Daniel Eric Markel (Dan) and Wendi Jill Adelson went through a very bitter divorce process and a tumultuous custody battle for their two sons. Their divorce agreement stipulated that they shared 50/50 custody of the children. However, this agreement did not satisfy Wendi or her family.
On the morning of July 18, 2014, Dan drove his two sons to their daycare center. While driving, Dan made a phone call to a friend and mentioned that there was a car in his driveway that he didn’t recognize. Then, the friend heard “a loud grunt” sound on the phone, and the call ended; Dan had been shot. He was immediately transferred from the scene to the hospital, but unfortunately, the following day, 41-year-old Dan Markel died from his injuries.
Police spoke with people in the community to find out what they heard and saw. They first spoke with the neighbor who called 911 to report the shooting. The neighbor said that he heard the gunshot, so he immediately looked out of his window and saw a small silver or light-colored vehicle that looked like a Prius backing out of Dan’s driveway. This Prius and a SunPass transponder were both registered to a rental car company out of Miami, Florida. Using that information, police looked at the records of the people who rented a car from them in the days surrounding Dan’s murder. The police listed a name, Luis Rivera, and a second name was listed as the renter’s brother, Sigfredo Garcia. Both men were arrested in connection to Dan’s murder. Still, the question remained: why would these two random men, with no connection to Dan, make a seven-hour drive from Miami to North Florida just to kill a random man?
After Dan’s murder, police took Wendi in for questioning. Several hours into the questioning, Wendi brought up a man named Jeff, whom she had been dating. Jeff had started to become a bit more jealous and possessive, accusing her of still wanting to talk to Dan and having a relationship with him. Police were able to identify that Jeff had an alibi. However, Jeff was able to provide some useful information to the police. He did not think that Wendi had this much resentment toward her ex-husband to want to kill him, but he said that Wendi’s brother Charlie and her mother Donna hated Dan.
Police started looking to see if there were any connections between Charlie and Donna and the murder of Dan. As the investigation continued, the police began to look into the two murderers, Luis and Sigfredo. They found that Sigfredo had been in frequent contact with a woman named Katherine Magbanua. At that time, Katherine was dating Charlie Adelson, Wendi’s brother.
The theory was that Charlie and Donna wanted Dan gone, so Charlie spoke with his girlfriend Katherine, who happened to know a leader of the Latin Kings gang, who set up a murder-for-hire plot using Luis and took Sigfredo to carry it out. Charlie, Donna, and the rest of the family had enough money to put this kind of thing into action.
Police needed more proof, so after this, they looked into the financial records of Katherine Magbanua. They found that before Dan’s death, Katherine was employed at a Miami-area dental office. However, after the murder, Katherine started receiving checks from the Adelson Institute for Esthetics and Implant Dentistry. The checks started in September 2014, and the transactions were always made for the amount of $407.58, with each check signed by Donna. In the year following Dan’s murder, she deposited a total of $44,000 into her bank account. However, police performed surveillance on Katherine to find out what her day-to-day movements were like. At no point was she visiting the Adelson dental office. She did not seem to actually work for them.
So why were the Adelson’s paying money to Katherine? The thought here is that Donna and Charlie were paying Katherine money and taking care of her after she set the murder-for-hire plot in motion. As part of their investigation in April 2016, police were able to intercept multiple interactions and phone calls between the people believed to be involved.
An undercover officer approached Donna, essentially giving her an article about the murder. He said that his friend Tato, which was a nickname for Luis, was not being taken care of after what he did for them. He said that Tato told him everything, and if they didn’t pay $5,000, they were going to do something with the information they had about them. During the interaction with the undercover agent, they were able to wiretap the family. Officers heard Donna call Charlie, kind of freaking out that somebody had information about them and was asking for money. Then, Charlie contacted Katherine to explain the situation to her. Katherine is heard asking Charlie, “What kind of information does the man who approached Donna know?” Does he know the murder weapon? Can he describe the suspect? What else does he know about the murder. Charlie then explained that they needed to do whatever they could to stop those people from contacting the police if they knew anything. He suggested to Katherine that maybe they needed to make a one-time charity payment to the blackmailer, and if not, they would kill him.
The following day, police finally obtained a warrant and arrested Sigfredo. About a week later, on June 2, Luis was also arrested. Both were charged with first-degree murder. Luis actually worked with the prosecutors to accept a plea deal for his charges. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for providing the prosecution with more evidence to get Katherine arrested. At the time, Luis had been charged with an unrelated crime and was sentenced to 12 years for it. So, in exchange for his guilty plea, he was given a 19-year sentence to run concurrently with his 12-year sentence. Therefore, he would only be facing an additional 7 years in prison for his part in the murder.
Based on the evidence as well as the information police obtained from Luis, they finally arrested Katherine and charged her with first-degree murder. Five years after Dan Markel’s murder, the trial for murder began, and Katherine and Sigfredo were tried together. They were charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and solicitation of murder.
The prosecution argued that Donna Adelson hired Katherine, Luis, and Sigfredo to carry out a murder-for-hire plot to eliminate Dan. It seemed that based on when these payments started, they had been planning this for about a year, or at least for about four months.
Wendi was given immunity in exchange for her testimony at trial. According to investigators, it did not seem to them that she had any involvement, or at least any involvement that they could possibly prove. She testified that her brother joked about hiring a hitman, but she never thought he was serious. She did not think, and does not think, that Charlie is capable of killing Dan. They found that Sigfredo was guilty of first-degree murder. However, they were deadlocked when it came to Katherine. For the time being, Katherine was not convicted. For Sigfredo, the prosecution was seeking the death penalty, but after consideration, Sigfredo received a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
At the end of the second trial, the jury went in for their deliberations, and this time the jury came back with a solid decision. They found that now 38-year-old Katherine Magbanua was guilty of first-degree murder of Dan Markel. They stated that while she did not pull the trigger, she played a pivotal part as the middleman to lead the shooters to Dan.
In 2022, Charlie Adelson was arrested on April 21, 2022, and was charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and solicitation to commit murder.
On Monday, November 6, 2023, Adelson was convicted of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, and solicitation of first-degree murder. On Tuesday, December 12, 2023, he was sentenced to life in prison for first-degree murder, plus an additional 30 years each for the conspiracy and solicitation convictions.
On the evening of November 13, 2023, Donna Adelson, Markel’s former mother-in-law, was arrested at the Miami International Airport on a warrant from Leon County, apparently trying to flee to Vietnam, a country with no extradition treaty with the U.S. She is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and solicitation of murder.
Donna’s trial was set to begin on September 17, 2024, but proceedings were delayed when Donna Adelson’s attorney withdrew his representation of her on the first day of jury selection. A new trial date has been set for June 2025.
