True Crime All The Time - Narcy Novak

Episode Date: November 6, 2017

Narcy Novak was born in Ecuador, grew up poor, and eventually made her way to American where she worked as a Stripper. Then she met Ben Novak Jr, a multi-millionaire, and her life would change forever. The two would eventually get married and Narcy would become accustomed to a wealthy lifestyle.But Ben Novak Jr was eccentric and would have a string of affairs during his marriage to Narcy. The marriage was turbulent to say the least and Ben would start having thoughts about ending it. He and Narcy has a prenuptial agreement that would leave with her with very little money in the event of a divorce. And as the marriage started to fall apart, this fact would loom large in Narcy's mind. She would resort to anything, even murder, to keep from being poor again.Join Mike and Gibby as they talk through the details of the bizarre relationship between Ben and Narcy. Narcy was very cunning and she started to make plans to ensure that she got her hands on Ben's money. The decisions that she would make would leave two people dead and destroy many more lives.You can help support the show by going to patreon.com/truecrimeallthetimeVisit the show's website at truecrimeallthetime.com for contact and merchandise information. We have new merchandise out on the store with the new logo. You can find the link to the store on both our website and on our Facebook page.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

one and welcome to episode 52 of the true crime all the time podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson and with me as always is my partner in true crime, Mike Gibson. Give me what's going on today, brother. 5-2. Yeah, episode 52. 52. That's a week. That's a week. That's a week. That'd be tough to do 52 episodes in a week. I guess you're not going to allow me to edit this one out. No. All right. Well, that's a year. fact that I asked you a question and you said, five two. Five two. I said, how are you doing, Gibbs? I'm doing good, man. Doing a little better than you. I am. I've had a, I've had a rough day. I will not lie. Yeah. But now that we're in the studio, we're recording. That's right. Everything starts to get better. Yeah. Because we like doing this. Get your Zen going or whatever.

Yang, yang. I'll get all that going. Yeah. Get that going. I get my chi flowing. Get your All right, let's do Patreon supporters. We've got new ones this week. Scott Minor, Catherine Brooks, Catherine. Susan Hyde. Yep. Karen Cohen. Alana Ali Reynolds. Sarah Parkhurst, Stephanie Cunningham, Jeney Moxie Cruz. Moxie. Got a lot of Moxie. Got like Moxie. And then on PayPal Gibbs, we actually had Jane, Cynthia Kelly, Rosie Gallagher, and Jane Huli. Really? Contribute.

That's a lot of people. Yeah, that's the most PayPal contributions we've ever had. And then we had our buddy, Lauren Sands, make a very special donation in a way that nobody ever has. It was something that she mailed to us. And it was amazing. Yeah. She caught off some of her hair, put it in an envelope.

Addressed it to Gibby. It said Team Gibby all over the envelope. Yeah. So. No, we appreciate that. We appreciate everyone. Patreon. PayPal, Lauren and her very special donation.

Yes. And then on top of that, all of our Facebook friends, our Twitter friends, our Instagram friends. No, we really do appreciate everybody. I mean, seriously. It means the world and all the stuff that you do on social media. That's what I'm saying. So last week's episodes, people really seem to like the Amityville crossover. Social media was crazy.

Tons are retweeting. Tons of sharing. So much going on. Oh, and before I forget. So hashtag Team Gibby. That was only, that was started because of Jessica and it was her birthday. So I just want to say happy 30th to Jessica. And she was going for a job interview.

Yeah, I hope she gets to. So we have to find out if she got that job. Yeah, yeah. We had our fingers crossed. That's the kind of people that we are bringing good energy. Absolutely. We want that, we want her to get that job. To our fans.

And I also appreciate Kristen because, aka Joan, AKA Mommy Dearest for kind of doing that Gibby K-bar shirt. Oh yeah, that was really cool. Yeah, that was really cool. So awesome. Thank you. Yeah. Maybe we'll get with her and figure out how to put some link on our website or Yeah. Yeah, we'll see how that works out. She was working on a Fergie design too. Yeah. We'll be as popular, but I appreciate it. You never know. I'll buy one. Got to use something to wipe my windshield off with. All right. So let's talk about Unsolved. When you're done with this, jump over. Check out Unsolved. We're doing the case of Molly Bish. Yeah. Disappearance, eventual murder. Yeah, sad story. It is a sad story. She had just finished her junior year of high school when she mysteriously vanished from her lifeguarding job.

Yeah. And this isn't any normal lifeguarding job, not like a pool. No, it's a little different. It's at a pond. Pond. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, somebody had access to her and it happened very early in her shift. But, you know, check that out. It's a very interesting story. I think you like it. And make sure you check out the website and our Facebook page. We've got some new merchandise in with the new logo, double-sided mugs, and we've got new mouse pads. We're still waiting on the T-shirts, but hopefully they'll be in soon. Had some bumps in that road trying to get the T-shirts ordered.

All right, Gibbs, you're ready to get into episode 52. We're talking about the murder of Ben Novak Jr. The episode is titled Narsi Novak. So it's probably not too hard to figure out where we're heading with this one. But we've got to start out talking about Ben because Ben Novak Jr. was born into money. And we're talking about the type of money that would ultimately make him a multimillionaire. Make change type of money.

You can do things. You can do stuff with this money. And he does. He does do stuff and we'll talk about it. But on a business trip to New York, Ben Novak Jr. is found dead in his hotel room. brutally murdered. And it's the investigation that follows into his death that is so fascinating. Because it's going to lead police down a path straight to his wife.

And when this whole story is unraveled, it's the reasons behind the murder that are fascinating. We know who did it. It's the why in this case. The why and the who? Yeah, it's a story about greed, sex, you know, all the good stuff, all the hits and murder. Because you've got to have murder in a story like this. If we're doing it. If we're doing it.

As Ben's wife, Narsi, she discovers that he's having an affair. And she starts to become increasingly paranoid that he's going to leave her. And the reason why she's paranoid is because they have a pre-nup agreement. So most women, you know, find out their husband's cheating on them. They just kick their ass out. And they should kick him out. Shouldn't be cheating on your lady, man. No, no way.

But because of this. This pre-nup, Narcy starts to become afraid that she's going to lose millions of dollars. And she's accustomed to this lifestyle at this point. And this is what leads her to make some really bad decisions. You know, that's that money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, makes you do some bad things. It really does. So she goes down this path and makes the decision that her husband has to die.

That's how she's going to ensure that she's going to keep all this money. Keep her lifestyle. She's willing to take a life to keep her current lifestyle. To keep her lifestyle. That's basically the long and the short of it. Yeah. But it's the shocking revelations that come out about how she did this. Right.

What she went through to do this. We already know what she did. And who she got to help her carry all of this out. Bizarre, man. So let's start off like we like to do Gibbs talking about the victim, who in this case is Benjamin Novak Jr. He was born January 19th, 1956 in Miami, Florida. His parents were Benjamin Sr. and Bernice Novak.

And Benjamin Sr. and Bernice kind of had this very interesting story. They had met in New York in the 1940s. But at that point, Ben Sr. was married to his first wife. He had grown up in New York. But by this time in the 40s, had already moved to Miami. But he went back a lot. He had friends. He had family.

And it's on one of these trips where he meets and falls in love with Bernice. It happens. It does. And I mean, she was flat out gorgeous. I mean, if you ever, if you see pictures of her from back in the day, she was a knockout. Now, I'm not saying that's a reason why you should leave your wife. No, no, no, no. But he was smitten.

Sure. Let's put it that way. And he pursued Bernice on multiple trips. But at first, she didn't want to have anything to do with him. You know, he was married at the time. She herself had a turbulent childhood. She was in foster homes. But she grew up to be a model.

Like I said, I mean, she was very pretty. And in New York, she posed for well-known painters. I mean, we're talking about like Salvador Dali. These are famous people. She worked for big brands like Coca-Cola. So, you know, she was doing all right for herself. But he wasn't about to let her go. I mean, he was so enamored with Bernice.

Ben Sr. that he actually divorced his first wife, flew to New York with the divorce certificate in his hand, and said, here it is. And they married in 1951. Just happened just like that. Yeah, that might have, might not happen that quickly, but the whole flight had that in his hand, just holding it, shaking. I was saying that for dramatic effect. Yeah. He gets there, here it is. She's waiting for him as he gets off the plane and he puts it in her face. Most women would be like, you're a little creepy dude. You know that you flew all this way with that in your hand. And you divorced your wife.

You divorced your wife. And then you to come show me the divorce papers. We haven't even went out to dinner yet. But Ben Novak Sr. This was kind of a guy that had it going on. He founded the legendary Miami Beach Fountain Blue Hotel and Resort. That's impressive. In the 50s.

Yeah. This place, especially in the 50s, We're talking about an oceanfront hotel was located on Collins Avenue right in the heart of what they called Millionaire's Row. Under where Tony Montana lived. Probably. Yeah. Say hello to my little friend. Yeah, you can.

I don't want to. I don't know what that invitation was, but I'm turning it down officially. So I don't even know where to go from that one. Sorry. So we're talking about this Fountain Blue Hotel. Yep. And back in the day, I mean, 50s, 60s, this was the hottest hotel in Miami. This is where all the big stars would stay when they were in town.

We're talking Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe. All the cool kids. All the cool kids were staying at the Fountain Blue. And you talked about Tony Montana. Right. So the hotel has been featured in a bunch of movies. Goldfinger, James Bombing. movie. Yeah. Scarface. Absolutely. With Tony Montana. That's right. And eventually it was so famous that it would

earn its own spot on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. That's cool. I mean, this is a really cool place. I've never been there, but did, you know, during the research, was looking it up, just an amazing place. Maybe, maybe they're, have you stay there now for plugging it in the podcast. In the podcast. It's still around. Yeah. You don't like oceans. I don't. I'm not a big ocean fan. Yeah. So probably not a good place for you to go. I'd like to go down to Miami and hang out. We should do a meetup in Miami.

We should. Maybe we've got to first start nearby, work our way out. It's one closer to home. Yeah. No, I want to go straight to Miami. But this glamorous environment, the fountain blue in the 50s, Sinatra, Monroe, all these big stars, this is where Ben Novak Jr. grew up. I mean, the family lived in a penthouse apartment of this hotel.

That's a pretty nice place to live. live, man. Seeing all these famous people, you know, your dad's hanging out with them. It's like the male version of Alois. I don't know what that is. Is it Eloise the little girl that grows up in the Manhattan Hotel, the kid's book? It probably is. That's not something that I would ever read or watch.

I might have the name wrong, too. I'm not sure why you even know about it. Had all these little nieces, you know. Okay. He's forced to watch. I'm not sitting there watching it by myself. You're just really trying to up your team Gibby likeability. And I think you just did.

I might be. I don't know. You pulled it off. But yeah, can you imagine, you know, living in this beautiful hotel, beautiful, one of the beautiful, beautiful place in the world, one of them. Not needing anything, really. I'm guessing if you're hungry, you call room servers. Yeah. Or go down in the kitchen and say, hey, chef, can I have a BLT?

Yeah, I mean, your dad owns the whole damn thing. Yeah, I mean. And then you're down at the pool and Sinatra's over here in his chair. Yeah. Ben Novak Jr. would say in an interview later that I saw that as a child, he remembered meeting every president from JFK to Ford. Really? Because they all stayed there while he was younger.

He got to meet every single one of them. Is that when JFK stayed with Maryland? It could have been. Because you know, that happened. No, it definitely. That could have been someplace where a little something, something happened. Yeah, a little private suite. So he saw all these presidents.

He met these presidents. And he talked about remembering his parents hanging out with the rat pack. So it wasn't just Sinatra. Yeah, it was Dean and Sammy. That other guy? That other guy that nobody ever talks about. Joey Bishop? Nobody can remember.

Jerry Lewis. Hey, you know, he ran around with Dean. He wasn't, he definitely wasn't part of the rap pack. They couldn't have stood him for more than like five minutes probably. Yeah, I agree. So this is like a magical time during the 50s and 60s. Yeah. But you get to the 1970s and both the Novak family and the Fountain Blue Hotel, they start to fall on a hard time.

Benjamin Sr. and Bernice, they divorce. Not long after Novak Sr. has to file bankruptcy in 1977. So as well as this hotel did, it started to go downhill for whatever reason and he had to file bankruptcy. Yeah, it was rough time for a lot of commercial buildings. The late 70s. Yeah, when you start getting the really super high interest rates. Yeah. But as part of the bankruptcy, the hotel was sold to a new owner for $27 million. This happened in 78. Wow, that'd be like $117 million today. I like it. I like it. So after the hotel was sold in 78, Ben Novak Jr., he launched his own company. It was called Convention Concepts Unlimited.

CCU. This was in 78. This company that he built was a convention planning business. And it was built primarily around just one company, one huge company. And strangely enough, we've talked about it on like two or three episodes in a row. And it's Amway. Amway, Grand Rapids, Michigan. You're talking about a retail giant with annual sales topping $8 billion. I mean, Amway is a huge corporation. Yeah, back in my early days when I was working for UPS, one of the big distributors, and I guess you call them distributors or within the chain or whatever. I don't know how that one. This story's starting out good.

Pyrid marketing kind of stuff works. But anyway, they were huge, man. Did you just call Amway a pyramid scheme? No, pyramid marketing. Is that what it's called? I don't know. Do you get people underneath? I don't know how Amway works.

I really don't. You get people underneath you. You go deep instead of. N-Y. Oh, okay. The more people, the more money. You make money off of what they sell? Yeah.

I didn't realize that's what it was. Yeah. But they'd probably say that's not how it works today or that's not, but that's- It may not be today. Yeah, back then it did. These folks lived in the city of Pickwell, Ohio, man, and they did really well. I mean, they actually had a commercial building just to store inventory to send out on a constant basis.

And they were millionaires. And they were far down the line from the actual Amway family. You know, I think there was two families. the DeVos, DeVos. The AMs and the Ways? Yeah, the AMs and the Ways. I have no idea. I can't remember their last days.

My AMWay knowledge is limited. You seem to know a hell of a lot about it. So the first time I went to Grand Rapids, Michigan, I stayed at the Amway Hotel, which was a very nice hotel. Are we getting paid in this episode to do a spot for Grand Rapids, Michigan? Because you've talked about it twice already. Grand Rapids, Michigan. We should get, we should get Amway as a sponsor.

We should, Annway. We've been talking about it a lot lately. Yeah. So, anyway. get, let's get back to Ben. He's, he's formed this company and basically makes all of his money planning conventions for Amway. And he did some others, but Amway was by far where he made all his money. That'd be like doing conventions today for that R&F that I see all over Facebook. What's R&F? Oh, Rodenfield or... Oh, Rodan and Fields. Yeah, Rodan and Field. Yeah.

That's huge, man. A lot of money be made there doing the conventions for him. Gotcha. I thought maybe you had started selling Rodan and Fields as a consultant. My skin look good. You actually look glowy today. I got longer eyelashes now. A little more than normal. But so Ben was planning all these major conventions and as a part of it, he had to fly to the hotels to oversee everything. Part of his job was not only to plan it, but make sure that as the convention was going on, that it all ran smoothly. That's kind of a cool job, actually.

No, it was because he wasn't married. He was able to travel all around. 70s. He was making a bunch of money. A lot of hooking up going on in the 70s. Probably wearing bell bottoms. Yeah. Some wide collars.

A little white, wide belt. Some white shoes, maybe. White shoes, yeah. Maybe a leisure suit. Might add one or two. I bet you he had a leisure suit. Yeah. So Ben Novak Sr.

He died in 1985 from heart and lung failure. He was 78 years old. But in the weeks and months leading up to his death, father and son, senior and junior, they were locked in this huge legal battle. And it was all centered around. the mental competency of Novak Sr. Ben Jr. had gone as far as asking a judge to declare his father mentally incompetent by saying that he was unable to handle his finances. And he had, you know, he had some money. Even though he had to file bankruptcy, you know, he still had some

money that he had made over the years. Oh yeah. I mean, bankruptcy is just there to protect your money. Depending on what you file. And that kind of type of money, I'm sure he had a good attorney. He filed the right way to keep most of his own money. But also involved in this fight was a woman named Wana Rodriguez. Wana? Wana. And Wana was a 30-year-old former Miss Uruguay. Oh, yeah. Or Uruguay, however you want to say it. I'll say it my way. I'll say it mine. All right. She had been living with the eldest Novak for about five years before he died. Maybe that's why you had heart problems. It might have been. And lung problems. He was getting a lot of workouts. Yeah. But she had been. But she was. She, Wana, had accused Ben Jr. of trying to steal his father's money, said that he was

over-sedating him, wouldn't allow him to see his friends. And after the elder Novak's death, this legal fight would go on for like two years over his estate between Jr. and Wana Rodriguez. One thing about Ben Jr. He was very eccentric. I mean, like way above you level. Really? Yeah, above Givie level eccentric. That's surprising. For one thing, he had one of the largest collections of Batman memorabilia in the world. Really? So he was making good money.

Yeah. And he was using that money to buy Batman stuff. He's big into Batman. That's more impressed than your cabbage doll collection. I know, my cabbage patch kids? Yeah. Keep thinking they're going to go up in value. I don't think so, man.

But he would eventually amass so much Batman memorabilia that it would fill up four warehouses. That is a shit. Like he had to buy four warehouses. You're gonna be kidding me. Just to put his shit in. That is nuts. But included in the collection was a real Batmobile. I would hope so. By that time, that many buildings. Like one that they had actually used, I think, in the show. Oh, back in the day of the, uh, you mean back when we had the pow wow. Oh yeah. This was before any, I think they restarted the movie franchise. Yeah.

This was like Adam West. Adam West type of. stuff. Whoever played the other guy. Robin? Robin. His actual name was actually, the guy that played Robin was Robin. Was it? No. I don't know he was. Man, give me just full of knowledge today. I'm a freaking encyclopedia. But not only so most people that would own something like that, yeah, they would just park it. Ben Novak Jr. He drove this thing all around town. Yeah. How cool was that, man. I mean, people would say, you know, there goes Batman. Yeah, I remember seeing him driving around town in his Batmobile. I wonder if he had the spotlight.

I don't know, but you got that kind of money, man. You might as well drive it. Who gives some rats? You know? Yeah. No, no, no, no, no. Again, remember, he's still single. There's a reason why now I understand.

He is into Batman, awful heavy. It might be a little problem with the ladies. But he finally gets married in 1991, and he marries a woman named Narsi, Narsi with an N. I don't want anybody to get confused. It's not Marcy. And he and Narcy move into this house and pomp and over. Beach, Florida, along with Narcy's daughter, May Abad.

Mayabon? Mayabon? Mayabon? Mayabon? May abod? I'll go with that. With a D. Yeah. Poppin, that's a nice area. I've been there. Yeah. No, no, it's great. Yeah. And they had a real nice house. Now, Narcy's real name was Narcisa Valise Pacheco. Oh, okay. That's how you knew her. Relate to that guy on the Star Trek show. Who? Check off. You're taking Pacheco. Yeah. Which is obviously Latin, or Hispanic and melding it with Chekhov, which you know is Russian. Sounds good, though.

No, it doesn't sound even close. She was born dirt poor in Ecuador. Now, they had actually met like eight years before. He met her in 83. And at that point, Narsi was working as a stripper. Oh, okay. Found in Ecuador? The way you said, no.

No, she's in the States, but she was born in Ecuador. I got you. I like the way you said, like, oh, okay. Oh, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. And Ben, he fell head over heels for Narcy. You know, while she was a stripper, showered her with expensive gifts, lavished her with all kinds of trips. But at the time they got married in 91, we mentioned it up front.

They signed a prenuptial agreement. And the terms of this limited the amount that Narcy would receive in a divorce to $65,000. Which even back then wasn't that great since you're married a millionaire. Multi-millionaire. Right. I think you have to put it in perspective, right? $65,000, a lot of money, but not when you're marrying a guy that's worth millions and millions of dollars. Right. That's like marrying A-Rod today and getting $120,000 if you divorced them. Pulled A-Rod right out of your ass. I did. But there was another stipulation to the pre-nup because she would only get the $65,000 if the marriage lasted at least 10 years. Wow. So this thing's pretty strict. That is. So in 10 years, you get $65,000.

She had a really bad attorney. I wouldn't assign that. She had no choice, maybe. It was either this or... Well, you either marry me and these are the terms or you don't. She had a little control there if she could have, you know. I don't know what you're getting at, Gibbs. I'm just saying she...

Won't you expand on that for us? You don't want to? No. Okay. In 94, we talked about Pompano, nice place. It is a nice place. But in 94, they buy a home in the upscale seven aisles development in Fort Lauderdale. It's even better.

even nicer place. Yeah. But we have to talk about their marriage because now we're really getting into the nitty gritty. It's not going to be a bed of roses. Maybe that's why there's a 10 year clause. It could be. I mean, maybe he thought, hey, I'm in love with this woman, but we don't get along all the time. May not work out. Now she wears clothes all the time. I've been part of it. But it was said they fought a lot. There was all kinds of accusations that he was a serial cheater. It was alleged that he an endless string of affairs during their 19 years of marriage. So they were married 19 years. Yeah. I don't know why I'm not surprised though. I'm just not surprised. What's not surprising? That he'd have affairs. No, no, I get that, but why? Because of the Batmobile? Yeah, being eccentric.

He was, yeah, very eccentric. I don't know. This was South Florida, man. It's a, it's a very, back then, but now too, but really back then. I mean, that was, you had a lot of Eastern European folks, coming over. A lot of Speedos. What are you getting out here? Yeah. Yeah, a lot of skin. A lot of dent of debauchery.

A lot of, uh... I don't know where you're going with this one. A lot of, uh, sex appeal going on. Okay. All right. A little Miami Vice. It's good stuff. I mean, it's not good stuff.

Gibby says thumbs up. Remind me we should get an ad, uh, tourism ad for, uh, Miami, Fort Laudanelle. Yeah. It'd just be, it'd just be an ad. of you with your thumbs up saying a lot of sex appeal. Yeah. But, you know, this goes back even further. This goes back to his days of pre-marriage, doing the conventions.

Remember, he's traveling all over the country. Sure. And it was said that he kept a little black book full of women's names and most of them were prostitutes. Apparently he had a name for all the different cities where he had. had these conventions, and he had a lot. Well, normally where you have conventions, you will have escorts, right? That's how they're going to make their money.

That's what they're there for. They're there for the convention or they're there for, to make some money? Well, no, they're there to make money. They're using the convention. They're used the convention. Yeah, I mean, it's common practice. You seem to know a lot about that too. I don't know.

I'm just, it's just marketing, marketing 101. You know, back when I was, uh, pimp, yeah, this is how we did it. Now at some point after the marriage, Narsi begins helping Ben out with the business. And later on, her daughter would as well, Mayabod. Narsi would often travel with Ben to the different conventions. But there was one thing that was known. There was no love loss between Narsi and Ben's mother, Bernice, because she's still a lot. Bernice was not happy that her golden boy son had married a stripper, plain and simple.

So she took offense to that, huh? Yeah, I mean, you have to think about Bernice. I mean, she was almost like royalty. She grew up tough, but she became a model. She became like this princess of the fountain blue, right? Hosting all these famous people. They were well to do. She was in her own little class. Yeah. So Ben Jr. was like going to grow up to be like them. Like a royalty. And then all of a sudden he marries a stripper. She didn't like that. There was even a story about one of the first times that Ben brought Narsi to meet Bernice. And allegedly, Bernice said that they could shorten the meeting if Ben was paying by the hour. Wow. That's what she told him.

Okay. So not only did she not like Narsi, I think she thought she was an escort. She threw that out there really fast, didn't she? To start out with. Yeah. So I think that tells you all you need to know right there about this dynamic between Narsi and Bernice.

Well, and that makes it hard for any relationship. marriage, right, when the mother-in-law's not jiving with the wife. Yeah, because Narcy was not fond of Bernice either, and why would she be based off of that stuff? But when you get into this type of money and power, I mean, you take that controlling mother-in-law to another level. So on June 10, 2002, we're fast forwarding a little bit, police were called to the home of Ben and Narcy for what they thought was a home invasion. And police found Ben Novak, he was gagged, tied to a chair. and he would tell the police that men had tied him up and that they had robbed him of over $300,000.

Wow. In cash and other valuables. There's a lot of cash to have laying around. That's a lot. Now, he said the men threatened to kill him. They had beaten him. But then Gibbs, things started to get very strange because Ben told police that Narsi had been there as well during this whole thing.

She was not tied up and she refused to untie him even after the men left. left. Yeah, that's a warning sign. It's a little, little warning sign that something might not be adding up. Adding up. And it was said that she left him tied to this chair for over 24 hours. That's even a bigger problem. But she gave him a portable urinal. So, she didn't want to ruin that to $80,000 rug. Yeah. So he had that going for him. Yeah. While he was tied to the chair. Well, I got one of those right now. So, well, we don't have time to stop the podcast. Yeah, just keep going, man. For you to take all these people. breaks. You don't. But Narcy's got to tell the police something. And what she would tell them is that

her and been, this was one of their sex games, but that wasn't true. In reality, she had hired some goons to rough him up so that she could steal some of his money. So she's trying to sell the sex game, what a bad? Yeah, the 24-hour sex game where you need a portable urinal. I guess he didn't have that safe word that you always say that you use when you do your word thing. Coliflower. Coliflower. Yeah. cauliflower. That's some sex game right there. 24 hours long. That's long.

Yeah. You need a portable urinal to make it through. That's a heck of a dominatrix. But as the police are there, Narsi is showing them some photographs that she said were from Ben's personal porno collection. I'm telling you, man, this is weird. This is weird. This whole thing is going very strangely. Now, she's trying to cover her ass.

It's like I'm going to have to take a shower here in a minute. You might. She's trying to cover. her ass because she knows she's about. Yeah, it's not good for her right now. Yeah. So she's showing the police all these pictures. And some of these pictures included naked women with artificial limbs. So I think Ben Jr. had some secrets in his closet. What do you mean artificial limbs? Like they're, they were missing a limb and they had an artificial one. Oh. So for whatever reason, that was something that he liked. Well, okay.

I'm waiting for your comeback on that one, but that's kind of hard. It is. It's kind of hard to even come back to that. And I don't want to offend anybody either. No, because, you know, whatever you're into, you're into. Yeah. But like we said, Narcy's trying to cover her ass. So she's playing this.

She's threatening to expose all of his fetishes. Right. To the police. I don't think that's illegal, though. No, it's not illegal. I think it was probably for him just something he didn't want to get out. More embarrassing, maybe for his family. Yeah.

Yeah. He just didn't, he didn't want that to get out. So incredibly, he doesn't, he decides not to press charges on her. Not that that would be embarrassing, but I'm just saying, you know. I get what you're saying. Yeah. To him, he might have thought it was embarrassing. And she tells the police another story about a time when Ben had beaten her up so badly,

broke her nose that he had to take her to a plastic surgeon. Wow. But when she woke up from the surgery, this is what she claims, she found that she had brand new breast implants and they were much, much bigger than what she would have wanted if she was to get breast implants. So according to her, he took this opportunity while she was out and in with a plastic surgeon to just say, you know, while you're in there, just go ahead and kick it up a size. Yeah. Well, maybe three or four. Yeah. And he was thinking, happy holidays, baby. Yeah. She wasn't. Got you something. If it really.

happened this way, she wasn't quite as happy maybe as he was about this whole thing. I'm sure a doctor would do that without her consent. It's very strange. Yeah. If you put this in a movie, you would laugh. You would say, you know, it's not plausible. You say, how could that happen? It never happened in real life.

And all of this caused Ben to file for divorce later that same month. I wouldn't stay with somebody that had me tied up for 24 hours and gave me a jar to piss in. No, things are going bad shit crazy. Yeah. I mean, in a pretty, now I think it's, there's a lot of stuff that's led up to this point. Sure. But that, that whole scene alone. I'm not hanging out.

No. No. But he doesn't stick with it. He rescinds the filing and they reconcile. That's weird. Well, it is. I don't know. Maybe they both had too many secrets on each other.

I must be. Maybe he thought she was going to expose his secrets and said, hey, I'll just live with it. I really don't know. Or sometimes love is blind, man. That too. But I don't think he's a happy camper, but he stays with her. And then in 2008, he starts having an affair with a woman named Rebecca Bliss. And Bliss was a tattoo artist. She was a stripper. She was a porn actress and a call girl. Wow. So she had a lot on her resume. Yeah, she really did. Now, Ben had met her through an online ad and they would start this relationship, like a real relationship, to the point where Ben set her up in her own furnished apartment paid for most of her expenses, but Narsi finds out about this relationship. And like we said in the beginning, this is what sets her down the bad path.

Because at this point, I think Gibbs, she thinks, okay, he already filed for divorce. He rescinded it, but now he's getting ready to move on. Right. He's got a new relationship. Yep. He's got a woman that he set up in an apartment paying for everything. He's about ready to leave me and I'm going to be left with. with $65,000.

Period. That's it. End of story. So over the next several months, Narcy sets about trying to sabotage this relationship between her husband and Rebecca Bliss. She tried to pay Bliss $10,000 to end the relationship. Well, that's not going to work.

Why would you take 10 grand to leave a plush apartment and this guy just dumping money on you all the time? Yeah. It's not enough. But Norsey probably doesn't have enough. Well, that's it. I don't think she has, she doesn't have control of the money.

I think it's part of the reason why she had to resort to that fake robbery. Right. To get the money. To get some money. But she would tell Rebecca Bliss, quote, if I can't have him, no other woman is going to have him. And then she called the FBI to say that her husband was arranging fake marriages as part of some immigration scheme. And she names Rebecca Bliss to the FBI as one of these fake brides. Well, that's one way to try to get rid of her.

She's trying everything, man. Yeah. She's a schemer. Right. And she's pulling out all the stops. Narcy's constant harassment of Rebecca Bliss would go into 2009. And she would call Rebecca's landlord to say that her rent was no longer going to be paid on the apartment because her husband had died. Her husband Ben had died, which is a lie.

He was still alive. So no doubt, Gibbs, she saw this relationship. as a serious threat. And she was going to sabotage it any way she could. Because she wouldn't have gone through all this stuff. Right. To that extent, if she wasn't really worried. But she's already tried just about everything.

Nothing has worked. Nothing has ended this relationship. And I think it's at the point where she realizes that she's losing this battle where things really start to get dark. She starts to begin to plot her next steps in 2009. And it's at this point where she makes two. fateful decisions. The first is that Ben has to die because that's the only way that she's going to be left with some money. The second was that Bernice had to die as well. Well, because the money

probably would have rolled up to Bernice. Exactly. So the thought is he's probably in the event of death left a bunch of it to his mom, especially at this point, he probably has even changed as will. I don't know that for a fact, but they're going through so many problems. Yeah, I mean, In a perfect world, you take out Bernice first, let him inherit all that, and then take out him, and then have yourself a little party. And Narcy would enlist her brother, Cristobal Valiz, to help her plan both murders. And not only did he help plan him, but he also recruited the hitmen that were going to carry these murders out. So the first step in Narcy's plan would occur in April of 2009. A hired hitman by the name of Alejandro Garcia was dropped off by another accomplice.

and he waited outside of the garage of 87-year-old Bernice Novak. So this is a hitman waiting in the shadows for her to come home. And he looks scary too, man. Yeah, if you see a picture of him, he's not somebody you'd want to run into in a dark alley. No. That's for sure. And when Bernice comes home, he ends up attacking her in her car, hitting her repeatedly with what he would later say was a big wrench.

He beat her severely. I mean, unbelievably. gruesome scene and he fled the scene just leaving her there in the front seat of her car. But this is incredible, Gibbs. This woman's 87 years old. She's been savagely beaten with some kind of wrench, you know, a pipe wrench, some type of big wrench. She's able to pull herself out of the car, get into her house. And it was theorized that Bernice even tried to clean up some of her own blood. Now, we've talked about some stories before where people are in such shock that they do things without even really understanding what they're doing.

And the one that comes to mind Gibbs is the Christopher Porco case where, if you remember, his dad walks downstairs, like fixing breakfast and making coffee. Normal routine going. All the while, I mean, he's dying. So this is kind of, to me, what is happening to Bernice, but she ultimately died, right there on the floor of her laundry room. And it's been Novak Jr. that would find his mother, Bernice, the next day, dead, covered in her own blood.

Blood was found throughout the house. You know, she had kind of walked through or crawled through the house. But didn't call anybody. No, didn't call anybody. And I don't even know if she would have been able to. A lot of blood found in her car. Now, when the autopsy's done, it would show that Bernice had suffered broken teeth, a broken finger, her skull had been cracked.

And like I said, this was brutal. This was a savage beating. But the Fort Lauderdale police and the Broward County medical examiner, they would make a huge mistake. They examined the crime scene. They looked at the autopsy results. And the medical examiner ruled Bernice's death an accident. An accident.

An accident. Broken teeth, broken finger, cracked skull. I mean, what they thought was that she had died from. a series of falls. That's kind of hard to swallow. Yeah. How you multiple falls like that. It doesn't make sense. Especially if you're looking at the car and see all the blood in the car. Well, and that's where I, that's where I get. Did she fall inside the car and then get in the house and continue to fall until she died? Yeah. Something's fishy there. It just didn't make any sense to me at all. Given the massive amount of injuries that she sustained and what was said to be a substantial amount of blood found in the car.

That just doesn't make any sense to me. You can't fall inside your own car. Well, even if you did. To cause that type of injury. Exactly. Ben was suspicious of her death from the very beginning, but he's never going to get the chance to really dig into it. Now, I don't know that he knew for sure that she'd been murdered, but if he had, maybe

he would have done something to better protect himself. If he knew what had really happened and who was behind all of this. Because with Bernice out of the world, way, Narsi starts to turn her attention to getting rid of Ben. And she believed that by committing these two murders, it would allow her to get the full amount of Ben's estate. At that point, it was valued somewhere between $8 and $10 million. So we're talking about a lot of money. That is a lot of money. Not enough money to kill anybody, which there's no amount of money for that. I said that came out kind of wrong. But it's a lot of money. Not enough money for you to kill some of that.

No, right. People have killed for a lot less. A lot less. A lot less. A lot. less. Snickers bar. Maybe. Maybe if they got hangary. Maybe if they, yeah. But Narsi also believed that not only she's going to get this estate, she's going to take control over Ben's company. And remember, it's making a big chunk of money every year. Yeah, doing all those conventions. So she's going and keep breaking that in as well. She's got this all planned out. I told you, man. She's a schemer. She's a schemer. And it's on July 10th, Ben Narsi and Darcy's daughter, Mayabod. They fly into Newark Airport. From there, they drive to the Hilton and Ryebrook, New York. It's at the Hilton that Ben had planned one of these major conventions for Amway. And like we said,

Narsi got into the habit of flying along and May was going to because they're both working with him, helping him. Ben apparently worked into the early morning hours of Sunday, July 12, not getting into bed until around 6.30 in the morning. That's a long night. Yeah. I mean, this guy's, you know, working his ass off. Around 7.15, Narsi would later tell police. This is her story, that at 715, she went out to get breakfast. When she got back to the hotel room, she found Ben. He was face down on the floor, covered in blood. He had been gagged and his hands were duct taped behind his back. His legs were also duct taped together. And Ben had been bludgeoned by some unknown object. And get this, his eyes had been slashed with some type of sharp instrument.

Why do that? That's vicious, man. Yeah, I mean, literally, like, almost like you're trying to cut them out. So you can never, ever see again. If you survive this, you won't be able to see. Now, normally that would mean something, right? That's, like, almost like some kind of mafia type message, maybe. Yeah.

Like, you saw too much or, I don't know. But Narsi calls the police. They get there about 7.57 a.m. And they find been dead. But police, they focused their investigation on Narsi from the beginning. Because you've got to think about it. Her own story says that Ben had been sleeping when she left. She went out to get breakfast.

She comes back around 45 minutes later. Now all of a sudden he's bound, gagged, and bludgeoned to death. Yeah, short window. Short window. How are they going to get in? All questions that are going to come up. And it doesn't take them very long. I mean, they're able to get the hotel records from the room.

room and they show that it had not been accessed by the key card prior to Narsi returning. That's what's so different about today's hotels. In the old days, you have a key. Nobody knows when the hell you come and go. Right. But not today. And I don't know if everybody knows that or not, but it tracks everything. It tracks everything.

Time, date, stamped, all that stuff. So that was the first kind of inkling that, you know, something might not be right here in Who'sville? Where'sville? Huseville. Because pretty quickly, I think police are starting to build their theories. And one of their theories is that maybe Narsi had let someone into the room to murder her husband prior to her leaving to get breakfast, right? Because there was a 45-minute window. And they would interrogate Narcy for 12 hours after the murder. That's a long time in the interrogation room.

I don't have anything to do with opening the door intention for anybody. I have I love my husband's back. I love my husband. Just a short clip of her in the interrogation room, basically her saying, you know, I didn't have anything to do with it. I didn't let anybody into the room. And you can hear at the end say, I loved my husband.

So she's putting on a good show. She's trying to be convincing. And I didn't have this part of the interview, but at one point she actually makes the statement, only a monster can do this kind of evil thing. But some of the things that she does tell police in this interview is that her husband had made enemies over the years through his business dealings. And she actually had a number of examples where Ben had butted heads with people in business, government officials, a lot of people in different cities, right? He's doing all these conventions.

You know Gibbs. Shit's going to come up. Oh. And you're going to have to be a hard ass about something. You're going a lot of big cities where there's union, union contracting going on and all that. So you've got to be, yeah, you're going to have some issues. So chances are he got into some verbal scrapes with people over that many years. And then there was Ben's Batman memorabilia coming back around to that.

So that big collection and she talked about all these, she called him sorted people that Ben dealt with related to this collection. You know, he was buying stuff from people. And one person in particular, one story in particular that Narsi told was about Ben dealing with this man that had come to their house in Fort Lauderdale. This was some kind of comic book collector. And Narsi said that Ben gave this man a huge amount of cash straight from the house. So he must have some big safe. He gave those one, those guys $300,000.

Sure. Ultimately went to Narsi. Right. But he kept a lot of money. money in the house. That was no. And he gave a bunch of it to this guy to buy some Batman collectibles. Sure. Probably was his buyer and said, here you go. Get me these things at the next auction that you're going to. Yeah. Or he already had them. Maybe he already owned them and he was buying them. Either way. But she was doing everything she could to point the police in a bunch of different direction. But they're not buying

any of these stories from Narcy. And they asked her to take a polygraph test the day after the murder. and the results came back that she had been deceptive on the questions related specifically to Ben's murder. So they're very suspicious of her, but they didn't have enough evidence, right? Her being deceptive on a polygraph ain't going to do Jack Squat. Can't do nothing with that. They don't have a smoking gun to tie her to the murders. They would have to continue their investigation, build a case. Smoke it out.

But they would find one interesting piece of evidence at the crime scene. And it was a broken piece from a pair of like knockoff sunglasses. This was found inside the hotel room. And when they showed this to Narcy, she tried to claim that these were from her sunglasses. But again, that doesn't add up. So you got a $10 pair of sunglasses. And she's saying that there were hers. A millionaire would wear a 10?

That's what I'm saying. Nobody believed that she would wear those. That she would wear these cheap knockoff sunglasses. Because this was a woman of very expensive taste. Right. She was used to all the good things in life. She could afford to buy the real thing. She'd have the Gloria Vanderbilt song.

Yeah, maybe. I don't know with that. I'm thinking back then, that was a designer back then. I don't think so. Not sunglasses. Didn't she make jeans or something? I mean, like outfits? Yeah, they design it all, man.

You seem to know a lot about women's clothing, women's apparel. Yeah, you know. It's important to know about it so you know how it operates. So you know how what operates? The clothing. What are you talking about so you can get it off? Yeah. You're giving out way too much information player.

Player, big baller. Now about a week after the murder of Ben Novak, police in Miami Springs, Florida, they receive a letter. And this letter is written completely in Spanish. And the letter was unsigned, but it stated that Ben and Bernice Novak were murdered in a plot, masterminded by Narcy Novak in an attempt to get all of his money. Really? They get a letter written in Spanish that basically lays all this out. And I just find it amazing that somebody did that.

And not only that, but the letter goes on to state that Cristobal Valise was also involved. He helped arrange the murders. So this letter writer knows the truth, knows it all. Yeah, it's a tell all. And police would eventually figure out that it was Narcy's sister Latire. Tisha Taruno that had written a letter. So she ratted her out. It was a tell law. It was. You were right. Yeah.

It's just shocking that it was her own sister. Well, thank goodness her sister had morals. Unlike her sister. Unlike Narcy. Yeah. Because Narcy didn't have none. None. Her sister did. Did the right thing. So after Ben's murder, Narcy does some things that make her look very suspicious. She tried to sell Ben Jot very quickly.

Get some quick cash. Get some cash. She emptied out. Three of the storage units that were full of his Batman memorabilia. Sold those off fast, huh? Yep. And probably one of the most brazen things she did was she was able to con her way into the safe deposit boxes of both Ben and Bernice. Wow.

Conned her way in because a bank employee would later state in a deposition that Narcy conned her by saying her husband would be at the bank. that day to vouch for her. There was no way for that bank employee Gibbs to know at the time, Ben was already dead. At that point, he was already in the morgue. Right. So I'm guessing the bank employee lost her job. I would have to think so. She got con pretty bad. Yeah, that's pretty bad. I don't know how you allow someone that go in to the safety deposit box to be validated later. Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and get some stuff out. Hubby's going to come by later and said, yeah, It's okay. Whatever she did and took, it's good.

We're all swell. We know banks have pretty tight regulations. Very much. Yeah. It's not a wing it type of operation that they have going on there. There's no wink, wink. Yeah, we got it. Don't worry about it.

And Narcy's own daughter, she was very suspicious of her mother from the beginning as well. She would actually come out and publicly state some of this. And this would create a huge riff between the two of them. And it's three days after the murder, the two of them, Narsi and May, they fly home to Fort Lauderdale. Narsi, ahead of time, had already hired a bodyguard and given the bodyguard instructions to keep May out of the guesthouse. This is where she lived. But May and a friend, they went in anyway. They were going to get some of her things.

They were going to leave. When the bodyguard or the security guard or whatever you want to call him saw this, he alerted Narsie. and she came at her own daughter with a crowbar. This is how bad things got. That is bad. In the matter of two or three days. In this house, we said it was a nice house, expensive home. It was wired with security cameras.

So all of this was caught. That's good. And what you can see on the security footage inside the guest house, you can see Narsi holding a crowbar. And then a subsequent confrontation occurs in a room where there were no cameras, but May's story to police is that Narsi hit her with the crowbar and May was able to block it with her arm. And she had the injuries to back this up. She had the bruises and all. She had a huge bruise on her arm where you would have one if you were trying to block a crowbar.

Self-defense wound. And police would take photos of it. They would document all this. Narsi and Cristobal Valiz, they start to realize that things are tightening around them. The new is tightening. And they start to panic because in the fall of 2009, Viles allegedly hired someone to kill Alejandro Garcia. The scary guy. The scary guy. And the thought was is that, you know, he knew too much. And both Narsi and Valiz were worried that he was going to turn on them and testify for the prosecution. Now, the hit never went through. Never happened. Alejandro lived. Well, probably the guy they sent after him. I'm upset. Took one look at him and...

Hell no. I'm not messing with this guy. Hell no. But later on, Narsi allegedly tried to bribe Joel Gonzalez not to testify on behalf of the prosecution. So they're either thinking about killing people or bribing them. Bribing, yeah.

And Valiz would also try to bribe Gonzalez later into saying that Maya Bod had been the mastermind behind the murder. So they first tried to bribe him and say, hey, don't testify against us. because he knows he was involved in this, and we're going to talk about why here in a minute. Then they switch gears. They try to get him to say that it was all May Abad. She wanted all the money.

In July of 2010, the FBI arrested Narcy, her brother Cristobal, and the two hit men, Alejandro Garcia and Joel Gonzalez for the murder of Ben Novak Jr. This was almost exactly a year after the murder had occurred. At this point, right before the murder, the arrest was made. Authorities were so worried about the safety of Mayabad and her two sons, they thought Narcy was going to take her out and maybe both of May's sons. Crazy enough, I think she would have. I think she might have. So what they did is they kept moving them around. They were relocating them to different places throughout the country to try to keep them safe.

Good old witness protection. Kind of, yeah, like a mini witness protection. Suzanne, we're learning that one of the men, Narcy Novak allegedly hired to kill her husband, is now working with the U.S. Attorney's Office. However, Narcy Novak's attorney says he's not worried about that. My client continues to assert her innocence. We've pled not guilty. Still after her court appearance in federal court in White Plains Thursday, Narcy Novak went back to her jail cell. Novak is accused of hiring three men to kill her husband, millionaire Ben Novak Jr. It happened at the Rye Town Hilton Hotel in July 2009. The couple was here on a business trip.

Now there's word that Gonzalez may be cooperating with the U.S. Attorney's Office. The attorneys for all the other defendants were in federal court today for a status hearing. But Gonzalez's attorney wasn't there, raising eyebrows. I don't know again whether this person is cooperating or not. But if he is, I don't believe that he'll be able to do anything to hurt my client. She continues to assert her innocence. But prosecutors said today they're planning to expand their case against Novak. They believe Novak, as well as her brother, were responsible for plotting the beating death of Ben Novak's mother, Bernice Novak.

She was found dead in her Florida home three months before Ben Novak was murdered. At first, her death was ruled accidental, but now investigators say it was a homicide. The trial of Narcy Novak and her brother, Cristobal Valle, Valle, began in 2012. It lasted nine weeks and featured more than 200 hours of testimony. So what the prosecution stated was that Narcy Novak, along with her brother, hired two hitmen to murder both Bernice Novak and Ben Novak Jr. And again, I don't think this is a stretch, Gibbs, but the prosecution's theory on motive was that Narcy feared that Ben was going to divorce her and that that pre-nup agreement that we talked about, it was going to keep her from all those millions of dollars that the estate was worth. The prosecution would state that Narcy let Hitman and. to the New York hotel room where her husband was sleeping and watched as the two men murdered Ben.

But they said that not only did she watch as these two men viciously beat her husband to death, she ordered them to cut her husband's eyes out. I mean, this woman's cold. This just shows you the level of hate disgust that she had for him, that she felt she needed to have his eyes cut out. bad enough that you're paying two people to kill your husband in a brutal way. We're talking about beating him with barbells. Yeah, that's not a, that's not a quick, it's a painful way to go. Yeah, that's not a quick and easy death. And then you've built up so much hate maybe. I think you're

right that you want his eyes cut out on top of that. I mean, really, if you think about it, it's a really sloppy hitman. Real hitman would never do it that way. No, because they wouldn't, uh, they wouldn't, uh, they wouldn't go to the truck. They'd do it the easiest way possible. Absolutely. With less ways to have any signs of evidence. Yeah. So it's just,

thugs. I don't know if these were real hit, man. Yeah, you're right. They were thugs that they hired. Scary-ass thug. Oh, yeah. Don't get me wrong.

So if he's out there today, hey man, it's all good, dude. Givby says we're good. We're good. I got my K-bar, though. Yeah, I don't think he's out there because this trial started in 2012. Right.

He's out there. We got something seriously wrong with our United States justice system. And both Garcia and Gonzalez would take the stand. And they would testify that they'd been hired by Christobal to carry out the murders. Garcia testified how he ambushed Bernice Novak in her driveway, beat her with a heavy wrench like we talked about. And they both testified that Narcy Novak let them into the hotel room and gave them the instruction. on how to beat her husband to death with barbells, then to cut out his eyes. I mean, imagine this testimony as a juror.

You'd be shocked. That's what you want to hear, though. They even said that Narsi handed them a pillow and said, you know, put it over Ben's mouth to muffle his screams as you're beating him to death. She was a ringleader. And cold. I mean, that's the word that keeps coming back to me. I mean, she was cold.

Ice. Ice, baby. Vanilla. Miami full circle. Is that the tie-in? That's, we brought it full circle. We did. But there was a third accomplice.

And this was a man by the name of Dennis Ramirez. He would end up pleading guilty for his role as the driver. But he would state that he didn't know he was driving these guys to kill somebody. He thought there was a robbery. So he's not innocent in it all, even if he's telling the truth. Just the level of, yeah. Of what they told him. You know, what he testified to was that he drove Garcia and Gonzalez to Brooklyn ahead of the murder.

He said that he was paid the whopping sum Gibbs of $100. Wow. For his role. $100. Somebody said, I'll pay you $100, drive these two guys to Brooklyn. Now, would you do that if you thought you were doing it for a murder? So I'm going to go to Brooklyn? For $100?

Yeah, like a rap song. No Sleep Till Brooklyn? Yeah. Okay. I wonder if they were team in that. on their way over. I'd love to really know how it plays in your head. It's pretty scary. Because it can't play correctly because you don't know the right words to it. But it's in there. It's in there. Like, no, please. Yeah. Bown-a-and. Is that how it? Sort of. Yeah. It's just kind of foggy.

Yeah, the words don't come out right. Right. Yeah. So anyway, this guy got 100 bucks to pick these guys up and take them to, wow. To the murder scene. Well, and not only that, he goes on to tell the jury that he bought a cell phone, he borrowed a friend's car, so he knew he was doing something shady. He's already in the hole, man. He's got to buy a cell phone. I mean, he's not managing. Managing his money very well. I'm sure he bought a burner phone for $15 or $20 or however much there.

Yeah, I'd want $100 plus expenses. Plus the burner phone. That's right. And eventually, you know, he dropped these two guys off at the hotel around 3 a.m. that morning. And the prosecution, they were able to produce cell phone records. that showed Narsi called her brother from the hotel at 6.39 a.m. Why is she calling her brother at 639 a.m.? Interesting. Right? To coordinate. Hey, head it out. Head it out. Let's get it moving. And the prosecution

would tell the jury that they thought it was shortly after that phone call that she let the two hitmen into the room to kill her husband. And this guy Dennis Ramirez, he also testified Gibbs that after the attack, he drove the two men back to Brooklyn where Cristobal Valise was waiting for them. So that's a lot of work for a hundred bucks, if you ask me. He really doesn't understand value. Time, time value. Poor guy. The value of time. No wonder he was broke.

And it would come out from the prosecution that Narsi paid these two hitmen that morning with her husband's diamond bracelet. because it was missing and $100,000 in cash that she had taken from his company. So this is how she paid to have her husband murdered. Another key witness for the prosecution was Rebecca Bliss. She testified that she was having an affair with Ben Novak Jr. She talked about how Narsi had offered her the $10,000 to end the relationship and how Narcy had been harassing her at every turn over a long period of time. Narcy Novak did not testify at trial.

Her defense attorney, Howard Tanner, and I think he was the guy that you heard on one of the previous clips. He said that she had nothing to do with the murders. The prosecution had no evidence to prove that she did. And he would also say, and this is a quote, the puzzling thing is that prosecutors are making deals with people who are admittedly involved in the murder of Ben Novak. and they are going after Narsi who had nothing to do with it. They are making deals with a variety of devils.

So pretty good strategy, I think, gives, for what he has to work with. Yeah, and I get what he's trying to sell. She didn't do anything. She didn't touch the guy. She didn't hit him with the dumbbell. She didn't do that. These guys did all the bad stuff. She's innocent.

But she was the ringleader, man. But you go down as a ringleader. Yeah, but what he's saying is you're making the deals with the guys that have said, yes, we killed him. Now, I agree with you. She was the ringleader. But what else, what other tactic could he use? That's probably the best he could come up with. Yeah, I don't think he could do anything better to try to defend her. Narsi's defense also tried to sell the jury on the fact that it could have been May Abad, who had orchestrated both murders. But I don't think the track record is there that she had issues. No, the track record is not there at all. But what they

argued was that it was really May Abad and her two sons that had the most to gain by the deaths of Ben and Bernice. There was a lot about May Abad and her relationship with Ben Novak. I mean, he really liked her, like, considered her maybe like his own daughter. So there could be something there that as the relationship with Narcy started to deteriorate, maybe he did switch some things over. in favor of May and started to cut Narsi out. But I don't have that. I didn't get those facts. That's just a theory on my part.

And Narsi maybe found that out too. Because, I mean, May's out there. She talks a lot about, you know, what happened and how much she cared for Ben, even more so than her own mother. I think she knew that her mom was a psychopath. Evil. Evil. And she thought Ben was a great guy.

I mean, in every interview that she's ever done, I mean, she talks about him in glowing terms and talks about her mom in not so glowing terms. Yeah, that's telling right there. Yeah, I mean, that tells a lot when your own, your real daughter is talking about you in a way and then the stepdad is the good guy. The evil woman. And then you had Christobal Valise. He testified, denied any involvement in the murder plots, but he would get a

on the stand and also follow suit blaming May Abod. So it's like they had all kind of formed a pact saying this is our strategy. This is the only thing we have. We're going to try to shift all the blame on the May. If Christabal and Narsi can prove that it's not them or make the jury believe it wasn't them. That's such a that it was May. You still, you have the two hitmen that have already admitted to it. Now it's really about who orchestrated it. But it's just a stretch for them to think that anybody would buy. No, I completely, I'm just saying I think you get enough doubt that it could have been, we don't know, was it the mom, it could have been the daughter, we can't find him guilty because we have reasonable doubt. Yeah. I think that's what they were trying to do. And Brian Narcy Novak keeping the

sensational trial interesting right down to the last second, literally as the jurors were about to walk in the courtroom and read the verdict, Narcy Novak announced by whispering in her lawyer's ears, she refused to talk directly to the judge that she was about to do something unusual. Leave the courtroom and listen to the verdict from a pen in the outside hallway. So pretty unusual. Yeah. I think she knew she was cooked at this point. Right.

And she just didn't want to sit and listen to them, tell her what she already knew they were going to say. I don't know about you. I mean, that's the only thing I can come up with. I think the reporter sounded pretty excited about that news, by the way. She was breaking it, man. Yeah, she really was. It was breaking news. She was better than San Diego's best news anchor ever.

San Diego. San Diego ends. So the jury deliberated for three days before coming back with the guilty verdict for both Narcy Novak and Christobal Vallez. They both received guilty verdicts on multiple counts, plotting the murders, domestic violence, stalking, money laundering, and witness tampering. Got them for all. They got them on a bunch of stuff. The one thing that they had to acquit both Novak and Vallees on was the actual charge of felony murder, right?

They didn't commit the murder. They got them on all this other stuff, plotting the murder and all that. And the prosecution asked the judge to give both defendants a life sentence, stating, quote, they engaged in the very worst criminal conduct imaginable. And Narsi wasn't even in the courtroom when, the judge handed down the sentence either. So she wasn't in there for the verdict. She said, you know, I'm not going to listen to the sentence either.

But the judge's quote was great. It said, because of Ms. Novak's greed and her selfishness and what she thought was her ability to manipulate other people, there are two innocent people, her husband and her mother-in-law who are dead. At the end of the day, she's a coward. So again, pretty, pretty apt description. I don't know if he was speaking, I think he was speaking of all of it, including the fact that she wasn't even willing to sit there and listen to spoiled, greedy. The verdict and the and the sentencing.

Yeah. But you're right. She got spoiled. Yep. And then she got greedy. And then she turned deadly. Very deadly. Now, in a separate trial, Alejandro Garcia, he got 210 months in prison.

210 months? Months. months. You're trying to calculate that into years? Yeah. Do it look like I have a headache right now? Yeah. Like you just slurped down a big icy? Yeah. Just kind of know how many more years he got till he gets out. We got to relocate. It's not 20 years, right? Because that would be 240 months. Yeah. So you got shy of, you know, a couple years shy. You got 17, 18, whatever it is. Yeah. I'm not a math wizard like you. I can't do all that in my head. Yeah. 16.8. Yeah. But okay. But he has. But he has. You know, actually committed the murders.

Just doesn't seem long enough. Right. Now, I'm sure that was a reduced sentence because of his cooperation in testifying against Narcy and Cristobal. Right. Joel Gonzalez, he got 10 years in prison for his role. And then Dennis Ramirez, we talked about this driver that got paid $100. He got sentenced to time served for his role as the driver.

But in the end, he ultimately served about two years. It's a pretty good stretch for... For a hundred bucks. For what he did, especially if he really didn't know what was about to happen. Yeah, I would think he'd have to be really stupid to take a hundred bucks if he knew what was happening. Well, like he said, he said he thought it was a robbery. Yeah. So he knew he wasn't doing something good.

Right. Yeah, I mean, he deserved to get what he got regardless. But what he said was, I didn't know it was a murder. Yeah. Whether you believe him or not. So that's it. Gibbs, that's the case of Narsi Novak. She's a bad woman.

Nightmare. Bad seed. Bad something. Bad Mammajama. Bad Mammah. All right, we got some voicemails. Let's play those. Hey, Mike and Gibby.

This is Jacqueline from Dallas. You also know me from Twitter as LSU Tiger Jack. Just wanted to call in say hello and to let you guys know how much I love listening to your show. I'm listening to you guys. interact and also interacting with you guys on social media. I've just really enjoyed listening to your show and being a part of, being a part of your group there. So keep up the good work, and I'm not going to bug you anymore, I promise, about the

particular serial killer that I would like for you to cover. I was just going to leave it at that. But, yeah, you guys keep it up and stay safe and keep your own time ticking. Bye. LSU Jack. Tiger Jack. Tiger Jack, yeah. She's pretty witty on Twitter there.

Yeah, she's awesome. Huge supporter of the show. Yeah, love it. And the person that she wants us to cover is Derek Todd Lee from Luzana. Yeah, we touched on him slightly as a suspect in one case. Right. But we are definitely going to do him. I just don't know when.

Yeah, we're good. Might have to move it up for her. And we're willing. For her, we do it. For her. Yeah. Hi, my name's Bernadette, and I'm calling from Maine in the U.S. And I wanted to let you know that I found your podcast a couple months ago, and I've burned

through 50 episodes and no time. And I tell my friends about your show. I love the chemistry between Mike and Givie, and I hope you guys keep up the good work. It's a great show. Thanks. Love that voicemail from Bernadette. Yeah, she burned through. Real, man.

We love that binging, right? We love people who binge. And then on top of that, we love people that tell their friends. Absolutely, man. It's an awesome thing, and I appreciate that so much. Hey, Mike and Gibby. This is Ben from Vancouver, Washington. I recently found your podcast, and I've been binge listening.

I just got through the Q&A episode, and I just had to call and tell you guys how funny that was. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. You guys should make up stickers that say, Mike knows more. more about everything. And of course, free gifts. Really enjoy the show. Looking forward to to Gibby being on criminology this week. I've been listening to that as well. Just really appreciate you guys. You're doing a great job. Oh, and I don't, I'm not on social media, but if you guys are ever out this way, buy your dinner and drinks, Portland or Vancouver. Take your easy and keep it

going, man. See you. All right, Gibbs. I like Ben. Ben the binger. He's binging. He also knows that I know. I know everything, which I appreciate. But you already knew that you. I knew. I knew it. You knew that he knew that. Yeah.

Because you know everything. I know that you know that I know that you know what you're saying. Yeah, you already knew where I was going with it. I did before you even said it. That's the problem we have. And he knows that you like free gifts. And I like steak and wine. And beer.

And beer and bourbon. So we're all in. We're all in for that. Yeah. All right, Gibbs. That's it for another episode of true crime all the time. So for Mike and Gibby, stay safe and keep your own time ticking.