For more than a decade, the killing of Florida State University law professor Dan Markel has haunted Tallahassee. On Thursday, it reached its most dramatic chapter yet.
A Leon County jury found Donna Adelson, 75, guilty of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and solicitation of murder in connection with the 2014 shooting of her former son-in-law. Adelson collapsed in tears after the verdict was read, crying out “Oh my God” again and again. Judge Stephen Everett cleared the courtroom of jurors before offering her time to collect herself. She now faces a mandatory life sentence.
Markel, 41, was a widely respected legal scholar who wrote about criminal law and punishment. He was gunned down in the driveway of his Tallahassee home on July 18, 2014, dying hours later in a hospital. For years, prosecutors pieced together a murder-for-hire scheme that stretched from South Florida to North Florida, involving multiple conspirators and a faimilial story that would make Tolstoy blush.
At the heart of it was a custody battle. Adelson’s daughter, Wendi, and Markel had divorced, and a judge had denied her request to move their two young sons to South Florida. Prosecutors argued that Donna Adelson viewed this as intolerable. With her son, Charles, she set in motion a plan to have Markel killed so Wendi and the children could relocate.
Charles Adelson, a Fort Lauderdale dentist, was convicted last year of arranging and paying for the murder. He is serving a life sentence. The shooters, Sigfredo Garcia and Luis Rivera, traveled from Miami to carry out the attack. Both were convicted, along with Katherine Magbanua, Garcia’s former girlfriend and Charles Adelson’s on-and-off partner, who acted as the link between the Adelsons and the gunmen. Rivera accepted a plea deal; Garcia and Magbanua received life terms.
Donna Adelson’s conviction makes her the fifth person to be held responsible. Prosecutors presented emails, texts, and checks from the Adelson family’s dental practice that Magbanua testified she received after the killing, signed by Donna herself. Former inmates testified that Adelson attempted to coax them into lying for her, offering gifts in return. And her estranged son, Robert, a doctor, described her as controlling and consumed with hatred for Markel.
The case against her was not just about the crime itself, but about motive—what prosecutor Georgia Cappleman called Adelson’s “nonnegotiable need to win.” In her closing argument, Cappleman told jurors that when every other tactic failed, Adelson escalated to the unthinkable.
Defense attorneys portrayed Adelson as a grieving, flawed woman, meddling in her daughter’s affairs, but not a murderer. There was a brief period where commenters thought Adelson might testify, but she never took the stand.
Her arrest in November 2023 added to the intrigue. Just days after Charles’s conviction, she and her husband were detained at Miami International Airport with one-way tickets to Vietnam, a country with no extradition treaty. Prosecutors laid this out, along with her internet searches for non-extradition countries as proof that she was preparing to flee the county. Her lawyers countered that she was simply distraught and looking for a way to escape the circus that her life had become.
Markel’s parents, Ruth and Phil, have waited 11 long years for justice. In court Thursday, Ruth told the judge her family’s grief is endless: “We have lost a treasure.”
For them, and for many who followed the twists of this case through headlines, documentaries, and podcasts, Donna Adelson’s conviction closes another chapter. Yet questions remain—about the family members prosecutors labeled unindicted co-conspirators, and about how far loyalty, anger, and control can drive people to tragedy.
After just three hours of deliberation, the jury delivered its verdict. For the Adelson family, and for the Markels, the story is still unfinished. But in Tallahassee, justice finally caught up with its matriarch.
