TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – A Broward County periodontist listened to the testimony on Tuesday in court of the FBI special agents who helped to identify him as a suspect in the murder of a university law professor.
Charlie Adelson, of the Adelson Institute in Tamarac, stands accused of being the mastermind of the murder-for-hire plot that killed Daniel Markel, his former brother-in-law, in Tallahassee.
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Oscar Jimenez, a retired FBI agent, said he pretended to be a Latin King gang member aiming to extort Adelson’s mother outside of her apartment on April 19, 2016, in Miami Beach.
“My instructions were to approach her and engage her in some type of conversation and to hand a flyer,” Jimenez said, later adding that he also called her and sent her text messages, but she never responded or sent him a payment.
Fear over the perceived extortion attempt prompted Adelson to meet on April 20, 2016, with his mother and Katherine Magbanua, his ex-girlfriend, according to prosecutors.
Louis Bronstein, an FBI special agent, said he was one of the agents who recorded Adelson’s conversation with Magbanua at the Dolce Vita restaurant.
Bronstein said he used a device that was inside what appeared to be a computer bag and placed it about 8 to 10 feet away from them. The prosecution played the video.
“I wish that it was a cop playing games,” Adelson told Magbanua, according to the video and accompanying transcript.
Bronstein said the room was noisy. James McElveen, a media forensics engineer, said in court that he processed the FBI recordings of the conversation at La Dolce Vita to “push down” the “competing voices” and noise in 2022.
“As a result of our enhancement more words are intelligible,” McEldeen said.
Markel, 41, who was born in Canada and taught at Florida State University, died on July 19, 2014.
Markel was talking on the phone in his car, when he was shot just outside of his home in Tallahassee, after dropping off his two sons at school, police said.
Patrick Sanford, an FBI special agent who was involved in the investigation, testified that Markel died 14 hours after he was shot and before a planned trip to a conference in New York.
Sanford said there were thousands of conversations recorded during the FBI’s investigation. The staged extortion, he said, was meant to establish the flow of communication from Adelson’s mother to Adelson, Magbanua, and the hitmen.
The prosecution played recordings of phone conversations between Adelson and his mother to the jury. During one call, two years after the murder, he talked about his sister’s love life and his influence over her career decisions.
“She doesn’t see herself as a victim anymore, which is great,” Adelson said, according to the recording.
On Monday, during her testimony in court, Margbanua said she connected Adelson to the convicted hitmen, Sigfredo Garcia, of Miami Beach, the father of her children, and Luis “Tato” Rivera, of North Miami, a Latin King member.
Garcia, who was sentenced to life in prison, shot Markel in the head twice, at close range, while Rivera, who took a plea deal for 19 years in prison for second-degree murder, admitted to purchasing the gun and driving the getaway car.
Margbanua testified she received payment from the Adelson Institute, where she was not an employee, and she delivered cash payments to Garcia and Rivera from Adelson for both the planning expenses and the murder.
Adelson’s sister, Wendi Adelson, and Markel were in the middle of a child custody dispute after she filed for divorce in 2012 and moved to South Florida with their two sons.
A Leon County judge denied her motion for relocation in 2013 and Markel sought to enforce the ruling in 2014.
Leon County Circuit Judge Stephen Everett is presiding over Charlie Adelson’s trial for first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, and solicitation to commit first-degree murder.
At about 4:45 p.m., Everett said court was in recess until 8:45 a.m., on Wednesday.
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