Christopher Corbitt — Direct
990 linesMS. DUGAN: The State calls Sergeant Corbitt.
JUDGE EVERETT: Please raise your right hand. Do you swear or affirm the testimony you're about to give?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: I do.
JUDGE EVERETT: You may take your seat.
MS. DUGAN: All right, great. Will you introduce yourself to the jury and spell your name for our court reporter, please?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Certainly. Good afternoon. My name is Christopher Corbitt, and that's C-O-R-B-I-T-T, and I'm a sergeant with the City of Tallahassee Police Department.
MS. DUGAN: And you mentioned you're a sergeant. What unit do you work in at TPD?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: I currently supervise the Technical Operations Unit, and that's the section of the agency that's responsible for sort of all the high-tech or technological ways that we help out in criminal investigations.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That includes things like computer and mobile device forensics, audio and video, CCTV retrieval, our LPR systems, we have a public safety camera system, all of those. And then what I spend most of my time doing, which is the analysis of communication records or analysis of phone records.
MS. DUGAN: And how long have you worked in the technical operations unit at TPD?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Quite some time. I believe 2012 — 2008 is when I started in there.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. And how long have you been the sergeant supervising that unit?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: 2012.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Can you tell us a little bit about — we've heard a little bit about your experience — but your training and experience to be in your position?
JUDGE EVERETT: The bailiff will take you back. Have a brief recess for the moment.
JUDGE EVERETT: My only question would be, are you good to sit through the rest of today?
JUDGE EVERETT: Are you good to sit through the rest of today?
JUDGE EVERETT: Right. You may continue, Ms. Dugan.
MS. DUGAN: Hi. Could you tell us a little bit about your training and experience for your position?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Certainly. I have a little over 1,675 hours of general technical training across kind of all of our disciplines. And then I have just under 900 hours of training specific to communication record analysis. And that, again, involves the collection of records — or obtaining the records — the various types of analysis that we do, including location, estimating the location of a handset, or calling analysis.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: I instruct other law enforcement officers and analysts across the state, and really across the country, in communication record analysis.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: I believe that's...
MS. DUGAN: And what is communication record analysis?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Communication record analysis is kind of a general term for what we can do with the records that — primarily, we're talking about the records that come from communication carriers like our AT&T, Verizon — cell phone carriers is primarily what we talk about. We also do get records from forensic analysis of phones; we can add that in. But primarily, again, the carrier records. And from the various types of reports they're able to give us, we can do analysis such as who a handset — and I say handset for cell phone — communicates with most frequently; again, estimated locations, approximately where was a handset when a certain call was placed; the calling pattern analysis, who calls who when, all of those kind of things. Really, there's a variety of analysis that we can do with those records, kind of pertaining to whatever the investigation needs.
MS. DUGAN: And have you ever testified where you've given an opinion in court in the field of historical communication record analysis?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: I have, yes.
MS. DUGAN: About how many times?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: 101.
MS. DUGAN: Judge, those are all my questions as to his qualifications in that field, if defense has any voir dire.
JUDGE EVERETT: Very well. Mr. Rashbaum?
MR. RASHBAUM: No, Your Honor.
JUDGE EVERETT: Is there any objection to the witness providing an opinion in the field of historic communication analysis?
MR. RASHBAUM: No, Your Honor.
JUDGE EVERETT: Members of the jury, the witness will be permitted to provide you with an opinion in this area of historic communication analysis. You may continue.
MS. DUGAN: All right. So we're going to get to your analysis in a minute, but before we do that, I just have to move certain things into evidence, so we're going to go through that. All right, so you told us that in your position at TPD, you often pull records — call detail records — from phone companies?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct, yes.
MS. DUGAN: Are these types of records kept in the normal course of business for phone companies?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: They are.
MS. DUGAN: And are they kept by an automated system, by a computer that has knowledge of those events in the records?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: And are you familiar with how to interpret and read those records?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes, I am.
MS. DUGAN: In this case, have you reviewed the phone records of what's been marked and shown to defense and you in previous proceedings? And I'm just going to go through all the numbers and names: State's Exhibit 85, Louis Rivera call detail record; State's Exhibit 86, Sigfredo Garcia call detail records; State's Exhibit 87, Wendi Adelson; 88, Donna Adelson; 89, Charlie Adelson; 90, Harvey Adelson; 91, Katherine Magbanua; and 92, Daniel Markel call detail records.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. And — Right in front of you on the witness stand, I've left a chart that's already been admitted into evidence. I believe it's State's 59. Does it say 59 on the pink sticker there?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: It does, yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Just to kind of save us time and without having to recite every number, do the numbers below each picture on that chart reflect the numbers for the call detail records we received for each one of these parties?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right. In addition to the call detail records we spoke about, did you also review traffic tickets received by Sigfredo Garcia, car rental agreements from Comfort Rental and Save Gas, surveillance video from Premier Gym, documents from Spirion GPS, Comfort Rental, Save Gas, as well as the iCloud of Charlie Adelson and the Cellebrite of Wendi Adelson's cell phone?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. I want to ask you about those last two items in just a second. But for the call detail records and the businesses I named out, when you receive records from a business, does it contain a certification from that business verifying that it is a legitimate record from that business? Did the records in this case have those items?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes, all the carriers provide — or can provide — a business record certification attesting to the things we mentioned earlier.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, and as far as the Wendi Adelson Cellebrite, what is a Cellebrite?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Cellebrite is kind of a catch-all name now. We do forensic analysis of mobile devices and computers.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: And there's a number of tools that allow us to do that forensic analysis that actually interact with the handset and allow us to retrieve the information that's on it.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Cellebrite is one of those, and it is one of the tools that we use. So we kind of say a Cellebrite report is a forensic report. Once we extract that information, then the software goes through and kind of analyzes it for us and says, "Well, this is a text message, this is a call log, this is a Wi-Fi access point" — whatever it may be — and creates a report for us that we're able to review and to be able to search through and print out excerpts, whatever we want to do. But it's a tool that allows us to analyze the results of that forensic extraction from the device.
MS. DUGAN: And was that forensic extraction of Wendi Adelson's cell phone done on the day of Dan Markel's murder, July 18, 2014, when she came to Tallahassee Police Department?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes, it was.
MS. DUGAN: All right. And then at some point during this investigation — I mentioned this iCloud — was a subpoena sent to Apple to get the information from Charlie Adelson's iCloud?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: I believe it would have been a search warrant, but yes.
MS. DUGAN: Search warrant — my apologies. And when we receive the information from that iCloud, were there messages in that iCloud?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right. And what is an iCloud, for those who don't know?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Again, kind of a general term, but for iOS users — or Apple users — they have the ability to back up most of the contents from their device to the iCloud, Apple's cloud storage. With the legal demand, we were able to recover that — or be provided that backup information — from the cell phones, Mr. Adelson again. So Cellebrite being the software we use to analyze that, to kind of parse everything out and allow us to review it and do the analysis of that iCloud return.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Did you base your opinions in this case on the records that you received from those businesses that I named out, from the extracts from the iCloud, and also from the call detail records that you received from the phone carriers?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right. All of this information — was this voluminous amount of information hundreds or even thousands of pages?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Definitely thousands of pages.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Did you prepare a summary in order to show the jury what these records say about the phone activity and locations of all these parties, and that you'll be relying on for your testimony here today?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: I did.
MS. DUGAN: All right. And did that summary include the call detail records, the business records we talked about, and also just certain extracts from Wendi Adelson's cell phone and the iCloud of Charlie Adelson?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. At this time, I'd like to move in item 64, the Comfort Rental contract; 65, another Comfort Rental contract; 66, Spirion GPS UPS information; 80, traffic ticket of Sigfredo Garcia; as well as 85 through 92, which are all of the call detail records that I described earlier when I named out each person.
JUDGE EVERETT: Please go over the numbers again.
MS. DUGAN: Yes, sir. That should be 85 through 92, 64, 65, 66, and 80.
JUDGE EVERETT: They are admitted.
MS. DUGAN: And then finally, this summary that we're going to see where you combined all of that information — did you create a PDF version to be printed and moved into evidence today?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right. Now, do you also have a version via PowerPoint that we can see here in the courtroom altogether?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: I do, yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right, Judge, at this time I would move his summary into evidence. This is State's Exhibit 67.
JUDGE EVERETT: 67.
MS. DUGAN: There's going to be both a flash drive containing this and then a physical copy.
JUDGE EVERETT: Any objection to 67?
MR. RASHBAUM: No, Your Honor.
JUDGE EVERETT: State's 67 is admitted.
MS. DUGAN: All right. So if you could pull up the summary — the PowerPoint — on your end, and we'll get started.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: It is.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. So let me see what I mean. Oh, I mean, I know what I mean.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. So you told us that part of your job is getting these call detail records from phone companies. Can you describe to us what these call detail records look like and what's contained in them?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Certainly. So this is a sample of call detail records. This is one page from the many records that we received, and you can see there's a lot of information here on the page, but there's certain sections that we kind of look at for our analysis. So here on the left-hand side, we have the date and time of events — and when I say events, it could be a voice call, it could be a text message, or it could be a data session. Different carriers provide records for different types of events, but in this case with AT&T, we generally see records with voice, text, and data. We have the date and time of that event. Sometimes our records are provided in different time zones and we have to do an adjustment to our local time, but in the older records here that we have, these records were actually provided in our local time; some of the later records we had were not. So that section, again, tells us the date and time of the event — so if we're looking for something that happened on a certain day, that's the section that we go to. The next section here involves who's calling who: these are the phone numbers involved, and one of those would be our target number, or the number that the records are for, and the other number would be the person that's either calling that person or being called by that person. So we see also the — what they call their seizure time, how long it takes to connect the call, and then the elapsed time, how long the call lasts. We will do a lot of summaries of call detail records — it's easier to read when we kind of do it in a different format that allows us to put a name with a number, so we know kind of who's calling who. It's a little bit easier to read, but those summaries will come from that section of the records as far as what phone numbers are communicating with whom else. And then the other section that we have here is the location section. So this is the cell site or cell tower that the handset was communicating with for that particular event, and they give us both a unique identifier for it — a number that we can go to a key or a spreadsheet and look up — and in the case of AT&T, they also provide us the latitude and longitude of that cell site. So when we do location analysis, it kind of looks like this: we can just take that latitude and longitude they give us, or which we looked up and confirmed in that key, and we can plot it on the map. And here it's just represented by this blue dot, but that would be the location of the cell site that this handset was communicating with during that particular sample event. Sometimes just knowing where the cell site is is sufficient, we don't really need to know any more.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We can do kind of our location analysis. We know this phone was generally in the South Florida area.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: But our cell sites are almost all broken down into multiple sides or sectors.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: And so that means they have antennas that are facing different direction, and a handset will communicate with one of those sectors. And we're also provided with that information in the call detail records. So not only do we know where the cell site is, but we know kind of which side of the cell site a handset was on for particular events. And sometimes we will look at that to help narrow down where a handset could have been. So sometimes we'll represent them — you can see here the large blue arrow would represent the sector that the handset was using; the smaller black arrows would represent the other cell sites on that, or other sectors on that cell site, that were not being used. But that kind of gives us an idea of how that cell site is divided up. Three being the most common kind of division of a cell site.
MS. DUGAN: Can you say exactly or precisely on a map where a certain handset is?
MS. DUGAN: Okay. How do you — do you say whether a handset is consistent with the location, or inconsistent?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes. Generally, we're provided with an address and we're asked to say, "Could this handset have been at this address — the scene, this incident?" And so we look at where the cell site is located, we look at the sector the handset is communicating with, and make an opinion as to whether that sector of that cell site services that incident location.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: And if it does — if we think it's within the coverage area of that particular cell site and sector — then we would say yes, your incident location is included.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: If that address were to be somewhere far outside of the cell site, that we do not believe the signal from that cell site could reach a handset, then we would say no, that location is excluded — or the handset could not have been there.
MS. DUGAN: If a phone is out of battery, or turned off, or just not being used at that time, are you able to get locations for that handset at those times?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So that's a good point — we can only make estimations about locations when we have events with location. If they're not in the records, then we don't know where a handset could be. And so, yes — and some of those situations: if a handset is not being used, it may still generate data records, so we may still see location information even if no one is actively making a phone call or sending a text message. And with some of the carriers, we don't see those — we don't see the passive events — and we may not have location information for some time. But yes, we only can make that determination when we have an actual record with location.
MS. DUGAN: All right. So let's get into this case. Can you walk us through Dan Markel's known locations on the day that he was murdered, on July 18, 2014?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes. We knew that he had been in three distinct locations that morning: one being his house; the second being where he dropped his children off at daycare; and then the third being Premier Health and Fitness Center, where he was before returning home. So we knew we had those three locations.
MS. DUGAN: Did TPD believe that whoever shot Dan Markel was at at least one of these same locations or more that he was at that morning?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes, we did have evidence that he was being followed, at least at the last location.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So we did believe that it was a probability that the suspects were possibly at all three of those locations around the same time Mr. Markel would have been.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. And the last location with the surveillance video you're speaking of is the Premier Gym?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Where the Prius was following him?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right. So how did TPD try to identify who was in that Prius?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: The first thing that we did is what we call a "tower dump," which is kind of a generic term for collecting all of the events that were processed through any cell sites that could service a particular location. So we gave the carriers those three addresses and the time frame that we believe the suspects would have been there and said, "Please give us all the events that your cell towers processed and the phone numbers associated with those."
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: And so that we could try to do some analysis and determine if, again, those suspects were following him in those locations.
MS. DUGAN: And which phone companies had cell sites in the area?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: At that time, we had T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon, and AT&T.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. So those four companies?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: So TPD then subpoenaed those records to get all of the numbers with events in that location.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. All right. So State has marked and shown to defense and the witness in previous proceedings State's 93, which is the tower dump of T-Mobile; State's 94, tower dump of AT&T; State's 95, tower dump of Verizon; State's 96, tower dump of Sprint — which all contain certifications of business records. Did you review the tower dumps of all those four companies in your analysis in this case?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: I did, yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. At this time, I would move State's 93 through 96 into evidence — to certify business records.
JUDGE EVERETT: Any objection? State's 93 through 96 are admitted.
MS. DUGAN: At this time, so — Was this analysis of those tower dumps a quicker and easy thing to do?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: No, not quick or easy. We do have software that helps us — that we're able to import these records into — and it kind of does some of the hard work for us in the background. But again, the results that we get have to be researched and analyzed and worked from that point.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. After looking through all of the numbers in all of those four — distinct in evidence — and all of that data, was there any one number at all of those locations that Markel is at that morning?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: There was not.
MS. DUGAN: All right. So since you couldn't find one number that was in every single one of those locations, what did y'all do next?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Well, the tower dump is, again, just kind of a listing of a bunch of phone numbers of handsets that were present in those kind of critical places and times. And at that point, we also had a significant number of records from the subjects in the investigation. So we were actually able to compare the phone numbers of phones that were in the tower dumps with both all of the target numbers — or subject numbers — that we had obtained records for, and all the people that they had talked to. We were able to kind of compare those two data sets to see if something would come out.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. What did you find?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We did, in comparing these — we did find a number that was common to the tower dump from the Premier Health and Fitness, and it was also a number that had been called or called into one of the subjects in the investigation.
MS. DUGAN: And which subject was that?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That was Mr. Harvey Adelson.
MS. DUGAN: And that's Charlie Adelson's father?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Can you show us that call? I want to ask you about the date and time and duration.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes. So this — sorry — July 1st of 2014. And while it looks like three events here, it's actually only one call, and this is something that we see in the records: there are a number of routing events that happen when the call is received, and in this case there's an indication it was routed to voicemail. So that routing shows up as multiple events in the record. So while it looks like more, it is actually only a single phone call.
MS. DUGAN: And what date was this call?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: July 1st of 2014.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. And what was the duration of the call?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: The duration was 37 seconds.
MS. DUGAN: So that was the time from the time the call connected to the time the call ended?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Could that be consistent with the 786 caller leaving a voicemail on Harvey Adelson's phone?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: It could be, yes. All we know is that it was connected for 37 seconds, and there is the indicator of routing to voicemail.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Was there any other communication in the phone records between this 786 number and Harvey Adelson besides this one call, this one 37-second call?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: There was not.
MS. DUGAN: And who did the 786 number belong to?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: The 786 number belonged to Mr. Sigfredo Garcia.
MS. DUGAN: And so Sigfredo Garcia's number was consistent with being at Premier Gym at the same time as the victim, and that number having this 37-second call on July 1st to Harvey Adelson is what brought him to the forefront?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: One way, yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. And was Sigfredo Garcia linked to Charlie Adelson?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: He was, yes.
MS. DUGAN: Can you show us how?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So again, one of the main analyses that we do with phone records is what we call a frequency report, or just a simple report that tells us who a particular handset communicates with most frequently. Helps us identify people that are significant in their lives — maybe co-conspirators or other people. But again, we do that frequency report. So we looked at his frequency report, and at the very top we had this number ending in 1312, clearly communicated with a significant number of times by Mr. Garcia.
MS. DUGAN: And who did that 786-1312 number belong to?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So the 1312 number was Ms. — Magbanua's.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. And how was she linked to Charlie Adelson?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Again, looking at her frequency, or who she communicated with the most, we see her second most frequent contact was a number ending in 9223.
MS. DUGAN: And who did that 9223 number belong to?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That was Mr. Charlie Adelson.
MS. DUGAN: Who was another one of Sigfredo Garcia's top contacts besides Katherine Magbanua?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So we did look at all of his contacts, or all the people in his frequency report, to attempt to identify who he may have been with. Going back to the tower-dump return, we found that there was a phone number in the AT&T tower-dump return, also from Premier, that was also in Mr. Garcia's frequency report. So someone that he communicated with relatively frequently was also here in Tallahassee at the same time.
MS. DUGAN: And who's the 8153 number belong to that was here at the same time?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That was Mr. Rivera's.
MS. DUGAN: All — Right, looking at your next slide, does anyone else in this chart have phone contact with Sigfredo Garcia down at the bottom or Luis Rivera right next to him, other than Katherine Magbanua and that one 37-second call between Garcia and Harvey Adelson on July 1st of 2014?
MS. DUGAN: Okay. So speaking of that July 1st, 2014 37-second call, was it your understanding through this investigation that that call came after an incident where Garcia confronted Magbanua and Charlie Adelson on July 1st when they were going to take out jet skis, and then Garcia left an angry voicemail on Harvey Adelson's phone?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: In looking at Charlie Adelson's iCloud, were there messages that reference the message left on July 1st?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: There are, yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, can you show us those messages? Or, yeah — what do we have here?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: This is just a sample of the Cellebrite report that we've been talking about. We can see that this is just containing the one message, but this is an example of how the Cellebrite report looks and how we're able to go through and get information. For most of our summaries, we will convert those out into something that's a little bit easier to read. You can see that the print's kind of small and there's all kinds of information in there. So when we do these summaries of the text messages, we will kind of bring them out into these bigger bubbles. But we have the two messages here on the left that are from Ms. Magbanua and the response from Mr. Adelson, and again this is July 2nd of 2014.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. And in this message from Charlie Adelson to Katherine Magbanua on July 2nd, 2014 — so this would be the day after the 37-second call to Harvey Adelson's phone?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Charlie Adelson says, "I'm sorry, but he's a fucking pussy."
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. And then he says that "leaving messages is so childish, but whatever."
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes, right, that's correct.
MS. DUGAN: All right. Was Luis Rivera interviewed by law enforcement back in 2016?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: He was, yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right. And did he admit that he and Garcia were in fact in that Prius at Premier Gym that followed Dan Markel on July 18th of 2014?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: He did, yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right. And did both Garcia and Rivera live in Miami back in 2014 to 2016, that time range?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Yes. Did Rivera tell law enforcement during his interview about an additional trip to Tallahassee, besides the one that law enforcement already knew about, where Dan Markel was killed on July 18th?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: He did, yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. What did y'all do once you learned that information that before the murder there was this first trip, or additional trip, to Tallahassee?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Well, we certainly investigated that. We looked at the records that we had to see if we could confirm that trip, and then researched other evidence that we may have been able to collect to document that trip.
MS. DUGAN: And were you able to see from the records that Luis Rivera traveled to Tallahassee not only in July of 2014, but also in June of 2014?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, so I want to go now in chronological order, starting with the June trip and then going into the July trip, which culminated in Dan Markel being murdered.
MS. DUGAN: All right, looking first at June 2nd of 2014, what did law enforcement find evidence of that happened that day?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: The first thing that we found was the rental contract for a rental vehicle that was ultimately driven up here.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: With that contract, we see that it was in the name of Mr. Garcia.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We see the vehicle description here on the right-hand side is a Nissan Altima. And we have a "due in" in the contract that indicates it was due back on June 5th at 8:50 p.m.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Using that date and time it was due back, what time was law enforcement able to determine that it was rented?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Knowing that they were 24-hour rental periods from this company, then it was logical that it was rented around 8:50 p.m. So we looked at records in that time frame.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, so around 8:50 p.m. on June 2nd, so three days before. All right, you mentioned it's a Nissan Altima that he rented. What color was that Nissan Altima?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Silver.
MS. DUGAN: And this is Sigfredo Garcia that's renting this vehicle?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: Does Luis Rivera's name appear anywhere on this rental contract?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: It does not.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, and you said that this is from Comfort Rental?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Yes. All right. Was there any phone evidence or records to show how the rental car was picked up on June 2nd?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes. So we know the location of the Comfort rental car here, represented by the yellow flag and the label "Comfort Rent-A-Car," and we also have Ms. Magbanua's residence at the time.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Looking at her phone records, the cell sites that her handset was communicating with the evening of June 2nd, we can see on the top right here there's a cell site at 8:25 which is near her residence.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We have another cell site at 8:34, where the handset has moved kind of west and south a little bit. And then we see events on the left-hand side, 8:53 through 8:58, where her handset is now communicating with a cell site much closer to the Comfort rental car.
MS. DUGAN: Did Sigfredo Garcia's phone records from June of 2014 have location information?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: They did not.
MS. DUGAN: Why not? Why might that happen?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: He was a Metro PCS customer, and at that time T-Mobile was going through an acquisition of Metro PCS, and the record-keeping was a bit sketchy. We ended up obtaining records from both T-Mobile and Metro PCS, and we went back on multiple occasions to try to get more, but we were able to get basically partial records from both providers — but nothing that had location information for the June trip.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Okay, so we see that you've plotted her cell phone locations on this map — or the cell-site locations that her phone was using on this map — after she's consistent with the area of Comfort Rental from 8:53 to 8:58. Does she stay in the area, or does she travel back to her home?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: She will travel back. Here we can see for those events, when looking at the specific sector that her handset was using, it's further consistent with the Comfort rental car location. And then, as you ask, she has events here — we see on the left at 9:17 consistent with moving away from Comfort rental car, and then the next event with location to the right-hand side being at 9:43 and 10:01, which will be consistent with her returning to the area of her residence.
MS. DUGAN: Did you look at the records to see who Katherine Magbanua and any other parties in this case were talking to during this time frame?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Can you tell us about that communication?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So this is again the call-detail summary. So this is where we've taken all of those kind of hard-to-read records from the carrier and we've put them in our software, and it's able to print out a report for us that's kind of easier to follow. We're able to attach names to phone numbers, and we're able to do time adjustments if we need to, so we make sure that all of our records are in the correct time zone as well. So these are the communications starting at about 8:25 and running through approximately 11:30 for that evening of June 2nd. This is during the period of time that this rental car is being picked up and Ms. Magbanua and Mr. Garcia are traveling back and forth. That first call that we see to GEICO —
MS. DUGAN: Would that call be kind of during the time that she would be driving out to the Comfort rental area?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Is she speaking to Sigfredo Garcia at all during that time frame where she's traveling out to Comfort?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: She is not.
MS. DUGAN: Could that be consistent with them being together during that time?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: It could be, yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right. So then, looking at during the time that she's at Comfort and the time period — which was 8:53 to 8:57, I believe — and the time period when she's traveling back to her home, who is she on the phone with during that time?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: She communicates with Mr. Adelson primarily.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Can you tell us the duration of those calls with Charlie Adelson?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: I can. The first at 8:57 is actually an outgoing call from Mr. Adelson to Ms. Magbanua for a minute and eight seconds.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We have a call at 9:17 p.m. — from Ms. Magbanua to Mr. Adelson, that is 25 minutes and 27 seconds long.
MS. DUGAN: And that's the third call down from the top we see?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, so that 25-minute call, she would have been on the phone with him for much of her drive back home from the car rental?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: And who does she call as soon as she gets back home from the car rental after she hangs up with Mr. Adelson?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We have outgoing calls to Mr. Garcia at 10:01.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, now I want you to walk us through this in just a second, and — do we expect most of these parties to be talking to each other on a daily basis, given that the Adelsons are family members, given that Charlie Adelson is in a dating relationship with Katherine Magbanua, and that Katherine Magbanua has children with Garcia, with Sigfredo Garcia? Would we expect those folks to be talking to the person that they're in their respective relationship with?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes, I believe we would.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. So are you going to be walking us through, throughout your presentation, certain periods of communication, though, that stood out to investigators?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: And why did those — since these are people that all may be talking to each other anyway on a daily basis — why did these certain periods stick out to investigators?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Well, these are communications that occurred during periods of time where significant events were happening in this crime. And so this is the evening that the rental car — this is the first rental car — is being picked up. And this is the rental car that will subsequently be driven to Tallahassee in an attempt to murder Mr. Markel. So it's kind of the first, from my perspective and what I can see in the records, it's the first kind of physical act that I can see where there's something actually happening. Someone's traveling someplace to pick up a vehicle to go and do this thing. So that's why this period stood out. There are communications that occur during the trips while Mr. Garcia and Mr. Rivera are in Tallahassee. There are communications that occur then, and communications that occur upon their return after the eventual homicide of Mr. Markel.
MS. DUGAN: Are there other things about certain communications that stand out to investigators, like a quick turnaround between phone calls?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Can you tell us about that?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We can see in this demonstrative here, the third call down we talked about is 25 minutes and 27 seconds. So Ms. Magbanua and Mr. Adelson would have been on the phone from 9:17, add 25 minutes to that. And we see at 9:44, which is just about the time that call would have ended, Mr. Adelson then makes an outgoing call to the Adelson residence, also for 25 minutes — 25 minutes and 32 seconds.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, so looking at situations where one of these conspirators hangs up with one and immediately calls the other, that could be something that stands out to investigators?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. And then is another, I guess, detail in the communications maybe calling a number that they might not ordinarily call?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. All right. So if you could walk us through the communications that we see, as you said, on like the night that the first physical act of this murder is occurring during this first trip to Tallahassee where this car is being rented.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So again, to help kind of visualize the calls, we can look at our subjects and then look at our communications. So we already mentioned the 8:57 call where Mr. Adelson calls in to Ms. Magbanua, just over a minute.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We have the next call at 9:17 p.m. This was the 27 — or 25-minute — phone call that we talked about.
MS. DUGAN: And that's while she's on the way back from Comfort to her home?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: Okay.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: And so in this relatively short time frame, we're also kind of keeping track up here on this one at the top, how much — kind of the total time of communications that we have.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So, again, at 9:31, Wendi Adelson texts Harvey Adelson.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: The phone call we already talked about, from Mr. Adelson to the Adelson residence, for 25 minutes.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Katherine Magbanua then communicating with Mr. Garcia.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Mr. Garcia back to Ms. Magbanua. Harvey Adelson calls Charlie Adelson — this is 10:16 — and that's a five-minute phone call, a little over five minutes. Charlie Adelson calls back for a little over three minutes. Ms. — Magbanua is communicating with Mr. Garcia again, and then Mr. Adelson for another 23-minute phone call, and then text messages from Mr. — Garcia, or call and then text from Mr. Garcia to Ms. Magbanua. About an hour and 25 minutes of communication between our parties in this time frame.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: More here at 11:05 — short calls, or a 27-second call, and then a four-minute phone call from Ms. Magbanua to Mr. Garcia again.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Communication with Mr. Garcia back to Ms. Magbanua.
MS. DUGAN: All right, we saw a call from Charlie Adelson — you mentioned it. But Katherine Magbanua was talking to Charlie Adelson on her way back from dropping Garcia off at Comfort Rental. She talks to Charlie Adelson for 25 minutes on her way back. And then Charlie Adelson, after he gets off that call, calls his parents' landline — Harvey and Donna Adelson's landline.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Does the defendant, Charlie Adelson, most often talk to his parents on their cell phones or on their home landline?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We looked at, again, for all the records that we had for Mr. Adelson, and our analytical software is able to kind of tally up for us how many communications are with the cell phones — the combined cell phones of Mr. Harvey and Ms. Donna Adelson — compared to their landline, or their home phone. And again, we know that events kind of make multiple records, and so we know that it may not be exactly 3,868 calls, but not all calls are completed, all of those.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: But statistically, we can see that there were only 28 contacts or attempted contacts between Mr. Adelson's cell phone and the Adelson residence, compared to a significantly greater number to the cell phones.
MS. DUGAN: So you said 99.3% of his communication is with his parents' cell phones, as opposed to the 0.7% of time he calls the landline?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: All right. And are there actually — you said 28 contacts, or 0.07%?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Those 28 contacts, those are from May of 2014 through March of 2016 — almost two years.
MS. DUGAN: There's only 28 contacts total?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: And this is one of them that happened that night?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: And that was at a time, also in that call flurry you just showed us, there were calls where there was a long duration of a call to Harvey Adelson's cell phone as well too, right?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Are you familiar — I want to talk a little bit more about this landline call before we move on. Are you familiar with statements by Charlie Adelson on the wiretap where Charlie Adelson tells people who call him on his cell phone that he'll call them back on a landline?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: As somebody who's familiar with technical operations of law enforcement and wiretapping, is there a perception — whether it be wrong or right — but is there a perception that talking on a landline phone is safer than talking on a cell phone as far as who can listen in or whether law enforcement can listen in?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes, I believe there is.
MS. DUGAN: All right. Where was Rivera's handset during this time where the car was rented?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So again, knowing the approximate time for the car rental, we looked at Mr. Rivera's cell sites that his handset was using, and we can see that they're consistent with the area of his residence and would be inconsistent with the area of Comfort Rental.
MS. DUGAN: Is there any evidence that Rivera was involved with the rental of this vehicle?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: There's not.
MS. DUGAN: All right. Do we have any other evidence that law enforcement was able to find to show who rented the car on June 2nd besides the last rental contract we saw?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes, I believe you mentioned earlier traffic citation.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We did recover a traffic citation that was issued to Mr. Garcia.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: And in that, we can see that he is driving the rental vehicle — the same information from the rental contract.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, and was this citation from 9:48 p.m. on June 2nd?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: It is, yes.
MS. DUGAN: So within an hour of renting this car, he got a traffic ticket.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: He did.
MS. DUGAN: All right. And that was in that silver Nissan Altima?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Are you familiar with the statement that Jeffrey Lacasse drives a silver Nissan vehicle, or drove that at the time of this murder?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: I am familiar with that, yes.
MS. DUGAN: Now, did this traffic ticket create a record that law enforcement would be in possession of? And that record memorialized the fact that Sigfredo Garcia is driving this Nissan — silver Nissan rental car from Comfort — on that day?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right. So after he got that traffic ticket that memorializes that — that law enforcement is going to have — what did he do next?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: There was a change of vehicles. So we have an additional contract from Comfort rental car that indicates the vehicle was changed out for a blue Hyundai.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, so then he goes back to Comfort, rents a different car?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: All right. This time a blue Hyundai. And again, was it Garcia renting it and not Rivera?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: All right. What can you tell us about the travel of Louis Rivera's handset on June 4th of 2014?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So again, Mr. Rivera is the only one that we have location information on for this period. And again, just looking at the cell sites that his handset is communicating with, we can see that it's consistent with leaving the South Florida — Miami — area. We see down here at the bottom right, early morning hours of June 4th of 2014.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: And then we can see that it is consistent with getting into Tallahassee the early morning, or later morning, of June 4th.
MS. DUGAN: Was Rivera's phone ever consistent with being near the victim Dan Markel's home on Trescott Drive the following day, on June 5th of 2014?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes, we did see a number of events where his handset was communicating with a cell site and a sector very close to Mr. Markel's residence.
MS. DUGAN: Are you familiar with Rivera's statement in his interview that they were at a park near Markel's house?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Was the phone information here — was that consistent with Winthrop Park near Trescott Drive?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: It is. We can see here at the top the location of Trescott Drive, and the blue kind of square there represents the GPS information for the rental vehicle. The rental companies did have kind of asset-recovery tracking on their vehicles, and they provided a location for the rental vehicle at 3:17 p.m. here on June 5th. And we can see that the vehicle is — or that — in the cell site just down here would both be consistent with Winthrop Park, just on the south side of Benton Road there.
MS. DUGAN: And sometime after this surveillance of Dan Markel, did Louis Rivera's handset end up traveling back down to the Miami area?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: It did, yes. Immediately after that we can see that the handset — again, just looking at the cell sites — would be consistent with traveling back down to the South Florida area that afternoon and evening of June 5th of 2014.
MS. DUGAN: All — right, did you look at the records to see what the communication, if any, was between the different parties during this June trip to Tallahassee?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes, we did.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Can you tell us about that?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: And again, just merely bracketing the period of time that the trip to Tallahassee was occurring, we can look at the communications. This is a summary of just the subjects in our investigation and other targets — so we've eliminated all the other people they're talking to and just focused on the phone calls where they're talking to other subjects in the investigation. But we can see that there are a number of events from the 2nd through the 5th.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Did Charlie Adelson contact Katherine Magbanua a number of times during this trip to Tallahassee?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Was that about ten times?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes. So again, looking at this, just this time kind of tallying up the number of contacts between our subjects, we can see — yes, Mr. Adelson contacted Ms. Magbanua ten times in this time frame.
MS. DUGAN: What about Katherine Magbanua to Charlie Adelson?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Seven times.
MS. DUGAN: What about Katherine Magbanua and Sigfredo Garcia?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Twelve times.
MS. DUGAN: What about Sigfredo to Katherine Magbanua?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Five times.
MS. DUGAN: What about Charlie Adelson and Donna Adelson?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Five times.
MS. DUGAN: What about Donna Adelson to Charlie Adelson?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Two times.
MS. DUGAN: What about Wendi Adelson to Donna Adelson?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Two times.
MS. DUGAN: What about Wendi Adelson to Harvey Adelson?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: One time.
MS. DUGAN: And what about contacts from Wendi Adelson to the Harvey and Donna landline?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We have one contact there.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, and what about Wendi Adelson and Charlie Adelson?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We have Charlie and Harvey one time.
MS. DUGAN: Okay.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We have Wendi and Charlie one time. Harvey — and Donna one time.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Ms. Magbanua to Mr. Rivera, one time.
MS. DUGAN: And was that at his number he had in July of 2014, or was that an old number for him?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That was an old number for him.
MS. DUGAN: Is that number, though, listed as "Tato" in her phone?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: It is, yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. But it wasn't working at the time, or — for the call detail records we have, we have his new number?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. So he had a new number at the time, even though she's calling an old number and not getting in touch with him?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: Gotcha.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, and what about Louis Rivera and Sigfredo Garcia?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We do see one contact between them as well.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. All right — looking at June 6th of 2014, what can you tell us about the location of the rental vehicle that day?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Again, we were able to obtain kind of periodic locations for the vehicle. It was not constant tracking, but we were provided with another location that was at 8:48 a.m. on June 6th. We can see the location of the rental car by the blue square and its proximity to Ms. Magbanua's residence.
MS. DUGAN: So was that consistent with her being at her residence at that time?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: It's consistent with the rental car being near her residence at that time.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. All right. So I want to ask you about a message — from the Cellebrite of Wendi Adelson's cell phone, from July 6th of 2014.
MS. DUGAN: So chronologically, this is going to be after the June trip that we just saw, and it's going to be before the July trip where Dan Markel ended up being murdered.
MS. DUGAN: Was there a text sent on July 6th by Wendi Adelson to Dan Markel?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right. Can you show that to us?
MS. DUGAN: Okay, what does this text say?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Okay. From Wendi Adelson, it inquires of Mr. Markel: "Are you in Tallahassee July 14th through the 18th? I just wanted to know if I can have the kiddos on the 16th. Thanks."
MS. DUGAN: Okay, and he says yes you can.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: He does.
MS. DUGAN: All right. The dates that we see that Wendi Adelson is asking Dan Markel about — what is significant about those dates, July 16th — I'm sorry, July 14th through 18th?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Those would encompass the second trip to Tallahassee where Mr. Markel was murdered.
MS. DUGAN: What happened on July 15th, which is in that date range?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: 15th would have been, I believe, the first rental vehicle.
MS. DUGAN: So the Prius?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Second rental vehicle, sorry.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, so the Prius was rented on July 15th?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, and then on July 16th, that was the date that they traveled to Tallahassee?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay — Garcia and Rivera, I mean?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: And on the 18th is when Dan Markel was murdered?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Correct.
MS. DUGAN: Where was Wendi Adelson when this text message was sent?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So looking at her cell sites, we can see that she is in South Florida at this time that text was sent. We see here around 10:49 — 10:47 to 10:49 a.m. is the text exchange. 10:14 is the closest event that we have with cell site location for her, and we can see the location of the Icon, which was the residence of Mr. Harvey and Donna Adelson at that time.
MS. DUGAN: So Harvey and Donna Adelson lived in a condo in the Icon building?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes, at that time.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Where — was Charlie Adelson, the defendant, when that text message was sent?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So we have location information for him in the early morning hours of the 6th, at 12:30 a.m., and the next event being at 11:46 a.m. Both of those are consistent with the proximity to Ms. Magbanua's residence.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Again, we don't have an event exactly at the time of that text message.
MS. DUGAN: Now, July 6th, 2014 — was that a weekend day, a Saturday or a Sunday, I believe?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: I believe it was, yes.
MS. DUGAN: Was that weekend the weekend of Harvey Adelson's birthday at the Adelson residence?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Did Charlie Adelson also go to his parents' home at the Icon on that day that this message was sent?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: He did, yes. For events starting about 12:28 in the afternoon of that date through a little after nine, all of his communication events are connecting to cell sites in that area of the Icon.
MS. DUGAN: All right, so now I want to go forward to the July trip to Tallahassee.
MS. DUGAN: Can you walk us through — well, I want to talk about the location information surrounding the trip to Tallahassee that took place that week of July 14th that we saw referenced in the text message before. Whose phone records did you have location information for, for the July trip, as far as those traveling?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We had location for both Mr. Garcia and Mr. Rivera.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, so before we had only Rivera, but now we've got both for the July trip?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, was it a similar situation as the June trip where they rented a car in Miami and drove to Tallahassee?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right. You told us before that July 15th was the day that that car, that Prius, was rented.
MS. DUGAN: For the June trip, we looked at the night before the car was rented, and we saw some activity and some things on that day.
MS. DUGAN: Did you look at the night before the Prius was rented on July 14th, 2014, for the July trip?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We did, yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, can you walk us through that night before the Prius was rented? Walk us through the communications and what happened that night.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So we see communication here between Ms. Magbanua, Mr. Charlie Adelson, and Mr. Garcia. We have some calls starting here in this summary a little after 7 p.m. and going through just prior to 2 a.m. — it will be the morning of the 15th.
MS. DUGAN: And when you say between the three of them, you mean Katherine Magbanua is talking to Charlie Adelson, and then Katherine Magbanua is also talking to Sigfredo Garcia at different times?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Garcia and Adelson are never talking?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. All right. Were you able to find location data or any messages between Adelson and Magbanua that night?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes. And again, going to the iCloud return and looking on that date, we see a text message or a message from Mr. Adelson to Ms. Magbanua where he indicates he just tried calling her. We see that's at 8:56. At the top, we can see there was, in fact, at 8:53, an outbound call from Mr. Adelson to Ms. Magbanua that only had a one-second duration.
MS. DUGAN: Does his handset end up going down towards her residence?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: It does, yes. He indicates in messages that he's five minutes away, and then on 79, in response to her request to eat closer to her.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: And then we can see he has a cell site event at 9:27 p.m. where, again, his handset will be in the proximity of Ms. Magbanua's residence.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, and what time did he end up leaving that residence for good that night?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Well, there's some travel around after that. The handset returns to that area a little before 12:40. We have an event at 12:42 a.m. where we can see the handset is again in the area of Ms. Magbanua's residence. And then the next event we have at 1:02 a.m., we can see — here to the left and up — indicates that the handset has moved away from the area of her residence.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, now going back, if you don't mind, to the call flurry — to the list of calls we saw — who does Katherine Magbanua communicate with immediately after Charlie Adelson leaves the area consistent with her home that night?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So we see down the list here at 12:48 a.m.
MS. DUGAN: So that's about halfway through?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's about halfway through, yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We see an outbound call from Ms. Magbanua to Mr. Garcia.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, and what time did you have him last consistent with her residence?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That was at 12:42.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, so 12:42 a.m. is the last time that Charlie Adelson is consistent with Magbanua's residence.
MS. DUGAN: After he leaves the area, we then see him quite a bit north at 1-something a.m.?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Correct.
MS. DUGAN: Approximately six minutes though after he last is consistent with the area, she's calling Sigfredo Garcia.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. All right, can we now look at July 15th of 2014, which is going to be the day of the Prius rental?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes. Again, we have a number of communications between all of our parties for that day, and again, this summary is limited to just those persons. But we can see, as we go through here, one of the first calls — Mr. Garcia does communicate with other people in the overnight hour, but we see that at 9 a.m... he makes an outbound call to the Comfort rental car, which is the same rental company from the previous vehicle rental.
MS. DUGAN: So we see Charlie Adelson leave the area consistent with her residence at 12:42, then she calls Garcia at 12:48, and then there's a number of other calls that look like between Magbanua and Garcia in the one o'clock hour that morning?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right, and then Garcia, you said, calls Comfort Rental basically first thing in the morning, as soon as — that probably shortly after that company would have opened — at 9 a.m.?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes, I don't know their exact hours, but yes, it's early in the morning.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, all right, so he calls Comfort Rental, and then what happens next?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: There's a series of calls throughout the day between, again, all of our parties. We see that at 4:28 p.m. is when he makes a call to Hybrid, or Save Gas, which ended up being the rental company for the Prius. We see that call is made, and we see that there are a number of communications between, again, all of our parties, but ending down here at the bottom just after 6 with Mr. Rivera — between Mr. Garcia and Mr. Rivera.
MS. DUGAN: Was there regular communication between Garcia and Magbanua that day?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: There was, yes.
MS. DUGAN: And Garcia and Rivera?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right, so was law enforcement able to find that car rental agreement from Save Gas?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We were, yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right, can you walk us through that?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So again, just a couple of excerpts from that rental contract. We can see that the renter's name is Luis Rivera.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We see written above that the indication of "brother," and it provides a phone number that is Mr. Garcia's phone number. And then down here at the bottom, we can see the Toyota Prius. We can see the color of it, the license plate, but that's the vehicle information, and that it shows being out at 6:15 p.m.
MS. DUGAN: Thank you.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Can you tell us about their locations at that time? Did they have locations consistent with being at that rental?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So looking at both of their location information, Mr. — Rivera, by the nature of his carrier, has more events. He has several events with a cell site in very close proximity to the Save Gas rental. And Mr. Garcia has an event at 6:11.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Again, the car was out at 6:15.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: And he has an event also on a cell site in the immediate area of the Save Gas rental. All right.
MS. DUGAN: Can you walk us through the communication between all of these players the day that this car was rented and right afterwards?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So again, the evening time hours on the date of this rental, we can see that there are a number of communications. And again, kind of looking at a summary of that, looking at the communications this time just between people, kind of tiling those together, but we can see that Charlie Adelson contacts the Adelson residence three times — and this is the evening hours of the 15th — three times for a combined 44 minutes and 17 seconds.
MS. DUGAN: And so you said before that there's only 28 calls total from him to his parents' residence from 2013 to 2016. But now, from the time that the first car was rented that night, and then now again the time that the second car was rented, four of those 28 calls are those days?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, what's next?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We have Mr. Harvey Adelson being contacted by the Adelson residence.
MS. DUGAN: Could that be consistent with Donna Adelson being present at the residence and talking on the landline phone?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct, yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, we —
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: — have five communications between Mr. Adelson — Charlie Adelson — and Ms. Magbanua, combined a little over 11 — almost 12 — minutes of communication. 32 — times again, communications or attempted communications, between Ms. Magbanua and Mr. Garcia. Only about seven minutes and 41 seconds of communication. Mr. — Rivera and Mr. Garcia communicate 10 times, a little over three minutes of communication. I believe that's it.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, and on July 15th, did any of the parties ever meet up that night?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, can you tell us about that?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Well, we see in — again, going back to the call detail summary, this is Mr. Garcia's records — we see that he has a number of communications to Ms. Magbanua, and that ends at 9:30. So we have a number of attempts; we see here 8:45 up through 9:30, a number of communications or attempts, and then it kind of ends at 9:30. So what we see, looking at Ms. Magbanua's locations, that would be consistent with her being at her residence. And then if we look at Mr. Garcia's residence — or Mr. Garcia's cell site information — after that 9:30 timeframe, we see that his location information would also be consistent with her residence.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, and was there a GPS that pinged that night, and where was that?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes, and we also see that, again, another location from the rental vehicle. And we see it's represented by the blue square — its proximity to her residence.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, and did Garcia and Rivera's phones appear to leave the Miami area the next day, on July 16th of 2014?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: They did, yes.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Here again, we have Mr. Rivera's information represented by the blue towers, Mr. Garcia by the orange. And we can see that both of their handsets are consistent with traveling from Miami to Tallahassee.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Obviously, we have a number of events here in this time frame, so we can't see every single time. Some of them are kind of hidden behind other labels, but we can pretty clearly see the general time frame of that trip getting into Tallahassee in the very early morning hours of the 17th.
MS. DUGAN: All right. Were either of their phones ever consistent with being near Markel's residence on Trescott on July 17th, the next day, which was the day that Rivera said that they were doing some surveillance on Markel?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes. Again, here we see the location of Mr. Markel's residence on Trescott Drive by the yellow flag.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We see the blue arrows that represent the cell sites and sectors that Mr. Rivera's handset was communicating with. We can see how those are oriented, that they're both towards the area of Mr. Adelson's — or Mr. Markel's — residence.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We also see a cell site and sector represented by the orange arrow for Mr. Garcia. We see it's also oriented towards the residence and will be consistent with being in that area.
MS. DUGAN: Was there communication between all the conspirators between July 16th and July 17th during this travel to Tallahassee, and on the day that there was surveillance done in Tallahassee on July 16th and 17th?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes. Again, this is just the summary of the communication during that time frame. We can see, again, that there are a number of communications between our involved parties.
MS. DUGAN: If we could focus in on the very late night hours on July 17th of 2014. So this would be the night before Dan Markel was murdered?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: Correct. The night before and into the very early morning hours of Mr. —
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: — Markel's murder. We do see events here starting at 10:18, and same thing — we can kind of look through and see who's communicating with who. 10:18, we have a call from Charlie Adelson to Donna Adelson for about four and a half minutes.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Another call for just over four minutes at 10:29.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We have Ms. Magbanua again attempting to contact Mr. Rivera at the old number — same number we saw earlier.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Ms. Magbanua attempting to call Mr. — Garcia. Another attempt to Mr. Rivera's old number.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We're now at 11:41. There is a call to Mr. Garcia for about 10 minutes.
MS. DUGAN: Could these calls previous to that be consistent with her not being able to reach Garcia, so she calls a friend of his to try to talk to him?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes. Generally preceding the calls to Mr. Rivera's old number, we see attempts into Mr. Garcia where they do not appear to connect — they're very short duration — which could be consistent with her not being able to get hold of Mr. Garcia, and then the attempt to Mr. Rivera's old number.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, so it ringing or maybe leaving a voicemail, but not like some long conversation?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Correct.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, so what's next?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We see 12:01, Ms. Magbanua again reaching out for Mr. Garcia.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: 12:07, Mr. Charlie Adelson is contacting Ms. Magbanua, a little over three and a half minutes.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: 12:30, Ms. Magbanua calls Mr. Adelson back, 53 seconds.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: There's an outgoing call at 1:02. It does not really have a duration, but there is an outgoing call in Mr. Adelson's records to Donna Adelson.
MS. DUGAN: And this is at 1 a.m.?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's at 1:02 a.m.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, and then what does he do next?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: And then at 1:03, immediately after, there is the outbound call to Ms. Magbanua for almost 20 minutes.
MS. DUGAN: All — right, so now if we can go to the next day, July 18th of 2014, the day Dan Markel was murdered.
MS. DUGAN: What can you tell us about communication between all of these players that morning?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So again, same summary for the morning of the 18th. We can see communications between our involved subjects here, and we have an indication here — this would represent the time that Mr. Markel was murdered between these events — and we can look at these kind of in detail again as we have.
MS. DUGAN: And what do we see as far as their communication?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So here we have also included the information from Wendi Adelson's forensic extraction, or her Cellebrite report. So we're able to see other things that were contained in her phone. One of the first things we see is that she had a calendar entry for that day for — listed as "fixed TV."
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Now we see that it's deleted.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: When would that have been deleted?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Sometime prior to our analysis of the handset.
MS. DUGAN: And your analysis of the handset was done that same day?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: It was done, yes. The afternoon of the 18th.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, so this calendar event "fixed TV" was deleted at some point before her phone was taken by law enforcement and looked at that afternoon?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, go ahead.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Then we see that there is an outbound call from Wendi Adelson to Donna Adelson, and that's starting at 8:09 in the morning.
MS. DUGAN: That's correct. Okay, an immediate return attempt and then a text message — again, this is from Wendi Adelson's handset itself, but there is a return text message, or a text message, from Donna Adelson to Wendi communicating about Best Buy and coming by for the repair of the TVs?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Okay. She says, "Best Buy just called me and I told them to confirm with you. They are on their way over now to help you with the TV set in your living room."
MS. DUGAN: Yes. Okay, all right. What's next?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We have a text from Wendi Adelson to Charlie Adelson stating, "This is so sweet." We see that that's deleted.
MS. DUGAN: It is, yes. That would have also been deleted prior to law enforcement, um, analyzing her cell phone that afternoon, the same day as Dan Markel's murder?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, what's next?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: An attempt from Charlie Adelson to call Wendi Adelson, and then a return call from Wendi Adelson to Charlie that lasted just over 18 minutes.
MS. DUGAN: What about after that 18-minute call between Charlie Adelson and Wendi Adelson?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Well, there's a — this would probably be almost during that, but there's a 9:38 call, or just after that, from Charlie Adelson to Donna Adelson, an attempt for 30 seconds.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: And then at 9:57, again, an outbound from Charlie Adelson to Ms. Magbanua, 12 seconds.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Return call, 9:58, 13 seconds.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: And again, Mr. Adelson to Ms. Magbanua for 6 minutes and 46 seconds.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Charlie Adelson, again, attempts to call Wendi Adelson at 10:06 a.m.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: 10:07, 10:08, there's a couple of contacts between Ms. Magbanua and Mr. Adelson, one just over a minute and one about nine seconds. And then 10:09, Charlie Adelson call to Ms. Magbanua for five minutes and 54 seconds.
MS. DUGAN: All right. And then I guess the last time we have here is 10:09 a.m., by less than an hour after that Dan Markel is murdered.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. All right. So what can you tell us about — I know you already showed us Dan Markel's locations the morning that he was murdered. Um, I'd like — could you show those to us one more time?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: I can, yes. Okay, so again we have the Trescott Drive where he departed from, the Creative Preschool where he dropped his kids off, and Premier Health and Fitness where he worked out before returning back to Trescott Drive.
MS. DUGAN: What can you tell us about Rivera and Garcia's handset locations that morning, looking at phone records and also any other evidence that law enforcement was able to gather?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So again, from the surveillance video of Premier Health and Fitness, we do see the green Prius entering the parking lot.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Following Mr. Markel. We know from Mr. Garcia's records we have events at 9:36 a.m. and 9:58 a.m. where his handset is communicating with a cell site in a sector that will be consistent with Premier Health and Fitness, and Mr. Rivera's handset has the events we see here between about 9:14 and 9:44, all of them together, that are communicating with two different cell sites and sectors, again both of which would be consistent with a handset being at or near Premier Health and Fitness.
MS. DUGAN: Um, and these are two different carriers, you said, right?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: But they're in the same location, even though they're communicating with cell sites that are in different places?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes. Sometimes the carriers are what we call co-located, where we may have more than one carrier at the same site, sometimes on the same tower or same equipment, and then sometimes they will have towers that are not that close or in different locations from the other carriers. So here we can see between the orange arrows and the blue arrows that AT&T and T-Mobile have some cell sites that are close together and some that are further apart, but all of those — the ones that are being used — will be consistent with a handset at or near Premier Health and Fitness.
MS. DUGAN: All right. So even though they don't have any other locations after 9:58 a.m. with — for cell phone events, what time do we know that they left the Premier gym area?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: From the surveillance video, we see the time on surveillance video just after 10:38 a.m. We see Mr. Markel's vehicle, and then we see the green Prius, Mr. Garcia, Mr. Rivera, again, leaving the gym area.
MS. DUGAN: All right. So his last — Garcia's last location from his cell phone records was 9:58 a.m. when he was consistent with Premier. What's the location for his next active event on his cell phone?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So the next event that we see is at 12:30 p.m. We can see here that it has traveled a reasonable distance from Tallahassee before we see that next event.
MS. DUGAN: And is he the orange dot here with 12:30 p.m. next to it?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: He is, yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. That looks around about Gainesville-ish area, north of that?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes, a little north of Gainesville.
MS. DUGAN: All right. So that's the first phone call that Garcia made after leaving Premier?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes, that's the first event with location that we have looking at his phone records.
MS. DUGAN: What do his phone records indicate about the status of his phone during that time when we don't see any events?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Well, what we see — we see the 9:58 event, an incoming text. We see some events 12:18, 12:19, there's two incoming calls from this 305 number, very short duration, and we don't see locations for those. So those calls did not reach the handset. Powered off, battery went dead, broken, whatever it may be, but those calls did not reach the handset.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: 12:29 and 12:30, we see these short codes, or these short three-digit numbers here, and those are associated with T-Mobile voicemail events.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: And then immediately at 12:30, we have the outgoing voice call that provides location, so that would indicate that the handset was now back in service with the network.
MS. DUGAN: And could that be consistent with him turning off his phone after he left Premier and then powering it back on after he figured he was far enough away from Tallahassee?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: It could be consistent with that, yes.
MS. DUGAN: And then who was his first call at 12:30 when he was north of Gainesville? Who was the first call that either of these, Garcia or Rivera, makes after the murder?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Ms. Magbanua.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, can you show that to us?
MS. DUGAN: That was the 12:30 call?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes. We see a very short duration.
MS. DUGAN: Is that 20 seconds?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: It is, yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. All right, switching gears here. I want to see where Wendi Adelson was during that late morning, early afternoon time when Markel was murdered and during the couple hours after.
MS. DUGAN: Are you familiar with her statement about her locations on July 18th, as far as being at home for her TV repair appointment, then going to ABC Liquors to buy a gift, and then going to lunch at Mosaic?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes, I am.
MS. DUGAN: All right. Based on her call detail records, were you able to determine what time she would have gone by the Trescott Drive area?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes. We do know the location of her residence at the time, here on Aqua Ridge Way.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We do know that she was going to the ABC. This was located on Thomasville Road.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Looking at her records, she has a rather lengthy voice call. Begins at 12:31 p.m. We see that's on a cell site that would be consistent with the general area of her residence. We see at 12:35 p.m., kind of in the middle of the screen here, her handset's now kind of halfway between, and then that call ends at 12:47 p.m. and it ends on a cell site here very close to ABC liquor store. So looking at that — again, the receipt time 12:49, the call ending time 12:47 — we can kind of approximate that she would have been by the Trescott residence, you know, 10 or so minutes earlier than that.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Are you familiar with Officer Brandon's statements that he saw a person in a red van that matched the description of Wendi Adelson's vehicle at the roadblock at Trescott Drive that day in the 12 to 1 o'clock hour?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right. About what time would she have been in the area of Trescott Drive when she's on her way from home to ABC?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Well, again, I would say sometime between 12:35 and 12:47, or 12:49 for sure at the absolute, because she would have been in the store at that point for the transaction. So sometime in that 12:40 time frame.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Now, did Dan Markel have he and Wendi Adelson's children the morning of July 18th?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: He did, yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right. And he had taken them to school that morning, right?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right. Looking at her Cellebrite, were you able to see her calls that morning after she would have passed this Trescott Drive area?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right. After driving by that street, the road being blocked, the crime scene tape and police cars, did she attempt to contact Dan Markel to make sure he was okay or the kids were okay?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Here we've kind of highlighted the calls that were made after that time starting at 12:47, and we can see that there are a variety of people, none of them were Mr. Markel.
MS. DUGAN: Did she attempt to contact, uh, Creative Preschool to make sure the kids made it to school, there wasn't some type of incident at the house?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: She did not.
MS. DUGAN: Did she attempt to call 911 or law enforcement to check and see what was going on, since her kids were staying on that street?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: She did not. She just continued on to ABC and then up to Mosaic.
MS. DUGAN: Correct. Now, are you familiar with the area at Thomasville Road and I-10 where Mosaic was located back in 2014 when it was around?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Were there any liquor stores in that area back in July of 2014?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: There were, yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, which ones?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So we have the Publix Liquor Store there off of Thomasville Road, Market Square Liquors at Market Square Shopping Center, and there is another ABC location a little further north on Thomasville Road.
MS. DUGAN: What route could she have taken to one of those three liquor stores?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Of many, the one of the routes is the one depicted here by the red dash lines, which would have taken her up Centerville Road and then over to Thomasville and down to Mosaic.
MS. DUGAN: What route did she actually take to go to the ABC liquor down on Thomasville and then to Mosaic?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We can see here her path would have been the purple line, and the shortest distance, again, being the red dotted line.
MS. DUGAN: Now, I know — I mean, obviously that looks like the shortest distance, but how much shorter are we talking about?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So we can only — our mapping, our GIS software is able to provide approximate travel times and distances kind of like Google Maps, and so what we can see is that the miles for the shortest route would have been 3.63 and they estimate travel time in about 11 minutes. The other travel was almost nine and a half miles, which they estimate travel a little over 20 minutes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, so switching gears here again one more time, still on July 18th but now switching back to Garcia and Rivera, who we last heard had — their cell phone records were consistent with turning off the phones, turning them back on again above Gainesville, a call from Garcia to Magbanua for 20 seconds. What happens after that?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So again, yes, we see their travel back. There's fewer communications, fewer dots on the map during their return.
MS. DUGAN: Fewer dots than when they drove up?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Correct. Sorry, yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We see they reached the South Florida area in the — just after 6 p.m. on the evening or afternoon of the 18th, and then the first thing we see, or information we have, is an ATM transaction from Mr. Rivera.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Based on the ATM transaction that was seen in the bank records, what did law enforcement do?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So first we look at the location information from the handsets to make sure that it's consistent.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We do see around the time of that transaction, we do see both Mr. Rivera and Mr. Garcia's handsets communicating with cell sites around the area of the bank, and then investigators were able to locate the surveillance video from the ATM. We can see Mr. Rivera, see Mr. Garcia in the passenger seat, and we see the green Prius.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, continuing on, once they get back to Miami after they go to this ATM, can you show us the communication between all these parties on July 18th that evening?
MS. DUGAN: Okay, so what we see here is all the communication between all of these parties starting at that 12:30 call from Garcia to Magbanua and then down through midnight that night?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Down through 10:20 in this particular summary, yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, thank you. All right, can we focus in on later that evening, and I believe that 8, 9 o'clock hour?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, so who is Katherine Magbanua communicating with that evening around that time?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Well, we see communication with Mr. Adelson and Mr. Garcia, but the communications with Mr. Garcia end here. This 9:46 is the last event where her handset communicates with Mr. Garcia's that evening.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, and who also is she talking with that evening, in addition to the communication with our subjects that we've been looking at?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We've added in Ms. Yindra Mascaro, and we see that Ms. Magbanua is communicating with her through the evening hours on the 18th of July.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. And are you familiar with the statements from Ms. Mascaro, Ms. Magbanua — Ms. Mascaro babysits her kids, or was babysitting her kid on the night of July 18th?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes, I am.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. So after her communication with Ms. Mascaro, what happens next?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Next, so what we see — events earlier in the lower right-hand side, we see cell site events in the 7:10 to 8:46 which would be consistent with Ms. Magbanua's residence. The next events we see, 9:20, 9:23, be consistent with her moving away, and ultimately 9:42 — one of those last events we saw Mr. Garcia, her handset is now communicating with a cell site in proximity to Mr. Rivera's residence.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We know that also on the way is Ms. Mascaro's residence, relatively on the way.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, so that could be consistent with her dropping her children off at Mascaro's and then heading back up towards Rivera's residence?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, so what about Garcia and Rivera? Were they ever consistent with Rivera's residence that evening?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes. Here for Ms. Magbanua, her 9:46-9:47 events and looking at the sector that she's using, again consistent with Mr. Rivera's residence.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: And if we look at all of the cell site usage for Mr. Garcia and Mr. Rivera, they are also consistent with the area of Mr. Rivera's residence.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. And who did she speak to on the phone during the 10 o'clock hour?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: There's contacts with Mr. Adelson.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We see at 10:12, there is Mr. Adelson attempts to call Ms. Magbanua, two seconds. And then at 10:20, Ms. Magbanua calls Mr. Charlie Adelson for a minute and 56 seconds.
MS. DUGAN: Were you able to find any other evidence about Katherine Magbanua and Charlie Adelson's plans that night?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes. Again, going back to her location information here, the 10:20, 10:22, she is consistent still with the area of Mr. Rivera's residence for those two events. And then we see communication from the iCloud through the evening hours of the 18th between Mr. Adelson and Ms. Magbanua.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. And it appears Charlie Adelson's pretty busy at work that evening?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. At 8:23, he says, "Just finishing, I'm not feeling good. Maybe we can just hang out at my house?"
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Okay.
MS. DUGAN: And this statement about he's not feeling good, would that be before Katherine Magbanua goes to Charlie Adelson's house that evening?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: It would be, yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. So at 8:23, she's still more consistent with her residence and on her way to Rivera's residence?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Correct.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. All right. So after he says he's not really feeling well, maybe they can just hang out at their house.
MS. DUGAN: Then we see the call with them, you said at, I believe, 10:20?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right. And where she's still consistent with Rivera's house at that time?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: What can you tell us about Charlie Adelson's locations?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So we can see first event here, 9:19 p.m. We see the cell site is represented by the green dots at the top of our screen. 9:21, a little further south, and then 9:40 and 11:39, the next events we have with location, would be consistent with the area of his residence.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, now who arrived at Charlie Adelson's residence during the time when Magbanua was still consistent with Rivera's residence?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Donna and Harvey Adelson.
MS. DUGAN: I'll raise my question, Judge, too. Would that be all right?
JUDGE EVERETT: Go ahead and do that.
MS. DUGAN: Was there some evidence in the iCloud involving messages between Donna Adelson and Charlie Adelson where she says she is at his house on the evening of July 18th during a time when Katherine Magbanua is still more consistent with Rivera's house?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, can you show us that message?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: I can.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. So Donna Adelson here says, "Call us ASAP" at 7:12 p.m.?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: And then at 8:59 p.m. she says, "Outside your house"?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: And Charlie Adelson says, "10 minutes," at 9:19?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Correct.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. About 10 minutes from when he sent that text message, so maybe about 9:30 p.m. — is that when he's consistent with being at his house?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: And according to this message, his mother is already there?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: All right. Does Charlie Adelson stay at his house that evening?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: He does, yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. So the location we saw before — he was still there at 11:39 p.m.?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: All right, let's go to the next day then, July 19, 2014. So this would be the morning after the murder of Dan Markel. What can you tell us about Charlie Adelson's location that morning?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So we see his events 10:22 through 11:09 a.m. — he's still communicating with a cell site adjacent to his residence.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. And what can you tell us about the communication from Catherine Magbanua's phone that morning?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Well, we see that we have some events here — 3:08, this is again the morning of the 19th, just Ms. Magbanua's records. We see three attempts for Mr. Garcia to call her beginning at 3:08 through 3:26 a.m., and they're all short duration, 41 seconds or less, but those are three incoming calls from Mr. Garcia to Ms. — Magbanua. Those — I'm sorry, those records do not have location, so again, meaning that those calls did not actually reach her handset, or her handset was not in communication with a network at that time.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Thank you. That was my question — is, did she have location?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So no location, because her phone was not connected to the network.
MS. DUGAN: Could that be consistent with her phone being off?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: So the last location, then, we have from her before the morning of July 19th is when she's consistent with being near Rivera's residence and she's speaking to Charlie Adelson on the phone about 10:20 p.m. the night before?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. What is Catherine Magbanua's first location on her call detail records that next morning on July 19th?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So the first location that we see — we saw the calls, the outbound calls there at 9:44 a.m. We can see the cell sites, again, hers represented by the red dots, that will be consistent with travel south from the area of Mr. Adelson's residence, or somewhere south of that, towards Mr. Rivera's residence.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. So could this be consistent with her leaving Rivera's residence, turning her phone off, going to Charlie Adelson's home as they discussed in those texts we saw, and then turning her phone back on, and she's coming from the direction of his house?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right. And if from the records you just showed us, it looks like she was repeatedly trying to reach Sigfredo Garcia starting at 9:44 a.m.?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: Was she able to reach him? Did any of those calls connect?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: They did not.
MS. DUGAN: Why not?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Well, if we look at Mr. Garcia's records, we can see here that he has an event at 5:12 a.m. where there is a successful completion of that call, and then his event starting at 7:09 have no location. This is a sample of the T-Mobile records, Metro PCS records, and we see that there is no cell site identifier, so none of these calls after that are reaching his phone. So, again, his handset is now off the network, unable to communicate, battery went dead, whatever the case may be. But there is no more events in his records that actually reach his handset.
MS. DUGAN: What was his last known location before his phone went off the network?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: It would have been the area of his girlfriend's residence at that point.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Was her name Stephanie Carmona?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Okay.
MS. DUGAN: And could this be consistent with him basically getting rid of, dumping his phone the night of Dan Markel's murder, or the early morning hours, the morning afterwards?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Does he ever have any more communication on the phone after that?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: For the records that we have, there are no more originated communications. There's no communications that actually reach the handset. There's no indication that that handset is used at all after this 5:12 a.m. event.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Now tell us about the other attempted communications with Sigfredo Garcia's phone on July 19th that morning that are relevant to this case.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So there are a number of communications between, again, Ms. Magbanua attempting to reach Mr. Garcia. Ms. Magbanua reaches out to another phone number that is associated with Mr. Rivera. Mr. Garcia attempts to communicate with them, and then for the first time we see Mr. Rivera actually call in to Ms. Magbanua from his actual phone, and there's more calls that go back and forth throughout the morning, and then all that kind of culminates at 10:31 a.m. where we see that last communication — between where Ms. Magbanua was trying to communicate with either Mr. Rivera or Mr. Garcia.
MS. DUGAN: And that number associated with him, that Anthony Ortiz person — is he a documented kind of friend of Garcia and Rivera's?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. So this could be consistent with her not being able to get in touch with him, so she's calling friends of his to find him?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: All right. And what about Rivera's location that morning? What did his record show us?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: He shows us that he was near his residence and then at some point he travels to the area consistent with Ms. — Carmona's residence, Mr. Garcia's girlfriend's residence, and then returns to the area of his residence.
MS. DUGAN: Could that be consistent with nobody being able to get in touch with Garcia, so Rivera goes out to find him, get him, and bring him back?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. And does this kind of flurry of attempts to get in touch with Garcia abruptly stop at the 10:30 timeframe?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: And that's when the calls between Magbanua and Rivera stopped too?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Correct.
MS. DUGAN: All — right. What is the next, um — or tell us about the location then at 10:31 after this flurry stops.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So picking up with Ms. Magbanua's locations from the previous 9:47 a.m., she's getting closer to Mr. Rivera's residence. Events from 10:02 to 10:25 is communicating with a cell site again relatively close to Mr. Rivera's residence. And then that final event we saw, that final communication at 10:31 a.m., we see again, looking at the sector that her handset is using, that it is consistent with Mr. Rivera's residence.
MS. DUGAN: So could this be consistent — or is Rivera's location here, after his phone travels out from Carmona's and back?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes, we do have events with Mr. Rivera. These are the times, approximate locations — the cell sites again consistent with his residence.
MS. DUGAN: All right. So could it be that Magbanua and Garcia and Rivera are all consistent with being at Rivera's residence at the same time that morning?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: It could be, yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. All right. When is Catherine Magbanua's next communication on her phone?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So the next communication that we have is 11:23 a.m.
MS. DUGAN: So about 50 minutes later?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right. And where was her phone located 50 minutes later at 11:23?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So at 11:23 we see the cell site and sector that her handset is using. It will be consistent with having moved away from Mr. Rivera's — it's now south of Mr. Rivera's and could be consistent with Ms. Mascaro's residence.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Could this be consistent with her leaving Adelson's house that morning, dropping the money off, and then going to pick up her kids from Mascaro?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right. I want to move on to our next section. I wanted to ask you about some different messages that you found in the iCloud, and then we'll be done.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Okay.
MS. DUGAN: So the defense theory in this case is that Captain Urbanoff frantically showed up at the defendant's home the night of July 18th, informed him that some violent men killed his brother-in-law, and were now blackmailing him.
MS. DUGAN: Were there any text messages between Magbanua and Adelson about blackmail or extortion in the days following the Dan Markel murder?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Certainly none that I found.
MS. DUGAN: Can you show us the text between Magbanua and the defendant in the week that followed the murder?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So these are some texts from that week. This would be July 19th — this would be the day after the homicide. These texts start at 12:13, just after noon on the 19th, and we see them going back and forth about going to the pool or the beach, kind of casual conversation.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. So this is the day, the same day of all the call activity we just saw —
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: — and locations we just saw. And so sometime after noon at 12:13, Charlie Adelson says he's headed to the gym. "Are you going to the beach? It's so nice."
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Looking at also that week — looking at your next slide, July 22nd — they're —
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: — talking a little bit about the weather, how late it is in the day.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Catherine Magbanua asked for Jerry to call in a prescription scalp medication.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes — a prescription for shampoo. Shampoo.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, prescription shampoo. Okay, all right, and what's next?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So on July 23rd — So on this one, Charlie Adelson says, "Don't forget to text Jerry your info, he'll call it in in the morning, sweet dreams," and then later she says something that he says laugh out loud to.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Correct. Yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right. What's next?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So the July 25th — On July 25th, she says, "Have a good day, smiling face." He says, "You too."
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: In all of the messages — or, let me — in all of the messages from the records between this defendant and Catherine Magbanua from 2014 to 2016, are there any messages where they discuss Charlie Adelson being blackmailed or extorted, or violent people wanting to hurt his family, anything like that?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: None that I found.
MS. DUGAN: During those years though, I mean, do the defendant and Catherine Magbanua stay in regular contact with each other even after they break up that fall?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: In 2014.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. From the messages, do they appear to have a close friendship?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: They do, yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. And when I say "in regular contact," sometimes they talk multiple times a day, every day —
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Correct.
MS. DUGAN: All right. I want — can you show us just a couple of examples of their close friendship? Can you show us October 6, 2014?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes. So this — these would be 2:18 in the morning, I'm sorry, 2:18 in the afternoon of October 6th. Just communication about him being a good father — potential to be a good father.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. And he's — she's saying that you have to find the right girl that you can deal with, and to see if she's worth it.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. And what's next?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: "And if she gives you hell, Catherine Magbanua will set her straight, winky face." And he says, "I love you, it makes me feel good that you care about me, I'm very lucky to have you as part of my life," and he says, "I'll always care about you."
MS. DUGAN: "You" — that's correct? Or she says that, rather?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: All right, next.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: She says —
MS. DUGAN: No — can we go back to the next one then, after he says he's lucky to have her as part of his life?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: I'm going to need to fix something on that slide.
JUDGE EVERETT: Okay, no problem.
MS. DUGAN: Judge — for time purposes, maybe —
JUDGE EVERETT: You have 10 minutes left.
MS. DUGAN: I would say 15 minutes left with that.
JUDGE EVERETT: Okay.
MS. DUGAN: Can you show us the next one?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Okay. I think that's the last one we read.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Can you go to the next one after that?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: All right. She says here — She says, "I always know" — this is in February of 2015.
MS. DUGAN: Is that correct?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Correct. February 24th. She says, "See, I always know how to make you smile." He says, "Yes, you do." She says, "Good, I love you." He says, "I love you too."
MS. DUGAN: Correct. All right, what's next on —
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: — October 27th of 2015. She says, "Hey, you're probably busy celebrating your birthday. I just want to thank you so much for helping me out. I love you. I — I love you. Have a great birthday. I hope I see you soon this week." And he says, "Can't wait to get lunch with you, you're the best, and I'm lucky to have you as a friend for life. Smiley face."
MS. DUGAN: Yes. Okay, what's next?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: All — right. And then this one — they kind of exchange "you don't miss me," "I do miss you," with some —
MS. DUGAN: Okay, go to the next one.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: All — right, um, this — one, they're talking about something and he ends it with "lol, you're the best."
MS. DUGAN: Correct. And "lol" — does that mean laugh out loud?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: It does, yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right. Were you involved in securing a wiretap of some of the suspects in this case in 2016?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: And what is a wiretap?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: A wiretap is sort of a general term for our ability to intercept either wire communications, something said over a phone line; electronic communications, maybe a text; or oral communications, things that are spoken — but when law enforcement is able to lawfully intercept those to record them during the course of an investigation.
MS. DUGAN: Does an order have to be signed by a judge and sent to the phone carrier in order to have authority to conduct a wiretap?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: And so because of that, I mean, are we able to go back and listen to the content of these phone calls that we've seen today from back in 2014?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: No, we don't have the ability to go back and record phone calls in the past. The only way that we would know about communications would be if we were to extract a phone — like we see the Cellebrite extractions, or forensic extractions of phones. We may be able to see some text messages, but we don't have the ability to capture things back in the past.
MS. DUGAN: At that time, we didn't know that a crime was about to be committed.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. But for a wiretap investigation, police can get that order to listen to suspects' phones in real time?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: All right. Can you explain to the jury what type of equipment is needed to conduct a wiretap?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Certainly. It's relatively complicated in today's world, but there is equipment on the carrier side where they're able to send us information about the activity, the text message content, and information about the calls — who's calling who, all of that information. And then they're also able to send us the actual content, so they're able to send us the audio when someone's on a phone call of what's being spoken. And then we have computer servers that receive that information and software that displays it for us — an intercept kind of interface — where we're able to see the incoming calls, we have some controls where we can play calls back, and we can see calls for the day, write synopsis for them as they're coming in. So it's, again, a lot of computer equipment necessary to conduct that.
MS. DUGAN: Do the people who are listening or monitoring these calls in real time have to go through certain types of training to do that?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: They do.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: First, we do what we call minimization training. And we are not — law enforcement, we're not allowed to intercept calls that may be privileged or not relevant to the investigation. So we can't listen to everything that is said. So the first thing that a monitor or someone who's listening has to know is, one, about the investigation — so they have to read that affidavit, the application for the wiretap. They have to read that thoroughly and be briefed on the investigation so that they know the relevant persons, the relevant evidence that we're looking for, kind of the history of the investigation, so they have some context when they're listening to these calls going on. And then they have training on how to actually do that minimization — how to actually stop the recording so that we can't hear that information, we can't record that information that we don't believe is relevant or authorized under the order. So they receive, again, training about the investigation, and then how to actually operate the software.
MS. DUGAN: And they're required to minimize it, right? If it's not relevant to the investigation?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That is correct, yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. And are you limited in time to decide whether the conversation is relevant or not?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: We are. Again, everything is geared towards not intercepting communications that we shouldn't. So for parties that we know never talk about anything relevant, then that period of time that we listen may be less, and then we immediately minimize, because we know historically they never talk about anything that's relevant to the investigation. For parties that do communicate about the investigation, then that period of time may be a little longer — the amount of time that we stay minimized, or amount of time that we come off of that before we come back and spot-check, or we will come back and see if the topic of the conversation has changed, are they now talking about something that's relevant. Again, that varies a little bit based on the monitor's knowledge of the case, history of communication between them, but yes, we do have some guidelines for the amount of time that we can listen and how long before we can go back.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. How can we as listeners of the call tell if an officer's doing that?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Uh, you'll hear an audible tone during the call. It's an abrupt audible tone.
MS. DUGAN: And is the portion of the call that is minimized recorded then?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: It is not recorded.
MS. DUGAN: All right. When listening, do you have to be on the lookout for suspects who may try to mask the meaning of what they're talking about, just in case law enforcement is listening?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Is that common for people to do?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: It is, yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right. And were Catherine Magbanua and Charlie Adelson's phones tapped in this case?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: They were, yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right. Who supervises these wire calls?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: I was the wire room supervisor, the person responsible for kind of the technical side of it.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: And then from the legal side, there is a state attorney assigned that conducts the training, keeps up with the investigation, and ultimately a judge who authorized it.
MS. DUGAN: And who keeps or maintains the recordings of the calls?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: During the investigation, or during the course of the wiretap, we have a partnership with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. They're the first point that receives that and sends it on to us. They maintain those originally, and then at the completion of it, those tapes are transferred to us in our custody and maintained securely.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. All right, so the bump in this case — was that at 1:47 p.m. on April 19, 2016? When I say the bump, I mean when Donna Adelson was approached by the undercover officer and handed the article about Dan Markel's murder?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right, so looking at 1:47 p.m. on April 19, 2016, who was Donna Adelson's first call after the bump? Can you tell us that from the call detail records?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: I can, yes.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes. So we see here her records from that date. The red line indicates the time of the bump, or the time of the contact.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: And we see that her first call at 2:09 p.m. is outgoing to Charlie Adelson.
MS. DUGAN: We have seen and heard about emails in the course of the trial which detail Donna Adelson's strong interest in the divorce of Wendi Adelson and Dan Markel. Is there phone communication in the iCloud between Charlie Adelson and Donna Adelson that shows Charlie Adelson's interest in the divorce?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Can you show us that first message? Looking at maybe October of 2013, was there a message in mid-October about that?
MS. DUGAN: All right. What does this say?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So this is from Donna Adelson to Charlie Adelson. It says, "Horrible evening for your sister and for us. Dad finally had to walk outside to lower his blood pressure. Just awful, I can't even explain." She says she's on the way back to Wendi's house.
MS. DUGAN: Yes. Can we go to the next slide. Now, on the slide before, did it say "I bet, let's talk this week" by Charlie Adelson after he heard that?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Looking at the next slide, what happened on October 30th of 2013?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: There is again a message from Donna Adelson indicating she just got a text from Wendi mentioning that she's moving ahead with a purchase of a home.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, and what does Charlie Adelson respond to that?
MS. DUGAN: Can you read those to us?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: He indicates, "She never told me. Why is she doing this? She never mentions it to me on the phone. I guess it's because it's stupid. Did Danny give her permission to move schools?"
MS. DUGAN: Okay, and what does he say after that?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: He says he will hold that over her and use it as leverage, especially after she puts money down. "She is really stupid. Give them their asking price??"
MS. DUGAN: And what about after that?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: He says, "I can try again, but I only talk to her about one time a week and leave about seven messages." And then he indicates — this would be October 31st, and the times here on these messages are still in coordinated universal time, so in October we're four hours behind, but that should be about 1 a.m. — but he says, "Spoke to Wendi. I think I made some headway. Hope you're having an awesome time in Israel. Have a good night."
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Now, the times that we saw earlier in your presentation, those have all already been converted to the actual time that that was sent, right?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct. Everything up to this point has been converted to our local time. And I do point out that communications with Donna here that we've just been talking about — those, if you notice, the time in the bottom of the messages still say UTC plus zero, which means there's been no offset or subtracting of time to get to our local time zone.
MS. DUGAN: So in those messages he seems to be thinking that her buying a house is not a good idea, Danny will hold it over her head, use it as leverage, and he's trying to talk her out of it, correct? All right, and then what's the next message to his mom?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Wait, I'm sorry, what was — did you read the last one?
MS. DUGAN: I did. "Spoke to Wendi. I think I made some headway. Hope you're having an awesome time in Israel. Have a good night." Okay, and how does his mom respond?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Okay. Let me go to. Indicates that the Adelsons appear to be in Israel at the time and look forward to speaking with him soon.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Danny sent them some pictures of the kids in Halloween costumes?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Okay, so let's go to the next one.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: So Charlie states, "Spoke to Wendi for 20 minutes last night. She texted me today that she pulled the plug on the house."
MS. DUGAN: Okay, with some smiley faces?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: And how does Donna Adelson respond?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: "Wow, Charlie, thank you again. How did you accomplish that? You're a miracle worker. Tell us."
MS. DUGAN: Okay, lots of exclamation points used there.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Yes. And this is on Halloween of 2013, on October 31st — October 21st, 31st of 2013, and then the day after.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. And then the conversations about her buying the house and Charlie Adelson against it — that was all the day before Halloween of 2013.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Could buying a house in an area be unfavorable for, like, a motion for relocation?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: I believe so, yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right, what about in February of 2014?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: I believe there's more here in this exchange from November 1st — this will be the continuation of the October 30th to 31st to the 1st. But he indicates, um, in response to the question of how did you accomplish it, he responds with a series of texts about how that went.
MS. DUGAN: "Danny would have used it against Wendi as leverage. She needs to get permission from him. He has several other reasons why it would have been the dumbest mistake of her life. The second dumbest mistake of her life."
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, and what's next?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: It says, "It took about 15 minutes of talking to her. I basically told her owning a house is like getting married. Renting is like dating. Why the F would you want to get married again?"
MS. DUGAN: Okay, and what's next in February of 2014? Were there some more messages from the mom?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes. So February 15th of 2014, it's been in the evening hours or afternoon hours, Donna Adelson indicates that Wendi is stressed out. She say that she'll have to go — Wendi will have to go through another depo.
MS. DUGAN: Could that be short for deposition?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Is that where the other side's attorney gets to ask you a bunch of questions?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: It is, yes.
MS. DUGAN: "That's outrageous. They're talking about repetitive motions being filed. And the half-million-dollar account is the same fifty thousand he tried to get his hands on last time, but it's in Wendi's name?"
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Correct.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, and what does Charlie Adelson say to that?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: "Crazy."
MS. DUGAN: What does Donna Adelson say after that?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: "Total waste of the court's time."
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: "Yesterday he sent Wendi a text that said he saw her leaving the school at 2:07. He's stalking her?"
MS. DUGAN: Yes?
MS. DUGAN: Okay, and what does Donna Adelson say after that, that Wendi wants to file a protective order? Is that what that said?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes. But that's very hard to do unless there's a history — a previous history — of threats or abuse, but she wants to let the judge know he's stalking her.
MS. DUGAN: Yes. Okay, what's next?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Charlie Adelson says, "I agree."
MS. DUGAN: Correct? All right, what does Donna Adelson say after that?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: "Anyway, it looks like mid — mid-March or mid-April before anything will be resolved regarding him paying her through the court system."
MS. DUGAN: Okay. And then does Donna Adelson go on to complain about the judge on the case giving him too much time to pay?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, and what's next?
MS. DUGAN: Okay, is that more complaints about the judge in the divorce case?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, what's next?
MS. DUGAN: Charlie Adelson — is that where — does he say how much per hour the divorce attorney costs and that she needs to give a refund or complain to the bar?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right, and what's after that? Does he ask whether Wendi's mad at her attorney yet?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: He does, yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, what's next? What does Donna — Donald — Donna Adelson say here in response?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: She says, "Yes, but don't get" — I assume that to be "her" — "worked up about it. She's too stressed about it. Let's just keep conversation with her light and not add to what she's dealing with. Let her just — just get through Monday with positive family support. Nothing stressful. Trust me on this."
MS. DUGAN: Okay. So Wendi's so stressed out, she doesn't want Charlie Adelson adding any more stress to her.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Correct.
MS. DUGAN: All right. What about after that, on February 17th?
MS. DUGAN: So does Donna Adelson indicate there that she's just leaving the courthouse?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. And what does Charlie Adelson say?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: He says, "At work," and then asks, "How did it go?"
MS. DUGAN: What does Donna Adelson say to that?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: "Okay, we'll talk later."
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Charlie Adelson asked what happened?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Does Donna Adelson then go into some detail about what happened in court — Wendi — what Wendi wants the parenting coordinator to do, and that she hate — Wendi wants the parent — parenting coordinator question because she hates Danny and will ask the court to have — please read the whole thing.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: "The judge was really pissed at him for not paying Wendi, but she will allow them to depo her with very strict limitations on the questions. Then Wendi wants the parenting coordinator question because she hates Danny and will ask the court to have him court-appointed psychological testing!" — exclamation points.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, and what's next?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Charlie Adelson states — this is February — February 17th — "Her attorney is going to run up a very large bill for Danny."
MS. DUGAN: All right, and Donna Adelson says, "Yep"?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yep.
MS. DUGAN: All right, what about two days later, on February 19th?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Another text from Donna Adelson.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: "If you speak to Wendi today, tread lightly. Don't ask questions about the depo, her lawyer, etc. Tough day, and she's really stressed out."
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: "The asshole showed up at soccer yesterday, and when she tried to leave with the boys, he said, 'No, stay here and play with Abba.'"
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: "She to the boys that Abba had to leave, and he said, 'No, I don't.' Of course, she woke up to another email from him telling her that she is lying to the boys about their father's whereabouts and that this will be brought before the court. Such a fucker. It was Wendi's day. He is allowed to attend the children's activities, but that's where it ends."
MS. DUGAN: So Donna Adelson looks like she was mad that he didn't just attend the activities — Dan Markel engaged with the kids, gave them a hug, said he wanted to play with them?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right. Was there a text message exchange in March of 2014 where Donna Adelson asked Charlie Adelson to erase a text that she sent?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Can you show us that? Can you read it to us?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Two texts here. The first says, "37 miles to Gainesville." And the next is, "I can't talk now, but I'll text you before we stop in Gainesville where I can go to the bathroom and have a moment of privacy. Then I'll call. Please pick up because I will have very limited" — quote — "alone time today. Erase this text after you read it."
MS. DUGAN: Okay, so she wants to go to a bathroom to talk to Charlie Adelson on the phone in private once she gets in Gainesville here?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: But wants him to erase that text on his phone?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: It's what it indicates, yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Then a few minutes later, what does she say?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: "We'll stop in about five minutes and I can speak to you privately about dad's birthday gift when I'm out of the car. I have some good ideas."
MS. DUGAN: Okay. So in this text, she's saying that the text she sent 30 minutes before is about dad's birthday gift?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: It would seem so, yes. Or that the call she wanted to make was about dad's birthday gift, rather.
MS. DUGAN: Yes. Does she ask him to erase this text message, though?
MS. DUGAN: And that's the message where she's talking about what the secret call is supposed to be about, right?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: If the defendant's dad, Harvey Adelson's birthday isn't until July, it would appear that they were planning a birthday present for him here on this phone call in a Gainesville bathroom about four months in advance, right?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right, what does Charlie Adelson say when his mom sends him that?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: He replies, "Great."
MS. DUGAN: Okay, and what's next?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Charlie responds, "If you don't pick up, I'll call you back in 30 seconds."
MS. DUGAN: Okay, and what's next?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: "Don't call yet. I need five minutes till we get to Panera Bread."
MS. DUGAN: All right, was there a message in May of 2014 where Wendi — I'm sorry, Donna Adelson — references having a tough conversation with Wendi?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes, and I'm sorry, there's an additional response here after these text messages where Charlie Adelson texts, "You guys back yet?"
MS. DUGAN: Okay, and that's it. I'm sorry, can you go back?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: I can try.
MS. DUGAN: That would appear to be about...
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes, does not like going backwards. Okay.
MS. DUGAN: Does it appear that the "you guys back yet" message was about six hours after the "I'll call you when I get to the bathroom"?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: I believe so, yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Could that be consistent with arriving back in Miami from stopping in the Gainesville area?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Could be, yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right. So this message references a tough conversation with Wendi and a horrible morning with Danny?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes, in a tough conversation with her, yes.
MS. DUGAN: All right, looking at June 7th of 2014, what does Donna Adelson say to Charlie Adelson that day?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: "Just waiting for Gary to come, should be here any minute. Hope you have a good evening. Would you like the apartment the weekend of June 19th to the 22nd? I think we're going to Tally. I miss the boys too much to wait till dad's birthday week to see them. Besides, we want you to spend some time here. We love you. Heart, Mom and Dad."
MS. DUGAN: Okay. Now, June 7th — this would be the day after... would this be the day after Garcia and Rivera arrived back in Miami with an unsuccessful trip for them to Tallahassee, where they did not accomplish the murder of Dan Markel?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: So this would have been the day after they got back in Miami from Tallahassee?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes.
MS. DUGAN: Okay, and what's next?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: He responds, "Okay, have fun, still working on dad's b-day present," to which Donna Adelson says, "I know it's a tough b-day being 70 and all, but I know you'll come through," and then there's a thumbs up, kissy face, "Mom." And those messages aren't on the following day on June 8th 2014 — they're actually June 7th, if you do the time correction. I apologize.
MS. DUGAN: So still on June 7th, still the day after Garcia and Rivera arrived back in Miami?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
MS. DUGAN: After they were not able to kill Dan Markel?
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: That's correct.
JUDGE EVERETT: I'm going to stop here for the night.
JUDGE EVERETT: Once again, I'm going to give you the same instruction that I always do. Do not discuss the case with each other or anyone else. Do not watch any news reports or seek out any information concerning this matter.
JUDGE EVERETT: Please report at 8:30 again tomorrow morning, and we expect to get started at 8:45. Have a good night.
JUDGE EVERETT: I need you to be back here at 8:30 for your cross-examination as well.
CHRISTOPHER CORBITT: Yes, sir.
JUDGE EVERETT: And we'll also handle the issue concerning the transcript tomorrow morning. We are in recess. Have a good night, everyone.