Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Joel Waldman is the co host of the hit true crime podcast Surviving the Survivor and the author of a book of the same name, Surviving the Survivor. Joel's co host on the podcast is his eighty something year old mother, carm Waldman, a Holocaust survivor and psychotherapist for over forty years.
Now.
Carm couldn't be here tonight because she's a little under the weather, but we wish her a speedy recovery. Joel is also an Emmy Award winning broadcast journalist who worked most recently as a Washington, DC based correspondent for Fox News, covering national politics from Capitol Hill. He's also worked as an investigative reporter for Fox five in New York City and for TV News program in West Palm Beach, Miami, and Tucson. He lives in Miami Beach with his wife
and three children. Joel Waldman, Welcome to Coast to Coast AM.
How are you Richard doing so well?
I'm had to say I'm a Coast to Coast insider myself a huge fan since ninety seven, so this is supernatural to me, like and outer body experience.
So thank you so much. This is a thrill for me. And I've done a lot of media with a book, with the podcast, so I really appreciate it.
First of all, you're in Miami. How were things down in Florida for you?
So the storm passed us to the west and we were fine here, just you know, intermittent rain, but the West coast obviously got hit so hard. And I've got a good friend in Ashville, and if you haven't seen the flooding up there, it's worth googling. It's amazing what Mother Nature can do. So we're seeing her wrath today. And as you said off the top of the show, my thoughts are with the forty plus people who have passed away as a result of the storm.
Yeah, it's just terrible, terrible, all right. Before we dive into the true crime, I want to ask you about your mom karm, a Holocaust survivor. How has her extraordinary life experience shaped your approach to investigating and discussing true crime.
That's an amazing question and one I hadn't really pondered. But my mom also, in addition to being a Holocaust survivor was a licensed marriage therapist for forty plus years, so I really grew up in a household and my dad may he Rest in Peace, was a psychiatrist, So I grew up. You know, people think I'm crazy by default, but I really got a very strong understanding of human nature, the way people think, the issues and the problems that they go through, and I think that's really what drew
me to journalism. I've always been a people person, always been interested in stories, and I think that's the answer. It's more so what she did than where she came from. But her background is really amazing.
As I mentioned, the dynamic between you and your mom on the podcast is just so special. But what's it like exploring the darkest corners of human nature together, especially given the contrast between her survival story and these modern day crimes.
Yeah, so her story, just to get a feel for it, and I just wrote a book about it under the same titles of podcast, called Surbiding the Survivor, And for full disclosure, it's really kind of a laugh out loud book, even though you know, we talked about the Holocaust, so it's about fifteen percent Holocaust and eighty five percent life advice from her, And if anyone's got life advice, it is she. She really wanted to be here by the way tonight, but she's, as you said, under the weather.
But promised to come on the next time. But at the age of just four and a half, she was actually forced to leave her own family behind. I have a five year old boy, so every time I look at him and imagined that my mother was six months younger when she was taken from her mother and her father was taken by the Nazis, it just blows my mind.
But very very long story short. She was saved by two non Jews known as righteous Gentiles, one of whom was a Catholic nun who hid my mother in a Catholic school for boys in the former Yugoslavia now Serbia, and my mom I grew up, we had a picture of this nun in my living room, and obviously I'm a part of a Jewish family, and I just figured every Jewish family, he's got a picture of a nun.
It was only later in life, once I.
Started working on this book, that I found out my mom was sending the nun money just until very recently she passed in her late nineties. The day she went into hiding her grandfather, my grandfather, her father was snatched by the Nazis, and soon after that she found out he was gassed in the Auschwitz gash. And then she rennected to her mom in Budapest and there was a big seas there. Uh, luckily she made it through. I mean, just crazy stories about having to eat horses who were
collateral damage from all the bombing. That's the only food that they could get. She had to say all her you know, Catholic prayers that she knew by heart, so no one would be tipped off to the fact that, you know, she was in facteous. And then once they were liberated, it was a two week walk home. Two weeks of walking from Budapest back to Serbia in March when it is absolutely freezing.
So my story.
Yeah, she also, you know, she lost the son, and the book also details my father who's in a nursing home passing away at the time I wrote this book. And for her, she admits that's the most difficult thing she's ever experienced. But nevertheless, she is the most optimistic person you will ever meet. Hilarious funny believes in Hue to get through things.
And she's my role model. She's who I look up to, and.
Her insights as a psychotherapist must bring a fascinating layer to your conversations. I mean, how does her perspective on human behavior influence the way you dissect motives and the psychology of the criminals you cover.
Yeah, So the podcast, I kind of found a niche within a niche, and we have the best guest and true crime and I always say it's not a tagline, it is the reality. Shout out to my booking producer Steve Cohen and my wife Eleanna, who helped produce the show. But we bring in absolutely amazing guests. I mean the top criminal profilers, the top criminal defense attorneys, top FBI agents,
children of serial killers, you name it. But well, my mom is able to do at eighty five is just sort of use this vast life experience that she has and her knowledge of therapy and the psychology of the mind to really break it down and always give a different perspective. You've met her, you've talked to her. She as sharp as attack for eighty five and she always comes up with an angle or a comment that no one else has.
So's why we keep on the show. And I love her on top of that.
All right, So let's dive into some true crime. In twenty fourteen, Florida law professor Dan Markle was executed in his driveway, a victim. It appears of a bitter custody battle, and allegedly this was orchestrated by his ex wife's family. And this chilling murder reveals a web of betrayal and revenge. With hitmen convicted, the mastermind remains elusive. It's a haunting mystery.
But let's talk about Dan Markle, the victim, this prominent law professor at Florida State University shot and killed again in twenty fourteen. Just kind of walk us through what happened, and then also we'll get into some of the you know, the main let's say, players in this whole case, Wendy Adelson and Donna Addelson and Charlie Addelson and so forth.
Sure, so, Den Martl, he was, as you just said, murdered back in twenty fourteen.
He was born in.
Montreal, grew up in Toronto. Both stories to night actually have a Toronto connection, which is, I know where you're coming from, but I don't think totally intentional. Dan by all accounts, was an absolute genius. He went to Harvard undergrad. He went to Harvard Law School, top of his class, was offered and took a position initially as a very high paid attorney. Imagine where you're getting paid at.
A top firm coming out of Harvard.
And he had no interest. Really, he wanted to teach. That was his life passion. So he eventually gets a professorship at.
Florida State University up in Tallahassee.
Along the way, he meets a woman named Wendy Adelson and they connect. She's from where I am down in South Florida, and you know, they hit it off. They're in kind of their honeymoon stage. They get married in two thousand and six, and like many marriages, after a certain period of time, things started to go south. What's interesting, and by the way, this story is why to do it? While the other one's who done it? But one of
the issues that came up was custody. They had two young children, Benjamin and Lincoln, and things were going south, and now Wendy did not want to stay in Tallahassee. Wendy happens to have a very overbearing domineering mother named Donna Adolson Donosue Adelson. She also has a brother named Charlie Adelson. So she starts getting in their ear about being, you know, miserable that she's stuck in what she called
hick Tallahassee. And the grandmother said the same thing. And by the way, I've been to Tallahassee multiple times for this story now and it's one of the nicest cities you will find in Florida. It's also the most highly educated city in Florida because it's the capital and FSU of course is there. So it's a long, complicated story, but long story short, and we can go back and track over some of the things we're discussing right now.
Dan Marcel drops his two kids off. He's separated. At this point, they're going through legal proceedings, you know, regarding a divorce and it's really contentious. And Dan on July eighteen, twenty fourteen, goes and drops his two kids off at daycare.
He goes to the.
Gym, gets back into his driveway, and he is shot in the head two times. Unbelievably, he doesn't die unseen. He's taken to the hospital. Rabbi praise for him. Family is called and he succumbs to his injuries the next day, and then the police investigation is just on and no one knows what happened, why it happened. An elderly next door neighbor happens to see or hears something, he goes out there. He's the one that finds Dan and then this major investigation ensues.
And it's been just over ten years since Dan wash that. As you say, he died the next day. Why is it taken so long to get justice in this case?
Yeah, that's a question that everybody asked.
And you know true crime, and I want to say this, it's intriguing and I've always been fascinated by it. But one of the problems is when you are covering true crime, there is a tendency to forget the victims. So that's something we are really conscious of at and the survivor. We really try to focus on the victims. As a result, if there's any silver lining in this, I've become very close with Ruth Markel and Phil Markel and Shelley Markell,
who are the parents and sister of Dan Markel. But the answer to why it took so long police had very little to go on, but they did a fantastic job in Tallahassee. They ended up getting a slight description of the car from this neighbor who thought they saw a silver car. They then used video cameras on buses.
They used a sun Pass, which is the coal pass here in Florida, and eventually traced it back to a rental car and two guys from South South Florida, right where I live, literally twenty blocks from where I'm talking to you from. And turns out one is a Latin King gang member, the other is basically just a career criminal and a thug. And the thug his name is Secredo Garcia. He has two children with Katie Magbanawa. Katie
Magbanua was dating Charlie Adelson, so she's the connection. Cops figured out the conveni grand jury.
And the dominoes start to fall.
So Katie Magbanua the intermediary. She hires the hitman, Sigfredo Garcia and Garcia's friend Louis Rivera, and correct Rivera did Garcia and Rivera cop a plea.
Rivera caught the Plea.
He was already in prison on racketeering charges, so he caught the plea and you know has the famous quote he couldn't He said he didn't even know who had hired him. But to paraphrase, he said, uh, the lady wanted her kids back, inferring that when they Adelson was behind it. So one of the you know, the much bigger questions right now is who really orchestrated this. The consensus is that it was Donna Adelson, this overbearing Jewish mother.
And by the way, I might have a little bit of an overbearing Jewish mother, even though she's not here to defend herself. And that's one of the things that kind of drew us to this story initially, you know, is just kind of the odd similarities, if you will. But she really infantilized her children, and Charlie was an unbelievable mama's boy. So what people think happened, and what I think happened, is that Wendy was really unhappy. She and Dan started having a major rift in the relationship.
She starts complaining to her mother, the mother, Donnosiue Adelson, then starts complaining to Charlie. This is a highly enmeshed family. Charlie's a very wealthy periodontist, as is his father. He drives around Charlie does enough Ferrari with a license plate that says Maestro.
He's a total ladies man.
He's out, you know, parting, and and people think that Donna basically convinced Charlie to help put this hit together. And the question remains, what heart of this did Wendy have. So Charlie actually was on trial a year ago November, he was convicted in the murder for Higher Plot. He is now sentenced to life in prison.
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