He chloroformed his wife, strangled her for good measure, then burned their Sullivan County house to the ground to incinerate the evidence.
But ex-New York City EMT Paul Novak was still convicted of the 2008 murder and arson by an upstate jury Friday — thanks to the testimony of his ex-girlfriend and a turncoat EMT buddy.
“We did it for the sake of the wife,” one juror told the Middletown Times Herald-Record.
Novak likely faces life in prison when he’s sentenced on Dec. 19 for first-degree murder, arson, grand larceny and insurance fraud.
He pocketed $800,000 in homeowner’s- and life-insurance policies, and took his two kids to live with his mistress, Michelle La France, in Palm Coast, Fla.
But after he cheated on her, La France and Paul’s EMT accomplice, Scott Sherwood, blew the whistle on him.
Sherwood confessed immediately, pleaded guilty to conspiracy, and testified against Novak at trial in return for a promise of no more than 12 years state prison.
Who better than an EMT to kill and escape without a trace, victim Catherine Novak’s friends had wondered during the years it took investigators to build a winnable case.
Paul had worn scrubs and plastic booties to avoid leaving behind incriminating forensics at their Narrowsburg home. He broke a basement gas line to confound fire officials.
Then he then torched the house in an overkill of caution, leaving his wife’s corpse face up on the basement floor — so charred, homicide could not be proven conclusively.
Once embarked on his wealthy, wife-free new life with La France in Florida, Novak again found work as an EMT, the blood and crime-steeped trade that had taught him so much about death and forensics.
But he’d never learned loyalty.
When La France found out he was cheating again — this time on her — she called the Sullivan County police, telling them Novak had admitted to her that he’d killed his wife with the help of Scott Sherwood, his partner EMT from their days answering calls together out of Jamaica Hospital in Queens.