TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – A Miami Beach grandmother accused of conspiring to murder her ex-son-in-law pleaded not guilty in a Tallahassee courtroom Monday afternoon.
Donna Adelson was arrested at Miami International Airport in November, having bought one-way plane tickets to Vietnam one week after a jury found her 47-year-old son, Charlie, guilty of orchestrating Dan Markel’s shooting death in 2014.
Markel was a law professor at Florida State University.
Adelson, 73, also asked a judge to move her out of solitary confinement at the Leon County Jail because she said her health is failing behind bars. Jailers said they need to keep a close eye on her because she has threatened to kill herself.
“When she was booked into the jail year she made a statement that she wanted to die,” Gregg Toomey, an attorney representing the Leon County Sheriff’s Office, said in court. “Now, before she was arrested in Miami, she also had a phone call with her son, who’s obviously in jail here, (a) 25-minute phone call. I personally listened to it. She very clearly spoke about a plan to kill herself using sleeping pills.”
The judge denied Adelson’s request.
Prosecutors allege she played a role in the plot, including signing checks to another suspect convicted in the murder.