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On the morning of July 18th 2014, in a wealthy neighborhood in Florida, a married couple in their 70s were sitting on their couch trying to figure out how to use their brand new iPad.
As they did this suddenly, coming from the property next door, they heard a loud popping sound almost like a firework.
The man got up off the couch and walked over to the window to see what was going on, and he saw a car he didn't recognize peeling out of his neighbor's driveway and speeding off down the street.
Not sure what to make of this car or the loud sound.
The man just instinctively walked outside and began walking over to his neighbor's house just to make sure they were okay.
And when he got to his neighbor's driveway he saw their garage door was open and their car was parked inside, but it was still running.
At first this made the man think that everything must be fine, that clearly his neighbor was in their car, sitting in their garage, and maybe that loud noise they heard was just the sound of that other car backfiring.
But when the man walked forward a few steps and got a look inside of his neighbor's running car, he knew immediately that everything was not fine.
Moments later, the man stumbled back inside his own house, where he frantically grabbed for his phone to call 911.
But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast, because that's all we do, and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday.
So if that's of interest to you, the next time the Amazon Music Follow button needs to use a public restroom, make sure you go in ahead of them and soak all of the toilet paper rolls.
Okay, let's get into today's story.
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At 830 am on Friday, July 18th 2014, 41-year-old law school professor Dan Markle drove his two young sons to a preschool in an upscale neighborhood in Tallahassee, Florida.
It was already a hot summer day and it was only going to get hotter, with temperatures set to go over 90 degrees Fahrenheit by the afternoon.
So Dan decided to let the boys in on a surprise he'd been planning.
He glanced back at his sons sitting in their car seats and said when he picked them up after school they could go right to the pool and spend the rest of the day swimming.
The boys got so excited, it sounded like Dan had just told them they were going to Disney World.
Dan laughed and then drove a little further down the road, turned into the preschool parking lot and parked his black Honda Accord.
Then he stepped outside, helped his boys out of the car and walked them both up to the door of the school where one of their teachers was waiting.
Dan crouched down, gave each of the boys a hug, and told them he loved them and to have a great day.
Once the boys were inside, Dan turned around and headed back to the parking lot and got into his car.
Dan was average height with short brown hair and a beard, and he wore glasses.
And today he was dressed for the gym in a red t-shirt and black shorts.
But before he went for his workout that morning, he knew there was a phone call he needed to make.
So he grabbed his cell phone from the pocket of his shorts, pulled up his contact list on the screen and stared at the name Wendy.
Dan let out a long sigh and his mind started to wander.
Wendy Adelson was Dan's ex-wife.
They had been divorced for a year and had been separated for almost two years, but there were still days when Dan couldn't believe the two of them were not together anymore.
Dan and Wendy had met on a dating website 10 years earlier.
At the time, Dan had been a law school professor at a university in Washington DC and Wendy was a law student at the University of Miami in South Florida.
And soon after they'd exchanged a few messages on the dating site, Wendy had decided she wanted to meet Dan face-to-face, so she hopped on a plane and flew to DC.
And the two of them hit it off in person just as much as they had online.
Wendy was totally taken by Dan's incredible intelligence and she could tell he was driven and that he had a bright career ahead of him.
And right after Dan had met Wendy, he told a friend he felt like he'd won the lottery.
Wendy was about seven years younger than Dan and she was beautiful, with long, curly brown hair and blue eyes.
She had grown up wealthy, but never really talked about money.
Instead, she just talked about how important her parents and her older brother Charlie were to her.
And Dan loved that, because he thought family was the only thing more important than work or money.
And Dan also loved that, even though Wendy was studying to become a lawyer just like he was, she was a lot more fun and more of a free spirit than most of his colleagues in the legal profession were.
Wendy had dreams of writing a novel.
She had been a contestant on the TV game show The Weakest Link and she'd even considered joining the circus at one point.
And Dan felt like Wendy was a breath of fresh air in his relatively routine life.
And by the time Wendy had flown back home to Florida a few days later, both of them were already convinced they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together.
And so, not long after that first meeting, Dan took a teaching position at Florida State University in Tallahassee, and Wendy joined him there when she finished law school.
And then, just eight months after they had first met, Dan and Wendy were engaged.
Even now, sitting in his car in the preschool parking lot and staring at Wendy's name on his phone, Dan could still remember how stunning she had looked when she walked down the aisle in her white dress at their wedding, almost like she was glowing.
And for a time back then, Dan couldn't believe how lucky he was to have a wife like Wendy and how great his life had turned out.
And things had only gotten better when Wendy gave birth to their two sons a little over a year apart.
And at least for a while, Wendy had seemed really happy too.
She'd gotten a teaching job at Florida State and she, Dan and their boys would often drive almost seven hours south to spend time with Wendy's parents and her brother Charlie, so Wendy still felt connected to her own family.
But back in the car Dan felt like his and Wendy's wedding, their first meeting in DC and his relationship with Wendy's family were all now ancient history.
He was never quite sure why their marriage had actually fallen apart.
But he was working hard now not to dwell on the past and to try to be happy in the present.
Dan took a deep breath and finally called Wendy.
He got her voicemail so he left her a message reminding her he was leaving town soon for an academic conference.
So they would need to work out their custody schedule with their boys.
Dan and Wendy had joint custody of their kids, but they made accommodations for each other when one of them had to travel for work.
Dan hung up and tossed his phone onto the passenger seat.
Then he pulled his car out of the parking lot and drove off towards the gym, which was only a few minutes away.
And as he looked out his windshield at the trees outside and the sun shining, he reminded himself that he had a fun day planned for him and his sons and that, even if his life was not perfect anymore, it was still pretty great.
Dan worked out at the gym for over an hour that morning and then he walked outside at about 10 45 am.
He got into his car and drove off, and a few minutes later he arrived in his neighborhood that was lined with large two-story homes with well-manicured lawns out front.
Then, just before Dan pulled onto his street, he remembered he had to make another phone call.
His oldest son was about to start taking piano lessons, and Dan had told Wendy that he would set everything up.
So he grabbed his phone and he called the piano teacher.
And the two men were still talking when Dan actually pulled into his driveway.
Dan reached up and pushed the garage door opener that was clipped to his sun visor, waited for the door to open and then pulled his car into the garage.
Dan left the car running and the garage door open while he sat in his car and kept talking to the piano teacher.
But then suddenly, Dan saw something move in his rearview mirror.
He turned to look back and asked the piano teacher to hold on for a second.
And then Dan saw someone walking towards his car.
Dan turned and looked out the driver's side window to get a better look at this person.
But before Dan could say anything, he heard a sound like a firecracker going off.
Then Dan's ears started ringing, his vision blurred, and he fell forward against the steering wheel.
At 1050 am, about the time Dan had pulled his car into the garage, a married couple in their 70s were sitting on their living room couch in the house next door to Dan's.
The couple had just gotten a new iPad and they were spending a relaxing morning figuring out all of the features it had to offer.
Then they heard the loud popping sound coming from the house next door.
The man got off the couch and rushed over to the large bay window in the living room.
He looked outside and saw a light-colored car peeling out of Dan's driveway.
He looked at his wife and he said he wanted to see what was going on and that he was worried someone might have broken into Dan's house and just driven off.
His wife told him to please be careful and the man said he would be and then he stepped outside.
The sun was bright and he shielded his eyes to block the glare as he walked across his lawn towards Dan's driveway.
And as he got closer, he heard the sound of a car running.
And then when he looked into the garage, he saw Dan's black Honda Accord parked there.
So, this man figured he must have just misunderstood what had just happened.
If Dan was parked in the garage, someone would not have been robbing his house and the light-colored car might have just backfired and made the sound he had just heard.
So the neighbor turned around, walked back to his house and into his living room, but instead of rejoining his wife on the couch he went back to the window and stared out at Dan's driveway.
He just wanted to wait and see Dan pull out of the garage or close the garage door, and that way he would be sure everything really was okay.
But after a few minutes, the garage door was still open and Dan's car was still inside.
The man leaned up against his window, squinted and tried to see if there was any movement next door inside the house, but nothing was happening and he started to get an uneasy feeling in his stomach.
So he told his wife he was going to go back outside again to actually go check on Dan.
This time the neighbor moved quickly across his yard to Dan's driveway and he could hear the car still running.
He called out to Dan as he turned the corner, but nobody replied.
Then he stepped into the garage and immediately he stopped in his tracks.
He felt broken glass crunch under his feet and he knew something had to be wrong.
The man rushed to Dan's driver's side window and he gasped.
Almost all of the glass in the window had shattered, and in the car he saw Dan's body slumped over the wheel.
The neighbor shouted Dan's name several times, but Dan didn't respond.
So the man leaned in closer to the shattered window and he saw blood and Dan's hair and on his face.
But he could see that Dan was still breathing.
So the man turned around and ran back to his house as fast as he could.
He threw the front door open, grabbed his phone in the living room, and he dialed 911.
When the operator picked up, the man told him that they needed urgent help at the house next door.
He said his neighbor was bleeding from his head, but he was still breathing.
But for some reason the operator asked the neighbor a bunch of questions about what specifically he had seen that had prompted him to call 911.
The neighbor didn't understand what was happening.
He just kept saying that his neighbor was slumped over in his car.
There was blood in his hair and on his face and they needed to help him right now.
Finally, the operator said, yes, they would send someone over.
At that point, the neighbor hung up, ran back outside and rushed over to Dan's garage again.
He leaned into the shattered window and tried to talk to Dan.
Dan didn't respond, but the neighbor could see Dan was still alive and breathing.
The neighbor's hands were shaking and he kept looking out at the street.
He didn't understand why it was taking so long for an ambulance to arrive.
Then finally, over 15 minutes after he'd called 911, the neighbor heard a siren approaching.
But when he walked out of the garage and looked down the street, he saw a police car, not an ambulance.
The police car parked in front of the house and as soon as the officer stepped out, the neighbor ran towards him and waved him to come into the garage.
And when the police officer saw Dan slumped over in the car struggling to breathe, he didn't understand why he had been the one dispatched to the scene instead of an ambulance.
So he called the station and said they needed an ambulance immediately.
And then after that, the officer reached into Dan's car and shut off the engine.
Then finally, a few minutes later, an ambulance did arrive and Dan was rushed off to the hospital.
But as Dan's neighbor listened to the ambulance siren fade into the distance, he worried that the few minutes he'd waited before calling 911, and then all the confusion that had occurred with the emergency operator, had cost Dan so much time and quite possibly his life.
At around noon that day, less than an hour after the ambulance arrived at Dan's house, Detective Craig Issam of the Tallahassee Police drove through a wealthy neighborhood and he saw kids who were off from school for the summer laughing and playing in their front yards.
But as Issam turned onto Dan Street, The flashing lights from squad cars and the yellow crime scene tape around Dan's house painted a very different picture.
He parked his car in the line of cop cars on the street, looked out the window and saw several officers moving in and out of Dan's open garage.
Issam knew some people thought bad things never happened in upscale neighborhoods like this one, but he'd been a cop for 25 years and so he knew bad things could happen anywhere.
Issam stepped out of the car and walked up Dan's driveway.
He was a stocky man with short cropped gray hair and today he wore a black golf shirt tucked into khaki pants.
Detective Issam took off his sunglasses and stepped into the garage, where the first officers who'd arrived at the scene were looking at Dan's parked car.
There was glass all over the ground and Issam saw.
The driver's side window was almost completely shattered.
And when he looked in the car, he saw a broken pair of eyeglasses on the floorboard.
All Issam knew about the scene was that Dan Markle, a well-respected law school professor, had been found slumped over in this car with bullet wounds in his head, and that he had been taken to the hospital.
Issam talked briefly with the other officers on the scene and he learned that when they had checked the house, there was no signs of struggle or forced entry.
He also learned that the next-door neighbor was the one who had found Dan and called 911.
So while the officers continued to photograph the scene inside of the garage and dust Dan's car for fingerprints, Issam walked next door and found Dan's neighbor still standing outside.
Issam smiled and told the man he'd just like to ask him some questions, and the man said he wanted to help in any way he could.
Then the man relayed his version of events from the time he'd heard the popping sound next door and gone to look out the window.
And as Issam listened, one thing jumped out at him the car the man had seen peeling out of the driveway.
But this neighbor had not gotten a license plate number and he could only say it looked like a pretty common car.
That was a light color.
With that description, Issam knew finding the specific car might end up being impossible, but at least it was something to go on.
Issam also learned from the neighbor that Dan had two young sons and an ex-wife named Wendy Adelson.
Issam had no idea whether Wendy was connected to the car that had driven off from Dan's house, but in cases like this, the ex-spouse was almost always the first person to talk to.
So Issam thanked the man for his help and then walked back to Dan's garage.
By this point, police had gotten word from the hospital that Dan was not going to survive.
And they would later learn that Dan had never regained consciousness at the hospital and he had died at around 1 pm.
Issam also found out that for some reason, the 911 operator had not made the call from Dan's neighbor a high priority response.
Issam didn't know if a faster emergency response would have saved Dan's life, but when he heard the news that Dan wasn't going to make it, his first thoughts were of Dan's sons.
Dwelling on the 911 call wouldn't change the fact that two young boys would now have to grow up without their father, and that hit Issam very hard.
And that news also made it very important for him to talk to Dan's ex-wife as soon as possible.
Regardless of her potential involvement in what happened to Dan, she would still have to tell her sons that their father was now dead.
So Issam walked back to his car, left the scene of the crime, and started looking for Wendy.
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At around 230 PM, about three and a half hours after the 911 call, Detective Issam pulled into the parking lot of a high-end shopping center.
With the help of cell phone and GPS data, police had tracked Wendy down to a popular restaurant that was there.
Issam got out of his car, walked into the restaurant, and scanned the tables.
He spotted Wendy sitting with two other women.
She was 35 years old and she wore a dark blue t-shirt with a print on it and blue shorts.
And she had her hair pulled up in a bun with her sunglasses perched on top.
Issam stood there and watched Wendy for a few moments.
She was talking with her friends and laughing.
And so, on the surface, she did not appear to have any idea about what had just happened to her ex-husband.
But Issam knew that didn't necessarily mean she was totally innocent.
Some people were just really good at hiding things.
So Issam made his way over to their table and right away the three women stopped what they were doing and looked up at him.
He smiled and said he was sorry to interrupt their lunch but that he needed to speak to Wendy Adelson.
Wendy immediately put her hand up and had a very confused look on her face.
Then Issam showed her his badge and told her he needed to talk to her at the station about an incident that had occurred that morning, and the look of confusion on Wendy's face turned to fear and she wanted to know if her children were all right.
Issam assured her her children were fine, and then he asked her to come to the station again.
Wendy looked at her friends nervously, and then she grabbed her purse and followed Detective Issam out of the restaurant.
Once they were outside, Wendy climbed into Issam's car and the two of them rode the 10 minutes to the police station in almost complete silence.
When they arrived at the police station, another officer led Wendy into a small interrogation room, where she took a seat at a wooden table.
Even after being outside in the Florida sun, the light in the room seemed bright and glaring to Wendy.
A few minutes later, Issam walked in carrying a small notebook and a pen.
He closed the door behind him and took a seat across from Wendy at the table.
Right away, Wendy wanted to know what was going on and why she'd been brought here.
So Issam told her that earlier that morning her ex-husband Dan, had been shot and killed in his car while he was parked in the garage.
Wendy immediately burst into tears and buried her face in her hands and kept saying, oh my God, oh my God.
Then at some point Wendy looked up at Issam and something in her eyes changed, like the lawyer in her had suddenly kicked in.
She told the detective she understood why she was here.
She was a suspect, but she said she had nothing to do with whatever happened to Dan.
Issam told her he was just trying to get a better understanding of what might have happened, and Wendy nodded and then took a deep breath.
Then Issam asked her where she had been that day before she went to the restaurant where he'd found her with her friends.
She said she'd been at home in the morning, had gone to the liquor store to buy a gift for a housewarming party, and then she went right to the restaurant.
Issam scribbled notes in his notebook, looked up at Wendy again and asked her if there was anyone she could think of who would have wanted to hurt Dan.
But Wendy shook her head.
She said Dan could be a tough professor and difficult to get along with at work because he was a perfectionist, but she couldn't imagine any of his students or colleagues doing something like this.
So Issam asked Wendy about their divorce and she told him it had gotten pretty ugly at first and that Dan had not been the easiest person to be married to.
But then she told him that she and Dan had been really working hard to get along better for the sake of their sons.
Then suddenly a look of panic came across Wendy's face.
She remembered Dan was supposed to pick up the kids at school and now they'd be left there alone.
And when she mentioned her sons, she started crying again.
Issam tried to comfort her and told her they would make sure the kids were okay, and he asked her if there were friends the police could call to make sure someone was at the school when the boys got out.
Wendy took another deep breath, then grabbed her phone out of her pocket and scrolled through her contacts to get Issam a list of names and phone numbers.
Issam said making sure the boys were taken care of was his top priority.
So he got up from the table, crossed the room and stepped out into the hall.
And once he was out there he asked an officer to call the list of Wendy's friends she had just given him to see if one of them could pick the boys up.
And then Issam just waited and left Wendy alone in the interrogation room.
During his time as a lead investigator, Issam had conducted his fair share of interrogations, and there were plenty of times he could pretty much immediately get a read on someone he was interrogating.
Other times though, people were just too hard to understand, and right now, he wasn't quite sure about Wendy.
He believed she was grieving and he believed her story about where she had been that morning, but he felt like she just wasn't telling him everything.
He thought that could just be the lawyer in her, or maybe she was in shock, or maybe she really was hiding something.
About 40 minutes went by and Issam got word that officers had contacted one of Wendy's friends who said she'd picked the boys up at preschool.
Issam thanked the officer and then headed back into the interrogation room, determined to get as much information from Wendy as possible.
So again, he took a seat across from Wendy and then told her which friend was going to get the boys, at which point Wendy breathed a huge sigh of relief and thanked him.
Then Issam looked her in the eye and asked her if there was someone in hers or Dan's life that maybe she hadn't thought about, who could possibly want to harm Dan.
At first Wendy kind of laughed and joked that during the divorce some of her family probably wanted to punch Dan on more than one occasion, but that was just because they loved her.
But then Wendy stopped laughing and she got a serious look on her face.
She covered her mouth with her hand and her eyes went wide.
Then she looked across the table at Issam, lowered her hand, and said something had just hit her.
There was somebody she hadn't thought about who hated Dan.
Her most recent ex-boyfriend, Jeff LaCasse.
Issam wrote Jeff's name down in his notebook.
Then he asked why Wendy thought Jeff might have a problem with Dan.
And she said that she and Jeff had only been dating for a few months when Jeff started getting really jealous of any other man that she talked to.
And she said Jeff couldn't stand Dan for that reason and that Jeff had a bit of a temper.
Then, Issam asked what kind of car Jeff drove, and Wendy said a silver Nissan Sentra.
Issam jotted that down in his notebook.
A silver Nissan Sentra could fit the description of the car that Dan's neighbor had seen speeding away from the house.
Issam thanked Wendy for all her help, and after five hours, her interview was finally over.
Issam was a long way from ruling Wendy out as a suspect, but for right now he really wanted to go talk to her ex-boyfriend Jeff.
After Detective Issam met with Wendy, police contacted her ex-boyfriend Jeff, who was also a professor at Florida State.
Jeff agreed to meet with police and they arranged for him to come to the station on the afternoon of Monday, July 21st, which would be three days after Dan's murder.
But on the morning of July 20th, so a day before Issam and his team would meet with Jeff, they walked into a local synagogue and stood at the back for Dan's memorial service.
At the service, Issam was struck by the number of Dan's former students who spoke about how much Dan had helped them in school and how his willingness to push them to always do better had helped them achieve more than they thought possible.
But it was the end of the memorial service that would stick in Issam's mind for years to come.
Dan's mom stood at the front of the synagogue and spoke about how much she loved her son and how much he had meant to so many people, not only at Florida State but to the Jewish community throughout Tallahassee.
And then, through tears, she invited Wendy and the boys to come join her.
Wendy, along with her boys, made her way to the front of the synagogue and listened to her former mother-in-law talk about how much Dan's children had meant to him.
And while this happened, Detective Issam listened to.
People seated throughout the synagogue start to cry.
Then he saw Wendy's mom stand up cross in front of Wendy's dad and brother Charlie, and make her way to the very front as well.
And there she promised Dan's mom, as one grandmother to another, that Dan's family would always have a place in Dan's son's lives.
Issam left the memorial service and he was taken by how many people that single act of violence in Dan's garage had affected.
And as he drove away, he was determined to find out who had pulled the trigger.
And he hoped Wendy's ex-boyfriend would help him get closer to the truth.
The next day, on the afternoon of July 21st, Jeff LaCasse sat behind a wooden table in an interrogation room just like the one Wendy had been in.
Jeff was 42 years old and he was thin with brown hair and a beard.
He wore a t-shirt and jeans and he wore glasses.
When Jeff had first arrived at the station, Detective Issam had been surprised by how much he looked just like Dan.
Issam stayed outside of the room and watched on a camera feed as another investigator stepped into the interrogation room first and took a seat at the table across from Jeff.
Even before the investigator started talking, Jeff started fidgeting in his chair and tapping his fingers on the table, like he couldn't sit still.
Then, the investigator asked Jeff if there was anything he could tell them about Dan and Wendy.
Jeff smiled and said he could tell them a lot.
Looking at the screen, Issam got the sense that he wasn't really watching an interview.
He was watching a guy get everything off his chest he'd ever wanted to say about his ex-girlfriend.
Without prompting, Jeff gave a very long monologue about his and Wendy's relationship and how he still loved her even though he knew she didn't love him.
He barely stopped to take a breath and he used his hands to accentuate certain points in the story.
Jeff admitted that he did not like Dan because, as Wendy's ex-husband, Dan was always going to be in their lives and he complained that at Florida State Dan was one of those professors who thought he was smarter than everyone else and that totally rubbed Jeff the wrong way.
But despite all that, Jeff said he would never do anything to Dan.
The idea of shooting someone was completely foreign to him and he said he had been in Tennessee on the day of the murder and he could give police the names of a bunch of people who would vouch for him.
But even after Jeff had offered a potential alibi, he kept talking.
And as Issam continued to watch from outside the room, he couldn't believe how much Jeff was willing to say without even being asked.
And at times Issam couldn't tell if he was watching a man put on an act or if he was watching someone who just really had nothing to hide.
But then, during a rant about how sometimes he felt like Wendy wasn't being completely honest with him, Jeff said something that stunned Issam and the investigator who was actually in the room.
The investigator put up his hands and asked Jeff to stop talking for a second and then asked Jeff to repeat what he had just said.
Jeff laughed a little, caught his breath, and repeated himself.
And when Issam heard what Jeff had to say again, he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
And what Jeff had said would make Issam look at the case in a completely different way than he had in the first few days of the investigation.
And Issam's new approach to the case would eventually help police find that mysterious car that had peeled out of Dan's driveway and that would lead them to who had killed Dan.
Some elements of Dan Markle's murder are still under investigation and pending trial.
But based on interviews, evidence at the crime scene and surveillance camera footage.
This is a reconstruction of the police's leading theory about what happened to Dan on July 18th 2014.
A little before 830am on July 18th.
The killers sat in a light green Toyota Prius vehicle on the street a few houses down from Dan's house.
They were calm, and each one knew their role.
The driver would make sure they never lost sight of Dan, and the shooter, who was sitting in the passenger seat with a Smith & Wesson revolver in their hand, would pull the trigger when the time came.
Then the killers watched as Dan's garage door opened and they watched him pull out onto the street with his two sons in the backseat of the car.
The driver waited a few seconds and then followed Dan.
The driver wound his way through the neighborhood, keeping Dan in their sights without getting too close to his car, like a hunter stalking their prey.
And when Dan pulled into a preschool parking lot, the driver found a spot on the street to park and wait.
Finally, after Dan had walked the kids up to the school, gone back to his car and made a phone call, the killers watched him drive back onto the road and they followed him.
They still didn't feel like they were in a hurry, and they never panicked.
They knew what their goal was, and they would wait until the perfect moment arrived.
So when Dan drove to the gym and went inside to work out, the driver just found a parking spot outside, a few spaces away from Dan's car, and the killers waited again.
While Dan was in the gym, the killers sitting in the car just talked and joked as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening.
And then, after they'd been sitting there for over half an hour, the driver backed out of the parking spot, drove around the lot and found a new spot.
The driver didn't want anyone who had seen the car while walking into the gym to see the car still there when they walked out.
Then, after over an hour had passed, since Dan had gone into the gym, the driver spotted Dan again walking out of the gym and back to his car.
And at this point, the killers felt like they were getting close.
Their sense of anticipation was starting to grow.
The killers followed as Dan drove out of the gym parking lot and back into his neighborhood.
And as they approached Dan's street, the killers saw Dan make another phone call.
Then, at about 1050am, almost two and a half hours after the killers had first started tailing him, Dan had arrived home and pulled his car into the garage.
At this point, the killers pulled into the driveway and parked the Prius.
Then the shooter opened the passenger door, stepped outside, and crossed in front of the Prius.
They saw Dan glancing back at them from his own car, so they rushed into the garage before Dan could have a chance to close the door.
Then the shooter walked within two feet of the driver's side window and saw Dan turning towards them, still holding his phone.
So the killer took a breath, raised the gun, and fired.
Glass from the window shattered and the killer threw their arm up to protect their face.
The .38 caliber bullet had struck Dan in the cheek and lodged in his ear canal.
Dan's ears were ringing and blood ran down his face, but he could still move.
So Dan raised his left arm in a desperate attempt to protect himself.
But the shooter didn't waste any time.
They fired again, and this time the bullet broke Dan's glasses and lodged deep in his skull.
At this point, Dan slumped forward.
The shooter ran out of the garage back to the Prius, threw the passenger door open, jumped into the car and shouted for the driver to go go, go.
The driver gunned the engine, peeled out of the driveway, and sped off down the street.
Minutes later, the killers drove out of the neighborhood and onto a highway heading south towards Miami.
And when they were far enough from the crime scene, the driver made a phone call to a woman in South Florida and told her everything had gone according to plan.
And then that woman hung up her phone and told her boyfriend, Charlie Adelson, that the job was done.
It would take Detective Issam, the Tallahassee police and members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation years to put all the puzzle pieces together.
But they would come to believe that Wendy Adelson's brother Charlie, had paid two hitmen roughly 100000 to murder his sister's ex-husband.
It would turn out that Wendy had no desire to share custody of the boys with Dan, and that she had even filed a motion with the court that would allow her to move with the boys seven hours away to South Florida so she could be closer to her own family.
But Dan had fought the motion and the judge had ruled in his favor, and so Wendy was stuck in Tallahassee.
As of now, police have never officially tied Wendy to Dan's murder, but her ex-boyfriend Jeff, was key in turning their suspicions towards Wendy's brother, Charlie.
During his long-winded speech in the interrogation room, Jeff had said he didn't think Wendy would kill Dan, but he was almost sure Charlie would be up for it.
That is what had stunned the investigator in the room with Jeff, as well as Issam, who was watching the interrogation via the camera outside.
And it would turn out that when Jeff had gone to South Florida on a trip with Wendy to meet her family, Charlie had spent most of the time talking about how much he hated Dan to the point that Jeff thought it was kind of bizarre and obsessive and how Charlie also thought that Wendy should be allowed to live anywhere she wanted with her sons.
And what had seemed even more bizarre was that Charlie had once made a joke to Wendy that he could just hire a hitman to kill Dan if he wanted to, And Charlie had implied he had enough money to basically do whatever he wanted and get away with it.
And so Detective Issam started to think Dan's death might have been a murder for hire, and that Charlie had possibly arranged the murder from South Florida.
So, with help from state law enforcement agencies, Issam had expanded the police search of surveillance footage to include cars that could possibly match the description Dan's neighbor had given and that had been driven up from South Florida into Tallahassee on the day of the murder, and surveillance footage from bus cameras, toll roads and businesses led police to the light green Prius, which they were able to track from Miami all the way to the parking lot of Dan's gym as the Prius drove off and followed Dan home.
The Prius turned out to be a rental car and police traced it back to two men in Miami with criminal records, and one of those men would confess to the murder and make it known that he and his partner had a close connection to a woman who happened to be dating Wendy's brother Charlie.
The driver of the Prius was sentenced to 12 and a half years in prison.
The man who pulled the trigger and killed Dan was sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years.
The woman who was dating Charlie and who was believed to have directly recruited the killers, was sentenced to life in prison as well.
And Wendy's brother, Charlie Adelson, is awaiting a trial that is set to begin in October of 2023.
And again, Wendy has never been officially linked to the murder of her ex-husband.
And despite the promises that had been made at Dan's memorial service, Wendy and her family kept Dan's parents from seeing their grandchildren for years.
But Dan's parents fought in court, just like they thought their son would have, and in June of 2022, the Markle Act was signed into law and it now protects grandparents and grandchildren from being kept apart when certain tragic events take place.
Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast.
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