Wendi Adelson Said Donna Wanted the Boys Dressed HOW?!

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1:00Kitchen and bathroom professionals know what goes behind the tile matters. That's why trade pros trust fiber cement, party backer board, to keep tile firmly in place, resist cracking, and help block moisture. Chosen over 40 million kitchens and bathrooms, party backer board, what the best build on. Shop now at participating Home Depot, Lowe's, and floor into core stores. For more information, visit JamesHearty.com slash HeartyBacker. This is The Big Breakdown. A long look back at some of the biggest stories we're covering for you at the Hidden Killers Podcast and True Crime Today. This is Hidden Killers with Tony Brusky. Just how much did Dada Adelson medal in the marriage of Wendy Adelson's marriage to Dan Markel?

2:00Just how much? We all know the story of the money in the washing machine, of the checks, of McBanoa, of Charlie, of all of that. But let's go back in time. Let's back it up a bit. Let's go all the way back. Let's go all the way back. Let's start on like 1989, shall we? When Wendy was a young child, all we knew about Wendy was her name being brought up to Pat Sejack and Vanna White. What? Yes. On an episode of Wheel of Fortune, on the Cool Crisp Fall evening of October 6, 1989. Pat Sejack turns to a contestant from Coral Springs, Florida, and asks her to introduce herself to the audience. She looks at the camera and says, she's a domestic coordinator.

3:02And look, there ain't nothing wrong with being someone who is a, quote, domestic coordinator, creative choice of words, by the way. It's a difficult, busy-ass job, being someone who is working basically from home, not collecting a paycheck, but coordinating the lives of their family. We used to call it housewife, some just call it mom, domestic coordinators, what she called it on Wheel of Fortune. It's the person responsible for schedules, classes, and lessons for her sons, and daughters, and all of that. I'm not knocking that at all. But it is interesting the choice of words she uses. Always trying to appear to be something a little different than reality, maybe, because the actual title might just be mom, and that's a good title to have.

4:05That's a title that, for the rest of your life, should you lead a decent life, a loving life, with your children in front of you? That those people in that world for the rest of their existence, when they ask who's one of the most important people to them, the answer's going to be mom. It's not going to be domestic coordinator. It's not going to be my boss in 1989. Hey, mom, that's a good, that's good. That's a good thing. That's an amazing thing. Not a lot of people make that kind of impact in other people's lives. So I'm going to be clear there. Not knocking the fact that Donna was a mom, or she called it domestic coordinator when asked by Pat SayJack, because it seems just being mom, being the emotional person,

5:05the person that could be there for her family on those levels, this wasn't quite enough for her. She had to give it a better title, a bigger title, because just dealing with reality on reality's terms, being proud of who she is and where she is, and she had every reason to be there, a good life going on. This wasn't quite good enough. Had to make it sound a little more important than she was. I know it's a silly little thing in this Wheel of Fortune episode, but it says so damn much. Join me as we continue on, and press subscribe in the comments section on Substagon YouTube. Responsible for the schedules, class as lessons for her son Robert, who's son Charlie and her daughter Wendy, her husband Harvey, and her dog Sam. Notice the order there. Literally listed her husband between her youngest child and the family pet.

6:08Then she solved the puzzle, the answer to the board, and you can't make this shit up. Missed your maker. She walked away with $2,900 bucks. Now Donna, if you're listening, if you're watching, I know you probably are because I know you've been watching a lot of us from behind bars on your tablet. I'm gonna say hi. And you're probably feeling pretty good so far. I just, maybe, I don't know. I've already criticized you're being a domestic or whatever the hell you called yourself. I'm not playing down your role as being a mom. It's just you failed at that miserably. Time and time again for your entire existence. You weren't a mom, you were a cult leader.

7:08You made sure people followed your will blindly. Even if it drove the people who loved and trusted you because your title was actually mom, not domestic coordinator in their mind, off a fucking cliff. That's what you did in your title as domestic coordinator and not necessarily being mom. Donna, that right there is where we have to start. Not with the murder, not with the trial, not even with the guilty verdict. We start with the game show because you stood on national television until the America, exactly who you were. You just wrapped it up in a nice cute package. Domestic coordinator, mischief maker, everybody in the studio laughed. And you've been running the exact same playbook ever since, performing this charming little routine to cover up something

8:09that is anything but charming. We've collected the receipts, all of them, and we're about to go through them. So I look forward to maybe email or something, encouraging a banana to go in places where it shouldn't, like you've done to some of my colleagues already. That's cute. Let's talk about Robert Adelson. He's done his oldest son of physician up in New York. He's been completely estranged from his family since 2016. Probably the best damn move this man's ever made. On August 25th, 2025, he took the witness stand at his mother's murder trial. It was the first time he had ever testified in any of the four trials connected to this case. He didn't yell. He didn't put on a show. He just sat there and calmly laid out how the machine worked. She ran everything. Her involvement in her kids' lives went way beyond over-involved. It was more like total control.

9:09She had very specific rigid ideas about what she wanted for her children. If you went along with her plan, life is great! You stepped out of line, things went south real fast. Strong opinions on who they married, strong opinions on their careers. When Rob wanted to marry a woman, done it in a proof of, he went ahead and married her anyway. So what did Donna do? She completely froze him out. That's the operating system in Donna Adelson's house. Total compliance or total exile. There's no middle ground. Rob told the jury that he never heard a single bad thing about Dan Markel before Wendy moved out. In fact, everything was positive. Dan was welcoming that family right up until the second he became inconvenient. The hatred toward Dan wasn't organic. It was manufactured piece by piece. As soon as Dan stood between Donna and the location, she wanted her family to live in. He was the roadblock, literally.

10:10And when he backed this up on that same witness, Dan, she looked right at her mother and admitted it out loud. My mom micromanaged my life. When the prosecutor asked if she had previously described her mother as operating with emotional suffrage, Wendy couldn't deny it. She admitted her mother thought her life in Tallahassee was terrible. And she even confessed to police on the very day Dan was murdered that her parents had more reason to dislike Danny than anyone else on the planet. And with the Wendy interrogation or questioning or whatever the hell that was where she offers up, Charlie on a platter and Donna and dad in a way that I didn't even know she really quite understood the gravity of what she was doing.

11:12I don't think she did. I really don't. I think she just kind of thought. What? You mean this is how the world works? Kind of just like a deer in the headlights or a teenager entering the world for the first time on their own, first day of that new apartment, first day of growing to the grocery store. You mean I have to pay for my groceries? Mom just doesn't buy them. It's kind of a sense of awe and awareness of the world coming to our list of it's had never been there before where it really should have been. And everybody's like, are you that stupid or are you that sheltered? I think sheltered is probably the actual answer. And sheltered is the right word. Sheltered manipulated coerced.

12:12Because depending on how much Wendy knew, she could very well be a victim in this story too. And I know a lot of people don't like to hear that. I don't necessarily know the answer to that question, but the court and Wendy, they, they, Wendy's never been convicted of anything. And I'm not here to say that that she should be that Georgia Kapleman is working on that behind the scenes this day. But in that sort of an ecosystem, it's not surprising when sometimes people's lack of understanding or awareness of the environment around them, it is missing huge blocks. That understanding is missing huge building blocks that otherwise should be there. The only time you realize it is when the real world comes calling and they don't have the levers or the understanding of the clear paths that exist in front of them,

13:12they don't even go down there because they don't even know they exist. What do you mean I could do something other than what my mother wanted me to do? That's not even an option ever. You're a grown-ass woman. You should be able to do that. You can do that. Not just should you can. Sometimes they don't even know they can. Now again, grown-ass woman, figure the shit out yourself. That's on you. How much you want to lean into the uncomfortable world of reality? Why would you want to do that? Especially since Donna made such a comfy little nest all these years, why would you leave? Donna will keep you safe. I mean, just think about this. Think about what's going on here. She confessed to police. On the day Dan was murdered that her parents had more reason to dislike Danny than anyone else on the planet. I mean, the contrast here. One son walked away from a family and never looked back.

14:13One daughter stayed trapped inside the machine and couldn't even articulate what was happening until she was forced to under oath. Two kids, two adults, two totally different reactions to the same controlling mother. And that is precisely why Wendy's marriage was never actually Wendy's marriage. February 26th of 2006. Congregation, Benai Israel, invoked her own 200 guests, a big right up in the New York Times. The South proclaimed, mischief maker had a grand wedding to coordinate. Dan asked for one simple thing, kosher catering. So his rabbi friends could eat the food. Seems like a reasonable request at a Jewish wedding. Doesn't seem like an out of the ordinary thing. Probably something every person who's planning the wedding is going to ask the people who are hiring them to host. It would you like it to be kosher? It'd be a standard request.

15:17Well, Donna handled the arrangements and initially agreed to it. Sure, we're all Jewish. I know you are a little more, a little more Jewish plus, if you will, a little more involved. I mean, everybody, every religion has their version of it. People who are a little more involved in their faith than others. And Dan was good. There is nothing wrong with that. It's important to so many people. And there are dietary restrictions that come along with those sort of things. Whether you agree with them or not, it's not your place to debate his diet, which is dictated by his religious beliefs at his own fucking wedding. If you get a day to choose the menu and say, you know what, here's how we're going to do this. It's your wedding. So what did Donna do? Prawns.

16:17Prawns were served. And if you don't know, and I don't, I am not Jewish. So I don't know the food stuff, the menu selection, the restrictions. So the rabbis laterally walked out of the reception. Donna actually walked up to a guest in scoff, asking why Danny was so strictly kosher when nobody else was. Why is Danny so kosher? I don't know, being Harvey just loved these prawns. Have some. Yeah, walk around the wedding criticizing the groom's diet. Family friend later said in plain English. There was always a third person in their marriage, right from day one. And that third person in the marriage was Donna Adelson.

17:18Look, a normal mother-in-law messes up the menu and feels awful about it. Donna messed up the menu and questioned why anybody even cared. That's how a narcissist works. Why would you care? And in her mind, she didn't mess it up. She made it better because she knew better. And if she knows better, well, then everybody should live by her better because they're going to, they're going to benefit from Donna's better thinking. That is how a narcissist pretty much functions in a sentence. Donna messed up the menu and questioned why anybody cared. It wasn't just an innocent mistake. It was an intentional boundary test. His faith, his guess, his self-respect. None of it mattered compared to her show. That was an harmless mischief. That was a dominance play on day one of their marriage. And she got away with it because nobody called her out on it. Nobody wanted to make a big, a big fuss about prawns.

18:24Fast forward to September of 2012, Dan leaves town to give a lecture. The divorce papers are already drawn up before he even steps on the plane. Donna has been living in Tallahassee for months at this point, setting things up. She rented Wendy in a apartment using her own maiden name so Dan couldn't track her down. She booked the movers. She transferred the funds in that phone call where Wendy drops the bomb on Dan. It was calculated to hit him right before he walked on stage to speak. Rob testified that his mother sounded downright gleeful when talking about the timing. Gleeful. Let that word sink in. Not sad, not relieved. She derives genuine pleasure from timing the most devastating call of his life to cause maximum humiliation. Dan fly flew back home. And what does he find?

19:25The house is cleared out. The kids are gone. Half. The dining chairs are gone. His son's bed is gone. A priceless two-karat ring belonging to his great aunt, a Holocaust survivor. Also gone. Divorce papers sitting on the bare mattress, no forwarding address. The boys were wished away to Donna and Harvey's house in Coral Springs over 400 miles away. In his legal filings, Dan described it as Pearl Harbor style ambush and a complete looting of his home. Don't let anyone call this a routine marital separation. When a woman leaves a marriage normally, she packs her bags or he, if a man leaves, packs his bags, that this, this was a tactical military operation. Donna planned the location. Donna hid the lease. Donna orchestrated the movers. Donna picked the target window. And the mischief maker just stood back and smiled as the dust settled.

20:25Then came the paper trail. The emails. Donna wrote them directly to Wendy and prosecutors eventually read them open in court. This is where the polished mask doesn't just slip. It shatters completely. She wrote, it's time to take control of your life and not let gibbers. That's what she referred to Dan as. Think he's won anything by keeping you stuck in Tallahassee eight hours away from your family. Stuck in Tallahassee, you mean employed and living a life as a married adult woman with your family and you happen to be eight hours away from mom and dad, which is pretty fucking normal. Oh, but not in Donnelland and Donnelland everybody's got to be right at her back and call all of the time. Notice the name gibbers when he tried to brush it off on the stand. It's just a silly nickname because Wendy in my opinion is kind of a fucking idiot or a fucking liar. One of the two or a little bit above.

21:27The prosecutors revealed what Wendy had actually written to a friend. It's just for Jew and boots. I don't know what that is. Oh, well, you did when your friend asked you about it. Jew and boots. Let me refresh your memory, bitch. A derogatory spin on push and boots, implying deceit and trickery. How nice. How kind of twisted to considering you're all Jewish. This is how they casually referred to the father of Wendy's children behind closed doors. She labeled Dan a hostage taker. She called Wendy a prisoner. She sat right at Wendy's kitchen table drafting legal responses to Dan's court filings. She meticulously put together a log tracking every single trip Dan had taken since her first child was born. Desperately trying to frame a devoted law professor with joint custody as an absentee father. Donna.

22:28Hi. It's me to you again. You're an acting as a supportive mother, guiding your child through divorce. You were deploying a soldier. You wrote the strategy. You scripted the talking points and you forced Wendy to sign her name to it because the judge would let you stand in her place. I don't think Donna sees Wendy as a human being as an individual outside of her. She sees a younger, more attractive, probably far more intelligent. More successful. And a woman with far more options in her future than Donna ever will have or chose not to have. And she's jealous and she's mad and she wants to control her.

23:30She wants her to be right by her side, living the Donna Adelson life, becoming the next Donna Adelson. Because the world can't survive without a Donna in it. But she knows her time is coming and her little minion is Wendy. And if Wendy doesn't follow what Donna wants while the world doesn't keep rolling with a Donna. Even when her name starts with the W. In those messages, she hurled every insult imaginable at him. Idiot, bastard, bully, zealot, narcissist, little projection going on there Donna. It was an endless stream of venom saved in black and white friend for a courtroom to hear years later. And then she wrote something that completely exposes a psychological dynamic here. She claimed that narcissistic personality disorder causes major problems in a marriage. Yeah, you know what's even worse? The mother with narcissistic personality disorder.

24:33Although you might fall into sociopath. She wrote that about Dan. Dan was that all while she was orchestrating her daughter's life, treating her family like pawns, and managing her husband like household inventory. She was talking about projection. She was diagnosing it with the exact behavior she was inflicting on everyone around her. In all too often in the narcissist life, no one around it saw. No one around her saw it as they become so used to it. This is just Donna being Donna at this point. June 20th, 2013, Judge Barbara Hobbs officially denies Wendy's petition to relocate with the children. The boys have to stay in Tallahassee and Donna's reaction explosive. The judge didn't agree with Donna.

25:34Does she not know who Donna is? A normal grandmother accepts the ruling in plans, more visits. Most of them will come up there. Maybe, you know, we'll summer it. I don't know. Figure it out. You're a grown-ass adult. Donna Adelson sat down and drafted a campaign of psychological warfare. Just five days later, she sends an email with a subject line, please read. Very important. She writes, never, never, never give up. It's time for action. Let's show this guy what will make him absolutely miserable. You know his weak points, money, religion, control, the rest of your life and dads and mind, and yes, even Charlie's depends on how well you can perform. You can be a great actress when you want to. I've taught you how to be a superstar. Okay, I get it that part. But on the performance of your life, he hasn't beaten the Adelson family yet.

26:35That's my interpretation of Donna's email. Then came the actual tactics. Her exact words laid out in plain text for her daughter to execute. Offer Donna Million Dollars cash and let the kids relocate. Split the costs three ways between Donna, Wendy, and Charlie. Everyone has a price, right? Take photos of the boys outside of Catholic church. Tell Dan they're adapting to the Bible belt. Sign them up for Baptist Emersona School Class. It's just to create a paper trail that would push his buttons, keep the scheme secret, push his emotional limits, and make him break down. And then comes the most shocking suggestion of all. Dress the young boys and Hitler youth outfits. Tell them it's just playing dress up like playing pirates. Wendy confirmed right there on the stand that her mother actually proposed this. Think about the horror of that. A Jewish grandmother suggesting that her Jewish grandchildren be dressed in not the uniforms,

27:36specifically to torment their Jewish father, all because of family court judge, didn't rule in her favor. That reveals what was beneath the surface all along, not a well-meaning mother. A woman willing to weaponize anything to win, no matter how toxic. When Wendy pushed back and said it wasn't a game, Donna made her position crystal clear. Well, it's about winning and losing. And we need a win. It didn't stop at the emails. She actively weaponized the children themselves. When the boys stated her house, she put them on video calls with Dan. While feeding them non-coachier foods like shrimp and bacon. Dan had to sit there watching his children eat food that violated his religious beliefs, unable to stop it. The family mocked his religious adherence and called it fanatical. Even worse, on multiple occasions, those toddlers repeated phrases, Donna had coached into them. They walked up to their father and said, Grammys says you're stupid. Grammys says she hates you.

28:37You're trying to take her sunshine's away. Her sunshine's. She turned little kids into messengers of her malice. A four-year-old child doesn't invent lines like that on their own. They repeat what they've been trained to say by a grandmother using them as tools in a bitter war. By March of 2014, Dan had enough. He'd filed that legal motion seeking to prevent Donna from having unsupervised contact with her children, because of relentless emotional manipulation. That motion was never ruled on. On July 8, 2014, Dan Markella was shot and killed in his driveway. The legal barrier he sought to protect his kids was still pending when the hitmen arrived. In the aftermath, everything Donna wanted immediately came to pass for a moment. Donna had thought she won. Wendy relocated to Miami. She changed the voice, her name from Markella to Adelson,

29:39like you do when your father, your children's father is murdered. Let's change their names. Dan's parents were cut off from seeing their grandchildren for years. It said in saying Dan's father Phil expressed the profound heartbreak of losing not just his son, but effectively losing his grandson's, whose very identity had been rewritten. She's lucky these are practicing religious people. Because if they weren't, if they were someone like me, and someone had tried to do that shit to me, someone did that to my child and took their life, Donna would be 32 different places, below a railroad bridge, after being hit by multiple train cars. Harvey Mutt night be that far behind.

30:40If it turned out that the family of my formal in-laws had taken the life of my child. Old beds are fucking off at that point. There ain't no law. That would hold a lot of people back from dissecting Donna like a frog in seventh grade science and selling parts on the black market. Just saying. Rob Adelson shared his final interaction with his mother on the stand after a rest remade in the case. He called her and said, they got the people responsible for Danny's death. Donna's brief response, I have to go. I never spoke again. Her eldest son cut ties completely. Her daughter testified to her controlling behavior under oath.

31:42Her own legal team characterised her as over-involved, a jury deliberated and reached a swift guilty verdict. Despite all of it, Donna maintained at sentencing that she had a clear record. Donna, you're facing the reality of spending the rest of your life behind bars because you couldn't allow your daughter to lead an independent life. Choose her own city or raise her children without your total control. The evidence against you didn't need to be invented. It came directly from your own written words, your own actions and the testimonies of your own family members. October 6, 1989, mischief maker. That was the very last time any of this was cute. Your thoughts in the comments section on Substacking You Tim. Be sure to press subscribe. If you're not already, take our podcast with you. Hit in Killers, a Tony Brusky search for it wherever you get podcasts. Even quicker, the QR code is there on the screen.

32:42If you're watching us on YouTube, scan that. We'll take you to Apple Podcast or Spotify. Or be like, press subscribe. To not miss any of our reporting and commentary on these cases. We'll continue our conversation in the comments section. Until then, I'm Tony Brusky. We will talk again real soon. With Tony Brusky. If you've been watching the Adelson documentary on Hulu right now, or you followed the case from the get go, and you're just continuing this journey into hell, like many of us are, have you ever wondered, have you ever sat and pondered,

33:43just how tight, how close, how close of a relationship do you think Donna Adelson and Charlie Adelson had? There's a lot of mother, son relationships and history where extreme activities are carried out at the behest of mom by the sun and then upon further digging, you realize, oh God, there's a lot more happening here than just, let's keep mom happy. Hmm, we're not talking about that. You're like, are you going there? I don't know that I'm going quite there,

34:44but we'll see. I don't think we're quite to Norman Bates level, but give it 20 more years, and if they were free, I think we could have possibly gotten there. If the allegiance in the bond held the way that it does, I mean, in all reality, would anybody be super surprised if you found out Charlie and Donna went into the back room of the Adelson Institute at lunchtime and Charlie had chocolate milk, meeting from Donna with Hershey's chocolate syrup. And I don't mean she got a milk card, and I said, here you go, son, let me put some syrup in there for you. Meaning that maybe he never really stopped feeding. That's probably a bit much. And Charlie, I know you're sitting in there trying to throw your tablet across the room if you have one right now.

35:45And Donna, I know that probably. I would never do that with my son. This is Donna Ailes. I want to let you know. I am not very happy with your portrayal of me and my son. We have never engaged in activity like that as much as I would have. I sometimes have dreams about it at night. I would never speak of that though. Only person who knows that is Harvey, because I tell him everything I possibly get to a masquerade every day of the week, and for my dogs. Okay, that's probably not quite how it went. In the cartoon version of Donna Ailes and maybe that's how it went. But again, let's, okay, let's pull back. We went down that road a little bit, a little much. I don't really quite think it went that far. But I don't know. With the Adelson's, it's been feeling like anything is possible, right? November 7th of 2023, the day after Charlie Adelson's conviction,

36:49he calls his mother from a Leon County jail phone. She picks up 86 calls that week. Somebody needed a assurance from somebody. 2,118 minutes, more than 35 hours. The longest one ran nearly two hours. I mean, think about that. A 47-year-old podiatrist. Pulling in three and a half million dollars a year, driving a Ferrari, girlfriend's everywhere in the only person who could call him his nervous system was the same woman who'd been booking his flights and paying his bills since he was 12. And don't forget milk time at the institute. Okay, again, that's probably not what was happening. Mommy, I'm thirsty. It's such a preposterous idea.

37:49But no. She tells him he's going to be okay. Tells him he's getting out of that stupid room. Can't you, sir? Don't talk about that stuff. You from Trimi, Charlie. I'm going to get out of that stupid room. We're all going to get back together at the institute. Someday we're going to have a delicious non-cumstrum meal of bronze. Just to defy little Danny. I'm because I'm done. I know my aim is with the daughter. Mom. Mom, you're what's that noise? And then she just fades away. Then comes a lying student realized that was going on. She didn't realize she was being recorded.

38:51Yeah. Charlie drops off. She keeps talking, apparently, to Harvey. Didn't realize she'd hang up the phone. And I said, I don't know. Do I want to go to sleep and not see my son? No. Perfectly honest I do. We could do it together. Leave a note. No one can come to guess. Basically talking about ending it. Simultaneously with her son. She doesn't want to go up by herself. But if the idea of her leaving and Charlie leaving the planet in the same off ramp at the same time. Well, ain't that a little more romantic in the eyes of Donna?

39:55In a sick, weird, twisted wife. Same call. She's looking up Vietnam because there's no extradition treaty than Korea. Then China next minute she's setting up trust for the grandkids. Fight, flee, or die together. Those were the choices for two people who literally could not imagine living apart mother and son. So how did two educated wealthy adults in Coral Springs, Florida, a podiatrist and a dental office manager talk themselves into putting a head on a man and his own garage over our custody ruling? The answer isn't in the execution. It's in the bond. Robert Adelson is Donna's eldest son. He's a physician in New York and hasn't spoken to the families since 2016. He was smart. On August 25th, the 25th, he took the stand at his mother's murder trial testifying for the first time across the trials. He told the jury point blank. His mother had fixed ideas about her children's lives. Go alone.

40:55And everything was fine. Stand up to her and things fell apart. Charlie, he said always needed more attention than the other two children. Charlie, somewhat dependent on my mom to help him figure out organizing stuff in his dental practice. That's his words. Rob Marrieday, a woman Donna disapproved of and moved 1400 miles away. That was how you escape the system. Charlie, he stayed right inside and built his career around it. He worked alongside his father at the Eglson Institute. Donna ran patient care and managed the office. Financial investigator Mary Hall confirmed a trial that Donna handled Charlie's hotel bookings, flights and personal bills. She was still acting as the domestic coordinator, the exact title she used on Wheel of Fortune back in 1989, when Pat Sejak said, what do you do? And then answering the puzzle mischief maker.

41:56The kids were in their 30s and 40s when Dan Markelle was killed, but the coordinator was still running the show. Prosecutor George Acafellon summed up the dynamic during closing arguments. She managed Charlie's life for him. And in return, he solved problems for her. He cared about getting things done for the number one woman in his life, and that was his mother. That was the tradeoff. She handled the logistics. He handled her crises. Kaplum and made it clear Charlie didn't care about relocation rulings, Wendy's divorce or winning against Dan. He cared about go-karts, jet skis, women. And handling whatever job his mother needed done. June on Chaita, Charlie's girlfriend. At the time, testified they spoke to Donna every single day. Phone records leading up to the murder showed roughly 80 calls between Donna and Charlie and June and July of 2014 alone.

43:01Charlie never married. Girlfriends came and went. Donna remained constant booking the flights, signing checks and deciding what was a threat. A wife would have meant another voice. Donna was not sharing space. When Charlie blocked Wendy from buying a house in Tallahassee, undercutting Dan's custody leverage, Donna texted him calling him a miracle worker. That was his role, Charlie fixed things. And what was broken in Donna's world was simple. A judge had told her no. And she couldn't handle it. Catherine McBannowa broke down the hierarchy for the jury. Excuse me, allergies. Charlie would step out of the room, check with his mother, and then relay instructions to McBannowa. Kaplum had asked her directly, Charlie. Charlie was the go-between between you and Donna, wasn't he?

44:03Yes, ma'am. The same way you were the go-between Charlie and Garcia. Yes, ma'am. The family business was already built, uncut-outs. The murder conspiracy just used the existing org chart. McBannowa also testified that Charlie painted Dan as a tyrant, tormenting the family, leaving Donna unable to sleep or eat. It was the way Charlie took on. His mother was unraveling over the court motions and fixing it became his assignment. He'd been solving her problems for years. This was just the next level. Lily Fletcher, producer of Welcome to the Family, described the dynamic well. Foddu is when two people talk to themselves on repeat about something. And they kind of go mad. Charlie and Donna just kept talking about this on a loop over and over again. And they convinced themselves that this feels like a response to a rational way and a rational way to solve their problem.

45:06And don't think about any of the consequences. It's just a loop. Here's what we're going to do. Here's how we're going to do it. Nothing else comes in. It's not a clinical diagnosis, but it captures the psychological reality. Two people locked in an echo chamber, amplifying grievances until murder starts to sound like a logical solution. Charlie admitted it on the stand, 80% of what he knew about Dan came straight from Donna. He'd hear a story from his mother during the day and repeated it dinner because in his words, it's more interesting than talking about teeth. He had no independent view of Dan. Just as mother's obsession recycled at dinner. And the rhetoric kept escalating. Donna's emails to Wendy were filled with venom. Dan was an idiot and effort, a religious salad. Never, ever, ever give up. Everyone has a price. Those are her words. Then came Charlie's joke that a TV was cheaper than a hitman, repeated over and over to anyone who'd listen.

46:07He said at the wedding, I mean, Vannewa, the casual acquaintances, five days before the murder. Wendy told her boyfriend, Jeffrey LaCos, a version of that joke that didn't feel like a joke anymore. Charlie had looked into it. The cost was $15,000 allegedly. LaCos testified she was dead serious. It made my stomach flippy, said. That's the loop. The mother feeds the rage. The son carries it out and nobody in the room ever tells them to stop. April 2016, an undercover FBI agent approached Donna outside her Miami condo, handing her a news clipping about Dan's murder and demanding $5,000. What is an innocent person? Do you call 911? You call it lawyer? Donna called Charlie. Three times back-to-back, zero calls to police. The wiretaps captured it all.

47:08She told Charlie she got paperwork hand-delivered. He asked if it involved him and Donna said, well, probably, probably the two of us. Then Charlie suggested going to police and Donna cut it. I don't think that's a good idea. When asked what they wanted, she dropped the code. This TV was probably about five. The old joke was now operational shorthand. They need to invent code words after the crime. They'd been using them for years. Charlie later told Meg Banahwa that if it were a real cop, Donna would have told Harvey that night, but she didn't. Harvey was kept in the dark. Harvey was an apartment. He was background noise. Charlie was the one she trusted when things got dirty.

48:11Meg Banahwa, maybe the one who's to God, Harvey, that's probably the best damn thing that's ever happened to you. The fact that your mother has an extremely unhealthy relationship with her son, or male son. Consider yourself lucky. Meg Banahwa testified that the payoff money was damp and moldy. Charlie told her Donna had washed it in a washing machine. Either believing that was how you laundered money or thinking water would remove fingerprints. It paints a wild picture. A mother running cash through a spin cycle while her son recounts it like a kid complaining about laundry day. When the washing detail was secondhand, Meg Banahwa confirmed directly that the bill she received were damp and came to pay off. Donna signed a 44 checks. Practice checks to Meg Banahwa for $407.58 each delivered by Charlie in batches. Meg Banahwa never worked a single day at that office.

49:14Long time dental assistant Clarisa Labrato testified she only ever saw Meg Banahwa as a patient. The domestic corn intercap corn dating, signing the checks, maintaining the cover, keeping the routine going. There's no evidence of a physical relationship between Donna and Charlie. That's not what this is. What this is is a total collapse of healthy boundaries. When his son is willing to arrange a murder to keep his mother happy, healthy boundaries are long gone. We've seen this kind of a measurement in other criminal cases. Look at Francis Schrauter in 1978, when her father cut off her money. She told her 70-year-old son, Mark, if you don't do it, don't come home again. Mark shot his grandfather, experts testify he acted under intense maternal control a teenager terrified of exile. Or, Sandy and Kenny, times, mommy and Clyde, as they were known, Kenny killed his, killed at his mother's direction,

50:15sharing beds in upskill townhouses and acting more like a partner than his son. Even after confessing to Saver from death row, Kenny said, she destroyed my life, but I loved my mom. And there's Barbara Daly, Bakeland in 1972, her son, Anthony, stabbed her to death after years of severe psychological control and boundary violations. When police arrived, see he was calmly ordering takeout. He later wrote from an institution, I was very much under my mother's power. The Adelson story belongs on that same spectrum. You don't need taboo lines to be crossed to see a complete psychological collapse. All it takes is two people locked in a room, feeding each other's rage until murder feels like the only way out. Kenny Kheim's language. She destroyed my life, but I loved my mom.

51:15Anthony, Bakeland, I was very much under my mother's power. Charlie Adelson never gave that jailhouse interview. He got life without parole instead, but the truth remains the same. Done until Harvey, she'd rather die than live without Charlie. She never told Harvey about the plot. Her husband was just background. Her son was her true partner. And in their closed loop, neither of them ever let a voice of reason in to say the one thing that needed to be said. This is insane. Your thoughts in the comments section on Substank and YouTube. Be sure to press subscribe if you like our reporting so you don't miss any of it in our conversations with the experts. And if you're not already done so, take us with you on the road. We're going to be on our podcast hidden killers with Tony Brusky, search it. Wherever you get podcasts and press subscribe or go to that QR code right there. Scan it and pick your podcast player and hit subscribe.

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