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Donna Adelson, the 75-year-old grandmother accused of helping orchestrate the murder-for-hire of Dan Markel, was convicted on Sept. 4, more than 11 years after the law professor was gunned down by hitmen in the garage of his Betton Hills home.
A jury of 12 people returned guilty verdicts against Donna Adelson after deliberating on the 12th day of the trial. She was charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy and solicitation. With the death penalty off the table, she faces a sentence of life in prison.
She is the second person in her well-to-do South Florida family to be found guilty in Markel’s murder, following the conviction of her younger son, Charlie Adelson, in 2023. She’s the fifth person overall to be convicted, including the two hired killers and a go-between.
The verdicts came after Assistant State Attorney Georgia Cappleman and Jackie Fulford, one of Adelson’s lawyers, delivered closing arguments to conclude eight days of testimony and evidence that included texts, emails and wiretapped phone calls between Donna Adelson, Charlie Adelson and others involved in the conspiracy.
Cappleman acknowledged the case was largely circumstantial, again giving the example of a child covered in powdered sugar as “pretty good evidence” that they ate a donut. She said Donna Adelson was covered in it but that there was direct evidence as well.
She said that when Adelson’s estranged older son, Rob Adelson, told her that he’d spoken to the police, the defendant said, “Well, you don’t know anything.” After the FBI “bump” operation in which an undercover agent pretended to shake down Donna Adelson for $5,000, she told her son in a recorded phone call soon after that “it involves the two of us.”
Cappleman also said Donna Adelson signed 44 checks that were given to Katherine Magbanua, the convicted conduit between Charlie Adelson and the killers, from the Adelson Institute, the Adelson family’s dental practice in Tamarac.
She noted that investigators found written in Adelson’s daily planner the make, model and tag numbers for Markel’s car, which she suggested was given to the hired killers to hunt down Markel. She also said Adelson dropped off the money used to pay the gunmen at her son Charlie Adelson’s house in Fort Lauderdale on July 18, 2014, the day Markel was killed.
“She was paying for a murder,” Cappleman said. “She knew it was going to be a murder. She’s the one who wanted it done.”
After repeatedly pushing for more time to make a decision, Adelson, 75, opted not to take the witness stand and testify in her own defense, a move that ran contrary to her son’s decision to testify in 2023.
Check back with Tallahassee.com for more on this breaking story.
Contact Jeff Burlew at jburlew@tallahassee.com or 850-599-2180.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Donna Adelson guilty: Jury renders verdict in Dan Markel murder
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