A wealthy Florida family. A pair of hit men. A law professor gunned down in his home.
The plot to murder Daniel Markel more than a decade ago hinged on a bitter custody dispute and took years to unravel. Earlier this month, a grandmother who’d once worked as a bookkeeper for her family’s dental practice became the fifth defendant sent to prison for their role in the sprawling conspiracy.
Here’s a look at the web of defendants, the man they were convicted of killing and the woman at the center of the plot, who has never been charged with a crime.
For more on the murder-for-hire plot, tune in to Deadly Mischief on “Dateline” at 9 ET/8 CT tonight.
Florida legal scholar gunned down at home
Daniel Markel
A Harvard graduate and prominent legal scholar at Florida State University, Daniel Markel focused on the philosophy of punishment and spent years examining the subject to better inform sentencing decisions in the criminal justice system, recalled a university colleague, Mark Spottswood. Markel, 41, was also a devoted father of two young boys and, at the time of his death, locked in a bitter dispute with his ex-wife over custody of their children.
On July 18, 2014, Markel had just arrived at his Tallahassee home when a gunman shot him twice in the head and fled. The scholar was pronounced dead the next day.
A neighbor provided what turned out to be a critical piece of evidence in the killing: After hearing gunfire in Markel’s garage, the man dialed 911 and reported what he saw — a light-colored Toyota Prius driving away.
A romance gone sour
Wendi Adelson
Then a law student, Wendi Adelson met Markel in 2004 on a dating site and they married two years later. Initially, the couple was in love — “They were, like, visibly lovey-dovey,” recalled a friend of Markel’s, Josh Berman — but by 2012 the relationship had soured and Adelson filed for divorce.
Adelson wanted to move their boys from Tallahassee to South Florida, where her family lived, but a family court judge denied the request, saying that she hadn’t met her “burden of proof that a relocation was in the best interest of the minor children.” What was left of the relationship between Markel and the Adelsons deteriorated.
“It was toxic,” Steven Epstein, an attorney and author of a book about the case, “Extreme Punishment,” told “Dateline.” “Definitely toxic.”
After Markel’s death, Adelson described her ex to authorities as “litigious” and said that he’d treated her badly, a video of the interview shows. She wondered if someone could have gunned him down not because they hated him, she said in the interview, “but because they thought this was good somehow.”
During their divorce, Adelson told authorities, one of her older brothers joked about hiring a hit man to kill Markel. Her parents, she added, had “more reason to dislike Danny than almost anyone else. He hurt their daughter.”
In interviews with police and in court testimony, Wendi Adelson has repeatedly denied being involved in Markel’s murder and has never been charged with a crime.
A $35,000 job and a confession
Luis Rivera
Luis Rivera was the driver of the Prius seen pulling away from Markel’s home. A member of the Latin Kings who lived in Miami, Rivera was arrested in connection with the murder in the summer of 2016, two years after Markel was gunned down. In exchange for a reduced sentence, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and confessed, telling authorities that he was paid $35,000 for his role in the killing and identifying the custody dispute as a possible motive, a video of the interview shows.
“The lady wants her two kids back,” Rivera recalled the man he identified as the gunman saying. “She wants full custody.”
Rivera was sentenced to 19 years in prison.
The connection
Sigfredo Garcia
The man Rivera identified as the gunman, Sigfredo Garcia, was also arrested in the summer of 2016. He pleaded not guilty and was convicted of first-degree murder after a trial three years later. He was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
Garcia provided a link between Markel’s killing and the Adelsons: The mother of his children, Katherine Magbanua, had not only dated the protective older brother who’d made the hit man joke, she was on the payroll of the Adelson Institute, a dental practice owned by Wendi Adelson’s parents, according to Georgia Cappleman, chief assistant state attorney in Florida’s 2nd Judicial Circuit.
On the drive from Tallahassee to Miami, Rivera told authorities, Garcia called Magbanua and said: “Everything is done. Make sure you have my money. I’m on my way.”
Working for the Adelsons
Katherine Magbanua
Although the dental practice was paying Katherine Magbanua, it didn’t appear she was doing any work for the practice, Cappleman told “Dateline.” And she’d gotten other perks from the family, including help paying for her breast augmentation surgery, according to Jason Newlin, chief investigator with the Leon County State Attorney’s Office.
Magbanua was arrested in October 2016 and charged with murder, conspiracy and solicitation in Markel’s killing. She denied the allegations and testified at a trial three years later that she’d done legitimate work for the Adelsons and paid for her surgery with cash tips from a job promoting liquor brands.
A mistrial was declared after the jury deadlocked, but during a retrial three years later, Magbanua was convicted of all charges and sentenced to life in prison.
The protective older brother
Charles Adelson
Wendi Adelson’s protective older brother was a periodontist who ran a lucrative implant practice north of Miami and drove a Ferrari with a distinctive license plate — “Maestro.” He’d been recorded at a Miami restaurant appearing to implicate himself in the crime, according to prosecutors, and was arrested in 2022 on charges of first-degree murder, conspiracy and solicitation of murder.
During his 2023 trial, Charles Adelson denied that he played a role in Markel’s killing and testified that he was the victim of a deadly extortion scheme: After Markel’s killing, he said, Magbanua told him if he didn’t pay one-third of a million dollars in 48 hours, he’d be dead.
Charles Adelson testified that he paid her what he could — $138,000 in cash — and agreed to pay $3,000 a month more through checks from his family’s dental practice.
Magbanua took the stand and provided testimony that was far different from her earlier statements. She said she’d lied in her trials to save herself and pointed to Charles Adelson as the one responsible for coming up with the murder plot. Magbanua also acknowledged recruiting Garcia to carry out the killing.
On Nov. 6, 2023, after three hours of deliberations, a jury convicted Charles Adelson of all charges. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Matriarch on a mission
Donna Adelson
Days after her son’s conviction, the matriarch of the Adelson family was arrested in dramatic fashion: She and her husband were taken into custody at Miami International Airport with one-way tickets to Vietnam that they’d booked on Nov. 7 — one day after Charles Adelson’s conviction — and after she’d been recorded on a jailhouse phone call saying they were “looking for places where there’s no extradition.” (Vietnam has no official extradition treaty with the United States.)
Donna Adelson was charged with murder, solicitation and conspiracy. She pleaded not guilty.
During a nearly two-week trial that began in August, prosecutors portrayed Donna Adelson as a vengeful mother-in-law who was furious over Markel’s efforts to limit her contact with her grandchildren and helped orchestrate the murder plot.
Among the key pieces of evidence presented at the proceedings was a phone call Donna Adelson made to Charles Adelson after an undercover FBI agent approached her and pretended to be affiliated with the murder plot. Cappleman, the prosecutor, described what Donna Adelson said in the recorded call — she told her son that the agent’s comments involved “both of us” — as a “confession.”
Donna Adelson’s lawyer, Jackie Fulford, acknowledged that her client was an overinvolved grandparent, but Fulford said she was a “meddler, not a murderer.” Prosecutors, Fulford added, didn’t have a single piece of evidence connecting Donna Adelson to the killing.
On Sept. 4, after just a few hours of deliberation, a jury convicted Donna Adelson of all charges. In a victim impact statement delivered immediately afterward, Markel’s father posed a brief question to Donna Adelson.
“Was it worth it?” Phil Markel said.
A month later, the 75-year-old was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.