Summer Series 2024: Dan Markel: Part 7

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 Marcal, the circumstances surrounding his death, and those responsible. Let's dive right in. Hello Twisted Humans. Do you find yourself wanting to know more about the latest murder, conspiracy, cult, or haunting than this is the podcast for you. In nineteen fifty two, there was a record high of UFOs reported fifteen hundred sightings. There has been evidence of human sacrifice, double worship, and it is haunted by more spirits than can be counted. A family of two adults and two kids reportedly saw a giant flying thing with glowing red eyes. And meanwhile, the family's nanny that helped Veronica to care for her and Lucian's children, was found bludgeon to death in the basement of their family. Well, I'm Malitia and I'm Sierra and this is twisted and uncorked. Hey, guys, welcome back to another episode of Primetime Crime. It's Kylie. We are going to talk right now into your crime. Before we get into today's episode. So I updated you guys on all the Long Island serial killer happenings. I feel like there is going to be more coming down the pipeline. I feel like there's going to be a lot more. I don't know. Call it gut, call it intuition, call it I know that that man has killed so so many. I will keep you guys updated, but I do want to update you on another American businessman suspected serial killer who is named Herb baum Eister. He committed suicide in nineteen ninety six. However, he lived in Westfield, Indiana. He was married, he had three children, and what he would do is similar to Rex. Allegedly, when his family was out of town, he would stay back because he was a businessman and he had he ran like thrift stores, owned and ran thrift store, so he would stay back to run the thrift stores. But in his spare time, he would go to gay bars and seduce these men and then he would allegedly murder them. Now, the family lived on a property that was called Fox Hollow Farms. They purchase and move there to that property in nineteen eighty eight and is a extremely large property eighteen acres four bedroom, ten bathroom eleven thy five hundred and seventy foot square property. In nineteen ninety six, investigators recovered some different bone fragments of at least eleven people on the property, and a new search conducted in December of twenty twenty two and there's been more bones found, and more bones and more bone fragments. Of course, they've gone through all of the DNA testing to try to figure out who these people are, and they have been able to identify some of them. This is an ongoing investigation. It is a really grueling process to identify some of these bone fragments because they're literal fragments scattered amongst this massive property, and we don't know if they're all human bones, if there's some other fragments mixed in as well. This guy obviously allegedly was a statistic, sadistic human, So it's going to be really interesting to see what ends up coming out as far as this. His wife did initiate a divorce and then he was of course wanted for potential murder and he ended up committing suicide, so he never had to pay for his crimes, unfortunately. But I do feel like we're gonna hopefully give a lot of people their names back, and hopefully their families can have some closure as to what happened to them, because, as we know, it has to be hard enough to have somebody taken from you in such a horrific way, murdered in such a horrific way, but not knowing is probably even harder for some of these families who have gone on for decades and decades not knowing what happened to their family members. So hopefully in this investigation they can continue to uncover all the secrets that are buried on this property and give these victims their identities back and give their families a little bit of closure. So I will be sure to keep you guys updated on that. Also, curiosity got the best of me, so I wanted to look up the Fox Hollow Farms property, and as with all things, I was directed to Reddit where there was a video that had a little slideshow of the property and the inside of the property is definitely creepy. I definitely get vibes from it, but it's interesting. I think maybe I'll do it in depth episode on Herb and his murders, alleged murders and we'll talk a little bit more about it, because I am just so intrigued by what goes on in the mind of serial killers, what makes them commit these crimes, and why do they keep doing it. It's just actual insanity to me. So stay tuned for that because I'm probably going to do an episode on him, just more or less for myself, because I am very, very intrigued by the whole thing. So there have been some documents released by the FBI in the Gabby Petito murder, so they released a lot of different things, but one of them was a letter that Gabby had written to Brian prior to her death. There isn't a date on it, but it says, and this is to Brian, excerpts, you know how much I love you. Just please stop crying and stop calling me names, because we're a team and I'm here with you. And she expresses that she's frustrated that there isn't more that she can do when Brian is in pain, and that she loves him too much. And I think that's just a really huge testament to what was going on in their relationship, because as much as he was abusing her and being a overall horrific human to her. She still loved him and this was the person that she had chosen to spend her life with. They were on a cross country road trip together. It was definitely a volatile relationship on his end, of course, and Gabby was young, and honestly, when you're in these situations, it is so hard to see what is actually happening in front of you. You don't want to believe that the person that you've chosen to be with is a volatile person, is an abusive person. You want to do everything you can to help them, and you very much internalize a lot. You often blame yourself for it. And this goes both ways. This goes for males abusing females and vice versa, females abusing males, which we really don't talk a lot about, and there's definitely a double standard for it. But in Gabby and Brian's case, Brian was a very, very toxic human, and when we look at his parents, we understand why he was a toxic human, not giving him any excuses, because you are what you are, but you're also a lot of the times of product of your environment. And we saw how Brian's parents handled everything when Gabby initially went missing and after her remains were found, and they have done nothing to reach out to Gabby's family to do what's right. They have literally done nothing but fight the family in every way, shape and form. So Brian is definitely a of his parents, and that is all I am going to say. That is just my opinion. But it's really sad because you hear time and time and time again, well why don't they leave, why don't they do this, why don't they do that? But it's not always so cut and dry and simple, and we have the ability to see hindsight and know that, yeah, Gabby should have left, but a lot of women, especially young women, aren't equipped with the knowledge that you can leave and you can escape, and that this isn't normal. You try to rationalize what you're going through because you are in the situation and you're trying to just make the best out of it, But until you're really in it, I don't think there's a way to judge other people's actions that are inside of something like that. But as all of these new documents are released, it's going to be really interesting to see what war comes out, because there is so much in this case, it is never ending, honestly, and Gaby's family, they've really all kind of come together and chosen to make something good out of what happened. They have started a foundation, the Gabby Patita Foundation. They help with resources for people who are in abusive relationships. They've also really used their platform because Gabby's story blew up and it was so in the media. Her family realizes that not everyone gets that media attention. And I talk about it on here all the time. A lot of the time, these stories that get the media attention are blonde, white women, and they want to help flip that narrative and help minorities, people of color, indigenous populations also have their stories covered, and like, everyone deserves to be found and everyone deserves the same type of media attention. So they're using what happened to Gabby to help so many people in so many different ways, and I think that they're doing an amazing job. Okay, last thing I want to talk about, and we're going to talk about the other end of the spectrum where there is a double standard for female abusers towards their partner significant others when that significant other is a man. We're going to talk about the disappearance of Gary Waite. So. Gary Waite is a thirty nine year old man living in Indiana, and he recently got engaged to Amber Portwood, who became infamous from her appearance on sixteen and Pregnant on MTV fifteen years ago and now is a regular on teen Mom on MTV. Amber has had a lot of issues, a lot of domestic issues, and all of these have been very very well documented. So Amber and Gary recently got engaged. They went on a vacation to celebrate their engagement. They went to Bryce in North Carolina. They got into an argument, and of course, one thing led to another and Gary ended up taking off in a area that he is not familiar with and he has not been seen since, seen or heard from since. Amber is the one who reported him missing. And I just don't even know. This story is getting a lot of attention because he is engaged to Amber, which is a good thing, because we want him to be found and we want him to be okay. But there is such a double standard in this type of situation because, like I said, it has been well documented on television and through just various social media channels. The different things that have occurred with Amber and her different partners over the years. It is sad, it's unfortunate, but it also is part of her being in the public eye. People are going to talk about the things that happen in her relationships because it's a huge folks and premise on the show that she is on. So Gary is still missing. Of course, we hope and pray that he is okay and that he will be found, but as of right now, he is still considered missing in North Carolina. I have shared his missing flyer on my Instagram and Facebook pages, so please be sure to check that out. And we are going to go ahead and get started with today's episode Summer Series twenty twenty four. Okay, guys, welcome to Part seven of Summer Series twenty twenty four Dan Markelle the trial of Charlie Adelson. Today we are diving into day four f testimony. So we have Sergeant Chris Kerbett on the stand currently and he's being cross examined at this point by Daniel Rashbaum, and basically Dan is questioning him and saying, why did the state wait so long to make an arrest Charlie if they had all of this data and cell phone evidence for all of this time. Dan then went on to suggest different reasons why the different parties would be communicating with each other over the span of the few years that they communicated, and was basically just trying to offer all of the different types of reasons that they could have all been communicating. But Sergeant Chris Corbett remained steadfast and stuck with his testimony. And then we are on to the next witness, who is named Oscar Jimenez Junior. Now he is a undercover FBI agent. He is the one that approached Donna Adelson on the streets and handed her that piece of paper what's going to be known as the bump. So he has been a special agent with the FBI for over two decades and at the time of the Bump, he was working in the Violent Crime Squad. So Georgia Kapelman is directly examining him, and he goes on to explain how bumps are used by law enforcement to gather information or to generate the possibility of a wire tap, basically trying to see if you set someone up, if what you think happened is going to happen, if you can get people to talk about what you think they're going to talk about. That is the whole premise and purpose behind the bump. So what he goes on to testify to is that he had been instructed to approach Donald Adelson on the street and give her this flyer. Now, on the flyer, it had a picture of Dan Markel and it also had a newspaper article about his murder. And there was written on the flyer a request for five thousand dollars and there was a phone number. When he approached Donna, he basically said that he was a quote unquote brother of Luis Rivera and says that Luis needs the Adelson family's help, and says that he knows that they have been helping Katie and Sigfredo Garcia in exchange for their role in Dan Markel's murder. And as we know, as a result of this bump that happened, it led Donna to call Charlie, which led Charlie to dulce Vita having this conversation with Katie, and that's pretty much where the case kind of comes together. So our next witness is a guy named Keith mceelvin. He is a forensic engineer. He has been in the field for over thirty five years, and he has the ability in his job to take audio, video computer data and make it a little bit stronger, enhance it, restore it. And that is exactly what he ended up doing with the Dulce Vita audio. And also he did it as well with a sushi restaurant audio that was taken of Harvey and Charlie shortly after the Bumps. So obviously in restaurants, you're gonna have a lot of background noise, and it's a secret audio recording, so it's not like you have a microphone up in someone's face and you're telling them to talk into it. You're dealing with a lot of background noise, so on and so forth. So his job is to take this audio and enhance it so they can actually hear what is being said, because without that audio, you have a super circumstantial case. You don't have anything in words saying this is what we're doing, this is the thing that we're going through with, this is why we're meeting, this is why we're having these back and forth conversations between all of these different parties. So this audio and the clarity of this audio is super super important to this case. On cross examination, Daniel Rashbaum is very much going to try to poke holes in this witness and the ability of him to enhance this audio. He questions why the male voice in the audio is so much stronger than the female voice, and basically trying to say that this audio is incredible. You can't even hear what they're saying. You can't even hear what's going on. You can't hear the female voice hardly at all. And the witness kind of points out that there are multiple different times during the conversation that you can even hear Charlie asking the female who is Katie? What what did you say? Meaning that even he couldn't hear it, so he was sitting there right with her. So it had little to do with the enhancement of the audio and much more to do with the fact that Katie was probably being very very low talking, very soft spoken, probably because she realizes the walls are closing it on her. Next up on the witness stand is Special Agent Patrick Sanford, and they are going to talk to him about the different intercepted conversations between Charlie Adelson and the other members of this conspiracy. Katie Luis Rivera and Sigfredo Garcia. They talked about the first date that Charlie Adelson had first approached Katherine mag Banawa about harming Dan Markel, and he said it was exactly ten years ago from today October thirty first, twenty thirteen. There was a wiretap call that occurred just prior to April fifteenth of twenty sixteen. In this call, Donna and Charlie were talking about Wendy's then boyfriend, who is named David Attel, and they were both saying that Wendy needed to stay in this relationship. And in this conversation with his mom, Charlie refers to Wendy as having won the Loatto and says that Wendy is a trust fund baby who hasn't had to work for what she has, while Donna says that David the boyfriend could be the father that the boys have never had, which is really horrific because Dan Markel was a great dad. Charlie then goes on to say that he uniquely is suited to influence Wendy, and he also says, I feel like punching her and then hitting her over the head. Basically, Charlie is just not a good person. He goes through all of this trouble to have his sister's husband murdered, the father of his nephew's murdered, and then like also turns it around on her, like, I'm not saying Wendy is an innocent party in all of this, but Charlie just isn't the move. He is just not the move. So they also got to hear Charlie talking about dating and he says, quote, why would I date a thirty seven year old woman when I could date a twenty five year old end quote. They also go on to talk about a job offer that Wendy had. Now, Wendy very much testified and said that her brother and mother and father were not meddlesome in her life and they really didn't do a whole lot of interjecting into her life. Basically saying, there's no way that they would plan this murder because they really aren't involved in my life. Well, this is saying, on the contrary that they were very involved in her life and obviously talking about her and her life choices and all of that. So they go on to them talk about the bump, and the jury is shown a video of the bump, And after Donna receives this note, she of course calls Charlie and then and Charlie called her back two more times after that, and then there was like three calls in total, And in these calls, Donna tells Charlie that she was approached while she was on the street and given some paperwork and said that it related to the two of us and an ex girlfriend. Now, interestingly enough, when they did the bump, they referred to one of the people on the bump as Katie. They never said ex girlfriend, They never said anything about Charlie. It was basically Katie and the Atolsins and Sigfredo Garcia. So Donna is spinning this on her own and saying that yes, it has to do with us, and it has to do with your ex girlfriend, meaning all the pieces of the puzzle are finally starting to kind of come together. Charlie of course goes on to ask Donna, do you think you're being blackmailed? And Donna said that she thought that it was possible, and she went on to say, quote this TV would be about five end quote meaning five thousand dollars, which is a coded phrase that essentially refers back to Charlie having bought that TV for Wendy as a divorce gift, and the whole thing about it being cheaper than a hit man, and the fact that this is the TV that is Wendy's alibi because she was having it repaired the morning of Dan Markel's murder. I do not believe in coincidences at all, and I do not think that any of this is a coincidence. In any of these phone calls, Donna never mentions Dan by name. He also has a nickname of Gibbers, and they never say anything about that, and they also never mentioned the name Katie at all during any of this conversation. It's just the ex girlfriend. So after Donna and Charlie get off the phone, Charlie calls Katie and basically tells her what has gone on. And he claims that the reason that he called Katie is because she was his most recent ex girlfriend, which was not the truth. He had had many other ex girlfriends by that point in time, and the ex girlfriend could have referred to anybody. So this is just the prosecution's way of laying out that obviously Dan Markel knew who the ex girlfriend was because he was in this murder for higher plot with her Katie, ex girlfriend, Mom, Sigfredo, and Luis Rivera. Next, I'm going to go through some of the transcripts of the enhanced audio from the dulcea Vita meeting between Charlie and Katie. I am basically going to be reading some of the transcripts of the videos that the jury was able to see, and then we are going to go from there. Now, this is pretty much all Charlie talking. Okay, if they have any evidence, we would have already gone to the airport. When the f and police show up, there's a doctor, there's an oral surgeon standing there with a dead gang member in his driveway. They're not going to come down too hard on me, and I'm not going to talk anyway. I don't know. I don't trust them. What I'm saying is is that this person is not going away. They came very equipped with details. Where did the details come from? I don't know the details. Katie chimes in, and there's not a lot of people that know much about Charlie. They didn't mention my name, which makes me think makes me think that they don't These people only know part of the story. Or they think they know part of the story. Let me ask you a question. When everybody was there the next day, did any of you take any money? Then what you do is where a wire, get this person talking, and if you can get the person to confess on wires and they have something that you're charging, you have a confession, you have an admission of guilt. Outside of that, there's no evidence. Okay, you have a car, you can link this person to red a car that's used at the scene of the crime. Okay, but you know, you also have to prove that they were also driving that day too. They didn't rent it and lent it to a friend. Hey, you know who this is coming from inside, And all of this is super interesting given the fact that Sigfredo and Luis Rivera rented a car and then trailed Dan Markel and then ended up killing him while they were driving this rental car, so so interesting. Then Charlie goes on to say, you've got to understand, in order to prove it, you have to put that person at the scene at the time and not in the car. But the fact is, it's like, even if let's say you just sat in the car, right and then I go ahead, and I commit a crime. And then I go, but your DNA is in the car, and I go, yeah, Katie was in my car. She got out and she did this horrible crime. Okay, So then they come and get the DNA in the car and go, oh, Katie was in the car. No, Katie sat in the car for two minutes and they got in the ace and then they got out of the car. Katie had nothing to do with me robbing the Burger King. So even if I can prove that, yeah, Katie was with me, can you put Katie at the Burger King? I can put Katie. I can say that she sat in the car. Yeah, but you need What you need to do is get a little bit of evidence from you having been in the car, and then they bring you into interrogation. They're like, listen, we know that you were in that car, and you were in that car such and such a day. We know we've got your DNA. Even if your DNA, your fingerprints, your hair is all over the car, that proves yeah, congratulations, you were in the car. It's not a crime to sit in a car, you know what I mean. My mom would have sat in the car too, it's not a crime. They have to prove they have to put you at the scene at the date which Charlie thinks he's smart, but he's really dumb obviously. I mean, he thinks he has it all figured out, but clearly, given the fact that he's currently on trial for murder murder for hire, he doesn't have a dang thing figured out. But he thinks he's smarter than everyone. And I think the reason that he thinks he's smarter than everyone is because he's had his family who has coddled him and gotten him out of trouble pretty much his whole life. He thinks that he can just get away with things, and I feel like this is very telling. He's literally sitting there talking about having a wire tap happen while he's being wire tapped, like he has not a freaking clue what's going on. He thinks he's so smart, and this is literally what led to him being arrested because they had all of this, although it was really grainy and hard to hear, they had all of this evidence of him basically talking about how they're not going to be able to touch him because they can't prove it. Charlie then goes on and say, but let me explain something to you. If we go to the police, this is going to put a spotlight on the investigation, the FBI. The FBI, We're not talking about a big wig in the FBI, not like a first year rookie. You're gonna have a twenty year vet with the FBI knocking at your door wanting to speak with you and wanting to speak with you with your attorney. And then Charlie then went on to tell Katie that she needed to call the phone number that the undercover person gave his mom, and he told Katie to say that his family was willing to pay up one time and that it was going to be like a charity donation kind of thing. And this went on to set up a series of calls between Katie and Sigfredo, Katie and Charlie, and then Charlie and Donna. So they're all doing exactly what they were hoping with this bump, is that it would get them talking, because remember a couple of years had gone by at this point, nothing had really come out about the murder, but they had this sneaking suspicion that they were involved. But they needed to get them talking again, because it had been a while and no one was really talking. So doing this bump was such an integral part of this investigation to try to get these parties talking, and they fell into the trap perfectly. So that is day four of testimony. We're gonna go ahead and go into day five of testimony because Day four, honestly was kind of a little bit short. At least my summary of day four was short. Day four itself was super long, but I touched on the important parts of course. Okay, so day five, we have FBI special Agent Patrick Sanford on the stand and he is being cross examined by Daniel Rashbaumb. So basically Daniels approach in this whole trial is the fact that Catherine Sigfredo Luis Rivera were all conspiring against Charlie Adelson to frame him for this murder for hire and it was like an extortion situation. So he kind of goes on to say that Katie had initially went to Charlie the night of Dan Markell's murder and said that somebody that is associated with me committed this crime and they're going to need money or else. Another member of your family is going to be killed, So that is in turn, why Charlie gave Katie all this moldy stapled money and why he ended up adding Katie Maggenowah to the payroll at the Adelston Institute, although she never really didn need work for them. And Charlie was clued in as to who committed this murder but couldn't say anything because he thought that he was going to be blackmailed. So that's the whole premise of the defense and this trial saying Charlie is just an innocent bystander. He was blackmailed. He thought someone else's in his family was going to be killed, so that is why he ended up paying Katie this money. But on the other side, if that's the truth, why are they continuously speaking in code and not speaking openly about what was going on? Why are they still kind of hush hush about things? Because everyone is part of the plan. That's why the defense also tried to make Wendy look a little bit better. The whole trial. They pretty much had been scrutinizing Wendy because she had cut off contact between Dan's parents and the children, completely cutting off contact between the two of them following the twenty sixteen arrests, and they very much wanted to paint the picture that with this wire tap that Charlie was actually, like, really deeply upset and hurt by Dan Markell's murder, which none of the evidence proves that this is true. So I don't really know where they were going with this. I get Daniel Rashbaum was trying to do his job, but he had a really hard job ahead of him because Charlie Adelson was literally just doing the most to make himself look bad. So at this time, the state the prosecution rested, and of course, at this point in the trial, the defense co counsels said that they needed to acquit Charlie, saying that they didn't feel like the state had proved its case and there was no proof that Charlie Adelson was responsible for Dan Markel's murder. And of course the acquittal was rebuked and the emotion of acquittal eventually was denied because obviously, so now it's time for the defense's case to start, and they very much begin with talking about Wendy and Dan's divorce. So they start off with Kristin Adamson, who was Wendy's divorce attorney, They start off asking Kristen about the divorce and the relocation that Wendy wanted to do, and just kind of how Wendy felt about it, and Kristen said that she was pretty calm about the whole thing. She seemed to understand that it wasn't a given that it would happen, that it was a long shot, and she said it's actually very very common for one party in a divorce to offer the other party in exchange for relocation, and she said it shouldn't be the case that money and children are connected, but it does happen, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. They also asked her about the different financial disputes and fights between Dan and Wade Wendy, and she said Dan had threatened sanctions and Kristin had said that she assured Wendy that she wasn't concerned about the legal ramifications of Dan's filings, and then when Georgia Kaplman got up to cross examine Kristen, she did end up saying that if Dan Markel had still been alive and had filed certain motions, there would have been serious ramifications for her personally and for her law license, meaning they were doing some really shady shiz in the background. So now is the star witness for the defense and that is none other than Charlie Adelson. So that is the end of day five. So next episode we are going to pick up with day six of testimony, Charlie Adelson on the stand to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So help him. God. I cannot wait to hear his testimony. I cannot wait to share it with you guys, because it's going to get really, really interesting. There's nothing to me worse than when a defendant takes the stand on their behalf. We saw an Elk Murda, and there's just something about these guys in particular who think that they're so like above everything and can make everyone just fall in love with them and do as they say because that's literally how they've lived their whole life. And to watch it backfire, it's just so interesting to watch. So we will be talking about that on next week's episode. And I hope you guys have a fantastic weekend. And I will see you on Monday for a brand new Unsolved case, And I hope you guys have a fantastic weekend. Bye. Hello, Like Mother Like Murder Listeners. I am Rachel and I'm Heather. We are the hosts of Like Mother, Like Murder. We bring you the good, the badass, and the crime. Each week, we bring you stories from missing and murdered to survivors and women who empower you, and of course some mom talks sprinkled in. Check us out wherever you get your podcasts at Like Mother, Like Murder, and give us a follow on social media so that we can say hi, Okay, love you bye kay, love you bye