The mother of a Florida dentist convicted last week in the contract killing of his former brother-in-law was arrested at an airport while allegedly trying to flee the country — and charged with orchestrating the twisted murder-for-hire plot.
Donna Adelson, 73, the matriarch of a wealthy family of dentists, was taken into custody Monday night at Miami International Airport as she and her husband, Harvey, were about to use one-way tickets to Vietnam via Dubai — two countries without extradition treaties with the US.
She was charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy and solicitation in the 2014 death of prominent Florida State University law professor Dan Markel, who was shot in the head inside his garage in Tallahassee.
Her son Dr. Charlie Adelson, 47, was recently convicted of murdering Markel, 41, who was in the middle of a bitter custody battle with the killer dentist’s sister, lawyer Wendi Adelson.
Leon County State Attorney Jack Campbell said he already planned to charge the family matriarch with the plot, but sped up those plans when investigators learned she planned to flee.
“It was going to be complicated and really difficult trying to bring them back, depending on where they ended up in the world,” Campbell said.
“The arrest was not just based on the flight, but that played a part in the timing.”
In the days leading up to her arrest, Adelson discussed “getting things in order” — with plans for either suicide or to flee to a non-extradition country — in calls with her son Charlie after his guilty verdict, according to recently filed court documents.
She is now being held at Miami-Dade County Jail without bail pending her transfer to Tallahassee.
On Nov. 6, a jury found Dr. Charlie Adelson, 47, guilty of first-degree murder, conspiracy and soliciting his former brother-in-law’s killing.
Prosecutors said the periodontist arranged the murder-for-hire through his then-girlfriend, Katie Magbanua, who tapped her ex-husband and the father of her children, Sigfredo Garcia, and his friend, Luis Rivera — both members of the ruthless Latin Kings gang – for the grisly task.
Magbanua and Garcia, who was the triggerman, are already serving life sentences after being convicted of first-degree murder. Rivera was sentenced to 19 years in prison after pleading guilty to second-degree murder and agreeing to testify against his accomplices.
Charlie Adelson, who, like his mother, has denied any involvement in the murder, faces a mandatory life term when he is sentenced next month.
The father-of-two dentist testified during his trial that his family had offered Markel $1 million to allow Wendi Adelson to move back to Miami with their two sons, but he refused.
That is when, according to prosecutors, the Adelsons began concocting a plan to have Markel killed.
Charlie has staunchly maintained his innocence — but conceded in court that he had made a joke about hiring a hitman to kill Markel as a present for his sister.
“When I gave her the TV set as a divorce present — stupidest thing I ever said in my life — and I said, ‘I was gonna get you a hitman, but the TV set was a lot cheaper so I went with the TV set instead.’ I said it as a complete joke and it was stupid but I do that a lot,” Adelson testified in court.
During his trial, it was shown that Charlie paid Magbanua $138,000, which she split with the two hired guns, and the Adelson family then gave her a no-show job at their dental practice and other payments totaling more than $56,000, plus a used Lexus.
Wendi Adelson and her father, dentist Harvey Adelson, have not been charged in the murder-for-hire plot, but Campbell said the investigation remains open.
Wendi told detectives that Markel’s killing could have been arranged on her behalf, saying her parents were “very angry” at her ex.
Over the course of the years-long multi-agency investigation, detectives tracked phone records showing a flurry of calls between Charlie and Magbanua, her and the killers and Charlie, his mother and his sister in the hours before and shortly after the killing.
Charlie Adelson was arrested last year after technicians enhanced a recording made of him and Magbanua inside a Mexican restaurant in 2016, telling her, in part, that if he thought police had any evidence proving the family orchestrated Markel’s murder, “we would have already gone to the airport.”
With Post wires