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Florida State University law professor Dan Markel, 41, was shot in the garage of his Tallahassee home on July 18, 2014, and died the next day in what police and prosecutors later described as a murder for hire arranged by the family of his former wife.

The killing came amid a dispute over custody of the couple's two young sons. A neighbor told authorities he heard a loud noise, saw a vehicle leaving the Betton Hills neighborhood, then found Markel slumped in his car with the driver's side window shattered. The neighbor called 911 and stayed on the line while a dispatcher tried to guide him through the scene.

Records released by the Tallahassee Police Department showed the call to the Consolidated Dispatch Agency was assigned a lower priority than the situation warranted. Officials said it took about seven minutes to reclassify it. Police reached the house roughly 15 minutes after the report and paramedics about 19 minutes after, delays a Leon County grand jury that reviewed the dispatch later called "unacceptable."

Investigators determined Markel was killed by two men from the Miami area, Sigfredo Garcia and Luis Rivera, who prosecutors said drove to Tallahassee to carry out the shooting. The pair were tied to the professor's former in-laws through Katherine Magbanua, who had a relationship with Garcia and financial links to the Adelson family.

Prosecutors said the plot grew out of Markel's 2013 divorce from Wendi Adelson, a fellow member of the FSU law faculty, and her family's wish to move the children to South Florida. Wendi Adelson was never charged. Her father, Harvey Adelson, was named an unindicted co-conspirator.

Rivera pleaded guilty in 2016 and agreed to testify. Garcia was convicted of first-degree murder in 2019 and Magbanua at a retrial in 2022, both sentenced to life. Charlie Adelson, the professor's former brother-in-law, was convicted in 2023 and given life plus additional decades. In 2025 the family's matriarch, Donna Adelson, was convicted and sentenced to life, more than 11 years after the shooting.