Karl Etters

Democrat staff writer

Prosecutors say Sigfredo Garcia and Luis Rivera were thwarted in an earlier attempt to execute Dan Markel in Tallahassee the month before he was finally slain.

A Leon County judge delayed the decision to set a bond for 33-year-old Garcia Friday as his attorney looked to interview Tallahassee Police investigators.

Garcia pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree murder in the July 2014 shooting of Markel, a Florida State law professor and prominent legal scholar.

On July 18, 2014, Markel was found slumped over the steering wheel of his car with two gunshot wounds to the head.

Prosecutors say the June trip was cut short when a Miami rental car company found out Garcia and Rivera were in Tallahassee. The car was rented for local use only. Chief Assistant State Attorney Georgia Cappleman said the company pinged the GPS on the car and Rivera and Garcia immediately turned around and headed back to Miami.

Read the newly released documents in the case: Sigfredo Garcia probable cause

Garcia was arrested May 25 in Broward County then transported to Tallahassee a few weeks later.

Court documents and other evidence point toward members of Markel’s ex-wife’s family, chiefly her mother and brother, Donna and Charles Adelson, as “enlisting” Garcia and Rivera in the murder-for-hire plot that ended in Markel’s shooting.

Police say 41-year-old Markel’s killing was connected to the child visitation proceedings in the aftermath of his acrimonious divorce.

The motive for Markel’s murder, court documents say, “stemmed from the desperate desire of the Adelson family” that his ex-wife Wendi Adelson and the couple’s two young sons be allowed to move to South Florida.

In a Broward County Jail phone call with his girlfriend, Katherine Magbanua, Garcia said he wanted to put the ordeal behind him and once he was released, “get the hell out of Dodge,” he said. “And just put all this sh** behind us.”

His South Florida attorney Jim Lewis argued that the state has only circumstantial evidence against Garcia, nothing concrete. However, he indicated that local attorney Zack Ward could possibly join the defense team to work during the sentencing phase.

"All they've got is theories," Lewis said. "No facts. No eye witnesses. No physical evidence. No confessions. No statements. This man should not be held here without a bond."

The bond hearing could come before a judge as soon as Tuesday when Lewis said he hopes to subpoena officers who investigated the case to ask how Garcia became a suspect and what witnesses prosecutors have who place him as being involved in a conspiracy with the Adelson family.

“I want to see some physical evidence linking my client to this horrible crime,” he said.

Garcia and Rivera drove from Miami in a rented Toyota Prius, police say, and stayed in Tallahassee for several days before shooting Markel.

Cell phone records show the men were in town and in the area around Markel’s Betton Hills home the day of the shooting. Surveillance videos captured the car driving on Thomasville Road in the moments before and after the midday shooting.

Lewis said there was a “good, legitimate reason why (Garcia) would be in Tallahassee for those days and at the appropriate time that’s going to come out.”

Cappleman is seeking the death penalty. She asked that Garcia be kept behind bars or face a minimum bond of $1 million.

Sigfredo Garcia's attorney Jim Lewis Speaks

She added that prosecutors must explain why Garcia should be held without bond, but that doesn’t allow Lewis to shake down the entire case.

“If I fail, then the result and the remedy is to give a bond, not to be able to call witnesses and be able to examine my whole case,” Cappleman said.

She conceded that concrete, physical evidence could not place Garcia as the shooter, but other evidence would prove otherwise.

"As far as I know there is no DNA at the crime scene. I don't have a witness that will say 'I saw Mr. Garcia kill Mr. Markel,’ so (Lewis) is right to that extent," Cappleman said. "But there is a mountain of other evidence that I think will be sufficient to reach my burden beyond a reasonable doubt at trial."

Sigfredo Garcia Bond Hearing

Prosecutors released dozens of pages of investigative materials – which include crime scene and suspect photos, videos, cell phone records – used to build their case against Garcia, Rivera and others.

The same grand jury that indicted Garcia and Rivera was retained to hear more on the slaying next month. More arrests are expected in the case.

Cappleman called Magbanua a suspect and possibly a witness in the case. According to court records, she was in a romantic relationship with Charles Adelson and is the mother of two of Garcia’s children.

Lewis said Garcia had an acrimonious relationship with Charles Adelson so to suggest he would kill for the South Florida periodontist was “ludicrous”

Garcia denied ever being in Tallahassee. Meanwhile, Rivera, who was questioned three days after Garcia's arrest, at first denied ever traveling to the Capital City. However, Rivera, an inmate in a federal prison outside Orlando on unrelated charges, changed his story when police showed him a photo of the two men in the Prius.

Contact Karl Etters at ketters@tallahassee.com or @KarlEtters on Twitter.