Just a week after Charlie Adelson was found guilty in the murder-for-hire killing of Dan Markel, his mother, Donna Adelson, has been arrested, according to the Miami-Dade County jail website.
Donna Adelson was arrested shortly after 10 p.m. on Monday on an out-of-county warrant and was booked into the Miami-Dade Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center. There were no other details available and officials connected to the case did not immediately respond for comment.
Her arrest came just two days before a Leon County grand jury is scheduled to meet, though it’s unclear whether it will consider charges against her.
The arrest was a bombshell development in the nearly decade-long Markel case, coming in rapid-fire succession after a 12-person jury returned guilty verdicts Nov. 6 against Charlie Adelson, a Fort Lauderdale dentist and the victim’s former brother-in-law.
Donna Adelson, 73, of Miami, the victim’s former mother-in-law, was arrested and booked into the Miami-Dade jail. It was not immediately clear when she will be transported to the Leon County Detention Facility, where her son is incarcerated while he awaits sentencing.
Who is Donna Adelson?
Adelson, who has three children with her husband, Harvey, is the matriarch of a family that built a successful dental practice in South Florida before allegedly planning and financing Markel’s murder.
She is the second member of her family and the fifth person to be charged in connection to the murder, which occurred amid a bitter post-divorce fight between Markel and his ex-wife, Wendi Adelson, who is Donna Adelson’s daughter and Charlie Adelson’s younger sister.
Markel, then a 41-year-old father of two young sons, was shot twice in the head the morning of July 18, 2014, after parking his car in the garage of his Trescott Drive home. He died the next day at a local hospital.
The ensuing investigation, conducted by the Tallahassee Police Department and the FBI, led to the arrests of the two hit men, Luis Rivera, a Latin Kings gang member, and Sigfredo Garcia, and Katie Magbanua, the killers’ link to Charlie Adelson.
Donna Adelson featured heavily in her son’s eight-day trial, though wire taps with her son that were played in court and emails and texts with her family that prosecutors read aloud. Though she and her husband were both initially listed as witnesses, the state and defense both agreed to drop them before the trial.
Analysis:Even after almost a decade, Dan Markel murder saga may not be over
Rivera took a plea deal in 2016 in Markel’s murder, and flipped on Garcia and Magbanua, the mother of Garcia’s children and Charlie Adelson’s ex-girlfriend. Both Garcia, found guilty in 2019, and Magbanua, found guilty in her second trial last year, are serving life in prison.
Charlie Adelson himself faces a mandatory life sentence in prison. Leon Circuit Judge Stephen Everett asked for a pre-sentence investigation, and the next court date is set for Dec. 12. Rivera avoided a life sentence, getting 19 years in prison for second-degree murder in exchange for his cooperation. Magbanua also opted to cooperate after her conviction, taking the stand against Adelson early in his trial.
Assistant State Attorney Georgia Cappleman told reporters after Charlie Adelson was found guilty that she didn’t know whether more people would be charged. “Stay tuned,” she said.
Donna Adelson and her connection to the case
Prosecutors said the nasty post-divorce proceedings, including a request by Markel to bar Donna Adelson from unsupervised visits with her grandchildren, provided the motive for the murder. Countless communications between the Adelson family — which featured heavily in Charlie Adelson’s trial — would resurface in any future prosecution.
In one email from June 2013, Donna Adelson, who referred derisively to Markel as “Jibbers,” told her daughter that it was “time for action” after a judge denied her request to relocate with the kids to Miami. Cappleman read the email aloud during closing arguments.
“It’s time to take control of your life and not let Jibbers think he’s won anything by having you remain in Tallahassee, eight hours away from the only family you have. You can be a good actress when you want to. I’ve seen you in action. You need to put on the performance of your life. Jibbers hasn’t beaten the Adelson family yet.”
When the FBI turned up the heat on the family in 2016, it dispatched an undercover agent posing as a blackmailer to rattle Donna Adelson outside her Miami condo and get her and others talking on wires.
In a call soon after to her son, she avoided explicit talk about what had just happened — that the agent had given her a newspaper article about Markel and instructions to pay $5,000. She said it involved “probably the two of us. So you probably have a general idea what I’m talking about.”
Contact Jeff Burlew at jburlew@tallahassee.com or 850-599-2180.
Chronicling every day of the Charlie Adelson trial:
The Tallahassee Democrat, which has covered the case closely since Markel’s murder, had three journalists in the courtroom. Here is a collection of their coverage.
