Crime, Dan Markel, Deaths, Murder

The Dan Markel Murder Case: The Adelson Family Speaks

Here is the Adelsons' statement, issued on their behalf by a "dream team" of attorneys.

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Wendi Adelson

Wendi Adelson

The family of Wendi Adelson, the ex-wife of slain law professor Dan Markel, has broken its silence about the case (this time for real). Here is the official statement they just issued through their lawyers:

On behalf of the Adelson family, we continue to send our deepest condolences to the Markel family. Dan’s death was a tragedy, and the loss is profound. Although Wendi and Dan were divorced, he was the father of their two children, who must now grow up without their dad.

There has been a lot of unsupported speculation that the Adelsons had something to do with the murder. That speculation is categorically false. To be clear, none of the Adelsons – Wendi, her brother Charlie, or their parents Donna and Harvey – had anything to do with Dan’s murder.

We respect the process and the enormous amount of work that the Tallahassee police department has done in this case. They have spent the past two years reviewing every shred of evidence out there — every phone record, financial record, text message, email, internet search, everything. We understand why the government has put the Adelson family through this type of severe scrutiny. But nothing has turned up that supports this fanciful fiction that the Adelsons were involved. The investigation has gone so deep that it employed FBI agents, undercover agents, and a tip line. There is a reason that the police have not arrested any of the Adelsons – they weren’t involved in Dan’s death.

We are issuing this statement because the media continues to run stories suggesting – without any support or evidence – that the Adelsons were somehow involved in Dan’s murder. Again, this is simply not true. The Adelsons were not involved. We share in the hope that those responsible will be brought to justice.

Charlie Adelson

Charlie Adelson

An eloquent, heartfelt, sensitive statement. And an unequivocal one: the Adelson family had nothing whatsoever to do with the horrific murder of Dan Markel, and the Adelsons share in the hope that justice will be done in this case.

The statement was issued on behalf of the Adelson family by their lawyers — some of the top legal talent in all of Florida (and, in fact, the country):

  • Wendi Adelson is represented by John Lauro, the veteran trial lawyer and former federal prosecutor who has successfully handled numerous high-profile cases during his more than thirty years of practice (as discussed in this New York Times profile).
  • Charlie Adelson is represented by David Oscar Markus and Margot Moss, of Markus/Moss, and Michael D. Weinstein, who has his own firm in Fort Lauderdale. Markus, despite his youth (a 1997 Harvard Law grad), is regarded as one of the nation’s leading criminal defense lawyers. Moss, a past president of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, worked as a public defender for more than a decade, during which she tried over 100 cases. Weinstein, who has previously spoken on the family’s behalf, is a seasoned trial lawyer and longtime friend of Charlie Adelson.
  • Harvey and Donna Adelson are represented by Daniel Rashbaum and Jeff Neiman of Marcus, Neiman & Rashbaum. Rashbaum is a former federal prosecutor who conducted more than 30 jury trials as an assistant U.S. attorney (never losing a case that went to verdict); prior to serving as an AUSA, he practiced at Skadden Arps and Morvillo Abramowitz. Neiman is also an experienced trial lawyer and former federal prosecutor, with additional experience at Main Justice (where he participated in the Attorney General’s Honors Program).

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This is — much like O.J. Simpson’s celebrated selection of lawyers back in the 1990s, or Turkish gold trader Reza Zarrab’s current collection of attorneys (including Ben Brafman, Paul Clement, Viet Dinh, and Bill Burck) — a true “dream team.” The Adelsons — a wealthy family, thanks to a successful dental practice and extensive real estate holdings — have clearly spared no expense on lawyers. (And note how they, much like the different players in a complex white-collar case, have wisely retained separate counsel, even if those lawyers are working together in some capacities.)

I spoke briefly with David Markus by phone earlier today. He reiterated the themes of the statement — despite a lengthy and exhaustive investigation, nobody in the Adelson family has been charged with anything — while declining to speculate about who actually ordered the murder of Dan Markel. As for my theory that law enforcement officials are hoping to “flip” Sigfredo Garcia and Luis Rivera, the two men who have been charged in the case, here’s what he had to say:

Law enforcement is literally holding a needle to these guys’ arms: “Say this or we will get the death penalty for you.” I can’t imagine a situation where testimony would be less reliable. But they have not flipped, because what would they say? They’d have to make up something that other evidence would disprove.

Since the publication over the weekend of a Tallahassee Democrat piece containing rather salacious claims about Wendi Adelson (which I’ve previously discussed here and here), I’ve been chatting with some sources close to the Adelson family to fill out their side of the story. Here are some of the most notable things I’ve heard:

  • The Adelsons are a wonderful, loving family, the kind of people you’d meet in your temple or church; there’s no way they could be involved in a crime of this nature. (See also the comments of June Umchinda, Charlie’s current girlfriend.)
  • The recent Tallahassee Democrat piece — featuring such “dirt” as potentially embarrassing Google searches conducted by Wendi Adelson — was “an extraordinarily unfortunate, personal hit piece on her, unusual in its scope and highly personal in its attacks.”
  • The Democrat article was likely driven by leaks from law enforcement investigators who are getting frustrated by the lack of tangible evidence to support their pet theory that the Adelsons were somehow involved in the murder.
  • The claim of a supposed “celebratory dinner” a few weeks after Markel’s death is completely untrue.
  • Wendi Adelson broke up with FSU professor Jeffrey Lacasse, the alleged source of that “celebratory dinner” story, that summer — and the reason she canceled on their planned trip to California in July 2014 is because it was a trip to meet Lacasse’s parents, and she didn’t see their relationship moving to that next level.
  • Contrary to any claims of celebration, “Danny’s murder came as a crushing blow to Wendi — he’s the father of her two children, and she expected and hoped that he would remain in the boys’ lives forever.”
  • When Wendi spoke with law enforcement for eight hours on the day of Markel’s murder, she did so unaccompanied by counsel. Law enforcement has returned to her from time to time over the past two years with requests for additional information, and she has cooperated completely every time.
  • There has been no recent contact between police or investigators and Wendi Adelson — nothing in at least the past year.
  • The theory that the Adelsons got involved in a plot to murder Markel because of their “desperate desire” to relocate Wendi and her two children to South Florida does not hold up, for a variety of reasons.
    • First, the issue of where the kids would reside had already been resolved in the divorce litigation, more than a year ago, and Wendi was actually very happy with her post-divorce life in Tallahassee. (Wendi also didn’t think that Markel was going to spend the rest of his life in Tallahassee anyway; he was, as a legal academic whose star was on the rise, thinking about making a lateral move to a higher-ranked law school and/or a law school in another city — perhaps someplace closer to New York, given his deepening relationship with Professor Amy Adler of NYU.)
    • Second, the issue of ending unsupervised visits of the kids by grandmother Donna Adelson, which some have cited as an upsetting prospect for the Adelson family, was not a cause for concern. It was a motion to end unsupervised visits (not all visits), and it was made not as an initial motion, but in response to (or retaliation for) a motion by Wendi to enforce the terms of the final marriage dissolution judgment relating to money that Dan allegedly owed Wendi. (According to this source — who is, to be fair, on Wendi’s side — Markel would frequently file 50-page, law-review-article-style motions in response to simple motions by Wendi. The judge would admonish him for these motions — and there was no way the judge was going to restrict Donna’s visitation privileges based on another such motion, premised on some offhand negative comments by Donna about Dan.)
  • There are no communications connecting Sigfredo Garcia to Charlie Adelson in any way, as one might expect if the two were involved in a murder-for-hire plot.
  • The relationship between Charlie Adelson and Katherine Magbanua — the only real connection between the Adelsons and Sigfredo Garcia, the father of two children with Magbanua — was not particularly serious, more in the nature of “hanging out” as opposed to real dating.
  • Katherine Magbanua’s communications have been extensively searched and analyzed, and nothing in them has connected Garcia to the Adelsons in any such plot, as one might expect if Magbanua were acting as the conduit.
  • Sigfredo Garcia did not like the fact that Charlie was seeing Katherine.

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That’s a lot of new information. What does it all mean? Right now it seems there are far more questions than answers in this case. We might learn more if and when Garcia and Rivera go to trial, but that’s still a few months away.

“This was a terrible tragedy — the circumstances of Danny’s death are just wrenching,” a source close to the Adelson family told us. “And the impact on Wendi and her family has been terrible as well. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone, to raise your two young boys under these circumstances. This awful crime did not in any way benefit Wendi. Instead, it hurt her grievously.”

UPDATE (8/4/2016, 2:09 p.m.): A quick note of clarification in response to some feedback I’ve received on this story: as reflected in the title of this post and the disclaimers regarding sources, this story is (intentionally) told from the Adelson family’s point of view. I have no agenda in covering this case, other than wanting to share information with our readers and to see justice done in this case.

Over the course of covering this investigation, I have explored all angles of whether the Adelsons might have been involved in the murder. For a post putting Wendi Adelson in a more critical light, you need look no farther than my story from Tuesday, More Disturbing Details About The Dan Markel Murder Case. And recall also that I was one of the very first commentators on this case to raise a possible connection between Dan and Wendi’s divorce and Dan’s murder (which caused me to receive a lot of angry mail from friends of the Adelsons claiming that I was unfairly maligning the family).

Earlier: The Murder Of Dan Markel: Wendi Adelson Speaks (Part 1)
More Disturbing Details About The Dan Markel Murder Case
Harsh Words From An Ex-Boyfriend Of Wendi Adelson, Ex-Wife Of Dan Markel

David Lat is the founder and managing editor of Above the Law and the author of Supreme Ambitions: A Novel. You can connect with David on Twitter (@DavidLat), LinkedIn, and Facebook, and you can reach him by email at [email protected].

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