She tried to pin it on her daughter but the jury didn’t buy it.
A Florida woman and her brother were found guilty yesterday in connection with the killings of her millionaire husband in Westchester County and his mother in Florida, in a grab for the family estate.
A federal jury in White Plains convicted Narcy Novack of Fort Lauderdale on counts alleging she caused the savage 2009 beatings of Ben Novack Jr. in a Rye, NY, hotel room and Bernice Novack at her Fort Lauderdale home.
Novack and her brother, Cristobal Veliz, of New York City, both were convicted of charges including racketeering, domestic violence, stalking, money-laundering and witness-tampering. They were acquitted of murder in aid of racketeering, which would have carried a mandatory life sentence.
Prosecutors said Novack feared that her husband, who was having an affair, would divorce her, and that a prenuptial agreement would bar her from the multimillion-dollar family estate. Ben Novack Jr. had a successful travel company. His father built the storied Fontainebleau hotel in Miami Beach, a celebrity hangout in the 1950s and ’60s that appeared in the movies “Scarface” and “Goldfinger.”
The family intrigue in the case deepened when the defense strategy turned out to be blaming May Abad, Narcy Novack’s daughter and Ben Novack’s stepdaughter.
Defense attorneys said Abad, who wasn’t charged, could have tried to benefit by ordering the killings and framing her mother because her two sons would inherit the bulk of the family estate — which includes Ben Novack’s large collection of Batman memorabilia — if Narcy Novack were convicted.
“She’s the one who has a lot to gain,” said Veliz’s lawyer, Lawrence Sheehan. Veliz testified that he had seen Abad with the killers and claimed she had kidnapped him.
Abad told the Miami Herald in April that trying to blame her stepfather’s murder on her was “a joke.”
“They are going to say whatever they can,” said Abad, whose sons now become heirs to the estate.
Prosecutors said Novack, 55, paid Veliz, 58, to hire Miami thugs to assault the victims. The killers testified that Veliz recruited them and relayed instructions from Novack on how to carry out the killings.
They testified that those instructions included blinding Ben Novack Jr. — his eyes were slashed with a utility knife — and bashing 86-year-old Bernice Novack in the teeth with a plumber’s wrench.
The killers testified that on the day of Ben Novack’s murder, Narcy Novack called Veliz, who said: “Well, she’s ready. Let’s go.”
One said that when they got to the Hilton hotel in Rye Brook, where Ben Novack’s company was running an Amway convention, Narcy Novack motioned them into her room, directed them to her sleeping husband, gave them a pillow to muffle his screams and questioned them afterward to make sure he had been blinded.
“She shows them where her husband is, she ushers them into the room and they inflict a vicious, brutal attack on Ben Novack,” said prosecutor Andrew Dember.
One key witness was Rebecca Bliss, a former prostitute and porn actress, who said she was having an affair with Ben Novack when he was killed.
She said Narcy Novack tried to buy her off for $10,000 and told her, “If she couldn’t have him, no other woman was going to have him.”
Another witness, Alejandro Garcia, said he killed Bernice Novack by slamming her in the head with a wrench in the driveway of her home on April 4, 2009. He and Joel Gonzalez testified that they beat Ben Novack to death with dumbbells three months later.
Novack chose not to attend the reading of the verdict. Veliz was present and showed no emotion. They face up to life in prison.
The victim
His murderer
Her
scapegoat