Money Trail: Katie suddenly had stacks of cash and even a payroll job at the Adelson Institute despite never working there.
The Bump & Wiretaps: A fake extortion attempt on Donna sent the family spiraling. Wiretaps captured Charlie basically narrating his own guilt.
Code Words: “TV” and “real estate” were not about Best Buy or condos.
Dolce Vita Tapes: Enhanced audio caught Charlie and Katie discussing the murder over dinner like it was a wine pairing.
The Witness: Rivera flipped, laying out the murder-for-hire plot piece by piece.
Bottom line: If you hire the gun, you own the bullet. Charlie is guilty as if he pulled the trigger.
Translation: Charlie thought he was slick, but he was basically auditioning for a true crime podcast with his own mouth.
The Defense’s Story (Daniel Rashbaum & Kate Myers)
Charlie the Dentist: A 46-year-old single periodontist with multiple practices, a lot of phone calls, and zero involvement in Wendi’s divorce.
The Hitman Joke: Charlie’s “TV is cheaper than a hitman” line was just a joke he repeated often. Bad humor ≠ conspiracy.
Million-Dollar Offer: Donna and Harvey supposedly offered Markel $1 million to let Wendi move, but Charlie wasn’t involved.
Katie & the Killers: Yes, Charlie dated Katie. Yes, Katie knew Garcia. But Charlie never officially met Garcia—who hated him and allegedly threatened him.
The Extortion Story: After the murder, Katie told Charlie the killers were her associates and demanded money. Payments that look like “murder money” were really “extortion money.”
The Bump: When Donna got that envelope, the family thought it was more extortion, not proof of guilt.
Timing: Why did it take six years to arrest Charlie if the state had all this evidence? Suspicious.
Custody Timeline: Dan had custody of the kids on both the attempt and the murder date, so Wendi wouldn’t have risked it.
Translation: Charlie is just an unlucky dentist who dated the wrong girl, told the wrong joke, and got shaken down for $100,000. Totally normal.
My Reaction
The prosecution crushed it. Sarah Dugan laid everything out clear, detailed, and airtight—I actually liked her delivery.
Meanwhile, Daniel Rashbaum… listen, he seems like a solid lawyer, but what is this story? “Charlie was just a dentist with bad jokes and worse girlfriends”? Please. Nobody is buying that—at least not me.
By the end, I was begging for his opening statement to wrap up. I swear it went on forever. When he finally stopped talking, I could’ve cheered. Lmao. At that point I needed to shut my laptop and go to sleep.
Act II: Meet the Adelsons
To understand how this all spiraled into murder, you’ve got to meet the Adelsons—a family that makes the Bluths from Arrested Development look functional.
If there were a Lifetime movie about this case, Donna would be the lead villain. She couldn’t stand her daughter being “trapped” in Tallahassee with her ex, so she allegedly orchestrated an entire murder plot to “fix” it. Later, when the walls closed in, she was caught at the airport with a one-way ticket to Vietnam — a country with no extradition treaty. Coincidence? Sure, Jan.
Dentist. Background character. More “supporting role” than lead, but definitely aware of what was going on. He and Donna once allegedly floated a million-dollar bribe to Dan to let Wendi move to Miami. Dan said no, and, well… here we are.
Charlie Adelson (The Fixer Son)
Periodontist, Ferrari owner, and proud mama’s boy. According to prosecutors, he was the middleman who turned his mom’s fury into action. He hired the killers through his girlfriend, Katie Magbanua, then spent years basically narrating his guilt on wiretaps. In November 2023, he was convicted of first-degree murder, solicitation, and conspiracy. Criminal mastermind? More like criminal amateur hour.
Dan’s ex and the spark that lit the whole mess. She wanted out of Tallahassee, wanted the kids in Miami, and wound up at the center of the custody battle that fueled the plot. Wendi has denied any involvement in the murder and has never been charged. Still, her name comes up so often in this saga you’d think she was on the prosecution’s payroll.
Robert Adelson (The Other Son)
He exists. Not much else to say. Robert stays out of the spotlight, but his name occasionally surfaces as part of the family picture. Think of him as the Adelson who managed not to end up on trial.
The Extended Cast
Because no crime saga is complete without its “friends of the family.”
Katherine “Katie” Magbanua — Charlie’s on-again, off-again girlfriend who linked the Adelsons to the shooters. She became the middlewoman in the murder plot, took money from Charlie, and ended up convicted herself. Currently serving life.
Sigfredo Garcia — Katie’s ex-boyfriend and father of her kids. One of the two men who drove to Tallahassee and pulled the trigger. Convicted of first-degree murder, now serving life.
Luis Rivera — Sigfredo’s close friend and the other hitman. He cooperated with prosecutors, pled guilty to second-degree murder, and testified against the others. Got 19 years instead of life.
The Charlie Adelson Trial
When Charlie Adelson finally went on trial in October 2023—almost nine years after Dan Markel’s murder—the prosecution came ready. Investigators had spent years methodically building their case, chasing every lead from phone records to family bank accounts. Charlie himself was arrested in April 2022, long after the hitmen and their go-between were already behind bars.
The state’s case leaned on evidence Charlie basically gift-wrapped for them:
Wiretaps & The Bump: The undercover sting in 2016 where an agent handed Donna Adelson a note set off a series of panicked phone calls. On the wires, Charlie practically narrated his guilt in real time.
Dolce Vita Tapes: Over dinner with Katherine Magbanua, Charlie casually discussed the murder, rental cars, and DNA evidence. Enhanced audio later made it undeniable what he was talking about.
Money Trail: Magbanua suddenly had stacks of cash and a no-show job at the Adelson Institute. Prosecutors argued it was Charlie paying her to funnel money to the hitmen.
Cell Tower Data: The hitmen’s phones pinged along the exact route from Miami to Tallahassee and near Dan’s house around the time of the shooting.
Luis Rivera’s Testimony: One of the shooters flipped, giving the jury a blow-by-blow of the road trip, the murder, and the payout—with Charlie as the middleman.
The defense clung to their story of Charlie being the victim of an extortion scheme, but the mountain of evidence told a different story. After an eight-day trial, the jury convicted Charlie on November 6, 2023 of first-degree murder, solicitation, and conspiracy.
Act III: The Fallout
Charlie’s conviction wasn’t the end of the Adelson family saga—it was just the beginning of the next chapter. Because if Charlie was the middleman, Donna Adelson was the matriarch who set the whole machine in motion.
Days after Charlie was found guilty, Donna made her move. On November 13, 2023, she showed up at Miami International Airport with her husband Harvey, luggage in hand, and a one-way ticket to Vietnam. Not Paris. Not Cancun. Vietnam—a country with no extradition treaty with the U.S.
Federal agents were waiting. Donna was arrested at the gate before she could board. Prosecutors later said she had liquidated assets, transferred property, and was preparing to disappear for good. Her lawyer, of course, swore she was just a distraught mother taking a “vacation.” Sure. Because when most people are devastated about their son getting life for murder, they book a one-way ticket to Southeast Asia. Totally normal behavior.
With Donna in custody, the state finally had the person they believed was the true puppet master behind the hit on Dan Markel. And unlike her son, Donna wouldn’t be able to talk her way out of the web of phone calls, wiretaps, and coded conversations that tied her to the conspiracy.
Donna on Trial
When Donna Adelson finally faced a jury in 2024, prosecutors painted her as the driving force behind Dan Markel’s murder. The evidence was brutal—calls where she discussed “options” to solve Wendi’s custody problem, the million-dollar bribe idea, and of course, her almost-getaway to Vietnam.
The defense tried the same tune Charlie’s lawyers had played: this was all just extortion, Donna was a loving mom caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the state was twisting innocent conversations into sinister plots. But jurors didn’t buy it.
Donna was convicted of first-degree murder, conspiracy, and solicitation in 2025. Just like her son, she was sentenced to life in prison.
Closing Thoughts
From a bitter divorce to a full-blown murder conspiracy, the Adelson saga is a chilling look at how far people will go when control, ego, and family pride take over. Dan Markel was a devoted father and respected professor who should still be here today. Instead, his life was cut short because the Adelsons couldn’t accept a judge’s ruling.
RIP Dan Markel.
