A day before Donna Adelson was convicted of first-degree murder for orchestrating a murder-for-hire plot to kill her former son-in-law, the 75-year-old woman agonized over whether to testify in her defense in a Tallahassee, Florida, courtroom.

Adelson, convicted Thursday after not taking the stand, was initially charged in 2023 with first-degree murder and other charges for her role in a plot to kill prominent Florida State University law professor Dan Markel in 2014, which prosecutors said was motivated by her desire to end the bitter custody battle between Markel and Adelson’s daughter, Wendi.

The subject of a true-crime podcast and television specials, the complicated family drama with its matriarch at the forefront was among this summer’s criminal cases of intrigue.

At the

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