Markel Family

Dan Markel was at the top of his game with a degree from Harvard, a PHD from Cambridge, and was selected for a Superior Court clerkship in Washington DC. All that was missing from this life was someone to share it with. Devotion to the Jewish faith was of utmost importance for Dan, which is why he turned to J-Date, a popular dating profile for practicing Jews to find love. He finds Wendi Adelson and feels like he’s hit the jackpot. Wendi’s beauty combined with her impressive collegiate and professional background instantly caught Dan’s attention. What Dan didn’t know was that the woman who created Wendi’s J-Date profile was her own mother, Donna. While Wendi agreed to go on dates, and did indeed find love in Dan, this was the first of many instances revealing Donna’s role as the puppet master to Wendi’s life. Wendi was the apple of her parent’s eye, and the one other family members orbited around. Dan Markel and Wendi Adelson married in 2006, and much to Dan’s disappointment, the two moved to Tallahassee, Florida, to please Wendi and Donna. Shortly after the move, they started a family and brought two healthy boys into the world. They were Donna’s first grandchildren, the bond only strengthened.

Donna saw her grandsons as carriers of the Adelson bloodline and she would do anything to keep them under her watchful, protective eye. Dan and Wendi agreed that their children would be raised respecting certain Jewish traditions that aligned closer to Dan’s conservative upbringing, such as eating Kosher. Donna Adelson, however, saw this as an opportunity to become closer with her grandchildren and spoiled them with cheeseburgers and bacon. What? It’s no big deal. They’re just children, they deserve to be normal and eat like their peers. Using the children as pawns, Donna drives a wedge into Dan & Wendi’s marriage and shatters their relationship into irreparable pieces. The notion of divorce was on everyone’s mind, and with that, the custody of Dan & Wendi’s sons was a highly debated topic. In 2012, Dan returns from a work trip to the family home and finds that Wendi had moved herself… and the boys…out of the home without so much as a warning. The family took the matter to court where Dan was awarded custody of the children. This was the final straw for Donna Adelson & the Adelson family, who then set into motion a 2+ year murder-for-hire operation which resulted in Dan’s eventual 2014 murder. An investigation yielded the prosecution of the hired gunman as well as Dan’s Mother-in-law Donna, brother-in-law Charlie, and wife Wendi Adelson.

LINK: https://people.com/crime/dan-markel-case-former-brother-in-law-charged-custody-battle/