TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Jurors began deliberating Thursday in the murder trial of a 75-year-old Miami Beach woman accused of being the mastermind behind a plot in which hired hit men shot her former son-in-law in the head in his Tallahassee garage.
Attorneys finished their closing arguments in the afternoon following more than two weeks of trial. Donna Adelson faces charges of first-degree murder as well as conspiracy and solicitation to commit first-degree murder. If convicted, she could spend the rest of her life in prison.
Adelson is accused of orchestrating the 2014 murder of Daniel Markel, a Florida State University law professor who at the time of his death was locked in a bitter child custody fight with his ex-wife, and Adelson’s daughter, Wendi Adelson. The couple had been married seven years before finalizing their divorce in 2013.
Adelson’s defense attorneys argued at trial that the state lacks sufficient evidence to link her to the murder plot. Instead they emphasized roles played by others, including the hired gunmen and Adelson’s own son, who prosecutors say handed over the money to pay for the killing.
Assistant state attorney Georgia Cappleman said during her closing argument that all the defendants in Markel’s killing have pointed fingers at each other and Donna Adelson is no different. The prosecutor outlined Adelson’s controlling relationship with her children and involvement in her daughter’s divorce, saying she tried to insulate herself by using her son to hire the people who killed Markel.
“Don’t let the way she thought she’d get away with this be the way she gets away with this,” Cappleman told jurors.
The case has riveted Florida’s capital for more than a decade as sordid details emerged about the messy divorce, tensions with wealthy in-laws and custody battles that culminated in the killing.
Four others are already serving prison time for what prosecutors say was a murder-for-hire plot hatched by members of the Adelson family and carried out by paid gunmen. Three people have been sentenced to life, including Adelson’s son Charles Adelson.
During the trial prosecutors painted Donna Adelson as the calculated and controlling matriarch of a wealthy South Florida family with the means and motive to orchestrate the killing of a former son-in-law she hated. They said the disdain grew from his standing in the way of letting her daughter and two young grandsons leave Tallahassee for South Florida to live closer to the rest of the family, more than 370 miles (595 kilometers) away.
Defense attorney Jackie Fulford said the facts of the case do not support the narrative that prosecutors created.
“There’s not a single piece of evidence that connects my client to that murder,” Fulford said. “Charlie Adelson? Yep. Potentially Wendi Adelson? She’s the one who said she hated him. She’s the one fighting with him court. Donna Adelson? Nothing. Not a single piece of evidence.”
A week after Donna Adelson’s son was found guilty of first-degree murder in 2023, she was arrested at the Miami airport as she and her husband, Harvey Adelson, tried to board a flight to Vietnam — a country that does not have an extradition treaty with the United States — using one-way tickets.
Harvey Adelson and daughter Wendi Adelson have denied involvement in the murder and have not been charged.
The others who are serving time for the killing are Katherine Magbanua, Charles Adelson’s then-girlfriend, who prosecutors say served as the go-between with the two men hired to carry out the killing, and those men, Sigfredo Garcia and Luis Rivera.
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