Divorce Papers on an Empty Bed: The Dan Markel Case

Dan Markel, a 41-year-old Florida State University law professor, was shot twice in the head in the garage of his Tallahassee home on July 18, 2014, in a murder-for-hire plot built by his former in-laws. The FBI and Tallahassee police investigation that followed used wiretaps, SunPass toll records, and a cooperating hitman to win five convictions, including first-degree murder verdicts against former brother-in-law Charlie Adelson and family matriarch Donna Adelson.

This one begins with a mop, a stepladder, and a hyperactive kid in Montreal who grew up to teach punishment theory to law students, and it ends with a 76-year-old grandmother serving life in a Florida prison. In between there's a divorce, a 50-50 custody schedule, a $1 million offer, a rented silver Prius trailing a man around town for two days, and a family so rattled by one undercover FBI agent that they started calling a murder "TV" on their own phone lines. Twelve years of trials, appeals, and one Florida law now named after the victim. Here's how a fight over 500 miles became a contract killing.

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