Summer Series 2024: Who is Dan Markel and other key players

All witnesses pursas of interest, and suspects are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Welcome to Primetime Crime twenty twenty, fourth 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 to another episode of Primetime Crime. It's Kylie. We are going to dive in to right now in true crime. I'm not going to say a lot as far as right now in true crime goes, because honestly, I'm really tired, and right now in true crime takes brain capacity and your girl does not have it today. So we are going to keep it short and sweet. But I did want to talk about Suzanne Morerifew. She is the mother who went missing Mother's Day of twenty twenty and it was presumed that she had been killed. A lot of people thought that her husband, barrymore Few, was responsible. There were some remains that were found in September of twenty twenty three, and they have officially ruled her death as a homicide by unspecified means. They also found tranquilizer animal tranquilizers in her body from the toxicology reports, so very interesting. Her husband, Barry used animal tranquilizers for hunting. He was deer hunter, so all very interesting things. Now, Barry was initially arrested, but he was let out of prison because they didn't have enough evidence to keep him incarcerated for her murder. So there has been a lot going on as far as the story goes. There's a lot that's come out. But the animal tranquilizers were found in Suzanne's sphemur, and of course it's used to sedate somebody enough that they are not able to fight back, immobile, So really sad, really unfortunate, And there are a lot of people, like I said, who are speculating that Barry is involved in this in some capacity. They had been going through quite a bit of a rough time in their relationship and Barry texted Suzanne shortly before she went missing that he was done. So again, it's all at this point circumstantial, but it's going to be really interesting to see what comes out, if anything happens. And we are just waiting for the day that they make an announcement that an official arrest has been made. I know that they are working to gather enough evidence. Of course, we want to be sure that whoever they do arrest, that they do have enough evidence to prosecute and see it through to the end. So that is kind of where we stand on that last thing I want to talk about. I talked about it on last week's episode. Leo Schofield, who has been incarcerated in Florida for a heck of a long time, finally was released from prison the end of a April, so just a couple of days ago, and is now transitioning to a halfway house where he will transition into real life again for the first time since he was a kid twenty years old, twenty one years old, insane wild. He's still is looked at as a felon and a murderer in the eyes of the Florida justice system because they haven't exonerated him, even though I feel like they should because somebody else confessed to the murder that he was charged and convicted of. But nonetheless, we are so glad that he is out. Bone Valley is going to be releasing an emergency episode talking about it, and if you want any more information on Leo's case and his story, please check out the Bone Valley podcast. It is so so good. I last learned about it last year at Crime Con and it became a story that is just so it's impactful, it's intriguing, and in my opinion, the story is just so so captivating, and it's amazing that somebody has been behind bars for such a long time has maintained his innocence and someone else has confessed and there's even like proof that this person committed the crime, and yet Leo still sat behind bars. But we're celebrating he is finally out on his way to hope, full freedom, full exoneration. We are going to keep our fingers crossed for that. All right, we are gonna go ahead and jump in to today's episode, episode one of Summer Series twenty twenty four. All right, guys, we are doing episode one of Dan Markel Summer Series twenty twenty four. I don't know how the summer series is going to go. I kind of have a rough plan, but we're gonna literally take it episode by episode. In today's episode, I'm going to talk about Dan and kind of a little bit of his background, how he met Wendy. And we're also going to talk key players, because a lot of these people I'm going to be referencing in the episode. So we're going to start first of all with the key players in this whole thing, and then we're going to talk a little bit about Dan, which is going to lead into how he met Wendy, and then we're just going to take it from there because I don't know how many parts this thing is going to be, but we have a lot to talk about, a lot to cover kind of everything from the in between of the murder happening and the arrest being made, and then we'll go through Charlie's trial, and there's just a lot. There's a lot of wiretaps, there's a lot of undercover stuff going on here, and a lot of really really fantastic police work. Like bravo to the investigators that handle this one, because they did it the right way and that is why we are finally getting justice for Dan. So we're also dealing with Donna being arrested, and at the time that I'm recording this, Donna is the last one arrested. I don't know what's going to happen during Summer series twenty twenty four. Is someone else going to be arrested? It remains to be seen, but we'll definitely keep you updated as it goes. So let's start with key players. That is what we are going to talk about first. So we have our victim, Dan Markel. I'm going to tell you a little bit about him here in a little while. We have Wendy Adelson, who is the ex wife of Dan Markel. We have her mother, Donald Adelson, mom to Wendy and ex mother in law of Dan. We have Harvey Adelson, who is Wendy's dad and ex father in law of Dan. We have Charlie Adelson Charles Adelson, who is Wendy's brother and also a dentist in Florida. We have Catherine mag Banawa who at the time of the murder of Dan, Catherine was dating Charlie. And we have Sigfredo Garcia, who is the ex boyfriend of Catherine and also the father of her children. And he also goes by the nickname Tuto, so you'll hear me kind of reference that. And then we also have Luis Rivera. He is one of the hired hitmen, and he is a Latin King gang member and also a friend of Catherine and Sigfredo, and Sigfredo is also one of the hired hitmen too. And last, but not least, we have Jeff le Case. He is at the time of Dan's murder, he was dating Wendy, and as I elaborate and tell the story, you're going to start to see that Jeff was a very, very big important key player in helping law enforcement solve this crime and get to the point where we're at now. It is really really interesting, interesting enough to because you see Jeff as he's being interviewed, start to put the pieces together and realize what exactly is going on. It is a wild ride. I'm just letting you guys know. There are going to be other people I'm going to mention. I will be sure to describe who they are as I mentioned them. But at the end of the day, we are doing this so we can spread a little more awareness of this ever evolving case that's going on right now. I honestly did not follow it when Charlie was on trial. I didn't know anything about who Charlie Adelson was. But I have been sucked into it, and now I'm in the biggest rabbit hole and I've had to catch up on years and years and years of happening. So that is what I'm going to take you guys through, and we're going to start with talking about Dan Markel. Daniel Eric Markell was born on October ninth of nineteen seventy two to Ruth and Film Morel. He was raised in Toronto, Canada. He had one sister who was named Shelley. And Dan was always very, very ambitious, and he graduated magna cum latte from Harvard Law School in two thousand and one, and he studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and ended up earning a master's in political theory at Cambridge before he returned to Harvard to get his law degree. So Dan was very very smart, very very prominent. At the time of his death, Dan was forty one years old and he was a prominent law professor at Florida State University. He was also very dedicated to his Jewish faith and lived a Kosher lifestyle, which is a very important aspect of this story in my opinion. So before Dan started teaching at Florida State, he served as a law clerk and had joined fa this used College of Law in two thousand and five and was also a professor at law. So not long after he began working at FSU, he announced that he was going to marry a gal named Wendy Adelson, and they got married on February twenty sixth of two thousand and six. So Dan and Wendy had met on a dating website after Wendy's mom, Donna, had urged her daughter to settle down and find a good man. She went on the website with Wendy and helped her hand pick Dan as her husband thought that he seemed like the perfect man for her, which, as I tell the story, is going to be the most interesting fact of them all, because Donna would grow to hate Dan enough to eventually allegedly plot his murder. So at the time of them dating and them eventually getting married, Wendy was a third year law student at the University of Miami and she later became a clinical law professor at FSU. So they get married and they have a very complicated wedding, because why would you not have a complicated wedding when you're marrying an Adelson. We will learn Adelson's are messy. So there was a friend of Dan's that told twenty twenty that the couple's parents, Wendy's parents and Dan's parents had agreed to split the cost of the wedding and they wanted it to be a Jewish wedding. Wendy and the Adelson's were also of Jewish faith, just pointing that out, and Dan was very specific that the only thing that he really wanted that was super important to him is he wanted a kosher caterer. And Wendy's parents, Donna and Harvey, were in charge of getting this caterer and hiring them, and he didn't have any thoughts that they wouldn't honor his quest. But on his wedding day, Dan was shocked to find out that the food wasn't kosher, and the friend said that automatically, the friend thought it was a bad omen and that it was a sign of bad things to come, and he was right. And Dan was very devout in his faith, and this was something that Wendy and Donna especially wanted. She wanted her kids to marry inside of their faith. She didn't want them to marry outside of her faith. But despite this, Donna took every opportunity in life to degrade Dan regarding his Jewish faith and his upbringing on all of that. So despite all of that, the wedding did happen. They did get married, and the couple ended up having two children, back to back in two thousand and nine. In twenty ten, they had two kids, two boys, and they settled into life in Tallahassee, Florida. So everyone describes Dan as a really, really good dad, but Wendy said that Dan was abusive to her, and Wendy hated, absolutely hated living in Tallahassee, Florida. Actually, all of the Adelsins would also hate Tallahassee and think that it was like white, trash, redneg people that lived in Tallahassee. And the Adelsons definitely thought that they were elite because they lived in Miami, and Miami was better than Tallahassee. Like this becomes a whole thing and part of the premise why they had Dan killed. So it's important to talk about. So Wendy very much felt that her legal career could go nowhere in Tallahassee. She wasn't going to be able to grow in her career and felt like this was definitely holding her back. So two years later, in twenty twelve, one day, Wendy decides she is going to leave and take the kids one day while Dan is out of town. So the kids and the court went ahead and granted joint custody to Dan and Wendy, but said that the children needed to remain in Tallahassee. That is where they were from, that is where they had been living their whole lives, and they weren't about to try to uproot them and tried to put them in two different parts of Florida because Miami and Tallahassee are a ways away from each other. That is where this whole story starts, because it's a battle of Miami and Tallahassee and two parents that want to live in those respected places. And Wendy kept challenging this ruling, but every single time she challenged it, she would lose. So regardless of that, the children had to remain in Tallahassee, and that was the biggest point of contention in the two families. Between the two families, so of course, the Agelesyns are all also pissed off that they will not let the kids move with Wendy back home where she belongs, and Donna said, you know what you should do, Wendy, you should threaten to have the kids baptized in the Catholic church, just to piss off your ex husband. Threaten him with this and see if he changes his mind on letting the boys come live with you. Regardless of the fact that Wendy is a lawyer and full knows that a court order is a court order, Wendy and Donna still were doing everything they could to try to push against the court and push against Dan. And even to the point, you're Jewish, like you are of the Jewish faith, and you're gonna say that You're gonna threaten your ex husband with having your children baptized in the Catholic church to see if he'll change his mind. Like, these are the kind of people we're dealing with here, and this is the least of the bad things that they have done. And I think it's important here to see that even from the very beginning of this custody battle, Donna was behind the scenes pulling the strings. I honestly think Donna was pulling the strings from the very start. She's the one that had Wendy eventually go on a date with Dan and they ended up getting married. So I think from the very very start, Donna had her hand all up in this relationship. So all in all, the divorce between Wendy and Dan was very, very messy, and there was many different core documents that went back and forth. But Dan argued that the children had already been through enough, having their lives kind of uprooted, and there was also a time where Wendy refused to tell him where she was with the kids for weeks and said that her departure with them was cruel and abrupt, and from everything I'm seeing, I a million per set agree with Dan on this. Of course, Wendy was very much on the other side of things, said that moving away provided her boys with more stability and consistency. But all in all, they ended up eventually getting divorced without a trial in July of twenty thirteen, and officially the divorce decrease said that you are not allowed to relocate your children and they are to stay in Tallahassee. That was official. Dan agreed to pay Wendy eight hundred and forty one dollars per month as child support and also had to pay her a lump sum of one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, which is a lot of money all at once. So in February of twenty fourteen, Dan filed a motion to enforce the marriage settlement agreement and claimed that Wendy and her lawyer had not been forthcoming about the things that Wendy had financially her financial assets. The next month, Dinn then filed another motion to prevent Wendy's mother from having unsupervised time with the sons because what was happening is the boys were going to see Donna and Donna was dragging their father to them, talking so bad about him to them, basically the start of brainwashing, in my opinion, to these boys who were young at the time, they are still young, they are still impressionable. There have been through this horrible divorce where both of their parents are arguing about where they're going to stay, where they're going to live. They've been uprooted from their lives, and Donna is doing nothing other than just bad mouthing their father to them. So Dan didn't want Donna to have unsupervised time with them to protect them because she was making disparaging comments about him and that was not okay. So they were in the process of a hearing being a hearing had been scheduled to hear Dan's motions against Wendy, but unfortunately, before the hearing could be scheduled, Dan Markel was murdered in the driveway of his home. So we are on Friday, July eighteenth of twenty fourteen. Dan had left his home to drive his two young boys to their daycare, which was on the west side of Tallahassee. He dropped them off at eight fifty am. He then went to the gym, which is called Premier Health and Fitness Center on McLay Boulevard, and he got there around nine to twelve am. And there is obviously surveillance which they would later go back and see, and they saw that there was this Toyota prius that kind of arrived at the exact same time as Dan did to the gym. So Dan left the fitness center around ten thirty eight am, and he drove toward Thomasville Road, and this exact same prius that arrived with Dan is now leaving with Dan and following him, and investigators do believe that this prius followed him pretty much all the way back home. At eleven oh two am, the Tallahassee Police Department was called to Dan's home, which was on Trescott Drive, and when they arrived, they found Dan slumped over in the driver's seat of his vehicle and he had an apparent gunshot wood to the head. His garage door was still wide open, and unfortunately, Dan passed away the next day at a local hospital. So when they found him, he was still alive, but you know, bad things had happened. He had been shot in the head and he was taken to the hospital where he later would pass away. And his sister Shelley, said that this is probably the strangest, saddest and most surreal experience I've ever had in my life. I don't think I could have ever imagined this scenario. I'm still trying to see when I am going to wake up, and this is horrible. You never ever ever think that your family member is going to be first of all, put in a situation where they're going to be killed, and then first of all, not just that, but killed in their own driveway like that is Dan's safe space, and he was just going on living his life, doing his own thing. Trying to fight for his kids and what was best for his kids, and he ended up being gunned down in his own driveway. So really really sad set of circumstances. I don't want to lose sight of the fact that the reason that we are all here at this moment is because we're getting justice for Dan, and it is a process. It is very similar to my last summer series Lori Valo Chad Dabeil, where it just goes on forever and ever and ever, and justice can take a long time, but at the end of the day, we are on our way to getting full justice for Dan Markel. It's not over yet, but we need to not lose sight of Dan as the whole reason that we're doing this, because we need to get justice for him. So right before Dan was shot, he was on the phone talking to somebody and he was interrupted by this unfamiliar person that was standing in his driveway. The person that was on the phone with Dan heard what sounded like a loud grunt, and he also had heard a muffled conversation in the background, but didn't really know what was being said. This person then heard labor breathing and was trying to get Dan to respond, you know, obviously on the phone, so it's hard, but Dan was not responding to this person at the time. An autopsy was completed and it revealed that Dan had been shot twice in immediate range, once in the forehead and once in the left cheek. So the neighbor, one of the neighbors of Dan, is the one that ended up calling the police because he heard the gunshot and knew something was wrong, and he saw an eyewitness saw this Toyota Prius backing out of the driveway in the midst of all that. Now we're going to get into the meat of this case because immediately, of course, investigators realize that this seems like a murder for hire. It seems like a hit, but there's obviously no proof of that. At this point, they haven't really been able to piece together anything. They of course, start closest to the person. So we're going to start with the ex wife. We're going to start with any family members. So we're going to hear the first interview that police did with Wendy Adelson, Dan Markel's ex wife, where they share with her that Dan has been shot. And I'm just gonna let the audio clips play because it is a really really important piece of this case to kind of hear Wendy's demeanor. Here are the different things that Wendy says, because she says a lot. But one thing about the Adelson's is they never shut the f up. They just keep talking and talking and talking and talking. And we have hours and hours and hours of audio clips of all of them just talking because they can't shut the f up. So I am going to play the first police interview video of Wendy Adelson being interviewed in three two one. It was a shooting at your home or your ex husband's home at twenty one to sixteen, trustcud. Okay, your husband, her ex husband. Excuse me. Daniel has been taken to the hospital. He's not going to survive. Okay, a lot of friends, I know. How do you know that we had two of them there for a last minute lunch day right last mining? Well, I mean they you you went up there, you're sitting with them, you have friends. I do. What I meant by it is that Danny didn't treat me very well. And I'm so scared that maybe someone did this, not because they hate Danny, even because they thought this was good somehow, or are you saying that you think maybe one of your friends would have done I don't know. That's why i'm That's why you're here, and that's why we're talking. Would you ever ask someone to do something like this? Not a million years okay? Do you think someone would do this for your benefit without asking you what good does it deserve? I mean my brother, the one, his name is Charlie, the one I'm really close to you. He makes a lot of jokes, some bad taste. And it was a joke he made. He bought the TV for me this morning that got broken, and I was talking to him about whether it made sense to pay to fix it or whether I should get a new one. And it was always his joke that like he knew, Danny treated me badly, And it was always his joke. He said, I you know, I looked into hiring a hitman and it was cheaper to get you this TV, so instead I got you this TV. I mean, he would never. He's my big brother and he's been taking care of me since I was little. But he would never. And I said I told that to the repair guy this morn right. They said he asked me how much it costs, and I said I didn't know because it was a gift, because my brother said it was cheaper than a hitman. It was my divorced present. Okay, so horrible. They just said, boast us, that's okay. But even my family who felt like I had been in the fistreet and would never do something like it's never. This is the worst day of my life. Maybe I should text them if I can't mention your Hi, Mom, how's it going? Shaming in your way? Mom? I need to just sit down. I am fine, the boys are fine. I need to sit down. I'm I'm fine, and the boys are and the boys are fine. Danny has been Dan you can put me on speaker. Danny has been shot, and I don't think he's gonna make it. And so I know, I know. So I found this out around one or two today and I'm at the police station and I'm trying to help them figure out whom they have done this. All right, So that is that now. Wendy at one point is on the phone with her mother. She calls Donna. While she's there at the police station. There's a victim's advocate in the room, but there's no one else in the room with Wendy when she's making this phone call. This whole interview is so interesting to me because literally from the start, she cannot help herself but say, you know, so many people love me, and Dan didn't treat me well, and I just hope that nobody would have done this to, you know, help me. And then basically right off the bat, implicates her brother saying that, well, he said, buying me a TV is cheaper than hiring a hitman. What is wrong with you? Why are you saying that? Like, why are you saying that you were saying all of the wrong things if you were trying to at all cover this up. Now, Wendy has not still to this day, been charged with any involvement in any murder for higher plot for Dan Markel. However, as I start to unravel all of this, you will see that everybody in this family seemed to be plotting against Dan, and it all just kind of comes back around I at this point don't know if there's any way that she couldn't have known, But she has not been charged or arrested or anything like that yet, so we cannot say anything in regards to that. So now we're going to talk a little bit about what Wendy told investigators when she first went into the police station to get interviewed after they had told her what happened to Dan. This is what she said she did that day. So she said that day, she didn't leave her house until around noon, and she said she tried to drive up Prescott, which was the street that Dan lived on, but she saw that it was blocked and for whatever reason, she said that she thought that there was trees down or power lines down, or something in those regards. So she said the reason that she was going that way was because she needed to buy some bourbon for a stock the shelf engagement party, and she drove up from her place to Prescott to get to ABC Liquor and then realized it was blocked, so she ended up just turning around. But she said she really wasn't super paying attention because she was on the phone and wasn't really paying attention to all that was going on. So she said she turned around and went up the other way and thought, you know, there's probably some electrical problems, that's why the streets blocked. So she went and got the bourbon and then got gas and some super glue for one of her kid's toys, and she was trying to get all of this stuff done before she was meeting her two friends at one o'clock for lunch, so earlier in the day that morning, probably around the time that Dan was killed. After he got home from the gym, Wendy had a TV repair person at the house from Best Buy because this TV that her brother Charlie had given her had broken and she was going to pay for this TV repair person to come out rather than just go buy a new TV. Doesn't really make any sense, but regardless, you kind of see that we're kind of setting up her alibi here because there's no way she could possibly be involved in Dan's murder because she was at home with this Best Buy TV repair person getting this TV fixed. And they did kind of question her in regards to why she chose to go the way that she chose, which why did you try to drive by the house, Why did you go down Trust Scott, And she just said it was a shortcut for getting to this other place. But there was definitely some discrepancies about why she would have gone down Trust Scott, and she could have gone to an entirely different liquor store, but she wanted to go to that liquor store that just happened to be near Trust Scott. Really really interesting to see all of this start to come together and the pieces start to fit. But in the beginning stages of it, they're just questioning Wendy. It's just the basics of what did you do that day? Where were you? She had an alibi. She was at home until right after ten o'clock when the Best Buy TV repair person left, and that was that. So that is we are going to stop for episode one. We have a lot more, a lot, lot lot more to cover, and next episode we are going to kind of pick up where we left off and go more into the police's investigation of everything. Now that they have statements from Wendy, they are going to start fitting the pieces together and eventually figuring out what happened, who shot Dan, and kind of who is responsible to tie in between the people that ended up being the hitman and the Adleson family. It is going to be very very interesting. It's all going to fit together like a lovely little puzzle, and we are just going to keep chugging along on this summer series. Twenty twenty four. So I will see you guys next time for a new Unsolved episode, and then I will see you a week from now for episode two of Summer Series twenty twenty four. Have a good one guys, stay safe, Bye the PEP. You for toting