The Dan Markel Case: Katherine Magbanua Arrested And Charged With Murder
Will we see more arrests in the days and weeks ahead?
Katherine Magbanua (Broward County Sheriff’s Office)
On Saturday, police arrested Katherine Magbanua, 31, and charged her in connection with the 2014 murder of Florida State University law professor Dan Markel. Magbanua was picked up in Davie, Florida, after a traffic stop near a bustling shopping plaza.
As readers who have been following this case will recall, law enforcement investigators believe that Magbanua served as the conduit between alleged hitmen Sigfredo Garcia and Luis Rivera and the family of Wendi Adelson, Markel’s ex-wife, with whom Markel was engaged in acrimonious divorce-related litigation. Magbanua was the mother of two children with Sigfredo Garcia but at one point dated Charlie Adelson, Wendi Adelson’s brother.
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The police allege that the Adelsons wanted Wendi and her two children with Markel to move away from Tallahassee, where Markel was a professor at FSU, and join the rest of the Adelson family in south Florida. But that couldn’t happen as long as Markel was in the picture. After Markel’s murder, Wendi and the children did in fact move down to the Miami area.
Magbanua’s arrest comes as a bit of a surprise given State Attorney Willie Meggs’s earlier statement that there likely wouldn’t be additional arrests in connection with Markel’s murder. But it’s not a total shock in light of (1) how Meggs later walked back those comments in advance of the 20/20 segment on the case, (2) law enforcement’s long-held suspicions about Magbanua’s possible role as go-between, and (3) the increased publicity for the case in the wake of the 20/20 episode.
Here’s one possible theory. The police have been trying to get Sigfredo Garcia and Luis Rivera to cooperate and identify who allegedly hired them to carry out the hit, but the two men haven’t been cooperating (despite a report, later denied by Rivera’s lawyer, that Rivera was talking to the police). So with Garcia and Rivera refusing to enter plea agreements and instead preparing to go to trial — October 24 for Rivera, November 14 for Garcia — law enforcement authorities are now leaning on Magbanua in the hope that she might point some fingers.
As of now, Magbanua isn’t talking, as her lawyer told ABC News:
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Appearing in bond court in Fort Lauderdale early Sunday, Magbanua’s attorney, Tara Kawass, said she had informed Tallahassee detectives investigating the Markel case that Magbanua would not be talking to them. Kawass also told a judge she had not been provided a copy of the arrest warrant for Magbanua.
“Katherine is a single mom who has no prior convictions,” Kawass said. “There was no reason to arrest her like this. Our sole priority right now is getting her on bond so she can take care of her two kids.”
Ah yes — Magbanua’s two children with Sigfredo Garcia. With Garcia in custody and Magbanua now arrested and charged as well, one has to wonder whether Magbanua might be more inclined to talk than Garcia and Rivera, for her kids’ sake. With their significant criminal histories, Garcia and Rivera likely belong to the “no snitching” school of thought. Magbanua, on the other hand, is a mother of two with no criminal record. Fearing for the fate of her children, she might be more willing to work with police.
Perhaps too willing to work with police, in the view of some defendants or suspects:
Garcia’s attorney, Saam Zangeneh, told ABC News that Magbanua’s arrest was not unexpected, but that it strikes him as last-gasp attempt by law enforcement to try to prove their theory of the crime after two years of investigation. “Desperate times call for desperate measures,” he said. “The prosecution has made her a focal point of this investigation. I am eager to read the arrest warrant and see why Katie was arrested.”
(The arrest warrant is now available; we’ve posted the complaint, warrant, and probable cause affidavit for Katherine Magbanua on the next page. The affidavit is pretty much the same as the one that surfaced last month.)
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The Adelsons have previously denied involvement in Markel’s murder. David Oscar Markus, counsel to Charlie Adelson, had this to say to the Tallahassee Democrat:
It’s sad that the police have arrested Katie when just last week the prosecution said there was no basis to proceed. They are trying to pressure a single mom who has no priors by threatening to make her little kids orphans. That’s not how our criminal justice system is supposed to work.
Of course, Magbanua and Garcia’s children aren’t the only kids implicated in this case. Dan Markel and Wendi Adelson’s two children should be able to learn the truth about who killed their father, no matter how painful that truth might be, and see the responsible parties brought to justice.
Will we see additional arrests in the wake of Katherine Magbanua’s? The answer, I suspect, is largely up to her.
(Flip to the next page to view the complaint, arrest warrant, and probable cause affidavit for Katherine Magbanua, as well as collected news coverage.)
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.
