2.Opening Statements

MS. DUGAN: Good morning, y'all. Thank y'all for being here with us today. I know that we've been introduced, but y'all haven't heard from me yet. My name is Sarah Kathryn Dugan, and I'm going to be representing the State of Florida in this case along with Georgia Cappleman.

So the last couple of days we've obviously been in jury selection. Thank y'all for your patience with that. I know there's a lot of waiting involved with that.

And in jury selection, you know, each side was able to kind of talk with about your feelings and concepts -- I'm sorry -- your feelings about the law and different concepts. But now it's time for opening statements where each of us is going to kind of give you a road map of what we expect that the evidence in this case will show. And, then, after opening statements we'll start hearing from witnesses and getting into the actual evidence in this case. So let's get right to it.

The reason that we're here today is because the defendant in this case, Charlie Adelson, hired a hitman to kill his former brother-in-law, Dan Markel. This murder was set into motion because back in 2014 the defendant's family, the Adelson family, had a big problem, and that big problem was Dan Markel. And the solution to that problem was this defendant. This defendant was the solution to that problem because he had a girlfriend with connections to the type of people who were willing and capable of pointing a gun at a complete stranger and pulling the trigger.

The victim in this case was known as Danny to his friends and family. He was a loving father to two little boys. He was a highly respected professor at Florida State College of Law. And, tragically, on July 18th of 2014, Dan Markel was shot twice in the head in broad daylight in the driveway of his home in the Betton Hills neighborhood here in Tallahassee.

The last day of Dan Markel's life that day began like any other of his mornings that summer. He woke up. He drove his two little boys to preschool and dropped them off, and then he drove over to the gym to work out.

After finishing his workout, he returned home. He pulled in his driveway, opened his garage. But little did he know that throughout his just normal routine that morning he was being followed. He was being followed by two hired hitmen who traveled all the way from Talla- -- from Miami to Tallahassee for the sole purpose of murdering him. And just like something out of a horror movie, he pulls into his driveway, and the car that -- unknown to him pulls in right behind him.

Moments later, Dan Markel'‘'s neighbor heard a gunshot. He looked out the window, and he saw a light-colored Toyota Prius backing quickly out of Dan Markel's driveway and then speeding away. The neighbor waited for a couple minutes to see if maybe Dan Markel came out of his house or backed out of his driveway too, and when nothing happened, this neighbor got that funny feeling that maybe something could be wrong here.

So he walked over, and what he found was a gruesome scene. He walked in the garage and saw that the driver's side window of Dan Markel's car was shattered. He saw Dan Markel was still behind the wheel with -- he was alive, but he was moaning. He was unresponsive, and he was terribly injured.

The neighbor then goes and calls 911. Law enforcement arrives, and they find Dan Markel unresponsive with gunshot wounds to his head. He was then taken to the hospital where he survived for several hours before he was actually pronounced dead.

Daniel Markel was 41 years old, and his little boys that were deprived of their father that day were just 3 and 4 years old.

Law enforcement immediately began to investigate to figure out who shot Dan Markel, and the evidence they find sets them down two separate paths. One path is that they had to track down that light-colored Prius that the neighbor saw fleeing from the crime scene and identify who was inside that Prius, and the other path relates to Dan Markel's personal life. They looked to see who, if anybody, in Dan Markel'"s personal life would hate Dan Markel enough to kill him. And after years of tireless investigation by law enforcement, both of these two paths led directly to this defendant.

MS. DUGAN: So let's talk about the path involving Dan Markel's personal life first. In looking at who might have a motive to kill Dan Markel, law enforcement learns that Markel was entangled in a very nasty divorce with his ex-wife, who is the defendant's sister, and her name is Wendi Adelson. A review of their divorce case file revealed that Wendi Adelson asked the Court to allow her to move back to Miami where she was from with the kids in order to be near her parents, whose names are Harvey and Donna Adelson, and her brother, the defendant.

Dan Markel was adamantly opposed to his children being relocated to Miami. He was a law professor here in Tallahassee. This is where he lived. This is where his kids have been raised. He wanted his kids to live here with him. And for this custody dispute, the judge ended up ruling in Dan Markel'‘s favor, so wendi Adelson was not permitted to move to Miami with the children, unless, of course, something happened to Dan Markel.

A review of Wendi Adelson's emails revealed that her mother, Donna Adelson, hated Dan Markel and was desperate to find a way for wendi and her children, who were Donna Adelson's grandchildren, to be able to move to Miami. Donna Adelson suggests in these emails that y'all will hear about several ways that Wendi Adelson could threaten or bully Dan Markel into submission and to getting what she wanted him to do. Donna Adelson even suggested offering Dan Markel a $1 million bribe to allow the relocation and even said that this defendant, Charlie Adelson, would pay a third of that million-dollar bribe to Dan Markel to make that happen.

The evidence in this case will show that Donna Adelson's closest confidante was her son, the defendant. She and the defendant talked multiple times a day, every day. He was the person with whom she would constantly vent and complain to about Wendi's situation. The defendant was also the person that Donna Adelson relied on to solve her problems, and this was a big, big problem for Donna Adelson, and she made it the defendant's problem to solve.

So the divorce between Wendi Adelson and Dan Markel was final about a year before the actual murder, but that was not the end of that case. Litigation was ongoing, to say the least. Each side would continue to routinely file violations of the custody agreement, violations of the settlement agreement, and that continued right up until Dan Markel's death in July of 2014. This was a highly, emotionally charged situation between them, leading up to his death. However, there was no physical violence that Wendi Adelson needed to be rescued from or anything like that. But make no mistake, this was a very messy custody dispute.

Shortly before the murder, in fact, Dan Markel, the victim, filed with the Court and basically asked the Court -- he alleged that Donna Adelson was disparaging him to his children by saying bad things about him, and he asked the Court to enter an order preventing Donna Adelson from having unsupervised contact with her grandchildren. This motion was still pending in court when Dan Markel was killed.

The murder of Dan Markel ensured that an adverse ruling on his motion would never be a problem for the Adelsons. And just about 48 hours after the shooting, Wendi Adelson and the little boys relocated to Miami, shortly thereafter moved into a home within walking distance of the Adelsons' Miami home. within a year of Dan Markel's murder, Wendi Adelson legally changed Dan Markel'"s sons" last name from Markel to Adelson. And just like that, their father was just effectively erased from their lives at 3 and 4. And the Adelsons' family, their big problem had been solved.

You'll hear during this trial that the Adelsons are a very tight-knit family. The defendant and his parents, Harvey and Donna Adelson, they actually even all work together or worked together at the Adelson Institute, which was their family's dental practice. At the Adelson Institute, the defendant and Harvey Adelson were dentists, and Donna Adelson managed the office.

MS. DUGAN: After Dan Markel was killed on July 18, 2014, law enforcement interviewed Wendi Adelson, and wendi Adelson acknowledged that her family had a motive to kill Dan Markel or to want him dead. She admitted that her brother, the defendant, had even said that he looked into hiring a hitman to kill Dan Markel as a divorce present to her, but he decided to buy her a TV instead because it was cheaper. And coincidentally or not, that TV that this defendant bought his sister as a divorce gift instead of hiring a hitman would be wendi Adelson's alibi for the morning of the murder when the defendant -- when the victim was killed by a hitman.

So this path of looking into Dan Markel's life to see who would have a motive to want him dead leads law enforcement to the Adelsons, including this defendant, a man who told his family that he'd looked into hiring a hitman to kill Dan Markel.

The Defense asked yesterday in jury selection, you know, who's talked trash or heard somebody talk trash about an in-law? which is not a rare concept. A lot of people don't like their in-laws. But the difference here is that the defendant's comment stopped being just a little bit of trash talk when Dan Markel was actually killed by a hitman.

While the police are trying to investigate, you know, who in Dan Markel's personal life may have a motive to kill him, they're simultaneously going down that second path I described to y'all, which was tracking down the vehicle that the neighbor saw fleeing the crime scene. When law enforcement retraced Dan Markel'"s steps the morning of the murder, they uncovered some chilling surveillance video of a Prius fitting the description of the one seen by the neighbor following Dan Markel into the Premier Gym parking lot, waiting for an hour while he was inside, and then following him home from Premier Gym back to his neighborhood.

They got this -- the surveillance images from city buses, from Premier, from everywhere they possibly could, and these surveillance images, coupled with a massive amount of phone data and SunPass records gathered in this case helped police to eventually track down the exact car used in this crime, but police still had to figure out who was in the Prius and why did they kill Dan Markel.

As part of this really painstaking review that law enforcement did of all of these records -- and when I say “painstaking,” finding this Prius and finding this -- all of this evidence and all of these records was not an easy task, and it took longer than your average investigation. It was very difficult to do. They combed through tons of phone records and even did what's called a "tower dump," which is where law enforcement collected a list of all the cell phone numbers that communicated with the cell tower that serviced different spots in Tallahassee that Dan Markel was at that morning, including Premier Gym when the suspects" Prius was there, because they thought, if the person in the Prius was using their phone at the time, then their number will be somewhere in this tower dump.

They combed through all of that data, and they found a number with a Miami area code belonging to a man named Sigfredo Garcia. Law enforcement examined all of Garcia's call logs and saw that he was in frequent contact with another number that was also present at Premier Gym that morning, and that number belonged to a man named Luis Rivera. Luis Rivera is a lifelong friend of Sigfredo Garcia and is also from Miami.

Police then looked at all of Garcia and Rivera's phone records, which showed that their phones left Miami about two -- or two days before this murder on July 16th of 2014. The phones came to Tallahassee, and on the day of the murder, July 18th, they followed Markel to Premier Gym. The phone data is consistent with both men turning off their phones just minutes before the murder and leaving their phones off until about an hour or so after the murder when they're well on their way back towards Miami.

MS. DUGAN: And then a bank's ATM camera caught both Garcia and Rivera in that light-colored Prius once they arrived back in the Miami area when they stopped at an ATM. So police figured out the identity -- and this should appear on the screens in front of you -- the identity of the two men responsible for following and killing Dan Markel. Luis Rivera, his nickname is Tato, and Sigfredo Garcia, his nickname is Tuto. But they continued to look for evidence of why this -- why two seemingly random men came all the way to Tallahassee to kill a man, Dan Markel, that they'd never met. You know, what or who is the connection between these killers and the victim?

well, phone records reveal that one of Sigfredo Garcia's most frequent contacts was a woman named Katherine Magbanua. Her nickname is Katie. Garcia and Katherine Magbanua have a long history of an on-again-off-again relationship over the course of many years, and they actually share two kids in common. And lo and behold, when looking at the phone records, Katherine Magbanua is also one of the most frequent contacts of this defendant, Charlie Adelson. Law enforcement learned that at the time of Dan Markel‘s murder, this defendant was dating Katherine Magbanua. She was his girlfriend at the time.

So Dan Markel was a problem that this defendant needed to solve for his family. The defendant was looking to hire a hitman to kill Dan Markel. Dan Markel ends up being killed by a hitman. And who ended up being the hitman? It was someone with a close relationship to this defendant's girlfriend. The hitman was the father of his girlfriend's children.

So you can see how both leads in this case followed by investigators, both of them charted paths to this defendant. Not only did looking into the motive lead law enforcement to the defendant because he wanted to hire someone to kill Dan Markel, but looking into the car fleeing the scene also led law enforcement to the defendant through his girlfriend at the time. So two different investigations arriving at the same conclusion.

Law enforcement also tried to follow the money in this case, and that was a third way that the evidence in this case points to this defendant. Law enforcement reviewed bank records, employment records, DHSMV records of all of the suspects and saw that, in the months after the homicide, Sigfredo Garcia, Luis Rivera, and Katherine Magbanua all acquired some big-ticket items.

Rivera and Garcia both bought motorcycles and cars. Katherine Magbanua got a breast augmentation surgery and later received a black Lexus sedan whose previous owner was Harvey Adelson. Katherine Magbanua's bank records were analyzed, and there was mo check ever written or matching cash withdrawal for the car or the breast augmentation which was paid for in cash.

Bank records also reviewed -- bank records also showed, rather, that Katherine Magbanua's account had a huge spike in cash deposits right around the time of the murder. She deposited more money into her account in the five weeks following the murder than in the entire previous year before the murder. This was during a time when there was no record of her being employed anywhere.

Also, about two months after the murder, the defendant added Katherine Magbanua to the payroll at the Adelson Institute, and she began receiving regular checks from their business account every two weeks for two years after the murder, and this was despite the fact that she did not work at the Adelson Institute. So the money was talking, but what were the suspects saying. That's what law enforcement wanted to know.

So as they're examining the phone records in this case, they see a distinct pattern surrounding important events and dates in this case. The phone calls -- and they can't see the content. They can't hear the content of these calls in these phone records, but they see that the calls are occurring, and the phone calls always went from Donna Adelson to the defendant, then from the defendant to Katherine Magbanua, then from Katherine Magbanua to Sigfredo Garcia, and back the other way. Kind of like train cars. They only touch the car right in front of them, you know. Donna Adelson never calls Katherine Magbanua or Sigfredo Garcia. Charlie Adelson never calls Sigfredo Garcia or vice versa.

so if this is a murder for hire, as law enforcement suspects, could it be that the defendant was wisely insulating himself from the actual shooters by having Katherine Magbanua act as a middleman between them?

MS. DUGAN: Law enforcement decided to launch an undercover investigation designed to clarify who the members of the conspiracy were and how information traveled within this conspiracy. So police applied for and received court authorization to listen in real time to the phone calls of the defendant and Katherine Magbanua. And this is what's known as a "wiretap."

By this point, the point that law enforcement received authorization to do this wiretap, it was April of 2016. So it's been not quite but almost two years since the murder of Dan Markel, which occurred in July of 2014. So by April of 2016, the defendant and Katherine Magbanua are no longer dating at that point. They've been broken up since the fall of 2014.

Katherine Magbanua is actually back together with Sigfredo Garcia, the father of her children, at that point. The defendant has moved on to many other girlfriends since Katherine Magbanua. But the defendant and Katherine Magbanua are still in regular communication and have remained very close friends since the murder. And Rivera, who was the second hitman in that Prius, he in April of 2016 was actually in federal prison doing time on another charge unrelated to this murder.

So all of the members of this conspiracy have presumably gone on with their lives, believing they've gotten away with this murder. So even though law enforcement has authority to listen to their calls now, you know, what are they -- what reason would these people have to still be discussing the murder at this point?

So police needed to stage an event that would generate conversation between the conspirators about the murder, and the plan was to send an undercover agent, posing as somebody on behalf of Luis Rivera who was incarcerated, to walk up to Donna Adelson on this street and try to extort money out of her, and law enforcement refers to this as "the bump."

So this undercover agent walks up to Donna Adelson one day as she's leaving the Adelson Institute during the day. The undercover agent hands Donna Adelson a piece of paper, and on the piece of paper is an article about the murder of Dan Markel with his picture on it and, you know, FSU professor killed. Also on the piece of paper are a phone number and the amount of $5,000. The undercover agent tells Donna Adelson that he knows that the Adelsons are taking care of Katie and he's there to extort money out of her on Rivera's behalf in order to even things out. The undercover agent never says the defendant's name or anything about the defendant's involvement to Donna Adelson.

Then law enforcement listens to see what will happen next. Will Donna Adelson go straight to the police to report this extortion attempt, or will something else entirely happen?

As suspected, based on the previously observed communication pattern, the first person that Donna Adelson calls after the bump is the defendant, despite the fact that the undercover agent never mentioned the defendant to her. On that first call, one would think that Donna Adelson would say to her son, you know: It's so crazy. Some man came up to me, and he handed me this article about Danny's murder, and he's -- you know, seems like he's demanding money from us.

She never says any of that. In fact, she never says Dan Markel's name at all. Instead, she tells the defendant that she needs to talk to him in person. In person, not over the phone, about some paperwork that was hand-delivered to her. she said that this paperwork -- she says this to the defendant: "It involves the two of us," and that he should know what she's talking about.

She says that he should bring cash to their meeting, and she also says that "this Tv is about 5."

Donna Adelson tells the defendant that the man who approached her mentioned an ex-girlfriend. Donna Adelson never says which ex-girlfriend she is referring to. She never says Katherine Magbanua or Katie's mame to the defendant in that phone call. She only says that the blackmailer mentioned an ex-girlfriend.

The defendant never asked his mom, Whose ex-girl -- my ex-girlfriend? which ex-girlfriend? He never asked that. Because as the evidence will show, he didn't need to. He knew that "this TV is about 5" meant that she was being blackmailed about Danny's murder for 5,000, and he knew that the ex-girlfriend in question was Katherine Magbanua.

MS. DUGAN: And we know that because after this call with his mother, what does the defendant -- the defendant calls Katherine Magbanua. He doesn't call his most recent ex-girlfriend. He doesn't even call the most recent ex-girlfriend before the most recent girlfriend, the one before that. No. He calls Katherine Magbanua. And his call to Katherine Magbanua is the only call that he makes to any ex-girlfriend after getting the information from his mother that the blackmailer mentioned an ex-girlfriend, and he had not dated Katherine Magbanua for a year and a half at that point.

And although the defendant threatens to do it often, neither he nor his mom ever report the matter to the police. The only people that he discusses it with in these calls is Donna Adelson and Katherine Magbanua.

And you'll hear these phone calls between the conspirators, and as you listen to these calls, y'all will notice that they are being cautious about what they say over the phone. It's very apparent that they are very careful with their words because they are immediately suspicious that law enforcement could be listening to their conversations.

So Donna Adelson calls the defendant, and the defendant's first call is to Katherine Magbanua. After that, the defendant then meets up with his mom in person like his mom requested, and his mom gives him this paperwork that the undercover agent gave her.

Then, next, the defendant and Katherine Magbanua meet up in person, and they meet up at a restaurant in Miami called Dolce Vita. And while they sat at their table in this -- Dolce Vita is a busy, noisy restaurant -- an undercover FBI agent sat at a table nearby with a hidden camera in their bag and recorded this conversation. And in the recording we hear the defendant discussing whether the man who walked up to his mom could be an undercover police officer or someone who's trying to blackmail them. And if it's the latter, if it's a blackmailer, is it somebody who's just trying to make a quick buck, or is it somebody who actually knows information from the inside?

The defendant reassures Katherine Magbanua that, if it is the police, that's a good thing. The defendant thinks that if it's the police, that means that they do not have enough evidence to charge anybody. In fact, the defendant tells her, if they had any evidence, we would have already gone to the airport.

The defendant starts giving her some legal advice. He says that, hey, in order to prove that someone committed a crime, you have to be able to put the person at the scene of the crime at the time it was committed, which, unfortunately for them, is not an accurate statement of the law.

It's important to note, too, at the time of this conversation at Dolce Vita, no arrests had been made. The only thing that police had released to the public was a photo of the Prius that fled the scene. This was the Prius that Garcia and Rivera rented and used the day of Dan Markel's murder. So police knew at that point that it was Garcia and Rivera who were in the Prius, but the public did not know that yet, and no arrests had been made because they wanted to do this undercover investigation.

And so the fact that this photo of this Prius had been released to the public is interesting in light of some of the things that y'all will hear the defendant say to Katherine Magbanua in the Dolce Vita recording. He starts giving Katherine Magbanua several analogies, all involving rental cars used to commit crimes. He reassures her that, hey, if DNA is found in a car, all that means is that at one point the person sat in the car. And if that car was later used in a crime, police can't prove that just from a person's DNA being in the car.

The defendant points out to her that, if a rental car is found that was at a crime scene, police also have to prove who was driving it at the time. He gives her a very relevant hypothetical of her renting a car in Miami and someone asking to borrow it and driving to Orlando to commit a robbery and how she would be innocent in that hypothetical because she wasn't in the car at the time of the robbery.

So through these analogies the defendant is reassuring Katherine Magbanua that even if police identify who rented the car that fled the scene, they still would not have enough evidence to hold anybody responsible for the murder, even if they did find out it was Garcia and Rivera.

MS. DUGAN: The defendant also says that crimes are tough to prove unless someone actually witnessed the suspect commit a crime or a suspect makes a confession or a suspect is caught on a wire talking about the crime. So the defendant's trying to reassure her about the lack of evidence and, hey, as long as we all stay quiet, then we don't have anything to worry about.

At one point the defendant asks her, “Let me ask you a question." And then he asks her about money. He says, “When everybody was there the next day, did you take any money -- like, are any of you driving around in a Bentley -- I mean -- or no. It's not like any of you are driving around in a Bentley or cruising around in a mega yacht."

So here the defendant is pointing out that the money wasn't used to buy anything flashy that would draw the attention of the police. And when discussing -- and you-all will hear during the course of this trial why his statement or his question about the money from the next day is particularly important.

The evidence will show that Katherine Magbanua went to the defendant's home the night of the murder where he paid her in cash, and the next day Katherine Magbanua paid Garcia and Rivera their cuts of the money.

When discussing the possibility of whether this is actually some gangster trying to blackmail his family for money, the defendant Says that, whoever this person is, whoever it is knows information. The defendant told Katherine Magbanua that there are two ways of dealing with this guy. They could call the police, but then the guy blackmailing them would be charged with trying to blackmail his family, and the blackmailer would start talking, and he would start calling out Katherine Magbanua's name, and then police are gonna be asking questions about what happened. The other option is to pay the blackmailer but let him know that this is a one-time thing and try to scare the blackmailer off by saying, Hey, if you come around again, we're going to the police.

so the defendant then gives Katherine Magbanua very precise instructions. He wants her to call the blackmailer and tell him that -- you know, this would be what he wants Katherine Magbanua to say. "My friends," meaning the Adelson family, “have no idea what you're talking about, and I don't have any idea what you're talking about either, but the name of the person who you said is incarcerated sounds familiar. So I'm gonna give you this money as charity to help the less fortunate, but don't contact these people again or they're gonna go to the police."

And the defendant said he would give Katherine Magbanua the 5,000 to pay off the blackmailer except he's concerned, though, that this won't resolve the issue for good. The defendant is worried that this guy is not gonna go away, that he's gonna keep coming back for more and more money. And the defendant offers a solution to have this blackmailer killed, and he says he's willing to pay whatever it takes.

The defendant tells her that -- this is the defendant talking to Katherine Magbanua. "This guy,” meaning the blackmailer, "is F-ing with him and his wife, and you'd better kill him or he's gonna be a big problem because he knows who you are."

And the defendant then says, “If he can't handle this, I'll have somebody else do it.” The defendant says, "So help me God, if they fuck with my family, it's gonna be Nazi shit because this will be done. I mean, Katie, I don't care what I spend."

It's important to note during this conversation in the entire wiretap, the defendant never says Sigfredo Garcia's name. But the evidence will show that the defendant was talking about Sigfredo Garcia when the defendant says that the blackmailer was F-ing with him and his wife, and if -- hey, if he can't do it, I'll find someone else who will.

Because immediately after that, the defendant checks with Katherine Magbanua to make sure that Garcia has no hard feelings towards him, no reason not to help him. He says, "Hey, I have you on salary. You think he'd be happy about that." And he also says, "I mean, our paths never crossed," meaning, hey, Garcia wasn't in the picture when he and Katherine Magbanua were together. There wasn't any overlap.

After hearing that the defendant wants someone killed and is willing to pay whatever it takes to get it done, Katherine Magbanua then asks the defendant to help her out. And the defendant reassures her that she'll be taken care of by saying -- he says, "I don't have to" --

MS. DUGAN: Sometimes those chairs can be a little wobbly. I know this is taking a bit, but I'm almost done. Thank y'all for being patient.

All right. So she asks him to help her out, and the defendant reassures her that she'll be taken care. He says he doesn't have to tell her the things that he'll do for her. He shows her what he'll do for her. She doesn't have to ask him for anything. He looks for things to do.

He says, Hey, when someone's birthday's coming up or there's car problems, she doesn't have to ask. He looks for ways to help.

And after his meeting with Katherine Magbanua, the defendant immediately calls Donna Adelson to let her know that everything's fine. And he does this using some pretty obvious code words which y'all will hear, and you'll hear the conspirators often use words to mask the meaning of what they're actually talking about.

Katherine Magbanua then, also using these code words, tasks Garcia with calling the number on the paperwork and finding out if the blackmailer is a legitimate associate of Rivera or not. And in the series of recorded calls that follow, you guys are gonna hear these conspirators talking and using words like "Tv, false leads, listings, properties, clients, rap songs, CDs, pot belly pigs, relationship advice" -- all these different terms that are normal terms any of us may use, but they're used in context in these calls that if you're listening to the conversation do not make any sense.

For example, in the calls the defendant and Katherine Magbanua don't outright debate the pros and cons of whether they should pay this blackmailer. Instead, they talk about the fact that this property is cheap. They might expect a property like this to even be a million dollars. This property seems like a great deal. But if you get the wrong tenant in there, the tenant may keep increasing the rent, and that tenant may become a leech that never leaves you.

So it will be up to y'all to decide whether this defendant is actually worried about a future tenant of a property that might raise the rent and pay him more money or if the defendant is actually worried that if he pays off the blackmailer, then the blackmailer may continue to come back again and again or senda cousin or a friend to become a leech that never leaves him, that he can't get rid of.

In another of these calls, the defendant tells Katherine Magbanua that, whoever this person is, this blackmailer is, he's got a lot of F-ing details. And in another they discuss the fact that this blackmailer is not from the inside, and the defendant says that this guy is probably not from the first layer but the second layer. So not someone who got info from Garcia, but maybe somebody who got info from Rivera.

But one fact -- and let me just say, as the jury, you-all will interpret and decide what they're really talking about in these calls. Only y'all can determine the meaning and the weight to give this evidence, and only you can separate just mere coincidences from evidence and a conspiracy.

But one fact, though, is really clear throughout these calls is that all these conspirators are hopeful that this blackmailer is law enforcement just trying to get information ‘cause they think if it's law enforcement, then the police don't have enough to bring charges, just fishing for information versus the other possibility, which would obviously be much worse for them -- that the Adelsons are being blackmailed by somebody who actually knows inside information about their roles in Dan Markel's murder and may tell the police what they know.

So after this undercover operation, which was in 2016, Luis Rivera, Sigfredo Garcia, and Katherine Magbanua are arrested. They're charged with the same charges before y'all in this trial. And Luis Rivera ended up cutting a deal with the State to tell law enforcement the truth about the murder of Dan Markel and the people responsible.

Rivera told law enforcement that he was hired by Sigfredo Garcia to help kill Dan Markel, and Rivera described how Garcia told him that Katherine Magbanua, the mother of Garcia's children, secured this job for them. And the job was in Tallahassee, and it paid $100,000, which Rivera's cut being about a third of it, $35,000.

MS. DUGAN: Rivera explained that he and Garcia actually made two trips to Tallahassee with the intent of killing Dan Markel. The first one was a month before the murder. It was in June of 2014. And the second was when Dan Markel was actually killed in July of 2014. Rivera said that he bought a gun off the street for that second trip and Garcia rented a car -- I'm sorry -- for the June trip. Rivera bought a gun off the street, and Garcia rented the car for that trip. Garcia and Rivera did some scouting on that trip of Dan Markel's residence, some surveillance, but ultimately couldn't get the job done. They ended up heading back to Miami.

During the trip to Tallahassee, he said that Garcia had a piece of paper with a picture of the man that they were supposed to kill on it and some handwritten notes as well. Cell phone records corroborated Rivera's information about the June trip.

Rivera also told a story about an incident in Tallahassee where he and Garcia were riding down the road in the rented Prius, and Garcia actually discharged the murder weapon, and the bullet struck the floorboard of the Prius. Law enforcement tracked down that actual Prius again and were able to see evidence in the undercarriage that corroborated Rivera's information about the accidental discharge.

So they're looking at the phone evidence. They're trying to find whatever they can to kind of corroborate what he's telling them.

I mentioned earlier that both men, Garcia and Rivera, cut their phones off from the time that they left Premier and kept them off until well after the murder when they're on their way back home. Rivera said that the first call that either of them made after the homicide was from Garcia to Magbanua where Garcia told her that the job was done, and Magbanua assured them that they would get their money the next day, which they did, Rivera says, when Katherine Magbanua brought cash to him at his home.

And all this information that Luis Rivera provided them was corroborated by -- including when the money was dropped off, was corroborated by cell phone records jin this case. Luis Rivera told police that the next day, after the murder, he was paid in cash by Katherine Magbanua, and that the money was packaged in a very unusual way. The money was in stacks of $100 bills, and the money was stapled together. The stacks of 100s, every thousand dollars was stapled together.

During this trial y'all will hear that the defendant had access to a lot of cash. And nothing's wrong with that. He had a lot of cash because his family gives cash discounts at their dental practice, and he keeps the cash that he receives in a safe. Again, nothing wrong about that either. However, what is relevant in this case is that the defendant had a very unusual practice of keeping the cash in his safe in thousand-dollar stacks of $100 bills that were stapled together, just like the money Luis Rivera received.

Over the last few years, since the 2016 arrest and interview of Luis Rivera, law enforcement has not stopped working on this case. There were trials in 2019 and 2022 -- so right before the pandemic and right after the pandemic -- of co-conspirators. Law enforcement also continued to try to gather all the evidence that they possibly could. They continued to interview people who may possibly have any information about the case.

They tried to clarify any audio recordings that couldn't be clearly heard. while the phone wiretaps are very clear, the wiretap conversations that took place in public places when these people were meeting in person were not clearly audible back in 2016. Some still aren't, but -- because these public places are often too noisy.

For instance, the recording of the conversation between the defendant and Katherine Magbanua at Dolce Vita had too much background noise to be able to clearly hear what the conspirators were talking about. However, since 2016, as technology developed over the years, and thanks to law enforcement's just continued dedication, law enforcement eventually found an expert that was formerly employed by the CIA with improved technology and enough expertise to clarify this recording at Dolce Vita that y'all will hear, and he did that by being able to reduce as much background noise as possible. And once this recording was clarified, which was actually just early last year in 2022, the State arrested this defendant.

MS. DUGAN: The presentation of this evidence, as y'all can see from opening, it's a lot. It's a lot of information. It"s gonna take a little bit of time, and it may be tedious at times. And I want to thank y'all in advance for the careful attention to all of the evidence y'all see and hear during this trial. When you do, you'll see that this defendant carried out his plan to hire a hitman to kill Dan Markel. He conspired and he solicited Katherine Magbanua to get this murder done, and he paid her for the job once it was completed. This defendant acted in furtherance of this murder plot that went beyond just thinking about it or talking about it, and these acts make him guilty as a principal to first-degree murder just as if he pulled the trigger himself.

While the defendant's choices helped solve a problem within his family, they came at a very high price. He took the life of a loving father of two little boys, and he caused a lifetime of grief for Dan Markel"s loved ones.

Y'all heard a lot in jury selection about how important this trial is to the defendant, which I'm sure it is. But Dan Markel was loved. He was a brother. He was a son. And this trial is his family's opportunity to see justice done for the person who set up their son's murder.

And at the conclusion of this evidence, y'all will be convinced beyond any reasonable doubt that this defendant is guilty, and at that point we'll ask you for the only verdict that does justice in this case, which is a verdict that the defendant is guilty as charged. Thank y'all.