Dateline NBC - Family Affair

Episode Date: January 20, 2021

In this Dateline classic, the scion of the family behind the famous Fontainebleau Hotel on Miami Beach, Ben Novack Jr., grew up with the likes of Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack. But his murder years later in a New York hotel, launches an investigation that would lead to surprising places and turn his stepdaughter’s life upside down. Dennis Murphy reports. Originally aired on NBC on October 12, 2012.

I am being followed. There are threats on my life. I know we're in danger. I know we are. It's a riveting mystery that started in a place of glamour. It became a destination for the Rat Pack for Frank Sinatra. And ended in a case of murder. The wealthy heir to this legendary hotel, dead. He was my father. He is the only father I ever knew. Now police said she was next. Someone in the shadows gunning for her. My suspicions are growing and growing by the minute.

Who was behind all this? Plenty of suspects and plenty of motives. Anger, jealousy, greed. Someone had 10 million reasons to kill. We looked back and said, my God, I couldn't believe what I saw. A final terrifying twist. I see my mother with a crowbar. Will you see it coming?

Tonight, family affair. Here's Dennis Murphy. If ever there was a little girl lost, it was Maya Bond. From when I was little, I was always in the way. She survived a mother-daughter relationship quite unlike any you've ever heard. My mother is like trying to hug a cactus. You will eventually get hurt. And if the intersection of blood and money intrigues you,

pull up a chair and stay a while, because there's plenty of both just ahead in this story. It's really an amazing, unusual, frightening story. What ended so badly in a darkened hotel room with the curtains drawn has its beginnings really in the warm sands of South Florida. Not the South Beach of today, with its hot bodies

and pulsating dance clubs. That's all a marketing reinvention of a much older Miami Beach. No, we need to go back 50 years or more when caddies with tail fins were pulling into the newest, glitziest hotel on the East Coast, the Fountain Blue. Miami should be a great city.

A hotel wheeler-dealer named Ben Novak built it, and they came. Stephen Gaines wrote about the era in his book, Fool's Paradise. The Fountain Blue. It became a destination for the Rat Pack, for Frank Sinatra. The major stars were appearing at the Fountain Blue, and lots of movies were shot there as well. Novak was the king, and he needed a queen to preside over his aqua-colored palace. He found one in a former Coca-Cola charm, Bernice turned out to be the perfect hostess to greet the celebrities, gangsters, and just plain guests who made the Fountain Blue the scene of its day. King Ben and Queen Bernice lived over the store in a penthouse suite,

and then along came their young prince, Ben Novak Jr. He was a spoiled kid. He was a brat. Ben Jr., don't call him Benji, would be trotted out to shake hands with the likes of JFK. Then it was back up the hotel elevator to home. Birthday cakes came from room service. And the kids who came to the birthday party were complete strangers to him, just kids who were passing through the hotel. The friendless, lonely boy, disliked by his father's help, lost himself in the fantasy world of Batman. The superhero became an obsession. Even as an adult, Ben Jr. was still amassing a floor-to-ceiling collection of Batman memorabilia.

He even bought a Batmobile from the old TV show. But there was no holding off the real world and change. Just as the Rat Pack faded away, so too did the Fountain Blue. But there was no holding off the real world and change. Just as the Rat Pack faded away, so too did the Fountain Blue. By the late 70s, Miami Beach was regarded as a stale place for old people. Ben Novak Sr. lost the hotel to bankruptcy and died not long afterwards. The son, Ben Jr., all grown up now, stayed in the hospitality business and made his mark. He created a company run out of his home here that organized conventions at big hotels.

Like his father, he was a hard-nosed businessman, and in time he was grossing $50 million a year. And like his father, he needed someone like his mother to mix and mingle with the clients. He found that woman in a recent emigre from Ecuador. Her name was Narcy, and she had a little girl called May. Why do you think they became a couple and not just passing in the night? My mother was a lot of fun. You know, she definitely partied. When Ben Jr. met Narcy, she was partying for tips as a stripper in a sleazy Miami club, supporting herself and her little girl. She did very well with it, I guess. She did very well. My mother is a survivor. She adjusts to pretty much anything. Narsi left behind her stripper pole to marry Ben Novak Jr.,

but the little girl felt like so much excess baggage in her mother's new relationship. She was dispatched to boarding school at the age of eight. Did you feel you'd been shipped off? Kind of. You had a tough childhood, huh? Best thing is that it's over. Ben Jr. and her mother lived in a two million dollar Fort Lauderdale estate with a boat out back. His elderly mother Bernice lived not far away. But May, the stepdaughter, was never going to be a rich man's trust fund kid. She grew up tough and hard, estranged from her mother, paying her own way with bartending and waitressing jobs.

She had two children young and sweated the bills. It was the grandchildren that ultimately thawed some of the ice between mother and daughter. She may have been a horrible mother, but she was the best grandmother. She did everything with them. And Ben Jr. warmed to May. The one-time lonely prince belatedly seemed to recognize a kindred spirit in lonely, neglected May. He saw me as his daughter, and I did see him as my father.

And he had no children of his own. Ben, after his own stunted childhood, finally found in his grandchildren some kids who wanted to play with all his Batman stuff. He did a lot of the grandfather things with them. A lot of, I think, why we saw so much of each other was because of those two boys. When she was in her late 20s, Ben Jr. asked May to become part of his very successful convention organizing business. She would work alongside her mother and his mother Bernice. It had taken 20 years, but they were finally becoming a family. You know, when I actually became older and got into the business, he was always there, guided me and showed me how to do things. Then sadness. In the spring of 2009, Bernice, in her late 80s,

had apparently slipped and taken a nasty fall getting out of her car. She struggled to the house and died. May thought the time had come. For years, Ben had been asking her to consider becoming his legally adopted daughter. She thought it would be the perfect Father's Day gift for him. I started thinking, you know, Bernice had just passed, and it would be something nice for him, you know, to be like, okay, you do have a daughter, you know,

because I do feel like I am his daughter to this day. So it never got legally changed. All the paperwork is still on his desk. It never got attended to because of the brutal event three months after Bernice's passing. Ben, Narcy, and Mae were putting on another of their big conventions at a hotel in New York's suburban Westchester County. Just after 7.30 Sunday morning, July 12, 2009, the last day of the convention, hotel security got the urgent call. Something very bad had happened in one of the suites. A 58-year-old man had been found bound and bludgeoned to death in the bedroom. Ben Novak Jr., the one-time Prince of the Fountain Blue,

had been murdered. Coming up, who might want Ben Novak dead? The search begins and it wasn't going to be easy. We decided we were going to download the locks of the entire hotel. The comings and goings of every room, every guest in the hotel. 450 rooms. The sprawling Hilton Hotel in Ryebrook, New York, was host to 2,000 Amway conventioneers that summer weekend in 2009. One of the suites had become a homicide scene. Sergeant Terry Wilson from the local police would lead the investigation.

I couldn't believe what I saw. I went in the room and there was the victim hogtied on the floor and it was a bloody mess. What does that tell you? This was a targeted individual. And is it true that his eyes were also gouged out? Yes. Yes. Sergeant Wilson learned that the victim was Ben Novak Jr., a name that meant nothing to him. The murdered man's wife and stepdaughter had been escorted to a nearby hotel room

so investigators could take their statements. The wife of 20 years, Narcy, told Sergeant Wilson that her husband had been up all night working on convention details and didn't go to bed, she thought, until about 6.30 in the morning. She said she'd then gone downstairs around 7 to oversee getting breakfast organized for the convention guests. Could you verify, for instance, that the wife was indeed at the breakfast by a security camera? We did have her on video, confirmed what she was saying. The stepdaughter, Mae Abad, who managed the company money on these road trips, confirmed her mother's story of coming down to pitch in with breakfast.

I was thinking, you know, there is a lot of people. There's 2,000 people down here. I'll take any help I could get. After the breakfast rush, Narcy says she called her husband up in the room. No answer. And then she comes back up, what, about 7.30 or so and finds him? Uh, yeah. She told the detective she tripped over the body, then bolted from the room, shrieking for help.

Security arrived, as did hotel manager Jeremy Morris. Our security guard was holding Narcy at the end of Mr. Novak's feet, and Narcy was continuing to lunge towards the body, like howling and screaming at the top of her lungs. When Narcy later told police about the timeline of the morning, the computerized room key card confirmed her recollection. Her card was used to get into the room at 7.40, but from just after midnight... Oh, there'd been no activity up to that point.

Opening to go into the door. So that right away tells you that, well, then the door opened from the inside. If Narcy had been downstairs helping with breakfast, and no key other than the wife's had opened the door since midnight, who then had admitted the killer or killers? An early-on mystery.

May, meanwhile, had been summoned by the hotel manager to her stepfather's suite so i asked him like you know what happened and they're just like he's gone you know and i'm like what do you mean he's gone i'm like just try to go do something the hotel guards wouldn't let her in the room one security officer was talking to another one he said it's a bloodbath in there a bloodbath that sent her mother into hysterics. She's emotional. She's wailing tears. She's like throwing herself on the floor. Then she starts telling me, she goes, I think they're after all the, you know, convention money. She's like,

it had to have been a robbery. They know we carry a lot of money. Somebody must have been watching us. Unusually, Ben Novak's convention business ran on cash, bags of it. The exhibitors would turn over their dollars to the stepdaughter May and her assistants on site. This weekend, they'd taken in more than $100,000. Now, that money wasn't being kept in a hotel safe behind the front desk. Rather, it was stashed in closets under the beds of the staff members. Question, had an insider who knew how they'd gone about their business decided to rip off the company by torturing Ben to cough up the cash. They had around $110,000 in cash. So you're in motivation country right now, right? And we're trying to figure out what's going on. They didn't get

anything from him. So of course I'm scared, you know, not just for myself, but for the staff. And if someone had been roaming the hotel hallways with money and murder on their mind, there were 2,000 potential suspects. A detective's nightmare. We decided we were going to download the locks of the entire hotel. You're kidding. The comings and goings of every room, every guest in the hotel. 450 rooms. It took him two weeks to do it.

The hotel was bristling with security cameras, but unfortunately for the investigators, none in the hallway outside the murder room. One of the first things the cops did was round up all that cash and get it stored in the hotel safe till the banks opened in the morning. Then Sergeant Wilson posted a guard at the hotel room being shared by the mother and daughter. Before that Sunday night was over, the two women would have another round of questioning with the detectives. They totally grilled me, and you get mad. So, of course, I was fighting back. They're asking you the question, could you do this? Correct. You know, and then one of the cops even told me, we have to ask these questions.

I'm like, would you have to get, right here and ask me the questions? A veteran Westchester County detective named Allison Carpentier had joined the investigation and led some of the questioning. May, the daughter, what'd you make of her? Pretty much, I got the feeling that she was being honest with me. But you never know. I mean, people are deceptive. The cops went through Narcy's story once again, hoping for some overlooked detail or investigative nugget. And she is the grieving, all of a sudden, widow. Widow, exactly. We need that information. She's the last person that saw Mr. Novak. Narcy told detectives there was something of value missing.

A gold bracelet that spelled out Ben's name in diamonds. An expensive Rolex watch was still on the bed lying in a pool of blood, as well as an unexplained broken stem from a cheap pair of sunglasses. And then there was the matter of her husband's huge Batman collection, and a rare comic valued at $43,000 he was planning on selling that weekend. Batman might have been a motivation for murder, his passion in life. He had a valuable comic and somebody else wanted it, or wanted the value of it. Correct. Sunday was over. On Monday, the cops would hear about the Novaks' tie-me-up sex games. On Monday, when mother and daughter

started to go for one another's throats. Coming up, they should have been united in grief. Instead, there would be a feud sparked by a single troubling moment. As I'm sitting there, my suspicions are growing and growing by the minute. When Dateline continues. Who had bound, gagged, and bludgeoned to death Ben Novak Jr.? Seeing it, it was overwhelming. I mean, to see it and just thinking, oh my God. In this case, the detective's art of victimology would play a big role, finding out who the murdered person was, as well as the people in his circle of friends and families, his enemies. No, this is the address here.

Detective Allison Carpentier, along with Detective Terry Wilson, would eventually piece together an unflattering family portrait. In the beginning, we didn't know if an affair, was this a domestic, was this just a random act? They cobbled together the story of Ben Jr., the wealthy son of a famous Miami beach man with his eccentric Batman collection, the wife from modest beginnings, the stepdaughter welcomed late to the family circle.

We were still learning the dynamics of the family, how May was a stepchild. It took a long time for us learning the dynamics of the family, how May was a stepchild. It took a long time for us to learn more about the family. The Novaks came off like candidates maybe for the cast of a bad reality show, but good old-fashioned robbery still looked like motive number one in the homicide. Ben Novak Jr. was a hard-charging businessman. A lot of guys didn't like his style. That's correct. He could have cultivated enemies along the line. There were a lot of people that didn't like him. On the Monday after the Sunday morning murder, police took Narcy and her daughter to the morgue to identify Ben Jr.'s body. Was that when May started to get the

creeps about what had happened? Watching her stone-faced mother watch. I'm throwing up in a garbage can, you know, detectives are like right there and everything else. And we all turn around and she is just staring at him. There was no emotion at all from her. That Monday, late into the night, Narcy and her daughter were interrogated by the detectives. I should have been there and I wish I got killed with him. Detective Carpentier broached the sensitive subject of the couple's sex life. I know this is hard. Do you want me to speak to me alone? Do you want me to leave? Detective Carpentier broached the sensitive subject of the couple's sex life. With the male detective out of the room, Detective Carpentier managed to win Narcy's trust.

Narcy confided that Ben was into bondage. Now here he'd been tied up in the homicide. Did you think, well, is this a sex game gone wrong? We had brought it up to her, and I did confront her with that during the interview. I just found it odd that the way he finds pleasurable, he's killed in the same way. Because she was the spouse, the questions for Narcy got sharper as the night wore on. Was she in on the murder? All the while, May had been outside eavesdropping on her mother's interrogation, getting chills. May said to me that somebody told her there was a bloodbath.

I don't remember killing blood. Blood is red. Just listening to her talk to detectives, nothing was making sense. When she heard her mother describe tripping over the body and reaching down to touch Ben, alarms went off. She'd seen her mother shortly after that. I'm looking at her and there is no blood on her. In a scene that was described to you as a blood bath. As a blood bath, correct. And I'm looking at her from head to toe. But you don't see any evidence? I don't see any evidence on her. What are you thinking? What's going on? My suspicions are growing and growing by the minute. And then I'm thinking that I am this horrible human being

for even thinking that my mother could do something like this. For 14 relentless hours, homicide detectives tried to pin back Narcy Novak's ears, grilling her as though she'd masterminded her husband's murder. Did she have anything to do with your husband's death? No. She never ate anything, she never drank anything, and she never went to the bathroom. The detectives would come in, question her. She would just keep flowing.

Nothing fazed her. Question. Had Ben hired a kinky escort girl to tie him up? Narcy scoffed at the idea and told the detectives to tone it down. I wonder they have compassion. Please, have mercy. Narcy scoffed at the idea and told the detectives to tone it down. Shortly after 9 p.m., Detective Carpentier brought up the idea of a lie detector test. I take a hundred lie detectors. I do whatever you want me to do. So at this point, I'm like hoping that I am completely wrong. If she takes this polygraph test and she passes,

then I'm just going crazy in my own head. There's no way she did this. May also agreed that night to be polygraphed. But then Narcy got cold feet about taking hers. And the daughter is saying to her mother, what is wrong with you? Why don't you just take the lie detector test? What's the problem? The mother finally agreed to the polygraph. May would pass her test, but... How did the lie detector test go for Narcy?

It didn't go well. She flunked it all the way through? Yes. When the cops were finally done with the two of them for the night, May confronted her mother. I asked her to her face. What? Did you have something to do with this? I did. I got in her face and they had pictures of like the crime scenes and stuff and I smacked them in her face. You think your mother has killed Ben Jr.? I think she definitely had something to do with it you know i didn't think she did it

herself personally the cops had only started to peel back the many layers of the novak family story there was still so much about these people they didn't know coming up there were a few things may herself didn't know i see my mother coming at me with a crowbar. When Family Affair continues. The cops were spooling through hours of hotel security cam footage, looking for what they weren't exactly sure. The footwork tedium of a homicide investigation was underway. We're leaving the doors open as far as we're concerned. Everything's on the table until the investigation either stalls or, you know, someone's arrested.

The body of Ben Novak Jr. was with the medical examiner. Mother and daughter, attached now by blood only, returned to Florida separately. May had her own agenda, telling the cops she'd help them any way she could. She was collecting her things from her parents' house when she stopped in the guest cottage where Ben had his home office. She was snooping through his files for the detectives when she turned to see her mother upon her like a fury. I see my mother coming at me with a crowbar. And I very quickly, she swung it and I picked my arm up and she got this ho-end on me with the crowbar.

It was literally the final blow for May. She was calling me a traitor. She knew that you were giving evidence against her. Could you have backed off at that point? Could you have been a good little daughter and fallen in line? No. It's not in me. I knew what she had done was wrong.

Even though she was my mother, I knew she was wrong. The battleground between mother and daughter then moved from the Novak house to the courthouse. A take-no-prisoners fight over the will. May was giving the cops her theory. Her mother had murdered her stepfather for the inheritance. Narcy, as the beneficiary, stood to get an estate estimated at $10 million, lock, stock, and Batmobile. At this point, my mother was to get everything, and I was like,

she's going to get away with this. May filed a civil lawsuit against her mother, arguing the probate court shouldn't award Narcy Ben's money because she'd had him killed. The judge ended up freezing Ben's assets while the court looked into the daughter's allegation. So the big money was on ice,

but May said her mother had already by then illicitly cleaned out safe deposit boxes kept by Ben and his mother. Was she on the list of people that had the key to get into the box? No, she was not. No, she was not. She told him a story? She did. My husband's out in the car waiting? Mm-hmm. And he'd been dead for a week at that point? Yeah. Narcy was seen leaving the bank with a duffel bag. With police scrutinizing her every move and May hounding her, Narcy hired New York attorney Howard Tanner. He says Narcy did have authority to go into those safe deposit boxes. He also disputed May's contention that

Narcy was involved in her husband's death. She had absolutely nothing to do with it. And she, when she discovers Ben Novak, she acted consistently with how anyone else would act in that situation. And the defense attorney urged anyone looking at this case to follow the money in Ben's murder. Down there in the fine print of the will, it shows that Mae, the daughter, may have had her own reasons for wanting Ben dead and her mother accused. Mae Abad and her children were the next in line. If somehow Narcy was removed from the line of inheritance, the daughter, May Abad, would get $10 million through her children.

That's correct. With Narcy out of the picture, May would get a flat $150,000 and her two boys the rest of the $10 million estate. Narcy began offering her own theory of the crime. May did it. When she realized, you know, the finger was being pointed at her, you know, she accused me. Of arranging to kill Ben.

Correct. For the money. Mm-hmm. The mother and daughter finger-pointing accusations continued without ceasefire, even as they interred Ben in his family mausoleum. Narcy, hidden beneath sunglasses and a scarf and hat, ignored her daughter. The mother was flanked by armed bodyguards.

The daughter brought her sons. One of my mother's bodyguards flashed his guns at my kids. I'm packing, in case there's any doubt, one of those kinds of gestures? Yeah. I saw the extent of everything when she threatened her own grandkids. And I always said she'd never do anything to her grandkids. She loves these kids. There was mother-daughter war, bad blood for sure. But the detectives were about to learn there was another close relative of interest in this toxic family portrait, and more crimes to investigate, perhaps even another murder.

Coming up, from out of the blue, a twist, a clue that could turn the case upside down. This is shocking, and it could be a big break. And then, revisiting those hotel security videos, the sight that chilled investigators, when Dateline continues. Mother and daughter each had a $10 million motive for murder, as the detectives saw it. But Sergeant Terry Wilson was focusing on Narcy. He knew he didn't have enough to charge her with her husband's death, at least not yet.

She had an alibi for the assumed time of the murder. The case against her was circumstantial. So someone else must have gotten into the room and killed her husband. But who? Then seemingly out of nowhere, an anonymous letter fluttered onto the desk of a detective a thousand miles away from the crime scene. Miami Springs, Florida investigator Gary Fedders personally knew nothing of the Ben Novak case, and his department wasn't involved. There's people obviously that heard the name and knew about him, the fountain blue and all. I wasn't involved. There's people obviously that heard the name and knew about him, the fountain blue and all. I wasn't one of them. I didn't know anything about it until I talked to Detective

Wilson in New York. The letter, written in Spanish, was nothing less than a blueprint to the murder, naming names, citing motivations. This is shocking and it could be a big break. Sergeant Wilson up in Westchester couldn't wait to see it. Whoever wrote this letter obviously had information inside information. Looking back, that letter had the whole story. The greed, the inheritance, the obstacles in the way of the inheritance. The facts of that letter were on the money. Here's the gist of the letter. It claimed Narcy's brother, a man named Cristobal

Valiz, had hired some thugs to kill Ben Novak Jr. Sergeant Wilson and his team paid an unannounced visit to the brother at his place in Philadelphia. We apparently had caught him off guard, and he by the sin told us to sit down, and he'd be more than happy to answer any questions we had. Wilson and another detective spied something atop the heap. There's Western Union receipts, and this is all right out in the open. This is too good to be true, like pinch me. And we're holding the conversation with him, trying to not focus on the table because we don't want to draw attention to it. When Narcy's brother briefly left the room, Sergeant Wilson's partner furiously copied down names, dates, and receipt numbers.

Why would Narcy's brother, a bus driver just scraping by, be wiring loads of money to one particular person in Miami. One of the names in the receipts is Garcia, is that right? Alejandro Garcia. But the surname Garcia in Miami is like being a Murphy in Boston. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. They began running it all down, and security cameras picked up Narcy's brother wiring the money from Philly, but at the receiving end in Miami, the cameras were on the fritz. No luck in getting pictures of this Garcia guy picking up the money. So they moved on to the brother's cell phone records and found frequent calls to a woman in

Miami. Turns out the phone belonged to Garcia's ex-girlfriend and he'd been using it. They talked to her. With a big break, she said that he had a defective eye. A Garcia with a bad eye. The database search was narrowed. Now we have some sort of physical description to see if this individual was arrested, and lo and behold, he was. So a Garcia with a bum eye comes out of the database.

A bum eye pops up, and we get a photo. Now the detectives were on a roll. With Alejandro Garcia's mugshot before them, they re-racked those hotel security tapes from the day of the murder. This is the main entrance. Here they come. Bingo.

There was Garcia in the dark shirt with somebody else. His ex-girlfriend said he always wore sunglasses to protect his bad eye, but he wasn't wearing them on that day. And you see the two of them walking very fast out. Alejandro has the bag. Alejandro doesn't have his glasses on anymore. With the broken frames, which are now...

Well, apparently, as the victim reacts to the assault, he hits Alejandro in the face, breaking the glasses. The glasses fall onto the bed. They rewound the tapes even further back to the first day of the convention, and there they were again. Garcia in sunglasses and a yellow shirt, and the other guy casing the hotel. In one chilling scene, they check out their future victim, Ben Novak Jr., in the lobby. And in less than 48 hours, they're going to murder this guy. In less than 48 hours, they're going to murder this guy. In less than 48 hours, they're going to murder this guy. The second man is ID'd as Joel Gonzalez of Miami.

Wilson and his team had two targets and started with the apparent leader, Garcia. We started to hunt him down. The Miami hunt didn't take long. Garcia was picked up on an outstanding warrant. The New York cops braced him. Garcia denied ever being in New York. He's on video in the hotel. He's on video. Detectives had some surprises to smoke out their one-eyed suspect. They showed him stills from the security cam footage,

Garcia and his suspected accomplice in the hotel. The capper was a tape recording of a phone call between a detective and Narcy's brother Cristobal. In the call, Narcy's brother, sounding all cooperative, says he wants to help the cops and gives them the name Alejandro Garcia as a person good for the murder. Garcia listened silently as the brother threw him under the bus. Cristobal told me who did the murder. Cristobal told me you. You did it. He says I haven't harmed anybody.

He denied being the hitman in that interrogation, but the message was clear. Get on board now, confess, or take the fall. He's going to be booked on charges of murder. Meanwhile, the evidence against Narcy's brother was piling up. Cell phone tower records showing him near the hotel on the morning of the murder. Evidence he'd provided a getaway car and driver. Who was in charge of this gag, the conspirators? The street boss that was handling everything that was going on was Christopher Belize. And who was the boss of bosses?

With a $10 million motive, there was only one answer for the cops. Narcy Novak had ordered the hit on her husband. Obviously, he reported to Narcy or worked at the direction. What started as a small suburban village investigation was now a multi-state conspiracy case. The decision was made to let federal prosecutors take the complex conspiracy to trial. The suspected hitman, Garcia and Gonzalez, were offered a deal. Testify against Narcy and her brother or go away to prison for what would likely be life sentences. The two confessed to being the hitman in a murder-for-hire scheme.

Then Garcia shocked the prosecutors. There was something else. A second murder they didn't know about. And if they didn't act fast, he said, a third was on the way. Coming up, just who was in the crosshairs? There was a hit out on me. This detective's personal quest to save this daughter in danger. When Family Affair continues. This is the brother. The two hitmen had confessed, admitting to killing Ben Novak Jr. They claimed Ben's wife, Narcy, and her brother paid them to do it. But still no charges had been filed as police continued to investigate.

And then the hitman, Alejandro Garcia, dropped a bombshell. He claimed he also killed someone else on orders from Narcy and her brother almost a year earlier, and he'd gotten away with it. The murder for hire? None other than Ben Novak's 87-year-old mother, Bernice. The one-time Queen of the Fountain Blue died three months before Ben in what Florida cops and the medical examiner ruled was an accidental death, a slip and fall getting out of her car. How does he kill her? He had a monkey wrench and he took what appeared to be a baseball swing and hit her several times in the head. Garcia said he got paid $600 for the job. But why kill Ben's 87-year-old mother? Because

in Ben's will in place at the time, if he died first, his mother, not his wife Narcy, would be the primary beneficiary. But with Bernice dead, there was nothing standing in Narcy's way. Had they not tried to kill Ben and succeeded in killing Ben, they would have probably never been caught. And there was more. When detectives arrested Garcia, they learned that still a third murder might be in the works. Someone else provided for in the will.

Narcy's daughter, May. She was in serious peril. And I always believed that she was. I just couldn't prove it to anybody. But when we sat down with Alejandro Garcia and learned that there was a hit out on May, that became concerning. A battered photo of May was found in Garcia that confessed Hitman's wallet. He was told she'd be the next job. Well, May freaked. She needed to move apartments ASAP and told federal prosecutors she didn't have the money.

The feds told her they'd get her the money, but the paperwork would take time. Detective Allison Carpentier didn't think there was time. And here came a moment of big moral dilemma, ethical dilemma for you as a person and an officer. Yes, it was hard. What did you decide to do? I decided to give her the money and tell her to move. Your money from your bank account? Yes. The Westchester detective loaned May $5,000 of her own money. May promised to pay her back. When prosecutors learned of it, they removed Detective Carpentier from the case. The defense they admonished her

would call it buying witness testimony. I said, I can't sleep at night knowing that if I wake up tomorrow morning, something happens to May and her children, and I did nothing. I am very grateful to her because if I didn't move when I did, I wouldn't be here today.

Almost a year after Ben's murder, Narcy was indicted and walked before the cameras of America's Most Wanted. She and her brother Cristobal were charged with racketeering and conspiracy for two murders, witness tampering, and a host of other charges. The plot that led to the death of Ben Novak was a family affair. When the trial got underway in federal court, Garcia, the hitman, testified in ice-cold detail how he killed Ben Novak Jr. So how did they get into the room? Narcy opened the door and let them in.

Prosecutors argued that morning there was a small window of opportunity for Narcy to let the hitman in and direct the assault on her sleeping husband. The victim is in bed. They get right in position. They signal, one, two, three, and then boom. Then the assault starts. And they're banging him in the head. Yeah, they hit him all over the head. They hit him in the ribs.

I mean, brutally. The two hitmen use small hand weights to pummel Ben. Narcy looked on. Then there is a point in time where I guess he's making sounds, The two hitmen used small hand weights to pummel Ben. Narcy looked on. Then there is a point in time where I guess he's making sounds, moans, and she tosses a pillow in to keep him quiet. Do they say that Narcy tells them to cut out his eyes? She did.

At mid-trial, the case against Narcy's brother was solid. A long trail of wire transfers, credit card receipts, and cell phone records connected him to the hitman. But for Narcy, it was primarily the hitman's word against hers. Until the jury heard about Narcy's secret cell phone. On the morning of the murder, Garcia testified that Narcy called her brother while they waited at a gas station near the hotel. Narcy makes a call from that phone at 6.39 in the morning to say, come on in, you know. Coast is clear. Coast is clear. That becomes huge because it's her calling Christabal to say, bring the killers in.

It puts her right at the top of the plot, the conspiracy. Yes. And there's yet another twist here. Would you be surprised to learn that there was another woman in this story? A person named Rebecca Bliss. You're looking mighty sexy today. Well, thank you. Bliss, a South Florida tattoo artist and sometime porn actress, was having an affair with Ben Jr.

He put her up in a nice waterfront apartment and told Bliss he was going to leave his wife for her. Narcy, the story goes, learned of the affair and called Bliss saying, if I can't have him, no one will. Six months later, he was dead and without eyes to ever look at another woman. This case was about money and it was about Narcy not wanting to be replaced. When defense attorney Howard Tanner put on his case, he zeroed in on the hitman's credibility and their motivation in testifying. He also attacked their allegation that Narcy was in the room during the murder. They themselves stated that they would do anything to help themselves. In my book, they would have been willing to lie. Is Narcy in the room?

Absolutely not. And how about the disturbing direction she allegedly gives him? Gouges eyes out. It just didn't happen. The defense also suggested that Narcy's daughter May could have somehow been involved in the murder so she and her sons could inherit Ben's estate. May Abad had Narcy Novak in her way. If Narcy Novak disappears, she takes and her children take under the will. Those are facts. So that's the defense. Jurors consider who's going to get this money here.

And it's not just Narcy Novak, it's the daughter here, May. There was an incomplete investigation done in this case. I'm not claiming that anyone else committed this murder. The defense here is that Narcy Novak did not commit this murder. Detectives concluded that May knew nothing about Ben's will till well after the murder. I didn't even know that my name or the boy's names were in this will. After a nine-week trial, Narcy and her brother were found guilty of racketeering and conspiracy in the death of Ben Novak Jr. and his mother Bernice.

They were acquitted of only one charge involving the theft of Ben's diamond bracelet. For the crime the conspirators almost got away with, the murder of Bernice Novak, the conviction carried a mandatory life sentence for both. The best part of it was that Bernice could finally rest in peace. After the verdict, Narcy spoke by telephone with Dateline from prison. She says she would never have done anything to harm her husband Ben and was innocent of all the charges.

Sergeant Terry Wilson and his team of detectives, the prosecutors, won their case with some big assists from May Abad. Now her mother is gone and will spend the rest of her life in prison. She didn't see what she had in front of her. She had her daughter. She had two grandkids that totally loved her. And now she has nothing. And greed and some amount of jealousy presumably is driving this, huh? Absolutely. No matter what, I loved my mother. She was my mother. She had grandkids that adored her, that would have done anything for her. And they did. And she just threw it all away. Threw it all away for money.

If you go to Miami Beach, the Fountain Blue is still there, all spruced up with a new lease on life. And May has a fresh new outlook on the rest of her life, too. Come here, buddy. A new little guy in her life, a son. She named him Ben after the lost prince. The namesake he never got to meet. That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thank you for joining us.