Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

WATCH: Dan Markel’s Parents Break Silence On Son’s Killing

The parents of Dan Markel, the Florida law professor who was allegedly murdered in a hit-for-hire, will be making their first public comments on NBC on Friday.

“You don’t repair from that, you really don’t repair from that,” Markel’s mother said in a preview for NBC’s “Dateline” program.

“The day was just the most unbearable day I can ever imagine,” his father added.

Markel was shot in the jaw at point-blank range in July 2014. Police eventually determined that two people had been hired as contract killers to shoot Markel. One hit man, Luis Rivera, has already pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, with another charged with first-degree murder and an alleged accomplice also charged.

The Tallahassee Democrat reported that Rivera confessed to a fellow inmate that the mother of Markel’s ex-wife Wendi Adelson had orchestrated the murder in order to help Adelson gain custody of her and Markel’s children.

The trial of the other hit man, Sigfredo Garcia, is set for July.

Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

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.