How the Adelsons Responded When a Judge Told Them No

0:00This is Hidden Killers with Tony Bruceke. Have you seen the new Hulu doc? Welcome to the family. The murder of Dan Markella. It's about the Adelson family. Charlie Adelson, Donna Adelson, Wendy Adelson, their friends, Catherine McBonna, the whole crew comes in this four part doc. You series. And if you've not followed this case, you're probably like, whoa, I got to go learn more about that on the YouTube. Well, thank you. Welcome. You found the right place. We're about to put together a four part series. Now, keep in mind, we've covered this case from way back. So if you want to actually watch the trial coverage and our commentary of it on the channel, there's thousands of videos for you to do that. But if you're wanting to kind of get the recap, we're going to give you a four episode series

1:03here that really dives into what happened here in four different lanes over the next handful of days. We're going to be talking about the hit. That's today's video. We're going to talk about the dentist, Charlie is dad. We're going to talk about the matriarch, Donna and Wendy as well in our fourth video. The unindicted co-conspirator who has never had charges against her, maintains her innocence. Got somewhat of a deal to say some things exactly what that deal is and how a protector, we don't know the answers to those questions exactly, but whatever it is so far as a cause to her to end up behind bars. And it may mean that that's part of the agreement or it may mean she just didn't know enough. We're going to dive into all of it.

2:04And I'd love to get your thoughts in the comments section and substank in YouTube as we discuss the Adelson's. This is a wild, wild case. Denmark, Cal filed a motion in family court to keep his mother-in-law from being alone with his children. That's got to be a fun one to have to do. His boys were coming home saying, Grandma says you're stupid. She says you're trying to take away her sunshine. That's lovely. That's Donna. That's who was telling the kids. Her ungrange children. Daddy's trying to take the sun shines away from me. You are my sun shines. And then the kids go back to dad. Why is Grandma saying this? Because Grandma's a narcissistic cont. Oh, wait, you can't say that to children. You can't say that to kids. They're hearing for that motion was scheduled, then continued. I never put back on the calendar because why?

3:04Well, Dan was dead before the judge ever heard it. He puts a little kink in plans. On July 18, 2014, two men drove five hours from Miami and a rented Toyota Prius followed Dan from his gym to his garage in Trescott, Drive in Tallahassee, and shot him twice in the head. He was 41, a Harvard educated law professor at Florida State. A father who dropped his two sons at preschool that morning. He built a career studying criminal punishment theory, authored a book called Privilege or Punished. He got out of the widely read legal blog called Prof's Blog and held the chair at FSU's law school. He grew up in Toronto, came to Florida for the work and stayed for the boys. He died at a hospital that night. He died at the hospital that night because two men who killed him didn't know him were hired.

4:08And the family, the prosecutors say, ordered the hit, paid for it the way they ran every other piece of family business through the dental office and monthly installments with the grandmother signing the checks. What? Yeah. An interesting way to pay for a murder. Right there basically on company letterhead. With everyone involved. Can we get your signature on this, too, please? Okay, great. We just want to make sure the paper trail is really rock solid when we get convicted. Denmark, Cal married Wendy Adelson in 2006 and both worked at FSU's law school. The marriage fell apart after their two sons are born. Wendy filed for divorce in September of 2012. Court records say Dan came home from a trip and found the house was empty. Papers on the bed. The divorce was finalized in July of 2013. Then came the fight that made Dan Markella target.

5:10Wendy wanted to move the children of South Florida near her parents and her brother Charlie, a judge, denied the relocation permanently in June of 2013. The boys had to stay in Tallahassee near their father. They can't just move because grandma's needy because grandma is a needy, petulant 13 year old in her brain and thinks the world revolves around her because she's married someone who's made it that way and trained her children to do the same, except for the one who ran away to New York and is only the seemingly sane member of the family. No, you can't have your children moved, your grandchildren moved, be close to you because you want it when the father says, I'm sorry, I'm working over here. This is where I live and I'm the father. So my needs, my desires for my children supersede that of grandma.

6:17That should have been the end of it. In a family that respects court orders and respects the actual parents, it would have been. But Donna Adelson doesn't respect people, doesn't respect parents, doesn't respect really anything outside of Donna Adelson herself. According to the trial testimony, she offered Dan Marquell $1 million to agree to the relocation, million dollars to let her daughter move the grand children's south. So he would have less time with his own children. So grandma could have that as if there are a hotel on monopoly, make it a trade, I'll tell you what, I'll give you a park place for your grandkids or for my grandkids for your kids. I'm like a good deal. Okay. The court had already said no, he said no. And for a family accustomed to buying its way

7:17through every problem hearing no twice, was apparently one time too many. Dan Marquell had won. He won by just wanting life to continue as he had every right to have it continue. He was working, he had children, he got a divorce, he wasn't planning on moving anytime soon and he didn't want his children moving far away. He has every right to say nope, we're staying here. That's how that works when you produce children. You have rights. Especially when you're a good parent. The system told him he was right. The children stay in Tallahassee. The system told the Adelson's they lost. The question was what the Adelson's did with that answer. Wendy's mother Donna Adelson ran the books of the family's dental practice near Fort Lauderdale. She'd pushed harder than anyone for the move. Wendy's brother Charlie was a period dentist

8:20to earning between three million and three and a half million dollars a year according to the prosecutions for Renzick accounted at a later trial. This was a family with resources and a problem they couldn't buy or litigate their way out of. The shock for the Adelson's. Charlie made a remark that would haunt him. A joke. A joke. Well, buying Wendy at TV is a divorce present because it was cheaper than hiring a hitman. He told the joke to Wendy to her boyfriend to people. He barely knew a man so confident in his own untouchability that he was handing out the punchline to his own crime. A neighbor spotted the light colored Prius leaving Trescott drive after the shooting. Surveillance found Dan's gym showed the same car followed him home that morning with a distinctive black side mirror and a sun pass toll transponder a device that automatically plays tolls on Florida highways.

9:25Mainly South Florida highways. Tallahassee didn't have toll roads. The killer is bought a car with a built-in receipt for every mile they drove. Investigators pulled toll records along I-75 that traced the Prius to a rental agency in North Miami. The car had been rented July 15th to the 21st. The agreement was the name of Lewis Rivera. And a phone number on it led to his childhood friend Sig Frito Garcia. Rivera was the leader of the North Miami Latin King. He's already in federal custody at racketeering charges. Garcia was the father of two children and the mother of Garcia's children a woman named Catherine McBanoa. It was also dating. Charlie. Adelson. And we're related to all investigators that he and Garcia had driven a Tallahassee once before in June of 2014, a month before the murder.

10:25But lost Mark Helen went home. They came back in July. Self on records placed both men's phone near Mark Hels home and near premiere health and fitness center while he was inside matching surveillance footage of the Prius and the parking lot. One woman connected the hitmen through their children and to the Adelson family through the bedroom. That's really the hinge of the entire case after the murder. Money made that connection impossible to ignore. Two months after Dan Rishant, McBano started collecting paychecks from the Adelson dental practice. She never worked there, not a shift, not a day, not an hour. Donna personally signed 44 checks to her anyway. The total payments from Charlie to McBanoa came to approximately $138,000 documented in financial records. Entered in the evidence at four separate trials. Prosecutors trace payments starting two months after the murder and running for nearly two years. It was a steady flow of money from a dental practice to a woman who's only connection to that

11:26office was a man who ran it and the woman who kept the books. The cash portion arrived in brown paper bags, according to trial testimony, with $100 bills stapled in $1,000 increments. Donna had literally washed the money before handing it off. Launder did. Donna thought laundering money meant putting it in the washing machine. Literally. Her son admitted on the witness stand years later. Like he was describing something his mother did with the towels, with a bit of embarrassment that yeah, she is that stupid. How did I know when laundering the money I wasn't supposed to use tied with bleach? Lewis Rivera cooperated with prosecutors and pled guilty to second degree murder for a 19 year sentence. He testified at every subsequent quintrial.

12:30His account, Garcia recruited him, Garcia pulled the trigger and the motive was custody. Rivera recalled Garcia telling him the lady wants her two kids back. She wants full custody. Rivera said he has paid $35,000 for his role. That's one cooperating witness's account, a gang member who cut a deal. The defense attacked Rivera at every trial. His story never changed across four proceedings and nearly a decade of cross examination. But Rivera alone couldn't prove the Adelson's order to hit. He was a gang member with a deal. His testimony placed the hitman at the scene in the money in Megvana's hands. But it couldn't prove what Donna or Charlie knew or when they knew it. The financial trail showed money moving from a dental office to a woman connected to the killers suspicious. Yes. Proof of a murder contract. No. Prosecutors needed the family to react to pressure and they needed that reaction on tape. So the FBI built a trap in April 2016. An undercover agent named Oscar Jimérez walked up to Donna Ailsen.

13:32Outside her Miami condo, he handed her a newspaper article about Dan's murder with $5,000 written on it and a phone number. He dropped two names Katie and Tutto. Megvana and Garcia. The message was designed to sound like someone from the killers. The killer's world knew what happened and wanted more payment. What mattered wasn't what Donna said to the agent when mattered was who she called next. She didn't call the police on her husband. She called Charlie three times in a row. But strange your hands. You a murder article and names the dollar amounts and you've never heard any of it. You call 911. If you already know every name on that paper, you call your son. Charlie met Megvana at the Dulce Vita restaurant nearby. The FBI recorded 41 minutes of conversation. The tape sat for years to garbled to use under a former CIA audio expert who enhanced it. And Charlie's voice came through a little more clearly on the possibility of being investigated.

14:37Quote. If they had any evidence, we would have already gone to the airport. Unquote. Megvana's no show dental job. Yeah, quote. You work for the office now because the checks are from there. Unquote. On the money. Quote. When everybody was there the next day. Did any of you take any money? End quote. His defense later argued the tape was exculpatory. Charlie also said, I've got nothing to hide, but the tape is only half the evidence. The bump produced. The other half is Donna's phone log. Three calls to Charlie. Zero to police. That doesn't need a CIA expert to interpret. In April of 22, state attorney Jack Campbell announced that the enhanced recording led to Charlie Adelson's indictment and arrest eight years after Dan's murder. The case was built from the ground up and every layer pointed back to the same dental office, the same family on the same checks. Denmark, hell, sons were in preschool when their father was shot. Wendy moved them to South Florida within days and later changed their last names to Markel or from

15:40Markel to Adelson. Dan's parents Ruth and Phil were cut off from their grandchildren. The custody order that was supposed to keep the boys near their father died with him in that garage. But a toll transponder. 44 checks to a woman who never worked at a dental office and 41 minutes of tape in a Miami Beach restaurant would eventually bring the whole family down. That's coming up next. Press subscribe. She don't miss it. And we're dropping you the whole series of Adelson's in the coming days. We want the full deep dive into it beyond what you saw in the doc on Hulu. Hit subscribe, we got it for you. And give us your thoughts on the comment section on YouTube or our sub stack, those links are in the description. And if you want to take the audio with you, if you know, you know, you're watching YouTube right now, probably, be sure to take the podcast with you. The link is in the descriptions.

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