Assistant State Attorney Georgia Cappleman asked Adelson why his then-girlfriend Katherine Magbanua and hit man Sigfredo Garcia would go through the trouble of murdering another person to extort him, when they could simply threaten Adelson and achieve the same result.
"Why did whoever did it have to kill someone to extort you?" Cappleman asked.
"You would have to ask them," Adelson quipped.
"Why couldn’t they just put a gun to your head and say, 'Give me whatever you have in your safe?'" she asked.
Adelson is facing charges of first-degree murder and solicitation of murder in the death of Markel, his sister's ex-husband. He is accused of enlisting Magbanua to hire Garcia to gun Markel down in his Tallahassee home during a heated child-custody battle between Markel and Adelson's sister.
While prosecutors say Adelson gave Magbanua $3,000-a-month payments through his family's dental office as part of the murder-for-hire plot, Adelson claims the money was meant to pay off the extortion demand.
Cappleman suggested Adelson's narrative that Garcia, who had a history with the Latin Kings gang, allowed him to pay the alleged extortion demand on a "payment plan" was far-fetched.
"Did she put you a payment plan?" Cappleman asked, to which Adelson replied, "Yes."
The prosecutor also grilled Adelson about his relationship with his ex-brother-in-law, Wendi, and his parents.
“Wasn't this divorce a big deal in your family?"
"It didn't affect my life," he responded.
The pair exchanged verbal jabs at each other as Cappleman’s questions got more pointed and accusatory. At times, she resorted to making dental puns while questioning the Broward County dentist.
The prosecutor eventually turned her attention to the gifts Magbanua received from Adelson following the murder. Adelson maintained he was only trying to keep her happy because he was under the impression she was protecting him from his extortionists.
"Are these gifts what it took to secure silence for so long?" Cappleman asked.
The original story follows below.
Charlie Adelson, the Broward County dentist on trial for the July 2014 slaying of Florida State University law professor Dan Markel, took the stand Thursday — the first time he has publicly aired his side of the story since Markel's death in an alleged murder-for-hire plot.
"I am really nervous," Adelson said as his testimony began. "My whole life depends on it."
Adelson is accused of enlisting two hit men to kill Markel at the professor's Tallahassee home in the midst of a child-custody dispute between Markel and Adelson's sister, Wendi. The periodontist, who once worked at his family's prominent medical practice in South Florida, faces charges of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and solicitation to commit murder.
Under oath, Adelson sought to explain comments he made to his sister prior to Markel's death, in which he noted that buying her a TV set for a divorce gift would be cheaper than hiring a hit man to kill Markel. Prosecutors have cited Adelson's repeated quips about hiring an assassin as open-and-shut evidence that he was behind the plot to kill Markel.
Adelson insisted the comments were a joke he'd repeat and recycle when his sister was having problems with her ex.
"The stupidest thing I have ever said in my life," Adelson testified. "I said it as a complete joke and it was stupid. I do that a lot."
"Did you hire anyone to kill him?" defense attorney Daniel Rashabum asked at one point.
"No," Adelson replied.
Prosecutors claim Adelson orchestrated the murder after Markel refused to move with his children to South Florida in order to be close to the Adelson family. Adelson's ex-girlfriend, Katherine Magbanua, testified early this week that Adelson approached her at a Halloween party a decade ago and asked her, "Do you know anybody that could harm someone?"
"Back in 2014, the Adelson family had a big problem," Assistant State Attorney Sarah Dugan told the jury during opening statements. "That big problem was Dan Markel and the solution to that problem was this defendant, because he had a girlfriend [Magbanua] with connections to the type of people who are willing and capable of pointing a gun at a stranger and pulling the trigger."
On the stand, Adelson maintained that he loved his nephews and would never want to take their father away from them. He said the custody dispute didn't incense him or cause him to lose sleep, stating, "It didn't change anything in my life."
The 47-year-old dentist testified that the murder plot boiled down to an extortion scheme by Magbanua and her ex-lover, Sigfredo Garcia, who was one of the hit men.
Adelson testified that Magbanua wanted more out of their relationship than he did and that Garcia hated him and wanted him dead.
The Day of the Slaying
Adelson testified he spent the morning of Markel's murder working at two different dental offices in the seaside town of Jupiter. He said he'd missed multiple texts from his mother and only learned about the murder when he finally called her."I was shocked," he claimed. "I said, 'Is he going to be okay? Are the boys okay? Is Wendi okay? What happened?'"
Adelson said Magbanua came to his home that night and she "looked panicked and upset."
"She looked more upset than I ever seen her," he testified.
That's when she explained that it was all her fault, Adelson said. He said she admitted she'd "spoken too much" about the Adelson family's personal problems and wealth, including a $1 million offer the Adelsons made to Markel to entice him to move to South Florida.
Adelson said Magbanua told him "a friend," who had learned of the family's resources, shot Markel and was demanding more than $300,000. When he asked whether Garcia was the "friend," he said, she wouldn't divulge who it was.
"She said, 'If you don't pay in 48 hours, they will kill you,'" Adelson testified.
Adelson said he told Magbanua he didn't have that kind of money. She took all the cash out of Adelson's safe — $138,000 — telling him she would see what her friend will accept and proposing that Adelson make monthly payments of $3,000 if he could not immediately pay what the man wanted, Adelson testified. He said he didn't suspect she was part of the alleged extortion plot.
The following morning, when he learned Markel had died, Adelson chose not to inform the police for fear the extortionists would kill him, he testified. He said he began carrying a firearm when he went out and sleeping with a gun in his nightstand, and that he installed security cameras outside his house and office.
Adelson sat mostly calm and composed during his testimony, looking in the direction of his attorney. Dressed in a navy-blue suit, he appeared to become emotional when speaking about the murder.
The dentist offered jurors a competing narrative that diverged from Magbanua's testimony at nearly every juncture.
Magbanua told the jury on Monday that in the early summer of 2014, Adelson had become "adamant about this job getting done" to kill Markel.
"He painted this picture that this was a terrible man and was making his family go through a lot custodywise with his sister," she testified, claiming that Adelson handed her a stack of cash, bundled and stapled together, the day after the murder.
Magbanua, Garcia, and the second hit man, Luis Rivera, are serving prison sentences for their roles in Markel's murder.
During her testimony this week, Magbanua said she lied about her innocence in the hope she'd be acquitted when she testified at her 2019 trial and a 2022 retrial. She said she'd refused to accept a plea deal in exchange for cooperating with prosecutors because that would have required her to betray Garcia, the father of her children.
"I believe the truth needed to come out now so the family can get some type of closure," Magbanua testified this week.
The Aftermath
On the stand, Adelson testified that he broke up with Magbanua within weeks after the murder but met with her in August 2014 to make a $3,000 payment to her "friend." He told the jury he'd begun to suspect she might be involved in the extortion, but she continued to deny it and apologized profusely for what happened.Adelson said Magbanua requested future payments be made in the form of payroll checks from the family's dental practice, Adelson Institute — an arrangement that would make it possible for her and her children to be covered by health insurance through the office. He testified that he instructed his mother, Donna, who handled the office payroll, to add Magbanua and send her checks.
The dentist said his mother's repeated questions about the odd financial arrangement led him to tell her about the ongoing extortion plot. Though Donna Adelson wanted to go to the police, he said he persuaded her not to, and not to tell his sister or father.
As for gifts he gave Magbanua in the months that followed the murder, Adelson testified that he felt he had to keep her happy in exchange for protecting him. He said he stayed in touch with Magbanua because she was "so broke all the time" that he believed her when she told him she had no involvement in the extortion plot and was not sharing in the proceeds.
"Every time she was asking me for money, I felt good. I thought she wasn't part of it," he testified.
