Family Affair

Speaker 1 the Creator of Homeland, Claire Danes and Matthew Rees star in the new Netflix series The Beast in Me as ruthless rivals whose shared darkness will set them on a collision course with fatal consequences.

Speaker 1 The Beast in Me is a riveting psychological cat and mouse story about guilt and justice and doubt, now playing only on Netflix.

Speaker 2 Grand Canyon University is one of the largest universities in the country.

Speaker 2 Praised for its community and impact, GCU integrates a welcoming Christian worldview and open discourse into over 300 online programs.

Speaker 2 Redefine your online education through GCU's industry-driven, academically rigorous programs. In 2024, online students received over $161 million in institutional scholarships.
Find your purpose.

Speaker 2 Private, Christian, affordable. Discover available scholarships at gcu.edu/slash/myoffer.

Speaker 3 I am being followed. There are threats on my life.
I know we're in danger. I know we are.

Speaker 4 It's a riveting mystery that started in a place of glamour.

Speaker 5 It became a destination for the rat pack for Frank Sinatra and ended in a case of murder.

Speaker 4 The wealthy heir to this legendary hotel dead.

Speaker 3 He was my father. He is the only father I ever knew.

Speaker 4 Now police said she was next, somewhat in the shadows, gunning for her.

Speaker 3 My suspicions are growing and growing by the minute.

Speaker 4 Who was behind all this? Plenty of suspects and plenty of motives. Anger, jealousy, greed.
Someone had 10 million reasons to kill.

Speaker 7 We looked back and said, My God, I couldn't believe what I saw.

Speaker 4 A final terrifying twist.

Speaker 3 I see my mother with a crowbar.

Speaker 4 Will you see it coming?

Speaker 4 Tonight, family affair. Here's Dennis Murphy.

Speaker 6 If ever there was a little girl lost, it was Maya Bond.

Speaker 3 From when I was little, I was always in the way.

Speaker 6 She survived a mother-daughter relationship quite unlike any you've ever heard.

Speaker 3 My mother is like trying to hug a cactus. You will eventually get hurt.

Speaker 6 And if the intersection of blood and money intrigues you, Pull up a chair and stay a while because there's plenty of both just ahead in this story.

Speaker 5 It's really an amazing, unusual, frightening story.

Speaker 6 What ended so badly in a darkened hotel room with the curtains drawn has its beginnings really in the warm sands of South Florida.

Speaker 6 Not the South Beach of today

Speaker 6 with its hot bodies and pulsating dance clubs. That's all a marketing reinvention of a much older Miami beach.

Speaker 6 No, we need to go back 50 years or more when caddies with tail fins were pulling into the newest, glitziest hotel on the East Coast, the Fountain Blue.

Speaker 6 Miami should be a great city. A hotel wheeler dealer named Ben Novak built it and they came.
Stephen Gaines wrote about the era in his book, Fool's Paradise.

Speaker 5 It became a destination for the rat pack that Frank Sinatra, the major stars, were appearing at the Fountain Blue, and lots of movies were shot there as well.

Speaker 6 Novak was the king, and he needed a queen to preside over his aquacolored palace. He found one in a former Coca-Cola model named Bernice.

Speaker 6 With her beauty and effortless charm, Bernice turned out to be the perfect hostess to greet the celebrities, gangsters, and just plain guests who made the Fountain Blue the scene of its day.

Speaker 6 King Ben and Queen Bernice lived over the store in a penthouse suite. And then along came their young prince, Ben Novak Jr.

Speaker 5 He was a spoiled kid. He was a brat.

Speaker 6 Ben Jr., don't call him Benji, would be trotted out to shake hands with the likes of JFK. Then it was back up the hotel elevator to home.
Birthday cakes came from room service.

Speaker 5 And the kids who came to the birthday party were complete strangers to him, just kids who were passing through the hotel.

Speaker 6 The friendless, lonely boy, disliked by his father's help, lost himself in the fantasy world of Batman. The superhero became an obsession.
Even as an adult, Ben Jr.

Speaker 6 was still amassing a floor-to-ceiling collection of Batman memorabilia. He even bought a Batmobile from the old TV show.

Speaker 6 But there was no holding off the real world and change. Just as the rat pack faded away, so too did the fountain bloom.
By the late 70s, Miami Beach was regarded as a stale place for old people.

Speaker 6 Ben Novak Sr. lost the hotel to bankruptcy and died not long afterwards.
The son, Ben Jr., all grown up now, stayed in the hospitality business and made his mark.

Speaker 6 He created a company run out of his home here that organized conventions at big hotels. Like his father, he was a hard-nosed businessman, and in time, he was grossing $50 million a year.

Speaker 6 And like his father, he needed someone like his mother to mix and mingle with the clients. He found that woman in a recent émigré from Ecuador.

Speaker 6 Her name was Narcy, and she had a little girl called May.

Speaker 10 Why do you think they became a couple and not just passing in the night?

Speaker 3 My mother is a lot of fun.

Speaker 3 You know, she definitely partied.

Speaker 6 When Ben Jr. met Narcy, she was partying for tips as a stripper in a sleazy Miami club, supporting herself and her little girl.

Speaker 10 She did very well with it, I guess.

Speaker 3 She did very well. My mother is a survivor.
She adjusts to pretty much anything.

Speaker 6 Narcy left behind her stripper pole to marry Ben Novak Jr. But the little girl felt like so much excess baggage in her mother's new relationship.

Speaker 6 She was dispatched to boarding school at the age of eight.

Speaker 10 Did you feel you'd been shipped off?

Speaker 3 Kind of.

Speaker 6 You had a tough childhood, huh?

Speaker 3 Best thing is that it's over.

Speaker 6 Ben Jr. and her mother lived in a $2 million Fort Lauderdale estate with a boat out back.
His elderly mother, Bernice, lived not far away.

Speaker 6 But May, the stepdaughter, was never going to be a rich man's trust fund kid. She grew up tough and hard, estranged from her mother, paying her own way with bartending and waitressing jobs.

Speaker 6 She had two children young and sweated the bills. It was the grandchildren that ultimately thawed some of the ice between mother and daughter.

Speaker 3 Chia may have been a horrible mother, but she was the best grandmother. She did everything with them.

Speaker 6 And Ben Jr. warmed to May.

Speaker 6 The one-time lonely prince belatedly seemed to recognize a kindred spirit in lonely, neglected May.

Speaker 3 He saw me as his daughter, and I did see him as my father.

Speaker 3 And he had no children of his own.

Speaker 6 Ben, after his own stunted childhood, finally found in his grandchildren some kids who wanted to play with all his Batman stuff.

Speaker 3 He did a lot of the grandfather things with them. A lot of, I think, why we saw so much of each other was because of those two boys.

Speaker 6 When she was in her late 20s, Ben Jr. asked May to become part of his very successful convention organizing business.
She would work alongside her mother and his mother, Bernice.

Speaker 6 It had taken 20 years, but they were finally becoming a family.

Speaker 3 You know, when I actually became older and got into the business, he was always there, guided me, and showed me how to do things.

Speaker 6 Then sadness. In the spring of 2009, Bernice in her late 80s had apparently slipped and taken a nasty fall getting out of her car.
She struggled to the house and died.

Speaker 6 May thought the time had come. For years, Ben had been asking her to consider becoming his legally adopted daughter.
She thought it would be the perfect Father's Day gift for him.

Speaker 3 I started thinking, you know, Bernice had just passed and

Speaker 3 it would be something nice for him, you know, to be like, okay, you do have a daughter, you know, because I do feel like I am his daughter to this day.

Speaker 3 So it never got legally changed. All the paperwork is still on his desk.

Speaker 6 It never got attended to because of the brutal event three months after Bernice's passing.

Speaker 6 Ben, Narcy, and May were putting on another of their big conventions at a hotel in New York's suburban Westchester County.

Speaker 6 Just after 7.30 Sunday morning, July 12, 2009, the last day of the convention, hotel security got the urgent call. Something very bad had happened in one of the suites.

Speaker 6 A 58-year-old man had been found bound and bludgeoned to death in the bedroom. Ben Novak Jr., the one-time Prince of the Fountain Blue, had been murdered.

Speaker 10 Coming up.

Speaker 4 who might want Ben Novak dead? The search begins, and it wasn't going to be easy.

Speaker 7 We decided we were going to download the locks of the entire hotel.

Speaker 10 The comings and goings of every room, every guest.

Speaker 7 450 rooms.

Speaker 4 When family affair continues.

Speaker 6 The sprawling Hilton Hilton Hotel in Ryebrook, New York was host to 2,000 Amway conventioneers that summer weekend in 2009. One of the suites had become a homicide scene.

Speaker 6 Sergeant Terry Wilson from the local police would lead the investigation.

Speaker 7 I couldn't believe what I saw.

Speaker 7 I went in the room, and there was the victim hogtied and on the floor, and it was a bloody mess.

Speaker 10 What does that tell you?

Speaker 7 This was a targeted individual.

Speaker 10 And is it true that his eyes were also gouged out?

Speaker 7 Yes,

Speaker 8 yes.

Speaker 6 Sergeant Wilson learned that the victim was Ben Novak Jr., a name that meant nothing to him.

Speaker 6 The murdered man's wife and stepdaughter had been escorted to a nearby hotel room so investigators could take their statements.

Speaker 6 The wife of 20 years, Narcy, told Sergeant Wilson that her husband had been up all night working on convention details and didn't go to bed, she thought, till about 6.30 in the morning.

Speaker 6 She said she'd then gone downstairs around 7 to oversee getting breakfast organized for the convention guests.

Speaker 10 Could you verify, for instance, that the wife was indeed at the breakfast by a security camera?

Speaker 7 We did have her on video confirmed what she was saying.

Speaker 6 The stepdaughter, May Abad, who managed the company money on these road trips, confirmed her mother's story of coming down to pitch in with breakfast.

Speaker 3 I was thinking, you know, there is a lot of people. There's 2,000 people down here.
I'll take any help I could get.

Speaker 6 After the breakfast rush, Narcy says she called her husband up in the room. No answer.

Speaker 10 And then she comes back up, what, about 7.30 or so and finds him?

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 6 She told the detective she tripped over the body, then bolted from the room, shrieking for help. Security arrived, as did hotel manager Jeremy Morris.

Speaker 11 Our security guard was holding Narcy at the end of Mr. Novak's feet, and Narcy was continuing to lunge towards the body, like howling and screaming at the top of her lungs.

Speaker 6 When Narcy later told police about the timeline of the morning, the computerized room key card confirmed her recollection.

Speaker 7 Her card was used to get into the room at 7.40,

Speaker 7 but from

Speaker 7 just after midnight,

Speaker 7 opening to go into the door. So that right away tells you that, well, then the door opened from the inside.

Speaker 6 If Narcy had been downstairs helping with breakfast and no key other than the wife's had opened the door since midnight, who then had admitted the killer or killers?

Speaker 6 An early on mystery.

Speaker 3 May, meanwhile had been summoned by the hotel manager to her stepfather's suite so i asked them like you know what happened and they're just like he's gone you know and i'm like what do you mean he's gone i'm like just try go do something the hotel guards wouldn't let her in the room one security officer was talking to another one he said it's a bloodbath in there a bloodbath that sent her mother into hysterics she's emotional she's wailing tears she's like throwing herself on the floor then she starts telling me she goes i think they're after all the you know convention money She's like, it had to have been a robbery.

Speaker 3 They know we carry a lot of money. Somebody must have been watching us.

Speaker 6 Unusually, Ben Novak's convention business ran on cash, bags of it. The exhibitors would turn over their dollars to the stepdaughter May and her assistants on site.

Speaker 6 This weekend, they'd taken in more than $100,000. Now, that money wasn't being kept in a hotel safe behind the front desk.
Rather, it was stashed in closets under the beds of the staff members.

Speaker 6 Question, had an insider who knew how they'd gone about their business decided to rip off the company by torturing Ben to cough up the cash.

Speaker 7 They had it around $110,000 in cash.

Speaker 10 So you're in motivation country right now, right?

Speaker 7 And we're trying to figure out what's going on.

Speaker 3 They didn't get anything from him. So of course I'm scared, you know, not just for myself, but for the staff.

Speaker 6 And if someone had been roaming the hotel hallways with money and murder on their mind, there were 2,000 potential suspects. A detective's nightmare.

Speaker 7 We decided we were going to download the locks of the entire hotel. You're kidding.

Speaker 10 The comings and goings of every room, every guest.

Speaker 7 250 rooms. It took him two weeks to do it.

Speaker 6 The hotel was bristling with security cameras, but unfortunately for the investigators, none in the hallway outside the murder room.

Speaker 6 One of the first things the cops did was round up all that cash and get it stored in the hotel safe till the banks opened in the morning.

Speaker 6 Then Sergeant Wilson posted a guard at the hotel room being shared by the mother and daughter.

Speaker 6 Before that Sunday night was over, the two women would have another round of questioning with the detectives.

Speaker 3 They totally grilled me and you get mad. So of course I was fighting back.

Speaker 6 They're asking you the question, did you do this? That's correct.

Speaker 3 You know, and then one of the cops even told me we have to ask these questions. I'm like, well, did you have to get like right here and asking the questions?

Speaker 6 A veteran Westchester County detective named Allison Carpentier had joined the investigation and led some of the questioning. May, the daughter, what did you make of her?

Speaker 13 Pretty much, I got the feeling that she was being honest with me. But you never know.
I mean, people are deceptive.

Speaker 6 The cops went through Narcy's story once again, hoping for some overlooked detail or investigative nugget.

Speaker 10 And she is the grieving

Speaker 6 widow.

Speaker 7 Widow, exactly. We need that information.
She's the last person that saw Mr. Novak.

Speaker 6 Narcy told detectives there was something of value missing. A gold bracelet that spelled out Ben's name in diamonds.

Speaker 6 An expensive Rolex watch was still on the bed, lying in a pool of blood, as well as an unexplained broken stem from a cheap pair of sunglasses.

Speaker 6 And then there was the matter of her husband's huge Batman collection and a rare comic valued at $43,000 he was planning on selling that weekend.

Speaker 10 Batman might have been a motivation for murder, his passion in life.

Speaker 10 He had a valuable comic, and somebody else wanted it. Correct.
Or wanted the value of it. Correct.

Speaker 6 Sunday was over. On On Monday, the cops would hear about the Novak's tie-me-up sex games.
On Monday, when mother and daughter started to go for one another's throats.

Speaker 4 Coming up, they should have been united in grief. Instead, there would be a feud sparked by a single troubling moment.

Speaker 3 As I'm sitting there, my suspicions are growing and growing by the minute.

Speaker 4 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 1 Most holiday gifts end up in a drawer or the back of your closet or accidentally left at your cousin's house. Not this one.
Mint Mobile is offering unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month.

Speaker 1 That's their best deal of the year, aka a holiday gift you'll actually use every single day. Don't get them socks.
Get them premium wireless for $15 a month.

Speaker 1 Shop Mint Unlimited plans at mintmobile.com slash dateline. That's mintmobile.com slash dateline.
Limited time offer. Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for 6 months, or $180 for 12 months.

Speaker 1 Plan required, $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra.
Initial plan term only.

Speaker 1 Greater than 35 gigabytes may slow when the network is busy. Capable device required.
Availability, speed, and coverage vary. See Mintmobile.com.

Speaker 14 If you're a custodial supervisor at a local high school, you know that cleanliness is key and that the best place to get cleaning supplies is from Granger.

Speaker 14 Granger helps you stay fully stocked on the products you trust, from paper towels and disinfectants to floor scrubbers.

Speaker 14 Plus, you can rely on Granger for easy reordering so you never run out of what you need. Call 1-800GRANGER, clickgranger.com, or just stop by.
Granger for the ones who get it done.

Speaker 15 A mochi moment from Mark, who writes, I just want to thank you for making GOP1s affordable. What would have been over $1,000 a month is just $99 a month with Mochi.

Speaker 15 Money shouldn't be a barrier to healthy weight. Three months in and I have smaller jeans and a bigger wallet.

Speaker 6 You're the best.

Speaker 15 Thanks, Mark. I'm Myra Ameth, founder of Mochi Health.
To find your Mochi Moment, visit joinmochi.com.

Speaker 16 Mochi members have access to licensed physicians and nutritionists and are compensated for their stories. Results may vary.

Speaker 6 Who had bound, gagged, and bludgeoned to death Ben Novak Jr.

Speaker 7 But seeing it, it was overwhelming. I mean, to say it and just thinking, oh my God.

Speaker 6 In this case, the detective's art of victimology would play a big role, finding out who the murdered person was, as well as the people in a circle of friends and families, his enemies.

Speaker 13 Oh, this is the address here.

Speaker 6 Detective Allison Carpentier, along with Detective Terry Wilson, would eventually piece together an unflattering family portrait.

Speaker 13 In the beginning, we didn't know if an affair, was this a domestic, was this just a random act.

Speaker 6 They cobbled together the story of Ben Jr., the wealthy son of a famous Miami beach man with his eccentric Batman collection.

Speaker 6 The wife from Modest Beginnings, the stepdaughter welcomed late to the family circle.

Speaker 13 We were still learning the dynamics of the family, how May was a stepchild. It took a long time for us to learn more about the family.

Speaker 6 The Novaks came off like candidates maybe for the cast of a bad reality show, but good old-fashioned robbery still looked like motive number one in the homicide.

Speaker 10 Ben Novak Jr. was a hard-charging businessman.
A lot of guys didn't like his style.

Speaker 7 That's correct.

Speaker 10 He could have cultivated enemies along the line.

Speaker 7 There were a lot of people that didn't like him.

Speaker 6 On the Monday after the Sunday morning murder, police took Narcy and her daughter to the moor to identify Ben Jr.'s body. Was that when May started to get the creeps about what had happened?

Speaker 6 Watching her stone-faced mother watch.

Speaker 3 I'm throwing up in a garbage can. You know, detectives are like right there and everything else.
And we all turn around and she is just staring at them. There was no emotion at all from her.

Speaker 6 That Monday, late into the night, Narcy and her daughter were interrogated by the detectives.

Speaker 17 I should have been there and I wish I got killed, but who knows?

Speaker 6 Detective Carpentier broached the sensitive subject of the couple's sex life.

Speaker 17 I know this is hard. Do you want me to speak to me alone? Do you want to have to leave?

Speaker 6 With the male detective out of the room, Detective Carpentier managed to win Narcy's trust. Narcy confided that Ben was into bondage.

Speaker 17 And when he let you tell him about this, he liked his hands behind his back or in front of him.

Speaker 17 He liked his husband's fancy.

Speaker 10 Now here he'd been tied up. Right.
In the homicide, did you think, well, is this a sex game gone wrong?

Speaker 13 We had brought it up to her, and I did confront her with that during the interview.

Speaker 17 Bennett found in a way that he enjoys sex.

Speaker 18 No, no, no.

Speaker 17 When I left Ben,

Speaker 13 I just found it odd that the way he finds pleasurable, he's killed in the same way.

Speaker 6 Because she was the spouse, the questions for Narcy got sharper as the night wore on. Was she in on the murder?

Speaker 9 I'm in action. You see, I let them in.

Speaker 18 No, I don't let them in.

Speaker 6 All the while, May had been outside eavesdropping on her mother's interrogation, getting chills.

Speaker 17 May said to me that somebody told her there was a blood bat.

Speaker 17 I don't remember guilty blood. Blood is red.

Speaker 3 Just listening to her talk to detectives, nothing was making sense.

Speaker 6 When she heard her mother describe tripping over the body and reaching down to touch Ben, alarms went off. She'd seen her mother mother shortly after that.

Speaker 3 I'm looking at her and there is no blood on her.

Speaker 10 In a scene that was described to you as a bloodbath?

Speaker 3 As a blood bath, correct. And I'm looking at her from head to toe.
There's. But you don't see any evidence on her.
I don't see any evidence on her. What are you thinking? What's going on?

Speaker 3 Suspicions are growing and growing by the minute. And then I'm thinking that I am this horrible human being for even thinking that my mother could do something like this.

Speaker 6 For 14 relentless hours, homicide detectives tried to pin back Narcy Novak's ears, grilling her as though she'd masterminded her husband's murder.

Speaker 9 Did she have anything to do with your husband's death? No.

Speaker 7 She never ate anything, she never drank anything, and she never went to the bathroom. The detectives would come in, question her.
She would just keep flowing. Nothing fazed her.

Speaker 6 Question. Had Ben hired a kinky escort girl to tie him up? Narcy scoffed at the idea and told the detectives to tone it down.

Speaker 18 I want you to have compassion, please.

Speaker 6 Have mercy.

Speaker 18 If there is a nice electrical chair and I'm a suspect, give it to me right now. Put me out of my misery.
I want to die.

Speaker 6 Shortly after 9 p.m., Detective Carpentier brought up the idea of a lie detector test.

Speaker 18 I take 100 lie detectors. I do whatever you want me to do.

Speaker 3 So at this point, I'm like hoping that I am completely wrong.

Speaker 3 If she takes this polygraph test and she passes, then I'm just going crazy in my own head. There's no way she did this.

Speaker 6 May also agreed that night to be polygraphed, but then Narcy got cold feet about taking hers.

Speaker 7 And the daughter is saying to her mother, what is wrong with you? Why don't you just take the lie detector test?

Speaker 6 What's the problem? The mother finally agreed to the polygraph. May would pass her test, but...

Speaker 10 How did the lie detector test go for Narcy?

Speaker 13 It didn't go well.

Speaker 6 She flunked it all the way through.

Speaker 7 Yes.

Speaker 6 When the cops were finally done with the two of them for the night, May confronted her mother.

Speaker 3 I asked her to her face.

Speaker 6 What? Did you have something to do with it?

Speaker 3 I did. I got in her face and they had pictures of like the crime scenes and stuff and I smacked them in her face.

Speaker 10 You think your mother has killed Ben Jr.?

Speaker 3 I think she definitely had something to do with it. You know, I didn't think she did it herself personally.

Speaker 6 The cops had only started to peel back the many layers of the Novak family story. There was still so much about these people they didn't know.

Speaker 4 Coming up, there were a few things May herself didn't know.

Speaker 3 I see my mother coming at me with a crowbar.

Speaker 4 When family affair continues.

Speaker 6 The cops were spooling through hours of hotel security cam footage, looking for what they weren't exactly sure. The footwork tedium while the homicide investigation was underway.

Speaker 7 We're leaving the doors open as far as we're concerned. Everything's on the table until the investigation either stalls or someone's arrested.

Speaker 6 The body of Ben Novak Jr. was with the medical examiner.

Speaker 6 Mother and daughter, attached now by blood only, returned to Florida separately. May had her own agenda, telling the cops she'd help them any way she could.

Speaker 6 She was collecting her things from her parents' house when she stopped in the guest cottage where Ben had his home office.

Speaker 6 She was snooping through his files for the detectives when she turned to see her mother upon her like a fury.

Speaker 3 I see my mother coming at me with a crowbar. And I very quickly she swung it and I picked my arm up and she got this whole end

Speaker 3 on me from with the crowbar.

Speaker 6 It was literally the final blow for May.

Speaker 3 She was calling me a traitor.

Speaker 10 She knew that you were giving evidence against her.

Speaker 6 Could you have backed off at that point? Could you have been a good little daughter and fallen in line?

Speaker 3 No.

Speaker 3 It's not in me. I knew what she had done was wrong.
Even though she was my mother, I knew she was wrong.

Speaker 6 The battleground between mother and daughter then moved from the Novak house to the courthouse. A take-no-prisoners fight over the will.
May was giving the cops her theory.

Speaker 6 Her mother had murdered her stepfather for the inheritance. Narcy, as the beneficiary, stood to get an estate estimated at $10 million, locked stock, and batmobile.

Speaker 3 At this point, my mother was to get everything, and I was like, she's going to get away with this.

Speaker 6 May filed a civil lawsuit against her mother, arguing the probate court shouldn't award Narcy Ben's money because she'd had him killed.

Speaker 6 The judge ended up freezing Ben's assets while the court looked into the daughter's allegation. So the big money was on ice.

Speaker 6 But May said her mother had already by then illicitly cleaned out safe deposit boxes kept by Ben and his mother.

Speaker 10 Was Was she on the list of people that had the key to get? No, she was not.

Speaker 3 No, she was not.

Speaker 10 She told him a story.

Speaker 3 She did.

Speaker 10 My husband's out in the car waiting.

Speaker 6 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 10 And he'd been dead for a week at that point. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Narcy was seen leaving the bank with a duffel bag. With police scrutinizing her every move and May hounding her, Narcy hired New York attorney Howard Tanner.

Speaker 6 He says Narcy did have authority to go into those safe deposit boxes. He also disputed May's contention that Narcy was involved in her husband's death.

Speaker 12 She had absolutely nothing to do with it. And she,

Speaker 12 when she discovers Ben Novak, she acted consistently with how anyone else would act in that situation.

Speaker 6 And the defense attorney urged anyone looking at this case to follow the money in Ben's murder.

Speaker 6 Down there in the fine print of the will, it shows that May, the daughter, may have had her own reasons for wanting Ben dead and her mother accused.

Speaker 12 May Abad and her children were the next in line.

Speaker 10 If somehow Narcy was removed from the line of inheritance, the daughter, May Abbad, would get $10 million through her children.

Speaker 12 That's correct.

Speaker 6 With Narcy out of the picture, May would get a flat $150,000, and her two boys, the rest of the $10 million estate. Narcy began offering her own theory of the crime.
May did it.

Speaker 3 When she realized, you know, the finger was

Speaker 3 pointed on her, you know, she accused me.

Speaker 10 Of arranging to kill Ben.

Speaker 6 Correct.

Speaker 6 For the money.

Speaker 6 The mother and daughter finger-pointing accusations continued without ceasefire, even as they interred Ben in his family mausoleum.

Speaker 6 Narcy, hidden beneath sunglasses in a scarf and hat, ignored her daughter. The mother was flanked by armed bodyguards.
The daughter brought her sons.

Speaker 3 One of my mother's bodyguards flashed his guns at my kids.

Speaker 10 I'm packing in case there's any doubt, one of those kinds of gestures? Yeah.

Speaker 3 I saw the extent of everything when she threatened her own grandkids. And I always said she'd never do anything to her grandkids.
She loves these kids.

Speaker 6 There was mother-daughter war, bad blood for sure, but the detectives were about to learn there was another close relative of interest in this toxic family portrait. And more crimes to investigate.

Speaker 6 Perhaps even another murder.

Speaker 4 Coming up from out of the blue, a twist, a clue that could turn the case upside down.

Speaker 19 This is shocking, and it could be a big break.

Speaker 4 And then revisiting those hotel security videos, the site that chilled investigators. When Dateline continues.

Speaker 20 Hi, we're Emochi Health, your long-term weight loss solution. We'll connect you with a board-certified provider to discuss your unique goals.

Speaker 20 Eligible patients can access custom-formulated GLP-1 medications at an affordable fixed price, delivered to their door monthly.

Speaker 20 Take our free eligibility quiz at joinmochi.com and use code Audio40 at checkout for $40 off your first month of membership. That's joinmochi.com.
Results may vary.

Speaker 20 Eligible GMP1 patients typically lose £1 to £2 per week in their first six months with Mochi when combined with a healthy lifestyle.

Speaker 6 A BetterHelp ad.

Speaker 21 This November, BetterHelp is encouraging people to reach out, grab lunch with an old friend, call your parents, or even find support in therapy.

Speaker 21 BetterHelp makes it easy with its therapist match commitment and over 12 years of online therapy experience, matching members with qualified professionals.

Speaker 21 And just like that lunch with an old friend, once you do reach out, you'll wonder, why didn't I do this sooner? Start now at betterhelp.com for 10% off your first month.

Speaker 3 I turned off news altogether.

Speaker 3 I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.

Speaker 5 It's the rage bait.

Speaker 3 It feels like it's trying to divide people.

Speaker 6 We got clear facts. Maybe we can calm down a little.

Speaker 1 NBC News brings you clear reporting.

Speaker 6 Let's meet at the facts.

Speaker 7 Let's move forward from there.

Speaker 1 NBC News, reporting for America.

Speaker 6 Mother and daughter each had a $10 million motive for murder, as the detective saw it. But Sergeant Terry Wilson was focusing on Narcy.

Speaker 6 He knew he didn't have enough to charge her with her husband's death, at least not yet. She had an alibi for the assumed time of the murder.
The case against her was circumstantial.

Speaker 6 So someone else must have gotten into the room and killed her husband. But who?

Speaker 6 Then seemingly out of nowhere, an anonymous letter fluttered onto the desk of a detective a thousand miles away from the crime scene.

Speaker 6 Miami Springs, Florida investigator Gary Fedders, personally knew nothing of the Ben-Novak case, and his department wasn't involved.

Speaker 19 There's people, obviously, that heard the name and knew about him, the fountain blue, and all. I wasn't one of them.
I didn't know anything about it until I talked to Detective Wilson in New York.

Speaker 6 The letter, written in Spanish, was nothing less than a blueprint to the murder, naming names, citing motivations.

Speaker 19 This is shocking, and it could be a big break.

Speaker 6 Sergeant Wilson up in Westchester couldn't wait to see it.

Speaker 7 Whoever wrote this letter obviously had information, inside information.

Speaker 10 Looking back, that letter had the whole story. The greed, the inheritance, the obstacles in the way of the inheritance, the facts of that letter were on the money.

Speaker 6 Here's the gist of the letter. It claimed Narcy's brother, a man named Cristobal Velis, had hired some thugs to kill Ben Novak Jr.

Speaker 6 Sergeant Wilson and his team paid an unannounced visit to the brother at his place in Philadelphia.

Speaker 7 We apparently had caught him off guard. And he invited us in, told us to sit down, and he'd be more than happy to answer any questions we had.

Speaker 7 And as we sit down, we sit at this kitchen table, and the kitchen table is littered with papers.

Speaker 6 Wilson and another detective spied something atop the heap.

Speaker 7 There's Western Union receipts, and this is all right out in the open. This is too good to be true.

Speaker 7 Like, pinch me.

Speaker 7 And we're holding the conversation with him, trying to not focus on the table because we don't want to draw attention to it.

Speaker 6 When Narcy's brother briefly left the room, Sergeant Wilson's partner furiously copied down names, dates, and receipt numbers.

Speaker 6 Why would Narcy's brother, a bus driver just scraping by, be wiring loads of money to one particular person in Miami?

Speaker 10 One of the names in the receipts is Garcia, is that right?

Speaker 7 Alejandro Garcia.

Speaker 10 But the surname Garcia in Miami is like being a Murphy in Boston.

Speaker 12 Yes, it is.

Speaker 7 Yes, it is.

Speaker 6 They began running it all down, and security cameras picked picked up Narcy's brother wiring the money from Philly, but at the receiving end in Miami, the cameras were on the fritz.

Speaker 6 No luck in getting pictures of this Garcia guy picking up the money. So they moved on to the brother's cell phone records and found frequent calls to a woman in Miami.

Speaker 6 Turns out the phone belonged to Garcia's ex-girlfriend, and he'd been using it. They talked to her.

Speaker 7 Where the big break came was, she said that he had a defective eye.

Speaker 6 A Garcia with a bad eye. The database search was narrowed.

Speaker 7 Well now we have some sort of physical description to see if this individual was arrested and lo and behold he was.

Speaker 10 So a Garcia with a bum eye comes out of the database, pops up, and that's it and we get a photo.

Speaker 6 Now the detectives were on a roll. With Alejandro Garcia's mugshot before them, they re-racked those hotel security tapes from the day of the murder.

Speaker 7 This is the main entrance. Here they come.

Speaker 6 Bingo. There was Garcia in the dark shirt with somebody else.
His ex-girlfriend said he always wore sunglasses to protect his bad eye, but he wasn't wearing them on that day.

Speaker 7 And you see the two of them walking very fast out. Alejandro has the bag.
Alejandro doesn't have his glasses on anymore. With the broken frames.
Which are now.

Speaker 7 Well, apparently, as the victim reacts to the assault, he hits Alejandro in the face, breaking the glass as the glasses fall onto the bed.

Speaker 6 They rewound the tapes even further back to the first day of the convention, and there they were were again. Garcia in sunglasses and a yellow shirt, and the other guy casing the hotel.

Speaker 6 In one chilling scene, they check out their future victim, Ben Novat Jr., in the lobby.

Speaker 10 And in less than 48 hours, they're going to murder this guy.

Speaker 7 In less than 48 hours, they're going to murder this guy.

Speaker 6 The second man is ID'd as Joel Gonzalez of Miami. Wilson and his team had two targets and started with the apparent leader, Garcia.

Speaker 7 We started to hunt him down.

Speaker 6 The Miami hunt didn't take long. Garcia was picked up on an outstanding warrant.
The New York cops braced him. Garcia denied ever being in New York.

Speaker 7 He's on video in the hotel.

Speaker 6 Detectives had some surprises to smoke out their one-eyed suspect. They showed him stills from the security cam footage, Garcia and his suspected accomplice in the hotel.

Speaker 6 The capper was a tape recording of a phone call between a detective and Narcy's brother Cristobal.

Speaker 6 In the call, Narcy's brother, sounding all cooperative, says he wants to help the cops and gives them the name Alejandro Garcia as a person good for the murder.

Speaker 6 Garcia listened silently as the brother threw him under the bus.

Speaker 6 He denied being the hitman in that interrogation, but the message was clear. Get on board now, confess, or take the fall.

Speaker 3 He's going to be booked on charges of murder.

Speaker 6 Meanwhile, the evidence against Narcy's brother was piling up. Cell phone tower records showing him near the hotel on the morning of the murder.
Evidence he'd provided a getaway car and driver.

Speaker 6 Who was in charge of this gang, the conspirators?

Speaker 7 The street boss that was handling everything

Speaker 7 that was going on was Cristopal Belize.

Speaker 6 And who was the boss of bosses? With a $10 million motive, there was only one answer for the cops. Narcy Novak had ordered the hit on her husband.

Speaker 7 Obviously, he reported to Narcy or worked at the direction.

Speaker 6 What started as a small suburban village investigation was now a multi-state conspiracy case. The decision was made to let federal prosecutors take the complex conspiracy to trial.

Speaker 6 The suspected hitmen, Garcia and Gonzalez, were offered a deal, testify against Narcy and her brother, or go away to prison for what would likely be life sentences.

Speaker 6 The two confessed to being the hitmen in a murder-for-hire scheme. Then Garcia shocked the prosecutors.
There was something else. A second murder they didn't know about.

Speaker 6 And if they didn't act fast, he said, a third was on the way.

Speaker 4 Coming up,

Speaker 4 just who was in the crosshairs?

Speaker 13 There was a hit out on May.

Speaker 4 This detective's personal quest to save this daughter in danger. When family affair continues

Speaker 3 this is the brother

Speaker 6 the two hitmen had confessed admitting to killing ben novak jr they claimed ben's wife narcy and her brother paid them to do it But still no charges had been filed as police continued to investigate.

Speaker 6 And then the hitman, Alejandro Garcia, dropped a bombshell. He claimed he also killed someone else on orders from Narcy and her brother almost a year earlier, and he'd gotten away with it.

Speaker 6 The murder for hire? None other than Ben Novak's 87-year-old mother, Bernice.

Speaker 6 The one-time queen of the Fountain Blue died three months before Ben in what Florida cops and the medical examiner ruled was an accidental death, a slip and fall getting out of her car.

Speaker 10 How's he killed her?

Speaker 7 He had a monkey wrench, and he took what appeared to be a baseball swing and hit her several times in the head.

Speaker 6 Garcia said he got paid $600 for the job. But why kill Ben's 87-year-old mother?

Speaker 6 Because in Ben's will in place at the time, if he died first, his mother, not his wife Narcy, would be the primary beneficiary. But with Bernice dead, there was nothing standing in Narcy's way.

Speaker 13 Had they not... tried to kill Ben and succeeded in killing Ben, they would have probably never been caught.

Speaker 6 And there was more. When detectives arrested Garcia, they learned that still a third murder might be in the works.
Someone else provided for in the will, Narcy's daughter, May.

Speaker 11 She was in serious peril.

Speaker 13 And I always believed that she was. I just couldn't prove it to anybody.
But when we sat down with Alejandro Garcia and learned that there was a hit out on May, that became concerning.

Speaker 6 A battered photo of May was found in Garcia, the confessed hitman's wallet. He was told she'd be the next job.
Well, May freaked.

Speaker 6 She needed to move apartments ASAP and told federal prosecutors she didn't have the money. The feds told her they'd get her the money, but the paperwork would take time.

Speaker 6 Detective Allison Carpentier didn't think there was time.

Speaker 10 And here came a moment of big moral dilemma, ethical dilemma for you as a person and an officer.

Speaker 13 Yes, it was hard.

Speaker 6 What did you decide to do?

Speaker 13 I decided to give her the money and tell her to move.

Speaker 10 Your money from your bank account? Yes.

Speaker 6 The Westchester detective loaned May $5,000 of her own money. May promised to pay her back.
When prosecutors learned of it, they removed Detective Carpentier from the case.

Speaker 6 The defense, they admonished her, would call it buying witness testimony.

Speaker 13 I said, I can't sleep at night knowing that if I wake up tomorrow morning, something happens to May and her children, and I did nothing.

Speaker 3 I am very grateful to her because if I didn't move when I did, I wouldn't be here today.

Speaker 6 Almost a year after Ben's murder, Narcy was indicted and walked before the cameras of America's Most Wanted.

Speaker 6 She and her brother Cristobal were charged with racketeering and conspiracy for two murders, witness tampering, and a host of other charges.

Speaker 3 The plot that led to the death of Ben Novak was a family affair.

Speaker 6 When the trial got underway in federal court, Garcia, the hitman, testified in ice-cold detail how he killed Ben Novak Jr. So how did they get into the room?

Speaker 7 Narcy opened the door and let them in.

Speaker 6 Prosecutors argued that morning there was a small window of opportunity for Narcy to let the hitmen in and direct the assault on her sleeping husband.

Speaker 7 The victim is in bed. They get right in position.
They signal one, two, three, and then boom. Then the assault starts.

Speaker 10 And they're banging him in the head.

Speaker 7 Yeah, they hit him all over the head. They hit him in the ribs,

Speaker 8 I mean, brutally.

Speaker 6 The two hitmen use small hand weights to pummel men. Narcy looked on.

Speaker 7 Then there is a point in time where I guess he's making sounds, moans,

Speaker 7 and she tosses a pillow in to keep him quiet.

Speaker 10 Do they say that Narcy tells them to cut out his eyes?

Speaker 7 She did.

Speaker 6 At mid-trial, the case against Narcy's brother was solid. A long trail of wire transfers, credit card receipts, and cell phone records connected him to the hitman.

Speaker 6 But for Narcy, it was primarily the hitman's word against hers until the jury heard about Narcy's secret cell phone.

Speaker 6 On the morning of the murder, Garcia testified that Narcy called her brother while they waited at a gas station near the hotel.

Speaker 13 Narcy makes a call from that phone at 6.39 in the morning to say, come on in, you know.

Speaker 10 Coast is clear.

Speaker 13 Coast is clear. That becomes huge because it's her calling Christabel to say, bring the killers in.

Speaker 7 And it puts her right at the top of the plot, the conspiracy.

Speaker 20 Yes.

Speaker 6 And there's yet another twist here.

Speaker 6 Would you be surprised to learn that there was another woman in this story? A person named Rebecca Bliss.

Speaker 12 You're looking mighty sexy today.

Speaker 3 Well, thank you.

Speaker 6 Bliss, a South Florida tattoo artist and sometime porn actress, was having an affair with Ben Jr.

Speaker 6 He put her up in a nice waterfront apartment and told Bliss he was going to leave his wife for her.

Speaker 6 Narcy, the story goes, learned of the affair and called Bliss, saying, if I can't have him, no one will. Six months later, he was dead and without eyes to ever look at another woman.

Speaker 13 This case was about money and it was about Narcy not wanting to be replaced.

Speaker 6 When Defense Attorney Howard Tanner put on his case, he zeroed zeroed in on the hitmen's credibility and their motivation in testifying.

Speaker 6 He also attacked their allegation that Narcy was in the room during the murder.

Speaker 12 They themselves stated that they would do anything to help themselves. In my book, they would have been willing to lie.

Speaker 10 Is Narcy in the room?

Speaker 12 Absolutely not.

Speaker 10 And how about the disturbing direction she allegedly gives him? Gouge's eyes out.

Speaker 12 It just didn't happen.

Speaker 6 The defense also suggested that Narcy's daughter, May, could have somehow been involved in the murder so she and her sons could inherit Ben's estate.

Speaker 12 May Abad had Narcy Novak in her way. If Narcy Novak disappears, she takes and her children take under the will.

Speaker 12 Those are facts.

Speaker 6 So that's the defense.

Speaker 10 Jurors consider who's going to get this money here.

Speaker 10 And it's not just Narcy Novak, it's the daughter here, May.

Speaker 12 There was an incomplete investigation done in this case. I'm not claiming that anyone else committed this murder.
The defense here is that Narcy Novak did not commit this murder.

Speaker 6 Detectives concluded that May knew nothing about Ben's will till well after the murder.

Speaker 3 I didn't even know that my name or the boys' names were in this will.

Speaker 6 After a nine-week trial, Narcy and her brother were found guilty of racketeering and conspiracy in the death of Ben Novak Jr. and his mother Bernice.

Speaker 6 They were acquitted of only one charge involving the theft of Ben's diamond bracelet.

Speaker 6 For the crime the conspirators almost got away with, the murder of Bernice Novak, the conviction carried a mandatory life sentence for both.

Speaker 7 The best part of it was that Bernice could finally rest in peace.

Speaker 6 After the verdict, Narcy spoke by telephone with Dateline from prison. She says she would never have done anything to harm her husband Ben and was innocent of all the charges.

Speaker 6 Sergeant Terry Wilson and his team of detectives, the prosecutors, won their case with some big assists from May Aban.

Speaker 6 Now her mother is gone and will spend the rest of her life in prison.

Speaker 3 She didn't see what she had in front of her. She had her daughter.
She had two grandkids that totally loved her.

Speaker 3 And now she has nothing.

Speaker 10 And greed and some amount of jealousy presumably is driving this, huh?

Speaker 3 Absolutely. No matter what, I loved my mother.
She was my mother. She had grandkids that adored her, that would have done anything for her.
And they did.

Speaker 3 And she just threw it all away, threw it all away for money.

Speaker 6 If you go to Miami Beach, the Fountain Blue is still there, all spruced up with a new lease on life.

Speaker 6 And May has a fresh new outlook on the rest of her life, too.

Speaker 3 Come here, buddy.

Speaker 6 A new little guy in her life, a son. She named him Ben after the lost prince, the namesake he never got to meet.

Speaker 6 That's all for now.

Speaker 4 I'm Lester Holt. Thank you for joining us.

Speaker 1 This time of year, many are checking off their holiday gift lists. But identity thieves have lists too, and your personal information might be on them.
Protect your identity with Life Lock.

Speaker 1 LifeLock monitors millions of data points every second and alerts you to threats you could miss. If your identity is stolen, LifeLock will fix it guaranteed or your money back.

Speaker 1 Save up to 40% your first year at lifelock.com/slash dateline. Terms apply.