Opening Statements
295 linesMS. DUGAN: Again, I'm Sarah Kathryn Dugan. Georgia Cappleman and I are representing the State of Florida in this case, and this is the defendant, Donna Adelson. We see her here at the defense table, and this is how she appeared back in 2014 when this crime occurred 11 years ago.
MS. DUGAN: And the reason that we're here today is because this defendant, Donna Adelson, was part of a conspiracy to hire a hitman to kill her former son-in-law, Dan Markel.
MS. DUGAN: This murder was set into motion because back in 2014, this defendant's family had a big problem, and the big problem was Dan Markel. And the solution to that problem was the defendant's son, Charlie Adelson.
MS. DUGAN: Charlie Adelson was the solution because he had a girlfriend with connections to the type of people who were willing and capable of pointing a gun at a complete stranger and pulling the trigger.
MS. DUGAN: The victim in this case, Dan Markel, was known as Danny to his friends and family. He was a loving father to two little boys, and he was a highly respected law professor at Florida State University College of Law.
MS. DUGAN: Tragically, on July 18 of 2014, Dan Markel was shot in the head in broad daylight in the driveway of his home in the Benton Hills neighborhood here in Tallahassee.
MS. DUGAN: The last day of his life began like any other day of his that summer. He woke up, he took his two young sons to preschool, and then he went to the gym to work out. After finishing his workout he returned home, he pulled into his driveway, and he opened his garage. But little did he know that throughout his entire routine that morning, he was being followed by two hired hitmen who traveled all the way to Tallahassee from Miami for the sole purpose of taking his life. And, like something out of a horror movie, when he pulled into his driveway, the killers pulled in right behind him. Moments later, Dan Markel's neighbor heard a gunshot and he looked out the window and saw a light-colored Toyota Prius back quickly out of Dan Markel's driveway and speed away.
MS. DUGAN: The neighbor thought that was very unusual, very suspicious, so he waited a second to see if Dan Markel also backed out of his driveway or came out of his house, and when he didn't see him, the neighbor got, you know, a very funny feeling, and he went over to Dan Markel's open garage to see if there was anything wrong, and he found a gruesome scene. Dan Markel's car window, his driver's side window, was shattered.
MS. DUGAN: His glasses and his phone were on the ground next to his car, and Dan Markel was behind the wheel. He was unresponsive and moaning and terribly injured.
MS. DUGAN: The neighbor called 911, and law enforcement arrived to find Dan Markel with a gunshot wound to the head.
MS. DUGAN: He was taken to the hospital, where he survived for about 14 hours before he was pronounced dead.
MS. DUGAN: Dan Markel was only 41 years old, and his little boys, who were deprived of their father after this murder, were just three and four years old.
MS. DUGAN: Law enforcement began to investigate, to try to figure out who did this, who shot Dan Markel. The scene there, the crime scene, left no trace of the killers. There were no fingerprints, no DNA, no bullet casing, nothing was stolen.
MS. DUGAN: And so police began to suspect that this may be a professional killing.
MS. DUGAN: The little evidence that they do have sends them down two separate paths.
MS. DUGAN: One path is to track down that light-colored Prius that the neighbor saw fleeing from the scene, and the other is to identify who was inside that Prius. And the other path relates to motive — who in Dan Markel's life would hate him enough to hire a professional killer to kill him?
MS. DUGAN: And after years of tireless investigation, both of these paths led directly to this defendant.
MS. DUGAN: So first, let's talk about the path involving motive — we'll go down both paths this morning. Police investigated Dan Markel's personal life to try to figure out a motive in this case, to see who might want him dead, and they learned that Dan Markel was entangled in a very nasty divorce with his ex-wife, who is the defendant's daughter, and his ex-wife is named Wendi Adelson.
MS. DUGAN: A review of the divorce case file reveals that Wendi Adelson had asked the court to allow her to relocate to Miami, where she was from and where her parents lived, with her children — and Dan Markel's children — in order to be closer to her mother Donna Adelson, to her father whose name is Harvey Adelson, and to her brother whose name is Charlie Adelson. The victim, Dan Markel, as y'all can imagine, is adamantly opposed to this, to his children being relocated to Miami. He works here in Tallahassee. He's a law professor here in Tallahassee. This is where he lives. This is where his kids have been raised. He wants his children here with him.
MS. DUGAN: A review by law enforcement of Wendi Adelson's emails made it clear that her mother, the defendant, hated Dan Markel and was the relentless driving force behind Wendi's relocation efforts to South Florida. And, you know, being a caring and involved parent is great, but the defendant's participation in her children's lives went beyond mere involvement, or even meddling. She was extremely controlling.
MS. DUGAN: She had very strong opinions about all the decisions in Wendi Adelson's life, whether it be about her career, her relationships, or even purchasing a home. And if Wendi Adelson would not do as the defendant wanted her to do, the defendant often then enlisted Charlie Adelson, her son — Wendi's brother — to solve the problem, by getting him to go to Wendi and persuade Wendi until Wendi ultimately agreed to do what the defendant wanted her to do. And while the defendant had always been controlling of her children's lives, the emails uncovered by law enforcement showed that this defendant was desperate to find a way for Wendi and Dan Markel's children, her grandchildren, to be able to relocate to Miami. The defendant told Wendi that she deserved more than just a life teaching in Tallahassee without her family, and that Dan Markel was essentially holding her hostage in Tallahassee because of his job.
MS. DUGAN: During the divorce and custody battle, the defendant's emails showed that she was heavily involved in Wendi's court case, even going so far as to draft and edit the documents that Wendi and her attorney were filing in court, and emailing Wendi instructions for her attorney on arguments her attorney should make and what her attorney should do. The defendant would guilt-trip Wendi Adelson about how much time she and her husband Harvey Adelson were having to spend away from their dental practice to visit Wendi and the grandkids in Tallahassee, and complain about how the family was losing income, losing patients, because of their constant absences from the practice.
MS. DUGAN: And the defendant instructed Wendi Adelson that relocation to Miami was the most important priority in this divorce, and if it had to be, her non-negotiable in the divorce. In June of 2013, the judge in the divorce case ended up ruling in Dan Markel's favor, and not only did the judge deny Wendi's relocation motion, but the judge dismissed it in a way that prevented Wendi Adelson from requesting the relocation again. So Wendi would not be permitted to move to Miami to be close to the defendant and her husband, with the children, at that time or ever.
MS. DUGAN: Unless, of course, something happened to Dan Markel.
MS. DUGAN: After the judge denied the relocation motion, after that was denied, the defendant told Wendi Adelson in emails that Dan Markel has not beaten the Adelson family yet. She let Wendi know that the Adelson family is a team, and they are trying to win.
MS. DUGAN: Donna Adelson suggested in her emails several bribes to get Dan Markel to agree to relocation — like plane tickets, paying for her grandson's education — and the defendant even suggested offering Dan Markel a one-million-dollar bribe to allow the relocation, to let Wendi move to Miami with the boys. And if the bribes didn't work, the defendant also suggested several ways that Wendi could threaten or bully Dan Markel into submission.
MS. DUGAN: The defendant told Wendi to aggravate Dan Markel like he aggravates you.
MS. DUGAN: And the defendant set out a plan of action that the defendant told Wendi would make Dan Markel absolutely miserable.
MS. DUGAN: And she's detailing all of these in her emails.
MS. DUGAN: So for the plan of action, the defendant knew that Dan Markel was devoutly Jewish.
MS. DUGAN: So she came up with the idea for Wendi to pose Dan Markel's sons for pictures in front of a Catholic church, and then post the pictures to social media, and even announce on social media she was getting the children baptized — just to make it appear to Dan Markel that she was changing their religion.
MS. DUGAN: The defendant assured Wendi Adelson that this would all be an act to get Dan Markel to agree to let her move to Miami.
MS. DUGAN: But told Wendi Adelson that in order to pull off the stunt, she had to put on the acting performance of her life.
MS. DUGAN: The defendant said that it did not matter to her if Wendi had to dress her two little toddlers up in Nazi or SS uniforms, as long as she was able to get them to South Florida and show Dan Markel that he was not in control.
MS. DUGAN: The defendant repeatedly told Wendi Adelson that the rest of her life — meaning Wendi's life, as well as the defendant's life, Harvey Adelson's life, and Charlie Adelson's life — depended on Wendi Adelson and the boys being able to relocate to Miami.
MS. DUGAN: And the defendant said that she would never, never, never give up and never stop fighting for Wendi and the boys to be relocated to Miami.
MS. DUGAN: And she never did.
MS. DUGAN: The evidence in this case will show you that this defendant's closest confidant was her son, Charlie Adelson.
MS. DUGAN: She and Charlie Adelson talked multiple times a day, every day, and he was the person with whom she would constantly vent and complain to about Wendi's situation here in Tallahassee, having to live in Tallahassee with her sons. And she would often — the defendant would use very dramatic life-and-death terms to describe it. The defendant portrayed Dan Markel to Charlie Adelson as a crazy person who was impossible to deal with and was causing an extreme amount of stress to Donna Adelson and her husband Harvey Adelson.
MS. DUGAN: And Charlie Adelson was also the person that Donna Adelson relied on to solve her problems.
MS. DUGAN: And her daughter and grandsons having to live eight hours away in Tallahassee was a big, big problem for this defendant. And this defendant made it Charlie Adelson's problem to solve.
MS. DUGAN: And although the divorce between Wendi and Dan Markel was final a year before the murder, throughout that year, litigation is still ongoing, to say the least. Each side is continuing to routinely file violations of the custody agreement, violations of the settlement agreement, and that continued right up until Dan Markel's death in 2014. A few months before the murder in 2014, Dan Markel alleged that the defendant, Donna Adelson, was disparaging him to his children.
MS. DUGAN: He was very worried about her trying to alienate him from his children.
MS. DUGAN: She was doing this by calling him stupid in front of the boys, and telling the boys that Dan Markel was trying to take them away from her.
MS. DUGAN: Dan Markel asked the court to prevent this defendant from having unsupervised contact with her grandchildren.
MS. DUGAN: And this motion was still pending in court when Dan Markel was killed.
MS. DUGAN: And the murder of Dan Markel ensured that not having access to her grandchildren would never be a problem for this defendant.
MS. DUGAN: And what do you know?
MS. DUGAN: About 48 hours after Dan Markel was killed, or after the shooting happened, Wendi Adelson and the little boys relocated to Miami, moved into the defendant's home with her, and the boys started school down the street.
MS. DUGAN: And just like that, their father was effectively erased from their lives, and the Adelsons' big problem had been solved.
MS. DUGAN: You'll hear during this trial that the Adelson family is a very tight-knit family.
MS. DUGAN: The defendant, her son Charlie Adelson, and her husband Harvey Adelson actually all worked together at their family's dental practice.
MS. DUGAN: The defendant — the defendant, I'm sorry — Harvey Adelson and Charlie Adelson are dentists there, and the defendant managed their accounts at the office.
MS. DUGAN: She was the details person.
MS. DUGAN: And this defendant, though, she managed much more than just the office for the Adelson family.
MS. DUGAN: She was the matriarch, and a domineering one at that. She ran the office, the home, and the lives of the Adelson family members.
MS. DUGAN: After Dan Markel was killed, law enforcement interviewed Wendi Adelson.
MS. DUGAN: Wendi Adelson told police, and the police confirmed this, that she was at home having her TV fixed — at her home in Tallahassee, having her TV fixed at the time of Dan Markel's murder. And when police asked her, "Well, you know, do you know anyone who would have a motive to kill Dan Markel?"
MS. DUGAN: Wendi Adelson acknowledged that her family had a motive to want Dan Markel dead, and said that her parents had more reason to dislike Dan Markel than anybody else. At one point in the interview, police allowed Wendi Adelson to make a phone call to her parents to let them know that Dan Markel had been shot.
MS. DUGAN: And after she got off the phone with her mother, the defendant, Wendi Adelson said to police, "Well, they acted surprised, so that's a relief." And when asked by law enforcement if anyone could have killed Dan Markel on her behalf, she also told the police about her brother, Charlie Adelson.
MS. DUGAN: Wendi admitted to police that her brother, Charlie Adelson, had joked that he looked into hiring a hitman to kill Dan Markel as a divorce present, but decided to buy her a TV instead because it was cheaper.
MS. DUGAN: And what do you know?
MS. DUGAN: The same TV that Charlie Adelson bought his sister as a divorce gift would be Wendi Adelson's alibi the morning of the murder.
MS. DUGAN: An alibi — the TV repair appointment — that was set up by her parents, against Harvey Adelson and Donna Adelson, the defendant.
MS. DUGAN: So this path of looking into Dan Markel's personal life to see who would have motive to kill him leads law enforcement to the Adelsons, including this defendant — a woman who vowed to "never, never, never, never give up" on getting her daughter and grandsons to Miami — and her son, Charlie Adelson, who told his family that he'd looked into hiring a hitman to kill Dan Markel, as Wendi said, was just a joke.
MS. DUGAN: But if Charlie Adelson was just joking about hiring a hitman, that joke — that stopped being funny when Dan Markel was actually killed by a hitman.
MS. DUGAN: While the police are trying to investigate motive, they are simultaneously following that second path of the investigation by tracking down that light-colored Prius the neighbor saw fleeing from the scene.
MS. DUGAN: When law enforcement retraced Dan Markel's steps on the morning of his murder, they uncovered some very chilling surveillance video of that light-colored Prius — fitting the description given by the neighbor — following Dan Markel into the Premier Gym parking lot and waiting for an hour while he was inside, and then following him home from Premier Gym back to Benton Hills. And these surveillance images, coupled with a massive amount of phone and SunPass records gathered in this case, helped police track down the exact car used to commit this crime.
MS. DUGAN: But police still had to figure out — okay, we got the car, but who was in this car? And why did that person kill Dan Markel?
MS. DUGAN: So law enforcement did a painstaking review of digital evidence in this case. And when I say painstaking, finding this Prius and finding evidence in these phone records was not an easy task, and it took much longer than your average investigation of a shooting, as you'll hear. But law enforcement eventually found that needle in the haystack. They found a number that communicated with the cell tower that services Premier Gym at the exact time when the Prius was there. And it was a number with a Miami area code, and that number belonged to a man named Sigfredo Garcia.
MS. DUGAN: Law enforcement examined Garcia's call logs, and they saw that he was in frequent contact with another number that was present at Premier Gym that day. And that number belonged to a man named Luis Rivera, who is a longtime friend of Garcia, and he's also from Miami. They both are.
MS. DUGAN: Police then looked at Garcia and Rivera's phone records, which showed that their phones left Miami two days before the murder — so July 16th, they came to Tallahassee. And on the day of the murder, on the 18th, they followed Markel to Premier Gym. The phone data shows that these men turned their phones off just minutes before the murder took place, and their phones then stayed off for about an hour or so after the murder, until they were well southbound to Miami. I think around the Gainesville area, the phones turned back on.
MS. DUGAN: And then once they got back to Miami, a bank's ATM camera caught them in the light-colored Prius at a bank drive-thru, and caught both of the men in the Prius.
MS. DUGAN: So police figured out the identity of the two men responsible for following and killing Dan Markel, but they continued to look for evidence to explain why these seemingly random men came all the way to Miami — I'm sorry, came all the way to Tallahassee — to kill a man that they'd never met. What or who is the connection between the killers and the victim?
MS. DUGAN: The defendant in her emails obviously had demonstrated ample motive to want Dan Markel dead, but how do we get from these two random and hired killers to her?
MS. DUGAN: Well, those phone records that I talked about — they revealed that one of the shooter's, Garcia's, most frequent contacts was a woman named Catherine Magbanua. She goes by Katie.
MS. DUGAN: The shooter and Magbanua have a long history of an on-again, off-again relationship, and they share two kids in common. This is Garcia and Magbanua.
MS. DUGAN: And lo and behold, these two paths — of the shooter's car and the motive — they converge when law enforcement sees that Catherine Magbanua is also one of the most frequent contacts in the phone records of Charlie Adelson, the defendant's son — the same son that she had been nagging to death about his sister being stuck in Tallahassee.
MS. DUGAN: Law enforcement also learned that at the time of this murder, Catherine Magbanua was dating Charlie Adelson.
MS. DUGAN: So Dan Markel was a problem the defendant needed to solve. The defendant's son, Charlie Adelson, was looking to hire a hitman to kill Dan Markel.
MS. DUGAN: Dan Markel is killed by a hitman. And who ended up being the hitman that killed Dan Markel? Someone with a close relationship to Charlie Adelson's girlfriend — the father of her children.
MS. DUGAN: So you can see how both paths, followed by investigators, charted the way to this defendant.
MS. DUGAN: Not only by looking into the motive led law enforcement to the defendant — because of her hatred of Dan Markel and her son's apparent efforts to hire someone to kill him — but also looking into that car fleeing the scene led law enforcement to the defendant through her son's girlfriend at the time. So: two investigations, one conclusion.
MS. DUGAN: Law enforcement also tried to follow the money in this case, and that was a third way that the evidence in this case pointed to the defendant.
MS. DUGAN: Law enforcement reviewed bank records, employment records, DHSMV records of all the suspects, and saw that in the months after the homicide, Garcia, Rivera, and Magbanua all acquired some big-ticket items.
MS. DUGAN: Rivera and Garcia both bought motorcycles and cars.
MS. DUGAN: Magbanua got a breast augmentation surgery and later received a black Lexus sedan whose previous owner was Harvey V.
MS. DUGAN: Adelson. Catherine Magbanua's bank records were analyzed, and there was no check ever written or matching cash withdrawal for the car or the breast augmentation.
MS. DUGAN: Bank records also showed that Magbanua's account had a huge spike in cash deposits around the time of the murder.
MS. DUGAN: She deposited more money in her account in the five weeks after the murder than in the entire year before the murder. And this was during a time when there was no record of her being employed anywhere.
MS. DUGAN: And also, about two months after the murder, this defendant added Catherine Magbanua to the payroll at the Adelson family's dental practice — the one that she kept the accounts for, the defendant kept the accounts for — and the defendant started issuing her regular checks from their business account every two weeks, despite the fact that Magbanua didn't work there at the time. Law enforcement noticed that each one of the 44 checks that were written to Catherine Magbanua every two weeks over the course of the next two years after the murder were signed by this defendant, Donna Adelson.
MS. DUGAN: So the money was talking. But what about the suspects? Law enforcement wanted to know what they were saying.
MS. DUGAN: In — examining the phone records in this case, law enforcement noticed a distinct pattern of communication surrounding important events or dates in this case.
MS. DUGAN: The phone calls always went from this defendant to her son, Charlie Adelson, and then from her son, Charlie Adelson, to his girlfriend, Catherine Magbanua, and then from his girlfriend, Catherine Magbanua, to the shooter, Garcia, and then back the other way — like train cars.
MS. DUGAN: They only seemed to touch the car directly in front and directly behind them.
MS. DUGAN: The defendant never calls her son's girlfriend, Catherine Magbanua, or the shooter, or vice versa.
MS. DUGAN: Charlie Adelson never calls the shooter, or vice versa.
MS. DUGAN: So, if this is a murder-for-hire conspiracy, as law enforcement suspects, could it be that the defendant and Charlie Adelson are wisely insulating themselves from the actual shooters by having Magbanua act as the middleman?
MS. DUGAN: Law enforcement decided to launch an undercover operation designed to clarify who are the members of this conspiracy and how information was traveling within the conspiracy.
MS. DUGAN: Police applied for and received court authorization to listen in real time to the phone calls of Charlie Adelson and Catherine Magbanua — the people in the middle of this train car.
MS. DUGAN: And this is what's known as a wiretap.
MS. DUGAN: By this point, though, it was April of 2016.
MS. DUGAN: It took about two years to do this investigation to find out who was in the car and to get this wiretap going.
MS. DUGAN: So at this point, it's been two years — almost two years — since the murder.
MS. DUGAN: And at this point, in April of 2016, Charlie Adelson and Magbanua are no longer dating. They've been broken up for over a year.
MS. DUGAN: Catherine Magbanua, at this point, is actually back together with Garcia. We heard they're on again, off again, and have these kids together.
MS. DUGAN: Charlie Adelson has moved on.
MS. DUGAN: He's had many other girlfriends at that point since Magbanua. And Charlie Adelson and Magbanua, though they are still friends, they remain close friends since their breakup, and they're still in regular communication by April of 2016 even though they're not together anymore. Rivera, the second hitman in that Prius, was in prison by this point doing time on an unrelated charge. And the defendant is happily taking care of her grandkids all day, every day. So all the members of this conspiracy have presumably gone on with their lives believing they've gotten away with murder. So what reason would they have to be discussing the murder at that point if police are listening in? They wouldn't. So police needed to stage an event that would generate some conversation, some activity between the members of the conspiracy so they could see who the members of the conspiracy were. Their plan was to send an undercover agent posing as someone on behalf of Luis Rivera — he was the hitman who was incarcerated by April of 2016 — to walk up to the defendant, Donna Adelson, on the street. There's a fly right in front of me. It won't leave me alone.
MS. DUGAN: To walk up to Donna Adelson on the street and try to blackmail her for money.
MS. DUGAN: Law enforcement refers to this as a bump.
MS. DUGAN: So this undercover agent posing as a blackmailer — and this is an actual picture from the surveillance cameras — this is the undercover agent passing a piece of paper to Donna Adelson back in 2016.
MS. DUGAN: This undercover agent is posing as a blackmailer. He hands the defendant a piece of paper, and on the piece of paper is a news article about Dan Markel's murder, and written on the piece of paper is a phone number and the amount of $5,000. He tells the defendant that he knows the Adelsons are taking care of Katie, and he's basically there to blackmail them to get more money out of them, or out of her, on Rivera's behalf to even things out because he knows they're taking care of Katie.
MS. DUGAN: He never says Charlie Adelson's name or anything about Charlie Adelson to Donna Adelson.
MS. DUGAN: The defendant then puts the piece of paper in her purse and walks away without ever looking at the piece of paper because she knew exactly what it was about.
MS. DUGAN: Then law enforcement listens in to see what will happen next. Will the defendant go straight to the police to report the blackmail, or will she do something else entirely? And as suspected, based on the previously observed communication pattern, the first person that this defendant calls is Charlie Adelson, despite the fact that the blackmailer never mentioned Charlie Adelson to her.
MS. DUGAN: On that first call, you would think the first thing that Donna Adelson would say to Charlie Adelson is, "Oh my God, so crazy, some man just came up to me, handed me an article about Danny's murder, and he's demanding money from us." But she never says any of that.
MS. DUGAN: In fact, the defendant never says Dan Markel's name at all.
MS. DUGAN: Instead, she tells Charlie Adelson that she needs to talk to him in person about some paperwork that was just delivered to her.
MS. DUGAN: She said that it involves the two of us, and that he should know what she's talking about. The defendant and Charlie Adelson continue talking, and she says that he should bring cash to their meeting, and she says the TV is probably about five.
MS. DUGAN: The defendant tells Charlie Adelson that the man who approached her mentioned an ex-girlfriend. The defendant never says which ex-girlfriend of Charlie Adelson — she never says Magbanua's name to Charlie Adelson in that phone call. She only says that the blackmailer mentioned an ex-girlfriend. Charlie Adelson never asked his mom, "My ex-girlfriend? Which ex-girlfriend? He's had a lot." He never asked that, because as the evidence will show, he didn't need to. He knew the TV is probably five meant that she was being blackmailed about Danny's murder, where the TV was the alibi, and he knew that the ex-girlfriend in question was the only ex-girlfriend that he had solicited to find a hitman for him, Catherine Magbanua. And we know that because after this call with his mother, the defendant, Charlie Adelson, calls Catherine Magbanua. He does not call his most recent ex-girlfriend or even the one before that. He calls Catherine Magbanua. And his call to Catherine Magbanua is the only call he makes to any ex-girlfriend after getting the information from his mother that the blackmailer mentioned an ex-girlfriend. And he hadn't dated her for about a year and a half at that point. And although they threatened to do it very often, neither Charlie Adelson nor the defendant ever reported this attempted blackmail to the police.
MS. DUGAN: You all will hear the calls between the conspirators, and as you listen to these, you'll notice that they're being very cautious about what they say.
MS. DUGAN: It's apparent that they're being very careful about the words they use because they are all immediately suspicious that law enforcement could be behind the bump. Law enforcement could be the person who came up to them on the street and gave her the paperwork, and law enforcement could also be listening to their conversations.
MS. DUGAN: After Charlie Adelson's first call to Catherine Magbanua, Charlie Adelson then meets up in person with his mother.
MS. DUGAN: The defendant. And in person, she gives him the paperwork that this blackmailer gave to her and makes it Charlie Adelson's newest problem to solve.
MS. DUGAN: And naturally, what does Charlie Adelson do? He goes to the next train car, Catherine Magbanua.
MS. DUGAN: Charlie Adelson and Catherine Magbanua meet in person at a restaurant called Dolce Vita in Miami.
MS. DUGAN: And while they sit at their table in this busy, noisy restaurant, an undercover FBI agent is sitting at a table nearby with a camera hidden in a bag recording the conversation. So this is an image from that video recording the conversation. And in the recording, we hear Charlie Adelson discussing whether the man who walked up to his mother could be an undercover police officer, or he could be someone trying to legitimately blackmail them. And if it's a blackmailer, is it somebody who just saw a way to make a quick buck, or is it another situation entirely which would be much worse for the Adelsons? Is it actually someone with inside information about Donna Adelson's role in the murder of Dan Markel, and that person could tell police what they know?
MS. DUGAN: Charlie Adelson reassures Katie, Catherine Magbanua, that if it is the police, that is a good thing.
MS. DUGAN: Charlie Adelson thinks that, hey, if it's the police, that means the police don't have enough evidence to charge anybody. You know, they're just fishing for information.
MS. DUGAN: And in fact, Charlie Adelson tells her, hey, if they had any evidence, we would have already gone to the airport.
MS. DUGAN: It's important to note that at the time of this conversation at Dolce Vita, no arrests had been made in this case.
MS. DUGAN: And the only thing that police had released to the public at that point was a photo of the light-colored Prius that fled the scene.
MS. DUGAN: Police knew at that point that it was Garcia and Rivera who were in the Prius, but the public didn't know that yet.
MS. DUGAN: So that fact is interesting in light of some of the things that Charlie Adelson started saying to Magbanua. He starts giving her several analogies involving rental cars being used to commit crimes.
MS. DUGAN: He reassures her that the police can't prove a person committed a crime just from someone's DNA being in a car that was used in a crime. In order to prove someone committed a crime, you have to be able to put the person at the scene of the crime at the time it was committed. So he's trying to reassure her that even if police identify who rented that car that fled the scene, they still would not have enough evidence to hold anybody responsible for this murder. Charlie Adelson also says that crimes are tough to prove unless someone actually witnessed the suspect commit the crime, or the suspect confesses to the crime, or a suspect is caught on a wire talking about the crime. So he's trying to reassure her about the lack of evidence in this case, about no witnesses, and trying to let her know that, hey, as long as we all stay quiet and nobody confesses or gets caught talking on a wire, then we don't have anything to worry about.
MS. DUGAN: And he begins educating Catherine Magbanua about how blackmail works.
MS. DUGAN: He tells her that, hey, if this is a guy who knows information, there's two ways of dealing with this guy.
MS. DUGAN: You know, we could call the police, but then the guy blackmailing us could be charged, and then that blackmailer is going to start talking, and the police are going to be asking questions about what happened.
MS. DUGAN: The other option is to pay the blackmailer but let him know that this is just a one-time thing, and we'll try to scare him off by saying, if you come around again, we'll go to the police.
MS. DUGAN: Charlie Adelson gives Magbanua very precise instructions on how to deal with the blackmailer. He tells her to call the blackmailer and tell him that my friends — meaning the Adelson family — have no idea what you're talking about, and I'm just going to give you this money as charity. But don't contact these people again, or they'll go to the police. And Charlie Adelson said he would give Magbanua the $5,000 to pay off the blackmailer who approached his mother, except that he's concerned that this guy won't go away. He'll get that five and then he'll just keep coming back and coming back for more money. He'll see him as an easy target.
MS. DUGAN: And so Charlie Adelson then offers that the best solution might be to have the blackmailer killed and that he's willing to pay whatever it takes.
MS. DUGAN: He says, "So help me God, if they F with my family, it's going to be Nazi shit because this will be done. I mean, Katie, I don't care what I spend."
MS. DUGAN: And after hearing that Charlie Adelson wants someone killed and is willing to pay whatever it takes to get it done, Magbanua then asked Charlie Adelson to help her out. And Charlie Adelson reassures her she'll be taken care of and reminds her she's on salary at the parents' dental practice.
MS. DUGAN: After Charlie Adelson finishes this meeting, where he's getting Magbanua to then solve the problem of the blackmailer, they say goodbye, he gives her a big hug that's captured on camera outside by the FBI.
MS. DUGAN: And then Charlie Adelson immediately calls the defendant to let her know everything's fine, and he has handled the situation.
MS. DUGAN: He does this using some pretty obvious code words.
MS. DUGAN: That you'll often hear these conspirators use to mask the meaning of what they're talking about in case law enforcement's listening.
MS. DUGAN: Magbanua then, also using code words, calls Garcia, and she tasks him with calling the number on their paperwork and finding the identity of the blackmailer.
MS. DUGAN: And in the series of recorded calls that y'all are going to hear later this week, you'll hear these conspirators talking and using words like TV, relationship advice, false leads, listings, patients, properties, clients, rap songs, CDs, pigs — all these terms that are obviously normal words, but they're used in context that, if you're listening to the conversation, don't make sense.
MS. DUGAN: So after that undercover operation was over in 2016, Rivera, Luis Rivera, and Sigfredo Garcia are arrested, and they're charged with the same charges before y'all in this trial.
MS. DUGAN: Luis Rivera, who was the second person in that Prius, cut a deal with the state and told law enforcement the truth about the murder of Dan Markel and the people responsible for it.
MS. DUGAN: He told police that he was hired by his longtime friend Garcia to help kill Dan Markel.
MS. DUGAN: Rivera described how Garcia told him that this was a job that Magbanua was able to get for them, and it was in Tallahassee, and it paid $100,000, and that Rivera was going to get a third of the money.
MS. DUGAN: Rivera said that during the trip to Tallahassee, Garcia had a piece of paper with a picture of the man that they were hired to kill and some handwritten notes. And during that trip, Rivera said that the first call that either of them made after the homicide was from Garcia to Magbanua, where Garcia told her that the job was done, and Magbanua assured them they would get their money the next day, which they did.
MS. DUGAN: That Magbanua brought the money the next morning to Rivera's home.
MS. DUGAN: And law enforcement checked cell phone records, which corroborated Rivera's information. Law enforcement told police that the money that he received from Magbanua the next day was packaged in a very unusual way.
MS. DUGAN: The money was basically in stacks of a thousand. Each stack was made up of $1,100 bills that were then stapled together. And after each stack was stapled together of a thousand. And after learning this from Rivera, Magbanua was arrested. And that was in October of 2016.
MS. DUGAN: During this trial, you'll hear that the Adelson family had access to a lot of cash because their family gave cash discounts at their dental practice.
MS. DUGAN: Like if you paid in cash, you would have to pay less than if you paid on a card or check. And they kept the cash that they received in stacks, and they stored it in a safe.
MS. DUGAN: Law enforcement also learned from Charlie Adelson's friends that Charlie Adelson had a very unusual practice of keeping his money in these thousand-dollar stacks that were stapled together, just like the money Rivera received.
MS. DUGAN: And over the last few years since the 2016 arrests of Garcia and Rivera in May and then of Magbanua in October 2016, law enforcement has not stopped working on this case. Three years after Garcia's arrest, in 2019, he was convicted at his trial. Law enforcement continued, though, to gather evidence. They continued to interview people who may possibly have information, and to clarify all of these recordings the FBI did that couldn't be clearly heard. And thanks to their tireless efforts, in March of 2022, Charlie Adelson was indicted.
MS. DUGAN: Two months later, in May of 2022, Catherine Magbanua's case went to trial, and she was convicted.
MS. DUGAN: During Magbanua's trial, Catherine Magbanua took the stand, and she insisted — this is back in May of '22 — she insisted she had no knowledge of the murder.
MS. DUGAN: The Adelsons must have just gone around her to hire the hitman directly. That's what she testified to. Her defense team insisted that the state's theory was correct about every co-conspirator except for her, for Catherine Magbanua. That Catherine Magbanua was just this victim of bloodthirsty and desperate prosecutors and investigators, and just a victim of this set of circumstances that appeared to prove one thing, but actually the truth was something else entirely.
MS. DUGAN: However, after being convicted at trial and sentenced, Magbanua finally decided to testify about the plot to kill Dan Markel and admitted that she was the connection between the Adelson family and the killers hired to kill Dan Markel.
MS. DUGAN: Magbanua testified in Charlie Adelson's trial in October of 2023 and said that Charlie Adelson wanted to hire someone to kill his sister's ex because his mom was stressed out over all of the problems his sister was having with her ex-husband.
MS. DUGAN: Magbanua said Charlie painted a picture that Wendi's ex was this terrible man causing his mom so much stress that she couldn't sleep or eat.
MS. DUGAN: Magbanua agreed to help him and ended up recruiting her children's father, Garcia, and also Rivera to kill Dan Markel.
MS. DUGAN: She says that the night of the murder, she went to Charlie Adelson's house to pick up the payment for the murder. And when she arrived, Charlie Adelson said that his parents had just been at the house and that Charlie Adelson had the money for her there.
MS. DUGAN: Law enforcement was able to corroborate this claim with phone evidence showing that Donna Adelson went to Charlie Adelson's house the night of the murder.
MS. DUGAN: Magbanua then spent the night with Charlie Adelson that night, and the next morning, on July 19th, he put the money that she was to divide up into the trunk of her car.
MS. DUGAN: Magbanua says several things about the money stood out to her. She said it was stapled together in stacks of hundred-dollar bills and that it was damp, like damp like wet.
MS. DUGAN: She then delivered the money to Garcia and Rivera afterwards.
MS. DUGAN: Catherine Magbanua said that when she asked Charlie Adelson about the money being damp, he said that his mother — the defendant — had actually washed the money, and that she and Charlie Adelson kind of laughed about the fact that the defendant had literally washed the money so it couldn't be traced.
MS. DUGAN: In Charlie Adelson's trial, Charlie Adelson took the stand and he testified that Magbanua, Garcia, and Rivera were all in on this crime together, but that the Adelsons had nothing to do with it. They were the innocent ones.
MS. DUGAN: He crafted an elaborate story in which Garcia and Rivera came to Tallahassee on their own, killed Dan Markel without his knowledge or his family's knowledge, and then colluded — these killers colluded with Magbanua — to play him and his mother for fools and extort money out of them.
MS. DUGAN: And for many reasons, which will be revealed to y'all in this trial, Charlie's interpretation of the facts was not reasonable to believe, and he was convicted.
MS. DUGAN: Charlie Adelson was convicted in November of 2023, and within hours of his guilty verdict, this defendant began to plan to flee the United States to a country that she could not be extradited from in order to avoid being arrested for Dan Markel's murder.
MS. DUGAN: The defendant, on her phone, researched countries that did not have extradition treaties with the United States, and she applied for an emergency visa to Vietnam.
MS. DUGAN: She was overheard planning to put her money in trust for her grandchildren, and she and her husband purchased one-way tickets with a fast-track emergency visa to Vietnam — and Vietnam does not have an extradition treaty with the US, as she would have learned from her searches. And just days later, she was stopped by law enforcement on the jetway in Miami International Airport, where she was boarding her one-way flight to Vietnam, and she was then charged for her participation in the murder of Dan Markel.
MS. DUGAN: After the defendant was charged, law enforcement received information from women who said that the defendant, Donna Adelson, was offering them bribes in exchange for false testimony in this trial.
MS. DUGAN: They said Donna Adelson promised them money, housing, veneers, prescription drugs, if they were willing to testify that Catherine Magbanua told them a completely different story about the crime than the one that she would be testifying to.
MS. DUGAN: One informant was even able to show law enforcement a script — a question and answer session for a direct examination at trial — that Donna Adelson herself wrote, and that Donna Adelson wanted this informant to memorize and come into court and perjure herself by reciting it to you here in trial.
MS. DUGAN: Please listen to all of the evidence that y'all are going to see and hear in this trial. I know it's been a long week already, and we have a lot of evidence for you in this case, but when you do, you will see that this defendant conspired with her son, Charlie Adelson, who solicited his girlfriend, Catherine Magbanua, to get this murder done. And then this defendant paid her, with cash, with checks, for the job once it was completed.
MS. DUGAN: The defendant acted in furtherance of this murder plot that went beyond just thinking about it or just talking about it.
MS. DUGAN: And these acts make her guilty as a principal to first-degree murder, just as if she was the one pulling the trigger in the garage herself.
MS. DUGAN: And while the defendant's choices helped solve a problem within her family, they came at a very high price. She took the life of a loving father of two little boys and caused a lifetime of grief for Dan Markel's loved ones. At the conclusion of the evidence in this case, you will be convinced beyond any reasonable doubt that this defendant is guilty, and at that point we'll ask you for the only verdict that does justice in this case, which is a verdict that this defendant is guilty as charged. Thank you.
JUDGE EVERETT: We are going to take a brief break. The bailiff will take you to the jury room.
JUDGE EVERETT: Gallery or the observers, if you need to use the restroom, please do so at this point, so that way when the defense is ready, we can continue moving on seamlessly.
JUDGE EVERETT: We'll resume them again at 10:20.
JUDGE EVERETT: Is the defense set up at this point?
MR. ZELMAN: Yes, sir.
JUDGE EVERETT: All right. Is there any further clarification needed about what was discussed at the sidebar?
MR. ZELMAN: Not at all, Your Honor.
JUDGE EVERETT: All right, very good.
JUDGE EVERETT: But they're coming right back in, so it's probably going to be some pop-goes-the-weasel musical chairs, whatever your variation is of this.
JUDGE EVERETT: Fourteen people wrangling the bathroom will be a thing throughout the trial.
[STAGE DIRECTION]: [court video cuts out briefly at the start of defense's opening statement]
MS. FULFORD: Educate himself so that he could get near at the law school as a professor. He worked very hard.
MS. FULFORD: He earned a lot.
MS. FULFORD: What he did not earn was for somebody to do this to him.
MS. FULFORD: You're going to hear that Wendi Adelson, the daughter of my client, was married to Danny.
MS. FULFORD: And I'm not trying to be informal when I say that. I respect Mr. Markel, Dr. Markel, but because so many people in the trial are going to refer to him as Danny, I'm going to do that, if that's okay. But I don't mean any disrespect by doing that.
MS. FULFORD: More important to Danny Markel than anything in the world were his little boys.
MS. FULFORD: He had two little children when this happened to him, a three-year-old and a four-year-old.
MS. FULFORD: When the divorce first happened, when Wendi moved out, he did not want the divorce.
MS. FULFORD: That was in 2012.
MS. FULFORD: And they squabbled during the divorce. They did.
MS. FULFORD: Each side argued for their side.
MS. FULFORD: The other side argued for their side. That's what happens in divorce. Divorce is not fun.
MS. FULFORD: Divorce is not usually friendly. Some of us have had friendly divorces, but not everybody does.
MS. FULFORD: And a lot of things were said.
MS. FULFORD: But moving forward to 2014 is where we're going to concentrate, because that's when Danny was killed.
MS. FULFORD: And in 2014, with these little boys that he had, the divorce had been over for a year.
MS. FULFORD: Relocation — the opportunity, even discussion about it — ended.
MS. FULFORD: On July 31st, when the final judgment was entered, relocation was over. The state told you that. The court denied it with prejudice.
MS. FULFORD: She could never raise it again. Nobody was fighting anymore about where these little boys would be. Danny advocated for not only himself in the divorce; he advocated for his children. They are an important part of his life. He wanted as much time as he could get with them. They ended up splitting the time equally between Wendi and Danny. Their schedules changed a little bit on how they worked that out, but it was 50%. This bug is driving me crazy, too. What in the world is that?
MS. FULFORD: Sorry.
MS. FULFORD: He continuously, from the time Wendi moved out till the time that he was killed, spent as much time as he could get with his children.
MS. FULFORD: He loved being with them.
MS. FULFORD: If it wasn't his time to have the children, he would go to their little preschool and spend time with them there.
MS. FULFORD: He wanted to talk to them on the phone as much as he could.
MS. FULFORD: You guys are way younger than me, so maybe you don't even know about this, but I guess there was a thing called Skype. I don't even know if it still exists, but I guess it's like FaceTiming, but doing it on your computer. And that's how he wanted to talk to his kids, so that he could see them when he wasn't with them while he spoke to them.
MS. FULFORD: Now, at three and four, it's kind of hard to wrangle them to sit down in front of a screen.
MS. FULFORD: So Danny came up with a really good idea.
MS. FULFORD: When he Skyped the children, it would be, most of the time, after the kids had had their dinner and had their baths, where they're kind of calmed down — they're not in their little running-around state — and he would read bedtime stories to them.
MS. FULFORD: He didn't have his little kids.
MS. FULFORD: He still wanted to know that when the children went to bed, they didn't forget about Daddy. And he made sure that didn't happen. These kids are not deprived of their father — their father was brutally taken from them, not just when they were three or four or five or six or seven or eight, but up into their teens. They lost the opportunity, because someone took it from them, to grow up with a father, to have his involvement and influence in their lives, to talk about what he did as a kid and share his experiences.
MS. FULFORD: All of that was stolen from him.
MS. FULFORD: That's very important.
MS. FULFORD: This Skyping that he did with his kids — Mrs. Adelson, when she had the little boys, actually arranged so she could do that with him, and she would keep the kids in front of the screen while he talked to his children. You've heard a lot about how she hated him. She said some ugly things during the divorce, foul things actually, but you're going to learn through the evidence why that was occurring and how she was actually interacting with Danny. There are two very different things. I want to talk to you now about my client, Donna Adelson.
MS. FULFORD: She is a normal person, just like all of us.
MS. FULFORD: At the time that this happened, she was 64 years old, married to her husband, Dr. Adelson, a dentist.
MS. FULFORD: Now they've been married 54 years. It was somewhere in the 40-year range when this happened 11 years ago.
MS. FULFORD: And she got up in the morning and went to work — not at her and Harvey's business, like you were just told.
MS. FULFORD: She went to the business owned by her son.
MS. FULFORD: Every morning they got up and they went to work.
MS. FULFORD: She did the books. She kept the books. She greeted patients. She got charts out at 7:30 every morning. She was there and organized and had everybody ready to go, because they had a little staff meeting so everybody could know what to expect, what patients they were going to see, what they were going to take care of. She was there working, sometimes late into the evening, just like all of us.
MS. FULFORD: She's a normal person.
MS. FULFORD: People who know Donna will tell you that she is not the person that the State is portraying her to be.
MS. FULFORD: She's kind, caring, loving.
MS. FULFORD: She cares more about people than she does about herself.
MS. FULFORD: Now, what happened on July the 18th of 2014?
MS. FULFORD: You've heard the State describe it, but I want to talk about it for a minute.
MS. FULFORD: The State is going to be able to prove to you some of the things they were talking about.
MS. FULFORD: Can everybody see it okay? Nope.
MS. FULFORD: Oh.
MS. FULFORD: Clearly.
JUDGE EVERETT: Thank you.
MS. FULFORD: Thank you.
MS. FULFORD: So the State told you that he got up every day just like he normally did on July the 18th of 2014.
MS. FULFORD: And I just want to say this also: throughout the trial you may hear me say that he was murdered on that date.
MS. FULFORD: Somehow he survived for another 11 hours, but in my opinion, all the evidence is going to show that what killed him took place on the 18th, and he was just able to survive long enough into the next day.
MS. FULFORD: So on that date, July 18th of 2014, these two men, Sigfredo Garcia and Luis Rivera, followed Danny all over town.
MS. FULFORD: Started at his house, followed him to the school where the little children were going to school — the preschool where he dropped them off — watched him drop those kids off, followed him to the gym, waited outside the gym for him, followed him to his house, pulled up in the driveway.
MS. FULFORD: Mr. Markel is talking on the telephone to someone, and he notices someone's coming into his driveway, and while he's talking on the phone he says something about needing to see who this is.
MS. FULFORD: He turns and looks in the direction, and this man, Sigfredo Garcia, is holding a revolver and he points it at him. And you may hear testimony that there's some evidence that maybe he tried to, you know, what you do in defense when somebody's going to hit you or whatever — you put your hands up.
MS. FULFORD: He saw this man pointing a gun similar to this at him.
MS. FULFORD: And in that instant, I cannot fathom how terrified he must have been when this man shot him. Not one time, but twice.
MS. FULFORD: One of the shots is almost right between the eyes.
MS. FULFORD: He was brutally murdered by this man.
MS. FULFORD: This man, Luis Rivera, who you've heard them mention in the State's opening, traveled with this car. This is an actual picture of the car, and the State's going to show it to you. This is the Prius that they were traveling in. This is a surveillance photo that the investigators were able to find to know that it was a Prius that they were looking for.
MS. FULFORD: This man supplied the gun and drove the car following Danny, drove it up into the driveway less than three feet away from Mr. Markel, whose engine is still running, and he's on the phone, and he waits while this man kills him. He hears the shots.
MS. FULFORD: This guy, Mr. Garcia, runs back to the car where Mr. Rivera is in the driver's seat, and he's the getaway driver. Supplies the gun, knows what they're going there to do — kill him — and drive off. They drive off. The State can prove that about Sigfredo Garcia and Luis Rivera, but they're not on trial here. Right? You heard — they've already been on trial.
MS. FULFORD: Then you're going to hear, as the State said, that they can prove that — everybody can see okay? — they can prove that Katie Magbanua (her name's Katherine, some people call her Katie), they can prove that she's the one who set it up. This is the father of Katie's children.
MS. FULFORD: This is his buddy that was recruited to go along on this trip to kill Danny.
MS. FULFORD: They can prove that she arranged these guys to do it and that she's the one who paid them the money.
MS. FULFORD: The money that was in stacks stapled — $100 bills, all $100 bills. There may have been something other than $100 bills, but each stack was $1,000 stapled together.
MS. FULFORD: And you're going to hear testimony that that's exactly what he did with his money.
MS. FULFORD: He kept it and saved it for a long time.
MS. FULFORD: And you're probably going to hear testimony that this happens on July 18th. And on July the 19th, Mr. Adelson — Charlie Adelson, which is her son — gave approximately between $130,000 and $138,000 that he had in his safe that he collected and stapled together. His money went to her — not Mrs. Adelson.
MS. FULFORD: They can prove that, and how, he paid her to get them to kill Danny Markel.
MS. FULFORD: That's what they can prove. And they've done it one, two, three, four times. Now this case is really a lot about theory and motive and not evidence.
MS. FULFORD: The State has a theory, and for the past 9 to 11 years — in fairness, probably 9 years — they have told the whole world that Mrs. Adelson was the reason that this happened.
MS. FULFORD: Mrs. Adelson was the reason that this happened. They've told this story, and it's outrageous.
MS. FULFORD: It gets people's attention. It's made a lot of money for the media.
MS. FULFORD: Interviews, specials — some people in jury selection said they had watched these specials.
MS. FULFORD: Lawyers on there, investigators on there. They made a lot of money for the media, and it got big attention because this is outrageous, what happened. It is truly outrageous. But what's more outrageous is — without any evidence, only motive and theory — they put her at the top of this pyramid.
MS. FULFORD: She's the matriarch. She's the matriarch mastermind behind Danny being killed, and they don't have evidence of that.
MS. FULFORD: That's what's outrageous.
MS. FULFORD: It's outrageous that he got killed, but it's also outrageous that we're sitting here with a jury and you're going to hear a lot of theory, a lot of motive, and a lot of what they believe the evidence means.
MS. FULFORD: They don't get to decide that. The evidence is what the evidence is, and I ask you to patiently sit here and really pay attention to all of the evidence that you hear — every witness that they put on, every piece of evidence that they present to you, all of it. Don't, for one second — I'm not asking you to ignore any of that. Please listen to all of it closely. Look for what they actually have as evidence that Mrs. Adelson planned — she planned — Danny Markel's murder, that she engaged these men to kill him, and that she gave the money to her son to give to Katie to pay them.
MS. FULFORD: You won't find evidence of that.
MS. FULFORD: The evidence about the $3,000 a month — I have that here on this board — $3,000 a month.
MS. FULFORD: Charlie Adelson gave $2,000 a month and he instructed his mother, for reasons you're going to learn in the trial, out of his business account, to put her on payroll.
MS. FULFORD: She worked for him and she paid that money.
MS. FULFORD: It's this man's money, not Donna Adelson's.
MS. FULFORD: At the end of listening to all of the evidence, we're going to have an opportunity to make closing arguments.
MS. FULFORD: And the judge is then going to give you — well, he's going to give it before — he's going to give you all of the instructions on what it is that you have to decide.
MS. FULFORD: Did the state charge, and then prove, that Mrs. Adelson committed a conspiracy?
MS. FULFORD: Not one of the elements — all of the elements, proven by evidence, not theory, not motive.
MS. FULFORD: For each count, then solicitation, all the elements. So while you're listening to the evidence, you don't know what those elements are, but think about what each thing it is that the state has alleged. She planned it, she got people to do it, she intended that he die.
MS. FULFORD: This woman wanted to take away the father of her grandchildren for the rest of their life because of a relocation that happened a year ago and was done and over. And at the end of the case, because there's not going to be evidence that she did this, keep an open mind, listen to all of it. We're going to ask you to find her not guilty of every single count. Thank you.
JUDGE EVERETT: Thank you, Ms. Fulford.
JUDGE EVERETT: Mr. Zelman, if you could take down the easels at this time.