Summer Series 2024: Dan Markel Part 2: The investigation, arrests and tying it all back to the Adelson’s

Welcome to Primetime Crime twenty twenty four summer series. We are going to talk right now in true crime, and then together we are going to unravel the mysterious death of attorney and law professor Dan Markel, the circumstances surrounding his death, and those responsible. Let's dive right in. Hey, guys, welcome back to Primetime Crime. It's Kylie. We are going to dive right into right now in true crime, and the main thing I want to talk about is the death of Micah Miller. There has been so much surrounding this case and it is, in my opinion, suspicious. In my opinion, there's no such thing as coincidences, in my opinion, allegedly. So we're just going to kind of talk about it a little bit. Because Micah's family is very much pressing law enforcement to investigate this further. They have come out and said that it was a suicide. They tracked all of Micah's movements, from her leaving her home in South Carolina to going to a pawnshop to purchasing a firearm, to then calling nine to one one to let them know that she was going to commit suicide, and ultimately allegedly in law enforcement's opinion taking her own life. They have released a press statement saying all of this with the timeline all laid out. However, like I said, Micah's family is questioning everything because of the circumstances that led up to her untimely death and all of these other things that were going on. We are going to talk a little bit about those now. So Micah and JP Miller were married. However, they first met when Micah babysat for JP and his first wife and their children, so that is initially how he first met Micah. She was young. I think she was like fourteen or fifteen when JP and her initially met. And as with all people that like to pray and groom, this is exactly what allegedly happened in Micah and JP's relationship. Because she was young, she was impressionable, and he was older and had the upper hand. They would go on to eventually marry. But not everything is as perfect as it appears. And even though JP took the opportunity to build himself up in Micah's obituary about how much she loved him and praised him and everything he did was the best, even though he might not not been the best. She always told him he was the best. This is all really interesting considering that Micah had officially filed for divorce two days before she was found dead, and they were in the process of going through a situation. She posted about it in some type of way on social media. She made videos about her struggles and how of course, in the eyes of God, divorce is bad. But you know what else is bad is abuse and hurting other people. God doesn't look good upon those things. It is so interesting to really go back and watch her Facebook posts and videos because it's literally like she's leaving little breadcrumbs in my opinion, of what she was going through personally, and it was not good. Whatever she was going through was not good. And she had in fact confided in her family that there was a lot going on obviously in her personal life. But even when as far as to tell her sister, if I end up with a bullet in my head, it wasn't me, it was JP. And here we are talking about a woman who ended up allegedly taking her life via gunshot to the head. It just doesn't make sense. Like I said, I'm not a huge believer in coincidences. I feel like everything that we are presented with kind of tells a story. And I think if you are just on the outside looking in and you're trusting what law enforcement says as fact, then you will just be like, Okay, she drove from South Carolina to North Carolina, she bought a gun, and then she committed suicide because she struggled so deeply with her mental health, which had been well documented over the years by her husband, who constantly used her mental health against her and would have her committed and talk about her and her mental health and everything that was going on in their life in his sermons and demonize her and use that against her. And to me, that is the most dangerous type of person that could ever walk amongst us, because they are so good at what they do that they're able to put on this front and this charm and everybody just kind of follows them blindly because they are so good at what they do. So there were two police reports that were filed on March eleventh by Micah Miller, and according to the documents, she was being stalked and somebody was trying to harm her. So Micah reported to the police that a razor blade was placed in her tire and that she said that this was the second time that that had happened within the week, and the responding officer to that scene said that the medal was a tired deflation device that could be bought online. Now, Micah did have a suspicion as to who this person was, but the name of this person is redacted in the report, but she thought this is the person who is responsible and that they had placed that item on the tire. And then the report also stated that Micah had noticed some strange activity and thought that people were watching her and following her, and that this person had a history of stalking her and it had been an ongoing type of situation. But because nothing is ever done when a woman feels unsafe or uncomfortable and is obviously being harassed and put in danger, law enforcement had nothing to go off of. They said, They said that there's no evidence that this person put this razor in her tire twice within one week, So we're just gonna let it go. Because when a woman feels uncomfortable, it's really more of her problem than anyone else's problem. So that, unfortunately, is the narrative that I feel like we get flipped so many times when we hear about a woman who ends up getting killed or getting severely hurt by someone who was stalking them, And for months and onths and months leading up to the major incident, they were trying to draw attention to it, file a police report, and nothing is done because nothing can be done until the really bad thing happens. And that is really really freaking frustrating to me. Sorry, I had to go off on that little side tangent. So from there, Micah leaves the gas station and goes to the Honda dealership to have her tire change and fixed. So Micah said that at one point while she was at the gas station, the suspect, the one who she named, pulled up next to her and was trying to talk to her, and she told him to go away, and then when she pulled out her phone maybe to record, he sped off, and then he ended up again showing up at the Honda dealership, almost like he had a tracking device on Micah's car and knew exactly where she was going. Micah told law enforcement that she was afraid for her life and she blocked the number of this person, but she would still get calls and texts from this person on other phone numbers, which is interesting again. So law enforcement leaves they are working on Micah's car, and then Micah finds out that the mechanics at the Honda dealership found a tracking device on her vehicle, so she let law enforcement know this, and then she said she wanted to get your restraining order. And in the midst of all of this going on, just a few weeks later, Micah is founded in a North Carolina state park with what law enforcement is calling a suicide. There is a lot more layers to the story and to the Miller family, and I could go on forever, but this is not supposed to be like its own little mini episode. But I did just want to give you guys an update on what was going on with that. And I really feel like, in general, we need to flip the narrative. When a woman or a man for that matter, go to law enforcement and they are expressing that they are afraid and that someone is following them and stalking them, and all these weird things keep happening, we need to a believe them and be protect them. And I feel like time and time again we hear it where that doesn't happen, and they fall through the cracks and then something bad ends up happening, and it all could have been prevented if there had been different things in place to help prevent it. It's really sad, it's really unfortunate, and I, like I said, the family is very much pushing law enforcement to look further into this. They are not accepting that Micah committed suicide, and I think that that's kind of where we start to flip the script and get the word out that this happened and that there is more than just black and white. And years down the line, we're probably still going to be talking about this case because we're still talking about Ellen Greenberg. I did her story long ago, and I'm in the process right now of doing another case where it was ruled a suicide. And there's all of these evidence surrounding the case that proves that there's at least reasonable doubt that it was suicide. There's at least something there that makes us think we need to look further into this, and I feel like that's a really important conversation to have. So I will continue to keep you guys updated on all of the Micah Miller things, but we are going to go ahead and move on to just one other quick thing. I want to talk about Richard Allen, who is the suspect in the murder of Abby and Libby from Delphi, Indiana. His trial was supposed to be starting on May thirteenth, but it has now been postponed to October. And this one is going to be a really really interesting tree. I am so curious to see what all they have against Richard. I really want to know the States case. I am so curious of where this is going to go. And I know it's going to be so hard for the families to relive all of the horror because law enforcement never released a whole lot about what actually happened to the girls, and they had, you know, these couple of Snapchat videos and that ultimately, years down the line, finally led them to who they believe is their killer, Richard Allen. So it's going to be really interesting to see kind of what happens. And I will continue to keep you guys updated with that one. Also. I am trying to stay on top of the Chad day Bill trial as best I can. It has been a really interesting last few days. Check out Pretty Lies and alibis Gigi for your daily trial updates. Also, Nate Eaton does a really good job at doing like a cumulative day, so also be sure to check him out. Between the two of them, I feel like I am pretty well versed in what's going on in the trial. Last thing I want to talk about Adam Montgomery, who is the father of Harmony. Montgomery was officially sentenced today to forty five years to life in prison for her murder. Harmony's remains have never been found, so the state did offer to dismiss some of his convictions if he would have given up where Harmony is, but he of course rejected the offer because he says he's innocent, which I tell you, there are many cases that I come across where I truly believe that the person that is standing trial is innocent. But Adam Montgomery is the biggest piece of shit and it's not even alleged at this point. He is the biggest piece of shit and he will never see the light of day again, and for that we are grateful the justice system got it right on this one. So thank you guys for sticking with me for a super extra long right now in True Crime, because I rambled for a good like eight minutes about Mike Miller, but I appreciate you guys, and we are going to go ahead and lead into episode two of Summer Series twenty twenty four Dan Markel. All right, we are jumping in to Summer Series Dan Markel Part two today. We are going to pick up where we left off. So episode one, we learn about the divorce and the separation custody battle that is going on between Dan and Wendy Dan Markel Wendy Adelson, and Dan drops his two children off at school, goes to the gym, comes home, and is ambushed and shot in his driveway. He is rushed to the hospital where he dies. Shortly thereafter, His estranged wife, Wendy Adelson, is brought down to the police. They established that she has an alibi and she kind of goes through the series of events that was kind of leading up to everything that day. And on July twenty first, police definitely say that Dan Markel was an intended victim of the shooting and a tip line is dedicated to the investigation. On July twenty second, police say that Dan's cause of death was a fatal gunshot wound to his head. On the twenty third of July, they release a photo of a silver Prius type of car that was seen in the area the day at the crime, and they say that this is just a vehicle of interest, and there are some other things that happen in the investigation. There was some discrepancy in regards to the nine to one one call center and emergency vehicles arriving to Dan's house in a timely manner, So there's kind of some back and forth in regards to that, and we are now in twenty fifteen, and in we are in July. Police give new information on the Prius and announce that there is a one hundred thousand dollars reward leading to the arrest and conviction of Dan Markel's killer or killers in twenty sixteen. On May twenty sixth, a suspect named Sigfredo Garcia, age thirty four, of Miami Beach was arrested for first degree murder. And they didn't release a whole lot more other than that, except they did say that they were investigating it as a murder for hire and that more arrests would be imminent, and let me tell you they were right. They then release the probable cause affidavit, and this affidavit revealed that investigators believe that Sigfredo Garcia and his co conspirator Lewis Rivera, who was thirty three, had traveled from the Miami area in a rented Toyota Prius. They stayed in different motels the nights of July sixteenth and seventeenth of twenty fourteen, and they were going to be committing this crime against Dan Markel. There was cell phone banking and electronic toll collection records, security camera footage from different buildings and city buses, and the video footage of this prius entering the gym right after Dan and leaving the gym right after Dan, and therefore following Dan home, committing this crime, and then leaving via this silver rented Prius. So the way that investigators were able to piece this together is really amazing. It I always, honestly will talk about the bad police work that we see in these different cases, but this is one case where we really have to have our hats off to the police and the detectives because the way that they were able to piece all of this together and get it all kind of in a nice little concise package where it was obviously clear what had happened in this scenario. It was really really incredible the way that they were able to take Luise Rivera and Sigfredo Garcia and connect them back to the Adelson family just through their own research and their investigation. It was really really incredible. So we're going to talk a little bit about that. Now, this may be a little all over the place, because the public is given this knowledge that Sigfredo and Luis have been arrested and it is a murder for hire, and that it ended up being tied back to the Adelson family via the way of Catherine mag Banawa, who was dating Charlie Adelson and also was the ex girlfriend and baby mama of Sigfredo Garcia. So you start to see how all of this comes together and how all these people interconnect and intertwine. So we're gonna go a little bit random. We're going to talk about some of the investigation tactics that they used in order to come to the conclusion that all of these people were in fact together, and all of the crazy undercover work that they did to expose all of them in the end. So in May of twenty sixteen, Sigfredo and Luis Rivera are arrested and in June they are brought up on charges a first degree murder in connection with Dan Markel's killing. Luis Rivera had already been jailed on some unrelated federal charges since twenty fourteen, and this charge had to do with some Latin king's situation and he was sentenced to more than twelve and a half years in prison, so he was then charged again with this situation. In their filing, they included some information on Luis and Sigfredo's first trip to Tallahassee, which was June fourth through sixth of twenty fourteen, and they had cellular data GPS records placing them in the vicinity of where Dan Markel was on both of those different trips. The media released video footage surveillance footage of the Toyota Prius pretty much stalking Dan Markel throughout the different areas of Tallahassee on July eighteenth, twenty fourteen, and then Sigfredo Garcia is pictured in this Toyota Prius at an ATM wearing a long white sleeve dress shirt. And then there's another video after the murder. That shows the prius going in the other direction on Thomasville Road. There are two individuals in the car and the one in the passenger seat is changing into a long sleeve dress shirt. So obviously this is the priest that is being driven by Sigfredo and Luis Rivera, and they have just followed Dan to his home, killed him in his driveway, and now they're leaving the scene of the crime. On October first of twenty sixteen, they arrest Katherine meg Banawah and they charge her with murder. Just a few days after that, on October fourth, Luis Rivera pled guilty to the charge of murder as a plea bargain in which she was sentenced to nineteen years and this would run concurrently with his other sentence that he was already serving. And he also claimed. Luis Rivera claimed that Sigfredo had recruited him to take part in the killing of Dan and said that Catherine mag Banawah was the woman who was in the middle doing everything, basically saying she orchestrated this. If she organized this, you need to look at this woman, and they did because they obviously arrested her. Luis also said that he wasn't sure of the names of the people who had hired Siegfredo and Catherine to carry out this horrific crime against Dan Markel, but he knew that the killing was because, and this is a quote, the lady wants her two kids back. She wants full custody of the kids end quote. And this is where these stories starts to take a bit of a turn. But police have their work cut out for them because this is a really strong accusation. They are able, as you'll see in a little while, able to tie back the fact that Catherine Mgganaha and Charlie Adelson, who is the brother of Wendy Adelson, the ex wife of Dan Markel, are in a relationship. But it takes a lot of work to actually have enough evidence to arrest Charlie. He isn't arrested until twenty twenty two, so we have a long way to go between twenty sixteen and twenty twenty two for this story to kind of come to a point. So let's talk a little bit about Catherine mag Ban Nahbah. She was a previous girlfriend of sik Fredo Garcia. They had children together. That is her baby daddy. She was one of the workers at Charlie Adelson's dental practice, so they met at work and they began having a romantic relationship. After Dan Markel was killed, Catherine was the first person that sik Credo Garcia called, and they had over twenty seven hundred calls between the two of them between May one, twenty fourteen, and July nineteenth and twenty fourteen, which was right after the day after Dan had been killed. There was also some talk about her having some breast enhancement surgery that they thought had been paid for partially by Charles Adelson. Charlie Adelson, so because they were in this romantic relationship, all of a sudden, Katherine is able to pay for this breast enhancement. And they also said that Sigfredo and Luis Rivera were able to purchase several cars and motorcycles around the same time that Catherine was receiving these paychecks from the Adelson family dentist practice, and all of these checks were written and signed by none other than Donald Adelson. So you can see what a tangled web we weave. As Elec Murda would say, the dental practice that Charlie worked for was his father's dental practice, the Aidelson Institute. It was run by the family. Hence why Donna is cutting checks to Catherine, who is there for giving money to Sigfredo and luis killing Dan Markel. You see how it all starts to fit together. But again, even though this is pretty good substantial evidence, it's not enough to arrest Charlie at this point. Also side note that I should have mentioned before. In twenty fifteen, Dan Markel's parents became privy to the information that Wendy Adelson had changed the children's last names from Markel to Adelson, which I don't even know would say about that. I have all the thoughts to say about that. I think you can probably read between the lines of what I think about that. And she did this shortly after Dan was murdered. She changed their last name to Adelson instead of Markel. And she also removed her older son's middle name, which was Hebrew, which again was a big part of Dan's heritage and highly important to him. And also like it's a legal name, like you have to jump through a bit of a hoop to change a name legally, And the fact that your ex husband and the father of your children was just murdered, and first thing on your mind is, Oh, I need to change their name to my last name. Are you joking, Wendy, Are you joking? And you're going to come to see that in all of this, the Adelsons think that they are untouchable. They do. They all think they're untouchable. They all think they're going to get away with this whole thing, and they did. They got away with it for a hot minute, and unfortunately, it took a long time to get justice and we're still in the process of getting justice for Dan. However, while everything else was going on behind the scenes, investigators were working together, there were wire taps, there were all the different conversations that were happening undercover to try to prove that the Adelsons had a hand in this. Okay, we are going to now go on to some of the trial developments for Sicredo Garcia and Catherine mang Banahwah. We are going to be kind of backtracking in a little while because as their trials are going on, other things are also going on where they're having these different conversations they're having Catherine's having conversations with Charlie, and there's a lot that happens in these conversations that eventually leads to Charlie being arrested. So it's a lot of information, but I feel like I have to kind of go in this order and then kind of backtrack, because that's kind of the way that this kind of happened in real time. Things were happening behind the scenes as other things were happening, and we didn't know any of this other stuff was happening until Charlie's trial. So I'm doing the best I can with the story. It is very overwhelming to me. So in twenty nineteen, there was a combined trial for Catherine and Sigfredo that took place in October. And in this trial, the prosecutors were claiming that Charlie had arranged to pay Katherine, Luis and Sigfredo one hundred thousand dollars to kill Dan Markel so that Wendy could get full custody of the children and move back to Miami. And of course, during the trial, Catherine denied the involvement, but claimed that the case presented by the prosecutors led her to believe that Charlie Adelson was involved in the murders. Now Sigfredo claimed that Luis had done the killing by himself. And it did not go Sigfredo's way because on October eleventh, a jury found him guilty of first degree murder and a conspiracy in the twenty fourteen killing of Markel, and on October fifteenth, the Course court sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole, which we are happy to hear, and they also gave him an additional thirty years for conspiracy to commit murder. Now, in regards to Catherine, the jury was not able to reach a unanimous verdict, so she remained in prison and was pending a retrial. And when I tell you the number of times that they offered this woman a plea, tell us what happened and will lighten your sentence. Tell us what happened, and we'll do this. We'll scratch your back if you scratch ours kind of thing. She refused to really tell them what happened. And it's astonishing to me because her in Sinctretos share children. So he's already going to prison for life. You have the opportunity to potentially serve less time, and she refuses by just not cooperating not giving them the truth, not giving them what they wanted. So you leave your two children who you had with Sigfredo parentless because you won't tell the truth, you won't take the plea. I will never understand that. And I understand like she was trying to protect Sigfredo in the beginning, but when it comes down to we're offering you this plea, can you give us information on everything that happened and will give you a lesser sentence, she refused to do it. Astonishing like those poor children. I don't really know what was going through her mind. I don't know if she thought that she was doing the right thing at the end of the day, but at the end of the day, she was not doing the right thing because her children are parentless and both of her parents are in prison for murder, which we'll get to in a minute, because we haven't even talked about Catherine's trial, her final trial. So of course, the pandemic kits and the world shuts down and life is a hot mess, right, So there are all the different delays because of the pandemic, and Catherine finally went back to trial in May of twenty twenty two, and shortly after the trial began. Eleven days later, they found her guilty on first degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and solicitation to commit murder. She was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the first degree murder, thirty years for conspiracy, and an additional thirty years for solicitation. Catherine is never getting out of prison. In the midst of all that, Charlie Adelson is finally arrested April twenty first of twenty twenty two, is charged with first degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and solicitation of murder. And in this claim, Wendy and Donald Adelson are also named as co conspirators, although at that time they were not officially charged with anything, just as co conspirators. And in November of twenty twenty two, they made a request for Catherine meg Banawah to be handed over to the Leon County Sheriff so that she could be transported to Leon County State Attorney's office in relation to Charlie Adelson's trial, which was going to be scheduled to take place October twenty third of twenty twenty three. So everything is starting to kind of come together. I think the best way to go about like doing the rest of this is we are now going to talk about what happened in Charlie Adelson's trial, which is where everything comes out, all of the evidence that they have against this man and against the whole crew of those people, what they did, why they did it, and who was at the forefront, which was the Adelsons. So we are going to stop here for this episode, and in my next episode, Slash episode, it's probably going to be ongoing. Of course, I'm going to discuss everything that happened at trial, during Charlie's trial, because that's where we get all of the tea, we get all of the information about interviews that initially happened. We hear from Wendy's then boyfriend, Jeff la Cass, who has a really really interesting story to tell. We also hear from Catherine, We hear from Charlie himself, we hear from Wendy, we hear from everybody, and it really emerges throughout this trial what exactly happened, who was involved. And then of course the story isn't over after the trial, because more things are coming out, still coming out to this day. So we are going to pick back up next week's episode with the trial testimony what happened. We're going to kind of deep dive into some more of the different witnesses and talk about all of the things that went on between the period of time of Dan dying, Dan getting killed, two when Charlie was arrested. Because like I said in episode one, the atal sins cannot shut the f up and they are the ones that orchestrated this. Obviously, Charlie especially orchestrated this, and him and his mom could not stop talking to everyone about it and each other about it, and they ended up pretty much shooting themselves in the foot at the end of the day because the cops were one step ahead of them the entire time, which we love to see. So that is it for this part two of summer series, Dan, Marcel and I will see you guys next week for part three. Have a good one.