TALLAHASSEE – Phil and Ruth Markel, along with other family members, have been in the court room for two days, sitting just feet away from the two people on trial for their son's murder.
In a statement they have asked for privacy. On Friday, they listened to their son's last spoken words.
"He said, 'Can you please hold on a second? There is an unfamiliar person in my driveway.' I heard a loud sound," said Stewart Schlazer, when he took the stand.
Schlazer was on the phone with Dan Markel when he was murdered.
The Markels also heard testimony from police expert Shawn Yao on the bullet's trajectory.
"You see that there's a slight downward declination. It goes downward into the victim," Yao said.
The autopsy testimony was so gruesome that Ruth Markel left the courtroom.
The Markels have been exiled from their two grandsons since the murder. The children's names have been legally changed from Markel to Adelson.
On Tuesday the Markel's son's ex-wife, Wendi Adleson, took the witness stand. Adleson was asked if she was aware of a safe filled with cash in her parent's home.
She said she was not.
The questions quickly turned to conversations Wendi Adleson had with her brother Charlie.
Wendi denied that her brother ever mentioned hiring a hitman to kill her husband, but acknowledged Charlie did joke about it being cheaper to buy her a television for a divorce gift than to hire a hitman.
"He did make that joke. He tended to repeat himself and sometimes he would make jokes that weren't very funny," Adleson said.
Adleson's brother did buy her the TV. It was being serviced at the time Dan Markel was murdered.
Wendi Adleson received immunity for anything that she said on the stand.