Charlie Adelson’s defense lawyer Daniel Rashbaum (left), Chief Assistant State Attorney Georgia Cappleman (center), and Charlie Adelson (right) pictured during closing arguments on Nov. 6, 2023 (Law&Crime Network)
Prosecutors and the defense appeared in court for closing arguments on Monday in the murder-for-hire case against Charlie Adelson in the 2014 shooting death of his 41-year-old former brother-in-law Dan Markel, a Florida State University law professor who was in a heated child custody battle at the time he was killed.
Late last week, the defense put forth its theory that Charlie Adelson, a 47-year-old Florida dentist, was actually the victim of extortion and that he “never” looked into hiring a hitman to kill Markel, despite repeatedly telling a “complete joke” about buying a TV as a divorce present for Wendi Adelson because it was cheaper than getting his sister a hitman.
On the other hand, prosecutors emphasized that Adelson’s elaborate story about being an extortion victim didn’t ring true, as it didn’t make sense that Dan Markel had to die in order for Miami-based Latin Kings gang members Sigfredo Garcia and Luis Rivera, the convicted hitmen, to shake down the defendant for a third of a million dollars with the help of Adelson’s then-girlfriend Katherine Magbanua.
Chief Assistant State Attorney Georgia Cappleman of the 2nd Judicial Circuit kicked off her closing arguments by drilling down on the same theme Monday morning.
“When you zoom out from the defense’s theory, it’s really unreasonable, right?” Cappleman asked the jury. “These two dudes, with no connection at all to Dan Markel, and without two nickels to rub together, rented a car and paid for gas to come to Tallahassee and stay at a hotel — twice — in order to kill someone the defendant hated, to harm him [the defendant].”
“And for what?” the prosecutor asked with emphasis. “To maybe get money? Maybe he just turns them in for murder. Why not just kill and rob him if what you’re after is money and there’s no hired hit? Why not just kill and rob him if your motive is we hate him?”
Even odder than this, Cappleman said, was that the “bad guys don’t even have any contact” with Adelson, “according to his own story.”
“They didn’t threaten him. They did not beat him into submission. Instead, they sent his own girlfriend to extort him on their behalf. And without any actual contact from the bad guys, the defendant just opened up his safe and handed over his beloved money that he had saved his entire life since he was a child. He just handed it over,” Cappleman said, ridiculing the defense explanation as implausible.
The prosecutor mocked Charlie Adelson’s testimony about a “supposed extortion layaway plan” with Latin Kings and noted that he continued to send “kissy faces and love texts to Katherine Magbanua,” the ex who went on to be convicted of Markel’s murder and who testified in court last week that she perjured herself at both of her trials when she said she had nothing to do with the killing. Magbanua testified that she told defendant Adelson she knew that Sigfredo Garcia, the father of her children and the convicted triggerman, could harm Dan Markel.
Adelson testified under cross-examination last Friday that he didn’t realize or didn’t want to believe at the time that Magbanua was trying to extort him for hundreds of thousands of dollars. He repeatedly said that what he knows in 2023 and what he knew in 2014 about the alleged extortion scheme are entirely different.
“He’s sending these messages to a woman who got him into this mess, and he says she didn’t suspect she was involved. What?” an incredulous Cappleman said Monday.
The prosecution has argued that Charlie Adelson had the means and motive to orchestrate Dan Markel’s murder to solve his “tight-knit” family’s “big problem,” namely a child custody battle that threatened to cut off unsupervised visitation to Donna Adelson, Charlie’s mother and the grandmother of Markel’s two sons with her daughter Wendi Adelson. After the divorce from Wendi, Dan Markel was embroiled in litigation to keep his sons with him in Tallahassee and to prevent them from moving to Miami to be near the Adelsons.
Charlie Adelson, for his part, has testified that Katherine Magbanua came over to his house after the murder and told him “my friend killed Dan.” Magbanua said that Adelson had to pay a third of a million dollars to the Latin Kings gang members within 48 hours, and warned him not to call the cops or else the hitmen “will kill you” too, according to the defendant.
“I’m not extorting you, I’m trying to help you,” Magbanaua said, according to Adelson. She said got caught in the middle of it just like he did and that she regretted running her mouth to Garcia about Adelson’s parents’ willingness to make Dan Markel a “million-dollar offer” to move from Tallahassee to Miami, according the testimony.
After Adelson learned all of this, he let Magbanua sleep over at his place that night.
Charlie Adelson (left), Dan Markel (right) (Law&Crime Network)
Adelson claimed he allowed Magbanua to stay over despite what he’d been told because he was “in a state of shock” and didn’t want to believe his then-girlfriend was involved.
Before Magbanua left the next morning with $138,000 in cash from Adelson’s safe, the defendant said, she begged him not to tell anyone.
“Can we just pretend like this never even happened?” Magbanua asked, according to Charlie Adelson.
Adelson said he thought about going to the police but never did under the belief that he would be killed.
Under questioning by the prosecution, Adelson acknowledged that his testimony was not necessarily the simplest explanation of what took place, but he said “it was the truth.”
“Why did whoever did it need to kill someone to extort you?” Cappleman asked last Friday.
“You gotta ask them,” Adelson deflected.
“Why couldn’t they just come put a gun to your head and say give me all of the money in your safe?” Cappleman followed up and added: “I still don’t get how killing Dan Markel advances the ball for them to extort money out of you, do you?”
“Yeah, I have a theory. They could extort me for life and I don’t think they knew how much money I had in the safe. She knew I had a lot of money in the safe, but this way I can get extorted for life and that’s what happened,” Charlie answered. “And I start paying $3,000 dollars a month,” referring to the extortion layaway plan.
“But you could have gotten extorted for life just by the threat of death-by-Latin King, couldn’t you doctor?” Cappleman asked again, previewing the main focus of the closing arguments she made after the weekend.
Defense lawyer Daniel Rashbaum has insisted that his client is “innocent” and that the state’s case is supported by guesswork and unreliable claims made by the actual killers. In the end, the jury will have to decide whether to believe the convoluted explanation of the dentist or the statements made by convicted triggerman Sigfredo Garcia, Luis Garcia, and Katherine Magbanua (who admitted to lying on the stand) about what took place up to, on, and after July 18, 2014.
After 11:45 a.m. on Friday, Rashbaum told jurors that even though he didn’t have to prove his client’s innocence he “believed” that he had done so in the face of “a mountain of reasonable doubt” presented by the state’s evidence.
“Just one of those puzzle pieces is of enough for reasonable doubt, but here we have a mountain of them,” the defense lawyer said.
“Charlie Adelson didn’t have a motive to upend his life. Charlie Adelson had a good life. His business was booming. He was supportive of his sister, but he didn’t wake up in the morning thinking about Dan Markel,” Rashbaum emphasized. “Are there any examples of any violence [in the emails produced by the state involving Charlie’s family members]? None.”
“Crazy ideas? Yes. An upset mother? Yes. Pushing each other’s buttons? Yes,” Rashbaum said. But all of that is a “far cry from murder.”
Adelson’s lawyer asked jurors to use their “common sense” to see that killing Dan Markel and potentially putting their beloved children/nephews/grandchildren in danger of crossfire didn’t make sense in its own right.
As for the “off-color” hitman joke Adelson admittedly told repeatedly?
“You don’t have to like Charlie Adelson. There are plenty of reasons not to like him. That doesn’t make him a murderer,” Rashbaum said, noting that Adelson told the joke to people he hardly knew, as well as to Katherine Magbanua.
“Ask yourselves: Does it make any sense for a guy about to do a hit — about to murder someone — to go around town and advertise it? It doesn’t fit,” the defense lawyer said. “Reasonable doubt.”
Daniel Rashbaum delivers closing arguments on behalf of Charlie Adelson on Nov. 6, 2023. (Law&Crime Network)
“Ask yourselves: Does it make more sense for Katherine Magbanua, a professional liar and con artist, to hear the joke, to hear the million-dollar offer and start to get ideas?” Rashbaum continued, asserting that “criminals do not advertise what they are about to do.”
Rashbaum also shot back at Cappleman’s mockery of Adelson’s testimony, when she insinuated this was “a murder by layaway,” as the defense put it.
“We agree with her. It doesn’t make any sense,” the defense lawyer said. “Murders for hire are not done by layaway. But you know what is done by layaway? Extortions.”
The defense lawyer repeatedly told jurors that the state had not met its burden and that many of the allegations were just as convoluted, if not more, as prosecutors claimed Adelson’s testimony was. Much of the evidence presented only tended to show that his client never acted like someone guilty of murder, the lawyer said. Yes, Adelson talked a lot — too much, even — on wires, texts, or otherwise, but being unlikeable and assuming the worst based on that doesn’t add up to proof beyond a reasonable doubt, Rashbaum said.
“He didn’t do it, he didn’t conspire to do it, he didn’t solicit,” the lawyer said, reminding jurors they are the ones who get the last word in all of this and that they can use their “common sense.”
If you follow the law, the defense lawyer said, there is “only one just verdict in this case”: Not guilty on all counts.
“End this nightmare. Send him home,” Rashbaum concluded.
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