Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Charges Consolidated In Woman Linked To Dan Markel Murder Mystery

Charges of first-degree murder, conspiracy and solicitation of murder were brought together into one case against 33-year-old Katherine Magbanua on Tuesday in relation to the death of Florida State law professor Dan Markel, The Tallahassee Democrat reported.

Magbanua is accused of helping to orchestrate the alleged murder of Dan Markel, who was shot in his garage in July 2014. Magbanua pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Magbanua is one of three people charged in Markel’s death, which investigators say was a murder for hire paid for by Markel’s former in-laws.

According to the Tallahassee Democrat, the alleged hit man charged with killing Markel confessed to a fellow inmate that Markel’s ex-mother-in-law had ordered the murder to gain custody of their two young sons.

Sigfredo Garcia, the 35-year-old father of two children with Magbanua, is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy and solicitation of murder.

Magbanua enlisted Garcia, who brought on his childhood friend Luis Rivera to shoot Markel, Tallahassee police said.

Rivera pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to seven years in prison in addition to a 12-year federal sentence on other charges. His statements to investigators led to Magbanua’s arrest in October 2016.

Markel’s ex-wife Wendi Adelson has denied any involvement in the killing and no one in the family has been charged. “Danny didn’t treat me very well, and I’m so scared that maybe someone did this … because they thought this was good somehow,” She told police in 2017.

A July trial date has been set for Garcia. Magbanua’s trial is scheduled for October.

Contact Haley Cohen at [email protected]

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.