A Family Matter
Their investigation initially revealed that a woman named Katherine Magbanua served as a middleman between the hitmen and the person, or people, who reportedly paid the trio $100,000 to commit the murder. At the time, Magbanua was romantically involved with Adelson’s brother, Charles, and had been previously involved with one of the hitmen, Garcia, who is the father of her children.
Although she did not fire the gun that killed Markel, Magbanua was arrested in October 2016 on a warrant for first-degree murder.
The same year, Rivera cooperated with the investigation and accepted a plea deal for a reduced sentence of 19 years. Garcia was convicted in 2019 and sentenced to life in prison.
Although Magbanua’s 2019 trial ended in a hung jury, she was re-tried three years later and convicted of first-degree murder, conspiracy and solicitation. She was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, with two consecutive 30-year sentences for the conspiracy and solicitation convictions. She appealed the verdict, but in 2025, an appellate court upheld Magbanua’s conviction.
Despite the three arrests, the case was far from over. Authorities had the hired guns and the go-between, but not who Magbanua was conspiring with.
Charles Adelson, the brother of Markel's ex-wife, Wendi, had been named in Garcia's trial as an unindicted co-conspirator, meaning he was not accused of wrongdoing. Charles maintained his innocence, but investigators didn’t buy it. They continued pursuing leads and ultimately arrested him in April 2022.
In the courtroom, Charles’s attorneys argued that he was the victim of an elaborate extortion plot by Garcia and Rivera, claiming the duo learned from Magbanua that Charles was considering hiring someone to kill Markel and took it upon themselves to murder Markel without Charles’s knowledge. Then, Garcia and Rivera allegedly threatened to kill Charles if he didn’t pay them for the job.
The jury wasn’t swayed. Charles was found guilty of first-degree murder, conspiracy and solicitation in November 2023.
A Mother of a Murderer
Police began closing in on Donna Adelson while her son was on trial.
In phone calls recorded with a wiretap, Donna implicated herself in the plot to kill Markel and even mentioned possibly fleeing to a country without an extradition treaty. Those recordings led to her being charged as a co-conspirator. In November 2023, Donna was arrested at an airport while she and her husband, Harvey, were preparing to board a flight to Vietnam, a country that does not have an extradition treaty with the United States.
Evidence presented at Donna’s trial showed she had signed a series of checks to Magbanua around the time of Markel’s murder. Magbanua kept some money and passed the rest along to Garcia and Rivera. But it was testimony from two of Donna’s three children that may have sealed her fate: Her daughter and Markel’s ex-wife, Wendi, testified with immunity, and her estranged eldest son, Robert, painted Donna as a controlling, manipulative mother.
Wendi has not been charged with any crimes, nor has her father, Harvey Adelson.
In 2024, to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Markel’s death, Justice for Dan—a grassroots organization dedicated to the type of legal scholarship Markel pursued—announced the Dan Markel Award for Criminal Law Theory.
