Nearly eight years after FSU law professor Dan Markel was gunned down in his Betton Hills garage by hired hitmen, his former brother-in-law has been arrested in connection with his killing.
Charlie Adelson was booked, according to Broward County Jail records, on charges of first degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and solicitation of murder. He was taken into custody at his home by the U.S. Marshals Service.
The news was a Thursday morning bombshell in one of the capital city’s highest profile cases – one that has been chronicled for years by the Tallahassee Democrat and around the globe on true crime drama television shows ranging from Dateline to 20/20.
Chronicling the case:
The booking documents do not detail the crimes he is accused of committing.
However, State attorney Jack Campbell said Adelson was indicted Wednesday by a Leon County Grand Jury in connection to Markel’s July 2014 shooting in Tallahassee, which investigators say was a murder-for-hire financed by his in-laws.
Campbell said newly enhanced audio from a secret recording done at a South Florida restaurant led to Adelson’s arrest. He also lauded the extensive work of investigators.
“That’s the new evidence,” Campbell said. “We’ve been able to hear things from the Dolche video that we weren’t able to hear until this most recent enhancement. We’ve never stopped working it and we appreciate the efforts of all of our law enforcement partners.”
The so-called Dolce Vida recording, taken in 2016 by FBI agents at the Miami restaurant of the same name, captures a conversation between Katherine Magbanua and Charlie Adelson in which they allegedly discuss undercover agents approaching his mom about Markel’s shooting, which prosecutors say detail the chain of information flow about the murder conspiracy.
Up until recently, when the audio was enhanced by a specialist, much of the conversation was inaudible.
Adelson is charged with the same offenses as Sigfredo Garcia, the gunman who drove to Tallahassee and shot Markel and Magbanua, who is set to stand trial May 16.
Adelson’s attorney David Oscar Markus said his client was innocent and chided prosecutors for the timing of the arrest, which comes just 25 days before Magbanua is set to stand trial.
“Charlie is innocent and the prosecutors have no new information that led to this arrest,” Markus said in a text. “The timing sure does stink, doesn’t it? On the eve of a long-awaited trial of Katie, this move has the smell of desperation.”
Sigfredo in the spotlight:
Adelson, a Fort Lauderdale dentist, and his mother Donna Adelson have been implicated in Markel’s murder from the start.
Investigators say the motive for the murder “stemmed from the desperate desire of the Adelson family” that Markel’s ex-wife Wendi Adelson and the couple’s two young sons be allowed to move to South Florida.
Inside the Divorce:Markel, Adelson sparred up to the end
The link between Markel, the Adelson family and the two alleged hitmen, prosecutors say, is Magbanua, a woman who worked in the Adelson’s dental office and is a former girlfriend of Charlie Adelson.
She is also the mother of two of Garcia’s children.
Magbanua was one of Charles Adelson’s top cell phone contacts around the time Markel was killed and was the first person Garcia called after the murder.
Police say email evidence indicated Adelson’s parents, particularly her mother Donna Adelson, wanted her daughter to “coerce” Markel into allowing the boys to move to South Florida.
Garcia and his childhood friend Luis Rivera were “enlisted” to kill Markel, court records say. Investigators say the two men drove from Miami in the rented Prius two days before the killing and stayed in a series of hotel rooms.
During Garcia’s trial in 2019, Wendi Adelson told jurors she didn’t believe her brother had a hand in Markel’s murder.
She testified that her brother gave her a television as a divorce present after she split up with Markel and that on July 18, 2014, the day he was killed, a repairman came to her house to fix the TV, which she said one their two sons had cracked.
She acknowledged that her brother Charlie Adelson joked that buying the TV was cheaper than hiring a hitman.
Check back with Tallahassee.com for updates on this story.
Contact Karl Etters at ketters@tallahassee.com or @KarlEtters on Twitter.
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