So, in July of 2014, a man named Dan Markel was murdered in cold blood in his car while sitting in the driveway of his home after dropping his two young sons off at daycare.
It became apparent very very quickly in this case that this was not a random attack and the investigation that followed is wild.
So this happened in 2014, right? But guys, there are so many people that are involved in this case and so many trials that took place that there was a trial as recently as October of last year.
So October 2025. And if I’m honest, I would not be surprised if there are more trials and more comes out of this case.
So, this is definitely one that I’m going to have to keep you guys updated on because from where I’m sitting, from what I’ve read, this case is probably still ongoing.
I would honestly be more surprised if there wasn’t another trial and another arrest in the future.
And I would honestly be pretty disappointed as well. And I think as we get into this case, you guys will see why.
So, Dan Markell, he was born in Montreal, which is in Quebec, Canada on the 9th of October, 1972.
His parents, Ruth and Phil Markel, raised him and his sister Shelley in Toronto in a conservative Jewish household.
He was described as high energy, a little bit mischievous as a kid, but he was very friendly, very funny, very social, and incredibly smart, hardworking, and driven.
When he was in grade three, he actually took an aptitude test at school, which is basically like a test to measure your ability to learn or perform tasks or succeed.
And he had the highest score, not just in the school, but that the school had ever seen from this test.
He was an incredibly high achiever in school. He went on to attend Harvard. He studied politics and philosophy there for his undergraduate degree.
Then he went to Israel and completed graduate studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
He went on to attend Cambridge where he earned a master’s degree in political theory.
And then eventually he went back to Harvard and graduated from Harvard Law School in 2001.
After all of this study, he went on to clerk for a federal judge. He worked in a prestigious law firm in Washington DC before eventually going into academia becoming a respected professor at the Florida State University.
So over the years he had moved and lived all over the world in Toronto, San Francisco, Boston, New York, Tel A Viv, London, and he made friends in every single place that he ever went.
His dad recalled teasing him for having quote 100 best friends in New York, 100 here, 100 there.
And he also said, and it was actually true, when he passed, the memorializing took place all over the world.
In 2005, Dan co-founded a very successful, very popular blog for law professionals and, you know, aspiring law students called Prof’s Blog.
And he also went on to write several books. He wrote several articles for the New York Times and a bunch of other publications as well.
He wrote about law, helping both new and experienced lawyers to connect. And he wrote about things like sentencing reform, critiques of using shaming as punishment, the intersection of criminal justice and family ties, which will become relevant in this case.
And he also wrote about the death penalty. He had very strong views on the death penalty and believed that it should be abolished.
So in 2003, he meets a woman who was also a lawyer. Her name is Wendy Adlesen and they met on a website called Jate which is a Jewish dating website.
They were engaged within a year and they got married on the 26th of February in 2006.
Wendy Adlesen was born on the 22nd of April 1979. She was raised in Coral Springs, Florida as the youngest of Donna and Harvey Adlesen’s three children and they were a very very close family.
Even when she and her brothers grew up, they spoke almost daily and they were very, very involved in each other’s lives.
They were also a very successful, very privileged, very hardworking family. Wendy’s dad, Harvey, ran a dental practice called the Aden Institute for Aesthetic and Implant Dentistry.
And her mom, Donna, helped out with the books for the practice and also worked as a stay-at-home mom.
Wendy’s brother, Robert, the eldest brother, went to medical school. And her other brother Charlie became a dentist just like their dad.
Wendy earned a bachelor’s degree from Brandis University and then she went on to complete a law degree with honors from the University of Miami School of Law.
She also attended Cambridge where she graduated with a master’s degree in international relations and she went on to work as a lawyer and a professor.
She specialized in humanitarian immigration law, child advocacy and disability rights. She also taught law students and ran clinics focused on these topics.
I mean, she really was a bit of a jack of all trades. She produced a manual on special immigrant juvenile status.
She was a contortionist randomly. She went on to write a novel, a fictional novel.
And she was also actually a contestant on a game show called The Weakest Link.
And her mom was also a contestant on that same game show. Eventually, her eldest brother, Robert, kind of fell out with the family because he started dating a girl who wasn’t Jewish and his family was very unhappy about that.
He also went on to marry this woman. And after they got married, he and his family only spoke several times a month, which I know sounds like a lot still.
It’s like they spoke almost weekly or every 2 weeks, but you have to understand this was a very, very, very tight-knit family.
They were all so involved in each other’s lives. They tell each other everything. They talk all the time.
They work together. Like they are tight. They are tight. So it was actually quite a fallout even though maybe it doesn’t seem like that much of a fallout.
And some reports actually described him as aranged. I don’t know if I would describe that as a aranged but eventually I think maybe they become more estranged because he does describe himself as aranged as well at one point.
So, as I’m sure you can imagine, Wendy, when she met Dan, and he was this successful, wellto-do Jewish lawyer and professor, her family was ecstatic.
They all loved Dan. Donna even helped plan the wedding. The wedding was held in Pinkerton in Florida.
And Dan was very devout. So, he wanted a very traditional Jewish wedding, which mean meant everything had to be kosher so that the rabbis could be there for the whole wedding.
I believe Donna organized the catering and the catering ended up you know she was very for Dan’s idea you know she was like absolutely I will make sure everything is kosher she was in charge of the catering the catering ended up not being kosher and so the rabbis left after the ceremony and Dan was you know he was quite unhappy about this because it was like he really wanted to have this traditional wedding he really wanted to have the rabbis there Donna couldn’t understand why he was upset about this and I don’t know if it was a thing if she couldn’t understand why he was upset or more so she was trying to blow it off because she messed up.
Maybe she was embarrassed. Maybe she was like a little bit defensive like I can’t understand why he would be so upset about this.
It’s not that big of a deal. Anyway, despite this, you know, they moved on from it.
The family all loved Dan. It was a happy relationship. And after the wedding, Dan and Wendy ended up moving from South Florida up to Tallahassee, which they moved there for Dan’s work.
He got a professorship at the Florida State University. So once they moved there, Wendy also got a job.
She became a clinical professor focusing on human trafficking cases. They lived in a nice neighborhood called Benton Hills on a street called Tescot Drive.
A few years later in 2009, Wendy gave birth to their first son, Benjamin. And the next year in 2010, their second son, Lincoln, was born.
These boys were Dan’s absolute world. He adored them with pretty much every fiber of his being.
And Dan’s dad, Phil, said, “I’m most proud of him as a father. He was really amazing.
His love for his children was so so special. He would go to their daycare centers when they were small and he would have breakfast with the kids.
He would read when the children would do any artwork. Danny would put up a clothes line.
He had a very open space across his living room and he hung all of their artwork.
So, they had this beautiful house. They had a beautiful family. They were both very successful, had great jobs.
But I’m sure you can see where this is going because every time there is the seemingly perfect family in one of these cases, beneath the surface, it is never, never, [clears throat] never as perfect as it seems.
And that is very much the case here. As much as it may have seemed like they had it all on paper, Wendy was becoming increasingly unhappy in the marriage and becoming very resentful.
She was really missing her family. That was a big part of it as well.
She, you know, they were living in Tallahassee. Her family was living in South Florida around Miami.
And that is around 6 and 1/2 to 7 hours drive between those two places.
And she really was not used to, you know, she’d been around her parents and her family so much for her entire life.
They were so entwined. So, she really wasn’t used to being so far away from them and not being able to see them all the time.
And she was really struggling with that. Dan actually tried to get a job in Miami so that they could move and be closer to her family, but that job ended up falling through.
It didn’t work out and so they stayed in Tallahassee. In 2011, Wendy actually wrote a book called This Is Our Story, which is about two women that become victims of human trafficking.
I read some reviews of this book online on Goodreads, and a lot of the reviews say that despite being about such an intense topic like human trafficking, it actually reads as quite self-important.
But the book really seems to be a reflection of her life and her marriage.
She even stated that in this book she tells insubstantial part her own story. She also said quote I selfishly wanted you to know about my story which has much but not all in common with attorney Lily and Lily is the main character of this book.
Right? Lily is an immigration lawyer who specializes in helping trafficked women. In the book, Lily is married to a guy named Josh.
And Josh is so unlikable, and it’s clear that Lily resents him and resents being married to him and just holds a lot of contempt for Josh.
So, in the book, Josh moves them moves him [clears throat] and Lily to what she describes as a god-forsaken place, which is North Florida, because he got a professorship there.
He moved them into what he described as an adorable, cozy country house, which turns out to be infested with cockroaches and is totally awful and Lily hates it.
But she manages to overcome her hatred for this place by becoming an immigration lawyer who specializes in human trafficking.
She does this all proono and she’s the only person within 300 miles that can do that.
She goes on to describe Josh in this book as short pouty. He calls her this nickname, Lily Billy Goat, which he thinks is endearing calling her that, but she thinks it’s stupid and she hates it.
She describes him as insincere. She says that he gives stupid career advice in this really pretentious and patronizing tone of someone who thinks they just invented the solution to global warming.
He doesn’t respect Lily. He doesn’t respect what she does. He’s distant from her. He doesn’t wear a wedding ring.
And he also pushes onto her that he really, really wants children, wants a family, and doesn’t care about what she will have to give up in order to have a family.
So yeah, he is just really, really unlikable. And just for a little bit of context maybe uh for some of these things, Dan Markel is not tall.
He calls Wendy by the nickname Mrs. Bear. He was always traveling for work. He apparently, according to Wendy and what she told some of her friends, kind of started to not respect her or not see her as an equal.
And he also really wanted children and a family. But so did Wendy. So I guess take with that what you will.
She also writes in this book that she basically married Josh because she was sick of and tired of dating.
And by the end of the book, Lily ends up adopting a child, which she gives her maiden name.
She doesn’t tell Josh about it until once it’s all finalized. So once the whole adoption has gone through, then she tells Josh, “I’ve adopted a kid.
I’ve given it my maiden name and I don’t want you in my life or the kids’ life.”
And then she leaves him. And then about [clears throat] a year after this book was published in 2012, she actually does leave Dan and tells him she wants a divorce.
Wendy did say that Dan never read the book. He promoted the book extensively on his blog, but allegedly he never read it.
And the reason he didn’t read it is because he didn’t want to kind of read the commentary of their marriage.
So, I feel like based on that, it’s safe to say that a lot of the issues between Lily and Josh were based on how Wendy felt about her marriage to Dan.
So, in 2012, Wendy and Dan separate. In 2013, the divorce is finalized. And this divorce was not amicable in any sense of the word.
It did not end on good terms. Dan actually described it as a Pearl Harbor style separation with what he called a visy gothlike sacking of the marital home.
Wendy actually told Dan that she wanted a divorce over the phone. It was September 2012.
He was in New York for this big speech that he was going to do.
And it was right before that speech that Wendy decided to call him and tell him basically to try and mess with him right before his big moment.
Dan immediately books a flight home. When he gets home, she has cleared the place out.
Wendy and their two sons, Benjamin and Lincoln, are gone. All of the furniture is gone.
She has completely emptied the place and left him with a mattress on the floor and then on top of that mattress she has left divorce papers.
Brutal. Absolutely brutal. He claims that he didn’t even know where his sons were staying for the first 6 weeks after the separation or after she scadaddled.
Obviously Dan was devastated and following this in the divorce proceedings it was messy. There was a lot of back and forth.
There was a lot of accusations. There was a lot of motions. There was a lot of court appearances or court hearings.
Wendy at one point files a motion to be able to take their two young children, Benjamin and Lincoln, who by the way are like two and three years old at this point, maybe one and three.
I don’t think that Lincoln had actually turned two by this point. And they are going through this like awful, you know, watching their parents fight at such a young age.
But she files this motion to be able to take them back to South Florida.
Dan, of course, objects to this because he loves his kids above all else. There is no way that he would want to be separated from his children by 6 and 1/2 7 hours.
So in June of 2013, Wendy’s petition to move the boys to South Florida is denied.
In July of 2013, the divorce is finalized. Dan agrees to pay child support. He agrees to a $120,000 payout.
But of course, that that is the fighting doesn’t stop, right? They are fighting over everything.
They’re fighting over money. They’re fighting over which school the boys are going to go to.
They’re fighting over custody and where the boys are going to move and live. In February 2014, Dan files a motion claiming that Wendy had concealed over $240,000 worth of assets and that she had helped herself to over $600,000 worth of cash, liquid equities, and other assets and took money from their joint account.
He even accused her of taking a diamond ring that belonged to his aunt from the Holocaust.
And his motion also said if she wanted to leave the marriage because she fell out of love, that’s one thing, but she could have done so without also taking more than the necessities so that a proper and fair distribution could have immediately followed.
He also claimed that her wealthy parents put her in a financial cocoon and paid for her legal fees, allowing her to take the most aggressive and unsubstantiated legal postures possible.
So Wendy also accuses Dan of not paying the full $120,000 payout that was agreed in the divorce and also accuses him of being controlling and abusive, emotionally abusive during their marriage.
She also accused him of talking to his colleagues about her and calling her a pathological liar, a narcissistic sociopath, and that she was mentally unstable.
Wendy was pissed, right? And I think most of her feelings of anger stemmed from the fact that her motion to take the kids was denied.
I think she just thought that she could, you know, up and leave him, take everything from the house, take the boys, move to Miami, and that would be that.
When it didn’t go that way, she’s pissed. She, you know, obviously is talking to her family.
She’s talking to her mom, Donna. And remember, her family is very, very close. So her mom, Donna, is just as pissed off at her.
She sends Wendy this long email basically giving her ideas or trying to tell her all of these different ways to threaten Dan into letting Wendy take the kids to Miami.
I’ll put some of the screenshots of the emails on the screen because they’re too long for me to read everything, but they are kind of insane.
But she tells her to threaten to baptize the boys Christian, to raise them in a Catholic home, to get them a private Catholic tutor to teach them out about Jesus because Dan was obviously very committed to his Jewish faith.
She also told Wendy to offer Dan $1 million, which Wendy, her parents, and her brother Charlie would all put in $333,000 each for this $1 million payout.
And she even told her to threaten Dan with or to put the children in youth Hitler costumes and send that to Dan, which is so insane that I can’t even I don’t even have words for that.
None of the threats worked because Dan refused to be separated from his children. And of course, that only infuriated Wendy and infuriated her parents, infuriated Donna even more.
After Wendy took the boys to visit Donna, Dan found out that Donna had been talking about him to his children, basically calling him stupid and saying all of these other awful things to his sons to make his sons hate him.
He said that on three separate occasions after the boys went to visit Donna, they would come back and they told Dan that grandma said she hates you, that you’re stupid, and that you’re trying to take her sunshines away from her.
So, of course, he then files a motion to basically require all visits with Donna to be supervised.
A trial date or a court hearing is set for the for the 15th of May, 2014.
This trial doesn’t go ahead because lawyers for both sides end up withdrawing for unspecified conflicts.
And before a new trial date could be set, Dan is murdered. So, that brings us to the 18th of January, 2014.
By this point, despite everything that’s going on, all of the fighting, all of the messiness of the custody battles, both Wendy and Dan appeared to have been moving on.
It had been a little while since the separation, a couple of years since the separation, and it took a while, but they both started to move on with their lives.
Wendy had started, she, you know, she dated a couple of guys, but at this point, she was dating a social work professor from Florida State University named Jeffrey Lassass.
Dan was dating as well. His family said that he was actually in love again and that they were so happy to see it.
They were so happy to see that he was finally what they call regaining his footsteps after and seeing him in a better moment after everything that he had been going through over these years.
So on the morning of the 18th of July, Dan was on summer break. He went and dropped his two sons, Benjamin and Lincoln, off at daycare at around 9:00 a.m.
He gave them a big hug. He told them he loved them. And then he drove to Premier Health and Fitness, his gym, and he arrived there at around 9:12 a.m.
He is there for about an hour and a half before he drives home. On his way home, he calls a man called Stuart Slaza, who is a teacher at a school called SAS.
This is a school that Wendy had actually secretly applied the boys to, their sons to, without Dan’s knowledge, but Dan was now willing to kind of consider them as a as a school option for the boys.
So, he calls Stuart to kind of ask some questions. He arrives home at around 11:00 a.m.
While he’s still on the call. And as he pulls up to his house, he says to Stuart on the phone, you know, “Hold on.
There’s there’s some unfamiliar people in my driveway that I don’t recognize.” Stuart waits on the phone for him.
And while he’s on the phone, he hears a loud noise. He hears grunting. He hears moans.
And then this is followed by loud, heavy, labored breathing. So Stuart starts calling to him on the phone and saying to him on the phone, “Are you okay?
Do you need any help?” And Dan never responds. Stuart hangs up. He calls Dan back.
Dan doesn’t answer. And worried that Dan was having a heart attack, Stuart calls 911.
>> 911, what’s the address of your emergency? >> Hi. Um, dress was hot. It’s I was talking to somebody on the phone and all of a sudden they kind of made a weird sound and it sounded like they were breathing, labored breathing.
>> Stop. I’m talking to the police. Stop. Okay, it looks like we already got a call about it.
Wait one second. >> Oh, you already got a call about it. >> Wait a second, sir.
Okay. >> Who are you speaking with? Who Who are you speaking with? Or who was I speaking to?
Who Who were you speaking to? Um, it was a friend of a friend. Let me think Dan Markle is his name.
The first time I’ve ever Huh. >> It looks like there was a traffic accident right in front of that place.
That exact location. So that’s it. So we are on the way. At around [clears throat] the same time, Dan’s neighbor Jim is standing out front of his house getting into his car when he hears gunshots and then sees a Toyota Prius pulling out of Dan’s driveway and speeding away.
He runs immediately over to Dan, who is still in his car. Glass is shattered.
There is blood everywhere. Dan is bleeding profusely from a gunshot wound to the head, but he is still alive.
And Jim calls 911. >> 911, what’s the address of your emergency? Uh it’s right next door to my house, which is Trescot Drive.
Uh we heard a a a loud bang and a car pulled away from next door.
I came over and looked in the garage door was up and I thought the gentleman was backing out.
And I went back to my house, but he never backed out. And I came back over and his wind his his driver’s side uh window is shattered and he’s battered and can’t answer.
He’s inside. I don’t know if somebody tried to shoot him or if he shot himself or what.
I don’t know. >> This 911 call that Jim made lasted almost 15 minutes and it took about 19 minutes for first responders to arrive at the scene and take Dan to the hospital.
It was reported that Dan was shot twice through the driver’s side window of his car.
One shot pierced his forehead and the other shot pierced his left cheek. One of these bullets lodged in his brain and caused severe hemorrhaging.
When he arrived at the hospital and doctors assessed these wounds, the doctor said that he had a 0% chance of survival.
And the next day at around 2:00 a.m. On the 19th of July, 2014, 41-year-old Dan Markel was pronounced dead.
Dan’s friends and family and the entire community was completely shocked. Everybody loved Dan. His friends, his family, his colleagues, his students.
No one could fathom what had happened and why. His parents lived in Canada, so they flew over for the memorial service.
And just as soon as they heard what had happened, they booked flights. A memorial was held for Dan at the Shamray Torres Synagogue on the 20th of July, which hundreds of people from the community attended, and many of Dan’s friends and families got up to say something, got up to make a speech or recall a memory.
Dan’s dad, Phil, said, “I was unbelievably moved. Just the outpouring of love for him.
I literally sat in my seat and cried because I found out things about Danny, my own son, that I didn’t even know myself.”
He also said, “I had wished that I could at least hold his hand before he passed away.
I regret that very much.” So, an investigation into Dan’s murder had gotten underway almost immediately.
Any kind of robbery was ruled out pretty much right away because nothing of value was taken.
Dan’s wallet was found on the ground right near to where he was shot. And also, it appeared that the killers hadn’t even entered or attempted to enter his house at all.
Investigators considered all of these options. Like maybe Dan had pissed somebody off or made somebody angry with his blog, a post on his blog because he was very outspoken about certain topics.
Or maybe there was a disgruntled student or something. But really, none of these made any sense.
Wendy, of course, is called and she’s brought into the station for questioning on the 18th of July around 2:50 p.m.
They obviously question her for a few hours. They take fingerprints. They take DNA swabs.
Also looked through her phone. >> I just listened to my voicemail. >> What did you hear?
>> Um I >> Who was your voicemail? >> Um it’s from Lisa Kerry who is um my real estate agent or who I had gone with to find um a house.
She just said she was going driving around town and she heard there was a shooting on Trescot.
>> Yeah, that’s what this is about. I’m sorry you had to hear it that way.
There was a shooting at uh your home or your your ex-husband’s home at Trescott.
Okay. Um your husband, your ex-husband, excuse me, Daniel. All right. Has been taken to the hospital.
Um he’s not going to survive. My god. >> Okay. >> [snorts] >> I don’t [laughter] understand what’s going on.
[gasps] I have a message. What happened? >> Well, before we get into everything, I have to establish where you were and who you were with.
Now, in this interview, okay, I find this interview just insane. Some of the thing things that she says, it’s like I don’t know what she was thinking saying some of these things to be honest with you.
Like her ex-husband, who she is in an intense custody battle with, has just been murdered and she is in this interview the day that he is shot and she says, you know, my parents really don’t like him and it’s possible that somebody arranged to have him killed thinking that it would help me out.
She even says that her brother Charlie had actually joked about hiring a hitman to murder Dan and that he had looked into it but said that hiring a hitman was too expensive and it was just cheaper to buy her a TV as a divorce present.
But then she says that you know there’s just you know it was all just jokes.
There was no way her brother would do anything like that. There’s no way that anyone in her family would do anything like that which is like why would you say it then?
I mean the interview was just so weird. She is so weird. In this interview, she also brings up Jeff Lacass, which if you remember is the guy that she was dating at the time.
I think they had broken up maybe like a week before the murder took place or they were in the midst of an ongoing breakup.
And so, in this interview, she says, you know, you should really look into Jeff because he heard all of these things about Dan.
He really hated him cuz he’d heard that he was emotionally abusive towards me. He knew that they were going through a really messy divorce and he hated him.
And he spoke on multiple occasions about wanting to kick Dan’s ass. A few days later, investigators talk to Jeff.
They bring him in for questioning. He comes in voluntarily for questioning and he is very upfront about the fact that he does not like Dan, but he had an airtight alibi.
He was out of town. He was in Atlanta at the time the murders took place.
He also tells police, you know, you should really look into the Adins into Wendy’s family.
In further interviews, he also says, I think he was interviewed like three times in the following months.
But he also describes Wendy in these interviews as a liar, as narcissistic, as a sociopath.
He says that his friends, when he and Wendy started dating, his friends were all telling him that he shouldn’t date her, that he should be really careful because Wendy is unbalanced.
He also basically says that the entire Adim family is unhinged. Allegedly within 20 minutes of meeting her brother Charlie for the first time, he Charlie and Wendy are in this hot tub together and Charlie starts bragging to him in front of Wendy, mind you, about sex tourism and about how he went to South America and he slept with all of these underage girls there, which if he was not underage as well, it’s not really sleeping with, right?
It’s rape. And it’s so crazy because he’s saying all of this first of all within 20 minutes of meeting his sister’s boyfriend and then also in front of his sister who was a huge advocate for human trafficking and child advocacy.
>> I met her brother Charlie when I was down there in Miami for a mock.
You may recall that I said I found him to be a very strange person, very aggressive um verbally.
He takes sex tourism trips to South America to have sex with underage prostitutes. He’s >> Wait a second.
Yeah, he takes sex tourism trips to South America to have sex with underage prostitutes.
>> Sex tourism? >> Yeah. South America. Just >> I’m kind of a sheltered guy.
[laughter] >> Well, I was I was shocked not only that he would tell people he did that, but that he would tell his younger sister.
That was strange to me. Um, very odd. And there’s this odd dynamic between them.
The whole family is real weird. He talked in the hot tub about punishing a girl by anally violating her in front of Wendy.
And I like bragging about the fact that he’d hurt this girl cuz she had got him in uncomfortable situations.
So, he came off like an offender to me. He came off like a, you know, kind of sociopathic.
Like, this is strange that you just met me. He’s telling me this. It was really, really weird.
>> By this point, Wendy and her family are not cooperating with police. After Wendy’s first interview with police, that was it.
That was the only interview that they willingly got from anyone in this family. They actually the whole Adenome family attended Dan’s memorial on the 20th of July that was held at the synagogue.
And at this funeral, Wendy’s parents, Donna and Harvey, go up to some of the officers there.
And they’re like, “Hey, you know, we want to come in and we want to cooperate fully.
We want to, you know, you can interview us if you want. We want to give you any information that we might have.
We are leaving soon. We’re going back to South Florida. So, let’s talk tomorrow. Will call you and we will arrange to come in before we leave and go back to South Florida.
So the very next day, investigators call Wendy to follow up on this because they were like, “Please, like, let’s arrange this.
We’re going to come in and we’re going to talk to you.” They call Wendy to arrange this meeting.
Wendy puts them on to her attorney and the attorney says, “Actually, no. They’re not going to speak to you.
They’re not going to do an interview with you and they’ve actually already left and gone back to South Florida.”
Another funeral was held for Dan in Canada. His parents had his body sent back to Canada so that they could have a funeral for him there.
This was on the 24th of July. No one from the Aden family attended this funeral.
Not Wendy, not anybody from that family. So, they are just acting really strangely. Wendy is also trying to get all of this money.
She’s trying to get Dan’s life insurance, his assets. She’s trying to get the boys, her sons, Benjamin and Lincoln’s trust funds released to her.
She’s trying to get this GoFundMe sent directly to her. Right. So Dan’s friends had set up a GoFundMe for money to go to Benjamin and Lincoln’s trust funds.
And Wendy was basically saying, “No, I want that money sent directly to me.” Mind you, her family is very wealthy, and she’s already getting paid $2,000 a month per son through social security.
She’s also getting paid through Dan’s pension and investments. And then to add to all of that, they are hardly letting Dan’s parents, so Benjamin and Lincoln’s grandparents, see Benjamin and Lincoln.
Ruth and Phil Markel flew to South Florida multiple times to see their grandsons. And every single time they did, Donna was watching them like a hawk.
Like, she would not let them see these boys unsupervised. She was always making sure that they were watched.
I mean, when I heard this, I kind of thought because Donna had been talking about Dan to these boys, she, you know, you kind of project your own actions onto other people.
So, I think she was projecting and thinking that they might have done the same thing and tried to, you know, poison the boys in the way that she was trying to poison the boys against Dan and Dan’s family.
But they, Ruth and Phil were not like that. They just wanted to have a relationship with their grandson, especially now that they’ve lost their son.
This is like a piece of their son, you know. Eventually, Wendy and her family, I guess, changed the boy’s last names from Markel to Aden.
And they also remove Benjamin’s middle name. And this middle name was actually a tribute to Ruth’s mother.
And they were basically trying to remove Dan and remove Dan’s family from these boys’ lives.
Now, in September of 2014, investigators managed to track down that Prius that was seen speeding away from the crime scene.
They had located a bunch of surveillance footage in the months following the matter. And this footage showed the Prius in the Premier Health and Fitness car park while Dan was inside working out.
During the entire hour and a half that Dan was in the gym, this Prius was constantly moving around, moving parking spaces, just clearly surveilling and trying to get a look inside or get an eye on Dan.
More surveillance footage and eyewitnesses show the car then followed Dan home after leaving the gym.
There was even footage of this car turning onto Dan’s street and the footage showed two men in the car.
It was a light colored Prius with a SunPass transponder in the rear window which is like basically a toll thing you put on your car.
They managed to trace this transponder to a rental car company in Miami. They contacted this car company in September of 2014 and that is when they find out that two men named Lewis Rivera and Sigfredo Garcia had rented this Prius from July 15th to July 21st, 2014.
Thankfully, all of the GPS information from when they rented the car was still available.
So when investigators looked at this, they found that these two men had driven this car or the car during this these men’s rental period was driven down from Miami to Tallahassee on the 16th of July.
It showed the car in Benton Hills, which is the suburb that Dan lived in.
And it also showed that on the day of the murders, they drove back from Tallahassee back to Miami and returned the car on the 21st of July.
So Lewis Rivera and Sigfredo Garcia were childhood friends. Garcia was a low-level criminal. His criminal record started when he was 14 years old, and he had been arrested at least 22 times since for vehicle theft, aggravated assault with a weapon, criminal mischief, possession of cocaine and marijuana, and strong armed robbery.
Rivera, however, was more of a hardened criminal, and he was actually the leader of the North Miami Latin Kings gang.
Neither of these men had any connection to Dan Markel. But what the GPS information did show was that on the day they rented the car and picked the car up, the 15th of July, they drove to the house of a woman named Katie Magma.
So Katie had dated Garcia on and off for many years, and they had two children together.
But in 2013, she actually started dating Charlie Adlesen, Wendy’s brother. So this is really where the case starts to unravel and investigators managed to kind of form this web of connections between Garcia, Rivera, Katie, Charlie, and the Adlesen family through all of these calls and through of course money.
So, in the months after Dan’s death, Katie starts receiving checks from the Aden Institute, which is the Aden’s dentist practice.
All of these checks are handwritten and hands-ed by Donna Adlesen. They are for a consistent amount of $47.58 every 2 weeks.
But despite the dates on the checks, sometimes Katie would receive the money in advance and, you know, just at different time periods.
And these payments lasted until at least April of 2016. These checks were for work that she was doing there, but it was never actually found that she ever actually worked at the dental practice.
Also, following the matter, she starts depositing large amounts of cash into her bank account.
The amount that she deposited into her bank account in the 6 weeks following the matter was more than she had deposited in the entire year before the matter.
So by November 15th, 2016, she had deposited $56,000, not including her paychecks, from the Aden Institute.
By January of 2016, a car that was registered to Harvey Adlesen was transferred to Katie.
It was a Lexus. Records show it was sold to her for $1,700, though the car was valued at $6,000, and there was no record that she actually ever paid them for the car at all.
She also received cash and gifts from Charlie Adlesen. And on top of that, she had a breast augmentation, which it appears that the Aden family paid a majority of.
Garcia and Rivera also made some large purchases following the murder. So, they both bought motorcycles.
Rivera bought one car and Garcia bought two cars. And if all of this wasn’t enough for you, there are a lot a lot a lot a lot a lot of phone calls connecting Ria, Garcia, Katie, Wendy, Charlie, Harvey, Donna, everybody involved.
I mean, the phone logs are so incriminating, but I I mean, there’s so many of them, so I can’t go over all of them, but I will just go over maybe some of the most incriminating ones.
So, on the morning of the murder, Dan calls Wendy and she doesn’t answer. So, he leaves a voicemail saying that he’s going to be at the gym between 9:15 and 10:00 a.m.
After he leaves this voicemail and Wendy listens to it, Wendy calls her brother Charlie and they have an 18-minute phone call and this is right before the murder takes place.
Charlie then calls his mom, Donna. Charlie and Katie then exchange four phone calls back and forth.
Dan’s murder takes place between 10:50 and 11:00 a.m. Donna calls Charlie at 11:06 a.m.
And then Charlie immediately calls Katie after that phone call with his mom that same morning.
So we’re still at the morning of the murders, July 18th, 2014. Garcia’s phone has no activity from 9:58 a.m.
Until 12:29 p.m. Which it’s assumed or investigators believe that’s because his phone was switched off during this time.
Immediately after his phone is active again, he calls Katie at 12:30 p.m. His phone’s location shows that at this time at 12:30, he is at Lake City, Florida, which is about an hour and 40minut drive from the murder, about an hour and 40 minutes after the murder.
So showing that, you know, they had fled the scene. So they get back to Miami that afternoon, Garcia and Rivera on the 18th of July.
As soon as they arrive back in Miami, they meet up with Katie. And while Katie, Rivera, and Garcia are all together, Katie starts calling Charlie, Charlie Adlesen.
She then goes to Charlie’s house, she stays at his house until the next morning, the 19th of July.
And as soon as she leaves his house, she calls Garcia. So, it’s all painting a picture, right?
Like, while all of this is going on, they’re all calling each other. They’re all meeting up.
They’re all seeing each other. So then on the 19th of April with all of this information, 19th of April 2016, police decide to carry out a sting operation that they called the bump.
And the operation was basically to try and spark some incriminating conversations on the phone or, you know, bump the Adles or anyone involved to kind of say something incriminating.
So they have an undercover FBI agent basically pose as a member of the Latin Kings gang.
They have him approach Donna Adlesen outside of her condo in Miami to threaten her with blackmail.
So he hands her an article about Dan’s murder and he says, “My brother helped you out.
He was incarcerated as a result, so he’s going to need $5,000.” He gave her a phone number to contact him and he walked away.
And he also mentioned that Katie was their mutual contact. >> Excuse me, Mrs. Addison.
>> How you doing? Just want to give you this. Um, listen. [laughter] >> Don’t be scared.
>> No, don’t be scared. Listen, just want to let you know that uh we know that your family uh has been taking care of Katie and her friend Google for quite some time after your problem up north has been solved.
And I want to let you know that my brother, he’s incarcerated. He helped your family with this problem you guys had up north.
And we want to make sure that he’s going through some rough times and we want to make sure that you take care of the of what he’s going through the way you’re taking care of Katie and uh two.
>> Well, this will explain it. >> After this interaction, Donna immediately calls her son Charlie, which is exactly what this whole operation was designed to get them to do.
But they are very, very cryptic on this phone call. Donna tells him that she needs to talk to him about some uh paperwork that had been handd delivered to her.
Charlie says, “You know, what’s it about? Is this involving me?” And Donna whispers, responding, and says, “Well, probably both of us.
Probably the two of us. You probably have a general idea of what I’m talking about.”
Charlie asks her if this has anything to do with Wendy, if Wendy knows about it, or if she’s involved at all.
And Donna then indicates that she doesn’t want to talk about it over the phone.
In a later call, Donna and Charlie are arranging to meet up in person, and Charlie asks if he needed to bring cash and if a threat was involved.
Now, during this phone call, Charlie asks if or what the contents of the letter is about, basically.
And Donna responds and says the TV is $5,000. And this is important because TV seems to be a code that they use quite a lot.
If you remember back in Wendy’s interview that she did with police, she mentioned that her brother wanted to hire a hitman for her, but then ended up saying to her that a TV would be cheaper as a divorce present.
Wendy also actually had a TV repair man conveniently at her house at the exact time that the murder was taking place.
Anyway, so after Charlie calls his mom and gets on off the phone with his mom, he immediately calls Katie and tells her that they need to meet in person.
And he tells her about what went went down and then with the sting and then says they need to meet in person.
Then the day after the sting, Charlie meets up with his mom or the day after the FBI agent approached Donna.
Charlie meets up with his mom, but they meet up at her condo. So there’s no recording of this.
Then that afternoon, he meets with Katie at a restaurant called Dolce Vita. And this is actually recorded.
The audio of it was recorded. It wasn’t a very good recording, so they had to get some experts to enhance the audio, but they did eventually manage to do that and write up a transcript of what was said.
So, I’ll read some of that to you. Not the whole thing, but I’ll read some of it.
If they had any evidence, we would have already gone to the airport. The problem is, even if they bugged this, bugged your phone, you’re still not talking about any of this.
So, my point is, how do you get people to talk? You throw in a smoke grenade and then you get all the cockroaches to run out.
Okay, this part is probably less relevant, but I just think Charlie sounds like such a cockhead, so I wanted to read it.
They may have approached my mom because my dad may know someone who’s carrying a gun.
You never know if someone, you know, you don’t want it to turn into a shootout, you know, and I can tell you a lot of times I carry on me.
I mean, someone comes up to me, I mean, I’m going to start carrying one on my back like, you know, a holster that fits in your shirt.
Someone comes up to me, they better be ready to shoot cuz I’m going to go shoot them.
Someone comes up to me asking for money right now. Yeah. And when the guess what?
When theinging police show up and there’s a doctor and there’s an oral surgeon standing there with a dead gang member in the driveway, they’re not going to come down too hard on me and I’m not going to talk anyway.
I don’t know much. I don’t trust them. And then towards the end of the conversation, he says, “You better kill him because he’s going to be a big problem.
If you can’t do it, I’ll have someone else do it.” And I believe here he’s talking about the FBI agent or something.
He repeatedly talks about the $5,000. Repeatedly talks about how these people are blackmailing them, so they have information, which means they’re not going to go away.
And so, she needed to find out who this guy was that spoke to her mom, cuz obviously the undercover FBI agent spoke about Katie being their mutual contact.
He told her that Katie needs to go and find out who this guy is, and she needs to deal with him and needs to shut it down.
Now, they didn’t have all of this audio right away. It took them a while to be able to kind of clarify the audio and get a full transcript for what they actually said at this Dolce Bea meeting.
So, it will become very important later on in the case. So, then the next day, Charlie meets up with his dad Harvey and they talk about the bump operation, the undercover agent approaching their mom, which indicates that all three of them, him, Donna, and his dad Harvey, all were involved in the conversation and knew about what was going on and why.
Later on in May, the police, the undercover agents as part of this sting, end up sending a letter to Donna.
They text her, they call her, and when Donna is getting all of these getting contacted by these this undercover agent, her and Charlie start having conversations about this $5,000 and how important it is that they pay it, which you just wouldn’t do if you were innocent, right?
If you had nothing to hide, you wouldn’t need to pay people off. So, they’re pretty clearly implying some stuff, right?
But not in at any point in any of these calls and any of these meetings, they never actually give a confession or anything to fully implicate any of the Aden family members enough to actually arrest any of them.
But with the car rental, the GPS, and the phone calls, they do have enough to arrest Rivera Garcia and Katie for the murder of Dan Markel.
On the 25th of May 2016, Garcia is arrested and Katie is arrested on the 1st of October.
Both plead not guilty. Lewis Rivera, on the other hand, was already serving a jail sentence, a 12-ear jail sentence.
And he actually decided to take a plea deal. So, he plead guilty to seconddegree murder of Dan Markel and agreed to cooperate with the authorities in exchange for a 19-year sentence, which would be served concurrently with the 12-ear sentence he was already serving.
So basically, he would only have to serve an extra 7 years on top of his current sentence.
So his story is that Garcia approached him and came to him and proposed a highpaying robbery.
They first they actually went down to Tallahassee twice. So they first went down to Tallahassee on June 4th to 6th, 2014.
So about a month or just over a month before the actual murder took place.
And on their first trip down to Tallahassee is when Rivera finds out that this is actually the intent of this is a murder and not a robbery.
Garcia tells him at this point that a woman with two children wants her ex-husband killed so that she can get full custody of the children.
And he also offered Rivera $30,000 for his involvement. So this woman and her family, he said, we’re going to pay them a total of $100,000.
And that would be split between Garcia, Rivera, and Katie. With Rivera obviously getting a $30,000 cut.
And he also told Rivera that Katie Maganua was the one that brought this job to him.
So during this trip in June, Riera and Garcia go to Dan’s house and they surveil him and they see that he is there with his children.
So Riverier says, “Absolutely not. Like I’m not going to shoot anyone in front of children.”
And so they go back to Miami. About a month later in July, they return to Tallahassee again to attempt this matter for the second time.
They arrive there early on the 17th of July and they kind of drive around Dan’s neighborhood and scope out Dan’s neighborhood.
On the morning of the 18th of July, they go back to Dan’s house and they follow him around that morning.
They follow him dropping his kids off at daycare. They follow him to the gym and then they follow him back to his house.
Rivera was the driver through all of this and he said that once Dan got inside his garage and parked his car, Garcia got out of the car, went up, shot Dan twice, immediately ran back to the car and they fled the scene and they drove straight back to Miami.
On the drive back to Miami, they threw out the murder weapon, which was a 38 caliber handgun.
They threw it off a bridge and despite extensive searching, this gun has never been found.
So on the 23rd of September 2019, Katie Maganua and Sigfredo Garcia finally go to trial and they are being tried together and Rivera is the star witness.
He testified to everything that I just mentioned. They also showed all of the evidence that we’ve already spoken about, all of the phone calls, all the meetings, all of the money.
The trial ended on the 11th of October 2019. And after 11 hours of deliberation, Sigfredo Garcia was found guilty of the firstdegree murder of Dan Markel and was later sentenced to life in prison.
He did appeal his sentence, but his appeal was denied. The jury in Katie’s trial, or the jury for Katie, was actually a hung jury, so her trial ended up being a mistrial, and her retrial is set for May 2022.
In the meantime, on the 21st of April, 2022, Charlie Adlesen is actually arrested thanks to the phone calls and his meeting with Katie back in April 2016 about Operation Bump.
So, they managed to clarify that audio, get transcript of that audio, and arrest Charlie.
Katie’s second trial begins on the 16th of May, 2022. She is still pleading not guilty, still saying she’s innocent, still denying any involvement.
She took the stand at both of her trials in her own defense. Wendy also testified at both trials and she is kind of an idiot to be honest with you.
She testified to pretty much the same stuff she said in her interview with police.
So that her family hates Dan that they were really pissed off about Dan trying to prevent the kids from being relocated to be with Wendy and her family and also about Charlie’s jokes about hiring a hitman.
I think honestly she thought that she that it was helping that she was like, “Oh, it it was just a joke.
You know, if they joke about this, then they would never actually do it.” She also testified that she never offered Dan a million dollars to basically bribe him to let her move with the kids like her mom had suggested in that email.
She also claimed that Donna didn’t even know about the motion Dan had filed to have her visits with Benjamin and Lincoln supervised.
And she also said that Dan’s relationship with her family was getting better and was improving before his murder.
All of which, by the way, was proven false. Like, they already knew that all of this was false because they had emails between Wendy and her mom and her family.
She literally forwarded her mom the motion that Dan filed to have Donna’s visit supervised.
So, it’s really not a good look that, you know, she’s getting up there and she’s lying about all of these things.
The only thing that changed in her two testimonies, everything was pretty pretty much the same in her testimony in the two trials, but the one thing that changed is that in the first trial, she denied ever driving down Trescot Drive on the day of the murder, which Trescot Drive is Dan’s street where Dan was murdered.
In the second trial, she actually does admit to driving down the street that day.
And I wanted to mention this for a few reasons, so stay with me here.
In her first and only interview that she did with the police, she straight up told them told them that she had turned on to Trescot Drive and she had seen all of the, you know, crime scene tape.
Officers also saw her do this. So, they saw her turn onto the street, see all of the crime scene tape, then immediately turn around and book it out of there.
She never spoke with an officer on scene. She never tried to contact Dan, ask, you know, despite the fact that she’s seeing all of this crime scene tape near his house.
She never tries to ask him if he’s okay. Never tries to ask if the kids are okay.
Never even tries to see what is going on and why there is all of this crime scene tape on his house and on his street.
So then in Katie’s first trial, Wendy gets up to testify and she denies all of this despite having already admitted it, despite officers having seen her, she gets up on the stand and says, “No, I never turned down his street on the day of the murders.”
Then in Katie’s second trial, she admits to it again. Anyway, I just wanted to mention this because first of all, it shows that she’s a massive liar.
Even when she’s been caught out in a lie, she will still lie. Second of all, I also wanted to point out that it’s very convenient that on the day that her ex-husband happens to be murdered, she happens to turn down his street for whatever reason.
She wasn’t called there or anything. She just turned down the street. Soon as she sees all the crime scene tape, she legs it out of there.
And so you would think knowing that Dan something has obviously happened on Dan’s street around Dan’s house and Dan has their children that if she knew nothing about what had happened, she would be like, “What is going on?
Are the kids okay? Is Dan okay?” She would at least try to check on her kids.
Even if she hates her ex-husband and is glad something happened to him, she would want to check on her kids or at least find out what is going on.
So take with that what you will. And also Charlie’s defense team in his trial named Wendy a co-conspirator.
So again, take with that what you will. So Katie’s trial ends on the 27th of May, 2022, and this time the jury does find her guilty of first-degree murder, and she was sentenced to life in prison.
Charlie Adlesen’s trial begins on the 23rd of October, 2023. Both Rivera and Katie testify against him, and Katie does a complete 180.
You know, this whole time she’s been claiming her innocence. She had nothing to do with it.
But I guess after she got convicted, she was like, “Screw it. Yeah, I’m involved.”
And Charlie’s the one that asked me to be involved and asked me to find a hitman to kill her sister’s ex-husband.
And so I [clears throat] connected him with Garcia. In Charlie’s trial, Rivera further testified on top of all of his other testimony we’ve gone over.
He further testified that he received payments in stacks of 10 $100 bills which had been stapled in the top corner.
During this trial, Charlie’s ex-girlfriend, June, also testifies, and she testified about the strange way in which Charlie would stash money where he would staple stacks of $100 bills together in the top corner.
And she remembered it cuz she thought it was a really weird way to store money.
She also testified that during the time Operation Bump was going on, Charlie was acting very angry, very agitated, very nervous, and so was his mother, Donna.
And in fact, Donna during this time even said that she felt like she was being haunted by Dan Markel from the grave.
And she also said that Charlie had given Katie a car and paid for most of her breast augmentation.
Wendy’s ex-boyfriend, Jeffrey Lass, also testified during this trial. And he testified that Wendy had confided in him that Charlie had never been joking [clears throat] when he was talking about hiring a hitman.
In fact, she told him on the 13th of July that Charlie had inquired into hiring a hitman in the summer of 2023 and got quotes for $15,000 and $50,000.
He also testified that on the week of the 4th of June, 2014, Wendy canceled travel plans that they had for the week of the 14th of July, they had already booked and paid for tickets and everything, but she cancelled because she said that she had to be home on the 18th of July, which as we know is the day that Dan was murdered.
Now, Charlie’s defense, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be laughing and I shouldn’t be smiling, but his defense is just so absurd.
But it’s just so ridiculous that he or his defense team for that matter thought anyone would buy this.
But his defense is that Rivera, Katie, and Garcia didn’t receive that money because he paid them to kill Dan.
They received that money because they blackmailed him. So, he says that he told Katie that his mom, Donna, had offered Dan $1 million to let Wendy and their two sons relocate to South Florida and that he, his parents, and Katie were going to go third.
So, they were each going to pay $333,000. So, he claims that Katie went and told this information to Garcia and Rivera, and they decided to go and kill Dan and extort him for that $333,000.
So he gives them $138,000 in wads of stapled cash on the night of the murder.
And apparently some of this cash was moldy because Katie claims that they literally tried to wash it in like a washing machine with washing detergent.
Then he agrees to pay them the remaining balance in in installments of $3,000 each month.
And he also said that if he didn’t pay them, they threatened to kill him and his family.
Obviously, nobody believed him. So, on the 6th of November 2023, he was convicted of first-degree murder, conspiracy, and solicitation.
And he was sentenced to life in prison for the charge of first-degree murder and 60 years for the charge of conspiracy and solicitation to be conserved consecutively.
On the day of his conviction, his mom, Donna, calls him and [clears throat] tells him that she and his father Harvey have a suicide pact and that they had been looking into countries that don’t have extradition treaties with the US, which god, I don’t know about you guys, but that is pretty much an admission of guilt in my eyes, right?
And she says this, mind you, when she thinks that she’s not being recorded. I don’t know at any stage that you could call someone who’s just been convicted of murder, conspiracy, and solicitation and you wouldn’t be being recorded, but she was definitely being recorded.
>> And the other thing I don’t understand that my daughter could help me with, but we’ve been looking it up over and over cuz things change if there is extradition from Vietnam because we we’ve looked at all the places.
I mean, I could go to Korea and China, but there’s no extradition. But we’re looking for places where there’s no extradition.
Who really good. Maybe she knows about maybe she can look up the extradition issue before we waste waste our time.
>> It’s also crazy the mindset of this family because in this call she also says you know our family is cursed and like yeah it’s a curse.
It’s it’s got nothing to do with the fact that you planned and hired people to murder a man.
Couldn’t be that. It’s honestly a really bad call for Donna. Right. And also in this call, she says, “We need to protect Wendy.”
But Wendy by this point has pretty much ghosted her entire family. Once her family starts getting arrested and convicted to stuff, she is out of there.
Donna and the rest of the family have created this whole mess for Wendy. I mean, obviously they are evil for doing this, but they they’ve done it basically for Wendy, right?
And then as soon as it all starts going pear-shaped and everyone starts going down for it and getting caught for it, Wendy basically washes her hands of the whole thing of her whole family starts distancing herself from the whole family so that she doesn’t go down with them.
But I mean considering though how people that know Wendy describe Wendy, I’m actually not even surprised.
They describe her as a sociopath. They describe her as a narcissist. They describe her as self-absorbed.
So considering that, I guess it is quite unsurprising. Anyway, obviously really bad phone call for Donna.
To make it worse, on the 7th of November, her and Harvey book one-way tickets to Vietnam and Vietnam does not have an extradition treaty with the US.
The flight is scheduled to leave on the 13th of November. They arrive at Miami International Airport and as the flight is boarding or waiting to board, Donna is arrested.
73-year-old Donna Adlesen is arrested and charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy, and solicitation. >> I have to go.
I have to go. I have to have you grab the bags. Take the bags.
>> Yeah. You need outside. >> Okay. >> My husband’s almost 80 years old. He can’t >> Please.
Can I help? >> No, you can’t do it. >> Oh, don’t do this, please.
>> Please. Oh, someone’s going to help him get help. This is terrible. >> Her trial date is set for the 22nd of August, 2025.
Once again, Rivera and Katie testify against her. They show all of the emails she sent to Wendy telling her to threaten Dan.
Wendy testifies once again, and this time she testified that she wasn’t involved and hasn’t spoken to her mother since 2023.
She also changed her testimony once again. So obviously her previous testimony is that her mom didn’t even know about the motion for supervised visits.
She’s now changed that to say that her mom does know about that motion. And she even testified that her mom tried to make her testify at or asked her to testify at Charlie’s trial in a way that would help him and that she was very upset with Wendy’s actual testimony.
She also confirmed in this testimony that in her first initial interview with police, the only interview she really did with police, that she had named both her brother and her parents as people that might be angry enough to harm Dan.
So pretty much just throwing her mom under the bus. Donna’s oldest son, Robert, so the son that had a falling out with the family, also testified for the first time.
He hadn’t testified in any of the other trials. In his testimony, he described his mom as controlling and he said that all the way up until the divorce, she loved Dan and then after the divorce, she hated Dan from that point on.
He also testified that Donna had told him not to cooperate or had warned him not to cooperate with law enforcement and when he told her that he had already spoken to the police, she responded and said, “Well, you don’t know anything anyway.”
He also said that when she initially called him to tell him about Dan’s murder that she described it in a way and had details that only somebody that was involved would have or be able to describe.
Rob testified that Donna and Wendy had conspired to tell Dan about the divorce right before his big speech in order to kind of throw him up and mess that up for him.
He went on to say that he became estranged from his mother when she basically refused to talk about Dan’s case whatsoever and at one point even said to him, “I don’t know.
I don’t care. It doesn’t concern me.” The last straw for him was in May of 2016 when his parents didn’t call him to talk about the fact that Garcia had been arrested because he was the first arrest in the murder of Dan Dan Markel.
Two days after the arrest took place. Donna calls him for his wedding anniversary. And so he decides to use this as an opportunity to bring it up.
And so three separate times on this phone call, he brings up Garcia’s arrest and he says to her, you know, “Did you hear?
They arrested the guy that is responsible for Danny’s murder.” She basically blows him off all three times until eventually she abruptly says she has to go and she hangs up the phone on him and he hadn’t spoken to her since that phone call took place.
Also, at Donna’s trial, they had two women that had been incarcerated with Donna and Katie testify at Donna’s trial.
They said that Donna admitted to them that she did have Dan killed and even tried to bribe them into testifying about Katie to help her son’s case, saying that Katie was extorting the Aden family.
One of the informants said she wanted me to say that Magma Manua told me, “When we killed him, I know my boyfriend’s parents had money.”
This informant also said that she asked Donna if she had done it and she said she said she did it.
It was to keep her grandkids, but it wasn’t supposed to go that far. The other informant, who Donna actually called her, allegedly called her jailed daughter, said that Donna had offered her $10,000 in order to testify that Katie had tried to extort them.
This informant even provided law enforcement with a notebook where Donna had handwritten a script for her to study.
And this script was basically a narrative of how Katie had schemed to extort the Aden family.
A crime lab analyst also testified that they had looked over this and confirmed that this notebook and this story, this script was written by Donna Adlesen.
So Donna’s defense claimed that Donna hadn’t been flying to Vietnam to flee the country.
She was just so distraught by everything that had gone down with Charlie and Charlie’s conviction that she was simply going on vacation, which is exactly what you do when your son is convicted of murder and sentenced to life plus 60 years in prison.
You go on vacation to a country that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the US.
Obviously, again, nobody believed this. Her trial ended on the 4th of September, 2025, and the jury only deliberated for 3 hours before finding Donna Adlesen guilty on all counts.
She was sentenced to life in prison for the charge of first-degree murder and 30 years for the charges of conspiracy and solicitation.
So, as of right now, neither Harvey nor Wendy Aden have been arrested or charged in connection with Dan Markell’s murder.
But at Donna’s trial, there was testimony that Garcia called Harvey directly on the 1st of July, 2014.
He also had a suicide pact with Donna. He was fleeing the country with Donna when she was arrested.
And he was involved in discussions with Donna and Charlie about the bump operation. And don’t even get me started on Wendy here.
Honestly, she’s out. She hasn’t been arrested. She hasn’t been charged. Once her family started going down for her ex-husband’s matter, she immediately washed her hands of all of them and starts distancing herself from all of them, basically ghosts her family, who she is incredibly, incredibly close with.
As soon as everything starts going pear-shaped, and keep in mind, it’s her husband, her ex-husband that was murdered, the man that was trying to prevent her from moving with their children back to South Florida.
So, that is why I think that we’re going to have some more updates on this case, and I’ll be disappointed if there are no more updates on this case.
And no more trials on this case. But that’s all we have for now. That’s all we have.
I hope that I will have some updates for you guys on this one. But what do you think?
Please let me know your thoughts. Do you think there are more people that are involved in this one or do you think they got everyone that was involved?
Do you think that Wendy knew anything about it? Do you think that Harvey knew anything about it?
Let me know. Let me know your thoughts, please. I would like to discuss this at length and hopefully there will be another update where we can discuss some more.
But that is everything for this case. That’s everything from me today, guys. I will be in the comments of this one for sure because I feel like you’re going to have some thoughts.
I definitely have a lot of thoughts on this case, so I definitely feel like you will, too.
