Donna Adelson: Cracks, Clues, and the Moment She Slipped | 2025 True Crime

In this 2025 Year-in-Review Hidden Killers special, we bring together the two most explosive pillars of the case against Donna Adelson: the alleged long-term orchestration of a murder-for-hire plot — and the undercover “bump” that may have exposed her entire operation in a single moment.

Tony Brueski sits down with defense attorney and former prosecutor Eric Faddis, along with retired FBI Behavioral Analysis Program Chief Robin Dreeke, to deliver the most complete psychological and legal breakdown of Donna Adelson we’ve produced yet.

We start with the big question hanging over the entire trial:
Was Donna Adelson the mastermind — or a woman unraveling under the weight of her own control?

From her children’s emotionally distant testimony, to the 44 paychecks she allegedly signed for the intermediary, to the one-way ticket to Vietnam waiting in her drawer, the case is stacked with bizarre behavior, shifting loyalties, and damning digital evidence.
Then we go to the moment everything cracked: the undercover FBI “bump.”
When investigators handed Donna a flyer implying someone “knew everything,” she didn’t panic. She didn’t break. She didn’t even call her husband.
Instead — just 22 minutes later — she quietly phoned her son Charlie. The money flow to the alleged conspirators stopped instantly.

Robin Dreeke dissects this reaction, explaining why the lack of visible fear might be the most incriminating behavior of all. A normal grandmother would freeze. Donna recalibrated. And that, he says, is the psychological tell investigators look for.

Together, these revelations paint a portrait of a woman who prosecutors claim coordinated, concealed, and controlled every variable — until the moment one piece of paper hit her lap and her mask slipped.

Is Donna Adelson a misunderstood mother caught in chaos?
Or the architect of a conspiracy now collapsing around her?

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