A Florida grandma accused of colluding with her dentist son to kill her son-in-law in a sinister contract murder plot was arrested just before boarding a one-way flight to Vietnam, shocking body camera footage reveals. The footage was revealed on Wednesday.
In November 2023, Donna Adelson, 73, tried to grab her cell phone while being handcuffed by police in front of her husband, Harvey, at Miami International Airport.
“Yeah, here we go again,” Adelson told the officer.
Adelson's arrest comes just a week after his son Charlie Adelson was convicted of hiring two hitmen to kill his brother-in-law and FSU professor Dan Markel in 2014. It was conducted.
Adelson, wearing a blue T-shirt and gray hoodie, was the same outfit he was wearing in the mug shot, and police began asking Adelson for his passport.
After police secured the passport, Adelson was informed that he was being arrested on suspicion of Markel's murder.
When the officer tried to take the phone out of his hand, the convicted murderer's mother resisted and pulled it away, saying her lawyer told her to stop.
“I don't want to give it to you,” Harvey Adelson says for his wife. “Why should I give it to you?”
Miami-Dade police told the Adelsons that the phone call was evidence of the incident before they began cooperating.
Adelson pleads with the police officer to allow her husband to accompany her.
“My husband is almost 80 years old. Can't he come with me?” she asks the police officer, who denies the request.
She finally tells her husband to order an Uber before kissing him goodbye while still handcuffed.
“You're making a mistake,” said Harvey Adelson. “That's two mistakes. Please.”
Adelson is then paraded through the airport in front of confused travelers.
of 27 minute video It then shows her sitting eerily emotionless in the back seat of a police car, staring blankly ahead.
She then appears in the prison parking lot for processing before the video ends.
Mr. Adelson made his first appearance in Leon County Court on November 21, 2023, where he was formally charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy, and abetting in connection with Mr. Markel's death.
Markel was shot in the head inside the garage of his Tallahassee home.
At the time of the FSU law professor's murder, he was in the middle of a bitter custody battle with Donna Adelson's daughter Wendy.
Prosecutors say Donna Adelson “hates” Markel and that emails with her daughters show she was “adamant” about the law professor's efforts to move her two grandchildren from Tallahassee to South Florida. It shared that it shows it is “desperate to find a way” to thwart the effort.
An affidavit obtained by Adelson said in the days before his arrest, in a phone call with his son after the guilty verdict, Adelson told him he was “sorting things out,” including plans to commit suicide or flee to a country where he would not be extradited. They talked about it. law and crime.
“Donna Sue Adelson has significant financial resources to accomplish this,” the affidavit added.
Adelson allegedly called her son from prison on Nov. 7, 2023, revealing new details about her attempt to flee the county.
“We've looked at it multiple times because the situation changes. What if there's an extradition from Vietnam? Because we've looked at all the places, so going to South Korea or China? We could do that, but there is no extradition and we are looking for a place where there is no extradition,” Adelson said. ABC News.
Her 47-year-old dentist son is serving a life sentence for arranging a murder-for-hire through his ex-husband and father of her child, Sigfredo Garcia, and his then-girlfriend Katie Magbanua, who hired his friend. are doing. Luis Rivera, both members of the Latin Kings gang, carried out the horrific hit.
Magbanua and Garcia were convicted in October 2019 and are serving life sentences.
Rivera is serving a 19-year sentence after pleading guilty to second-degree murder in 2016 and testifying against others.
Adelson denied any involvement in the murder-for-hire plot.
