True Crime Campfire - The Heir: The Murder of Ben Novack Jr. Pt 2

Episode Date: July 24, 2026

In Part One of this story last week, we followed the rise to riches of hotel owner Ben Novack Sr. and his glamorous model wife Bernice, and the spoiled yet lonely life of their son Benji. When we left off, Ben and Bernice were divorced, and Benji’s own first marriage had just ended. He had just gotten together with an exotic dancer named Narcy, a choice that would eventually have disastrous consequences for everyone in Benji’s life. This week, things get nuts. Visit quince.com/campfire for free shipping and 365-day returns! Join us live at Wet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camp in Equinunk, PA, September 10-13th! Visit ⁠badmagicproductions.com⁠ for more info and to buy tickets.   Tickets are on sale now for CrimeWave 2.0! Visit crimewaveatsea.com/CAMPFIRE to get your discount code for $100 off your cabin and a private meet-and-greet with us! The cruise is Feb. 8-12, 2027. Sources: The Prince of Paradise, John Glatt https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/alejandro-garcia-sentenced-white-plains-federal-court-17-years-and-six-months-prison https://www.justice.gov/archive/usao/nys/pressreleases/December12/NovackVelizVerdictPR.php Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/truecrimecampfire/?hl=enEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Hulu original series Furious is coming to Disney Plus, starring Emmy Rossum. Furious follows FBI agent Alice Black on the hunt for a mysterious and calculating serial killer. Both walk their own paths toward justice, and as their lives start to intertwine, the line between right and wrong begins to blur. Don't miss the three-episode premiere of the Hulu original series Furious on July 27th, only on Hulu on Disney Plus. Wendy's 99 cent Frosty is back, and Frosty farmers couldn't be happier. Made with Canadian dairy, they grow up cool, creamy, and mighty thick. It's farm to Frosty.

Get a small 99 cent Frosty until longest second. And participating Wendy's Texas Extra. Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction.

We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. In part one of this story last week, we followed the rise to riches of hotel owner Ben Novak Sr. and his glamorous model wife, Bernice, and the spoiled yet lonely life of their son, Benji. When we left off, Ben and Bernice were divorced, and Benji's own first marriage had just ended. He'd just gotten together with an exotic dancer named Narcy, a choice that would eventually have disastrous consequences for everyone in Benji's life. This week, things get nuts. This is Part 2 of the Air, the murder of Ben Novak Jr. As Benji was first getting together with Narcy, his father, Ben Sr. was having a rough time of it.

He held an auction of font and blue furnishings and memorabilia to raise money. Thin and frail, he told a reporter, I hold my weight down because I have no money to buy food. But just a couple minutes later, he said he had enough money to be comfortable for the rest of his life. Things like this were happening more. and more, Ben contradicting himself and being unable to remember what he'd just said. In fact, he had plenty of money. Before being forced to sell the Fontainebleau, he'd stashed a fortune, both in offshore accounts and with his older sister Lillian. The claims of poverty were probably

a reflexive reaction to worries about the IRS. Ben, along with his much younger beauty queen girlfriend, Wana, moved south to Boynton Beach to try and turn it into a resort town. As he rather ominously told the Miami Herald, it looks like a lovely area for good, clean exploitation of nice people. We're here, we're full of ego and ready to go. What a thing to say. His big idea was completely bonkers. Just buckle up for this. He sunk over a million dollars into converting an abandoned ANP supermarket into Alcatraz, a prison-themed restaurant, bar and nightclub. I am not making this up. Guests were booked. We're booked. in and had their mugshots taken by staff dressed up as prison guards and then

or taken either to tables which were in cells where they had to sit on toilet seats or to no contact visitation boots with wire mesh separating the guests. After dinner, guests would go out into the yard where Ben had built an enormous pool table sunk into the ground so guests could stand on it and play with croquet mallets instead of cues. And this is the best part. Every now and again, alarms would sound through the whole place as if someone was trying to escape. So you'd just be sitting there eating an, eh, mm, mm, mm, fun. It's so close to being kind of a cool idea. But like, the more you list off, the less appealing, it sounds like, you start, you're like, okay, you get your, you get your mugshot taken and you go in.

The mugshot part sounds fun. Super fun. Like, your, your booth is actually a, cell, ooh, fun, but you're sitting on a toilet. It's like a nightmare Casa Benito without the cliff divers. Yeah, it doesn't particularly sound like a good time to me. There were people made curious by just how bizarre the place was, but that's not exactly a sustainable model. I mean, who was this for? Ben thought he knew, saying, we built something we think will be for the everyday public, because, you know, what Middle America really wants is to have dinner while sitting on a toilet seat in a prison cell while terrifying, ear-bleeding alarms go off at random. Who doesn't love that, right? He should have gone all in and hired someone to try and shiv guests when they went to the bathroom or something.

Or, you know, snipers maybe trying to shoot people as they try. It was completely nuts, although obviously, obviously, yes, I would like to play croquet on the giant pool. table, who wouldn't, okay? But I love that this is what Ben thought regular people, TM, would like. Yeah, like, what do the pores like doing? Hmm, I don't know, going to prison? Yeah. You're lucky you didn't go to prison, you'll fart of tax fraud. Ben was convinced he was on to a big thing. Already had plans for an Alcatraz franchise with three more locations across Florida, but to the surprise of no one except himself, Alcatraz was a spectacular failure. Ben, now using a wheelchair, essentially retired afterward and lived a quiet life with Juana, with Bernice visiting every day to

make sure he took his meds, because I guess the young wife wasn't doing that. In October of 1984, Ben Sr. signed power of attorney over to Benji and moved into a nursing home after a leg surgery. He was almost certainly also suffering from dementia. Benji's priorities were probably not his dads because he right away sued to recover gifts and money Ben Sr. had given to his girlfriend, Wana, and to prevent her from contacting him. What the hell? There was a brief, ugly legal fight between the two over who should care for Ben, which ended the following April when he died of a stroke and a heart attack. Wana promptly sued Benji for half a million dollars for slander after he claimed Ben Sr. had paid her for her companionship. They settled out of court for an undisclosed amount. Ben's will gave comfortable monthly payouts to Bernice and Benji, along with millions of dollars, although he was so secretive and scheming about where he kept his money that the exact amounts will remain mysterious. Also, we've barely mentioned him because he doesn't impact this story at all,

but you might remember from last week's episode that shortly before their divorce, Ben and his first wife had adopted a two-year-old boy. Ben's involvement with the life of this kid, Ronald, went no further than giving him a reception job at the fontainebleau, but Ben didn't forget about him in his will. Ronald was now mentally ill and often living on the streets. Ben left him exactly one dollar in his will, just to make sure he couldn't contest it. Wow, father of the year. Benji's convention planning business, meanwhile, had taken off big time, raking in big bucks as he, with Narcy by his son. traveled to hotels all across the country. He made money, but no friends, because he was always rude, always complaining,

and this just got worse after his father died, and Benji didn't have to worry about money anymore. But he always paid hotels promptly for hosting his conventions, so managers across the country had to calculate how much of his shit they were willing to put up with just because he made them money. The answer was they'd put up with him for years, but not forever. Eventually, Benji would be almost,

entirely blackballed from the English-speaking convention scene in North America, just for being a dick. But his company still thrived among Spanish speakers because Narsi translated for Benji and softened his words. Now that he had money, Benji liked to spend it. In 1987, he spent half a million dollars on a speedboat he named White Lightning and would cruise up and down the intercoastal waterway. After her boob job, he'd have Narcy stand on the front of the boat in her bikini like a busty figurehead showing her off to people on the shore. They'd been together four years at this point and seemed to mesh together well. They were an unusual couple, the millionaire who'd grown up in an unimaginable luxury

and the former stripper from a South American dairy farm. Not that Narsi stuck with her actual past for long. She now claimed to come from a wealthy family and said that when she'd met Benji, she'd been working as a successful fashion designer in New York. Not shaking her ass at Follies International with big Fannie Annie and the rest of the girls. It seemed weird to a lot of people that Benji stuck with Narcy. Most of his relationships with showgirl types had been very short-lived. Narcy had an edge to her that made her exciting,

but the big thing was probably that she was willing to do things Benji's other girlfriends were not. Somewhere along the journey from weird nannies to buying, new boobs for every woman he dated, Benji had developed an interest in BDSM and other kinky scenarios. Obviously, these are things most couples keep private, so we don't know everything that went on, but they generally involved Benji being restrained, sometimes on a particular chair in the bedroom, while Narcy fooled around on the bed with other partners, both male and female. For whatever reason, anyway, his relationship with weird, sexy Narcy was apparently what worked for Benji. It wasn't the only thing that worked for him, though.

He always had other girlfriends. Ben's mom, Bernice, predictably, hated Narcy on sight. She'd always been on the lookout for anyone she perceived as a gold digger, and from her point of view, Narsi might as well have shown up in a minor's helmet with a shovel in her hand. Yeah. But with Ben's previous girlfriends, Bernice had had influence because she was where he got his money. That was no longer the case.

Bernice was as nice as possible to Narcy because if she wasn't, she wouldn't get to see her son. Bernice kept busy. She'd become involved with the Science of Mind organization, something which can apparently be a little culty in some congregations, but not the one Bernice visited in Bocetone. She did a lot of work for the church. Also, in her early days at the Fontainebleau, the hotel had employed a hairstylist, Manny Bucola, and Bernice had become good friends with him and his boyfriend. Bernice and Manny were now both in their 60s, and for decades, he visited her once a week to do her hair. In 1987, Manny was diagnosed with AIDS and quickly became really sick, dying several months later. Oh, man.

Bernice became involved with AIDS charities, which is to her credit, because there was still a lot of stigma around the disease in the late 80s. Yeah. She also got a job doing books for her son's convention company, mainly so she could spend time with him. Another new employee of Ben's was a guy named Joe Gandy. Gandhi was a contractor Ben hired to build an extension to his house, and after that work was done, Ben hired Gandhi to handle his affairs. And I mean, literally, to handle his affairs. Ben usually had at least three girlfriends on the side, each with an apartment and allowance that he paid for, and it was Gandy's job to deliver cash and whatever else they needed. Furniture, groceries, whatever. Can you imagine? It's just a wild. I've got my dad.

different mistresses all in their different little apartments and you got to go take care of them, give them their flowers or whatever bullshit they're asking for this week. It's just crazy. Despite his girlfriends, in 1991, Ben and Narcy got married. She converted to Judaism beforehand, but not sincerely. She still openly practiced voodoo in the house. Excuse me? Maybe that's the least surprising thing about her is that she was a voodoo practitioner. Oh yeah. Yeah. And believe me, Narcy's version of voodoo was not nice. Well, it wasn't nice. Ben was much wealthier now than he had been the first time he'd gotten married,

and he insisted on a pre-up. If he and Narcy got divorced within 10 years, she'd get nothing. After 10 years, she'd get a single payment of $65,000 if they divorce. Fuck that, man. This doesn't seem like much of a reward for marrying a millionaire, but Narcy was certainly aware that the pre-nup would be superseded by the terms of Ben's will. Of course, that would only come into play if he was dead. Shortly before the wedding, 35-year-old Narcy became a grandmother.

Her 16-year-old daughter, May, still living in Naples with Narcy's sister, had a son. A couple years later, she had another. Narcy and May did not get along at all, and Narcy hadn't seen her daughter for years at this point, but she couldn't get enough of her grandbabies, so Narcy got May a job with Ben's company. May and her mom never reconnected, but she did build a relationship with Bernice. who felt sorry for her and who could not get enough of May's stories about how much Narsi sucked, I bet. Ben and Narsi moved into an enormous new house in Fort Lauderdale, with Ben's speedboat tied up on the water out back. They also bought the adjoining property and used it as offices for Ben's business, which meant there was a lot of direct back and forth between work and home,

so plenty of people got to see the dramatic fracturing in their relationship. Narcy correctly thought Ben was cheating on her and her accusations often erupted into big screaming arguments that sometimes involved them smashing up the furniture in their new house or jumping into their cars and chasing each other at high speed through the streets. You know like you do. For most couples, fights like this would be huge relationship defining things, but not for Ben and Narcy. This was their normal. This was just foreplay for them. In 1999, Bernice Novak, now 78 years old, started thinking her daughter-in-law was trying to poison her.

She'd put a bottle of water in the mini-fridge she had at work, but when she started drinking it, she noticed a slight, weird taste. She drank it anyway. Soon afterwards, her throat swelled up. She couldn't speak and couldn't swallow. Bernice had had asthma her whole life and thought she was going to die. There's no way to know whether Narcy actually had anything to do. with this, but Bernice wasn't the only one in the office that was suspicious of her. Joe Gandy wouldn't eat or drink anything she made. A couple of times Ben went to the hospital from eating her food, he said.

It was a dangerous fucking situation. As the people close to him started to worry that his wife had it in her to be a murderer, Ben Novak Jr. started focusing on something more important. Batman. Since the Batman TV series first aired in 1966 when Ben was 10, the character had a firm grip on his imagination. With the 90s movies and animated series, Batman was a big deal once more, and for the past few years, Ben had been building up a collection of comics, toys, and memorabilia.

And hey, if you're stupid rich, there are plenty of worse things to spend your money on. As the end of the century neared, Ben got serious about his hobby, aiming to amass the best Batman collection in the world. I call it his hobby, but really this became like the main focus of his life, where most of his energies went to. He was particularly interested in the vintage stuff from the time of his own spoiled, miserable childhood, but he wasn't restricted to that.

Boxes of Batman stuff arrived every day, and soon he had Joe Gandhi rent a warehouse to store it all to keep the house from filling up. He had a warehouse of Batman stuff. He also had Gandhi build a Batman museum in the house for his favorite pieces. I don't think there's anything wrong at all in having a collection,

but I do think that collecting something with an emotional link to your childhood has the potential to be kind of melancholic, you know, it's a little, hmm. Ben Jr. had been a sad, lonely kid, and for all of his hard-driving business deals and adventurous sex life, he was still kind of a sad, lonely man. He'd call up dealers and collectors to talk about Batman for hours. In 2001, as their marriage neared its 10-year anniversary, things between Ben and Narcy were approaching a breaking point. Despite cheap, on her throughout the entirety of their relationship, Ben had been absolutely devastated to learn that Narcy had had an affair. And if you listened to Part 1 of this story last week, that might

sound familiar because it's exactly the dynamic that Ben's dad had with his mom before their divorce. That always just floors me. Like, how do you, what's the internal dialogue with yourself about that? I wonder, like, you are doing the same thing. I don't understand. What do you say to yourself. It's just bizarre to me. I think cheaters have to like have like twist their mind so much to justify the affair that like they have to demonize their partner. And then when their partner does the same thing, they just kirk out. Their brain can't handle it. I don't know. Yeah. It's like, well, I'm only doing it. Yeah. I'm only doing it because I want the sex. But you're probably like in love with this guy or something, and that's worse.

You know, whatever it is, but it's some, like, mental gymnastics for sure. It's crazy. Having been married for 10 years, the pre-nup Narcy had signed guaranteed her 65,000 if she hadn't been divorced. But she'd been living large for almost 20 years now, and that just wasn't going to be enough. There's no shortcut for saving time, but saving money is simple. Just combine your car and home insurance with Bel Air Direct and save.

Get a quote at bellairdirect.com. know that moment when everything feels in sync? That's Bacardi's vibe. Canada's number one white rum, a rum born from a rhythm, set to a soundtrack of laughs, loud music, and looks that say stay a little longer. Because weather pouring an ice cold majito or a classic Bacardi and Coke, you're opening the door to the party that lives in everyone. So, consider this your invite. Bienvenito at La Fiesta. Bacardi, do what moves you. Tap the banner to shop now. Live passionately, Drink responsibly. On a Saturday night in June of 2002, Ben and Narcy went out to dinner, then came home and went to bed.

At around 1 a.m., three armed men burst into their bedroom. Ben usually slept with a loaded Smith and Wesson revolver on his nightstand. And as he scrambled for it, he heard Narcy shout, Look out! He has a gun on his nightstand. Oh, shit. She's yelling too. Oh, my God. One of the men pinned Ben to the bed, another held a pillow over his face, and the third smacked

around the head with the butt of his own gun. They handcuffed his wrists together, blindfolded him, and tied him to the leather chair that sometimes featured in his sex games with Narcy. Oh, Lord. The intruders held Ben captive at gunpoint for 25 hours, letting him pee in a disposable urinal, the kind of thing you might be given if you have to stay in the hospital.

This was already in the bedroom because Ben would use it if he had to pee at night so he wouldn't wake up his cats without getting out of bed, which I don't know about. I mean, I love my cats, dude, but go to the bathroom. Your cat will go back to sleep. Yeah, I'm not peeing in a plastic bottle for anybody. Man, feline.

No. With Ben bound, blindfolded and terrified, Narsi told him to behave where she'd cut off his dick and throw out in the canal behind the house. Okay. Jesus. With Ben under guard, Narsi ransacked the place. She took nearly half a million dollars in cash out of the same. safe, took jewelry and heirlooms, business documents, guns, and the prize picks from the Batman

Museum. She packed up all her clothes and shoes, and then, 18 hours after the home invasion, called her yoga teacher and asked her to come over and help pack up some boxes. The yoga teacher, Rada, was dog sitting for Ben and Narcy's neighbor and came over to help, and soon Ben could hear boxes being loaded onto a truck. After that, Narcy came up and took off his blindfold. Ben begged her to untie him. Narsi said she'd call a neighbor soon and have them come over and release him. Then she looked Ben in the eye and told him, If I can't have you, then no one will have you.

The men that helped me will come back and finish the job. I can have you killed any time I want. You're not dead now because I stopped them. Then she gagged Ben with duct tape and left. This is so romantic, isn't it? This is beautiful, man. At around 1.30 a.m. on Monday morning, Narsi once again called her yoga teacher and asked her to go over to the house and move some stuff out of the hallway so the maid wouldn't throw it out when she got there. She's sending her friend. Like, this just blows my mind. Now, obviously, this was a big ask, but Narsi was a wealthy client, so Rotto went over. Upstairs, the bedroom door was open, and she saw Ben tied to the chair with duct tape over his mouth. His eyes like, why? and terrified. After Rada freed him, Ben begged her not to call the police because he was sure the invaders were watching the house and would come back and kill him if they saw the cops arrive. Then Ben called his mom and asked her to come over right away. As soon as Bernice arrived, a deeply freaked out Rada got the hell out of there as quickly as she could. She'd soon make plans to get out of the city altogether. Do not blame her. I cannot believe she sent her over there.

No. Ben called his friend Charlie Serator, who had recently retired from the Miami Beach PD and frantically told him what had happened. Charlie told him to call the cops, which Ben did, but he insisted that no uniformed officers come to his house, no marked vehicles and no mention of the attack over the police radio. He didn't want any forensics personnel to come to the house either. Now, obviously, this put the police in kind of a bind. They didn't have detectives and unmarked cars available at two. in the morning. All the police had was a phone call from Ben with no evidence that anything had actually happened, so Ben would have to wait until morning. Around 10 a.m., a pair of discreet detectives arrived to interview Ben. It was clear he had been bound and smacked around some. He demanded they find an arrest Narcy immediately. They put out an alert for Narcy's car, but nothing much happened for the next two days, and a frustrated Ben hired a PI, Pat Franklin, to find her. By now, Ben had spoken to Narcy several times on the phone and had changed his tune.

This is unreal. He told Franklin he wanted both Narcy and his money back, and if he got them, he'd drop any prosecution. Yeah, you heard the first part of that correctly. He wanted Narcy back. Now, every relationship is different. But if your spouse has goons break into your home and beat you and bind you while she steals everything she can, I just feel like that's a deal breaker. That's well over the line for me. There's no coming back from that. To try and untangle what was going on here, we first have to look at Narcy's police interview,

which she came in for voluntarily. She initially said she'd bound Ben to the chair as part of their usual sex games, and afterwards just decided to leave him there while she robbed the place, although she claimed she only took $5,000, plus her own property. When detectives pressed her on inconsistencies in her story, Narcy, with no embarrassment at all, admitted, yeah, she'd been lying to him, and that Ben's description of what had happened was more or less the truth.

Yeah, she had threatened to cut off his dick and throw it in the canal, but she never would have done it because she was not that nasty. You know, nasty enough to threaten it, but not nasty enough to do it. Narcy told the cops that Ben had been abusive to her for years. Their tempestuous relationship

may have sometimes been violent in both directions, but some of her claims were just outlandish. Like, she claimed Ben, had sedated her against her will, and when she'd woken up, she had bigger boobs. And she quite cheerfully showed the detective some of the documents she'd stolen from Ben. When Ben had been a boy, his father had been involved in lots of charity events held at the Fontainebleau, some of which involved young amputees with prosthetic limbs or on crutches having their pictures taken in bikinis by the hotel pool. This connected with young Ben in some deep way, and over

the years, he'd built up a huge collection of pictures of amputees, usually with prosthetic limbs. I mean, this is a thing. There were both men and women, and only some of the pictures were at all like pornographic, but nevertheless, it was clear that the collection represented a pretty significant fetish. I think they called them devotees. There's a whole, this is a whole fetish. Ben's PI, Pat Franklin, convinced Narcy to come talk to him at a coffee shop and then call Ben from the phone there. Franklin spoke. to John Glad, whose book The Prince of Paradise, was our main source for this case. So I put her on the phone, Franklin said, and she begins to sob like a baby, giving him baby talk,

and I'm scratching my head because I can't believe what I'm hearing. Narsi sobbed it, she was sorry, begged Ben not to send her to jail. And when I hang up, Franklin says, her tears dry up and she winks at me. And I'm like, what the fuck is this? She winks again. She's a bullshitter, and she's letting me in on her secret. Jesus, Jones, this woman. After the coffee shop, Narsi took Franklin to a storage unit where she was keeping the stuff she'd taken from the house. She made a point of showing him Ben's special photo collection.

When Franklin called Ben to tell him he'd found his property, the first thing Ben did was ask if Narsi had shown him any photographs. Franklin said, yeah, she had. I'm not interested in that anymore, Ben said. She's blackmailing me over this. Mm-hmm. And that seems to have been the case. Ben had quickly filed for divorce after the home invasion, but just a few weeks later, he and Narcy signed a notarized agreement that he would drop the divorce.

Narcy would stop repaying the money she'd taken. They'd resume their relationship, and certain private items would be kept private. Years later, Narcy's daughter May would say that an unwritten part of the agreement was that Ben pay Narcy $6,500 a month if he didn't want his fetish to go public. Ben's old school friend, Kelsey Grammer, offered People magazine an additional, and I think accurate reason for Ben letting Narcy back into his life. He was terrified of her. No shit, I can imagine. So unbelievably, just weeks after she'd hired goons to beat him up and rob him, Ben and Narcy were back together.

They were soon acting like nothing had happened at all. I think it had to be because he was scared of her mostly, because surely, like tons of people have weird. fetishes, right? Like, just, who cares if she tells people about your, like, that's tame, you know? I don't understand why he would be that freaked out by, like, okay, so I like looking at pictures of amputees, BFD, you know, especially like really rich people. Like, everybody assumes that, like, the fabulously wealthy, all have weird kinks. Okay, we just know this already. So I can't imagine that was enough for him to let this absolute viper back in his house. So, yeah, he must have just been scared to death of her. Yeah, the other stuff was way weirder. Like,

Like him watching the surgeries. That's weirder. That's way weirder. But, you know, maybe in his head it was like so verboten that he was like, no one can know. I don't know. Yeah. I guess so. And I guess maybe early 2000s, it would have been a little bit more of a scandal or something. But, I mean, it's not like Ben had like a wide circle of friends or like, you know, like, who's going to know or care? I don't know. That's weird to me. Right. You're right. In January of 2006, Ben turned 50.

and for the first time made a will, which would supersede his pre-up with Narcy or any other agreement they had. We don't know whether Narcy was still applying blackmail pressure, or if Ben somehow still didn't recognize her for what she was, but the will was a deadly, dangerous document. Narcy would get essentially everything if Ben died, unless his mom, Bernice, now 83, was still alive. In that case, Bernice would inherit the vast majority of the family wealth, and Narcy would only get $200,000. So now, if Bernice died, and then Ben died too, Narsi would become a millionaire. Bernice was having a rough time. Ben was still more reliant on her than anyone else for emotional support. He'd call her in the middle of the night to complain about Narsi, and if the two of them

were having a fight, he'd call his mom to come over and help. It was exhausting and stressful. Bernice would tell a friend almost every day. I never thought my life would be like She was prescribed Xanax and had an oxygen machine next to her bed because of chronic asthma attacks. She started sleeping in her clothes because she might have to go to the emergency room and she didn't want to have to go there in her nightgown. For Ben, part of carrying on like normal meant having girlfriends on the side. And at the start of 2008, after a big fight with Narcy, he went on to an escort website and got in touch with an attractive 40-year-old sex worker named Rebecca Bliss. Rebecca's life had spiraled into some strange places since 2002, after her marriage broke up and she lost custody of her seven-year-old daughter. As someone who'd loved tattoos all her adult life, she moved to Florida to work as a tattoo artist.

But she soon owed thousands of dollars in child support and moved to California to work as a porn actress under the name Mona Love. Mona Love. A couple of years featuring in movies such as housewife willing to do anything and mommy blows best. which 10 out of 10, that is good stuff. Evened out her finances, she retired from the biz and moved back east to work again as a tattoo artist. But not long after that,

her boyfriend shot her three times, including in her right hand, which ended that career. She moved to Miami and started advertising her services as a sex worker online. She and Ben met for coffee and then went to bed afterwards.

He saw her a lot over the next few months, then asked her to move to Fort Lauderdale where he'd pay for her apartment and all her expenses, including $10,000 in new furniture as long as she gave up escorting. She agreed. Soon, Ben only came over for sex every once in a while, but they talked on the phone for hours every day.

They were falling for each other. Ben asked Rebecca to be patient, saying he'd soon divorce his wife so they could be together openly. Now, this is something that's been heard by plenty of women having affairs with married men, but Ben actually meant it. he began the groundwork for divorcing Narcy. Narcy knew something was up.

She went through Ben's files and found the receipts for Rebecca's new furniture, which enabled her to track down her husband's mistress. Narcy quickly discovered that Ben was planning to divorce her. Narcy's first reaction was to try and ruin their lives. She met with the FBI and first claimed that Ben was using his convention business as a cover for a green card scam and was planning to marry Rebecca and another woman off to wealthy

Iranian businessman. Now that is a story. Damn, she's got an imagination on her. A couple of days later, she was back at the FBI, this time claiming Ben was using his private jet to smuggle cocaine in from Mexico. The FBI logged both of these accusations but didn't investigate them

because they thought Narcy was full of shit. Surprise, surprise. Narcy started calling Rebecca. alternating between screaming at her and offering her thousands of dollars to stop seeing Ben. Rebecca said no. Ben's new mistress and his plan to divorce Narcy made everything happen more quickly. The financial situation was that if Ben died but his mom Bernice was still alive, Narcy would get $200 grand.

If Bernice was also dead by the time of Ben's death, Narcy would get millions. But if Ben divorced her, Narsi would only get that $65 grand promised in the pre-nup, and Ben would certainly change his will to cut her out of it. So to Narcy, this offered her a straightforward plan. Kill Bernice and then kill Ben, and she'd be fantastically rich. She recruited her older brother Christobal, working as a baker in New York to help her. Christobal apparently had no hesitation at all in joining his sister's plan for a double murder. For a few months at the end of 2008, Narcy called her brother every day to tell him about Bernice and Ben's movements and activities,

is so creepy to me. In December, Christobal came down to Miami and hired a guy to drive him around and follow Bernice's tan infinity. Cristobal asked his driver if he'd be willing to hit an old lady in the face for money, but he said no, good for him. Wish he'd gone to the cops too. Christobal's story was that Bernice was telling Ben to beat Narcy every day and also helped him drug Narcy for one of the boob jobs that she was now insisting had all been done without her consent. Oh boy. That's that's the wildest story that NRC came up with in all of these to me. So you're saying his elderly mom helped him drug you and transport you to a plastic surgeon who was willing to perform a surgery on an unconscious, unconsenting patient.

Jesus. It's just bizarre. Like I'm sure there are probably doctors that awful somewhere in the world, but not many, you know? Not many. Christobal had made friends with guys working at a car wash, and soon there was a new employee that seemed like a promising prospect. Alejandro Garcia was a 33-year-old man from Nicaragua, a stocky guy with a scar over his right eye, which had been blinded with a machete. Yikes. He wore sunglasses all the time because bright light gave him headaches and made him dizzy. He was also a crack addict with a petty police record as long as your arm. And you can discern Garcia's moral compass from the fact that when he was asked if he'd beat up an old lady for cash, he said,

sure, if she's an old lady, it'll be easy work. Garcia would insist he was just hired to injure Bernice, but come on, Narcy got nothing if Bernice was just scared and hurt. He was hired to kill her. On March 28, Bernice visited the downtown Bank of America in Fort Lauderdale, but tripped on the uneven sidewalk outside, falling face down and cutting her face. She was pretty banged up, but refused when the bank staff wanted to call her an ambulance. Then wanted to sue the bank. Narcy was delighted because Bernice's new record of falling would provide some cover for her murder. On April 3rd, Christobald drove Garcia to Bernice's house, where they waited.

Garcia chugging through two bottles of rum to work up his courage. When the sun started to set, Garcia skulked out of the car and hid in the bushes. They knew from Narcy that Bernice left her car in the driveway, all day in case she needed to go somewhere, then brought it into the garage at night. This is exactly what she did, coming out of the garage in a blue nightgown and getting into her car. As the Infinity moved into the garage, Garcia crouched and followed it in. Bernice opened the car door to get out and Garcia rushed forward with the wrench held high. Bernice screamed. Hit her in the face. She fell back into the car and Garcia leaned in,

holding the steering wheel with his left hand and beating Bernice with the wrench, hitting her more times than he could remember. Then he wiped his fingerprints off the steering wheel and left. The first blow had fractured Bernice's skull. The second broke her jaw and knocked out some teeth. After Garcia left, she shifted in and out of consciousness. Eventually, she managed to stand and stumble into the house, locking the door behind her. There was a panic button on her security system, but before Bernice could reach it,

she collapsed onto the floor, and within minutes, she was dead. Man, man. The next morning, an early-rising neighbor immediately suspected something was wrong. In the pre-dawn gloom, Bernice's garage was still open, with the lights still on. A little later, the neighbors went over. No one answered the door. Looking through the windows, they could see the lights and the TV were still on. Bernice was an elderly lady who had recently had a fall.

They were worried about her, so they called Ben. He and Narcy were quickly there. Ben led himself in and found his mom dead on the floor. Totally distraught, Ben called the police. Narcy just stood there in silence. The police and the medical examiner completely shit the bed. Yep. They determined that Bernice had fallen and hit her head getting out of her car

and managed to stumble inside where she died. Her death was ruled an accident. Ben was shaken up, so Narcy took charge, arranging for Bernice's body to be cremated within 24 hours, of it being released before her friends and family were told. This woman's skull was fractured. This woman was missing teeth. Multiple blunt force trauma.

Like, what the hell were they thinking? This just blows my mind that they ruled this in an accident. So you think she fell and broke her teeth out and hit her skull in multiple places? What in the hell is wrong with you? That is some Bushley bullshit right there. He hit her so many times. he can't remember how much he hit her, and she has that many contusions on her head. Yeah.

Like, come on. Just ridiculous. It's so gross. A memorial service was held on Friday with a cheerful Narsi seating the guests like they were at a convention. She died her hair red as a tribute to Bernice. For the reception afterwards, she had hired a country and Western duo and got up there and sang with them. Bernice hadn't liked country music, but Narsi did. Good God, this woman is a freaking ghoul.

Ugh. She's throwing a party. She's literally throwing herself a party. Unbelievable. And died her hair red? What? He's wrong with you. Oh. Ben was not at all convinced his mother had died in an accident. He hired investigators to look into the death and they agreed the Fort Lauderdale authorities had done incredibly shoddy work. But before his own investigation could move any further forward, Ben was in trouble himself. With Bernice out of the way, Ben's life was all that stood between Narcy and an even greater

fortune than before, as Ben had inherited his mother's $2 million estate. Again, Narsi and her brother Christobal spoke on the phone every day, plotting Ben's murder. They decided they'd have a better chance of getting away with it if Ben were killed in another state, and in early July, Ben and Narsi would be at the Rytown Hilton in New York organizing a Spanish-language Amway convention. Christabel decided to go back to the well and hired Alejandro Garcia once again. I actually think they would have been much better off doing this in Fort Lauderdale because we know that the Fort Lauderdale police at the time were absolute trash, but whatever. The fact that Amway is part of this, by the way, like we could do a whole series of episodes on Amway.

Like, y'all, that is a rabbit hole in and of itself. According to Garcia, the initial plan was to beat up Ben and cut off his balls. leaving him disabled so that Narcy could run the company. This didn't make a whole lot of sense, as although it would have been incredibly traumatic, a castrated Ben would obviously still be competent. But Garcia was not a complicated man and believed whatever Christobal told him.

Knowing that Garcia had a 13-year-old daughter back in Nicaragua, Cristobal told him that Ben had a factory that made prosthetic limbs for children, which he traded in exchange for sex with underage girls. Garcia hated Ben, and he was also getting paid $15,000. Before things got really bad, Ben had one happy day when he finally got his Batmobile. This was a fully functional, custom-made replica of the car from the 1966 TV series made with castings from the original. Ben had spent several years and over $100,000 having it made, and in May it was finally delivered. He was like a kid on Christmas morning, but he had spent several years and over $100,000 having it made, and in May it was finally delivered. He was like a kid on Christmas morning, but he was, only ever got to drive at once to the gas station a couple blocks away. Alejandro Garcia hired someone else to help him assault Ben, a friend named Joel Gonzalez, who had just lost his food truck job.

Christobal told Garcia that now, instead of castrating Ben, the plan was to blind him instead. This was Narcy's idea. Garcia had no problem with this, but Christobal told him to keep it a secret from Gonzalez, who had no real idea what he'd signed up for, just that the three of them we're going to do some kind of crime. Dude, just some advice.

It's very important to clarify your specific responsibilities before accepting employment. Are you going to steal some bicycles or are you going to raid Fort Knox? Kind of important to know what you're getting yourself into. Right now, for a limited time, everyone's part of the Buick team, even you. Buick's employee pricing for you event is on now. Get a purchase credit of up to $3,168 on. a 2026 Buick Envision. Surround yourself with signature Buick refinement

from an available massaging driver's seat to an expansive panoramic moonroof and a stunning ultra-wide 30-inch diagonal screen. Don't miss Buick's employee pricing for you event. Visit buick.ca for more details. Some things are better when they're kept simple, like simply lemonade made with real lemons and cane sugar, giving you a fresh, all-natural taste

that shines through in every sip. It's the kind of drink that turns an everyday moment into something a little more special. Bright, refreshing, and crafted for people who appreciate the real thing. Visit the chill juice aisle in your local grocery store today and say yes to Simple. On July 9th, Ben and Narcy flew into JFK and got a cab to the leafy village of Rye Brook, where they went to the Hilton. Narcy's daughter, May, was already there and would be liaising with the hotel. The next day, Garcia and Gonzalez visited the hotel, familiarizing themselves with the layout and the location of the suite where Ben and Narcy were staying. Before arriving and leaving, they were caught on the hotel's security cameras.

The Amway Convention was a huge success, with far more attendees than anticipated. More people for the cult. Yay. Ben and his crew worked long days. Ben operated his business on a cash basis as much as possible. His company collected maybe $100,000 in registration fees every day of the convention, which was kept in an employee's room safe. On the night of July 11, Ben and Narcy had a late dinner and then went to their suite. Narsi went to bed, but Ben, as was normal when he was working at convention,

stayed up late on his laptop, doing business work and browsing eBay for Batman stuff. He didn't go to bed until 6.30 a.m., trying to catch just a couple hours sleep. As soon as he was asleep, Narsi went into the next room and called her brother. Around 7 a.m., there was already a crowd of Amway attendees in the hotel lobby. Christobal had had Garcia and Gonzalez wear dress shirts and loafers to fit in, and they did, moving unnoticed through the crowd. Upstairs, Narcy was waiting in the open door of the suite. She put her finger up to her lips, telling them to be quiet and gestured for them to go inside. Ben was asleep on the bed, wearing boxer shorts and black socks.

Narsi led them to the kitchen. Garcia put a backpack on the counter and took out gloves, duct tape, and some small dumbbells he and Gonzalez were going to use to beat Ben with. They took off their nice shirts and shoes, put on the gloves, and took the dumbbells into the bedroom, standing on either side of the double bed. On the count of three, they started pummeling Ben with the dumbbells. He woke up screaming, desperately trying to defend himself. As he punched at Garcia, he knocked off his sunglasses, breaking off one of the arms. Gonzalez got freaked out and tried to leave, but Narcy yelled at him to go back and put a pillow over Ben's mouth. Ben fought hard, and Gonzalez got scared again.

When Narcy screamed at him to go back and help Garcia, he found Ben on the floor, but still moaning, with Garcia standing over him, furiously hitting him with the dumbbell. Gonzalez said it was enough, and Garcia stopped and apologized. He told Gonzalez to tie Ben's wrists and legs with duct tape. Ben seemed to be unconscious, breathing hard with blood streaming from his mouth. Gonzalez went back to the kitchen, where Narcy was pacing back and forth. In the bedroom, Garcia took out a box cutter, grabbed Ben's hair to pull his head back. This is so awful, you guys, and stabbed the blade into Ben's left eye, twisting it back.

and forth. Oh, my God. And even unconscious, Ben, you know, cried out with pain. And Garcia did the same to his right eye. He went to the kitchen where Narcy asked if he'd cut Ben's eyes. Garcia said he had, but offered to do it some more if Narcy wanted him to. She didn't. Ben was still moaning on the floor. Finish him off, Narcy said. Garcia wrapped duct tape around Ben's head and mouth, and he has Fixated, dying. Narsia got towels for the pair to clean themselves up with. The original plan was for Garcia and Gonzalez to tie Narsi up so it looked like the suite had been robbed, but she changed her mind. Instead, she left with the killers, pulling a small suitcase. Garcia had recovered his sunglasses,

but hadn't been able to find the arm Ben had broken off in the struggle. Garcia and Gonzalez left the hotel, again being caught on security cameras. Narcy was also caught on the cameras. the locations of which she'd carefully noted over the previous few days. She stood right in front of one camera outside the ballroom, making calls to May and as part of an alibi attempt to Ben's cell phone. At the reception desk, she said Ben had just gone to sleep. Her daughter, May, had tried to give her a hug, but Narcy pulled back. You look like shit, May told her.

Narcy wasn't wearing any makeup, which was rare. Usually, if Narcy was out of bed, she was wearing makeup. After five minutes, Narsi left and went back upstairs. And this brings us around to where we started the story last week, with Narsi hanging out outside the suite, suddenly screaming, Help me, my husband! When she noticed that someone had seen her. As police and paramedics arrived, news of Ben's death spread through the hotel.

May rushed up to the suite. When Narsi saw her, she screamed, He's dead! He's dead! Narsi was so upset that the hotel got a wheelchair to help her into a room across the hall. May, now crying, might have already had an inkling of what happened, or at least saw that Narsi was exaggerating her grief. She told her mom, stop it, you're going to make me throw up. Christobal drove the two killers south.

They stopped at a gas station where Garcia threw the backpack containing the dumbbells and knife into a dumpster. In New York, they changed clothes, threw the bloody ones into another dump. dumpster and headed back to Miami. In the suite, the police began their investigation. There was no sign of force entry, no open drawers or suitcases, as you might expect in a robbery. Because the attack had been limited to the bed and the floor beside it, there weren't any of the usual signs of struggle, no disturbed furniture or anything. On the bed, they found Ben's gold Rolex and the broken off arm of Garcia's sunglasses. The sink in the wet bar, where Garcia and Gonzalez had cleaned up was stained red.

Narsi told police that Ben had been fine at 7 a.m. when she'd gone to breakfast. She tried to call Ben about some convention business, and when he didn't answer, she'd gone upstairs and tripped over his body in the bedroom. Then she'd frantically phoned the front desk and rushed outside screaming and banging on doors. That version of events would not stand up at all, but the cops didn't know that at the time. With Narcy sobbing about suicide, they called for a rabble. to come and counsel her. She told the police that Ben had been nervous recently, that he had been doing business with a lot of weird people.

According to Narcy, he'd been getting into disputes with dealers over tens of thousands of dollars of Batman comics. A detective showed Narcy the gold Rolex from the hotel room. Narcy said it was Ben's and he'd been wearing it the previous night. Then the detective showed her the broken arm of a pair of sunglasses. Narcy said the sunglasses had been hers and the arm had broken off on their flight up. Asked why the arm had been on the bed,

Narcy said, Ben had been trying to fix the glasses. When the detective asked where the rest of the sunglasses were, Narcy was briefly flummoxed, then said she'd lost them on the plane. So then asked, the detective asked how Ben could have been trying to fix them if they'd been lost, and the best Narcy could come up with was, I don't know. Great job, girl.

Way to hold it together. Narcy and May went to the medical examiner's office to identify Ben's beaten, mutilated body. They didn't have to, but Narcy insisted. May had no idea how horrific Ben's injuries were going to be. She threw up and had to be helped away. Poor May, God. Narsi just stared at the corpse of her husband with no emotion at all. She stood there for 15 minutes. When Narsi and were formally interviewed the next day, investigators already suspected Narsi was involved in her husband's death. The electronic lock on the suites showed no key card used to get in until

Narcy came back at 7.45 a.m. to discover Ben's body. With no sign of forced entry, that suggested that the killers had been let in by someone inside the suite. Narcy's obvious lie about the sunglasses didn't help either, and early in the morning, detectives had gotten a call from Florida about the 2002 home invasion and Narcy's part in it. Narsi got more and more agitated during the interview, eventually snapping, just give me the electric chair and put me out of my misery. I cannot take this anymore. She agreed to take a polygraph, which she flunked about as badly as as possible, and when officers outside the testing room told May how badly Narcy was doing, May burst screaming into the room and tried to attack her mom. Narsi and May were allowed to travel

back to Florida, but New York detectives asked the Fort Lauderdale PD to shadow Narsi. At the office beside Narcy's house, Narsi found May leafing through Ben's files and completely lost her shit. She went and found a crowbar and swung for her daughter's head. May blocked it with her arm and the two of them got in a rough fight,

which ended with May running down the street screaming, my mom, I killed my daddy! Because she was actually quite close to Ben. It's really sad. Narcy had been busy grabbing as much of Ben's money from his bank accounts as she could, laundering it through her brothers in New York. When May challenged Narcy's

appointment as executor Ben's estate and convinced a judge to freeze his assets, Narsi suddenly had a big problem. So she and Christobal decided to try and frame May for Ben's murder, with Christobal dropping sinister hints to investigators that he knew things about the murder that he'd heard from his niece. There was never any chance of the investigators falling for this, but to try and nudge them along, Narsi and Christobal hired Alejandro Garcia again, this time to plant drugs and guns in May's truck. Cristobal gave him $100 to buy weed to plant in the truck, but sending a crack addict to a drug dealer is not the best idea.

And Garcia just spent the money on women in crack instead. The plan to implicate May didn't go any further, but another of Narcy's brothers, Carlos, tried to hire Garcia to beat his niece so badly she'd be crippled. What is wrong with these people? God. Garcia agreed, of course, because the man is an empty shell of evil, but that didn't go anywhere either. Thank God, Jesus. The New York investigators, along with Bernice's sister, Maxine, kept pressing for Fort Lauderdale to reopen the

inquiry into Bernice Novak's death, but the Fort Lauderdale authorities dug in their heels and insisted their verdict of accidental death was correct. Ew. Because the case crossed state lines, before the end of the year, the FBI started their own investigation into Bernice's death, doing the work the lazy morons in Fort Lauderdale refused to do. When criminal conspiracies fall apart, they tend to do so quickly. A detective interviewing Christobal in his New York apartment happened to notice a receipt for a Western Union money transfer, just sitting out in plain sight. The receipt showed the name Alejandro Garcia, his phone number, and the fact that he lived in Miami.

It didn't take long for investigators to match Alejandro to one of the men caught on the security cameras in Rybrook, and they brought him in. We are really dealing with some Menza candidates, y'all. I'm telling you. Yep. Initially, Garcia said he'd never been to New York in his life, but they showed him the security footage, and Garcia said, okay, he had been there, but just because Narcy's brother had hired him to do some house painting, this was. this was obviously not convincing and he was arrested for Ben's murder. When Christobal couldn't get in touch with Garcia, he started freaking out. He thought Garcia had gone back to Nicaragua and started making arrangements to have him killed there.

God, sakes. You know how, I guess everything looks like a nail to a hammer. Yeah, absolutely. Every problem is solved with, I guess we got to kill him. It's just, I guess we got to cripple. our niece, it's fine. God. What he was most scared of was that Garcia would start cooperating with authorities, which is exactly what happened. At 6 a.m. on July 8th, 2010, federal agents burst into Narcy's palatial home on Delmar Place and arrested her.

At the same time, agents in New York arrested Cristobal. An arrest warrant was issued for the squeamish Joel Gonzalez, whose location the feds did not know. These arrests were for Ben's murder. The same day, a New York assistant U.S. attorney said that Bernice Novak had also been murdered by an assassin hired by Christopal and Narcy. Apparently, what it takes to get Fort Lauderdale to actually investigate violent crime is to be publicly shamed by the U.S. government. They announced the next day that they were reopening the investigation into Bernice's death. Oh, great. Not a day too late, I guess.

Joel Gonzalez turned himself into the Miami police later that day, and like Garcia, agreed to cooperate with authorities. Soon, Narcy and Cristobal would also be charged with Bernice's death. There wasn't a whole lot of doubt about the outcome of the trial. Narcy and Cristobal continued their long-shot ploy of trying to blame May, with Cristobal claiming that May had told him Ben sexually assaulted her when she was just a girl, and she'd killed him in revenge. May denied every part of that story. After a long nine-week trial and 16 hours of deliberation, the jury returned guilty verdicts for Narcy and Cristobal on almost all counts, but not robbery, which would have upped the verdict to felony murder. They both received federal sentences of life imprisonment and there is no federal parole, so they're staying there for the rest of their lives.

Alejandro Garcia and Joel Gonzalez received lighter sentences for their cooperation of 17 and 10 years, respectively. Which I think sucks. I think Garcia in particular should have gone away forever. Yeah, I agree. The inheritances of very wealthy people often get messy. And that was the case here. Ben's will stated that if both he and Narcy died, May was to receive $150,000 with the vast remainder of the estate going into trust for her two sons. Ben's cousins disputed this, claiming that the will had been made under duress,

but as far as we can tell, that's where the money went. Although I wouldn't be surprised if there's still litigation ongoing. Narcy is currently in federal prison in Alabama, but before that, she was jailed in Tallahassee, where in 2022, she struck up an unlikely friendship with famous child sex trafficker Galane Maxwell. It's just unbelievable. Presumably, they bonded over spending ridiculous amounts of money and doing really unpleasant things in bed. I wish I could be a fly on the wall for their little heart-to-heart talks, right? my heart-to-heart and air quotes, obviously, whatever desiccated little lumps of coal they've got in there.

I think this is a sad story all around. It's sad for May, who had to come face to face with her mother's true face in the midst of all this, and confront the fact that the woman who brought her into this world was more than willing to let her take the fall for her stepfather's murder. And it's sad for Bernice, a woman who went from rags to riches, spent most of her life being trotted out as a walking jewelry and fashion display for her husband's well. healthy friends and being cheated on and having to put a smile on her face and act like everything was golden. When she finally struck out on her own and made a real best friend, she lost him to AIDS. And then her son's wife killed her. There's something kind of Shakespearean about that, isn't there? And most of all, it's sad for Ben, a lonely kid who grew up surrounded by rich, famous adults

who had very little interest in him. There are a lot of sort of empty lives in this story. A lot of people who never understood either because of their emotionally bankrupt childhoods or because of pure psychopathy, what really matters in this world. I hope everybody Narcy has hurt has managed to find some kind of healing, and hopefully she'll be good and miserable for the rest of her life. Now, before we go, don't forget about our two amazing live shows coming up. First, we've got summer camp coming up soon, September 10th through the 13th, an amazing four-day festival and Equino Pennsylvania at a real summer camp with all the real summer camp activities hosted by Dan and Lindsay Cummins of Time Suck and Scared to Death. We'll be performing live alongside them

and the podcast astonishing legends in addition to a roster of stand-up comedians and local bands. We cannot freaking wait. It's going to be so much fun. Go to Bad Magic Productions.com for more info and to buy tickets. And then we've got our True Crime Cruise, Crime Wave 2.0, February 8th through 12th, 2027. If you want to come to the Bahamas with us and some of the biggest true crime and paranormal podcasts in the world, like Case File, True Crime Garage, last podcast on the left, and scared to death, here's what you got to do. Tickets are on sale now, but they're 90% sold out at this point, so if you want to go,

make sure you get over to crimewave at sea.com slash campfire and book your cabin ASAP. You'll get $100 off, plus a private meet and greet with us. The great thing is you can pay all at once or set up a payment plan and pay it off over time. So get on it, y'all. That's crimewave at sea.com slash campfire. So that was an insane story, right campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light you lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire.

And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely Patreon supporters. Thank you so much to Erica. Abiham, I think I'm saying that right. Heidi, Jessie, Helena, and Liz. We appreciate y'all to the moon and back. And if you're not yet a patron, you're missing out. Patrons of our show get every episode ad-free, at least a day early, sometimes more, plus tons of extra content, like patrons-only episodes and hilarious post-show discussions.

And when you join the $5 and up categories, you get even more cool stuff. A free sticker, a rad enamel pin, or fridge magnet while supplies last, virtual events with Katie and me, and we're always looking for new stuff to do for you. So if you can, come join us at patreon.com slash true crime campfire. The war is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered like bones in the dust. Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world praying. The darkness chooses someone else tonight.

But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins. This is old school adventuring and its most cruel. Your torch ticks down in real time, and when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job. This is a brutal rules-light nightmare with a story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make. This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s, and man, it is so good to be back. Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the Shadow Dark every Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on YouTube.com slash the Glass Cannon with the podcast version dropping the next day. See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark. From the parents behind law and order comes a mystery the whole family can enjoy.

Patrick Pickle Bottom Everyday Mysteries. Step into the whimsical world of Patrick Picklebottom, a precocious 11-year-old with a love for reading and an uncanny ability to solve mysteries. Inspired by the beloved children's book of the same name, this podcast vividly brings Patrick's tales of deduction and everyday adventures to life as he unravels baffling enigmas and solves clever cases. Patrick Pickle Bottom Everyday Mysteries is perfect for kids and is just as entertaining for grownups who love a good mystery.

The whole family can listen now wherever you get your podcasts.