Secrets & Lies

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Speaker 4 You had the good cop, you had the bad cop, and the polygraph.

Speaker 5 It felt like law and order.

Speaker 6 The fire broke out before dawn. In the daylight, they found this mother of two young children dead.

Speaker 8 She lived a very courageous life. She was very bold in the things she did.

Speaker 6 But after the smoke cleared, a mystery lingered.

Speaker 9 We knew she did not die in that fire.

Speaker 10 She died before the fire.

Speaker 11 Who do you look to as the suspect?

Speaker 9 Obviously, the spouse is the first person you look to.

Speaker 6 But her husband had a clear alibi and he passed a lie detector test. Eventually, the case grew cold until this witness came forward with a tale of love and lust gone wrong.

Speaker 6 But could she be believed?

Speaker 3 I was sleeping around.

Speaker 14 I think I slept with half the town.

Speaker 6 Was she out for justice or revenge?

Speaker 15 Is it a perfect world?

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 15 Will she get hers?

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 12 And she dies.

Speaker 6 What was the lie? And what was the truth?

Speaker 4 How could you miss it?

Speaker 16 He wasn't there.

Speaker 16 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 6 Here's Andrea Canning with secrets and lies.

Speaker 22 On a frigid December morning in 2008, in a tiny, picturesque town along the banks of the Delaware, a tragedy unfolded.

Speaker 23 911 with the emergency.

Speaker 24 The whole house is on fire.

Speaker 25 A deadly blaze burned a small country house to the ground.

Speaker 27 And left behind in the ashes were secrets.

Speaker 21 Love gone wrong, illicit affairs, friends turning against each other.

Speaker 19 It would take years to unravel the mystery of that fire, haunting this town, and those who loved the couple who once lived in that house, Paul and Catherine Novak.

Speaker 25 The Novaks had both grown up as city kids.

Speaker 19 Paul was a New York City paramedic, a job that seemed the perfect fit.

Speaker 4 I wanted to be that person that would show up, that would help my parents, and help my sister if she was in a car accident or something like that.

Speaker 36 But he also saw the dark side of city life, a little too close to home.

Speaker 4 I would do shootings and stabbings two blocks away from my apartment, and I always thought to myself that I could just never raise a child in this area.

Speaker 38 So in 2002, Paul and his wife Catherine went house hunting in Narrowsburg, New York, a small hamlet tucked between the Catskill and Pocono Mountains.

Speaker 18 They didn't need to look for long.

Speaker 8 You know, it was the Big Red House, as she called it, and she would talk about the Big Red House all the time.

Speaker 19 Catherine's brother Michael and sister-in-law Joanne said she worked hard to make the big red house a home.

Speaker 8 Growing up, we lived in apartments. You know, this was a space of her own.

Speaker 42 Yeah, she was thrilled to have five acres or ten acres of property

Speaker 42 and she loved it there.

Speaker 43 The perfect place for the perfectly matched couple.

Speaker 19 They seemed meant for each other right from the start.

Speaker 4 I liked her from the first moment I met her. She was very effervescent and very funny and very opinionated, and I really liked that in her.

Speaker 44 So you really saw into the future the first time you saw her? Yes.

Speaker 4 I mean, we ended up getting married,

Speaker 4 I think, seven months later.

Speaker 21 Two years after that, their first child, Natalie, was born.

Speaker 46 It was very special.

Speaker 40 Catherine's mom, Christina, was ever the proud grandmother.

Speaker 46 Natalie looks so much like her mom.

Speaker 22 So much like her mom.

Speaker 44 What was it like the first time you laid eyes on your new dad?

Speaker 4 Natalie, well, it was like falling in love like a thousand times more than you ever have with any other person. Natalie's just,

Speaker 4 you know, she's a part of me.

Speaker 20 Four years later, along came Nicholas.

Speaker 46 She was in her glory and then, you know, to have a boy and a girl, which was good.

Speaker 44 Things were all coming together. Yep.

Speaker 8 She got directly engaged in the community, in the church. She taught Sunday school.
She became a Girl Scout leader of the school board. She did many, many things.

Speaker 21 And she did almost all of it by herself.

Speaker 19 Paul was still working as a paramedic in New York City, more than 100 miles away.

Speaker 27 That's a big commitment.

Speaker 44 This is pretty far from the city.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's a two-hour drive. I was making the New York City money, but living up here.
And the sacrifice was that I couldn't be home every night.

Speaker 38 And that, they soon discovered, can be tough on a marriage.

Speaker 4 And we went to counseling for about a year, and she just felt that she never got a break, you know, from being a full-time mom.

Speaker 28 But they were both committed to making their marriage work.

Speaker 19 On their 10th wedding anniversary, Valentine's Day, Paul surprised Catherine with a ceremony to renew their vows.

Speaker 4 Now, I'm not a church-going type, so for me to do that is a big thing. I planned a little, you know, couple-of-day getaway, and she was really taken by surprise by that.

Speaker 4 And things were good for a couple of months after that.

Speaker 27 It wasn't enough.

Speaker 29 The glow of that getaway faded, and life became routine again.

Speaker 19 Soon, Paul's eyes wandered to a much younger woman, someone from work.

Speaker 29 They had an affair, and Paul moved out, leaving Catherine and the kids alone in the house.

Speaker 50 She was beside herself. She was

Speaker 50 absolutely hysterical.

Speaker 19 Catherine's good friend and neighbor, Sue Mueller, remembered when the marriage ended.

Speaker 32 She couldn't even get the breath,

Speaker 50 she was sobbing so hard.

Speaker 20 But Catherine's family, who considered her the eternal optimist, watched her move on with her life, pouring all her love and attention into her children.

Speaker 8 She was very focused on them, very engaged in their lives, did everything with them.

Speaker 44 Sounds like that's what was important in her life anyway.

Speaker 8 Absolutely.

Speaker 19 She was working at her children's school and had even been on a few dates. Catherine was creating a life without Paul.

Speaker 18 Then, in December 2008, sometime in the early morning hours, somewhere in her house, a fire started.

Speaker 3 The house was totally on fire.

Speaker 24 It's on fire.

Speaker 25 When firefighters arrived, the big red house was a wall of flames.

Speaker 27 They had no idea if anyone was still inside.

Speaker 3 Does anyone live there? Yes, yes, they're kids. Do you know if they're out of the house? I don't know.

Speaker 34 Neighbors knew Paul wasn't there.

Speaker 35 He was living in an apartment three hours away with his new girlfriend.

Speaker 32 That morning, he got a call from Catherine's pastor.

Speaker 4 Picked it up and it was Pastor Phyllis. And she goes, where are the kids? Where are the kids? And I'm like, they're with me.
What's going on? She goes, the house is on fire.

Speaker 19 Firefighters worked for hours dousing the flames.

Speaker 55 When Catherine's friend, Sue Moeller, arrived, the fire was still raging.

Speaker 34 She stood vigil for hours, waiting to hear news of her friend.

Speaker 50 All of a sudden, the firemen were all concentrated in one area, looking down into the basement. And then the local funeral home was there with the

Speaker 50 body bag, and I saw them bring the body bag down into the basement.

Speaker 18 In the destruction and muck of the basement, under massive pieces of what had been the house, firefighters found the remains of the family dog, and to their horror, the body of 41-year-old Catherine Novak.

Speaker 3 Oh, no, oh, no.

Speaker 3 It can't be.

Speaker 3 And I think it takes a while to grasp that.

Speaker 22 Death is forever.

Speaker 44 What did you think when you heard that?

Speaker 58 I was just

Speaker 4 a blank.

Speaker 4 A complete blank. What on earth am I going to tell these children? How am I going to tell them? She was a great mom.
I didn't know how I was going to be able to even try to fill that void.

Speaker 29 The autopsy report said she was killed when heavy debris fell on her.

Speaker 19 Catherine's death was officially ruled accidental.

Speaker 8 She lived a very courageous life. She knew what she wanted.
She went after it. She was very bold in the things she did.

Speaker 27 A tragic end to a life that held so much promise.

Speaker 51 But as you probably guessed, the story didn't end there.

Speaker 29 For investigators, it was just the beginning.

Speaker 33 Not everyone believed this was an accident.

Speaker 6 When we come back, if it wasn't an accident, was it murder? It certainly didn't look that way until a second autopsy report came back.

Speaker 9 We knew she did not die in that fire.

Speaker 10 She died before the fire.

Speaker 4 He goes, we want you to take a polygraph test.

Speaker 19 The remains of that old country house were still smoldering as investigators dug through the debris looking for clues.

Speaker 54 They wanted to know what caused the fire and exactly how Catherine Novak died there.

Speaker 39 Her mother's question was more simple.

Speaker 46 The big thing for me was why didn't she get out? That was...

Speaker 46 That was what kept going over in my mind. Why did she get out?

Speaker 19 Even her estranged husband, Paul, said he was puzzled.

Speaker 4 I didn't even know what to think about it. I've been surrounded by death and violence my entire life and now it hits home.

Speaker 27 The pathologist ruled Catherine's death an accident, but investigators weren't so sure.

Speaker 62 They turned to district attorney Steve Lungeon to take a closer look.

Speaker 44 So you were contacted despite this talk that it was an accident?

Speaker 10 Yes, we had a fire and we had a death.

Speaker 9 The question of how the two of those items were going to come together would not play out for a couple days later and actually years later.

Speaker 25 The police, as they often do, began by interviewing Catherine's soon-to-be ex-husband, Paul Novak.

Speaker 44 What happened in the interview as far as the way they treated you, the questions they asked you?

Speaker 59 They were nice.

Speaker 4 They just asked me, you know, about Kathy's last whereabouts, if I knew if she had any boyfriends at the time who may have been in the house, any utilities in the house that may have had a problem or something like that.

Speaker 19 The interview was all very routine, but the investigation at the scene was not.

Speaker 38 Fire inspectors couldn't figure out what ignited the blaze.

Speaker 27 They checked the wiring, the appliances, the pellet stove, the propane tanks.

Speaker 25 Nothing conclusive.

Speaker 20 But then things changed.

Speaker 19 The DA brought in a specialist, a forensic pathologist, to do a second autopsy a few days later.

Speaker 36 And the results this time told a different story.

Speaker 9 We knew she did not die in that fire.

Speaker 10 She died before the fire.

Speaker 19 The second pathologist discovered there was no carbon monoxide in Catherine's blood or soot in her lungs, which meant Catherine had stopped breathing before the fire started.

Speaker 29 She changed the manner of death from accidental to pending investigation.

Speaker 9 The question is, what else can we gain or learn before we can start to classify this as a homicide? Who do you look to as the suspect? The state police had done some initial interviews.

Speaker 9 Obviously, the spouse is the first person you look to.

Speaker 10 The spouse had a clear alibi.

Speaker 19 Paul and his new girlfriend, Michelle LaFrance, said they were far from Catherine's beloved red house when the fire broke out.

Speaker 60 A three-hour drive away in their apartment on Long Island.

Speaker 63 Still, investigators didn't just take the couple's word for it.

Speaker 62 They made a request.

Speaker 4 He goes, we want to take a polygraph test.

Speaker 21 Did you feel like you were almost in a TV show at this point?

Speaker 4 Yes, it felt like law and order, a really bad episode of it.

Speaker 21 When did you get the results?

Speaker 4 He came back about 15 minutes later and he says, okay, you're all done. You passed.

Speaker 64 He was driving home from the interrogation and he was hysterical.

Speaker 40 Paul's sister, Alona, had never heard him so emotional.

Speaker 64 He was crying and seeing they asked me if I killed her, and he just found it so unbelievable that, you know, he was being asked these questions.

Speaker 19 So if it wasn't Paul, investigators needed to look for other suspects.

Speaker 9 The state police did a complete canvas of the area. Anybody who had any connection to Catherine Nowick, the state police reviewed, found, interviewed.

Speaker 60 But after many months and no leads, investigators hit a dead end.

Speaker 49 The case turned cold.

Speaker 54 None of that mattered much to Catherine's mom.

Speaker 46 I still miss my daughter.

Speaker 62 The same.

Speaker 46 I miss her. No matter what happened to her, I miss her.

Speaker 21 Seven months after Catherine's death, Paul and his girlfriend packed up the kids and their apartment on Long Island and moved a thousand miles south to Florida.

Speaker 4 I figured with my experience that it would probably be pretty easy for me to get a job somewhere.

Speaker 50 Kind of a fresh start.

Speaker 4 A fresh start. I thought it would be good for the kids.
Great school, nice neighborhood.

Speaker 19 But Paul said not long after their move, things with Michelle started to sour.

Speaker 43 When they first met, she was a paramedic in training.

Speaker 51 He was her teacher, her friend.

Speaker 19 She had confided in him about her history of mental illness, long bouts of depression, and alcohol abuse.

Speaker 52 But now, he says her problems were beginning to take a toll on their relationship.

Speaker 39 His young daughter, a sore spot.

Speaker 4 She was very jealous of Natalie, and her mental issues definitely became more apparent as time went on. At one point she she actually threatened to commit suicide inside my own house.

Speaker 18 This was no surprise to Alona and her mom who loved Catherine but never approved of Michelle.

Speaker 25 What are your first impressions of Michelle?

Speaker 64 We didn't like her.

Speaker 10 Why?

Speaker 64 She walked into my mother's house and she immediately wanted Catherine's pictures turned around

Speaker 64 because she felt like Catherine was looking at her.

Speaker 56 Paul said it took him a bit longer than his family to realize he and Michelle Michelle were not the best match.

Speaker 52 They had been together for three years when he found out she was cheating on him with a married man.

Speaker 64 He didn't want to stand for that, so he had to ask her to leave.

Speaker 43 And he did it very nicely and

Speaker 45 she didn't want to go.

Speaker 19 In what Paul described as a bitter breakup, he forced Michelle to move out and told her it was over.

Speaker 19 By that time, it had been more than two years since Catherine's death.

Speaker 34 Investigators back in New York had moved on to other cases.

Speaker 52 The years were ticking by with no new leads.

Speaker 56 But the DA was a patient man.

Speaker 9 We never put the file away. It was always a matter of when something is going to come forward.

Speaker 10 We'll be ready to go forward.

Speaker 9 And we never accepted an accidental cause of death, ever.

Speaker 57 His patience would be rewarded.

Speaker 19 A break in this cold case was coming, and it would surprise everyone.

Speaker 16 Coming up, a surprise knock at Paul Novak's door.

Speaker 4 My girlfriend comes in and she goes, there's something fishy going on outside. There's two police detectives outside and they want to talk to you about your car being involved in a hit and run.

Speaker 6 Is that what they really wanted?

Speaker 13 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 53 Years had passed since Catherine Novak's body had been discovered among the blackened ruins of her big red house.

Speaker 34 But the passage of time didn't make it any easier for her mother.

Speaker 46 It's, you know, the thing that never happens to you. It always happens to someone else.
It doesn't happen to you.

Speaker 46 You don't lose a child like that.

Speaker 2 It's such a heartbroken fire.

Speaker 21 Catherine's brother Michael and his wife Joanne had stopped asking questions, choosing instead to accept they might never know what really happened to her.

Speaker 8 To take Catherine's perspective, you know, she would look for the positive side, the good things, and she would want us to move on.

Speaker 8 And, you know, that's what we tried to do. We made our peace with it

Speaker 8 and we went on living.

Speaker 25 But as time went by, in the little town of Narrowsburg, dark suspicions were whispered from neighbor to neighbor, and one name kept coming up.

Speaker 37 Catherine's estranged husband, Paul Novak.

Speaker 19 Her close friend, Sue Muller.

Speaker 50 I was angry as time went on, and I thought more and more about it, and I thought that Paul might somehow be involved.

Speaker 29 As she looked back, she was particularly haunted by the way Paul acted the day of Catherine's memorial service.

Speaker 50 The whole congregation was sobbing so loud. I mean, Pastor couldn't even finish her sermon.
And I went up to him and I hugged him. I kind of was struck by how Philly showed no emotion.

Speaker 50 After 11 years of marriage, that she might have meant a little bit more to him that he might shed a tear, but I didn't see any.

Speaker 27 But there was no evidence that Paul had anything to do with Catherine's death.

Speaker 43 No DNA or fingerprints at the crime scene.

Speaker 51 No witnesses.

Speaker 27 He had even passed a polygraph test.

Speaker 60 And he had an alibi for the morning of the fire.

Speaker 45 He was three hours away with his girlfriend Michelle in their apartment on Long Island.

Speaker 19 Paul continued to enjoy his new life in Florida with his two children,

Speaker 19 working again as a paramedic and now dating a new woman he'd fallen for quickly on Match.com, Kat Del Grosso.

Speaker 67 We started texting and then we made a date and

Speaker 67 we went on the date. Really, it was it.
Was it instant? Instant.

Speaker 67 Instant.

Speaker 21 What was the attraction?

Speaker 67 I don't know. It's really hard to put your finger on something like that.
We just seemed to have an immediate connection. There was zero stress.
talking, no uncomfortableness.

Speaker 19 Their romance blossomed, and she eventually moved in with Paul and his kids.

Speaker 44 Do they look up to him?

Speaker 67 They worship him.

Speaker 2 They completely worship him.

Speaker 67 He's always up with them, checking homework. We do a lot of things as a family.

Speaker 44 Is it a nice life?

Speaker 2 We were really happy.

Speaker 3 Really, really happy.

Speaker 44 And then you get a knock at the door.

Speaker 44 Yep.

Speaker 67 Yeah, that was a tough day.

Speaker 38 It was an early morning in September 2012, four years after Catherine's death.

Speaker 4 I was asleep.

Speaker 4 I just got off of work. I'd worked 12 hours at the hospital.
And I remember my girlfriend comes in and she goes, there's something fishy going on outside.

Speaker 4 There's two police detectives outside and they want to talk to you about your car being involved in a hit and run.

Speaker 49 But when he arrived at the police station, he saw a familiar face and realized this had nothing to do with a car accident.

Speaker 4 This is Investigator Kelly from New York.

Speaker 3 So I'm like, okay.

Speaker 4 So he sits down, he grabs a chair, and he's like a foot away from me. And then I remember him.
He's the guy that grilled me, the one that got in my face.

Speaker 40 How are you feeling?

Speaker 32 Oh my gosh, these people are back in my life four years later.

Speaker 4 At that point, I still didn't know what they wanted from me. I knew this guy was yelling at me.
And then I just looked at him and I said, I would like to speak to a lawyer.

Speaker 19 Paul had already been interviewed by police several times.

Speaker 49 He thought this was all behind him.

Speaker 44 You knew it had to be about Catherine.

Speaker 4 Well, yeah, obviously it had to do something with that.

Speaker 19 Later that day, the police went back to Paul's house.

Speaker 67 And I went outside in the driveway with them, and they said,

Speaker 67 we're sorry to have to break this to you, but Paul Novak's under arrest.

Speaker 2 I said, for what?

Speaker 67 They said, it's for involvement in his wife's murder four years ago.

Speaker 19 What Kat and Paul didn't know was that a witness had come forward telling police an evil tale.

Speaker 61 And in that story, Paul was the villain.

Speaker 55 They arrested you.

Speaker 44 Did they put you in jail right there then? Yes.

Speaker 19 The story the witness told was chilling.

Speaker 19 Revealing dark secrets.

Speaker 39 But was it true?

Speaker 16 Coming up, Paul's alibi becomes his accuser.

Speaker 14 He was going to chloroform her, leave her, and then burn the house down around her, and she was going to die in the fire.

Speaker 45 Catherine Novak's death had been a cold case for more than three years when, out of nowhere, a witness came forward, pointing a finger at Catherine's estranged husband, Paul.

Speaker 57 So who was this mystery witness?

Speaker 39 A woman from Paul's past, his ex-girlfriend, Michelle.

Speaker 15 Michelle LaFrance, who was the defendant's alibi in 2008,

Speaker 15 has now come forward and said Paul was not home. And that Paul went to Narrowsburg and that Paul killed Catherine.

Speaker 3 What was that phone call like?

Speaker 15 It was now time to get to work.

Speaker 19 Jim Farrell was now the district attorney. He teamed up with the former DA, Steve Lungeon.

Speaker 44 Didn't it feel good that you had a break?

Speaker 15 It's a break, but again, I needed more information.

Speaker 55 Investigators sat LaFrance down to hear her story.

Speaker 8 Let's start back in in the beginning. Okay.

Speaker 19 During a six-hour interview, Michelle laid out what she claimed was the true story of how Paul killed Catherine.

Speaker 21 She said he started plotting weeks before the murder.

Speaker 14 He was researching things on the internet. He was going to chloroform her, leave her, and then burn the house down around her, and she was going to die of the fire.

Speaker 49 Michelle says one week before the fire, she and Paul went to Catherine's house to move his things out, and Paul unlocked the basement doors.

Speaker 14 So that he can go up the next time we had the kids which would be a week later

Speaker 14 and that way he can sneak into the house and she wouldn't know.

Speaker 56 According to Michelle Paul wasn't with her on the night of the murder that alibi was a lie.

Speaker 19 Instead, she said he was with a fellow paramedic named Scott Sherwood who drove Paul to Narrowsburg.

Speaker 14 As far as I know, Scott was left in the car

Speaker 14 and Paul walked down to the house.

Speaker 19 Michelle said Paul told her he went inside, set off the basement smoke alarm, hid behind the stairs, and when Catherine came down to investigate, he tried to knock her out with chloroform.

Speaker 14 This was supposed to be quick and painless, and

Speaker 14 you know,

Speaker 14 she was supposed to be passed down before she knew what happened. But I guess he put it over her mouth and it didn't work.
She was screaming and begging for her life.

Speaker 19 Through her tears, Michelle spilled out gruesome details of what Paul said were Catherine's final words.

Speaker 55 She begged him to think of their children.

Speaker 14 And he told me that the only thing he said to her the entire time that he was fighting with her was, I'm doing this for the kids.

Speaker 14 And he said that she had been wearing a hooded sweatshirt and that he finally just took the sweatshirt and wrapped it around her neck and held it until she stopped breathing.

Speaker 19 Then Michelle claims Paul took a blowtorch from the garage and set the kitchen curtains on fire.

Speaker 14 He waited for it to catch fire

Speaker 14 and

Speaker 14 I don't know how long he's, I don't think he ever told me exactly how long he sat there, but he didn't watch.

Speaker 19 Michelle's story was a stunning betrayal of her former boyfriend.

Speaker 29 And if it was true, Paul had committed a vicious and calculated crime.

Speaker 37 Michelle said Paul told her he did it because Catherine was a monster.

Speaker 14 He had me convinced that Catherine was the bad guy and he was the good parent and these kids are abused and these kids are miserable.

Speaker 14 We need to save the kids.

Speaker 19 Paul's sister Alona didn't believe a word of it. From the moment she heard a witness had come forward, she was convinced her brother was being set up.

Speaker 64 And I said, this is Michelle.

Speaker 64 You got rid of her. And now, what happened?

Speaker 44 This is payback. I believe that's what it is.

Speaker 19 Paul's girlfriend, Kat, who got engaged to him in jail, also believed Michelle's story was suspicious.

Speaker 67 He's innocent.

Speaker 67 Absolutely, positively.

Speaker 50 Why are you so sure?

Speaker 67 He's just not that kind of a person. He's a caretaker.
You know, it's like

Speaker 67 his job as a paramedic

Speaker 67 to find him.

Speaker 33 And while Paul had a squeaky clean record, Michelle, his accuser, had issues, a history of depression and alcohol abuse.

Speaker 35 And she'd waited years to come forward.

Speaker 44 Michelle LaFrance has been described as a scorned ex-girlfriend, a woman looking for revenge.

Speaker 44 Did all that go through your mind?

Speaker 15 No, I don't believe that it did because after she leaves Paul in January, February of 2011, it's 14 months before she gets up the courage to come forward to the police, to tell the police what she knows, fully expecting that she's going to be arrested.

Speaker 3 Are you a lawyer?

Speaker 31 As Paul waited for his trial to start, he told us he wasn't worried.

Speaker 43 And there's really nothing that puts you at that crime.

Speaker 44 There's no eyewitnesses.

Speaker 21 Do you think that's going to work in your favor?

Speaker 4 I think it's going to go rather well for me.

Speaker 16 Coming up.

Speaker 6 The prosecution is feeling confident, too.

Speaker 13 Did someone leave digital tracks?

Speaker 15 State police immediately do a search for the toll records of that vehicle, and we had a hit at 6.39.

Speaker 16 But what, if anything, does that prove?

Speaker 13 When dateline continues.

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Speaker 11 I'm Alina and I'm Ash, and we are the host of Morbid Podcast.

Speaker 58 Each week, we dive into the dark and fascinating world of true crime, spooky history, and the unexplained.

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Speaker 19 As Paul Novak prepared to stand trial for the murder of his wife, he insisted he was innocent.

Speaker 51 Are you the evil murderer that some people think you are?

Speaker 44 No.

Speaker 7 Not at all.

Speaker 21 Any reason to kill your wife?

Speaker 32 No.

Speaker 4 No, absolutely not. I mean,

Speaker 4 when I left Catherine, I probably wasn't in love with her anymore, but I respected her and she's the mother of my children.

Speaker 36 For Catherine's brother Michael, the upcoming trial felt like opening an old wound.

Speaker 8 Part of me wished I didn't get that phone call because I knew how traumatic it would be to the family and especially how traumatic it would be to Natalie and Nicholas.

Speaker 19 Catherine's mom also knew a trial would mean more heartache for her grandchildren.

Speaker 46 I know no one can imagine how I feel losing my child.

Speaker 46 I can't imagine how they would feel with now the loss of both parents, in essence.

Speaker 62 All right, some water, Sullivan County Criminal Court is now in session.

Speaker 39 On August 12th, 2013, the trial of Paul Novak began at the Sullivan County Courthouse.

Speaker 39 The district attorney attorney opened the case.

Speaker 15 The evidence will show that as Catherine begged and fought for her life,

Speaker 1 the defendant ended her life,

Speaker 15 murdering her in the basement of her own home.

Speaker 19 Prosecutors set out to prove that Paul orchestrated this murder down to the last detail.

Speaker 9 He was planning this for a period of weeks and maybe more in his own mind of how to rid himself of Catherine.

Speaker 15 He's a murderer. He's a sociopath.

Speaker 15 He planned, he executed, and he killed Catherine Novak in cold blood.

Speaker 36 Their star witness was Paul's ex-lover, Michelle LaFrance.

Speaker 40 The jury heard every minute of those police interrogation tapes of Michelle describing the details of how he killed his wife.

Speaker 14 He told me that they were fighting and that they were rolling around on the basement

Speaker 14 floor for like 45 minutes and that's why he was so late

Speaker 14 and that she was screaming and begging him for her life.

Speaker 29 And the jury didn't have to just take her word for it.

Speaker 39 Prosecutors called Scott Sherwood, Paul's partner from work, to the stand.

Speaker 52 They told the jury he had been interrogated by police and showed them the tape.

Speaker 5 Let's go from the beginning.

Speaker 3 Paul, you meet Paul where?

Speaker 23 I met Paul at his house in Glen Cove.

Speaker 19 Jurors heard him tell police his version of what happened the night of the murder.

Speaker 5 So he gets in your red blazer. Who's driving?

Speaker 23 You're ahead. I was driving.
We were driving up towards where his residence was, where Catherine still lived.

Speaker 30 Sherwood said Paul told him to park about a mile away from Catherine's house and wait in the car.

Speaker 5 How long is he gone from the car?

Speaker 66 Over an hour.

Speaker 5 And what does he say when he gets in the car?

Speaker 23 He said it's done. He had said that the chloroform didn't work.

Speaker 23 I had to strangle her. And something about hitting the gas line to ignite.

Speaker 66 So you knew the house is on fire?

Speaker 20 Yes.

Speaker 33 As Scott Sherwood's story played in the courtroom, the prosecutors pointed out how remarkably similar it was to Michelle LaFrance's.

Speaker 17 Did he say where he strangled her?

Speaker 23 Where? In the basement.

Speaker 19 Prosecutors felt these matching stories were powerful, but didn't think they would be enough to get a conviction.

Speaker 51 They wanted physical evidence to prove Michelle and Scott were telling the truth.

Speaker 19 They began with Sherwood's account of the drive up to Narrowsburg.

Speaker 62 Sherwood had told investigators Paul asked him to stop at a Walmart.

Speaker 5 When you get into the Middletown area, he said, you stopped where?

Speaker 7 At a Walmart.

Speaker 5 And he went inside. He went inside.
You waited outside?

Speaker 23 Waited outside.

Speaker 5 And then he came out with a bag?

Speaker 23 Yes. Do you know what he bought? I believe duct tape.

Speaker 49 Prosecutors showed jurors what investigators found when they visited that Walmart.

Speaker 9 The state police found a receipt, only one receipt out of 30 registers that had three things on it. Duct tape, a hat, and gloves.

Speaker 9 Scott Sherwood tells us that the defendant used tape to tape up his scrubs. He had a hat and he had gloves on when he went and came back from the house.

Speaker 32 And there was more physical evidence to back up Sherwood's account.

Speaker 35 He told police he and Paul crossed the George Washington Bridge on their way back to Paul's place the morning of the murder.

Speaker 23 Was it a toll you guys went through?

Speaker 23 I would assume so. We went through, I guess it was the lower level, but there was no booth, there was no attendant.

Speaker 59 No attendant saw them pass, but detectives wondered, could digital eyes help place the car at the toll booth?

Speaker 15 State police immediately did a search for the EasyPass records or toll records of that vehicle, and we had a hit at 639 of that vehicle coming across the George Washington Bridge lower level.

Speaker 3 That's huge.

Speaker 9 It was a highly corroborative piece of evidence to corroborate Scott Sherwood.

Speaker 48 What's more, there was a photo snapped of the license plate.

Speaker 20 It was evidence that almost didn't exist.

Speaker 29 Prosecutors said Paul had planned to pay cash that night, but construction at the toll booth forced him to drive through the EasyPass lane.

Speaker 15 He made some mistakes, and he couldn't have anticipated that the bridge was going to be under construction.

Speaker 12 There would be no toll takers.

Speaker 35 And then prosecutors presented what they thought would remove any smudge of doubt from their case.

Speaker 37 A third person who linked Paul to the murder.

Speaker 51 Elise Hanlon, Scott Sherwood's wife.

Speaker 59 On the stand, she recalled a conversation with Paul where he told her that he committed the murder and that he did it alone.

Speaker 69 Scott's had nothing to do with it. There's no way Scott's getting into trouble.
Scott had nothing to do with it.

Speaker 4 He told her, I went up there with him, he drove, I went in, I did everything.

Speaker 15 We have three people in three different rooms. They're telling us the same thing.
You may may not be able to say we have a fingerprint or we have DNA, but that's pretty damning evidence.

Speaker 48 The last piece the prosecution needed was motive.

Speaker 19 Why would Paul want to kill his wife Catherine?

Speaker 27 Simple. They said money.

Speaker 36 When Catherine died, Paul cashed in on her life insurance policy and homeowner's insurance.

Speaker 39 It all totaled around $700,000.

Speaker 9 The defendant said he would kill Catherine and burn up the evidence, and he did just that.

Speaker 27 Now it was the defense's turn to attack.

Speaker 29 Jurors would hear more about the checkered pasts of the witnesses at the very heart of the case.

Speaker 16 Coming up, and what a very checkered past some of those witnesses had.

Speaker 14 I was sleeping around in Mattatuck. I think I slept with half the town.

Speaker 37 It was the defense's turn.

Speaker 19 Paul Novak would not take the stand to proclaim his innocence.

Speaker 62 It's my decision not to testify.

Speaker 45 Instead, his defense attorney, Gary Greenwald, did the talking.

Speaker 17 And I'm going to tell you, you're going to have reasonable doubt.

Speaker 61 His argument, don't believe everything you hear.

Speaker 39 Consider the source.

Speaker 29 Consider the mental states of the key witnesses.

Speaker 19 Consider their possible motives. He started by attacking Paul's ex-girlfriend, Michelle LaFrance, the woman Paul had thrown out of his house.

Speaker 17 She was a liar. She was manipulative, willing to take whatever steps necessary to hurt Paul.

Speaker 19 The defense tried to portray her as unstable, offering evidence of everything from suicide attempts to a bizarre drunken incident involving the police.

Speaker 14 It took six officers to take me down, and I apparently had to be handcuffed to a tree, topless. I had bruises from

Speaker 14 fighting the tree.

Speaker 31 The defense attacked her credibility and used her own words to portray her as a liar who carried on a string of affairs with married men.

Speaker 14 I was sleeping around in Mattatuck.

Speaker 14 I think I slept with half the town.

Speaker 17 She was probably one of the most promiscuous people who I've ever seen testifying in open court.

Speaker 19 And the defense also argued Scott Sherwood suffered from serious mental health issues.

Speaker 17 Scott Sherwood, from the time he was eight years old, was being treated for major psychiatric problems.

Speaker 17 And one of the crucial pieces of evidence was his psychologist, who testified that when he was put into a conflict situation, he would say whatever was necessary to get out.

Speaker 44 I think what some people are going to have a hard time wrapping their head around is why three separate people would all lie.

Speaker 17 The reality is, I take Elise out of the picture because she lied to support her husband. Scott had a psychiatric problem, and he was manipulated, in my opinion, by Michelle.

Speaker 17 Michelle was a woman scorned.

Speaker 19 And the defense argued their stories were tainted because Michelle had been given full immunity when she agreed to testify against Paul.

Speaker 21 And Sherwood made a plea deal for a reduced charge and a sentence of three to 12 years in prison.

Speaker 19 Next, the defense went after the evidence that seemed to support Sherwood's story, specifically that photo of Sherwood's license plate taken the morning of the murder.

Speaker 44 One piece of evidence that seemed pretty damning was the EasyPass record that showed Scott Sherwood's SUV crossing the George Washington Bridge at the right time for this crime.

Speaker 17 The answer to that is very simple. It proves nothing.
There's a picture of the license plate. There's no picture of who's in the vehicle.

Speaker 17 How do you know, as we're sitting here now, that Scott Sherwood or possibly Michelle were not in that vehicle?

Speaker 7 The answer is you don't.

Speaker 19 And Greenwald dismissed that receipt from the Walmart in Middletown.

Speaker 52 Is it just a coincidence that someone went into Walmart around 1.30 in the morning, the morning of Catherine's death, and bought a hat, gloves, and duct tape?

Speaker 44 All the things that were supposedly used in her murder?

Speaker 17 Okay, first of all, Mr. Sherwood admitted under oath to me that he got to Middletown at 12 o'clock.
He never could have been there at 1.30 or so because he was out by 12.15.

Speaker 20 Still, there was an age-old motive, money, to explain away.

Speaker 19 And in our interview, Paul himself had an answer for that.

Speaker 44 Are you having any financial issues at this point?

Speaker 4 Actually, at that point, I was in a much better financial situation than I had been previously because I had ended up getting a second job at New York Hospital in Queens, which was very high-paying.

Speaker 56 And then Greenwald called what he said was his most crucial witness, Paul's landlord.

Speaker 31 The defense wanted to use him to undermine a key part of the prosecution's case. Remember, Scott Sherwood said that after the murder, he and Paul drove home to Paul's house.

Speaker 23 Do you go straight to Paul's house in Glencove when you come back?

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 53 But on the stand, Paul's landlord disputed that.

Speaker 57 He said he'd been outside setting up for a photo shoot starting in the early morning, didn't lay eyes on either of them.

Speaker 66 How could the man be out there and he never sees Scott Sherwood or Paul.

Speaker 12 There's only one way. It did happen.

Speaker 20 The landlord's testimony was proof.

Speaker 19 The lawyer argued that Scott Sherwood had made up his story.

Speaker 54 The defense closed its case, claiming the prosecution had not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Paul was a killer.

Speaker 3 Paul Novak

Speaker 12 is not guilty, and we ask you to find that.

Speaker 19 After seven weeks, the jury finally began to deliberate.

Speaker 20 Going into the trial, Paul Paul was certain they would find him not guilty.

Speaker 44 Your life's on the line.

Speaker 4 Yes, my life is on the line, but I think the truth will come out in the end, and

Speaker 4 hopefully those 12 people will know the true story.

Speaker 62 His fiancé Kat told us before the verdict she will stick by him no matter what.

Speaker 3 I believe in him.

Speaker 44 Have you thought about your wedding and

Speaker 52 where it will be, when it will happen?

Speaker 11 I actually already already bought my dress.

Speaker 35 Kat's future and so many others would be determined by what the jury decided.

Speaker 39 For Catherine's family, the waiting was the hardest part.

Speaker 46 And truthfully, did not know what it was going to be. No matter which way you went with it, it was emotional.
There's no winners.

Speaker 19 Almost five years after Catherine Novak's murder, so many secrets, lies, and betrayals had been revealed. So many questions raised.

Speaker 18 Would the jury believe Paul's ex-lover and his ex-partner?

Speaker 39 Was Paul a ruthless killer or had he been set up?

Speaker 38 It took the jury two full days of deliberations.

Speaker 19 On the third day, they had made a decision. The verdict was in.

Speaker 50 How do you find in the case of the dictator of the state of New York v. Paul Novak as to count one murder in the first degree?

Speaker 21 Guilty.

Speaker 59 Guilty.

Speaker 32 Convicted of first-degree murder.

Speaker 53 Paul showed only a slight headshake as he was convicted of all charges against him, including insurance fraud, grand larceny, and arson.

Speaker 32 How are you feeling right now? How are you feeling?

Speaker 3 Very good.

Speaker 21 Paul was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Speaker 20 An appellate court upheld that decision.

Speaker 32 But Michelle, who knew about the murder plan from the beginning, walked away a free woman.

Speaker 44 A lot of people will be angry and think this woman knew

Speaker 58 about a murder that was going to happen and didn't do anything.

Speaker 9 I can think of hundreds of people, thousands of people that know about a crime and don't come forward and say a word.

Speaker 58 It doesn't make it okay.

Speaker 15 Is it a perfect world?

Speaker 16 No. Will she get hers?

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 12 When she dies.

Speaker 19 Up in Narrowsburg, where Catherine Novak's beloved red house once stood, the trees glow orange and gold. Her mother still mourns the daughter she lost, but remembers the life she lived.

Speaker 50 What do you miss most about her?

Speaker 46 Her smile and her hugs.

Speaker 6 That's all for now.

Speaker 16 I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 6 Thanks for joining us.

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