A Tallahassee, Florida jury has found a wealthy Jewish dentist guilty of hiring hitmen to kill his former brother-in-law, Dan Markel. It’s the fourth guilty verdict in the sensational case of Mr. Markel’s murder and means that Charlie Adelson could spend the rest of his life behind bars.

Adelson was arrested last year and charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy and solicitation in relation to the 2014 killing of Mr. Markel, a celebrated law professor with two Harvard degrees who studied the role of punishment in criminal justice. Mr. Markel had been entangled in a nasty child custody battle with Adelson’s sister, Wendi. Prosecutors said Adelson hired hit men from the Latin Kings to kill Mr. Markel because he was refusing to let his ex-wife move with their children from Tallahassee to Miami where her family lives. 

The two hitmen, Latin Kings boss Luis Rivera and his friend Sigfredo Garcia, have both already been sentenced to prison along with Garcia’s common law wife, Katie Magbanua. Prosecutors claimed Magbanua, Adelson’s ex-girlfriend, was the connection he used to orchestrate his brother-in-law’s murder since she knew Rivera and Garcia – “the type of people who were willing and capable of pointing a gun at a complete stranger and pulling the trigger.”

The defense, on the other hand, tried to paint a very different picture. Adelson’s lawyers argued that Magbanua, alone, was the mastermind behind the murder because she wanted to extort money from the Adelson family after learning they were so desperate to get Mr. Markel’s children to Miami they were going to offer Mr. Markel $1 million to move to South Florida. 

Closing arguments, which began Monday, saw Assistant State Attorney Georgia Cappleman urge the jury to see through the defendant’s alleged lies and distortions.

“I have no way of knowing if this stuff sounds ridiculous to you,” she said of the defendant’s claims. “But they only need to get one of you confused enough to derail this whole thing.”

The defense’s theory rested on the idea that Adelson was extorted for money by his ex-girlfriend Magbanua, in cahoots with Garcia and Rivera. But Ms. Cappleman pointed to the defendant’s claim that the killers let him go on a monthly “payment plan” to pay the extortion as “ridiculous.” Additionally, she said it made no sense that Adelson and Magbanua’s relationship would grow stronger during the alleged extortion – something Adelson, himself, claimed during his testimony.

Ms. Cappleman also took aim at the relationships between Adelson, his sister and their mother, Donna. Pointing to emails and text messages, Ms. Cappleman sought to convince the jury that even if Adelson didn’t care enough about “his sister’s marital problems to commit the murder,” he was deeply influenced by his mother. The mother, Ms. Cappleman claimed, did care enough, especially when considering a legal motion Mr. Markel filed before his death to limit his former mother in law’s visits with his two children.

Donna Adelson, her husband Harvey and Wendi, their daughter, have all been named by the state as co-conspirators. While it is unknown if prosecutors are going to charge the rest of the Adelson family with murder, the state made clear during both Charlie Adelson’s and Magbanua’s murder trials that they believe Donna Adelson was complicit in the murder plot.

Regarding Donna, Ms. Cappleman brought up a so-called “bump” operation in which prosecutors engaged in a ruse to try to trick the Adelsons into discussing the murder on wiretapped phones. During the “bump,”  a detective pretending to be a Latin King who had knowledge of the murder confronted Donna Adelson asking for money. Prosecutors hoped that she would make a concerned call to her son and reveal his involvement in the murder on a wiretapped line. She did not. 

Though the “bump” was largely unsuccessful, Ms. Cappleman says the fact that Adelson’s payments to the hitmen and Magbanua stopped after the operation shows that the defense’s extortion theory didn’t hold up.  

Furthermore, a covert recording of Adelson’s comments at a restaurant to Magbanua after the “bump” saying, “If they had any evidence, we’d already be at the airport,” was also brought up by Ms. Cappleman. “Does that sound like an innocent man?” she asked the jury. The recording also revealed Adelson saying that if Garcia couldn’t take care of the undercover agent, then he would find someone that could.

The defense, albeit unsuccessfully, tried to remind the jury that when there are two reasonable explanations, you must go with the one that presumes innocence. In closing, Adelman attorney Daniel Rashbaum presented nine “puzzle pieces” that he said didn’t make sense in the prosecutor’s argument, including things like Adelson’s motive and Magbanua’s lies. Magbanua had previously refused to flip on the Adlesons until she was convicted of the murder and sentenced to life in prison. It has not been made public if she was promised a reduction in sentence in exchange for being the star witness against Adelson.

“Sometimes the simple answer is the wrong answer,” Mr. Rashbaum said. “Sometimes things aren’t so simple.”

Apparently, the 12-person jury thought this case was simple enough.