Transcription
Good morning, everybody. Again, I'm Sarah Katherine Dugan. Uh, Georgia Kaplan and I are representing the state of Florida in this case. And this is the defendant, Donna Adlesen. We see her here at the defense table. And this is how she appeared back in 2014, when this crime occurred, 11 years ago.
And the reason that we're here today is because this defendant, Donna Adlesen, was part of a conspiracy to hire a hitman to kill her former son-in-law, Dan Markell. This murder was set into motion because, back in 2014, this defendant's family had a big problem. And the big problem was Dan Markell. And the solution to that problem was the defendant's son, Charlie Adlesen. Charlie Adlesen was the solution because he had a girlfriend with connections to the type of people who were willing and capable of pointing a gun at a complete stranger and pulling the trigger.
The victim in this case, Dan Markell, was known as Danny to his friends and family. He was a loving father to two little boys, and he was a highly respected law professor at Florida State University College of Law. Tragically, on July 18th of 2014, Dan Markell was shot in the head in broad daylight in the driveway of his home in the Benton Hills neighborhood here in Tallahassee.
The last day of his life began like any other day of his that summer. He woke up. He took his two young sons, uh, to preschool, and then he went to the gym to work out. After finishing his workout, he returned home. He pulled into his driveway, and he opened his garage. But little did he know that throughout his entire routine that morning, he was being followed by two hired hitmen who traveled all the way to Tallahassee from Miami for the sole purpose of taking his life. And like something out of a horror movie, when he pulled into his driveway, the killers pulled in right behind him.
Moments later, Dan Markell's neighbor heard a gunshot and he looked out the window and saw a light-colored Toyota Prius back quickly out of Dan Markell's driveway and speed away. The neighbor thought that was very unusual, very suspicious. So, he waited a second to see if Dan Markell also backed out of his driveway or came out of his house. And when he didn't see him, the neighbor got, you know, a very funny feeling, and he went over to Dan Markell's open garage to see if there was anything wrong. And he found a gruesome scene. Dan Markell's car window, his driver's side window, was shattered. His glasses and his phone were on the ground next to his, um, car. And Dan Markell was behind the wheel. He was unresponsive and moaning and terribly injured.
The neighbor called 911, and law enforcement arrived to find Dan Markell with a gunshot wound to the head. He was taken to the hospital, where he survived for about 14 hours before he was pronounced dead. Dan Markell was only 41 years old, and his little boys, who were deprived of their father after this murder, were just three and four years old. Bless you.
Law enforcement began to investigate, tr- to try to figure out who did this, who shot Dan Markell. The scene there, the crime scene, left no trace of the killers. There were no fingerprints, no DNA, no, no bullet casing. Nothing was stolen. And so police began to suspect that this may be a professional killing. The little evidence that they do have sends them down two separate paths. One path is to track down that light-colored Prius that the neighbor saw fleeing from the scene. And the other is to identify who, well, and who was inside that Prius. And the other path relates to motive. Who in Dan Markell's life would hate him enough to hire a professional killer to kill him? And after years of tireless investigation, both of these paths led directly to this defendant.
So, first, let's talk about the path involving motive. We'll go down both paths this morning. Police investigated Dan Markell's personal life to try to figure out a motive in this case, to see who might want him dead. And they learned that Dan Markell was entangled in a very nasty divorce with his ex-wife, who is the defendant's daughter, and his ex-wife is named Wendy Adlesen.
A review of the divorce case file reveals that Wendy Adlesen had asked the court to allow her to relocate to Miami, where she was from and where her parents lived, with her children and Dan Markell's children, in order to be closer to her mother, Donna Adlesen, to her father, whose name is Harvey Adlesen, and to her brother, whose name is Charlie Adlesen. The victim, Dan Markell, as y'all can imagine, is adamantly opposed to this, to his children being relocated to Miami. He works here in Tallahassee. He's a law professor here in Tallahassee. This is where he lives. This is where his kids have been raised. He wants his children here with him.
A review by law enforcement of Wendy Adlesen's emails made it clear that her mother, the defendant, hated Dan Markell and was the relentless driving force behind Wendy's relocation efforts to South Florida. And, you know, being a caring and involved parent is great, but the defendant's participation in her children's lives went beyond mere involvement or even meddling. She was extremely controlling. She had very strong opinions about all the decisions in Wendy Adlesen's life, whether it be about her career, her relationships, or even purchasing a home. And if Wendy Adlesen would not do as the defendant wanted her to do, the defendant often then enlisted Charlie Adlesen, her son, Wendy's brother, to solve the problem by getting him to kind of go to Wendy, be go to Wendy and persuade Wendy until Wendy ultimately agreed to do what the defendant wanted her to do.
And while the defendant had always been controlling of her children's lives, the emails uncovered by law enforcement showed that this defendant was desperate to find a way for Wendy, and Wendy and Dan Markell's children, her grandchildren, to be able to relocate to Miami. The defendant told Wendy that she deserved more than just a life teaching in Tallahassee without her family, and that Dan Markell was essentially holding her hostage in Tallahassee because of his job.
During the divorce and custody battle, the defendant's emails showed that she was heavily involved in Wendy's court case, even go- going so far as to draft and edit the documents that Wendy and her attorney were filing in court, and emailing Wendy instructions for her attorney on arguments her attorney should make and what her attorney should do. The defendant would guilt-trip Wendy Adlesen about how much time she and her husband, Harvey Adlesen, were having to spend away from their dental practice to visit Wendy and the grandkids in Tallahassee, and complain about how the family was losing income, losing patients because of their constant abst- absences from the practice. And the defendant instructed Wendy Adlesen that relocation to Miami was the most important priority in this divorce, and if it had to be her non-negotiable in the divorce.
In June of 2013, the judge in the divorce case ended up ruling in Dan Markell's favor. And not only did the judge deny Wendy's relocation motion, but the judge dismissed it in a way that prevented Wendy Adlesen from requesting the relocation again. So Wendy would not be permitted to move to Miami to be close to the defendant and her husband with the children at that time, or ever, unless of some, unless of course something happened to Dan Markell.
After the judge denied the relocation motion, after that was denied, the defendant told Wendy Adlesen in emails that Dan Markell has not beaten the Adlesen family yet. She let Wendy know that the Adlesen family is a team, and they are trying to win. Donna Adlesen suggested in her emails several bribes to get Dan Markell to, um, to get Dan Markell to agree to relocation, like plane tickets, paying for her son, the grandson's education. And the defendant even suggested offering Dan Markell a $1 million bribe to allow the relocation, to let Wendy move to Miami with the boys. And if the bribes didn't work, the defendant also suggested several ways that Wendy could threaten or bully Dan Markell into submission. The defendant told Wendy to aggravate Dan Markell like he aggravates you. And the defendant set out a plan of action that the defendant told Wendy would make Dan Markell absolutely miserable. And she's detailing all of these in her emails.
So, for the plan of action, the defendant knew that Dan Markell was devoutly Jewish. So, she came up with the idea for Wendy to pose Dan Markell's sons for pictures in front of a Catholic church and then post the pictures to social media, and even announce on social media she was getting the children baptized, just to make it appear to Dan Markell that she was changing their religion. The defendant assured Wendy Adlesen that this would all be an act to get Dan Markell to agree to let her move to Miami, but told Wendy Adlesen that in order to pull off the stunt, she had to put on the acting performance of her life. The defendant said that it did not matter to her if Wendy had to dress her two little toddlers up in in Nazi or SS uniforms, as long as she was able to get them to South Florida and show Dan Markell that he was not in control.
The defendant repeatedly told Wendy Adlesen that the rest of her life, meaning Wendy's life, as well as the defendant's life, Charlie Harvey Adlesen's life, and Charlie Adlesen's life, depended on Wendy Adlesen and the boys being able to relocate to Miami. And the defendant said that she would never, never, never give up and never stop fighting for Wendy and the boys to be relocated to Miami. And she never did.
The evidence in this case will show you that this defendant's closest confidant was her son, Charlie Adlesen. She and Charlie Adlesen talk multiple times a day, every day. And he was the person with whom she would constantly vent and complain to about Wendy's situation here in Tallahassee, having to live in Tallahassee with her sons. And she would often, the defendant would use very dramatic life and death terms to describe it. The defendant portrayed Dan Markell to Charlie Adlesen as a crazy person who was impossible to deal with and was causing an extreme amount of stress to Donna Adlesen and her husband, Harvey Adlesen. And Charlie Adlesen was also the person that Donna Adlesen relied on to solve her problems. And her daughter and grandsons having to live eight hours away in Tallahassee was a big, big problem for this defendant. And this defendant made it Charlie Adlesen's problem to solve.
And although the divorce between Wendy and Dan Markell was final a year before the murder, throughout that year, litigation is still ongoing, to say the least. Each side is continuing to routinely file violations of the custody agreement, violations of the settlement agreement, and that continued right up until Dan Markell's death in 2014. A few months before the murder in 2014, Dan Markell alleged that the defendant, Donna Adlesen, was disparaging him to his children. He was very worried about her him her trying to alienate him from his children. He was, she was doing this by calling him stupid in front of the boys and telling the boys that Dan Markell was trying to take them away from her. Dan and Markell asked the court to prevent this defendant from having unsupervised contact with her grandchildren. And this motion was still pending in court when Dan Markell was killed.
And the murder of Dan Markell ensured that not having access to her grandchildren would never be a problem for this defendant. And what do you know? About 48 hours after Dan Markell was killed, when or after the shooting happened, Dan Markell, or Wendy Adlesen and the little boys relocated to Miami, moved into the defendant's home with her, and the boys started school down the street. And just like that, their father was effectively erased from their lives, and the Adlesens' big problem had been solved.
You'll hear during this trial that the Adlesen family is a very tight-knit family. The defendant, her son Charlie Adlesen, and her husband Harvey Adlesen actually all worked together at their family's dental practice. The defendant, um, I'm sorry, Harvey Adlesen and Charlie Adlesen are dentists there, and the defendant managed their accounts at the office. She was the details person. And this defendant, though she managed much more than just the office for the Adlesen family. She was the matriarch, and a domineering one at that. She ran the office, the home, and the lives of the Adlesen family members.
After Dan Markell was killed, law enforcement interviewed Wendy Adlesen. Wendy Adlesen told police, and the police confirmed this, that she was at home having her TV fixed at home, at her home in Tallahassee, having her TV fixed at the time of Dan Markell's murder. And when police asked her, well, you know, do you know anyone who would have a motive to kill Dan Markell? Wendy Adlesen acknowledged that her family had a motive to want Dan Markell dead and said that her parents had more reason to dislike Dan Markell than anybody else.
At one point in the interview, police allowed Wendy Adlesen to make a phone call to her parents to let them know that Dan Markell had been shot. And after she got off the phone with her mother, the defendant, Wendy Adlesen said to police, "Well, they acted surprised, so that's a relief." And when asked by law enforcement if anyone could have killed Dan Markell on her behalf, she also told the police about her brother, Charlie Adlesen. Wendy admitted to police that her brother Charlie Adlesen had joked that he looked into hiring a hitman to kill Dan Markell as a divorce present, but decided to buy her a TV instead because it was cheaper. And what do you know? The same TV that Charlie Adlesen bought his sister as a divorce gift would be Wendy Adlesen's alibi the morning of the murder. An alibi, the TV repair appointment that was set up by her parents, Harvey Adlesen and Wendy and, and Donna Adlesen, the defendant.
So, this path of looking into Dan Markell's personal life to see who would have motive to kill him leads law enforcement to the Adlesens, including this defendant, a woman who vowed to never, never, never, never give up on getting her daughter and grandsons to Miami, and her son Charlie Adlesen, who told his family that he'd looked into hiring a hitman to kill Dan Markell, as Wendy said, was just a joke. But if Charlie Adlesen was just joking about hiring a hitman, that joke that stopped being funny when Dan Markell was actually killed by a hitman.
While the police are trying to investigate motive, they are simultaneously following that second path of the investigation by tracking down that light-colored Prius the neighbor saw fleeing from the scene. When law enforcement retraced Dan Markell's steps on the morning of his murder, they uncovered some very chilling surveillance video of that light-colored Prius, fitting the description given by the neighbor, following Dan Markell into the Premier Gym parking lot and waiting for an hour while he was inside, and then following him home from Premier Gym back to Benton Hills. And these surveillance images, coupled with a massive amount of phone and SunPass records gathered in this case, help police, police, police track down the exact car used to commit this crime. But police still had to figure out, okay, we got the car, but who was in this car and why did that person kill Dan Markell?
So law enforcement did a painstaking review of digital evidence in this case. And when I say painstaking, finding this Prius and finding evidence, um, in these phone records was not an easy task. And it took much longer than your average investigation of a shooting, as you'll hear. But law enforcement eventually found that needle in the haystack. They found a number that communicated with the cell tower that services Premier Gym at the exact time when this, when the Prius was there. And it was a number with a Miami area code, and that number belonged to a man named Sigfredo Garcia. Law enforcement examined Garcia's call logs, and they saw that he was in frequent contact with another number that was present at Premier Gym that day, and that number belonged to a man named Lewis Rivera, who is a longtime friend of Garcia, and he's also from Miami. They both are.
Police then looked at Garcia and Rivera's phone records, which showed that their phones left Miami two days before the murder. So, July 16th, they came to Tallahassee, and on the day of the murder, the 18th, they followed Markell to Premier Gym. The phone data shows that these men turned their phones off just minutes before the murder took place. And their phones then stayed off for about an hour or so after the murder until they were well southbound to Miami. I think around the Gainesville area, the phones turned back on. And then once they got back to Miami, a bank's ATM camera caught them in the light-colored Prius, um, at a bank drive-thru, and caught both of the men in the Prius.
So, police figured out the identity of the two men responsible for following and killing Dan Markell. But they continued to look for evidence to explain why these seemingly random men came all the way to Miami, I'm sorry, came all the way to Tallahassee to kill a man that they'd never met. What, or who, is the connection between the killers and the victim? The defendant, in her emails, obviously had demonstrated ample motive to want Dan Markell dead. But how do we get from these two random and hired killers to her?
Well, those phone records that I talked about, they revealed that one of the shooter, Garcia's, most frequent contacts was a woman named Katherine Magbanua. She goes by Katie. The shooter and Magbanua have a long history of an on-again, off-again relationship, and they share two kids in common. This is Garcia and Magbanua. And lo and behold, these two paths of the, the shooter's car and the motive, they converge when law enforcement sees that Katherine Magbanua is also one of the most frequent contacts in the phone records of Charlie Adlesen, the defendant's son. The same son that she had been nagging to death about his sister being stuck in Tallahassee. Law enforcement also learned that at the time of this murder, Katherine Magbanua was dating Charlie Adlesen.
So, Dan Markell was a problem the defendant needed to solve. The defendant's son, Charlie Adlesen, was looking to hire a hitman to kill Dan Markell. Dan Markell is killed by a hitman. And who ended up being the hitman? The hitman that killed Dan Markell? Someone with a close relationship to Charlie Adlesen's girlfriend, the father of her children. So, you can see how both paths followed by investigators charted the way to this defendant, not only by looking into the motive led law enforcement to the defendant because of her hatred of Dan Markell and her son's apparent efforts to hire someone to kill him, but also looking into that car fleeing the scene led law enforcement to the defendant through her son's girlfriend at the time. So, two investigations, one conclusion.
Law enforcement also tried to follow the money in this case, and that was a third way that the evidence in this case pointed to the defendant. Law enforcement reviewed bank records, employment records, DHSMV records of all the suspects and saw that in the months after the homicide, Garcia, Rivera, and Magbanua all acquired some big-ticket items. Rivera and Garcia both bought motorcycles and cars. Magbanua got a breast augmentation surgery and later received a black Lexus sedan whose previous owner was Harvey Adlesen. Katherine Magbanua's bank records were analyzed, and there was no check ever written or matching cash withdrawal for the car or the breast augmentation. Bank records also showed that Magbanua's account had a huge spike in cash deposits around the time of the murder. She deposited more money in her account in the five weeks after the murder than in the entire year before the murder. And this was during a time when there was no record of her being employed anywhere. And also about two months after the murder, this defendant added Katherine Magbanua to the payroll at the Adlesen family's dental practice, the one that she kept the accounts for, the defendant kept the accounts for. And the defendant started issuing her regular checks from their business account every two weeks, despite the fact that she did not work there at the time. Magbanua didn't work there. Law enforcement noticed that each one of the 44 checks that were written to Katherine Magbanua every two weeks over the course of the next two years after the murder were signed by this defendant, Donna Adlesen.
So, the money was talking, but what about the suspects? Law enforcement wanted to know what they were saying. In examining the phone records in this case, law enforcement noticed a distinct pattern of communication surrounding important events or dates. In this case, the phone calls always went from this defendant to her son Charlie Adlesen, and then from her son Charlie Adlesen to his girlfriend Katherine Magbanua, and then from his girlfriend Katherine Magbanua to the shooter Garcia, and then back the other way, like train cars. They only seem to touch the car directly in front and directly behind them. The defendant never calls her son's girlfriend, Katherine Magbanua, or the shooter, or vice versa. Charlie Adlesen never calls the shooter, or vice versa. So, if this is a murder-for-hire conspiracy, as law enforcement suspects, could it be that the defendant and Charlie Adlesen are wisely insulating themselves from the actual shooters by having Magbanua act as the middleman?
Law enforcement decided to launch an undercover operation designed to clarify who are the members of this conspiracy and how information was traveling within the conspiracy. Police applied for and received court authorization to listen in real-time to the phone calls of Charlie Adlesen and Katherine Magbanua, the people in the middle of this train car. Um, and this is what's known as a wiretap. By this point, though, it was April of 2016. It took about two years to do this investigation to find out who was in the car, to get this wiretap going. So, at this point, it's been two years, almost two years since the murder. And at this point, in April of 2016, Charlie Adlesen and Magbanua are no longer dating. They'd been broken up for over a year. Katherine Magbanua, at this point, is actually back together with Garcia. We heard they're on again, off again, and have these kids together. Charlie Adlesen has moved on to, he's had many other girlfriends at that point since Magbanua. And Charlie Adlesen and Magbanua, though they are still friends, they remained close friends since their breakup and they're still in regular communication by April of 2016, even though they're not together anymore. Rivera, the second hitman in that Prius, was in prison by this point, doing time on an unrelated charge. And the defendant is happily taking care of her grandkids all day, every day. So, all the members of this conspiracy have presumably gone on with their lives, believing they've gotten away with murder. So, what reason would they have to be discussing the murder at that point? If police are listening in, they wouldn't.
So, police needed to stage an event that would generate some conversation, some activity between the members of the conspiracy so they could see who the members of the conspiracy were. Their plan was to send an undercover agent posing as someone on behalf of Lewis Rivera, he was the hitman who was incarcerated by April of 2016, to walk up to the defendant, Donna Adlesen, on the street. There's a fly right in front of me that won't leave me alone. Uh, to walk up to Donna Adlesen on the street and try to blackmail her for money. Law enforcement refers to this as a bump. So, this undercover agent, posing as a blackmailer, and this is an actual picture from the, um, from the surveillance cameras that, this is the undercover agent passing a, a piece of paper to Donna Adlesen back in 2016. This undercover agent is posing as a blackmailer. He hands the defendant a piece of paper, and on the piece of paper is a news article about Dan Markell's murder. And written on the piece of paper is a phone number and the amount of $5,000. He tells the defendant that he knows the Adlesens are taking care of Katie, and he's basically there to blackmail some, to get more money out of them or out of her on Rivera's behalf, to even things out because he knows they're taking care of Katie. He never says Charlie Adlesen's name or anything about Charlie Adlesen to Donna Adlesen. The defendant then puts the piece of paper in her purse and walks away without ever looking at the piece of paper because she knew exactly what it was about.
Then law enforcement listens in to see what will hap- happen next. Will the defendant go straight to the police to report the blackmail, or will she do something else entirely? And as suspected, based on the previously observed communication pattern, the first person that this defendant calls is Charlie Adlesen. Despite the fact that the blackmailer, the blackmailer never mentioned Charlie Adlesen to her. On that first call, you would think the first thing that Donna Adlesen would say to Charlie Adlesen is, "Oh my god, so crazy. Some man just came up to me, handed me an article about Danny's murder, and he, she, he's demanding money from us." But she never says any of that. In fact, the defendant never says Dan Markell's name at all. Instead, she tells Charlie Adlesen that she needs to talk to him in person about some paperwork that was just delivered to her. She said that it involves the two of us, and that he should know what she's talking about. The defendant and Charlie Adlesen continue talking, and she says that he should bring cash to their meeting. And she says, "The TV is probably about five." The defendant tells Charlie Adlesen that the man who approached her mentioned an ex-girlfriend. The defendant never says which ex-girlfriend of Charlie Adlesen. She never says Magbanua's name to Charlie Adlesen in that phone call. She only says that the blackmailer mentioned an ex-girlfriend. Charlie Adlesen never asks his mom, "My ex-girlfriend? Which ex-girlfriend? He's had a lot." He never asks that because, as the evidence will show, he didn't need to. He knew "the TV is probably five" meant that she was being blackmailed about Danny's murder, where the TV was the alibi, and he knew that the ex-girlfriend in question was the only ex-girlfriend that he had solicited to, to find a hitman for him, Katherine Magbanua. And we know that because after this call with his mother, the defendant, Charlie Adlesen calls Katherine Magbanua. He does not call his most recent ex-girlfriend, or even the one before that. He calls Katherine Magbanua. And his call to Katherine Magbanua is the only call he makes to any ex-girlfriend after getting the information from his mother that the blackmailer mentioned an ex-girlfriend. And he hadn't dated her for about a year and a half at that point. And although they threatened to do it very often, neither Charlie Adlesen nor the defendant ever reported this attempted blackmail to the police.
You all will hear the calls between the conspirators, and as you listen to these, you'll notice that they're being very cautious about what they say. It's apparent that they're being very careful about the words they use because they are all immediately suspicious that law enforcement could be behind the bump. Law enforcement could be the person who came up to them on the street and gave her the paperwork. And law enforcement could also be listening to their conversations.
After Charlie Adlesen's first call to Katherine Magbanua, Charlie Adlesen then meets up in person with his mother, the defendant, and in person, she gives him the paperwork that this blackmailer gave to her, and makes it Charlie Adlesen's newest problem to solve. And naturally, what does Charlie Adlesen do? He goes to the next train car, Katherine Magbanua. Charlie Adlesen and Katherine Magbanua meet in person at a restaurant called Dolce Vita in Miami. And while they sit at their table in this busy, noisy restaurant, an undercover FBI agent is sitting at a table nearby with a hidden, with a camera hidden in a bag, recording the conversation. So, this is an image from that, um, from that video recording the conversation.
And in the recording, we hear Charlie Adlesen discussing whether the man who walked up to his mother could be an undercover police officer, or he could be someone trying to legitimately blackmail them. And if it's a blackmailer, is it somebody who just saw a way to make a quick buck, or is it another situation entirely, which would be much worse for the Adlesens? Is it actually someone with inside information about Donna Adlesen's role in the murder of Dan Markell? And that person could tell police what they know. Charlie Adlesen reassures Katie, Katherine Magbanua, that if it is the police, that is a good thing. Charlie Adlesen thinks that, hey, if it's the police, that means the police don't have enough evidence to charge anybody. You know, they're just fishing for information. And in fact, Charlie Adlesen tells her, "Hey, if they had any evidence, we would have already gone to the airport."
It's important to note that at the time of this conversation at Dolce Vita, no arrests had been made in this case, and the only thing that police had released to the public at that point was a photo of the light-colored Prius that fled the scene. Police knew at that point that it was Garcia and Rivera who were in the Prius, but the public didn't know that yet. So, that fact is interesting in light of some of the things that Charlie Adlesen started saying to Magbanua. He starts giving her several analogies involving rental cars being used to commit crimes. He reassures her that the police can't prove a person committed a crime just from someone's DNA being in a car that was used in a crime. In order to prove someone committed a crime, you have to be able to put the person at the scene of the crime at the time it was committed. So, he's trying to reassure her that even if police, even if they identify who rented that car that fled the scene, they still would not have enough evidence to hold anybody responsible for this murder. Charlie Adlesen also says that crimes are tough to prove unless someone actually witnessed the suspect commit the crime, or the suspect confesses to the crime, or a suspect is caught on a wire talking about the crime. So, he's trying to reassure her about the lack of evidence in this case, about no witnesses, and trying to let her know that, hey, as long as we all stay quiet and nobody confesses or gets caught talking on a wire, then we don't have anything to worry about.
And he begins educating Katherine Magbanua about how blackmail works. He tells her that, hey, if this is a guy who knows information, there's two ways of dealing with this guy. You know, we could call the police, but then the guy blackmailing us could be charged, and then that blackmailer is going to start talking, and the police are going to be asking questions about what happened. The other option is to pay the blackmailer, but let him know that this is just a one-time thing, and we'll try to scare him off by saying, "If you come around again, we'll go to the police." Charlie Adlesen gives Magbanua very precise instructions on how to deal with the blackmailer. He tells her to call the blackmailer and tell her that my friends, meaning the Adlesen family, have no idea what you're talking about. And I'm just going to give you this money as charity, but don't contact these people again, or they'll go to the police. And Charlie Adlesen said he would give Magbanua the $5,000 to pay off the blackmailer who approached his mother, except that he's concerned that this guy won't go away. He'll get that $5,000, and then he'll just keep coming back and coming back for more money. We'll see him as an easy target. And so Charlie Adlesen then offers that the best solution might be to have the blackmailer killed, and that he's willing to pay whatever it takes. He says, "So help me God, if they f with my family, it's going to be Nazi [ __ ] because this will be done. I mean, Katie, I don't care what I spend."
And after hearing that Charlie Adlesen wants someone killed and is willing to pay whatever it takes to get it done, Magbanua then asks Charlie Adlesen to help her out. And Charlie Adlesen reassures her she'll be taken care of, and reminds her she's on salary at the dental, at the parents' dental practice. After Charlie Adlesen finishes this meeting where he's getting Magbanua to then solve the problem of the blackmailer, he gives her a, they say goodbye. He gives her a big hug that's captured on camera, um, outside by the FBI. And then Charlie Adlesen immediately calls the defendant to let her know everything's fine, and he has handled the situation. He does this using some pretty obvious code words, uh, that you'll often hear these conspirators use to mask the meaning of what they're talking about in case law enforcement's listening.
Magbanua then also using code words calls Garcia, and she tasks him with calling the number on their paperwork and finding the identity of the blackmailer. And in the series of recorded calls that y'all are going to hear later this week, you'll hear these conspirators talking and using words like TV, relationship advice, false leads, listings, patients, properties, clients, rap songs, CDs, pigs. All these terms that are obviously normal words, but they're used in context that, if you're listening to the conversation, don't make sense.
So, after that undercover operation was over in 2016, Rivera, Lewis Rivera, and Sigfredo Garcia are arrested, and they're charged with the same charges before y'all in this trial. Lewis Rivera, who was the second, um, person in that Prius, cut a deal with the state and told law enforcement the truth about the murder of Dan Markell and the people responsible for it. He told police that he was hired by his longtime friend Garcia to help kill Dan Markell. Rivera described how Garcia told him that this was a job that Magbanua was able to get for them, and it was in Tallahassee, and it paid $100,000, and that Rivera was going to get a third of the money. Rivera said that during the trip to Tallahassee, Garcia had a piece of paper with a picture of the man that they were hired to kill, and some handwritten notes. And during that trip, Rivera said that the first call that either of them made after the homicide was from Garcia to Magbanua, where Garcia told her that the job was done, and Magbanua assured them they would get their money the next day, which they did. That Magbanua brought the money the next morning to Rivera's home, and law enforcement checked cell phone records, which corroborated Rivera's information.
Law enforcement, uh, told police that the money that he received from Magbanua the next day was packaged in a very unusual way. The money was basically in stacks of a thousand. Each stack was made up of of $10 bills that were then stapled together. And after the, each stack was stapled together of a thousand, and after learning this from Rivera, Magbanua was arrested, and that was in October of 2016.
During this trial, you'll hear that the Adlesen family had access to a lot of cash because their family gave cash discounts at their dental practice. Like, if you paid in cash, you would have to pay less than if you paid on a card or check. And they kept the cash that they received in stacks and they stored it in a safe. Law enforcement also learned from Charlie Adlesen's friends that Charlie Adlesen had a very unusual practice of keeping his money in these thousand-dollar stacks that were stapled together, just like the money Rivera received.
And over the last few years since the 2016 arrests of Garcia and Rivera in May, and then of, uh, Magbanua in October 2016, law enforcement has not stopped working on this case. Three years after Garcia's arrest in 2019, he was convicted at his trial. Law enforcement continued, though, to gather evidence. They continued to interview people who may possibly have information and to clarify these all of these recordings the FBI did, um, that couldn't be clearly heard. And thanks to their tireless efforts, in March of 2022, Charlie Adlesen was indicted. Two months later, in May of 2022, Katherine Magbanua's case went to trial, and she was convicted.
During Magbanua's trial, Katherine Magbanua took the stand, and she insisted, this is back in May of '22. She insisted she had no knowledge of the murder. The Adlesens must have just gone around her to hire the hitman directly. That's what she testified to. Her defense team insisted that the state's theory was correct about every co-conspirator except for her, for Katherine Magbanua. That Katherine Magbanua was just this victim of bloodthirsty and desperate prosecutors and investigators, and just a victim of this set of circumstances that appeared to prove one thing, but was actually the truth was something else entirely. However, after being convicted at trial and sentenced, Magbanua finally decided to testify about the plot to kill Dan Markell and admitted that she was the connection between the Adlesen family and the killers hired to kill Dan Markell.
Magbanua testified in Charlie Adlesen's trial in October of 2023 and said that Charlie Adlesen wanted to hire someone to kill his sister's ex because his mom was stressed out over all of the problems his sister was having with her ex-husband. Magbanua said Charlie painted a picture that Wendy's ex was this terrible man causing his mom so much stress that she couldn't sleep or eat. Magbanua agreed to help him and ended up recruiting her children's father, Garcia, and also Rivera, to kill Dan Markell. She says that the night of the murder, she went to Charlie Adlesen's house to pick up the payment for the murder. And when she arrived, Charlie Adlesen said that his parents had just been at the house, and that Charlie Adlesen had the money for her there. Law enforcement was able to corroborate this claim with phone evidence showing that Donna Adlesen went to Charlie Adlesen's house the night of the murder. Magbanua then spent the night with Charlie Adlesen that night, and the next morning, on July 19th, he put the money that she was to divide, um, divide up into the trunk of her car. Magbanua says several things about the money stood out to her. She said it was stapled together in stacks of $100 bills, and that it was damp, like damp, like wet. She then delivered the money to Garcia and Rivera afterwards. When Katherine Magbanua said that when Charlie Adlesen, when she asked Charlie Adlesen about the money being damp, he said that his mother had actually, the defendant, had actually washed the money, and that she and Charlie Adlesen kind of laughed about the fact that the defendant had literally washed the money so it couldn't be traced.
In Charlie Adlesen's trial, Charlie Adlesen took the stand, and he testified that Magbanua, Garcia, and Rivera were all in on this crime together, but that the Adlesens had nothing to do with it. They were the innocent ones. He crafted an elaborate story in which Garcia and Rivera came to Tallahassee on their own, killed Dan Markell without his knowledge or his family's knowledge, and then colluded. These killers colluded with Magbanua to play he and his mother for fools and extort money out of them. And for many reasons, which will be revealed to y'all in this trial, Charlie's interpretation of the facts was not reasonable to believe, and he was convicted. Charlie Adlesen was convicted in November of 2023.
And within hours of his guilty verdict, this defendant began to plan to flee the United States to a country that she could not be extradited from in order to be, to avoid being arrested for Dan Markell's murder. The defendant, on her phone, researched countries that did not have extradition treaties with the United States, and she applied for an emergency visa to Vietnam. She was overheard planning to put her money in trusts for her grandchildren, and she and her husband purchased one-way tickets with a fast-track emergency visa to Vietnam. And Vietnam does not have an extradition treaty with the US, as she would have learned from her searches. And just days later, she was stopped by law enforcement on the jetway in Miami International Airport, where she was boarding her one-way flight to Vietnam. And she was then charged for her participation in the murder of Dan Markell.
After the defendant was charged, law enforcement received information from women who said that the defendant, Donna Adlesen, was offering them bribes in exchange for false testimony in this trial. They said Donna Adlesen promised them money, housing, veneers, prescription drugs if they were willing to testify that Katherine Magbanua told them a completely different story about the crime than the one that she would be testifying to. One informant was even able to show law enforcement a script, a question and answer session for a direct examination and trial that Donna Adlesen herself wrote, and that Donna Adlesen wanted this informant to memorize and come into court and perjure herself by reciting it to you here in trial.
Please listen to all of the evidence that y'all are going to see and hear in this trial. I know it's been a, it's been a long week already, and we have, um, a lot of evidence for you in this case. But when you do, you will see that this defendant conspired with her son, Charlie Adlesen, who solicited his girlfriend, Katherine Magbanua, to get this murder done. And then this defendant paid her with, with cash, with checks for the job once it was completed. The defendant acted in furtherance of this murder plot that went beyond just thinking about it or just talking about it. And these acts make her guilty as a principal to first-degree murder, just as if she was the one pulling the trigger in the garage herself.
And while the defendant's choices helped solve a problem within her family, they came at a very high price. She took the life of a loving father of two little boys and caused a lifetime of grief for Dan Markell's loved ones. And at the conclusion of the evidence in this case, you will be convinced beyond any reasonable doubt that this defendant is guilty. And at that point, we'll ask you for the only verdict that does justice in this case, which is a verdict that this defendant is guilty as charged. Thank you. Briefly approach.