The matriarch of a wealthy South Florida family was found guilty Thursday of manslaughter in the death of her former foreigner, a prominent law professor who was embroiled in a bitter legal battle over custody of her children with her ex-wife when he was shot dead in 2014.
The jury issued guilty verdicts in the week-long trial of Donna Adelson on charges of premeditated murder and conspiracy, among others, for the death of Florida State University law professor Daniel Markel in Tallahassee, where he taught. The case drew attention in Florida for more than a decade, amid the sordid details of a complicated divorce, tensions with wealthy in-laws, and custody disputes that led to the murder.
When the judge announced that the jury had convicted Adelson of premeditated murder, the defendant exclaimed, “Oh.” And he began to tremble and cry.
Then he retired to the jury in the courtroom, and Judge Stephen Everett of the Second Judicial Circuit of Florida granted Adelson a two-minute break for it to recompose.
“Although I am sure that this is not the result you wanted, there will be no more outbursts in front of the jury,” he said.
In a statement after the verdict, Ruth Markel, mother of Daniel Markel, spoke of her deep sadness and pain after her son’s death.
We’ve lost a treasure. “My son Dan’s life was tragically truncated at the age of 41,” he said. For 11 years, we have been forced to live a life full of unimaginable pain and anguish.
Daniel Markel and Wendi Adelson were divorced and shared custody of their two children, but she wanted to move them nearly 600 miles from Tallahassee to South Florida to be closer to the rest of their family. However, a judge ruled that Wendi Adelson could not transfer the children, and Markel refused to move.
Prosecutors argued in the trial that Donna Adelson helped orchestrate Markel’s murder after he got in the way of his daughter and her two young grandchildren to move south.
The judge said the sentence would be handed down at a later date, but he set the case for 14 October.
Adelson was the fifth person to be judged for what prosecutors described as a plot to kill Markel. Among those already serving life sentences in this case is Donna Adelson’s son, Charles Adelson.
Wendi Adelson denied involvement in the manslaughter and has not been charged.
During the trial, prosecutors described Donna Adelson as the calculating and controlling matriarch of a comfortable South Florida family with the media and the reason for orchestrating the murder of the former med, whom he hated.
Defense attorneys insisted that the state did not have enough evidence to link the elderly grandmother to the plot to commit the crime, and instead emphasized the role played by other people and raised suspicions about two of Adelson’s adult children.
Charles Adelson is serving a life sentence, as does his ex-girlfriend Katherine Magbanua. Prosecutors said Magbanua acted as an intermediary between the two men hired to carry out the murder: Sigfredo GarcÃa, sentenced to life in prison, and Luis Rivera, who is serving a 19-year sentence after cooperating with the state.
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