<\/p>\n
Hody NemesAugust
\nForward.com<\/p>\n
In the days before his murder, Florida law professor Dan Markel was hired<\/a> as a legal consultant in an explosive New Jersey divorce extortion case involving several Orthodox rabbis.<\/p>\n Markel, who was gunned down outside his Tallahassee, Florida home on July 18, had been in touch with Rabbi Martin Wolmark, one of ten men arrested last October for conspiring to kidnap and torture Orthodox Jewish husbands who refuse to grant their wives gets<\/em>, or religious divorces.<\/p>\n The Forward has learned that police initially investigated whether there was any link between Markel\u2019s plans to consult in the \u2018get\u2019 extortion case and his still-unsolved murder.<\/p>\n Detectives called Wolmark\u2019s attorney Ben Brafman, a prominent criminal defense lawyer whose clients have included Sean \u201cP. Diddy\u201d Combs and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, to ask about Markel in the days after the murder, Brafman told the Forward.<\/p>\n But they appear to have quickly rejected any connection. That could have been because Markel\u2019s tie to the case was so tangential as well as the fact that the husbands targeted in the \u2018get\u2019 case \u2014 who might have been thought to hold a grudge against Markel \u2014 were apparently not even aware of his involvement.<\/p>\n A Tallahassee police spokesman said he couldn\u2019t comment on any possible tie between Markel\u2019s murder and the \u2018get\u2019 case.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are following up on all of his associations,\u201d Officer Scott Beck said.<\/p>\n Markel, 41, was shot in the head as he pulled into his driveway in an affluent neighborhood of Tallahassee. A neighbor who heard the gunshot quickly called 911, but because of a dispatcher error, it took emergency responders 19 minutes to reach Markel, who later died at a hospital.<\/p>\n Tallahasse Police have said they believe that Markel was the \u201cintended victim,\u201d ruling out robbery or a random attack. Three weeks after his death, police are still searching<\/a> for the culprit and have announced no major leads in the investigation.<\/p>\n Investigators have told reporters that they are investigating reports that Markel was threatened by hostile posts on law blogs. He also was in the midst of a contentious divorce from Wendi Adelson, who is also a Florida State law professor.<\/p>\n Detectives apparently came across the \u2018get\u2019 connection while combing through Markel\u2019s recent email communications.<\/p>\n But police never actually questioned Wolmark, who is under house arrest in New York, and he is not a suspect, according to Brafman.<\/p>\n Brafman described Markel\u2019s recent association with his client\u2019s case as \u201can unfortunate coincidence,\u201d but said any attempt to link that case with Markel\u2019s murder was \u201csheer craziness.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWolmark had absolutely nothing to do with this,\u201d he said, and emphasized that police are interested in talking to everyone who had contact with Markel in the days before his death.<\/p>\n Brafman said his collaboration with Markel was in its earliest stages, and believes his office was first in touch with Markel only the day before his death. \u201cWe were supposed to meet, but that never happened,\u201d he said. It is unlikely anyone could have known that Markel had been in touch with Wolmark or was assisting his legal team, according to Brafmann. That includes the recalcitrant husbands who were Wolmark\u2019s alleged victims.<\/p>\n \u201cNobody knew about it and nobody would know about it,\u201d Brafman said.<\/p>\n