Books, Crime, Dan Markel, Deaths, Murder

The Dan Markel Case: Insights From Wendi Adelson's Novel

Wendi Adelson's novel sheds (chilling) light on her marriage to the late Dan Markel.

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This Is Our Story by Wendi AdelsonThe search for answers in the Dan Markel murder case may take longer than expected. After I wondered whether defendant Katherine Magbanua might be cooperating with the police, upon noticing that her charge got downgraded from first-degree to second-degree murder, one of her lawyers contacted me to claim that his client is innocent and to deny that she’s working with law enforcement. (For the full statement from Christopher DeCoste, see the 9:15 p.m. update.)

In the meantime, we’ll have to look elsewhere for clues about the case. Over at Outside the Law School Scam, blogger “dybbuk123” took one for the team and read This Is Our Story, the “criminally lousy” novel written by Dan Markel’s ex-wife, Wendi Adelson. As followers of the case will recall, police allege possible involvement in Markel’s murder by members of the Adelson family (but nobody from the family has been charged, and the Adelsons insist on their innocence).

So let’s turn to Wendi’s book. From Dybbuk’s takedown:

In spite of the intense publicity generated by the lurid murder mystery starring herself, I do not believe anyone has yet explored Adelson’s novel as a possible window into the self-perception of its enigmatic author.

Even at the risk of death by Prius-driving hitman, I am compelled [to] endorse the latex [Ed. note: this is a pun Wendi used for “late-ex”] Markel’s decision not to read his wife’s novel. This is Our Story is inartful, shallow, clichéd, oddly bland given its human trafficking theme, and terribly self-important. Interestingly though, Adelson states that her book purports to tell, in substantial part, her own story. In an afterword to her novel, Adelson states that “I, selfishly, wanted you to know a bit about my story, which has much – but not all – in common with Attorney Lily” (i.e., the main character in the novel).

It’s not hard to find similarities between Wendi’s art and life, as noted by Dybbuk:

In the novel, Lily, a lawyer in her early thirties, gives up a thriving corporate practice in DC to follow her seemingly bright and sweet, if exasperatingly blunder-prone, new husband Josh Stone to “this Godforsaken place”—namely, “North Florida State University” in “Hiawassee Springs,” where Josh holds a professorship. Unfortunately, Josh installs Lily in what he describes as an “adorable, cozy” country house that he has just rented without realizing that the place is infested with cockroaches. Lily overcomes her disgust at her new digs and the boredom of small town life by hooking up with a nonprofit and becoming a pro bono immigration attorney specializing in helping trafficked women, the only one in a 300-mile radius.

Followers of the case will recall that Wendi Adelson, after marrying Dan Markel in 2006, followed him to Tallahassee, where he took a professorship at Florida State University and she became a clinical professor focusing on human trafficking cases.

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The book review continues:

The Lily chapters are notable for the character’s increasing contempt for her husband. Lily criticizes Josh for his short stature (“He is my same height, which is something I had never considered pre-Joshua, because I had already determined that my dating window extended only from 6 foot two to 6 foot 4”), his pouting, his habit of calling her “Lilybillygoat” under the misimpression that it is endearing, his insincerity in asking what she wants him to make for dinner when he had already begun preparing spaghetti and pasta sauce (“I think dinner’s going to be really good, sweetie…. Josh looked really proud of himself, like he just climbed an icy mountain in winter time instead of preparing a simple meal like I do for him every single night”), and his stupid career advice, often delivered in the infuriatingly triumphant tone of someone who “had just invented a solution to global warming.” But Lily especially resents her husband’s constant pressure for children, which Lily herself finds perplexing in that she wants children too.

This also fits the Wendi/Dan relationship. Dan was not particularly tall. Dan addressed Wendi as “Mrs. Bear” (as noted in the 20/20 episode). Dan could at times sound pretentious or patronizing. Dan (and Wendi) very much wanted children.

And then there’s the ending, which also reflects real life — although, in a chilling way, real life after the publication of the book (the novel came out in 2011, Wendi left Dan in September 2012, the divorce was finalized in 2013, and Dan was murdered in July 2014):

In the final chapter of the novel, Lily adopts a baby that [her client] Mila conceives post-rescue and then abandons…. Lily only informs her husband of the adoption after the fact. Though, as noted, Josh badly wanted children, Lily informs him that she adopted the kid in her maiden name and did not want him in her or her child’s lives….

[Extended quotation from a scene in the novel in which Lily breaks up with Josh, unilaterally and without prior notice, telling him that “my life is going in a different direction now, and [adopted baby] Anna and me, well, we have to forge our own path.”]

My interpretation of the breakup scene is that author Wendi Adelson was signaling through her fiction that she not only wanted to divorce Markel, but that she also wanted him out of the lives of her kids. The naming question in the novel foreshadows Adelson’s real life behavior, post murder, in changing her children’s surnames from Markel to Adelson and removing the middle name of one son because it referenced Markel’s deceased grandmother….

In the novel, Lily’s heroic work is obstructed by a clueless and condescending husband whom she has outgrown. Hubby Josh whines and snivels, but ultimately accepts his marching orders. However, discarding Josh’s real-life model seems to have been a messier proposition.

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Dybbuk’s stylishly written post can be read in full over at Outside the Law School Scam. As noted by one of the commenters, “This is one of the few entertaining things to come out of this very sad situation.” (My favorite part of the post is the riff on Wendi’s portrayal of Latino men, accents and all.)

A source of mine who also read This Is Our Story shared additional interesting observations:

The basic premise of Attorney Lily’s life is that she married a professor (Joshua Stone). She says that she married him too quickly, and that at the time she was “absolutely sick and tired of dating” and saw “dating, at its best, as nothing more than a romantic interview. ‘Are you the kind of person who would produce good looking, smart and nice children and never cheat on me and help me clean up the kitchen and love me even when I’m grouchy and not trade me in for a younger model and not join the other team?'”

This is, you may recall, pretty much exactly what Wendi said about Dan in her writing-class podcast — that she married a man she lacked passionate love for because she figured he would be a good father.

Joshua gets a job at North Florida State University in Hiawassee Springs (“the ‘Wassee), a small town in the Florida panhandle. Lily moves there because that’s where his job is, but she hates it. She takes many digs at “the Wassee” throughout the book — making fun of the people, their speech, their clothing, calling the town “irrelevant.”

This is consistent with what sources have described as Wendi’s dislike and disdain for Tallahassee, which she fled in favor of cosmopolitan Miami as soon as she could after Dan’s death.

Here are my source’s final reflections on the book:

Lily eventually finds her niche as an immigration lawyer helping victims of human trafficking, but her husband does not seem to respect what she does. There are lots of digs at the husband throughout — he doesn’t wear a wedding ring, he is distant from her, he wants her to have children and doesn’t care that she would have to give up the important work she is doing…. There is not much that is likable about the husband, because the book is told from Lily’s perspective and she is the heroine….

A couple of observations after having read it:

(1) The book was originally published in 2011, so — when they were still married. Given that the book casts Attorney Lily as a savior and Joshua Stone as kind of a dick, it seems kind of bold, arrogant, or aggressive to write and publish a book that includes a commentary on your marriage or your husband.

(2) This book could be the ultimate mind-twister for Dan, too. If he read it and got mad about something, she could just say, “But it’s fiction.” I feel like some of the details were thrown in there just for that purpose — to drive him crazy….

(3) In the podcast, Wendi said that Dan did not read her novel. I would be willing to bet almost anything that he did (even if you despised your spouse by the time the book was published, wouldn’t you be interested to see what it said about you?), but told her he didn’t because he didn’t feel like engaging with her on the book’s commentary on their marriage. [Ed. note: As noted by Dybbuk, “whatever his private misgivings, Markel extensively promoted Adelson’s debut novel, This Is Our Story, on his popular academic blog “Prawfsblawg.”]

(4) [My] main reaction to reading this book was the same reaction the Amazon commenter had when she read it a year before the murder. Wendi is a narcissist, plain and simple, and I felt like she was playing games by “selfishly” (as she herself says in the afterword) writing her own story into the book.

(5) Wendi says in the podcast that she never had a chance to tell her story or share how things looked from her perspective. She did. She told it in this book. In fact, this line from the podcast: “And I don’t get to complain that I didn’t do anything of those things because I am alive.” Same basic line appears in her book. She describes all of these things she dislikes about her life — living in “The Wassee,” being unsure about whether she wants to have children — and then: “The complicated truth is that I feel guilty complaining about anything when my clients’ lives are so hard.” Makes the line from her podcast seem inauthentic — like it’s just a rehearsed line.

Is Wendi an “inauthentic narcissist” spouting “rehearsed lines”? I’ve defended her before, but I know from my reader mail that many people respectfully dissent.

This Is Our Story [Amazon (affiliate link)]
Wendi Adelson’s criminally lousy novel, “This is Our Story” [Outside the Law School Scam]

Earlier: The Dan Markel Case: Is Katherine Magbanua Cutting A Deal?

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 dlat@abovethelaw.com.

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