POPULARITY
10 episodes with ruth markel
2 episodes with ruth markel
2 episodes with ruth markel
2 episodes with ruth markel
2 episodes with ruth markel
2 episodes with ruth markel
2 episodes with ruth markel
#STSNation!Welcome to Surviving the Survivor, the podcast that promises to bring you the very #BestGuests in all of #TrueCrime. In this powerful episode, we are joined by Ruth Markel, mother of Dan Markel, as she opens up about the profound impact of her son's life and tragic death. We honor the Markel family—Dan, Ruth, Phil, and Shelly—highlighting their resilience and determination to seek justice. Ruth reflects on Dan's legacy and shares what lies ahead for her family in their ongoing pursuit of accountability. Join us to hear her story, the family's journey, and how they keep Dan's memory alive.Support the show:Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/SurvivingTheSurvivorYouTube: Surviving The Survivor: #BestGuests in True Crime - YouTubeJoel's Book: Https://www.amazon.com/shop/surviving...Website: https://survivingthesurvivor.comAll Things STS: https://linktr.ee/stspodcast#DanMarkel #RuthMarkel #PhilMarkel #ShellyMarkel #DonnaAdelson #CharlieAdelson #WendiAdelson #HarveyAdelson #JusticeForDanMarkel #TrueCrime #SurvivingTheSurvivor #TrueCrimePodcast #MarkelFamily #MurderForHire #FloridaStateUniversity #FSULaw #CrimeUpdate #LegalDrama #FamilyJustice #truecrimecommunity #truestory #criminaljustice #crimestory #criminal #crime_news #murdermystery #murdermystery2 #trial
2 UPCOMING EVENTS:
IT'S HERE: STS HARDCOVER BOOK SIGNED COPIES FROM JOEL AND KARM: https://premierecollectibles.com/waldmanSTS Book on Audible: Https://www.audible.com/pd/Surviving-...STS Book on Amazon: Https://www.amazon.com/shop/surviving...STS Merch Store: https://www.bonfire.com/store/sts-store/STS Patreon: Https://patreon.com/SurvivingTheSurvivorSTS Website: https://survivingthesurvivor.com/#STSNation, Welcome to another episode of Surviving The Survivor, the podcast that brings you the #BestGuests in all of True Crime… After 9+ years, Donna Adelson finally appeared in a Tallahassee courtroom to hear the charges levied against her, including murder, in the conspiracy to kill her ex son-in-law FSU Law Professor Dan Markel. The following day her son Charlie Adelson was sentenced to life in prison without parole. This week, Donna was back inside a Tallahassee courtroom as she hopes to go to trial soon. We break it all down. #BestGuests: Dan Markel's mother Ruth, author of The Unveiling. Stephen Webster & Louis Baptiste are the lawyers behind Webster & Baptiste Attorneys at Law in Tallahassee. Stephen was Dan Markel's post divorce attorney. Louis was Dan Markel's law student at FSU. #JusticeForDanMarkel #TrueCrime #FSU #TrueCrimeCommunity #Podcast #Podcasting #Florida #CharlieAdelson#WendiAdelson #TrueCrime #DonnaAdelson #DanielRashBaum
IT'S HERE: STS HARDCOVER BOOK SIGNED COPIES FROM JOEL AND KARM: https://premierecollectibles.com/waldmanPre-Order Joel's Book: Https://amzn.to/48GwbLxConnect with STS, join our Patreon: Https://patreon.com/SurvivingTheSurvivorSTS Website: https://survivingthesurvivor.com/STS Merch Store: https://www.bonfire.com/store/sts-store/#STSNation, Surviving The Survivor is the Podcast that brings you the #BestGuests in all of #TrueCrime. In this STS episode, the STS COE (Chief of Everything) talks to Ruth Markel, Dan Markel's mother, about loss, mourning her son, justice and making a lasting change for other families in similar situations. #BestGuest Ruth Markel is the mother of Dan Markel: a loved, intelligent and well known law professor at FSU who was murdered in Tallahassee in 2014. Dan was also a father to two young boys. Ruth is also an author of nine books including, The Unveiling A Mother's Reflection on Murder, Grief, and Trial Life. Ruth's book, The Unveiling, is available here: Https://a.co/d/44AHOJW#JusticeforDanMarkel #prisonlife #behinbars #truecrime #truecrimecommunity #justice #criminaljustice #crime_news #murdermystery #danmarkel #charlieadelson #donnaadelson #news
Also more on the Kosher-style claims of Wendi Adelson.Show Notes: My interview with Ruth Markel - https://youtu.be/7hfYMIHCJZw?si=0OyV7rwfAyLWklDkThe Society Page "Dan Markel Murder: Thank You Jeff!" - https://youtu.be/7u2qr8MYKO0?si=wxj95NNH62gxdnfhMurder by Maestro ''Charlie & Donna's Airport Adventures" - https://youtube.com/shorts/1q5ophgIQto?si=keCYGyZlXs6J6_iFThank you, Patrons! Stephanie Roach, Stark Stuff, Robyn Ray, K, Kayce Taylor, Yvette Jockin, Karen Cote, Tammie Sheppherd, JenTile, LadyLex, Shari Davis, AussieDood, Katrina Hetherington, Susan Swan, Dean, GiGi 5, Susan, Manjit Ender, Mentour Mentor's Mentee, Kee Sardi, Dana Natale, Marie Patrignani, Bewildered Beauty, MotherofHens, Pepper, Joan, Pat Dell, Blythe, Laura, Plai Braik, Lorraine R, Sandra Guse Van Zealand, Isa, Krissy G, Michelle B, TB , Maria, Erin Faesen, Regan Johnson, AJ Foster, Hugh Ashman, Melissa V, Heyy Manny, Victoria Gray Bross, Toni Woodland, Danbrit, Evan Scott, Holly from Dallas, Kenny Haines, Maureen P and Toni Natalie.Get access to exclusive content & support the podcast by becoming a Patron today! https://patreon.com/robertaglasstruecrimereport Or throw a tip in the tip jar!https://buymeacoffee.com/robertaglassOr support Roberta by sending a donation via Venmo.https://venmo.com/robertaglass
In this riveting episode of "Closing Arguments with Vinnie Politan," we delve into the shocking and complex case against Donna Adelson, a mother accused of conspiring with her son, Charlie Adelson, in an alleged plot to arrange the murder of her former son-in-law, Dan Markel. The beloved Florida State University law professor had found himself entangled in a bitter custody battle with his ex-wife, Wendi Adelson, who is Donna's daughter and Charlie's sister. Join Vinnie Politan as he meticulously examines the details of this high-profile case, exploring the tumultuous dynamics within the Adelson family and the motives that may have led to the deadly conspiracy.
#BestGuests #STSNationWelcome to another episode of Surviving The Survivor, the podcast that brings you the #BestGuests in all of true crime. And...this episode is no different. In this special taping, STS takes you BTS of a live event in South Florida. JAFCO hosted Perspectives of Trial Life and invited STS Host Joel Waldman along with Ruth Markel, Dennis Murphy and Dave Aronberg to discuss the Dan Markel story and the long journey for trial, the families involved and the community rallying behind them. JAFCO is a non-profit that helps to provide housing and services to children who are abused, neglected or dealing with trauma. Please consider making a donation to JAFCO. Even $5 or $10 can make a lasting impact in helping a child during the most difficult time of their life. Donate here: Https://www.jafco.org/Markel Thank you to all of the #STSNation members who joined us in person. We had a great time meeting you all! Please subscribe, hit the like button and connect with us below: STS Membership: Https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-yr... Support STS ❤️ Https://www.patreon.com/survivingthes... Connect w STS
** For Ad-Free Episodes, Join Our Patreon! ** https://www.patreon.com/thesurvivorsquad This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at https://www.betterhelp.com/SURVIVOR, and get on your way to being your best self. Part 2 of a two-part interview with Ruth Markel. Audience note: Charlie Adelson was convicted in the murder-for-hire plot of his brother-in-law, Dan Markel, on Monday, November 6, 2023. Adelson had solicited two men, Sigfredo Garcia and Luis Rivera, connected to the Latin Kings gang, to murder Markel. He was introduced to the men by his former girlfriend, Katherine “Katie” Magbanua, who is also incarcerated for her role in the murder-for-hire plot. The same charges have now been filed against Charlie and Wendi's mother, Donna Adelson, as she was caught trying to flee the country to Vietnam on a one-way ticket on Monday, November 13, 2023. On Tuesday, November 14th, the grand jury returned an indictment for first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, and solicitation to commit first-degree murder. These are the same charges for which her son, Charlie Adelson, was convicted last week. About Ruth Markel: Ruth Markel's tenacious fight for justice on behalf of the murder of her son, Dan Markel, a noted law professor who was murdered in Tallahassee, Florida, in 2014, and the struggle to be legally reunited with her grandchildren. She is the author of the book The Unveiling: A Mother's Reflection on Murder, Grief, and Trial Life Website: www.ruthmarkel.com Link to Ruth's book: https://amzn.to/3szextX ***Join our Survivor Squad True Crime Podcasting Course!*** https://coaching.terranewellsurvival.com/ethical-true-crime-podcasting/ Survivor Squad Podcast links: https://linktr.ee/thesurvivorsqaud Join our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thesurvivorsquad • Terra's links: https://linktr.ee/terranewell • Collier's links: https://collierlandry.com/links • Collier's Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-collier-landry-show/id1551076031 • Book a 1-on-1 with Terra for trauma/ toxic relationship coaching: https://calendly.com/terranewell91/15-minute-coaching-consult?month=2023-06 • Join Terra's Complementary Trauma Support Group: Every 1st and 3rd Monday 5:00 PM PT mailto: Terranewellcoaching@gmail.com It's important to consider seeking support from a licensed mental health professional or support group. Talking to a trusted friend/family member can also be beneficial in overcoming trauma and its aftermath. •Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/ •Trauma-Recovery.org: https://trauma-recovery.org/ •American Psychological Association: https://www.apa.org/ •National Institute of Mental Health: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/index.shtml •National SA Hotline 1-800-656-4673 https://www.rainn.org/ •National Domestic Violence Hotline 800-799-7233 https://www.thehotline.org/
This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at https://www.betterhelp.com/SURVIVOR, and get on your way to being your best self. ** For Ad-Free Episodes, Join Our Patreon! ** https://www.patreon.com/thesurvivorsquad This is Part 1 of a two-part interview with Ruth Markel. Audience note: Charlie Adelson was convicted in the murder-for-hire plot of his brother-in-law, Dan Markel, on Monday, November 6, 2023. Adelson had solicited two men, Sigfredo Garcia and Luis Rivera, connected to the Latin Kings gang, to murder Markel. He was introduced to the men by his former girlfriend, Katherine “Katie” Magbanua, who is also incarcerated for her role in the murder-for-hire plot. The same charges have now been filed against Charlie and Wendi's mother, Donna Adelson, as she was caught trying to flee the country to Vietnam on a one-way ticket on Monday November 13, 2023. On Tuesday November 14th, the grand jury returned an indictment for first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, and solicitation to commit first-degree murder. These are the same charges for which her son, Charlie Adelson, was convicted last week. About Ruth Markel: Ruth Markel's tenacious fight for justice on behalf of the murder of her son, Dan Markel, a noted law professor who was murdered in Tallahassee, Florida in 2014, and the struggle to be legally reunited with her grandchildren. She is the author of the book The Unveiling: A Mother's Reflection on Murder, Grief, and Trial Life Website: www.ruthmarkel.com Link to Ruth's book: https://amzn.to/3szextX ***Join our Survivor Squad True Crime Podcasting Course!*** https://coaching.terranewellsurvival.com/ethical-true-crime-podcasting/ Survivor Squad Podcast links: https://linktr.ee/thesurvivorsqaud Join our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thesurvivorsquad • Terra's links: https://linktr.ee/terranewell • Collier's links: https://collierlandry.com/links • Collier's Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-collier-landry-show/id1551076031 • Book a 1-on-1 with Terra for trauma/ toxic relationship coaching: https://calendly.com/terranewell91/15-minute-coaching-consult?month=2023-06 • Join Terra's Complementary Trauma Support Group: Every 1st and 3rd Monday 5:00 PM PT mailto: Terranewellcoaching@gmail.com It's important to consider seeking support from a licensed mental health professional or support group. Talking to a trusted friend/family member can also be beneficial in overcoming trauma and its aftermath. •Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/ •Trauma-Recovery.org: https://trauma-recovery.org/ •American Psychological Association: https://www.apa.org/ •National Institute of Mental Health: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/index.shtml •National SA Hotline 1-800-656-4673 https://www.rainn.org/ •National Domestic Violence Hotline 800-799-7233 https://www.thehotline.org/
The Fallout of Charlie Adelson's Conviction Former child murder witness examines the fallout of Charlie Adelson's conviction in the murder-for-hire plot of his brother-in-law Dan Markel. Adelson solicited two men, Sigfredo Garcia and Luis Rivera, connected to the Latin Kings gang, to murder Markel. He was introduced to the men by his former girlfriend, Katherine “Katie” Magbanua, who is also incarcerated. This episode also features an EXCLUSIVE interview with Dan Markel's mother, Ruth Markel. YouTube version of this episode: https://youtu.be/wSlEYILIKpU ➡️ Upgrade your life with NextEvo CBD - the experts in CBD! Go to https://NextEvo.com/MPT and use code "MPT" to get 25% off your order! ➡️ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/collierlandry ➡️ Official Merch Store: https://www.collierlandry.com/store ➡️ Buy me a coffee? https://www.buymeacoffee.com/collierlandry ➡️ Amazon Affiliate Link: https://www.collierlandry.com/amazon ▶ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/collierlandry/ ▶ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@collierlandry ▶ Twitter: https://twitter.com/collierlandry ▶ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/collierlandry ▶ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/collierlandry/ ▶ APPLE Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-collier-landry-show/id1551076031 ▶ SPOTIFY Podcasts: https://open.spotify.com/show/465s4vsFcogvKIynNRcvGf?si=00da2b8e06864257 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
How does a mother survive the murder of her son? Join Dr's Gloria and Heidi Horsley and their guest Ruth Markel, noted author, public speaker, and president of RNM consulting. […] The post Ruth Markel: Healing Through Advocacy appeared first on Open to Hope.
Ep 127: A mother's worst nightmare and her grief leads to her ongoing quest for justice and her push for new legislation This is the Ruth Markel story with a tribute to her son, Dan Markel Link to Ruth's book, The Unveiling Sources for Today's Episode: The Unveiling by Ruth Markel An interview with Ruth Markel 20/20 episode “Over My Dead Body” Fox News Florida Politics Wctv.com Original Jurisdiction Sponsors: (thanks for using our promo codes, it really does help the show!) Babbel - Language for life Get up to 55% off your subscription when you go to BABBEL.com/WOMEN. EveryPlate - America's Best Value Meal Kit! Get started with EveryPlate for just $1.49 per meal by going to EveryPlate.com/podcast and entering code womenandcrime149. Thats up to a $110 value! Credits: Written and Hosted by Amy Shlosberg and Meghan Sacks Produced & Edited by James Varga Script Editor: Abagail Belcastro Music by Dessert Media Help is Available: If you or someone you know is a victim of domestic or other violence, there are many organizations that can offer support or help you in your specific situation. For direct links to organizations please visit https://womenandcrimepodcast.com/resources/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ep 126 (Part 1): A mother's worst nightmare and her grief leads to her ongoing quest for justice and her push for new legislation This is the Ruth Markel story with a tribute to her son, Dan Markel Sources for Today's Episode: The Unveiling by Ruth Markel An interview with Ruth Markel 20/20 episode “Over My Dead Body” Fox News Florida Politics Wctv.com Original Jurisdiction Sponsors: (thanks for using our promo codes, it really does help the show!) Daily Harvest Stop settling with your next meal and try Daily Harvest. Go to DAILYHARVEST.com/women to get up to $65 dollars off your first box. Credits: Written and Hosted by Amy Shlosberg and Meghan Sacks Produced & Edited by James Varga Script Editor: Abagail Belcastro Music by Dessert Media Help is Available: If you or someone you know is a victim of domestic or other violence, there are many organizations that can offer support or help you in your specific situation. For direct links to organizations please visit https://womenandcrimepodcast.com/resources/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Today's Talmud page, Sotah 6, focuses on the intricate ways that proof must be given to determine guilt or innocence. Ruth Markel joins us to discuss the story of the murder of her son Dan, and the book she's written about dealing with the trauma of her loss. How does the Justice system impact members of the families impacted by a crime? Listen and find out. Like the show? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Send us a note at takeone@tabletmag.com. Follow us on Twitter at @takeonedafyomi and join the conversation in the Take One Facebook group. Take One is a Tablet Studios production. The show is hosted by Liel Leibovitz, and is produced and edited by Darone Ruskay, Quinn Waller and Elie Bleier. Our team also includes Stephanie Butnick, Josh Kross, Mark Oppenheimer, Robert Scaramuccia, and Tanya Singer. Check out all of Tablet's podcasts at tabletmag.com/podcasts.
This week on Unorthodox, are the Muppets Jewish? Our Jew of the Week is Ruth Markel, whose son, Dan Markel, was murdered in 2014 (the case is featured on the first season of the podcast Over My Dead Body). She joined us to discuss the book she's written about dealing with the trauma of losing a son to murder, as well as becoming an activist against grandparent alienation. Our Gentile of the Week is comedian Zarna Garg, who tells us how her experience as an Indian immigrant influences her comedy, as well as the role of funny Jewish moms in her comedy journey. Her question for the hosts is a spicy one: how do Jewish parents feel about their kids dating outside the religion? We love to hear from you! Send us emails and voice memos at unorthodox@tabletmag.com, or leave a voicemail at our listener line: (914) 570-4869. Remember to tell us who you are and where you're calling from. Merch alert! Check out our new Unorthodox tees, mugs, and hoodies at tabletstudios.com. We're back on the road! Find out about our upcoming events at tabletmag.com/unorthodoxlive. To book us for a live show or event, email Tanya Singer at tsinger@tabletmag.com. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get new episodes, photos, and more. Join our Facebook group, and follow Unorthodox on Twitter and Instagram. Get a behind-the-scenes look at our recording sessions on our YouTube channel. Unorthodox is produced by Tablet Studios. Check out all of our podcasts at tabletmag.com/podcasts. SPONSOR: The Sassoons, now on view at the Jewish Museum, reveals the fascinating story of a remarkable Jewish family. Explore a rich selection of artwork collected by family members over time, including portraits by John Singer Sargent, illuminated manuscripts, and rare Judaica. Learn more at thejewishmuseum.org.
#STSNation,Welcome to the podcast that brings you the best guests in true crime. In this episode we see how “the sausage is made”. Dateline NBC's Dennis Murphy tells us why they chose to do two shows on Dan Markel. #BestGuests:Dennis Murphy is the winner of four national Emmys for excellence in news reportingHe's best known known for regular contributions to NBC News, NBC Nightly News, Dateline NBC, The Today Show and NBC News at Sunrise.He's covered the Dan Markel murder case from the beginning. Ruth Markel is the author of the WIDELY DISCUSSED book about her son's murder: The Unveiling: A Mother's Reflection On Murder, Grief, and Trial LifePrior to writing The Unveiling, Ruth was already a noted author, public speaker and the president of RNM enterprises, a leadingmanagement consulting firm. Ruth has appeared on 20/20 ABC,Inside Edition, CourtTV, and Dateline NBC, and participated in the hit podcast “Over My Dead Body,” by Wondery. #JusticeForDanMarkel #TrueCrime #FSU #TrueCrimeCommunity #Podcast #Podcasting #Florida #Dateline #DatelineNBC #DennisMurphy
True Crime Tuesday presents The Unveiling: A Bullet Breaks A Family, A Mother Fights to Heal It with Mother of a Murder Victim/Author, Ruth Markel! Today on TCT, we talk about Ruth's book, "The Unveiling: A Mother's Reflection on Murder, Grief, and Trial Life" , the life of her son, Dan. The tumultuous marriage between Dan and his now ex-wife, Wendi, The details behind that fateful day in 2014 when Dan was assassinated in cold blood, and the peculiar events that started to happen almost immediately after after Dan died, including moving Dan's two sons further away from Dan's family (cutting off contact) and members of Wendi's family being named by authorities as co-conspirators in Dan's death. We also talk with Ruth about "Grandparent Alienation", and the rights of grandparents in felony criminal cases to be able to see their grandchildren after conviction. Ruth and Dan's father were separated from Dan's two boys for six years without a visit while seeking justice for Dan! Ruth took that time and energy and fought in Florida for the Markel Law, which gives Grandparents there rights to see their grandchildren! PLUS: AN ALL NEW DUMB CRIMES/STUPID CRIMINALS w/ MALLIE FOX!! Get your copy of "The Unveiling..." here: https://amzn.to/3Zmroe2 Look further into the effort to get complete justice for Dan Markel: https://www.justicefordan.com/ #crime #truecrime #truecrimepodcasts #truecrimetuesday #ruthmarkel #theunveiling #danmarkel #wendiadelson #charlieadelson #sigfredogarcia #donnaadelson #katherinemagbanua #luisrivera #hitman #latinkings #murderforhire #sociopath #murder #dumbcrimesstupidcriminals #TimDennis #Malliefox #ghostbait #floridaman #drugcrimes #foodcrimes #stupidcrimes #funnycrimes #strippers #sexcrimes
True Crime Tuesday presents The Unveiling: A Bullet Breaks A Family, A Mother Fights to Heal It with Mother of a Murder Victim/Author, Ruth Markel! Today on TCT, we talk about Ruth's book, "The Unveiling: A Mother's Reflection on Murder, Grief, and Trial Life" , the life of her son, Dan. The tumultuous marriage between Dan and his now ex-wife, Wendi, The details behind that fateful day in 2014 when Dan was assassinated in cold blood, and the peculiar events that started to happen almost immediately after after Dan died, including moving Dan's two sons further away from Dan's family (cutting off contact) and members of Wendi's family being named by authorities as co-conspirators in Dan's death. We also talk with Ruth about "Grandparent Alienation", and the rights of grandparents in felony criminal cases to be able to see their grandchildren after conviction. Ruth and Dan's father were separated from Dan's two boys for six years without a visit while seeking justice for Dan! Ruth took that time and energy and fought in Florida for the Markel Law, which gives Grandparents there rights to see their grandchildren! PLUS: AN ALL NEW DUMB CRIMES/STUPID CRIMINALS w/ MALLIE FOX!! Get your copy of "The Unveiling..." here: https://amzn.to/3Zmroe2 Look further into the effort to get complete justice for Dan Markel: https://www.justicefordan.com/ #crime #truecrime #truecrimepodcasts #truecrimetuesday #ruthmarkel #theunveiling #danmarkel #wendiadelson #charlieadelson #sigfredogarcia #donnaadelson #katherinemagbanua #luisrivera #hitman #latinkings #murderforhire #sociopath #murder #dumbcrimesstupidcriminals #TimDennis #Malliefox #ghostbait #floridaman #drugcrimes #foodcrimes #stupidcrimes #funnycrimes #strippers #sexcrimes
Ruth Markel tells all about her son's murder, her new book "The Unveiling" and how she turned grief into advocacy for victims. Buy Ruth Markel's book "The Unveiling" here:https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BGW2668M?ref_=cm_sw_r_mwn_dp_PQ4VKFTQJSJA20AJBGR4 Ruth Markel's website: https://ruthmarkel.comThe Roberta Glass True Crime Report Graphic Design by Ati Abdo MacDonaldIntro by Tuesday MoneyThis episode was made possible by Roberta's patrons: Kay Be, Toni Woodland, Toni Natalie, Kenny Haines, Jon, Melissa, Happy Jack, Danbrit, Holly from Dallas, Victoria Gray Bross, Una, Maureen P and Christopher F.Support brave true crime reporting & get access to bonus content here: https://patreon.com/robertaglasstruecrimereportOr drop a tip in the tip jar!https://buymeacupofcoffee.com/robertaglass
Ruth is the mother of the late Dan Markel, a noted law professor who was murdered in Tallahassee, Florida, in 2014. Ruth is the author of The Unveiling: A Mother's Reflection on Murder, Grief, and Trial Life, where she describes her experiences since the day of Dan's death from several distinct perspectives. As a devastated mother with the unique human perspective of becoming a homicide survivor and victim. As a woman whose attempts to achieve normalcy and live a healthy life are continually interrupted by painful reminders, a rollercoaster of hearings, frequently changing trial dates, verdicts, and appeals. As an engaged citizen, using what she has learned to help other victims of homicide and violent crimes recover from trauma and begin an optimistic outlook on life. As an insider who shows how our collective network of family, friends, and experts — including a murder coach — have helped her family remain involved, motivated, and hopeful. As a grandmother who had not been allowed to see her grandchildren in many years, she used advocacy to inspire the Florida State Legislature to pass a grandparent visitation bill. And as an experienced author of nine books using the written word to address the shift from grief to promise effectively. Key Takeaways: Ruth shares her grief story. Ruth explains the concept of the Unveiling that finds its roots in Jewish tradition. Ruth talks about their grief experience, one that is never going to end. Susan talks about the “sneaky pockets of grief.” Ruth talks about the characteristics of going through complicated grief. Ruth speaks of her book The Unveiling: A Mother's Reflection on Murder, Grief, and Trial Life. Ruth talks about the motive for her son's murder. Ruth talks about her suffering as a grandmother who wasn't allowed to see her grandchildren. You have to pay attention to the gifts you receive in life. Ruth shares how she advocated for grandparents' visitation right and reached “The Markel Act.” Ruth advises those who have lost someone due to a traumatic death: What is going on in your inner mind has to be edited sometimes. Resources Tendrilsofgrief.com Email Susan: susan@tendrilsofgrief.com Meet Ruth Markel The murder of Dan Markel has attracted a great deal of media coverage — 20/20 and Dateline have covered the story and Wondery's podcast on the case Over My Dead Body, had over 10 million downloads.
FSU Law Prof Dan Markel Was Shot Point Blank By Contract Killers as He Pulled Into The Garage of His Home Murder is a life sentence for the victim's family and friends. Closure is a myth perpetuated by the news media. During three decades of investigative reporting, Robert Riggs has witnessed how the victim's families often suffer in silence and are left out of the confusing criminal justice process. In this episode of the True Crime Reporter® podcast, Ruth Markel shares a remarkable story of grief, resilience, and hope during an eight-year murder investigation that is not over. FSU Law Professor Dan Markel Her son, Dan Markel, a Florida law professor, was ambushed in a murder-for-hire conspiracy allegedly masterminded by his ex-wife, Wendi Adelson, and members of her family, according to state prosecutors. Wendi Adelson has denied those accusations during a police interrogation and under oath in court testimony. The anatomy of the murder has been highly publicized on television crime shows and true crime podcasts. But Robert Riggs is here with the “rest of the story” from behind the crime scene tape. In this interview, Ruth Markel reveals how the victim's family can become advocates for their lost loved ones. She inspired the Florida State Legislature to pass a grandparent visitation bill titled the “Markel Act.” Before the murders, Markel had published eight books about the advancement of women in the corporate workplace. She never expected to write about such a horrific and powerless situation as the murder of her son. Now Ruth Markel shares her story to help others survive their grief from murders and violent crime in her book titled The Unveiling: A Mothers' Reflection on Murder, Grief, and Trial Life. Riggs and Markel discuss her fight for justice on behalf of her son and the struggle to be legally reunited with her grandchildren. Riggs starts the episode by recounting the key events of the contact murder in 2014. Links to resources mentioned during the podcast: Full coverage by Paul Caron, Dean of the Pepperdine University https://youtu.be/KIDXVsibEJw Court Testimony by Wendi Adelson FOLLOW the True Crime Reporter® Podcast SIGN UP FOR my True Crime Newsletter THANK YOU FOR THE FIVE-STAR REVIEWS ON APPLE Please leave one – it really helps. TELL ME about a STORY OR SUBJECT that you want to hear more about
Murder is a life sentence for the victim's family and friends. Closure is a myth perpetuated by the news media. During three decades of investigative reporting, Robert Riggs has witnessed how the victim's families often suffer in silence and are left out of the confusing criminal justice process. In this episode of the True Crime Reporter® podcast, Ruth Markel shares a remarkable story of grief, resilience, and hope during an eight-year murder investigation that is not over. Her son, Dan Markel, a Florida law professor, was ambushed in a murder-for-hire conspiracy allegedly masterminded by his ex-wife, Wendi Adelson, and members of her family, according to state prosecutors. Wendi Adelson has denied those accusations during a police interrogation and under oath in court testimony. The anatomy of the murder has been highly publicized on television crime shows and true crime podcasts. But Robert Riggs is here with the “rest of the story” from behind the crime scene tape. In this interview, Ruth Markel reveals how the victim's family can become advocates for their lost loved ones. She inspired the Florida State Legislature to pass a grandparent visitation bill titled the “Markel Act.” Before the murders, Markel had published eight books about the advancement of women in the corporate workplace. She never expected to write about such a horrific and powerless situation as the murder of her son. Now Ruth Markel shares her story to help others survive their grief from murders and violent crime in her book titled The Unveiling: A Mothers' Reflection on Murder, Grief, and Trial Life. Riggs and Markel discuss her fight for justice on behalf of her son and the struggle to be legally reunited with her grandchildren. Riggs starts the episode by recounting the key events of the contact murder, which occurred in 2014. Links to resources mentioned during the podcast: Full coverage by Paul Caron, Dean of the Pepperdine University https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2022/10/extreme-punishment-the-chilling-true-story-of-dan-markels-murder.html Link to recent court testimony by Wendi Adelson: https://youtu.be/KIDXVsibEJw We want to become your favorite true crime podcast. Please leave a review wherever you listen. Join our true crime community and follow us here. The True Crime Reporter® podcast features stories about serial killers, mass murderers, murder mysteries, homicides, cold cases, prisons, violent criminals, serial rapists, child abductors, child molesters, kidnappers, bank robbers, cyber criminals, and assorted violent criminals. True Crime Reporter® is a @2022 copyrighted and trade-marked production by True Crime Reporter®, LLC, in Dallas, Texas. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
FSU Law Prof Dan Markel Was Shot Point Blank By Contract Killers as He Pulled Into The Garage of His Home Murder is a life sentence for the victim's family and friends. Closure is a myth perpetuated by the news media. During three decades of investigative reporting, Robert Riggs has witnessed how the victim's families often suffer in silence and are left out of the confusing criminal justice process. In this episode of the True Crime Reporter® podcast, Ruth Markel shares a remarkable story of grief, resilience, and hope during an eight-year murder investigation that is not over. FSU Law Professor Dan Markel Her son, Dan Markel, a Florida law professor, was ambushed in a murder-for-hire conspiracy allegedly masterminded by his ex-wife, Wendi Adelson, and members of her family, according to state prosecutors. Wendi Adelson has denied those accusations during a police interrogation and under oath in court testimony. The anatomy of the murder has been highly publicized on television crime shows and true crime podcasts. But Robert Riggs is here with the “rest of the story” from behind the crime scene tape. In this interview, Ruth Markel reveals how the victim's family can become advocates for their lost loved ones. She inspired the Florida State Legislature to pass a grandparent visitation bill titled the “Markel Act.” Before the murders, Markel had published eight books about the advancement of women in the corporate workplace. She never expected to write about such a horrific and powerless situation as the murder of her son. Now Ruth Markel shares her story to help others survive their grief from murders and violent crime in her book titled The Unveiling: A Mothers' Reflection on Murder, Grief, and Trial Life. Riggs and Markel discuss her fight for justice on behalf of her son and the struggle to be legally reunited with her grandchildren. Riggs starts the episode by recounting the key events of the contact murder in 2014. Links to resources mentioned during the podcast: Full coverage by Paul Caron, Dean of the Pepperdine University https://youtu.be/KIDXVsibEJw Court Testimony by Wendi Adelson
In 2014, Ruth Markel experienced just about the worst thing any mother can when she learned that her son Dan had been murdered. It would become even worse when she discovered that her in-laws had been involved in the murder-for-hire plot. Far from breaking under the grief, Ruth has become a tireless advocate for victims and their families. In 2022, the State of Florida passed the Markel Act enabling grandparents to petition courts for visitation rights in the case of a violent death. Learn more about Ruth and her work at https://ruthmarkel.com/ Find LOVE MURDER online: Website: lovemurder.love Instagram: @lovemurderpod Twitter: @lovemurderpod Facebook: LoveMrdrPod TikTok: @LoveMurderPod Patreon: /LoveMurderPod Credits: Love Murder is hosted by Jessie Pray and Andie Cassette, produced by Nathaniel Whittemore and edited by Kyle Barbour-Hoffman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In 2014, Ruth Markel experienced just about the worst thing any mother can when she learned that her son Dan had been murdered. It would become even worse when she discovered that her in-laws had been involved in the murder-for-hire plot. Far from breaking under the grief, Ruth has become a tireless advocate for victims and their families. In 2022, the State of Florida passed the Markel Act enabling grandparents to petition courts for visitation rights in the case of a violent death. Learn more about Ruth and her work at https://ruthmarkel.com/ Find LOVE MURDER online: Website: lovemurder.love Instagram: @lovemurderpod Twitter: @lovemurderpod Facebook: LoveMrdrPod TikTok: @LoveMurderPod Patreon: /LoveMurderPod Credits: Love Murder is hosted by Jessie Pray and Andie Cassette, produced by Nathaniel Whittemore and edited by Kyle Barbour-Hoffman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Welcome to Original Jurisdiction, the latest legal publication by me, David Lat. You can learn more about Original Jurisdiction by reading its About page, and you can email me at davidlat@substack.com. This is a reader-supported publication; you can subscribe by clicking on the button below. Thanks!Burying your own child is one of the most difficult experiences to endure. Burying your own child because he was murdered is even more horrific.Just ask Ruth Markel. She was the mother of my friend Dan Markel, the renowned professor of criminal law who was shot in his garage on the morning of July 18, 2014. At the time of his death, Dan was only 41, the father of two young boys. Now Ruth has written a powerful, deeply moving memoir about her life since that fateful day, The Unveiling: A Mother's Reflection on Murder, Grief, and Trial Life.I was honored to have Ruth as my guest on the Original Jurisdiction podcast. We discussed what the past eight years have been like for her, why she wrote The Unveiling, how she got Florida to pass a landmark law about grandparental rights, and the latest in the Markel case—not just the legal proceedings, which are far from over, but also her struggle to win access to her grandsons, whom she was not allowed to see for six years. You can listen to our conversation by clicking on the embed above.[UPDATE (11/17/2022, 3:35 a.m.): Yesterday brought big news in the case: after staying silent for the more than six years since her arrest, Katherine Magbanua, who served as the go-between connecting the Adelsons and hit men Sigfredo Garcia and Luis Rivera, has agreed to talk to the authorities. Here's the order from Judge Robert Wheeler providing for her transfer from prison to the Leon County State Attorney'ss Office for a proffer on or before November 28 to 30.]Show Notes:* Ruth Markel, author website* The Unveiling: A Mother's Reflection on Murder, Grief, and Trial Life, Amazon* Mom's quest to solve university professor's murder, by Brad Hunter for the Toronto Sun* How targeted murder of Dan Markel went down, by Brad Hunter for the Toronto Sun* Surviving A Son's Murder With Ruth Markel, Surviving the Survivor (podcast)Prefer reading to listening? A transcript of the entire episode appears below.Two quick notes:* This transcript has been cleaned up from the audio in ways that don't alter meaning—e.g., by deleting verbal filler or adding a word here or there to clarify meaning.* Because of length constraints, this newsletter may be truncated in email. To view the entire post, simply click on "View entire message" in your email app.David Lat: Hello, and welcome to the Original Jurisdiction podcast. I'm your host David Lat, author of a Substack newsletter about law and the legal profession also named Original Jurisdiction, which you can read and subscribe to by visiting davidlat.substack.com.You're listening to the fifth episode of this podcast, recorded on Tuesday, November 8. My normal schedule is to post episodes every other Wednesday.My plan for this podcast is to have at least two categories of guests. The first consists of high-profile lawyers, like Alex Spiro, Paul Clement, and Robbie Kaplan. The second consists of individuals with expertise in topics that are important to me and my audience.One such topic is the 2014 murder of law professor Dan Markel. Dan was a friend of mine from college, when we worked together at the Harvard Crimson, and from the early days of legal blogging, when he founded PrawfsBlawg and I founded Above the Law. I have been following the quest to bring his killers to justice for more than eight years, here at Original Jurisdiction and at Above the Law before that.For my third podcast episode, I had as my guest Steven Epstein, author of Extreme Punishment: The Chilling True Story of Acclaimed Law Professor Dan Markel's Murder. For this latest episode, I'm honored to have as my guest Ruth Markel, who has the most personal connection of all to the case: Dan Markel was her son. And like Steve Epstein, Ruth is also the author of an important and acclaimed new book about the case, The Unveiling: A Mother's Reflection on Murder, Grief, and Trial Life. Ruth is a noted author, public speaker, and the president of RNM Enterprises, a leading management consulting firm. She has worked in senior management positions in both private and public sectors for the past forty years. The Unveiling is actually her tenth book; some of her earlier works include Moving Up: A Woman's Guide To A Better Future At Work, published by HarperCollins in 1988, and Room At The Top: A Woman's Guide To Moving Up In Business, published by Penguin in 1985. In connection with the Markel case, she has appeared on such prominent programs as 20/20, Inside Edition, and Dateline NBC.In our conversation, Ruth and I discussed what the eight years since the murder have been like for her; why she wrote The Unveiling; how she got Florida to pass the Markel Act, an important piece of legislation about grandparental rights; and the latest developments in terms of both the legal proceedings in the Markel case and her ability to see her two grandsons, who were cruelly kept from her for years after the murder.Without further ado, here's my interview of Ruth Markel.DL: First of all, Ruth, congratulations on the book, which I have read and I highly recommend, and condolences on both Dan's passing and the journey you have been on these past eight-plus years. I think one point that you make in the book repeatedly is that this type of situation is not one discrete loss, but it's a suffering that recurs again and again as you go through what you refer to as the “trial life.” So again, just my condolences and thank you for trying to seek justice for Dan's murderers and also getting legislation passed to help other grandparents.Ruth Markel: Thank you so much, David. I first of all have to thank you, a long and special thank-you, because I know you've written so much about Dan's murder, and I know that you knew him too. And whatever you've written is very accomplished and very thorough, and I appreciate your hands and eyes on the case, because we always need people who really know what's happening, rather than just reporting on separate incidents. So I really, really have a lot of gratitude to say to you—on the part of the family, it isn't just me, but it's all of us who want to thank you.DL: It's the least I can do. As I've written before, I knew Dan—I knew him from college, when we worked on the Harvard Crimson, and then we reconnected again as bloggers, when he founded the extremely successful PrawfsBlawg and I started Above the Law.One thing I wanted to ask you about—and I know you've talked about this in past interviews—many of us know Dan as a brilliant legal scholar, a prolific blogger, an academic, but what can you tell us about his childhood? What was he like growing up? I think some readers will be interested in hearing that maybe he wasn't what we [might have expected].RM: No, not at all. I think if anybody had any contradictions from their later life to their earlier life, that would be Dan Markel, the late Dan Markel. Danny was a bum when he was younger. He was Dennis the Menace at his core—very, very high-energy as a child. He never liked normal toys. His favorite objects at 18 months, two years, were a pail, a mop-and-pail type of thing, and a stepladder. And a stepladder was his favorite toy. When he was really young, he would go up on the kitchen counter not to look for cookies, like many kids go into the pantry, but [for] the challenge of climbing it up and climbing it down, and so forth.We lived in Montreal. First, we're Canadian. Many people don't even know that we're Canadian, that Dan was Canadian. And there's a lot of places that write that he was born in Toronto, but that's not true—he was born in Montreal. We lived there until he started school, kindergarten, when he was five, and then moved to Toronto.And he was still [unfocused] in the first few years of school, even until eight, nine years old. The funny story is the school had an aptitude test in grade three, and they called me and they said he had the highest score in the school—not only the highest score in the school, but the highest score that [they] ever saw from this aptitude test. And then [the principal] said to me, bluntly, she says, “Why is he only getting an A-minus or A, what's wrong with him? He's not performing at this high peak.” So I said to her—it was a very funny conversation with the principal—I said, “You know what? Wait another year. I promise you, by when he's nine or ten, he'll settle down. Because he read all the comics from me, at five or six, his reading, his skills were there. But [he tended to] wander off, he had high energy, which really was, as you know, the trait for the rest of his life and so forth.So he really got serious about nine, 10 years old. And then he became really not serious in his choice of outside activities—he skied, he played baseball. But I would say, you know how there's the expression, “he settled down”—he settled down around 10, 11, and you could see he was going to be, I wouldn't call it scholarly yet, but that high level of achievement.DL: And then I know of course, and we all know of course, about his résumé and his credentials. He went to Harvard College. He studied abroad in Cambridge. He went to Harvard Law School. He clerked for Judge [Michael Daly] Hawkins on the Ninth Circuit. He worked at a very prestigious law firm, now known as Kellogg Hansen, and then he went into academia. But as I recall from past interviews, you've said that his success as a lawyer or as an academic is actually not what you're most proud of about him as an adult.RM: That's true. I'm most proud of him as a father and as what all his friends call the ”connector” part, the friend part. But let me talk about the father part for a minute. He was really amazing—his love for his children was so special. He would go to their daycare centers when they were small and he would have breakfast with the kids. He would read. As a dad he had a strong Jewish identity, and he would often at the daycare center say, this Jewish holiday is coming up, this is Christmas, this is Hanukkah. He would read stories, and they really liked that aspect of him.He also was amazing because when the children would do any artwork, Danny put up a clothesline, he had a very open space across his living room, and he hung all their artwork. And what was so funny is when some of the students—he invited all the students who went with him to the final-level criminal courses [over] for dinner—and they were shocked because they thought, oh my, they're coming to the stuffy professor's house, and if they didn't trip over the toys, they were lucky. Right across the room was all this artwork, and I used to tease him: he started a new design category called “Preschool Decor.”He was funny. He was really—as you know, Danny had an academic side—but his social side was so, so strong and so much a part of him that everywhere he went—and he lived in a lot of places, you mentioned a few, New York, Tel Aviv, London, Boston, San Francisco, Toronto—he always stayed connected. And he used to say, “Oh, my best friend here.” So we used to tease him—you have a hundred best friends in New York, a hundred here, a hundred there. And it was true actually. When he passed away, the memorializing [took place] all over the world. So he was blessed. We were blessed in that whole aspect of his life.DL: Fast forwarding now to the terrible events of July 2014, which again you talk about in detail in your book, what was it like when you heard the news that Dan had been shot? I think you said in the book that it was like an out-of-body experience, that it was just really surreal for you?RM: Right. I had several experiences. The first is numbness, and in the book I do talk about the purpose of the book. Maybe I should say it now because it'll give you really where I'm going. So I wrote the book, which is called The Unveiling: A Mother's Reflection on Murder, Grief, and the Trial Life, and the reason I wrote it and called it [that] is what's so significant here.The title of the book is The Unveiling. In Jewish life, the unveiling is the time after a person is buried, the gravesite has been settled, the funeral is over, [and] there's different cultural customs, but we chose about eight months after the [funeral for the] unveiling. On the tombstone is writing. And we spent a lot of time as a family writing what's called the inscription. The Jewish tradition is you leave this piece of fabric cover[ing] the tombstone until the day that you actually have a ritual or a service called the unveiling…. And so why I called it The Unveiling is because my real grief process—which is very important, which I want the public to know about, not just me, there's so many school shootings, and I'll come to this in the second part of the reason I wrote the book—but the first part is that was [the start of] my grief journey, the real deep, deep grief. And before that, I did have what you would call an out-of-body experience. I was numb. I was in a daze.The next reason for writing the book is more important to the public, and that's really to lift the curtain on what it is to be in a victim experience, particularly a victim experience in the criminal system. So there's two parts, and they're very important in the follow-through of not just my own personal experience.I'm not sure if you're familiar with it, but there's a term called “homicide survivors.” Homicide survivors are different. It's a different loss and a different trauma than illness and so forth, and the homicide-survivor trauma lasts longer because it doesn't get resolved. In addition, it's the violent, sudden finality of the death, which other types of trauma don't have. Even the pathway afterwards is very different than other losses because now I'll go to the second point, which is the criminal system, and the victim experience of the criminal system, [coupled] with the fact that the psychological component of the trauma is very different, the criminal system doesn't end.And there's no such thing… the word “closure,” I've said it before, it's a word in the dictionary. All those words are not meaningful. You're dealing now with a psychological factor, which is impaired, let's call it, because of the level of grief and the long-term effect and the interaction of the criminal system, which is everlasting. Look, here we are, it's eight years, we're nowhere finished. So it's that combination that really makes this whole experience different.DL: You've actually just answered some of the questions I wanted to raise….RM: Oh, good.DL: … as to why you wrote the book and why you named it The Unveiling, which I think is a very powerful title. Let me ask you this. Some readers might not know, but this is far from your first book—it's your 10th, but your prior books were very different. They were focused on business and career and professional subjects. You've just talked about having to relive that pain and reopen that wound. Were you really convinced to write this book, given that it would involve reliving this trauma that you've just described?RM: No, this was hard. I'll tell you how I started to write the book. You're very right about the other books. [It's a] foreign language when you do a personal-trauma story, it's a foreign language as to business management books, where it's charts and checklists and a whole different kind of process.So how did I write the book, and why did I write the book? Right after Danny's murder—I hate to say the word—we were privileged with the media, as you know well, and you were part of it. There were tons and tons of things happening. I normally wasn't thinking initially of anything like this kind of book, but I did have—so I'm a little older—I did have a box, and I would photocopy and print [stories]. Nobody does that today. But I got this box filled up, which gave me a chronology. I could get the chronology on the internet, as you know, and I did as well, but it was just that, an earlier phase, and I was not planning this kind of book. I knew maybe I would write a book, but not the level that I wrote the trauma about. But, as time progressed, a lot of time actually, because we were preoccupied with the justice system, then it was about a year and a half or two years before the pandemic, which probably was a good thing because I used the pandemic to write, I have to tell you that. So in the period before I started to feel, I have a message, I guess it's because I've written before, whatever, but I started to feel really, I have a message about victims and trauma and grief. And there's not that much out there, and not that much with a personal story. So that was the real sort of the fork in the road. And I decided, okay, now it's serious.Then, as you know, you would know, you go out, you have to get a publisher, an agent, the whole thing. It was after [hitman Sigfredo] Garcia's [trial]… I needed to get, I guess, to Garcia's and [go-between] Katherine [Magbanua]'s trial of 2019…. The trial ended in October and in November, I was in New York looking for, starting the regular routine of pitching the publisher and not the publisher, really, but the agent at that point. And then the pandemic came, January [2020]. I live in Canada, and we locked down very, very early, so it was different here, a whole different climate. We locked down much more, I don't want to say seriously, but I would say more uniformly.Now I'm a person who's always doing something—I'm like Dan or Dan's like me, I don't know which one is which—but the point is I said, oh, now I better get this together. And that's what I did. I really wrote in the pandemic, the first year, because it was a good time to write—not smart time, maybe, because you are isolated. I hardly saw my grandkids, Canadian grandkids in that time, but I was, yes, the fact is that I was busy and I was occupied, but it was very hard. The first part of the book on the grief and the murder and the finding out, it was more than challenging.DL: Did you find the book therapeutic in terms of writing it and talking to other survivors of homicide? I know, for example, you mentioned in the book you had a coach, someone who had gone through a similarly awful experience. Did you find some solace in writing the book?RM: I wouldn't call it solace. I did have support. The coach was terrific and we had excellent expertise and legal support, as you know, from Gibson Dunn and others, and a lot of Danny's friends. So we were definitely privileged.I can't tell you… I can't tell you that the book in any way has added any closure. I don't use the word, but any help, “therapeutic”—has there been any cathartic benefit? Not yet. When we'll come to the grandparent legislation, the answer is totally different. And that's what's fascinating because I'm in the process still of the criminal system, I think because I'm still a victim.Look, I'm going to put it out in—I don't know if you want to go into the case, who's arrested and when, but we went through, now Garcia was arrested in 2016, later [hitman Luis] Rivera, later Katherine Magbanua. We didn't have any trial until 2019. And then there's the appeal of Garcia. What we just went through, just to give you the current view, is really amazing. We just did the trial from a point of view of calendar for Katherine Magbanua. We just finished it right in May, in July was sentencing, and Shelly, my daughter, had to do the victim impact statement. Then following that, Charlie Adelson was arrested, just before Katherine Magbanua's trial. Then he had the Arthur [bail] hearing. Now Katherine is appealing, and you know, the public doesn't see all this, but we are in full-blown systems and movements and conversations and communications about what's happening. And so that's why I think in all fairness, the book has not yet been as cathartic, let's call it. It's very helpful for me now to go out and talk about the victim experience, but because I'm still so immersed, I don't know if I have that feeling [of catharsis]. I'm still like a student in school. I didn't graduate yet. I'm studying still, if you know what I'm trying to say. It's continuous.DL: And you mentioned that throughout the book. You talk about, for example, even the different vocabulary words that you're learning as part of the legal process. And the book is interesting. There's an update at the end on the legal proceedings where you talk about how Katherine is about to be retried, and then of course now we know she was convicted on the retrial and sentenced. And then, of course, since the publication there has been another series of developments—for example, denial of Charlie Adelson's bail request, [after] the so-called Arthur hearing under Florida law.How would you say you feel in a general sense, given the state of developments right now? You have three people who have been convicted and put behind bars, and you have this pending appeal from Katherine, but honestly I don't think it's going anywhere, knock on wood. And then you have, of course, Charlie's looming trial for the first part of 2023. I know you may want to be a little guarded in some of the things you say, but what would you say you just feel generally about where the state of the legal proceedings is right now?RM: I think for us, for me… 2022 has been a great year, in the sense—and I'll explain why it has been very, very good. After 2016, after the arrest—I'm going to go into the grandparent issue for a minute because it relates to why 2022 has been very important—after the arrest in 2016, Wendi, Danny's ex-wife, cut us off from visiting the children. We tried behind the scenes, the lawyers and so forth, and we even used the media. Now, just to put it in perspective, we are privileged with the media, but Phil and I, Dan's father, we never went [to the media right after] Dan was murdered. Most parents and most lawyers, they bring their clients out into public view, and we didn't—we didn't need to, because Danny had quite a bit of international acclaim, he was memorialized all over the world, and [going public] was really not our way of grieving. However, after we were unable to see the boys, Benjamin and Lincoln, Dan's children, we decided, let's try whatever we can to get some exposure to the fact that we are not able to see these young children. So that's what we did. We went [to the media], we were going to anyway, the programs were running, as you know, 20/20 had two sessions, Dateline had two two-hour sessions, then the [Over My Dead Body] podcast came out, and so forth. So it's been an unusual journey [in having] so much media available to us.Then also, which really is a privilege, Jason Solomon started Justice For Dan. And he even started a petition on Justice For Dan to have people sign, and there were a lot of Canadians, a lot of Americans who signed [in support of] us to be able to see the children. Anyway, needless to say, that was effective, but not enough—it gave us a voice, but not a change in dynamics, let's call it.Anyway, so what happened was after Garcia's trial, it was October 12th, 2019, I'm in Tallahassee, it's my birthday, I'm in the hairdresser, and this young woman [Karen Halperin Cyphers] comes over to me and she says, “Can I give you a hug?” And I don't really know her, I don't recognize her as one of Dan's friends, but I could see she's his age, I thought maybe she saw me on TV. And then she told me who she was and so we went for coffee. And then she said to me….Now this is really important in the process of grief, I'm going to explain to you—I was advised by my New York lawyer, Matt Benjamin from Gibson Dunn, “Ruth, you're going to have to write a bill” [if you want to address the problem of grandparent alienation]. I'm sitting in Toronto. This is in 2016, after we went on Dateline and 20/20. A bill. I'm sitting in Toronto. What do I know? I'm in Canada. Although I had advocacy experience in my early, early social-work career, I did not know the American system, and also we are a little different in Canada, it didn't occur to me even that that [might be] the solution. And then my other friend said, “It's all-American—you have to get lobbyists.” So I prepped, I'm getting the buzz in my ear, but I didn't do anything for three years. And why I think this is important—I'll get back to the journey—the reason it's important is because many families that are grieving, they want to memorialize their child, they want to start a foundation, they want to do something, but they don't break out of it from out of their head. So here was my experience, I was sitting on it for three years, but Karen Halperin Cyphers says to me, right in the coffee shop [in October 2019], “Okay, what can I do for you?” And I just blurt out, “Grandparent alienation.” And she says, “Done.” So here I am, fortunate that Karen had all of these contacts through her position—at the time she was a partner in a media firm in Tallahassee—and this was only in October 2019. In January of 2020, Karen already organized in the Senate, [Florida State Senator] Jeff Brandes actually wrote a bill, got it passed in the Senate, but we couldn't get it into the other house in 2020. So this is another part. Try, try, and try again…. This is why we're coming back to 2022. Why is it such an exceptional year? In the first part of 2022, [Florida House Speaker] Chris Sprowls decided that he would get a representation in the House and the Senate at the same time, and he really organized. Anyway, the best news in the world: the Senate passed it unanimously, and the House was, I think, 112-3. And in the end, Governor DeSantis signed it on June 24. So that's the first part of 2022—and a really big part of the success that we feel. So the mood is changing, is what I'm trying to tell you.Now, the next good part of 2022. So Katherine Magbanua was scheduled to have her retrial in February. That was postponed. The word is “continued”—I love the word “continue” when it meets “canceled,” but we won't go into law language—anyway, and it's till May 16th. In the same period, I get an email from Wendi Adelson, that's Danny's ex-wife, the mother of his children: “Ruth, we're making a bar mitzvah for Benjamin around May 14th”—two days before the actual Katherine Magbanua trial—”and we're inviting you all then.” “All” means us plus Shelly's family.I couldn't be more delighted. And I said, yes, we're coming for sure, and then I suggested, “Can we have an in-person visit on May 13th, the day before the bar mitzvah? The kids have not seen us now [for a long time].” So she writes back right away, “You know what? If you want an in-person visit, come in April.” First the date she selected was the Passover date, then she wrote back, apologies, come April 20th. And we said, we're on. We came April 20th. We saw the kids. We had a wonderful visit. We get back to Toronto, let's say, 1 a.m. on April 21st, at 6 a.m. I get a call from law enforcement in Tallahassee—well, they're not in Tallahassee, now they're down in Broward [County in South Florida]—and they just arrested Charlie Adelson. In 24 hours, a lot on the children and on the case.So 2022, this is the big year, right…. it's an actually an important story piece because families wait and, and certainly for us, the waiting and uncertainty are really the characteristics of the victim experience. But this is just an example of sometimes when the waiting does materialize into something that's very fruitful.DL: Just to rewind a little bit, you mentioned the passage and the signing into law of the Markel Act, which deals with the problem of grandparent alienation. Can you say briefly to listeners what the Markel Act permits?RM: The Markel Act, actually, is not a broad-based, all-encompassing act for any grandparent who's alienated or any grandparent who has difficulty. Florida laws are very restrictive, [some] of the most restrictive ones in North America, and considering they have all these elderly people, their grandparent legislation is very, very restrictive. And there's a piece in there that people have to understand. The reason it's restricted is because the natural parent in Florida has the right for autonomy and privacy [in child rearing], and that is huge, and that trumps anything else, and it always has to be reviewed against what are their rights.So what happened with the Grandparent Act? When it was developed, it was developed to meet a very specific set of circumstances, which is if one of the partners in the marriage or ex-marriage or whatever divorced relationship was deceased or is deceased, and the other partner has some civil or criminal findings against them, that gives the grandparents rights to go to the courts and request a visit, and the request is less conditional than under other circumstances because those findings have to be met. So to that extent, it's very restrictive.Having said that, and one of the most amazing things of why I said earlier on, I have to say that having passed this legislation has really given me—I would say I always have hope, but it has given me more satisfaction on a different level—do you know how many people write to me now asking how to use the Markel Act, telling me about grandparent alienation, and what's really sad is how many circumstances there are in Florida where [the Act might apply]. [There is also a 2015 law about grandparent visitation rights, which] is something else which I did another presentation on… like if your child has committed a felony. It's not the same. It's not the Markel Act, I have to say. But the point is, what happens? These adult children come out of prison, and the grandparents have taken care of the kids all these years, and [the adult children] tell [the grandparents], “Bye bye, Charlie.” So the grandparents lose out, and the children really lose that because that's their new family. But those families can get help—not necessarily [from] the strength of the grandparent legislation, but there are places to help them, and also they should know to go to Legal Aid as well.DL: That's really important, and I'm glad you're sharing that information with people. One of the things that's interesting to note—it's very selfless in a way, what you've done, because the Markel Act, as I understand it, does not at the current time apply to your particular case. But on the bright side, I do note that very shortly after its passage, you were invited by Wendi to meet with the boys.So I see we're almost out of time. In closing, can you talk about how much contact you have with the boys right now? Because for those of us reading the book, that was in many ways one of the most heartbreaking things—that for years, you were kept away from your grandsons after this horrific event. Can you talk a bit about how often you get to see them now and under what circumstances?RM: We're only at a stage where the door is open, like a crack in the door. We did try to get some Zooms on the boys' birthdays to wish them happy birthday. We were successful. We made other attempts to get visits, which didn't materialize, but just recently, I asked Wendi for a visit in December, and she approved, she confirmed it. So that'll be the next visit. We saw the boys, we had contact with them in April, and now I'm really hopeful that I will get to see them in December. So we're, you know, it's a rocky ship still, but it's more open communication. And although small, but it's working in the right direction, very incremental, small steps. And so forth.DL: As you mentioned, 2022 was a big, big year for you and your family. My final question is, what are you hoping for or expecting from 2023? Which is not that far away, less than two months until the start of the new year. What are you looking forward to in the coming year?RM: I'm looking forward to, look, right now, I'll put it this way, the grandparent priority is a little bit, I don't want to say on the back burner at all, but it's less. Now we have to get justice in the criminal system, which has always been the competing priority…. So that's really one of the things I do want to say that I'm also looking at now, and in 2023 I want to make sure that people understand the victim experience, and particularly the legal and professional people who help—psychologists, lawyers, clergy, whatever, have to understand the victim experience. How can you learn to develop compassion for the victim in all these professions?I have an agenda, I guess I'm a person who has agendas, and this is really because I really think it's an undervalued [experience]. And there's a statement, I read this in one of the reports in Canada, the [statement] is “the victim is the orphan of the criminal system.” And so that's my new challenge, and I hope that there are some lawyers, legal schools, law firms listening today. I have a lot of programs that I would really like to talk about in terms of an educational format to get the sensitization to what the victim experiences in the criminal system.DL: Well, I think you've been doing a wonderful job of advancing your agenda, just in terms of getting people to understand that victim experience. And of course getting legislation passed to help other grandparents in similar situations. And of course spearheading and enduring this long, long quest for justice for Dan's murderers.So again, on behalf of my listeners, on behalf of all of us who knew and cared for Dan, thank you, Ruth, for everything you've done. You are really an inspiration—just how you have endured this tragedy with such dignity and grace and how you have managed to try and find some things positive out of an unspeakable tragedy. So thank you.RM: Thank you very much, and please continue writing. You're doing a great job.DL: Will do.RM: I always welcome your articles and your support, so thank you.DL: Thanks again to Ruth for joining me. As I have said before, her resilience and strength over these past eight-plus years, as well as how she has used her experience to help both other victims and other grandparents, is nothing short of inspiring.As always, thanks to Tommy Harron, my sound engineer here at Original Jurisdiction, and thanks to you, my listeners and readers, for tuning in. If you'd like to connect with me, you can email me at davidlat@substack.com, and you can find me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, at davidlat, and on Instagram at davidbenjaminlat.If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate, review, and subscribe to Original Jurisdiction. Since this podcast is new, please help spread the word by telling your friends about it. Please subscribe to the Original Jurisdiction newsletter if you don't already, over at davidlat.substack.com. This podcast is free, as is most of the newsletter content, but it is made possible by your paid subscriptions to the newsletter.The next episode of the Original Jurisdiction podcast should appear two weeks from now, on or about Wednesday, November 30. Until then, may your thinking be original and your jurisdiction free of defects.Thanks for reading Original Jurisdiction, and thanks to my paid subscribers for making this publication possible. Subscribers get (1) access to Judicial Notice, my time-saving weekly roundup of the most notable news in the legal world; (2) additional stories reserved for paid subscribers; and (3) the ability to comment on posts. You can email me at davidlat@substack.com with questions or comments, and you can share this post or subscribe using the buttons below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit davidlat.substack.com/subscribe
In today's episode, Ruth Markel, the mother of Dan Markel, joins the founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) to discuss turning grief and pain into advocacy.Ruth's son, Daniel, was a Harvard undergraduate and graduate law school professor who was shot and killed in his driveway in 2014. Ruth is also the author of “The Unveiling: A Mother's Reflection on Murder, Grief and Trial Life.”Candace Lightner is a spokesperson and widely recognized as one of the most influential American citizens of the 21st century. Candace is the founder of the first national anti-drunk driving campaign in the United States and currently manages the “We Save Lives” foundation.In today's episode, we'll be discussing turning mourning, grief, and pain into public movements and a force for good.Make sure to check it out!--Key Takeaways:- Intro (00:00)- Introducing Ruth Markel and Candace Lightner (02:31)- The history of drunk driving in the US (15:30) - Anger can be the fuel for meaningful change (25:38)- How violent deaths impact families of victims (29:25)- "Kick a few pebbles, turn a few stones, and eventually..." (39:10)- Is social media hurting social change? (49:25)- Things to be aware of as an advocate for change (1:05:30)- Episode wrap-up (1:14:50)--Additional Resources:Connect with Ruth Markel: https://ruthmarkel.com/Connect with Candace Lightner: https://www.candacelightner.com/Learn more about Mothers Against Drunk Driving: https://madd.org/Learn more about We Save Lives: https://wesavelives.org/--Support the show at: https://www.patreon.com/survivingthesurvivorpodSurviving the Survivor is a podcast dedicated to incredible stories of survival and the people who share them.Be sure to give us a follow, so you never miss an episode!
In today's episode, Ruth Markel, the mother of Dan Markel, joins the founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) to discuss turning grief and pain into advocacy.Ruth's son, Daniel, was a Harvard undergraduate and graduate law school professor who was shot and killed in his driveway in 2014. Ruth is also the author of “The Unveiling: A Mother's Reflection on Murder, Grief and Trial Life.”Candace Lightner is a spokesperson and widely recognized as one of the most influential American citizens of the 21st century. Candace is the founder of the first national anti-drunk driving campaign in the United States and currently manages the “We Save Lives” foundation.In today's episode, we'll be discussing turning mourning, grief, and pain into public movements and a force for good.Make sure to check it out!--Key Takeaways:- Intro (00:00)- Introducing Ruth Markel and Candace Lightner (02:31)- The history of drunk driving in the US (15:30) - Anger can be the fuel for meaningful change (25:38)- How violent deaths impact families of victims (29:25)- "Kick a few pebbles, turn a few stones, and eventually..." (39:10)- Is social media hurting social change? (49:25)- Things to be aware of as an advocate for change (1:05:30)- Episode wrap-up (1:14:50)--Additional Resources:Connect with Ruth Markel: https://ruthmarkel.com/Connect with Candace Lightner: https://www.candacelightner.com/Learn more about Mothers Against Drunk Driving: https://madd.org/Learn more about We Save Lives: https://wesavelives.org/--Support the show at: https://www.patreon.com/survivingthesurvivorpodSurviving the Survivor is a podcast dedicated to incredible stories of survival and the people who share them.Be sure to give us a follow, so you never miss an episode!
Ruth Markel's tenacious fight for justice on behalf of the murder of her son, Dan Markel, and the struggle to be legally reunited with her grandchildren.Ruth Markel is the mother of the late Dan Markel, a noted law professor who was murdered in Tallahassee, Florida in 2014.In The Unveiling, she describes her experiences since the day of Dan's death from several distinct perspectives:As a devastated mother with the unique human perspective of becoming a homicide survivor and victim.As a woman whose attempts to achieve normalcy and live a healthy life are continually interrupted by painful reminders, a rollercoaster of hearings, frequently changing trial dates, verdicts, and appeals.As an engaged citizen using what she has learned to help other victims of homicide and violent crimes recover from trauma and begin an optimistic outlook on life.As an insider who shows how our collective network of family, friends, and experts—including a murder coach—have helped her family remain involved, motivated, and hopeful.As a grandmother who had not been allowed to see her grandchildren in many years, she used advocacy to inspire the Florida State Legislature to pass a grandparent visitation bill.And as an experienced author of nine books using the written word to effectively address the shift from grief to promiseSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/houseofmysteryradio. Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/houseofmysteryradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
On the morning of July 18, 2014, Dan Markel pulled into his garage in the upscale Betton Hills neighborhood of Tallahassee, where he was a law professor at Florida State University. Seconds later, the 41-year-old father of two was shot twice in the head. Taken to the hospital, he was pronounced dead less than 12 hours later.Dan Markel was a friend of mine. We worked together as editors of the Harvard Crimson in the 1990s, and we reconnected in the early 2000s as the founders of two prominent legal blogs, PrawfsBlawg for him and Above the Law for me.As both a friend of Dan's and a journalist covering the legal profession, I have closely followed the years-long quest to bring his killers—all of his killers—to justice. And so has litigator turned bestselling true-crime writer Steven B. Epstein, author of Extreme Punishment: The Chilling True Story of Acclaimed Law Professor Dan Markel's Murder. As I write in the foreword, “Meticulously researched and beautifully written, Extreme Punishment is now the definitive account of Dan's life and death, the standard against which all future tellings will be measured.”I invited Steve to join me as the third guest of the Original Jurisdiction podcast. We talked about what inspired him to tackle the Markel case, how he went about researching and writing the book, his email correspondence with Dan's ex-wife Wendi Adelson (who some suspect of playing a role in the murder), and his predictions for what might happen next in the case. To listen, please click on the embed at the top of this post.Show Notes:* Extreme Punishment: The Chilling True Story of Acclaimed Law Professor Dan Markel's Murder, Amazon* Extreme Punishment: The Chilling True Story of Acclaimed Law Professor Dan Markel's Murder, Barnes & Noble* Steven B. Epstein: True Crime Writer, author website* Steve Epstein bio, Poyner Spruill LLPPrefer reading to listening? A transcript of the entire episode appears below.Two quick notes:* This transcript has been cleaned up from the audio in ways that don't alter meaning—e.g., by deleting verbal filler or adding a word here or there to clarify meaning.* Because of length constraints, this newsletter may be truncated in email. To view the entire post, simply click on "View entire message" in your email app.David Lat: Hello, and welcome to the Original Jurisdiction podcast. I'm your host, David Lat, author of a Substack newsletter about law and the legal profession also named Original Jurisdiction, which you can read and subscribe to by visiting davidlat.substack.com.You're listening to the third episode of this podcast, recorded one week ago, on Wednesday, October 12. My normal schedule is to post episodes every other Wednesday.For the first episode, I interviewed Alex Spiro of Quinn Emanuel, one of the nation's top trial lawyers. For the second episode, I interviewed Paul Clement of Clement Murphy, one of the nation's top appellate and Supreme Court lawyers.At the end of the second episode, I mentioned this third episode would be a bit different, and it is. Like my first two guests, my latest guest is a friend, but he has made his name outside the realm of practice.Steven B. Epstein is a lawyer turned bestselling true-crime writer. After earning his bachelor's and law degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, both with highest honors, he clerked for Judge Earl Britt in the Eastern District of North Carolina. After a few years in legal academia, Steve turned to civil litigation, practicing for more than 30 years and handling dozens of trials and appeals in federal and state courts. Since 2010, he has been a partner at Poyner Spruill in Raleigh, North Carolina.But I had Steve on the show not to chat about his legal career, but his career as a writer. In 2019, he published his first true-crime book, Murder on Birchleaf Drive: The True Story of the Michelle Young Murder Case, which became a #1 bestseller on Amazon in the true-crime genre. In 2020, he published his second book, Evil at Lake Seminole, about the murder of Mike Williams in Tallahassee. And this month, October 2022, Steve published his third book, Extreme Punishment: The Chilling True Story of Acclaimed Law Professor Dan Markel's Murder.As many of my listeners and readers know, this is a case to which I have a personal connection. Dan Markel was a friend of mine from college, when we worked together for the Harvard Crimson, and we reconnected as early entrants to the field of legal blogging, when he founded PrawfsBlawg and I founded Above the Law.In 2014, Dan was brutally murdered, shot in the head after pulling into his garage. Dan's murder—and the years-long quest to bring all of his killers to justice, which is not yet over—is the subject of Steve's book, Extreme Punishment. As I write in the foreword, “Meticulously researched and beautifully written, Extreme Punishment is now the definitive account of Dan's life and death, the standard against which all future tellings will be measured.”Without further ado, here's my interview of Steve Epstein.DL: Welcome to the podcast, Steve, and congratulations on the publication of Extreme Punishment, which I think is some of your best work yet. And on behalf of those of us who knew and cared about Dan, thank you for writing it. Before we dive into the book, can you introduce yourself to the readers—or listeners, I should say?Steve Epstein: Sure—and thank you for those kind words, David. For those who don't know, you've been along this ride with me for the last couple of years. I appreciate all of your encouragement. I appreciate the foreword to the book, which is beautiful, and I'm thrilled that that's the introduction my readers are going to have to my writing, so thank you for all of that.I'm a native of New York. I grew up mostly on Long Island. I then went south to go to college at the University of North Carolina and decided to stay there for law school. I clerked for a federal judge in the Eastern District of North Carolina. A couple years later, after I was done with the judge, I was off to the University of Illinois, where I was actually teaching on the University of Illinois law faculty for just two years. I've been back in North Carolina ever since 1996, when I finished up at Illinois, and I've been practicing law ever since then at two different private law firms. And as you said, I've also written three books.DL: And what is the focus of your legal practice, or what has it been over the years?SE: I was a civil litigator. I started as a personal injury lawyer and then became more of a commercial civil litigator, mostly on the defense side, mostly working for self-insured large corporations. Then over the years, I drifted into actually doing family law, which is about two-thirds of my practice now, and has been the majority of my practice for the last eight years.DL: As I mentioned in the foreword, you have multiple connections to this story, which we'll explore in a minute. But before we do that, for those of my readers who are not familiar with the subject of your book, Extreme Punishment, which is the murder of law professor Dan Markel—many of my readers are familiar with it, but for those who are not—can you give a quick overview of what this case is about?SE: Sure, and we'll start with the subject of the book, Dan Markel. Dan was a young, very hungry, very intellectually gifted law professor when he joined the Florida State faculty in 2005. He had two Harvard degrees, undergraduate and law school. He had a master's degree from the University of Cambridge. He was also somebody who took his Judaism very seriously, so that was part of his DNA. And he was very successful as a law professor.He was married to a woman named Wendi Adelson, who was from South Florida. Dan himself was from Canada, which is where he grew up—he actually never became an American citizen before his death, he was a Canadian. Wendi Adelson grew up in South Florida in a town called Coral Springs, which isn't too terribly far from Miami, and they wound up becoming a couple while Wendi was still a law student at the University of Miami, while Dan was practicing law at a boutique firm in Washington, D.C.Wendi actually went to Florida State with Dan when he got his gig as an assistant law professor, and Wendi finished up law school at Florida State University. Even though her degree says University of Miami, she actually finished up in classrooms in which Dan was teaching law school at Florida State.On July 18th, 2014, which is when my book actually begins—in fact, that's part of the title to chapter one—Dan was murdered by a gunman who showed up in his garage, shortly after he had dropped his two young boys off at preschool and gone to the gym for a workout. Two bullets penetrated the front window of his car and went straight into his head. He was pronounced dead at the hospital, Tallahassee Memorial Hospital, about one o'clock the next morning.So this is a story about Dan's life, Wendi's life, and how that all led to that fateful morning, and then the march to justice that has literally been going on now for eight-plus years, with four different people involved in this crime now behind bars—three convicted, one awaiting trial—and a significant possibility of more arrests and convictions later on.DL: That's an excellent overview of this really tragic, horrific event. And for those of us who knew Dan, it was just insane. As I write in the foreword, he was a law professor. He was part of our legal-nerd circles. I knew him from college because we worked on the Harvard Crimson together. I reconnected with him in the mid-2000s because we were legal bloggers.I remember the morning, that July morning, where there was just furious calling, texting, Facebook messaging among his friends, saying, did you hear what happened to Dan, did you hear what happened to Dan? And we just could not, for the life of us, figure out who would want to kill our friend who was a law professor. It just seemed so crazy….SE: And it was. And so investigators who started investigating this crime, literally within an hour of the shooting, were faced with this very puzzling dilemma: why would someone want to kill this 41-year-old, extremely successful law professor, who had made hundreds if not thousands of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, across the legal academy and across the world? He was enormously popular. He was extremely well-known. Who would want to kill him?DL: What I would add there is—as I've written in Above the Law and Original Jurisdiction covering Dan, as your biographical portrait of him makes really clear—he was a very complex guy. He wasn't boring, he wasn't vanilla, some people he didn't rub the right way. He had strong opinions. He was outspoken. But again, to us it just seemed that there was nobody who'd want to kill him. It just seemed like such a crazy thing.I will pause here for any listeners whose interest has been piqued by the discussion so far. Feel free to hop off the podcast at this point and get the book, Extreme Punishment by Steven B. Epstein, and you can always tune back in after you've had the chance to read the rest of it.Now, for those of us who are familiar with the case, let's take a deeper dive. We talked about or alluded briefly to your personal connections to this story. What inspired you to tackle the Dan Markel murder for your third?SE: Well, it's a story I really didn't initially want to write because I had just written a book about Tallahassee. I'm not from Tallahassee. I've been there a few times. My daughter was actually very interested in attending Florida State University. We visited Florida State University. She wanted to be a theater major. She wanted to audition there, and she was crushed to not be invited to give a live audition at Florida State University. She wound up at the University of Alabama.But you know, even then I noticed some things about Florida State. We actually did go down there when a friend of hers was in a play in production down there, and it's very interesting how seedy it is. It's almost like Yale, which you have a little familiarity with—it's odd that a university of that stature is in a town where, literally once you walk off campus, you don't feel safe. And that's definitely true about Tallahassee. It's got this very unique vibe to it for a capital city of the third-largest state.So I didn't want to write another story about a murder that happened to somebody who lived in Tallahassee. But the mother of the victim of my second story, Cheryl Williams, who is a fantastic human being—and I encourage you also to read my second book, Evil at Lake Seminole, where you'll learn a whole lot more about this incredibly courageous woman—we continued having conversations long after I finished that book. She's been a fan, she's been a friend, and she's been a confidant. And we were talking about what I was going to write next, and I was literally searching for the right true-crime story to write next when she encouraged me to think about writing about Dan Markel.At that point, all I knew about this story was stuff I gleaned from reading the pages of the Tallahassee Democrat, which I was doing as part of my research for Evil at Lake Seminole. And so I knew just a little bit about this law professor who was killed, and there was a suspicion that maybe his wife's family was involved, and I knew that there had been a trial, and that's literally all I knew.And then mysteriously within a couple of days of speaking with Cheryl and her encouraging me to write this story, on my DVR—we have Direct TV—on my DVR in my saved shows, a Dateline appeared, a Dateline about the Dan Markel murder. I don't know how it got there to this day, but I was like, okay, this is a sign, this is a sign from God. I'm going to watch the Dateline episode.I watched it, and I was mesmerized. And the thing that led me in the next direction was one of the talking heads, a guy named Matt Shaer. Matt did a podcast, which a lot of your listeners probably have listened to, called Over My Dead Body—sort of like the Serial podcast that is now getting a lot of attention because the person who was convicted of that crime in Serial has just been exonerated, released from jail after nearly 20 years. Well, this podcast sounded a whole lot like it had the production value of Serial, Over My Dead Body, and I listened to all eight episodes, and I was absolutely at that point convinced this was a book that I was meant to write.And so I started, and I reached out to Matt Shaer to get some assistance, I reached out to you because you were also interviewed in that podcast, and then I literally just started figuring out who was involved, sending emails. I made a visit to Tallahassee. I met with Dan Markel's next-door neighbor, Jim Geiger, who was the person who found him slumped over behind the steering wheel of his Honda Accord, the fateful morning of July 18th, 2014. I started realizing the enormity of Dan's circle of friends, and I basically had to start picking and choosing who I was going to talk to because there were far too many to interview. I wound up interviewing probably three dozen or so of Dan's friends, and then all of the lawyers involved in the case, and on and on and on.DL: One thing people will be curious about is did you reach out to or hear from Wendi Adelson, Dan's ex-wife—who some have suspected of involvement in the murder, other people have disagreed—but did you ever hear from her?SE: Yes, I did. So I actually have [these emails] in front of me, because I want to get it exactly accurate. At some point I wanted to reach out to Wendi's circle of friends, which was a lot smaller [than Dan's], and easily identify who the people were who I needed to talk to. The first person I reached out to is a woman named Jane McPherson, who was a Ph.D. candidate in the school of social work at Florida State. Why did I want to talk to her? She actually wound up in the interrogation room with Wendi the day Dan was shot, and she was there for about half an hour, and some of what happened during the time she was there was very significant, so I wanted to talk with her.I also wanted to talk with somebody who was a professor on the main campus named Daniel Sack. Ironically, Daniel Sack became Wendi's boyfriend not long after she broke up with Dan Markel—so the two Dans. And so I reached out to both Daniel Sack, who by that point was a professor in Massachusetts, and Jane McPherson, who I think at that point was a professor in Georgia, because their emails were easily accessible from their faculty websites.I began both emails—and this is significant—“My apology for this intrusion.” Each of the emails I started that way, and I explained who I was, explained I was working on a book about Dan Markel. I didn't hear from either of them. This was March 20th, 2021, it was a Saturday.So that Monday morning, at 10:53 a.m., I had this surprise email in my inbox, and all I could see in my inbox was only the name of the person sending me the email and the subject line, I saw the name was Wendi Adelson and the subject line was “Central character.” And it began, “Dear Steve,” and here are the magic words: “My apology for the intrusion”—which right away I found to be somewhat passive-aggressive.It's quite clear she was literally stealing my words that I used in the emails to her friends, Jane McPherson and Daniel Sack. She continued, “My apology for the intrusion, but my friends”—and I knew who they were—“have contacted me about your interview requests. As a central character in your writing, I am curious why you haven't contacted me. Most sincerely, Wendi.” As if we were on a first-name basis.I had never had any communications with her up until that point, and the reason I didn't is I knew full well she wasn't going to talk to me. She is implicated, certainly her family is implicated, in the murder of Dan Markel. There's no way she's going to talk to me. So I didn't reach out to her, and I literally said in response to her email, calling her bluff—and I knew it was a bluff—I said, “I didn't think you would talk to me, but if you are interested in talking to me, of course I would love to talk to you, and I won't talk with you about anything related to the murder. I'm interested in your background. I'm interested in growing up in Coral Springs, the relationship you had with your brothers. I'm interested in your appearance on The Weakest Link. So if you're interested in talking to about those things, by all means, let's chat.”And not surprisingly, I never heard another word from Wendi Adelson. But for some reason I decided, you know what? I'm going to reach out to her again. And I did in October, so some seven months had passed since my interaction with Wendi that she instigated, I didn't instigate, and I decided to push her a little bit and said, you know, I hadn't heard from her and I was wondering if she had actually gotten my email. And she responded within 15 minutes, and within 15 minutes she said, “Steve, you do not have my consent to use my identity and trauma for your own profit. Best, Wendi.”DL: “Best.” And I totally agree with you about the wording, the replication of “apologies for the intrusion.” She's trolling you. She's saying, I've got your number, and the people you're reaching out to, they're loyal to me, and I know what you're doing. She's yanking your chain, isn't she?SE: Yes. And if you pay close attention to her testimony in both trials [of Katie Magbanua], she does that quite a bit. She has little words and little phrases that just, you know, they're needling. She has this habit of needling.In talking with people who were mutual friends of Dan and Wendi's, that's what they said about her, is that she would needle them about little things. Like one of Dan's friends was a little bit short, and she would needle him about his height—not really appropriate, but as her way of one-upping him, she would bring up his height. And she was friends with him.I don't think she considers me a friend, and she was doing more than needling me. She was effing with me, in my view, with her emails and reaching out and calling herself the “central character.”Yes, she is a central character in my book. There's tons of information about Wendi Adelson in my book that I learned from all kinds of sources, not the least of which is Wendi's own writing, Wendi's own CV, which I was able to find, and then friends of Wendi's that I was able to talk with. So you'll learn a whole lot about Wendi Adelson, and you'll learn a whole lot about growing up Adelson in this book.DL: I thought her veiled threat was really a bit disingenuous because she's a smart lawyer, she knows you're a smart lawyer, she knows that this story is in the public domain, she knows the laws about privacy and defamation, and so the notion that you had to get her consent to write about something that is already out there—as long as you're writing stuff that is true, and your work is very heavily researched—that struck me as a bit rich.SE: Yeah, but it tells you a lot about Wendi Adelson, that it doesn't matter that I would've recognized right away that her threat meant nothing—which of course I did, I chuckled when I read it and then reread it to my wife and reread to all kinds of other people who also chuckled—that of course she knew that I didn't need her permission in order to write about her, as zillions of other publications have. I'm very careful and very diligent, and I'm confident that everything that I've said in this book is true and well-researchedDL: It's interesting—I will say also, just as a testament to the book, I think that the biographical chapter of Wendi is very fair and does not paint some negative or nasty picture. It's not a hatchet job. I think that you are trying to get inside her world, just as in the earlier biographical chapter about Dan, you tried to get inside his world. I think that later things develop, and we learn more about members of her family who are, shall we say, problematic. But I thought your chapter was very fair. I did not think you were out to get her or something.SE: If Wendi Adelson was a hideous, despicable monster, why would Dan Markel have fallen in love with her? Why would Dan Markel have married her and had two kids with her and have been beside himself with grief when she left? The notion that she's this horrible, despicable person, or this completely unintelligent person, doesn't make any sense. You have to understand why Dan was so head-over-heels in love with her in order to understand this story.This story is a love story about the two of them. And when that love fell apart, it's a story about what happens from there and why this becomes not just Wendi's mission, but her parents' mission, and her brother's mission, to do something about the fact that she lives seven hours apart from where she really wants to be and where they want her to be.That's what this story's really about. As a family-law attorney, we call that relocation. And Wendi tried her very best, mostly at the urging of her family, to relocate with the children to South Florida, so that they would have more access to both Wendi and the boys. And she failed. And the question then became, well, what now?Now we know the answer. Extreme Punishment is all about the answer, but you have to know the antecedents. You have to know the seeds of what happened, both in terms of the good and the relationship that was good for a long time between Dan and Wendi, and then how that relationship soured, and why it soured, and why the in-laws started getting involved.And understanding about Rob Adelson, Wendi's older brother, and how his parents got involved in his relationship, is a really telling part of this picture about how those parents of the Adelson children couldn't help themselves from being involved and completely overly involved in what was going on in their children's love lives.DL: One thing I'm curious about… when I talk about this case to people, they say, “Well, this sounds”—again, I've used this term multiple times in our conversation, but—“this sounds insane.” This is a family of well-to-do dentists, they're well-educated and they have significant assets and real estate investments, and they have lot to lose. And sure, divorces and custody battles and relocation battles can get acrimonious, but would a family that is this well-established and well-respected and well-to-do, would they really hire hit men to take out their former son-in-law? I think your book does a brilliant job of explaining how things came to that point, but can you give a short overview just to anyone who says, “I can't even believe this story, Steve, you're pulling my leg. This is ridiculous.” How did it come to this?SE: Well, the most telling pieces of evidence, if you're trying to follow the line from, okay, it's a simple divorce, and Dan and Wendi are going their own separate ways, and they're trying to figure out what to do with the boys and custody and all of that, the line from there to two bullets in Dan's head, you can't get there without really understanding four emails that were sent from Donna Adelson to Wendi Adelson, both before and after the relocation battle.[They make] very clear that Donna believed that there was no limit to what needed to be done in order to make sure that Wendi was able to move to South Florida with those boys—convert the kids to Catholicism, put them in church, have a Christian tutor, teach them about Jesus, make your Facebook photo, Wendi, a picture of the boys and you in front of a church. The goal was to get into Dan's head and make him believe these boys were going to be taken away from him one way or another. And his best bet was to do it amicably and peacefully by allowing them to relocate to South Florida, and he could deal with it then. There were places he could go there. He had a great uncle who lived there. He could stay with him. And Dan actually gave a little bit of thought to that from friends I talked to. Dan didn't consider that completely out of the question. But ultimately he decided this is my life, I've built a life here in Tallahassee. I like my life here in Tallahassee. Wendi actually has a good life here in Tallahassee. She's also on the Florida State faculty, albeit as a clinical faculty member. There's nothing wrong with both of us living here and raising these boys together. And I want to do that in a loving way, and my goal is to do that with Wendi and co-parenting with her.But the Adelsons didn't see it that way. The Adelsons saw Dan standing in the way of what they wanted. They were willing to spend a million dollars to bribe him to bring the boys to South Florida. And what's notable is that every time they were trying to do these despicable things, it was Wendi who had to play this role, and Donna told her, “You need to do this great acting job. You're a great actress when you want to be, you need to do this for us. It's going to be best for you. It's going to be best for the kids. Put on the best acting job of your life, sweetheart.”And what's notable is Wendi refused. She didn't do that. She wouldn't go along with the bribe. She wouldn't do her acting job. She lost the relocation battle. And now you're getting closer from just a simple divorce to two bullets in the head of the person standing in the way of the relocation.DL: She lost the relocation battle. The judge denied her motion to move six, seven hours closer to family. The other ploys that were suggested by Donna, [Wendi] didn't attempt or they didn't work. And so I think then you do get a little bit closer. You can kind of see how it got to this situation.SE: And let me add one more thing. Dan was doing his own legal writing. He had two different lawyers, and they literally were signing their names to the briefs that he was preparing. In family law—and I can say this because I'm a family law attorney—you don't write briefs to judges that have 47 footnotes that basically are half of each page, or dense footnotes underneath the line, which is what of course you do in law review articles. But that's the way these briefs were written to this family court judge who had, by the way, just recently been appointed as a family court judge.[Dan] was writing these vicious, scathing attacks on Wendi and on Donna and Harvey, telling the judge that the parents were footing the bill [for the litigation], they were interfering, and telling [the judge] that Wendi was being dishonest, that in fact she should be sanctioned for all of her dishonesty. He came up with every adjective in the book to describe her and her lawyer, even at one point getting the point of suggesting to his friends that he was going to seek to have them disbarred.So all of these things he was saying about the Adelson family, not surprisingly, the Adelson family clearly took very personally. And then the last straw, which has been widely reported, is that in his final motion before he was killed, Dan asked the judge to take away visitation between Donna and her grandchildren, and that the only visitation she should be permitted to have would be supervised.Wendi testified at both trials [of Katie Magbanua] that nobody took that [threat of taking away Donna's visitation] very seriously. That is impossible for me to believe—having read Donna's attacks on Dan, and also knowing that Donna was losing at every turn, lost the relocation battle, there was a battle over whether Wendi would have a second deposition taken, she lost that battle—Donna was watching, and she was pissed at Wendi's lawyers for not doing a better job. So the notion that Donna Adelson was not concerned about this motion that would result in restricting her access to the grandchildren I find completely farfetched. And that was the last thing that was on the table and never got resolved because, again, two bullets wound up in Dan Markel's head and he was killed.DL: A lot of us who knew Dan, who were his friends, often wonder what could have averted this, or what [other] paths could have been taken. For example, you talk about how Dan came close to getting positions at other universities, including maybe universities closer to Wendi's family, and they didn't work out. And I think that'll be of interest to a lot of my listeners who are legal academics. You also talk about how this battle was litigated. Do you think that if he had not taken such a scorched-earth approach in the divorce or relocation litigation, maybe this wouldn't have happened? And again, I'm not victim blaming—I'm trying to figure out [if] there were off-ramps to avoid this tragedy, maybe in just different worlds.SE: Well, certainly if things had worked out differently. In his first year teaching at Florida State, Dan was offered a position at the University of Miami Law School and wound up teaching there in a look-see visitor position in the fall of 2006. By a whisker-thin vote against him, he was denied a position on the permanent faculty. It's interesting, Wendi had a full-year position there. She stayed. Dan went back to Tallahassee to teach at Florida State, licking his wounds and moving on, not having gotten that job. And the person that I spoke to at the University of Miami and remembers that vote vividly, he wakes up at night in a cold sweat because he knows that had that vote gone differently, this awful tragedy probably never would've happened because those grandchildren would've grown up within an hour's drive of Donna and Harvey Adelson. But because they were seven hours away, that was a game changer.And Donna—I haven't even mentioned this—Donna was driving up after Dan and Wendi broke apart. Donna was driving up, sometimes with Harvey, sometimes on her own, every other weekend. Every time Wendi had the kids, Donna was there. So she was living basically both in Tallahassee and in South Florida, and yet she was the office manager for the dental practice, and Charlie now owned the dental practice, and she didn't think that was fair, and she wrote in her emails that she wanted Wendi's lawyer to say how unfair it was that Donna had to drive up and Harvey had to come, and that the family had to spend all this time in Tallahassee when the easy solution was just to move the children down to where their loving family was. So that was one of the things that could have happened differently.Dan had three offers, actually, during the first five years he was at Tallahassee. He had three different offers. Take it back four years—he was there for four years, and within those first four years he had three different offers: one at the Washington University in St. Louis, one at Miami, and one at the University of Houston.Washington University in St. Louis wound up revoking his offer, and that story is told in the book. University of Houston occurred while Wendi was pregnant with Benjamin, and a very pregnant Wendi got on the plane with Dan to explore the University of Houston. Wendi actually described the position she was offered in the immigration law clinic as her dream job, but the timing just wasn't right.So there are all kinds of things that could have transpired differently. But certainly Dan getting under the Adelsons' skin—he basically was getting almost as vitriolic in his writing in those legal briefs and legal filings as Donna had been in her emails to Wendi—the acrimony was reaching a level that would've, I think, had a lot of people very upset on both sides. But no one could have predicted that this was how it was going to end.DL: No. Absolutely. Absolutely. And again, I think in some ways this was a story, terrible as it is, that you were just born to write, having been a matrimonial lawyer, having been a law professor, having been the author of two prior true crime books, one of them set in Tallahassee, the Mike Williams story. So again, I urge readers to check it out.SE: Yeah. To any of your listeners who have ever been to the “Meat Market” [academic job fair], I'm a three-time veteran myself. I describe the Meat Market in all of its gory detail. And what most people would not even suspect is that Dan was an abject failure at his first Meat Market. He had over two dozen interviews lined up and literally struck out, got nothing. And he learned about himself a lot through that process. And the second time he went through the Meat Market, he actually had a callback interview at Berkeley and came close to getting a teaching position at Berkeley.So there's a lot in this book about Dan. Dan had many facets to him, some weaknesses, and I don't try and hide Dan's weaknesses. Dan was well aware of his weaknesses and relied on Wendi as his wife to help him through some of his own social quirks—and Wendi did for a while. But that was one of the thingsthat chafed at her, along with how Jewish Dan was compared to the way she was brought up, and many other things. It got to the point where it was clear this marriage was not going to work, and then the thing in the divorce that really set the tone was they had very different ideas, not only about how to be married, but how to be divorced.Dan felt that the lines between them should be as blurred as possible. Dan felt that the more he was able to see the kids during Wendi's time, the more she was able to see the kids during his time, the more contact that they had with each other, the better off it would be for the kids. And Wendi didn't want that more than she wanted to be hit by a speeding train. She wanted nothing to do with Dan Markel. She realized she had to have something to do with him because they were raising their kids together. But the idea he had, the concept he had about what divorce should look like, could not have been more diametrically opposite as to what she thought divorce should look like. And that was one of the things that was also causing heightened acrimony between the Adelson family and Dan.DL: You have such incredible details in the book that capture these things. Take the scene where she is thinking of taking the kids to Whole Foods and it's during her time, and then she sees Dan inside and then she says, oh, I don't want to go in there because then we're going to see him and then he's going to want to talk, and then it's going to be like our shared time, and she goes somewhere else.SE: That was two days before he was shot. That was the Wednesday before the Friday of the shooting.DL: It's just amazing. One thing I'm curious about—and you do this so well in your other books too—you do all this research, but then what I love really about the writing, and I guess it's also true of the genre of true crime, is it's told in a narrative nonfiction way. It's told as if we are inside the heads of these protagonists. Is that difficult? And at times, do you find yourself having to take some poetic license to imagine what was going through people's heads? I remember you talk about Wendi putting her hair in a messy bun. And again, I know you can look at these things, you can look at the interview footage from her police station interview, and you can see her hair or what have you. But how do you do this? I think it's amazing.SE: There is definitely creative license that has to be taken to fill in very small, inconsequential gaps where I, as the writer, clearly don't have access to what was happening in Wendi's home the morning that Dan was shot. I know what she described in her interview with the police investigator, but I have to obviously fill in those gaps a little bit. So I do take creative license with very small things like that. And to the extent that there's dialogue that happens that there's no recording of, there's no transcript of—for instance, when Wendi called Dan when he was up in New York at a colloquium and she said, I'm leaving you, the exact words that were said, there's no written recording of that. So I'm obviously ad libbing the exact words that they said to one another at the time before Dan got on a plane and flew back to Tallahassee. So little things like that. As a writer, I do have creative license to manufacture. But important facts and things about people that are documented, I have to get those things right, and I work very, very hard, I kill myself trying to make sure I am getting those things right.DL: And I know it took you a long time to write and you interviewed 50-plus people for it. How long did it take you from when you started your research to the completion of your manuscript, roughly?SE: There was a little bit of waiting because I was waiting on the second trial and then I got a gift from God when they decided to indict and arrest Charlie Adelson. And I know I got the facts surrounding his arrest right, because I worked very hard to get the right interviews with the right people. That's an interesting story of itself, the arrest of Charlie Adelson. So there was a little bit of a gap there while I was waiting for that trial to occur. And then there was obviously Charlie's arrest. But I finished writing at the end of June, and I had started writing in December of the prior year. So it was a full 18, 19 months of writing.DL: It's interesting, the scene of Charlie [getting arrested] in his underwear, stoned probably, is… people just need to read it. But let me ask you this. I heard about this in a different podcast, your interview with Judy the YouTube Lawyer, and I thought it was a really interesting point you made. The first trial for Katie Magbanua, the go-between connecting the Adelsons and the hitmen, ended in a mistrial. And for those of us who've been following this case, it really saddened us and angered us to see how that first trial shook out. But can you explain how this might, totally counterintuitively, have been a good thing?SE: It was a blessing in disguise, as it turned out. So the juror who actually hung the jury, I met with that juror in person in Tallahassee and had an extensive interview. The juror was unabashedly, basically nullifying the judge's instructions, deciding that these two children—not the Dan Markel and Wendi Adelson children, but the children of the hitman, Sigfredo Garcia, and Katie Magbanua, the go-between between the Adelson family and the hitman—that those children shouldn't grow up without two parents. And so although she agreed to convict one, Sigfredo Garcia, she wouldn't agree to convict the other. And that's what hung the jury. And that story is told in the book, in the chapter called Civic Duty.But as it turns out, between that and Covid, that bought the State Attorney's Office a couple of years to try and figure out how to put on a better case. You've been a prosecutor, I'm sure you've been part of mistrials before, and as a prosecutor, you want to learn from your mistakes and do better the next time and put on a better case.The one thing in the first trial that left the prosecution unable to put on the case that they wanted to was not being able to use the Dolce Vita video and audio to show that Charlie Adelson and Katie Magbanua, two years after the murder, were basically discussing what had happened in the murder and how to deal with the fact that this perceived gang member was shaking Donna Adelson down as part of the so-called “bump” [undercover operation], and how to deal with that.There was a lot of valuable information in that dialogue, the State Attorney's Office believed, but it was a noisy Italian restaurant, and if they were going to play it for the jury, the jury wasn't going to be able to make out a thing. So they got the lead FBI agent to literally, on his own, over the course of a hundred hours, prepare a transcript by listening with noise-canceling headphones and using some proprietary FBI software.And lo and behold, he comes up with this great transcript, and the judge in the first trial, Judge James Hankinson, says no, you can't give the jury that transcript, because that's basically taking the FBI agent's own interpretation of what these people are saying, and the jury's just going to substitute that for the voices that they're hearing in the actual recording. So they put on one minute basically of the audio of the meeting in Dolce Vita between Katie Magbanua and Charlie Adelson, just to show the jury we don't really have anything useful here.In between the two trials, with all this extra time afforded by Covid, they reached out to several different audio forensics experts and eventually landed one in South Carolina named Keith McElveen, who had spent about 10 years working for the CIA dealing with this whole issue of how to hear individual voices in noisy, what he calls “cocktail party,” environments. And he came up with 12 different patents for proprietary software, and he was able to get a fairly clear recording for 41 minutes. He missed the first 25 or so minutes of the Dolce meeting between Katie Magbanua and Charlie Adelson, but the last 41 minutes he got pretty darn well, especially what Charlie was saying, and it was very clear they were talking about the murder and at one point—this is why Charlie was arrested at one point—Charlie literally says, “Why didn't they know it was me? Why didn't they know it was me?” And at another point he's talking about the money drop, and he asked Katie, “When everyone was there the next day, did anybody take any money? I mean, it's not like you're driving around in a Bentley, you know, riding around in a mega yacht on the seas.”And there were many other things. I actually have an entire chapter toward the end of the book that is devoted solely to how incriminating Charlie Adelson is in that Dolce Vita record—Katie not as much, because her voice is much softer, and you can't hear a lot of what she's saying.Why the Dolce Vita audio was so effective for the prosecution at the [second Magbanua] trial was because Katie didn't do anything like run away or say “what the hell are you talking about” or “I don't want to be involved in this.” She participated in this conversation, she chimed in, and you can hear her chiming in several times, basically accepting all of the premises in Charlie's rambling through the course of 41 minutes, and it was used extremely effectively during Sarah Kathryn Dugan's cross-examination of Katherine Magbanua on the witness stand. If anything, that cross-examination is what sealed Katie's fate with the second jury who unanimously found her guilty.DL: And then, of course, that Dolce Vita enhanced recording was used as the basis for arresting Charlie….SE: Absolutely.DL: …. which I know Georgia Cappleman in the state prosecutor's office had been resisting for a while because, understandably, they wanted to take their one best shot at Charlie if they were going to go after him.SE: And they wanted Katie to flip. They thought all that time that Katie… you know, who's going to spend six years in jail, when they have information that can land a much bigger fish with the prosecutors? Surely at some point they thought she's going to flip. But after six years she never did. And now she's convicted and sentenced to life in prison. At this point, she's made some horrible miscalculations. Maybe she believed her lawyers were so good, they were going to get her off. I don't know.DL: So you don't really have a theory on what I view as one of the huge questions to this case: why the heck didn't she cooperate? I know Georgia Cappleman at one point said [Katie] holds the keys to her own cell, or something along those lines. And yet here we are. She's been convicted. She's looking at life in prison. She has two kids. Her husband, or the father of her children, is also looking at life in prison. And yet she still has not said anything, right?SE: I think that the operative word there is “still.” So I posit at the very end of the book that it's not too late, and I spent some time on the phone with some big wigs, some stalwarts in the Florida criminal bar, to confirm that it is never too late for someone in their position, even after they've gotten a mandatory sentence of life in prison, which first-degree murder is in Florida, that there are ways around that mandatory life-in-prison sentence, and if they wanted to deliver the goods, it's never too late for them to approach the State Attorney's Office. And certainly somebody like Georgia Cappleman and Jack Campbell, the elected State Attorney, would be interested in hearing from Katherine Magbanua about all the stuff that they've been waiting for her for six years to tell them.What kind of deal she can get now, post-conviction, post-sentence, would certainly be a very different deal than what she could have gotten back then. And even Sigfredo Garcia, you wouldn't think that he's got something valuable to offer. But the reality is that Luis Rivera is not a terribly good witness after having already testified about a dozen times now. There are so many inconsistencies in his testimony. Sigfredo Garcia has never testified, so even if he just repeated the same sort of things that Luis Rivera has said at two different trials, he would be a much cleaner witness than Luis Rivera. So there probably is a deal there even for him, even if he can't point directly at Charlie Adelson.The obvious reason why he didn't come forward before Katie Magbanua's second trial was because anything he would've said would've implicated her. She's the mother of his children. She's the love of his life. It makes sense that he was never going to throw her under the bus. And even Katie during the first trial wouldn't let her lawyers say horrible things about Garcia. They had permission in the second trial to do that because he was already convicted and sentenced to life. And they did. They tried to make it seem like this was a direct conspiracy between Charlie and Garcia—they're the bad people, Katie knew nothing. And that never made any sense because the very first thing Sigfredo Garcia would've done upon his arrest, if in fact he had the goods on Charlie Adelson, is he would've run to the State Attorney's Office just like Luis Rivera did.And even though he didn't have the goods on anybody named Adelson, if Sigfredo Garcia had the goods on Charlie Adelson, especially after Katie Magbanua was arrested, if she knew nothing about it, he would've sprinted with his lawyers by his side to the State Attorney's Office to make a deal, and he never did. Because he didn't know they walled Charlie and the Adelsons off through Katherine Magbanua. That was her whole point. The whole point of Katie being involved was to wall the killers off from the people hiring them.DL: So you mentioned it's never too late. People are now looking at Charlie Adelson. He's sitting in jail. His motion for bail after the so-called Arthur hearing under Florida law was denied. He's looking at a trial early next year. Do you think he could cut some kind of deal? Any predictions about what will happen next if he goes to trial? Does he have any viable defense, especially in the wake of the enhanced Dolce Vita recording?SE: Well, according to Daniel Rashbaum, his attorney, his saying five or six times during the enhanced recording “and I had nothing to do with this”—that's his defense. The fact that he fit those words into that conversation, even though there are about 45 incriminating things that he said that belie the notion, such as “why didn't they know it was me”—how do you square those two together? Daniel Rashbaum has his work cut out for him.And besides that, Charlie Adelson is a very unlikable guy. If he takes the witness stand, the notion that he's going to charm this jury, I mean, they're going to hear all of these conversations that he's had with his mother, with Katie Magbanua, and they paint him in a horrible, horrible light, as does the Dolce Vita recording. So the notion that he's going to charm this jury into believing that he's an innocent victim or that he was only trying to hire these hit men not to kill Dan Markel, but just to scare him and intimidate him, none of that makes any sense. He really has his work cut out.That said, would the State Attorney's Office make some kind of a deal with him so they didn't have to try this [case]? We're just talking about the number of years, and would he accept 30 years instead of life? Would they do that? That's a possible deal that could get done. As you know, as a former prosecutor, most cases end in a plea bargain, not because the person being convicted is ratting somebody else out, but just because the most economically efficient thing for a prosecutor to do is to see if there's not a way to get somebody to agree they did the crime and accept a lesser sentence than their maximum sentence.So that's always possible. There are people speculating, you know, is he going to give up his sister? Is he going to give up his mother, his father, in exchange for his own freedom? A, it's hard to believe that anything like that happens, but B, would that even be something that the State Attorney's Office would consider? You're the person who paid a hundred thousand dollars to get this done. You're the person who had the relationship with Katie Magbanua. The fact that you might also be able to give us your mother or your father or your sister—that's not going to get you a better slice of bread. So at the end of the day, if Charlie's making a deal, he's making a deal to get a lesser sentence, not because he's going to give up one of his family members. And the likelihood of him making a deal increases exponentially if Katie Magbanua or even Sigfredo Garcia flips and turns state's evidence.DL: Looking at his family members, I agree with you. I don't think that [the government] would give him a good deal just because he can give up somebody else in his family. But do you think that the authorities will eventually move against Donna, who the evidence strongly suggests was involved?SE: If you remember back to the time that there was a turf war between the Tallahassee Police Department and the State Attorney's Office, even though they had drafted a probable cause affidavit and leaked it only for Charlie, that affidavit points the finger at Donna every bit as much as it points the finger at Charlie.And remember, Charlie's signature isn't on any important piece of evidence in this case. Donna's signature is on 44 pieces of evidence, the checks that were written to Katie Magbanua to keep her quiet from literally just after the murder happens until just before Sigfredo Garcia is arrested. And those checks stop the instant Sigfredo Garcia is arrested, and Donna is the one who stroked every single one of those checks, and there's no dispute. Both trials made clear that Katie didn't work for the Adelson Institute. There's no reason the Adelson Institute would've been paying her, but Donna was in on that.And then if you watch what happens in the bump and Donna's reaction to that, and all of the communications that Donna has with Charlie, and then Donna's communication even with the undercover agent who orchestrated the bump as she speaks to him for eight minutes, even that is quite entertaining, hearing Donna protest that she didn't know anything at all about what happened to Dan Markel and is as torn up about it as anyone. So yeah, there's tons of evidence against Donna and the very first thing she says after the bump to Charlie, “who does it involve,” he asks her, “who does it involve”? And she says, twice, “the two of us.” And then she says, “I think you know what I'm talking about.”DL: Exactly. SE: Those are incredibly incriminating words. And then you add that to the other evidence. You take the emails that she wrote, all of the checks that were written. I would hate to be Donna Adelson's defense lawyer as well.The only thing she has going for her is that she's in her seventies and she's not the most attractive target because she's got some sympathy on her side because she's in her seventies, she's a grandmother. But when you think about the role that she has played, she was the one who selected Danny for Wendi off of JDate. She was there at the beginning, and the evidence seems to suggest very strongly she was the one who decided not only that it was time for Wendi to leave him, but that it was time for his place in Ben and Lincoln's life to end as well, because Wendi needed to come home with the boys. And Donna Adelson was there literally every step of the way. And if you're the State Attorney's Office, you have to have her within your sights because of the very significant role she played in Dan Markel being part of this tragedy.DL: Absolutely. I totally agree with you.I'm so grateful to you, Steve, for taking the time and for writing this remarkable book, which as I say in the foreword is going to be the definitive account of this tragic event and its aftermath. So again, thank you for devoting so much time and energy to giving people an idea of who Dan was and telling the world about this crime and the quest to bring folks to justice. I believe this would've been, this month, Dan's 50th birthday?SE: The book was released on October 9th, and it was released on that day to be a further tribute to the late Dan Markel—that would've been his 50th birthday. Yes, and we are speaking, I don't know when this is going to drop, but we are speaking on Ruth Markel's birthday, so happy birthday to Ruth. She has her own book out, The Unveiling, and it comes straight from her heart, everything she's been through since that awful day in July of 2014.I've gotten to know her very well. She's an incredible human being. Two of my favorite people in the world now are Cheryl Williams and Ruth Markel, and I actually connected them at one point because they have so much in common. They've lived through so many similar things, and they're both incredible, incredible women.And that's one of the things that I love about true crime, is that you learn about just incredibly tenacious human beings who care so much about justice. And Ruth and Phil and Shelly [Markel] are not done getting the justice that they so richly deserve. Stay tuned. There's a lot more to be written even after folks turn the last page of my book.DL: That's an excellent note to end on. I agree with you that Ruth Markel is amazing and I urge people to check out her book, The Unveiling, just to see what she has endured and how she has tried to turn it into something for good, to protect the rights of grandparents who wind up in horrific situations like the one that she's faced. Again, it is a testament to the human spirit.So again, Steve, thank you for writing the book. Thank you for joining me, and we will continue to hope and pray for complete justice in the case of Dan Markel.SE: Thank you, David. Thank you for having me on. I really, really appreciate it.DL: Thanks again to Steve for joining me. As I wrote in the foreword to Extreme Punishment, “I wish nobody had to tell this tale. But since it is being told—and should be told, to honor Dan's legacy—I am thankful to Steve for doing so with such thoughtfulness, understanding, and skill.”As always, thanks to Tommy Harron, my sound engineer here at Original Jurisdiction, and thanks to you, my listeners and readers, for tuning in. If you'd like to connect with me, you can email me at davidlat@substack.com, and you can find me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, at davidlat, and on Instagram, at davidbenjaminlat. If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate, review, and subscribe to Original Jurisdiction. Since this podcast is new, please help spread the word by telling your friends about it. And if you might be interested in sponsorship opportunities for either the podcast or the newsletter, please reach out to me.Please subscribe to the Original Jurisdiction newsletter if you don't already, over at davidlat.substack.com. This podcast is free, as is most of the newsletter content, but it is made possible by your paid subscriptions to the newsletter.The next episode of the Original Jurisdiction podcast should appear two weeks from now, on or about Wednesday, November 2. Until then, may your thinking be original and your jurisdiction free of defects.Thanks for reading Original Jurisdiction, and thanks to my paid subscribers for making this publication possible. Subscribers get (1) access to Judicial Notice, my time-saving weekly roundup of the most notable news in the legal world; (2) additional stories reserved for paid subscribers; and (3) the ability to comment on posts. You can email me at davidlat@substack.com with questions or comments, and you can share this post or subscribe using the buttons below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit davidlat.substack.com/subscribe
Link from the show:The Unveiling: A Mother's Reflection on Murder, Grief, and Trial LifeConnect with RuthJustice For Dan PostsSubscribe to the newsletterAbout my guest:Ruth Markel is a noted author, public speaker, and the president of RNM Enterprises, a leading management consulting firm. She has worked in senior management positions in both private and public sectors for the past forty years.Ruth has lectured on issues concerning negotiation and advancement in organizations at the University of Toronto, the London Business School, and Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University)Due to the circumstances surrounding the murder of Ruth's son Dan Markel, she has appeared on 20/20 ABC, Inside Edition, and Dateline NBC, and participated in the hit podcast Over My Dead Body, by Wondery.In 2016, Ruth was cut-off from any contact with her grandsons. With support from Dan's friends and extended networks, Ruth used advocacy to inspire the Florida State Legislature to pass a grandparent visitation bill known as The Markel Act.The bill opens a legal path for grandparents in the event a surviving parent is found criminally and/or civilly responsible for the death of the other parent while preserving the surviving parent's rights.Ruth hopes to use her platform and the media coverage that is inevitable around the trial and the publicity of Dan's case to make sense of, provide consolation and counsel for a horrific and powerlessness situation. And that her story will help others through the experiences of their grief from murders, victims of violence and grandparent alienation. Get full access to Dispatches from the War Room at dispatchesfromthewarroom.substack.com/subscribe
In this week's episode, Bob interviews author and public speaker, Ruth Markel. Ruth is the mother of Dan Markel, who was shot to death in his driveway in 2014. Bob asks Ruth about her book, “The Unveiling,” in which Ruth describes her experiences after her son's death and her work to help pass The Markel Act. “The Unveiling” was published on September 20, 2022 by Post Hill Press.
Ruth Markel joins us once again to discuss grandparents rights, fittingly, on #GrandparentsDay ... Her book, "The Unveiling: A Mother's Reflection On Murder, Grief, and Trial Life" is available later this month. Ruth is joined by Sarah Franco, the founding CEO of JAFCO, Jewish Adoption and Family Care Options. #DanMarkelAct #justicefordanmarkel
One of Florida's most high profile cases. The 2014 murder of Canadian law professor Dan Markel has shocked and dismayed two nations. Ruth Markel shares her experience of the loss of her son and her new book The Unveiling. The case has had some significant updates in 2022 and we will share those with you today.Support the show: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/amillionotw https://www.taylortollerfund.org/Music Credits: Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/anuch/a-hero-is-born License code: 50H8C3N03M3JDWTEWoman On Her Path "Woman on Her Path" is an opportunity to learn and be inspired to follow your own path...Listen on: Apple Podcasts SpotifySupport the show
It's been a minute, again, after a chaotic AF month for Emmy with family drama, back-to-back travel, and COVID...womp womp. But we're back! With a long list of updates in some of the biggest true crime cases of the moment, including movement in the trial of Paul and Ruben Flores, finally! We have a sentencing date for Katherine Magbanua, and a new tell-all book by Dan Markel's mother. Are we getting closer to answers, finally, about Adnan Syed from the hit podcast serial? It sounds like it! There's also some major movement in the INSANE case of Alec Murdaugh, former SC attorney - truly one of the craziest cases you've ever heard of. Listen in and get updated on the world of true crime as of late.Sources:Your Own Backyard with trial updatesGhislaine Maxwell gets her sentence Pre-order Ruth Markel's tell-all bookCould we finally get answers about Adnan Syed and who killed Hae Min Lee?Baltimore is getting a new state attorneyAlex Murdaugh pleads not guiltyMisconduct allegations against Billy JensenI'll be Gone in the Dark documentaryVictoria's Secret Hulu documentaryThe Good Nurse
In this incredibly special episode, Dan Markel's mother, Ruth, joins us for a candid interview about her son's high-profile murder. Ruth opens up about her soon-to-be-released book: The Unveiling: A M
Our guests today include: Ruth Markel, Tamara Demko, and Jeremy Cohen. Follow the show on Twitter @TMSPrestonScott. Check out Preston's latest blog by going to wflafm.com/preston. Listen live to Preston from 6 – 9 a.m. ET and 5 – 8 a.m. CT!WFLA Tallahassee Live stream: https://ihr.fm/3huZWYeWFLA Panama City Live stream: https://ihr.fm/34oufeRFollow WFLA Tallahassee on Twitter @WFLAFM and WFLA Panama City @wflapanamacity and like us on Facebook at @wflafm and @WFLAPanamaCity.
Eight years ago this week, Dan Markel was killed in his car as he was pulling into his driveway in Tallahassee, Florida. Markel, 41, was a well-regarded professor whose then-recent divorce lies at the centre of this whole saga: his ex-wife wanted to move their two sons to Miami, but the courts sided with Markel. Days after his murder, the children were moved. A messy, complex series of arrests and court cases unfolded, in which the arrested murderers and conspirators confessed to receiving $100,000 to perform the job on behalf of Markel's former in-laws. Despite this, that family has always denied any involvement. The process has been a brutal experience for Markel's parents, Ruth and Phil. The Toronto residents have struggled with the death of their son, a drawn-out legal battle and the inability to see their own grandchildren. But they haven't been sitting still. Later this year, Simon and Schuster will be publishing Ruth Markel's book, The Unveiling, which documents her struggle and grief, as well as her fights—both political and legal—to win some kind of justice for her son. Ruth joins today to discuss the last eight years and give a glimpse into her new book. What we talked about: Read about Dan Markel's death in The CJN Pre-order The Unveiling Learn more about the "Justice For Dan" movement Credits The CJN Daily is written and hosted by Ellin Bessner (@ebessner on Twitter). Victoria Redden is the producer. Michael Fraiman is the executive producer. Production assistance by Gabrielle Nadler and YuZhu Mou. Our theme music is by Dov Beck-Levine. Our title sponsor is Metropia. We're a member of The CJN Podcast Network. To learn how to support the show by subscribing to this podcast, please watch this video.
© 2020-2025 Ivy Podcast Discovery LLC
