Murder-in-Law

This story moves chronologically through a marriage that begins to unravel—with fatal consequences. The victim is Dan Markel, the ex-husband of Wendi Adelson, but it’s the involvement of Wendi’s domineering mother, Donna, and her brother, Charlie, that leads to his tragic end. Katherine Laidlaw shows how there were far more than two people in this marriage—and far more than two lives destroyed when it fell apart. > Harvey was nominally the breadwinner, but Donna ruled the family.

She had strict ideas about how her children should live, pushing them to earn advanced degrees and build prestigious careers. Rob became a doctor, and Charlie became a periodontist, eventually buying his father’s dental practice. Donna obsessed, too, about her children’s love lives, scrolling through online dating profiles and sending them lists of promising candidates.

When Rob started seeing a woman who wasn’t Jewish, Donna interfered so aggressively that he eventually broke it off and briefly married someone else. (He has since married his original non-Jewish girlfriend.) At first, Donna was thrilled that her daughter was seeing Dan, then a lawyer at a boutique firm. She was less thrilled when he left to pursue academia, a path that she felt paid poorly and lacked cachet. Malcolm Johnston | Toronto Life | July 27, 2026 | 6,557 words “An ambitious young couple, a multimillion-dollar swindle and the sting that brought them down.” Kennedy Lashley, as told to Jes Mason | Toronto Life | March 16, 2026 | 3,791 words Harley Rustad | Toronto Life | August 11, 2025 | 3,564 words “When an A&W takeout bag appeared on my neighbour’s porch in the middle of the night—followed by another, then another—I became obsessed with solving a fast food whodunit that was as baffling as it was beguiling.” “Before Ryan Wedding landed on the FBI’s Most Wanted list as a high-level associate of El Chapo, he was a bright-eyed kid from Thunder Bay.

The inside story of how an Olympic snowboarding prodigy became one of the world’s most dangerous and powerful drug lords.” Luc Rinaldi | Toronto Life | February 10, 2025 | 6,575 words “Ashley’s remains turned up in a burned-out car at the bottom of a ditch, and all signs pointed to her husband.” “A growing cohort of Torontonians are swapping the coke-fuelled, booze-soaked club scene for cold plunges, sobriety and superfood smoothies. Inside the expensive, obsessive, addictive quest for a perfect life.”