Donna Adelson, the fifth individual arrested in the conspiracy to kill Dan Markel, her former son-in-law, has arrived in Tallahassee to face charges in the almost decade-old murder.
Adelson, 73, who had been held in a Miami jail, was transported Monday to the Leon County Detention Facility, the place she is being held with out bond after spending every week in the Miami-Dade Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Heart. She was booked early Tuesday, in accordance to on-line jail data.
She was arrested Nov. 13 after she and her husband tried to fly out of Miami Worldwide Airport with one-way tickets to Vietnam, which has no extradition treaty with the U.S.
Her attempted flight got here one week after her son, Charlie Adelson, was convicted in Markel’s murder and fewer than 48 hours earlier than a Leon County grand jury indicted her on charges of first-degree murder, conspiracy and solicitation.
Authorized evaluation: Adelson flight to Vietnam lets state argue ‘consciousness of guilt’ in Markel murder
After an eight-day trial on the Leon County Courthouse, Charlie Adelson was discovered responsible Nov. 6 of the identical three charges. He faces a compulsory life sentence in the murder of his former brother-in-law.
Markel, a 41-year-old regulation professor at Florida State College, was fatally shot July 18, 2014, in the storage of his Trescott Drive dwelling. The murder occurred amid a nasty court fight between him and his ex-wife, Wendi Adelson, over their two sons and different points. Wendi Adelson, whose movement to relocate with the boys to Miami had been denied by a decide, is Donna Adelson’s daughter and Charlie Adelson’s youthful sister.
On the time of Donna Adelson’s arrest, regulation enforcement was conscious that she was eager about occurring the run. She and her son had spoken a number of instances after his trial ended on jail calls and she or he was recorded mentioning presumably committing suicide or fleeing to a non-extradition nation, in accordance to arrest data.
In 2016, the FBI despatched an spy posing as a blackmailer to rattle her outdoors her South Seashore rental and get suspects speaking on recorded traces. He handed her an article about Markel’s killing along with his telephone quantity and $5,000 written on it.
She had lengthy been a goal of each Tallahassee police and the FBI and featured closely in each her son’s trial and earlier trials of Sigfredo Garcia, one of many hit males, and Katie Magbanua, the mom of Garcia’s youngsters who was courting Charlie Adelson on the time of the murder.
Moments after that encounter, dubbed the “bump,” Donna Adelson referred to as her son to inform him she had been handed some “paperwork” and that they wanted to discuss in individual. She stated it concerned “in all probability the 2 of us. So that you in all probability have a basic concept of what I’m speaking about.”
She additionally signed dozens of checks totaling $18,000 from the household’s dental follow that got to Magbanua over a interval of months after the murder even supposing she by no means really labored there.
The possible trigger affidavit says Donna Adelson and her husband, Harvey Adelson, a retired dentist, spoke with the Tallahassee Police Division’s lead investigator at Markel’s native memorial in 2014 and promised to name him earlier than returning to South Florida to organize an interview.
Monetary image: Adelson family had ‘piles’ of cash and millions in the bank when Dan Markel was murdered
“Harvey and Donna Adelson left Tallahassee with Wendi and the grandchildren the day after the memorial service with out talking with the investigator as promised,” courtroom data say. “Since leaving, nobody in the Adelson household contacted TPD or inquired in regards to the standing of the investigation. In July of 2015, Wendi had her kids’s surname modified from Markel to Adelson.”
Contact Jeff Burlew at [email protected] or 850-599-2180.
This text initially appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Donna Adelson booked in Tallahassee jail for Dan Markel murder plot
