Dan Markel, a law professor at Florida State University, was killed, and Charlie Adelson, Markel’s former brother-in-law, was taken into custody on Thursday.
The Associated Press reports that Adelson is accused of orchestrating the murder for his sister to relocate from Tallahassee to the Fort Lauderdale region with her two children.
A 45-year-old Fort Lauderdale dentist named Adelson was arrested on Monday and lodged in the Leon County Detention Center on suspicion of first-degree murder, conspiracy to do first-degree murder, and solicitation to commit first-degree murder.
Author of significant works on retribution in criminal law and sentencing with an emphasis on the function of punishment in the criminal justice system, Daniel Eric Markel was a Canadian-born lawyer and law professor.
He was a native of Toronto and received his J.D. from Harvard in 2001. In 2005, he joined the Florida State University faculty after serving as a junior associate and law clerk for a short time.
Following his divorce from Wendi Adelson, a clinical law professor and child advocate who was also working at Florida State University at the time, Markel was killed in Tallahassee, Florida, in 2014 in a murder for hire motivated by child custody disagreements.
Although Wendi Adelson, her brother Charlie, and her mother Donna have all been implicated as “conspirators” in the homicide, she has not been charged. Four people have been accused thus far: Luis Rivera was given a 19-year prison term after admitting guilt to murder.
Charlie Adelson was arrested without incident on Wednesday after a Grand Jury indicted him, according to State Attorney Jack Campbell.
Adelson appeared via video conference on Tuesday before Leon County Judge Augustus D. Aikens Jr. ruled that he should be held without bond and not speak to co-defendants. Adelson was dressed in a white and orange jumpsuit.
According to the prosecution, Adelson paid two assassins from South Florida to Tallahassee in 2014 to kill Markel. Markel was fatally shot at close range in the garage of his Betton Hills residence.
According to court documents, the murder-for-hire plot developed as Wendi Adelson and Markel, Wendi’s ex-husband, argued over who should have custody of the children.
Sigfredo Garcia and Luis Rivera, the two contract killers who carried out the assassination, had already been found guilty of killing Markel, a distinguished legal scholar, and father of two boys. Magbanua and Garcia have two children together.
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