Miami-Dade

BEN NOVACK MURDER CASE

A plot to kill, an epic trial, and finally the verdict

 

jbrown@MiamiHerald.com

Narcy Novack will likely spend the rest of her life peeling potatoes in a federal prison.

Novack, who went from lap dancing in strip clubs to jet setting with celebrities, on Wednesday was convicted, along with her brother, Cristobal Veliz, of engineering the 2009 grisly murders of her millionaire husband, Ben Novack, Jr., and his 86-year-old mother, Bernice Novack.

The verdict means the pair faces life in prison, ending Novack’s fairytale existence married to the son of one of Miami’s most flamboyant hoteliers, the late Ben Novack, Sr., founder of the Fontainebleau hotel.

Narcy Novack, 55, was not present in the courtroom when the federal jury in White Plains, N.Y., announced the verdict shortly before noon. Veliz, 58, who was prone to public outbursts, was uncharacteristically stoic. They were convicted on all counts but one: the felony murder of her husband.

Ironically, it was the murder that no one believed was a murder that they were convicted on: the brutal beating of his mother in Fort Lauderdale.

The denouement capped a dizzying family saga that unspooled an array of seedy family secrets, sealing the murder case as one of the most famous in South Florida history.

The wild yarn featured surprise breast implants, extra-marital affairs, a tattooed porn star, sadomasochistic sex, a one-eyed hit man, the worlds’ second-largest Batman collection, an ex-Miami Dolphins linebacker, voodou, baseball-sized balls of cocaine, amputee porn, a long-lost adopted Novack son, a bungled police investigation and a hotel manager who happened to be the grandson of David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister.

Narcy Novack, who once was able to stuff cash into the shoeboxes in her closet, will likely lose all rights to her husband’s $10 million fortune, which, under his will, now goes to her grandsons. She will move from their $2 million waterfront Fort Lauderdale compound to a cozy room with steel bars, a bunk bed and a toilet.

Novack, who suffers from a germ phobia and once practiced black magic, will share showers, meals and prison chores like scrubbing bathrooms and peeling potatoes.

“I hope she will never see the light of day. That is such good news. I’m crying, I have been through so much,” said Bernice Novack’s sister, Maxine Fiel.

Terence Wilson, the lead Rye Brook police detective who dogged the case for three years, was ecstatic.

“We are very happy. Bernice can now rest in peace,’’ he said.

The ten-week trial included more than 4,000 pages of testimony, some 50 witnesses, more than 300 exhibits and 100 pages of jury instructions. The indictment had enough elements, acts, conspiracies and criminal counts to make a law professor’s head spin.

The jury of eight men and four women apparently struggled with a robbery charge which was critical to convicting the defendants of the felony murder of Ben Novack. The indictment required proof of aggravated robbery to find them guilty of murder under New York law, which is where the crime happened.

The pair were, however, convicted in the felony murder of Bernice Novack, whose crime was charged under Florida law, and required proof of different aggravated circumstances, including aggravated battery on an elderly person.

Novack’s attorney, Howard Tanner, found some sense of victory in the fact that jurors aquitted his client of the murder of her husband.

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