Prosecutors in Florida on Friday rested the state’s case against a woman charged with orchestrating a murder-for-hire plot to kill her former son-in-law who was tied up in a messy custody dispute with her daughter in 2014.
The trial of Donna Adelson comes more than a decade after two hit men stalked and killed a law professor in Florida, Dan Markel, fatally shooting him in his Tallahassee garage.
Adelson, 75, faces life in prison if convicted of a first-degree murder charge. She’s also charged with conspiracy and solicitation to commit first-degree murder for Markel’s death.
Markel, 41, a Harvard law grad, was a prominent Florida State University law professor who shared custody of his two toddlers with his ex-wife, Wendi Adelson, in an ongoing custody dispute after their messy 2013 divorce.
The televised trial has featured evidence from an FBI sting operation and wiretapped phone calls and testimony from the defendant’s adult children, jailhouse informants and alleged co-conspirators — elements prosecutors say show Adelson was the mastermind of the murder-for-hire plot that she helped fund and conspired with her son for years to cover up.
Four other co-conspirators, including her son Charles Adelson, have already been convicted in the scheme that prosecutors allege the “domineering” matriarch put in motion.
Attorneys for Donna Adelson have said at trial that there’s no direct evidence proving that she actually planned the contract kill or helped fund it. They also said her son paid the hit men himself.
The judge didn’t push Adelson’s attorneys Friday to detail her defense case after prosecutors rested but her attorney indicated in a recent pretrial hearing that she would take the stand. Charles Adelson was not among the two dozen witnesses called by the state. It’s unclear if his mother’s attorneys will call him in her defense case.
The two hit men who carried out the killing were arrested in 2016, but it took years and the sting operation encircling the Adelson family before Charles Adelson was arrested in 2022.
Donna Adelson wasn’t charged until after Charles’ conviction in November 2023, arrested at the Miami Airport as she attempted to leave the country with a one-way ticket to Vietnam.
Katherine Magbanua, who the son was dating in 2014, ultimately was convicted in 2022 for her role in facilitating the murder plot. Her children’s father, Sigfredo Garcia, was convicted of killing Markel. He had help from his longtime friend Luis Rivera, a known Latin Kings gang member, who took a plea deal in 2016 and ultimately helped law enforcement tie Garcia, Magbanua and Charles Adelson to the crime.
Rivera testified at Donna Adelson’s trial about his cooperation with investigators which got him a more lenient sentence. Rivera said he knew Markel’s death was arranged to help Wendi get custody of her kids, but said he didn’t know who Donna was.
The jury saw records suggesting that Adelson, who lived with her husband in a luxury Miami condo, had the means to fund the murder plot that cost over $100,000 with their son, who worked with them at the family’s thriving dentistry practice.
Prosecutors showed extensive communications between mother and son illustrating their close relationship and how Donna kept track of things for Charles, who in turn solved all kinds of problems for her.
The jury saw how they spoke at length about Wendi’s divorce before Markel’s death.
Daughter, eldest son testify for prosecution
In 2013, after the divorce was finalized, Wendi Adelson, an attorney herself, hoped to relocate her sons to South Florida to be near her brother and parents. But a judge barred her from moving the kids away from Markel, who was based in Tallahassee, according to divorce records reviewed at trial.
Emails between Donna and Wendi showed how she pushed Wendi to pursue relocation to South Florida at any cost, including taunting her ex-husband with the possibility of converting their kids from Judaism to Catholicism, according to records put in evidence at Charles’ trial.
In emails around the time of the divorce, Donna Adelson suggested that Wendi offer her ex-husband $1 million to let the kids relocate. Donna said she’d split the cost with Wendi and Charles, who was also willing to chip in, according to the records.
Wendi testified at her mother’s trial that she never offered Markel the money, nor did her family, as far as she knew.
At her mother’s trial last week, Wendi Adelson testified that she hasn’t spoken to her mother since November 2023, around the time Donna Adelson was arrested. She testified that in October of that year her mother had encouraged her to testify in a way that would help her brother at his trial. Donna was upset with how her daughter testified, feeling like Wendi’s testimony wasn’t helpful to her brother, Wendi testified.
Prosecutor Georgia Cappleman questioned Wendi about things she said in her first interview with law enforcement hours after Markel was shot.
Wendi confirmed that she initially told investigators that she was concerned she’d be a suspect and also named her brother as someone who might be angry enough to harm Markel. Wendi also named her parents on that list but told investigators at the time she didn’t think they were capable of something like that.
Wendi several times denied having any involvement in or knowledge about a plot to kill her ex-husband.
When the prosecutors asked Wendi what information she had about her mother’s involvement in a plot to kill Markel, Wendi testified, “I don’t have any information.”
Wendi and her father have not been charged in connection with Markel’s murder.
In her final question on cross-examination, Donna Adelson’s attorney asked Wendi to confirm that anyone who was involved in Markel’s killing should be held responsible — including her.
“You testified on direct that anybody in your family that had anything to do with it should be held responsible, isn’t that correct?”
“Yes,” Wendi Adelson said.
“And that includes you, doesn’t it?”
“Anyone, anyone who’s responsible,” Wendi responded.
Donna Adelson’s eldest son, Rob Adelson, testified that he’s been estranged from his mother since 2016, around the time law enforcement arrested the gunmen who killed Markel.
Rob described the moment his mother told him Markel had been killed, calling it “one of those moments you’ll just remember forever.”
On that phone call Donna Adelson said Markel had been shot and later died of his injuries. She also said she’d been told, “Someone went to the front door and said, ‘Are you Dan Markel?’ and then shot him.”
He responded to his mother at the time, “Well, how could you know that?”
She said, “Well, that’s just what they’re telling us.”
On the stand, Rob Adelson testified, “That story bothered me a lot because there’s only one way you could hear that story.”
Rob also said his mother warned him not to cooperate with law enforcement, and when he said he’d been interviewed by the FBI, Donna said, “Well, you don’t know anything anyway.”
He testified that Markel’s death was not a topic for discussion with his family in the following years and Donna once said, “I don’t know and I don’t care. It doesn’t concern me.”
The last straw for Rob was in May 2016. He recalled feeling it was odd that he didn’t hear from his parents about the arrest of Garcia, one of the hit men.
When his mother called him for his wedding anniversary that happened to be two days after the arrest, Rob testified that he had to bring it up.
And when he did, Rob said he repeated it three times, “They made an arrest. They got the guy who killed Danny.”
Donna didn’t acknowledge the news and abruptly said she had to go and hung up, Rob testified. Rob said he hasn’t spoken to his mother since.
Sting operations and wiretaps
Katherine Magbanua, sitting on the witness stand in chains and an orange jumpsuit, told the jury that she believed Charles ferried information to his mother about the murder plot though he never explicitly said as much to her. She said that many times before the murder when Charles would discuss the arrangement with her, he would step away to call his mom.
Magbanua went to Charles Adelson’s house the night of the murder to get the money for herself and the two hit men, she testified. Charles told her at the time that his parents had just left his house. He also told her that the money was damp and moldy because his mother physically washed the money, Magbanua testified.
The night of the murder in July 2014, text message records show Donna Adelson texted her son, “outside your house.” Cell tower data submitted as evidence also suggested Adelson could’ve been driving in the area.
About three months after Markel’s murder, Magbanua testified that she began receiving paychecks from the Adelson Institute for Aesthetics & Implant Dentistry and that Charles would hand deliver them to her, usually several at one time, and Donna had always signed them.
Magbanua never actually worked for the family dental practice, she said, but received 44 checks until April 2016, around the time the FBI conducted an undercover operation to gather evidence against the Adelson family.
The jury also heard from an undercover FBI agent who described approaching Donna Adelson on the street in April 2016 purporting to threaten her with information about the murder-for-hire plot on behalf of Rivera, who was already in prison for another crime.
On a wiretapped phone line, Donna immediately called her son upset about the confrontation, telling him discreetly that they needed to meet in person to discuss the details, but said someone approached her with “paperwork” that probably involved both of them.
Magbanua testified that after the undercover agent approached Donna, Charles called her frantically about the situation even though they’d been long broken up. They spoke on the phone in code about the situation and met up several times as the agent followed up with Donna in a mailed letter and by phone and text message, text message records, recorded phone calls and surveilled meetings showed.
The jury also heard Magbanua on recorded calls enlist Garcia to look into the purported threat seemingly linked to the other hit man.
Eventually Donna personally called the undercover agent back, repeatedly insisting that she didn’t know anything about Markel’s murder.
“I know I lost my ex son-in-law. I did not have anything to do with this,” she said.
The agent, keeping up the ruse, continued to push her on the phone for several minutes.
She continued to deny any involvement. “That’s the problem. It’s not me. I have had a year of aggravation, a year and a half of aggravation over this. My daughter, my grandchildren. It is not me.”
Jailhouse informants take stand
Two women who were incarcerated with both Adelson and Magbanua testified Friday that Donna admitted to them she committed the crimes she’s accused of and promised to compensate them if they testified about Magbanua to help Adelson’s case.
Both women testified they instead opted to tell prosecutors about their interactions with Adelson and acknowledged they could get a break in their own prosecutions for their cooperation.
Patricia Byrd testified that when she slept near Adelson for several months in jail, she asked Donna if she did it.
“She said she did; it was to keep her grandkids but it wasn’t supposed to go that far,” Byrd said.
Adelson also promised her fellow inmate a tract of land and a trailer and to “have her husband fix my teeth” if she testified that Magbanua was extorting the Adelson family.
“She wanted me to say that Magbanua told me, ‘When we killed him, I knew my boyfriend’s parents had money.’”
Drina Bernhardt, another inmate confined with Adelson, testified that Donna called her “her jail daughter” and spoke often about the case, promising her $10,000 if she’d testify about Magbanua’s alleged extortion plot.
Bernhardt gave law enforcement her notebook containing a lengthy script Adelson penned for Bernhardt to study. The script wove a detailed narrative of Magbanua’s scheme to extort the Adelson family that she divulged to Bernhardt while they were incarcerated together.
An investigator later testified that the story Donna wanted Bernhardt to tell was consistent with claims Charles Adelson made when he testified in his own trial that Magbanua and the hit men were extorting him for years, threatening to hurt him and his parents if they didn’t pay them over $300,000.
A crime lab analyst testified that a forensic document examination confirmed that Adelson wrote the script. Donna Adelson’s attorney said the defense never contested that Donna wrote it.
The defense team poked holes in the women’s stories, pointing out inconsistencies in their prior statements, attacked their credibility and highlighted the leniency they stand to gain from cooperating against Adelson.
The defense is scheduled to start its case Tuesday.
