Here's something that puzzles me. Perhaps people here know the answer or have an idea.
How does a good Jewish boy just happen to meet contract killers?
Prior to the conspiracy, Charlie is a traveling periodontist, happily travelling North-South on the local highways, schmoozing on the phone, putting in implants in people for dental practices that like to subcontract his services. The work is lucrative and allows him to buy fancy toys, invest in real estate, and please his parents. He was raised in a Jewish community, probably he was proudly introduced to his parent's large social circle, and has had all of the educational benefits and opportunities consistent with his family's wealth. He's a philanderer, and when he is not travelling to Vietnam or Thailand for sex tourism, he's dating intellectually-challenged single women in Miami who fawn over him. He's brilliantly Caucasian, wears scrubs in public, drives fancy cars (Mercedes, Ferrari, a limo, etc.), and fancies himself a dangerous person in his off hours when he can adopt his non-dental id. He looks Jewish and has speaking mannerisms supporting that assumption. From my experience in major US cities (but not Miami), a person like that does not just saunter in to the Hispanic 'hood and befriend people (cross the "tracks"). More likely, he gets jumped.
As Charlie is living his life, his family becomes stressed about an in-law and wants action. How does Charlie know whom to turn? As the story goes, Charlie doesn't know hit men, but being the uber-philanderer he meets Katie through a chance encounter at a dental office who does. They become intimate. On the face, Katie's not different than any other air-head Charlie has been dating. What are the chances that Charlie's next random love interest would happen to have ties to hit men at just the right time? Isn't the meeting of Charlie and Katie -who just happens to know hit men from the 'hood - too improbable to be occurring just as Charlie is trying to hatch a murder plan?
Maybe Charlie's not trying to hatch such a dastardly plan, but as he and Katie become intimate, she suggests it to him. Why? Because that's her way of taking care of "b...ches" and she knows how to "f.. people up." Also, because she's an opportunist, she knows how much it costs on the street and figures she can get paid.
It just seems so improbable (perhaps near impossible) that as Charlie is dealing with the vicissitudes of his life - including his private murder dream - he just happens to begin dating someone who has the means to bring his dream to life.
Alternatively, was Charlie directed to Katie by someone else - someone who knows Katie is just the person who could put together a plan (for the right $$)?
Oy vey.
This post deserves far more attention. Its really baffling when you scroll out and look at the bigger picture of this crime and the key players. I don't want to rehash your bits on Charlie because you've covered it far more eloquently than I could but I would just add that in addition to Charlie Adelson throwing away his $3M/year Ferrari-driving, ocean-front living bachelor lifestyle, we also have the legacies of Harvey and Donna Adelson to contend with. They were also making $2M/year (Harvey was down to working 2 or 3 days a week by then) and were living in one of the most exclusive pieces of real estate in the world - to say nothing of their own portfolio of real estate properties. Don't quote me, but I thought I read somewhere that they were likely worth somewhere in the $30M range?
What could drive this otherwise (mostly) law-abiding and extremely well-connected family empire to throw everything away, including their own liberty, on a brutal murder of a Harvard-law grad who had no vices and by all accounts was a loving father of their grandkids/nephews? The Adelsons are evil but you can't say they never worked hard. Really hard. Their entire lives. How do you throw everything you've worked for your entire life away?
After the separation in 2012, this family had virtually no direct interaction with Dan Markel, aside from reading divorce proceedings and then having Wendi tell them just how awful he was. That is the key for me. What is Wendi telling them? She's 6 hours away and stuck in this place with this horrible monster who is doing everything he can to "terrorize her" (by not letting her take his kids away from him). And now she's clinically depressed. I mean, if all you have is Wendi's side of the story - and there's really no limits to her hatred for Dan Markel - it really just starts to take on a life of its own. So she's the fuse. But you still need someone to light it.
Enter Donna Adelson. This is a woman who threatened to essentially ban her oldest son from the family because her and Harvey did not approve of his non-jewish girlfriend, an Indian-American doctor. Robert was still under he spell so he broke it off, married some nice jewish girl he never loved and then quickly recognized that this was entirely nuts - divorced that wife and went back to his soulmate. Now, we have since learned that Donna Adelson was willing to have her grandkids dress in
Hitler Youth uniforms and convert to catholicism just to coerce Dan Markel to allow Wendi to move to Miami. So obviously, Jewish credentials aren't really THAT important to Donna Adelson, are they? Its all about control. If Harvey spent his life building a financial empire, Donna spent hers building a family empire: doctor, dentist, lawyer. And Donna was the emperor while Dan Markel, some poor serf with some snotty degrees could interfere (in his own family) with her family that she built up? She's the gasoline. And Charlie, well....there were some emails from Wendi's friends saying that Donna needs immediate medical assistance for her anxiety. Even to friendly outsiders, Donna had lost her mind. And so Charlie is watching his mother go insane while poor Wendi is getting emotionally abused all because of Dan Markel. All legal options have been exhausted. Charlie is the zippo lighter.
In my previous 3,000 word essay on Wendi, I said she was the most vile and evil character. And I still believe that. At least in Donna and Charlie's cases, you can say "well, what they did was absolutely horrific and quite possibly psychotic" but on some twisted level most of us will never understand, they were helping Wendi. In Wendi's case, she has no such claim. She shared a life and all kinds of memories and a bed and children with this man - who was desperately heartbroken at her decision to leave him. She may not have actively planned or even had advance knowledge of his murder (although the two long phone calls with Charlie on the morning of the murder and the TV repair suggest: maybe?)....but to speak of him the way she does, still to this day? To refuse visitation to the grandparents. That stuff is as cold as Ive ever seen.
As for what drove them to decide to go through with it? They really just thought they'd get away with it. Everyone thinks they can outsmart law enforcement and they usually cant but they REALLY almost did. For someone as anxious and certifiably insane as she is, look how guarded Donna Adelson was on the very first wire convo. Her next move was to plan a meeting outside her building to discuss it. No phones, no bugs in the apartment, nothing. Never discuss "it" again. Multi-layered conspiracy, where the killers can't connect the people hiring them? Then when you catch the middleman, they would rather risk life in prison than testify against the Adelsons. What in the world is going on here.
