Serial Napper | True Crime for the Chronically Tired

In January 2006, 18-year-old Joe Pichler seemingly vanished from Bremerton, Washington.

Joe had grown up in front of the camera, appearing in movies and television shows including The Fan, Varsity Blues, Beethoven’s 3rd and Beethoven’s 4th. After stepping away from Hollywood as a teenager, he returned home, graduated high school and began building an ordinary life while planning his eventual return to acting.

Then, during the early morning hours of January 5th, Joe made his final known phone call.

Days later, his silver Toyota Corolla was found abandoned near the Port Washington Narrows. Inside were two pages of emotional writing that police initially interpreted as pointing toward suicide. But the writings never explicitly said Joe intended to end his life.

His family disputed the suicide theory from the beginning, raising concerns about how Joe’s car and apartment were initially handled and questioning whether potentially important evidence had been missed. Police themselves would soon become less convinced that suicide explained his disappearance and continued investigating other possibilities.

More than twenty years later, there has been no confirmed sighting of Joe, no financial or government activity known to establish that he started a new life, and his remains have never been found.

So what happened after Joe’s final phone call?

Anyone with information regarding Joe’s disappearance is asked to contact the Bremerton Police Department at 360-473-5228 or the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children at 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678).

Sources:

https://allthatsinteresting.com/joe-pichler

https://www.ladbible.com/news/child-actor-from-beethoven-missing-since-2006-20220601

http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?s=5bb93ec13cd41535139045de83024223&t=61494

https://archive.kitsapsun.com/news/local/nation-watching-pichler-search-ep-424313295-359562221.html

https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/20060717/missing17m/former-child-actor-missing-for-6-months

https://www.seattlepi.com/seattlenews/article/former-child-actor-missing-1192897.php

https://charleyproject.org/case/joseph-david-wolfgang-pichler

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When we left off in Part One, Florida State University law professor Dan Markel had been murdered in what investigators believed was a carefully planned hit.

Nearly two years later, police had traced a rented green Prius from Tallahassee back to South Florida, identified suspected gunmen Sigfredo Garcia and Luis Rivera, uncovered connections to Katherine Magbanua and Charlie Adelson, and staged an elaborate FBI operation known as “the bump.”

Now, investigators are finally ready to make their first arrest. But the arrest of a suspected hitman is only the beginning.

In Part Two, someone on the inside finally starts talking, giving investigators an account of the murder-for-hire plot from someone who was actually there. What follows is a years-long effort to work their way up the alleged chain: from Rivera and Garcia, to Katherine, to Charlie... and eventually to Donna Adelson.

We'll get into multiple murder trials, Katherine's changing story, Charlie's extraordinary claim that he wasn't responsible for Dan's murder but was actually being extorted by the people who killed him, and the recorded jail calls that preceded Donna and Harvey Adelson purchasing one-way tickets to Vietnam.

Donna would make it all the way to the jet bridge at Miami International Airport. She would not make it onto the plane.

We'll also look at Donna's eventual conviction, the questions that continue to surround Wendi Adelson, where every major figure in the case stands as of August 2026, and what happened to the two little boys who were at the centre of the custody battle prosecutors said ultimately led to their father's murder.

Dan Markel was killed in 2014. More than twelve years later, five people have been convicted in connection with his death. But behind the wiretaps, undercover operations, trials and appeals is something much simpler: Two little boys went to preschool one morning expecting their father to pick them up later. He never got the chance.
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Florida State University law professor Dan Markel was 41 years old when he was shot in the garage of his Tallahassee home in July 2014. It quickly became clear that this wasn't a random act of violence. Someone had followed Dan through his morning routine, waited until he returned home, and then disappeared.

But who would want a Canadian-born law professor and devoted father of two dead?

The answer would lead investigators hundreds of miles south to Miami and into the bitter aftermath of Dan's divorce from Wendi Adelson.

In Part One of this two-part deep dive, we look at Dan's life before the headlines, his contentious divorce and custody battle, Wendi's unsuccessful attempt to relocate their two young sons to South Florida, and the increasingly hostile involvement of her family.

Then we follow investigators as they begin piecing together the murder itself: a rented Toyota Prius, surveillance footage, cellphone records, two mysterious trips from South Florida to Tallahassee, and two men who seemingly had absolutely no connection to Dan.

Eventually, investigators uncover a link between suspected gunman Sigfredo Garcia, his former partner Katherine Magbanua, and Wendi's brother, Charlie Adelson.

But having a theory and proving a murder-for-hire conspiracy are two very different things.

Nearly two years after Dan's murder, investigators still hadn't made a single arrest. So the FBI decided to shake things up An undercover agent approached Wendi's mother, Donna Adelson, with a photograph of Dan, a phone number and a demand for money.

The operation became known as the bump. And suddenly...the phones started ringing.

Part Two continues with the first arrest, the insider who finally starts talking, multiple murder trials, Charlie Adelson's extraordinary extortion defence, Donna's attempted flight to Vietnam, and the question that has followed this case for more than a decade: how far did this conspiracy really go?

Sources:

https://www.reddit.com/r/dan_markel_murder

​​​​https://www.courttv.com/tag/dan-markel/

https://thecjn.ca/news/slain-law-professor-dan-markels-canadian-family-hopes-for-more-time-with-his-kids-after-new-guilty-verdict/

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/daniel-markel-murder-hit-men-family-donna-adelson-katherine-magbanua-rcna239425

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/florida-matriarch-convicted-daniel-markel-1.7625845

https://www.wctv.tv/2022/04/21/extended-timeline-key-dates-dan-markel-murder-case/

https://abcnews.com/US/police-tracked-caught-suspected-hit-men-murder-fsu/story?id=42064896

https://law.justia.com/cases/florida/first-district-court-of-appeal/2026/1d2024-0004.html

https://people.com/wendi-adelson-today-what-to-know-12021519

https://abcnews.com/US/south-florida-grandmother-center-murder-hire-saga-spanning/story?id=128005003

https://www.wctv.tv/2025/09/03/contentious-or-typical-dan-markels-divorce-under-scrutiny-donna-adelson-trial-continues/

https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/cnc/date/2025-09-04/segment/02

https://www.wctv.tv/2025/08/29/state-rests-its-case-against-donna-adelson-without-calling-son-charlie-defense-call-witnesses-tuesday/

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In this episode, the True Crimecast team, John and Jamie, sit down with Nikki Young, host of the Serial Napper podcast, to take a deep dive into the disturbing and unsolved disappearance of 22-year-old Liam Tomen.

On the weekend of January 31, 2025, Liam and two friends travelled from Whitby, Ontario, to the resort village of Mont Tremblant, Quebec, for a ski trip. After spending the evening at local village spots—ending at Le P'tit Caribou—Liam got separated from his friends. Surveillance footage captures him walking directly toward his hotel, L'Auberge du Voyageur, just minutes away. He never made it inside.

Despite extensive search efforts using cadaver dogs, snowmobiles, helicopters, and pond drainage, no trace of Liam was found during the winter. Months later, as the snow melted, his wallet was recovered near a parking lot—intact with his ID and bank cards, but stripped of cash. With phone pings raising questions and a white vehicle spotted in the area, Liam’s family continues to fight for answers.

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On a warm September night in 2005, 18-year-old Jennifer Teague finished her shift at a Wendy's restaurant in Barrhaven, Ontario. She stopped to chat with friends at the local Mac's Milk before beginning the short walk home, a route she'd taken countless times before. She never made it.

Jennifer's disappearance shattered the sense of safety in one of Ottawa's fastest-growing suburbs. As police, volunteers, helicopters and search dogs scoured the community, her family refused to believe she had run away. Ten days later, the search ended in heartbreak when Jennifer's body was discovered in the Stony Swamp Conservation Area.

For months, investigators chased leads that went nowhere. A composite sketch. A $100,000 reward. Dozens of new tips. Then, in one of the most unusual twists in Canadian true crime history, a Barrhaven man began telling complete strangers that he had killed Jennifer.

In this episode of Serial Napper, we're revisiting Jennifer's case nearly twenty years later, exploring who she was before she became a headline, how one ordinary walk home changed an entire community, and why her story still resonates with so many people today.

Sources:

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/from-the-archives-jennifer-teague-there-will-never-be-closure-until-the-truth-is-known-father-says

https://www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/article/finding-hope-after-the-murder-of-their-daughter-jennifer-teague/

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/jennifer-teague-s-killer-heads-to-prison-after-pleading-guilty-1.712530

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/neighbours-stunned-after-ottawa-man-charged-in-teen-s-slaying-1.586319

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