Day 3 - August 26, 2025

Day 3 opened with routine gallery instructions before moving into four consecutive prosecution witnesses whose testimony collectively built the core of the state's case. **Jeffrey Lacasse** (direct and cross): FSU social work professor Jeffrey Lacasse, who dated Wendi Adelson from late 2013 through July 14, 2014, described her fixation on relocating to South Florida as an almost daily obsession after the court denied her motion. He recounted a March 2014 dinner where Charlie Adelson boasted in a hot-tub conversation about knowing people in the criminal element, specifically referencing Cuban neighborhoods. On July 13, 2014 — five days before the murder — Wendi told Lacasse the only way she could ever relocate was "if something happened to Danny," then asked to speak in confidence and disclosed that her brother Charlie had "looked into all options possible to take care of the Danny Markel problem, including hiring a hitman, and it would cost about $15,000." Lacasse described the disclosure as unlike any known Adelson family joke: she was "dead serious" and had specifically asked for confidence. He also recounted that after the murder, Wendi told him Charlie had taken her to what he called a "celebration dinner" at which something was said that caused her to vomit at the table. A discovery violation arose when Lacasse began testifying about children's autobiographical memory development without being disclosed as an expert; Judge Everett conducted a Richardson hearing, found the violation trivial and non-prejudicial, and issued a curative instruction. On cross, Zelman elicited Lacasse's concession that Wendi was "deeply deceitful, depending on the topic," leaving the bare admission after the judge struck Lacasse's qualifying follow-up. Zelman also established that Lacasse's knowledge of the Adelson family's reactions to the custody litigation came entirely through Wendi rather than direct observation. A brief delay followed when June Umchinda could not be located in the courthouse; Judge Everett directed bailiffs, U.S. Marshals, and FBI personnel to find her, noting with evident exasperation that this had happened before. **June Umchinda** (direct and cross): Charlie Adelson's girlfriend from October 2015 through June 2017 testified that the murder barely came up during the early months of their relationship. After the April 2016 FBI undercover approach targeting Donna Adelson — an operation Charlie concealed from Umchinda despite their constant proximity — his behavior changed markedly: insomnia, belief his phone was tapped, acquisition of a secondary phone, a shift to WhatsApp, and a bag of clothes kept by his bed. Cappleman read Umchinda's prior law-enforcement statement into the record: the Adelson family appeared neither curious nor upset about who killed Dan Markel. Umchinda described recognizing Charlie's practice of stapling hundred-dollar bills into thousand-dollar bundles after reading media accounts describing the hitman payment method, and confirmed she raised the subject with Charlie directly. She also recounted Donna Adelson stating on her balcony that Dan Markel felt like he was "haunting her from the grave" as the investigation intensified. On cross, Fulford established that Umchinda's initial law-enforcement interview was unrecorded, was given during a painful breakup with Charlie, and that her attribution of family indifference to the murder was her own speculation. Fulford's sharpest impeachment drew from Umchinda's own prior sworn testimony at the Magbanua second trial, where she characterized the "haunting from the grave" remark as her interpretation of Donna's distressed emotional state rather than her literal words. The state took no redirect. **Ryan Fitzpatrick** (direct and cross): A close personal friend of Charlie Adelson from roughly 2013 to 2020, Fitzpatrick testified that Donna Adelson "didn't like Dan" and that the murder was conspicuously absent from conversation in Charlie's circle — an omission he found "odd." He grounded the stapled-cash evidence in direct personal experience: Charlie habitually paid him in stapled bundles of ten hundred-dollar bills, and he had personally been paid that way. He tracked Charlie's behavioral arc: before the FBI bump, no visible stress; after it, "agitated, nervous, anxiety — looking back now, guilty." He relayed Charlie's statement that "you could get away with anything if you keep your mouth shut," delivered in the context of the murder inquiry, and described Charlie's post-arrest behavior as compulsive, repetitive talking about the case "almost to help himself believe something." On cross, Fulford established that Fitzpatrick had no specific statement from Donna about disliking Dan Markel — her hostility was "implied" rather than directly expressed — and that he personally found Donna and her husband Harvey "very nice" and "pleasant." Their friendship ended "ugly," Fulford noted. The core financial corroboration was not disturbed. A sidebar on financial exhibits produced two rulings before Mary Hull took the stand. Judge Everett sustained a hearsay objection to Slide 38 — a 2012 text from Harvey Adelson referencing "too much cash" — characterizing the prosecution's non-hearsay framing as "splitting the hair is pretty thin." He also warned defense counsel that late objections to the revised Corbitt PowerPoint would not receive further accommodation after multiple deadline extensions. **Mary Hull** (direct, cross, redirect): Certified fraud examiner Hull presented financial pattern evidence across multiple sets of records. For Luis Rivera, she documented that his chronic pattern of empty accounts and bounced auto-drafts reversed immediately after July 18, 2014: no overdrafts for four months, a motorcycle purchased on July 28, and a car on July 31. For Sigfredo Garcia, no bank account at the time of the murder, yet three vehicles within three months of the killing. For Katherine Magbanua, Hull showed cash deposits of $46,820 in 2014 — roughly three times the prior year — with August 2014 as her single highest cash month at $13,200, during a period of no documented employment. Hull established that Donna Adelson personally signed all 44 Adelson Institute payroll checks issued to Magbanua from September 2014 through May 2016, that three of those checks appeared in Magbanua's bank records but not in the Institute's own QuickBooks printout — the only document the Institute produced in response to a comprehensive employment records subpoena — and that the payroll checks stopped shortly after the April 2016 FBI undercover approach targeting Donna. Hull also read a 2011 text from Donna to Charlie describing moving $25,000 between accounts while Harvey moved "cash in the safe into your pile." On cross, Fulford offered an innocent credit-card-processing-fee rationale for the Institute's cash discount policy; Hull conceded the text messages contained no alternative explanation. Redirect by Dugan established that the cash discount language came from Institute employees and walked the jury through the post-arrest corporate restructuring: both Harvey and Charlie were co-managers through the period Magbanua received checks; Charlie dropped to registered agent after his April 2016 arrest; Harvey became sole manager. **Clariza Lebredo** (direct, cross, redirect): Harvey Adelson's dental assistant of more than 40 years confirmed that Donna Adelson handled the Institute's books and payroll and was the only person, along with Harvey, with access to employee records. She testified flatly that Katherine Magbanua came to the office only once or twice as a dental patient and never worked there in any capacity. She identified both voices on State's Exhibit 100 — a female voice as Erica Johnson, Charlie's assistant, and the male voice as Charlie Adelson — from years of working alongside both. On cross, Zelman extracted the defense's key point from this witness: in approximately 40 years working alongside Donna Adelson, Lebredo never once heard her speak negatively about Dan Markel. Redirect by Dugan narrowed the evidentiary weight of that concession by establishing that Lebredo's relationship with Donna was primarily at work, not on a regular social basis outside the office. Before Katherine Magbanua took the stand, Judge Everett addressed Donna Adelson directly: "I'm going to remind you again not to have any emotional reactions while the testimony is going on. No head shaking, no nodding, nothing to indicate that you either disagree or agree with what's happening." The word "again" indicated prior history. **Katherine Magbanua** (direct and cross): Magbanua, serving a life sentence for her role in the Markel murder, testified under direct examination by Cappleman. She opened by acknowledging her conviction "for the murder of Dan Markel" and recanted the testimony she gave across two prior trials in which she claimed innocence — explaining she had stayed silent initially because Sigfredo Garcia faced the death penalty and later because she had been living a lie for years. She described the conspiracy's origin: on Halloween 2013, Charlie Adelson jumped into her car on Lincoln Road in Miami and asked if she knew anyone who could "harm someone." She agreed to serve as intermediary, connecting Charlie to Garcia. Charlie subsequently passed her a manila envelope — sealed while wearing gloves, with instructions not to open it — which she transferred to Garcia. She relayed mounting pressure from Charlie, who stepped out of planning conversations more than five times to call his mother before returning. On the night of the murder, Charlie contacted her and invited her to dinner; she arrived to find him frantic, pacing with a gun in his hand, saying his parents had just left. The following morning she retrieved money from her car trunk and delivered it to Rivera's residence. Days later Garcia brought her share: cash in nested plastic bags, stapled in bundles and wet. When she asked Charlie why the money was wet, he told her his mother had washed it. She identified Donna Adelson as the signer of all 44 Adelson Institute paychecks she received, and confirmed they were compensation for arranging the murder, not for any work performed. She confirmed speaking in code during the wiretapped restaurant meeting and agreed that innocent people do not speak in code. On cross, Fulford established that Magbanua disclosed the full account only incrementally across multiple law-enforcement meetings after her own trial — "finally coming out with the truth," as Magbanua herself put it — and highlighted that she claimed to have arranged a homicide without knowing or ever counting the payment amount. Fulford's closing sequence established that Magbanua met Donna Adelson only once, had no subsequent direct contact with her, and was not present for Donna's conversations with Charlie. Magbanua confirmed that Charlie served as go-between between Donna and herself — structurally parallel to her own role between Charlie and Garcia. A brief recess allowed Sergeant Corbitt to set up equipment; both sides agreed on the record to conditionally move the cell-data summary into evidence, deferring final resolution to the following session. **Christopher Corbitt** (direct, beginning): Sergeant Corbitt, qualified without objection as an expert in historical communication records analysis with over 1,000 hours of specialized training and 123 prior court appearances, began presenting the state's cell and digital evidence. The pivotal phone finding: a tower dump at Premier Health and Fitness — one of the locations Dan Markel visited the morning of his murder — identified a 786 number physically present at the scene. Cross-referenced against Adelson family call records, that number appeared in Harvey Adelson's call detail records as a single 37-second call on July 1, 2014, routed to voicemail. The 786 number belonged to Sigfredo Garcia. No other Adelson family member (outside of Magbanua) had any phone contact with Garcia or Rivera. Frequency reports established the relational chain: Garcia's most frequent contact was Magbanua; Charlie Adelson was Magbanua's second-most-frequent contact; Donna Adelson was Charlie's fifth-most-frequent contact. Corbitt then read from Donna Adelson's email and text records tracing a timeline of escalating hostility toward Markel from March 2013 — calling him a "major fucker" and a "royal jackass" — through an October 2013 text forwarding Markel's custody email to Charlie with "impossible" in all caps, to a June 2013 email describing the Adelson family's financial offer to Markel as a "team" effort of Donna, Harvey, and Charlie. A March 4, 2014 text — four months before the murder — showed Donna instructing Charlie to "erase this text after you read it" before a private roadside phone call; the follow-up text, which named the call's subject as a birthday gift, carried no deletion request. Corbitt's examination was not completed before recess; the parties agreed to resume at 8:40 the following morning.