Steven B. Epstein, author of EXTREME PUNISHMENT: The Chilling True Story of Acclaimed Law Professor Dan Markel’s Murder will be guest posting for a while. Here is the first installment:
As he neared his neighbor’s garage a second time, Jim found the garage door still up and the black car still running inside. This time, he decided to enter the garage and walk up to the driver’s side to make sure everything was okay. He expected to find nothing more ominous than Dan talking on his cellphone. But that isn’t even close to what Jim Geiger found.
As he came within a foot or two of the driver’s-side door, Jim felt and heard crunching beneath his shoes, which was startling enough. He then noticed that the door’s window was shattered, a large portion missing entirely. The only glass that remained intact was fractured in a spiderweb pattern, surrounding two-thirds of a quarter-sized hole in the upper-right-hand-corner of the frame. Small, jagged shards were scattered on the garage’s concrete floor—what Jim had sensed crunching beneath his feet. In that brief instant, he realized a gunshot had blown through the glass window.
“Oh my God!” he thought to himself, his relaxing day off with his grandkids suddenly thrown into a tailspin. Standing beside the car door, he cocked his head to peer through the shattered window.
What he observed was utterly horrifying. His neighbor Dan Markel was slumped over—behind the steering wheel—the left side of his head covered with a thick layer of blood. More glass shards surrounded him inside the car. It was obvious he’d been shot, though unclear whether his head wound had been self-inflicted or the result of an assault. Jim wondered whether Dan had become so despondent over his divorce with Wendi that he’d opted for suicide.
“Danny, what happened?” he shouted through the broken window. No response. He could see Dan’s head rocking ever so slightly from his left shoulder to his right, suggesting he was still alive, but perhaps unconscious.
(Excerpt from Chapter 1, Friday, July 18, 2014, 10:50 a.m.)
What happened in FSU law professor Dan Markel’s garage that fateful summer morning shook the Sunshine State’s capital city, Tallahassee, the entire Florida State community, and the legal academy writ large to its core. Why on earth would a revered criminal law professor—the co-founder of PrawfsBlawg and prolific punishment theory scholar—be shot and killed in broad daylight? Was this the act of a deranged madman or part of a coordinated plot to eliminate him? And if the latter, who could possibly have been angry and desperate enough to do that?
To those who knew him—and there were literally thousands who did—they can recall with precision to this day, eight years later, exactly where they were and what they were doing when they received the news of Dan’s horrific slaying. There aren’t many murder cases that result in international media attention and a cult-like following of people who devour every TV documentary, podcast, YouTube video, and news story about even the most minute pieces of evidence related to the murder or developments in the criminal case. Yet something about this story—many things likely—have struck a cord that resonates with ordinary people as much, if not more, than those inhabiting the legal world and faculty lounge.
In EXTREME PUNISHMENT, I rewind the clock all the way back to the 1970s, when Dan Markel was growing up in Montreal and Toronto, and the 1980s, when Wendi Adelson was being raised alongside her two brothers in Coral Springs, Florida by her former schoolteacher mom, Donna, and dentist dad, Harvey. Despite having grown up worlds apart, their paths to becoming law professors were incredibly similar, both having experienced transformative post-college fellowships and a master’s education at Cambridge University prior to attending law school.
With two Harvard degrees, a Ninth Circuit clerkship, and four published law review articles in hand, Dan had hoped and expected to land a position at an elite law school. That he ended up at FSU—ultimately obtaining a job for Wendi there in a new legal clinic—is actually a huge part of why he ended up with two bullets in his head in July 2014. Over the next few weeks, I will share additional snippets from EXTREME PUNISHMENT, telling just enough of this fascinating story to whet your appetite and convince you to read it all. Thanks for the opportunity.
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