312. Murder of the Hotel Heir - Benji Novack

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I'm just going to say my favorite one is the handprint one, which if you go check it out, you'll know what I'm talking about. All right. Do you have a 10 seconds for this episode? I do have one, but it was kind of related to bagels, so I'm not going to say it because you guys might be getting sick of bagel, hock, but I do have another one. I was thinking about the other day how weird it is that we all just have social media. Like we all just can see each other 24/7. We just make videos and posts and everyone looks at it. I don't know. It's like one of the black mirror moments. I was just thinking about it and I could not imagine what the world's going to look like 10, 15, 20 years from now. It's kind of a strange concept. I mean, I know for the most part, I didn't really grow up with it. I didn't have social media until I was like 16. I mean, I had Vegas at Facebook before, but it's just so different now, like because of our phones. It's just a weird concept. I don't know. You know what I'm saying? Just this fake world that like, what's like real, but like it's, it's just so digitalized. It's not really that real though. I mean, to an extent, I guess, I mean, it's like, yeah, but I mean, like it's just us. Like it's like, we're real. It's just I feel like most people actually think social media is the real world. And I just don't, I don't think it is what you're saying. I mean, honestly, eventually we're all going to turn into like a ready player one type status. It's going to be love that movie, by the way, one of my favorite movies going to be nuts. Oh my gosh, I have to say real quick. Love Burger King. I'm a big Burger King fan, okay? I lived in Spain for a few years. There wasn't any McDonald's. There was Burger King Burger King was everywhere. I ate so much Burger King, a big Burger King fan, I'm hearing they're coming back. They're making a comeback on social media. So pretty excited about that. I'll leave that. That's my 10 seconds. If you like, if you haven't had Burger King, go and try it. If you don't like Burger King, go and try it again. Nice. You ready for the episode or the case? Oh, Burger King, if you want to sponsor me, like, I don't have to give me much, just like free food. Please. Like all just free food, I'll put a big Burger King bag right here when I was like a freshman in high school. Yeah. I'd have dance right after school, but I danced at a club, so it was different from school. And I carpooled with some girls and we would get in the car and drive from school to dance and barely. And in between, we would swing through the Burger King drive through. Why don't you have, why don't you try again? You never told me that. Listen, listen. And we would get like a chicken, dry and a hamburger and we would all split it because we didn't, we, it's not like we were rolling in money and able to buy fast food every day. Okay. And so we would just get the smallest thing and just split it, like pass the hamburger around the car and take a bite. And we would be late to dance every single time and we always would tell our instructors that we got stuck at a train because there was a really like major train intersection that was that we had to cross and every time would be, oh, sorry, the train. It's good though, right? Yeah. That's just my only experience with Burger King and they had fry sauce in Idaho. That's an Idaho Utah thing, babe. I know, but I was just saying, dang, not a lot of fast food joints had fry sauce. I could go for a walker right now. Okay. Well, let's hop into today's case. Our sources for this episode are oxygen.com and we see Miami.com, justice.gov, abcnews.go.com, cbsnews.com, archives.fbi.gov, Palm Beach post.com, people.com, New York post.com, through pedia and crime library.org. All right. We have an heir to a luxury hotel chain, a model for Salvador Dali and an exotic dancer with a pretty woman story. Okay. Now, what do all of these things have in common? Batman. Their twists and turns in today's episode. One so unimaginable it feels like it came directly from the pages of a thriller novel, but today's case is not a work of fiction. It is the devastating reality of a family whose legacy was tarnished, whose dirty laundry was aired out publicly to dry, who was betrayed by those closest to them in a story that even the best fiction novelist couldn't conceive of on their own. So now I want to take you back to the 1960s, where a young Benji Novak is living in Miami Beach, Florida. Or specifically, he's actually living at the prestigious Fontainebleu hotel. Now back around this time, Fontainebleu was like the four seasons, but better. It was the place to see and be seen, especially in the 1960s in Miami Beach. I mean, Frank Sinatra and the rap pack had stayed there as did Marilyn Monroe, John F. Kennedy. It appeared in a handful of movies, including the James Bond film Goldfinger, and it eventually even earned a spot on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. But for most people, this hotel was just a stopover point, a vacation destination, but Benji and his family were different because they lived there full time, and well, they actually own the place. So we have a little Zack and Cody situation going on here. Benji's dad, Ben Novak senior, was a real estate investor, but after a few flops in New York City, he moved his family down to South Miami Beach during World War II, built a small hotel that eventually led to his next property, the Fontainebleu, which opened in 1954 just two years after Benji was born. Now as for Benji's mother, Bernice Novak, her story was arguably even more interesting. She was a foster child turned model, who had done everything from Coca-Cola campaigns to working with the famous painter Salvador Dolly. Now Bernice and Ben senior had met in New York back in the late 1940s, and by that point, Ben senior was already actually living down in Florida, but with so many frequent trips to the big apple the two of them fell in love. The only problem was Ben senior was actually still married at the time. Now Bernice quickly called things off when she learned that her boyfriend was still married, but a year or so later, Ben came knocking on her door with a divorce certificate and said, "Now can we date?" And by 1951, the two of them were married, by the 1960s, they were living in the penthouse suite of their new prestigious hotel with their only child, Benji, basically living a very glamorous lifestyle. They would get dressed up, head downstairs each evening to wine and dine the famous guests who were coming through. Again, this is everyone from world leaders to famous celebrities. I mean, he literally is London-tipton. For young Benji, he felt like this was actually a pretty lonely upbringing. He didn't venture out of the hotel much. Most of his meals were made by hotel staff. His friends were limited to the other younger guests that were just passing through the hotel. On vacation, it wasn't like a neighborhood where he had consistent neighbors he could play with. Birthday parties were actually often just filled with strangers and children. He had never met before. And when he went trick-or-treating, the families chauffeur took him alone. And as a way to keep himself company, Benji actually developed a love for the Batman comics and began collecting memorabilia. To the point where in his later years, he would come to actually have the second largest known Batman collection in the world. That's cool. Over time, the charmed, sheltered lifestyle also made Benji a little particular. Those who knew him said he was a tiny tyrant. He was spoiled. He was kind of difficult to work with, quality that never really left him. Even after that fancy lifestyle came to a screeching halt in the 1970s. Again, he's just still a child, and that is when his dad and his mom filed for divorce. Now by this point, the hotel had kind of lost a lot of its allure. It really lived a short life. And so the hotel filed for bankruptcy. He was taken away from the Novak's by the courts. And then suddenly, Benji and his mom Bernice were now off on their own. But Benji used his father's missteps to fuel his own fire. So when Benji was just around 22 years old, he started his own company that would grow into a lucrative corporation. Now the one thing Benji had been seeing and studying his whole entire life was the hospitality business. Actually luxury hospitality business. So it made sense that he would follow down that path later in life. He created a company that organized hotel conventions all across the country. At one point, his company was even valued at 50 million dollars. And it was around the same time that Benji found the person he wanted to share his wealth and his life with. An exotic dancer in her early 30s named Narcissa Pacheco or Narcy. She went by Narcy. Now Narcy was born in Ecuador. She had a daughter of her own 10 year old. And while she wasn't exactly the person everyone pictured Benji marrying one day, the two said they felt wildly in love. And by 1991, 35-year-old Benji and 34-year-old Narcy were married. And Narcy quickly took on the role of the established wife. Her daughter, whose named May, was sent off to boarding school as Narcy helped Benji with his company, going with him on business trips, consulting on different projects. Benji eventually bought them a multi-million-dollar estate and expensive cars. So Narcy was now basically said to live the pretty woman lifestyle. She was kind of taken in. She was getting beautiful furs and flashy jewelry. And as May, her daughter got older, she also got closer with Benji, her stepfather, seeing him more as a father that she never really had. And after growing up and then eventually having two kids of her own, two boys, May ended up taking on a role at Benji's companies, even helped patch some of the holes she had in her own relationship with her mother. So things were kind of going well for the family, but the one person who vocally did not approve of Benji's family was his own mother, Bernice. Now, by the year 2009, okay, they've been together, they've grown up a bit. Benji's father had passed away. The hotel had found a new owner had undergone a $500 million renovation. And 87-year-old Bernice was kind of now just living in obscurity. For the past 40 years, she had been residing at a home in Fort Lauderdale amongst the relics of her past. Fancy gowns that she once wore to presidential inaugurations, a grand piano that was once played by Frank Sinatra, scrapbooks of photos from her heyday at the hotel they once owned, and an oil painting of her most treasured possession, her son Benji sitting on the beach with a scarf around his neck. Now, as her only child, she and Benji were close and stayed close, which was why no woman would ever be good enough for Benji in Bernice's eyes. You know, it's interesting that I mean this still happens today. You hear about all these insane crazy toxic mother-in-law stories. It's just wild to see it. Like, I've watched them on Instagram and on TikTok. TikTok, TikTok. My gosh, I'm turning into a boomer. But it's wild to, it's wild to see them watch them. Like, there are some crazy mother-in-law's out there. And there is this stereotype, which I'm saying stereotype because I don't know if there's any like proven statistics on this. But there is this stereotype of like, moms of boys, like a mama's boy. Yeah. And then then becoming a monster in law because like this, they almost have this weird attachment, attachment to their son where they don't want a woman to replace them. I don't want to say it's ancestral, but it definitely is a little different than like women with their daughters. Yeah, for sure. In a way. At least that's the stereotype. Okay. True. So obviously when he had met Narcee and then they decided to get married, this was hard for Bernice. In her own eyes, she did not want a former exotic dancer, someone who she saw as lower than them to now have this beautiful marriage and get to like live this beautiful, fancy life that she believes her son had built on his own and was now just giving to a girl. So Narcee and Bernice had never gotten along. But as I said, these two stayed married. They raised May. She ended up having kids. She's now working for Benji. So basically now that Bernice was reaching almost 90 years old, it seemed like she had kind of decided to just shut her mouth and accept that this relationship was real as she's coming to the end of her life. They had been married for 18 years at this point. But on April 6, 2009, any lingering issues Bernice had became meaningless because that day, 90-year-old Bernice was found dead in the laundry room just off of Grosh. Okay, here we go. So when police responded, they say, you know, it came from a series of faults she had taken after trying to get out of her car. So Benji took the loss hard, but he kept focused on his business, which was probably a welcomed distraction. And in July of that year, he was called to New York to oversee a convention in the town of Rhybrook. It's about 30 miles outside of the city. So on July 10, Benji, Narcee, and May all flew north to stay at the Hilton in Rhybrook where the convention was being held. It was definitely in all hands on deck situation as the conference was going to host over a thousand people. This was pretty big for their business. So from the 11th into the 12th of July, Benji worked all night, tying up loose ends, working on other projects, and then the convention kind of wrapped up that morning. Now according to Narcee, he had stayed up working until 6.30 a.m. that Sunday morning before then finally crashing. And Narcee said around 7.15 a.m. she went downstairs at the hotel to get some breakfast. And this is something hotel security footage did confirm because again, we are now in 2009. She returns to their room about 30 minutes later. And according to her, she walks in to a horrifying scene. Benji, her husband of 18 years, who had just lost his mom not too long ago, was faced down on the floor of the hotel covered in blood. Wait. Okay. So the mom died. Yes. And then shortly after the sun died. Yes. On a work trip with his wife and his wife's daughter, basically his stepdaughter, who also worked for him. At a hill, and by the way, which is just a little ironic considering he grew up in one of the most infamous hotels. So we're at a point where there's like one suspect. Well, the mom's death was from false. She wasn't murdered. The police said she fell. Oh, okay. So I guess technically we can have two suspects. The son could have killed the mom and then killed himself or you think the mom was murdered. Yeah. Obviously the mom was murdered. No. She just died from falling. She was 90 years old. Like it's confirmed she died from falling. Yes. Like police found her dead and then said she died from a series of falls. That's very common. Have you seen life alert? Yes. I've seen life alert. I think they have that. Okay. But I just I just find it suspicious that we're doing an episode about murder and murder. And the mom just fell down the stairs and died. Not down the stairs. Where'd you get the stairs from? I don't know. You said she fell. He fell while getting out of her car and trying to walk into her house. That's even worse. There's no way. Okay. So wait on. I need the clarification. Was she for sure? Like they claimed it like an accident. Like she fell and died. Yes. Okay. So she dies on April 6th. And it just so happened that the son died a couple weeks later. Not a couple weeks. July 10th. Okay. So a couple of months. Yes. See, that's just. And a Hilton. That's suspicious. I'm not saying. I mean, I guess if they rolled in an accident, whatever. It's just the true crime podcast. Little suspicious. For me, it's just like his mom dies in this house that she has lived in forever after her marriage ending getting kicked out of this infamous hotel. She's surrounded by relics of what used to be like in her. That's where she, you know, she peaked. She peaked when she lived in this house and or when she lived in this hotel, they ran it and met all these famous people. And then she left. And then, you know, a couple months later, he dies at a Hilton. It's just the whole like hotel thing to me from a film. No, no, it's the it's just the theme of hotel. Oh, like dying in a hole. like he's raised at a hotel. She dies surrounded by this dream life at a hotel. - Yeah, I get it. - And then he goes to a Hilton because his entire company is based off of hotels. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - He's at a Hilton with his stepdaughter and his wife. And okay, let me just keep going. - Yeah, keep going. - 'Cause not only is he dead, okay? So it's that morning. Remember, he worked the whole weekend, they all had. He stayed up till 6.30 a.m. She goes down each breakfast. We see that on camera. She comes back up just 30 minutes later, okay? The continental breakfast. - Yes, walks into their hotel room. Benji is face down on the floor, okay? He's covered in blood. His head is covered in duct tape. - What the. - His arms are taped behind his back. - Oh my god. - And his legs are basically taped wrapped together below his knees. - Not to say, his arms are cut off. His head is cut, that's nuts. - So, Narcy is like, calls the police, who arrive a little before 8 a.m. And they discovered that the scene was actually far more gruesome than Narcy had really mentioned on the phone. Like, she calls and says, my husband, he's dead, but when they show up, Benji is not, okay, he's duct taped, but he's hog tied on this floor, right? He also has been bludgeoned so badly. 20 of his ribs are cracked. - Oh my gosh. - His mouth is taped shut so tightly and violently, like you choked. - Yeah. - And even worse, his eyeballs. - Oh no, nope. - Had been gouged out of his head. - This isn't safe. This is not normal. I mean, none of this is normal, but this is next. - Yeah. - This is crazy. - Right. - So because of the blood stains that were on the bed, police believed he was actually attacked in his sleep. Like, someone had snuck up on him in this room and hit him multiple times before he either fell or they moved him to the floor. - And no one heard this? - Not that, like, not that they know of immediately at this point. - Also, we know how thin a hotel walls are. - Yeah. I've had some bad experiences. - Like, you're telling me no one's heard this? - Yeah, this is like a pretty brutal attack. - Even if he was attacked in his sleep. - This is not. - It feels insane. So police also think this was too complicated a job for one person. They think this was like a hit. - Camelette, you keep going. There's cameras everywhere. There's gotta be footage. - But they can't tell at first whether this was a robbery or not, mainly because 53-year-old Benji's Rolex is still there, lying in a pool of blood near him. However, a gold bracelet with diamonds that Benji never took off, like his signature bracelet, was missing. Now, police realize whenever you're dealing with a victim that's kind of this high profile that has this much wealth, that a lot of people knew he was here at this convention. You have a lot of potential suspects. In fact, the hotel had thousands of people staying there for a convention Benji had planned, meaning a lot of people knew where to find him that morning. But the convention was over that day. So people were waking up, this is 8 a.m. People are gonna be waking up checking out and taking off to head home, which meant police had to work fast 'cause their suspects could leave. And one of the early leads they look into comes from Narcy, who actually mentions to police Benji's Batman collection. And I don't know if they're like, does he have anything of value or anything, but somehow this gets brought up, which includes get this, an actual functioning replica of the 1960s Batmobile. And four warehouses full of memorabilia, estimated at a total of over $1 million. - Yeah, there's a lot of money, but I'm not gonna lie, I thought I was gonna be like 10, 20 million or something crazy. - Well, this is what she says. She's like the only thing I can think is, he's dealt with some shady people when it came to buying and selling Batman. memorabilia. Apparently there was one person he was dealing with who even came to their house in Fort Lauderdale and got upset when they were negotiating prices over a comic book. - This isn't the lead, it's something else. - And she's like, it's also wasn't unusual for my husband to have amounts large amounts of cash when he would meet these people to buy a memorabilia. He once agreed to pay $43,000 for just a single comic book. So she's like maybe someone knew that he was into this stuff that he did carry large amounts of cash on him, wanted to rob him or maybe he had been planning to meet someone to do one of these exchanges. So the police keep Narcy's statement in mind, but they learn that Benji's convention company operates in cash as well. According to colleagues, he often kept large sums of money hidden in hotel rooms in case he needed it during the conferences for something. That weekend, in particular, he had $110,000 taken out of company funds for incidentals. And I don't know if this was like a company card before a company card became as like often used as it is now. So it was like they would just pull a chunk of cash for a convention and be like, if we have any companies like expenses, we'll just pull from this cash instead of using a company card. - That's a good question. I wouldn't know. I would say that's not normal, but I could totally. - Maybe they just didn't want taxes. - That just seems crazy. That much cash seems not normal, 'cause you can write checks. - Right. - But like Benji just doesn't want normal for that. That seems insane. - Either way, after Benji's death, a majority of that cash is missing. But whether that was like stolen or spent, we don't know. Plus, as we heard earlier, Benji wasn't exactly the easiest person to deal with. A lot of the qualities and habits he had made earlier in life really stuck with him. And because of that, Benji had made quite a few enemies in business. And all of this to say, this was gonna be a pretty long list of potential suspects and motives. So the police would have to scratch people off one by one. - But it's a hotel. There's a billion cameras. There's no way that this can be that complicated. Maybe cameras in the elevator, but might not be in the hallways. - For sure, I feel like there has to be, right? We're gonna find out in a second. - Police also learn early on, like pretty early on in the investigation from a tip while talking to people in Benji's life, that he didn't just love to collect Batman memorabilia as his hobby. He actually also had a hobby of stepping outside of his marriage as well. I would not consider that a hobby. - So it's no secret. Benji was a bit of a party animal. And through that, he had met several women over the years that he had been intimate with. This is something that Narcy always suspected and eventually confirmed. The two had always stayed together through this habit he had. But it did make Narcy jealous, paranoid over the years. However, when Narcy tells police something about Benji's sexual preferences, it sets off alarm bells for them. And maybe this is why she wasn't as like descriptive on the 911 call because she tells them, no, he was into bondage, like bondage games. He liked to be tied up. And since Benji was found with his hands and legs bound, mouth covering his tape, police are wondering, okay, does this have something to do with that side of his life? Is that why we found him like this? - I mean, his eyes are gouged out. So I'm not sure about that one. - So I guess, right? Like part of it? - I mean, like, if you know he's into this and this is how he's found, obviously that feels like a connection. - Yeah, I get that. - This is basically what brings police to learn about a woman named Rebecca Bliss. This was a porn actress that Benji had been seeing since the previous year, 2008. But this wasn't just some fun on the side for Benji. Supposedly, the two of them had fallen in love. Eventually, Benji even moved Rebecca from Miami, where she was living, to be closer to his current home in Fort Lauderdale. But in early 2009, Nancy caught wind of Rebecca and Benji's relationship, and according to Rebecca, Narcy actually called her one day, threatened her saying, if she couldn't have Benji, then nobody could, Narcy offered Rebecca $10,000 to end the affair with her husband. But after speaking with Rebecca, police realized, it wasn't her that had the motive to kill Benji, the two were in love. She's not really gaining anything by losing him. And they learned when they talked to her, that Benji had even mentioned divorcing his wife over her, like he was like, we're gonna run away. So instead, when police learned about all this, the person they feel with the real motive was Narcy. And the more the police start to look at Narcy, who was seen on camera eating, what was she eating? - He nuts. - For breakfast? I think she definitely used one of those waffle makers. - Oh, you're asking me, oh, okay. I don't know, do you have an answer? Or are you just asking? - Well, what do you eat at a hotel con and a breakfast? - I don't know, but is it-- - No, I'm just trying to imagine what she was eating. - Oh, I don't know. husband was being hog tied. Sorry, I don't know. I was confused there. Maybe she got the little cereal boxes. You like left me on a cliffhanger there. So let's keep this. Sorry. So the more police look at Narcy, the more distrustful she begins to seem. Narcy, the narcissist. In fact, that's not what I said. What? That's not what I said. It's what I said. Okay. Okay. I said it. Who are you? I am. Is yeah. Like who you think you are? I am. That's what he says. Yeah. That's so good. Okay. We need to get. Yeah. Sorry. We need to lock in. We need to lock in. Okay. Keep going. This is not normal. So in fact, the suspicion around Narcy started almost the second police had arrived at the crime scene because when Narcy called 911, she told the operator that she thought her husband had died in their hotel room from a heart attack. So when police show up, they're like, okay. And when Narcy and her daughter May went to the medical examiner's office later to like officially identify Benji's body, May told police she was a little worried about her mother's cold response. May said, you know, I was overthrowing up in the trash can and my mother was just sitting there with no emotion at all. Oh, that would that would be horrible. Narcy told investigators repeatedly that she had nothing to do with her husband's murder. And at one point, she even said she wished that she had been there. So she could have just died with him. But during her first interview with the police, she's acting pretty strange. The interview Narcy for nearly 12 hours. And during that time, she refused to take a break. She didn't drink water. She didn't take a bathroom break. She didn't get a cup of coffee. She sat there all night, stiff as a board, insisting over and over that she was innocent. But the evidence wasn't exactly matching up those claims. For starters, the door to the Novak's hotel room showed zero signs of a break in her forced entry. So if someone had gone in and somehow done this in the 30 minutes, she was downstairs making her waffle. They didn't they used a card like they used a key card to get in. Yeah, I mean, I I think she's probably innocent within the fact that she didn't commit the murder, but she definitely hired somebody to do it. And you think he was murdered before she went down. She went down to do her alibi or you think it happened while she was down there. Yeah, one of those probably while she was down there, but I'm not sure. We know that these hotel key cards actually register when a guest opens the door to their room, not when they leave. Still, the key card showed there was no activity on either Benji or Narcy's keys between midnight the evening before and 7.45 AM when Narcy said she returned from breakfast and found Benji dead, meaning that door was an open between that time. At least not until she came back from back from breakfast and used the unlock someone either was already inside the room from the night before or someone let the attacker in maybe Benji. And remember, it was obvious to the police though that Benji seemed to have been attacked while he was asleep. So they don't believe he got up and let the attacker in, which means the attacker was hiding in the closet or Narcy let the attacker in. So the police build a timeline from other witnesses. One worker at the hotel says they last spoke to Benji on the phone around 6.54 that morning to say there was a problem with overcrowding for breakfast. So the hotel is like no, we know he was alive at least at 6.54 because we talked him on the phone. And then around 7.17, Narcy is seen on that security footage in the hotel dining room. So not in the elevator or the hallway, just in the dining room. And then at 7.40, she's returning to the room on security footage as well. So if Narcy let someone in, it was likely between 6.54 after he hung up from talking to the hotel staff. And 7.17 am when she left, well, when she was eating her breakfast. So unless she let them in earlier without Benji's knowledge, and then they just hit out in the room all night. So the day after the murder, police asked Narcy to undergo a polygraph test. It doesn't come back in her favor. It shows signs of deception. Still, it's not enough to charge her with a crime. So they keep digging into Narcy and Benji's past. And they find some pretty eventful moments. Before Narcy and Benji even tied the knot back in 1991, Narcy was already worried about Benji's infidelity. To the point where she had called Benji and threatened to burn down his house if he didn't stop fooling around with other women, I mean, valid, right? Yeah, like valid, but also don't marry him. If this is a habit, if this is something he just loves to do, but valid, you're signing up first. Oh, is before they got married? Yes. Oh, okay. You know, you're signing up for some heartbreak here, but also valid to be like, I think you just think the best. Right. So after they get married, Benji had threatened to divorce Narcy on at least one occasion. But in 2002, things got really wild when Benji found himself the victim of a home invasion. He was tied up for 24 hours, as burglars stole around $350,000 worth of cash and items from his house. Wow, this isn't the first time. This first time, he was bound pretty similar to when he was found dead. He was gagged, his feet, and hands were tied. Now, after the burglars released him, Benji called a friend, said, hey, I just was robbed and tied up. And I'm not calling the police because I'm pretty sure that Narcy orchestrated this entire thing. Oh, my God. He said, I'm pretty sure he's fed up with me cheating. And instead of leaving, she wants to prove a point. Now, shockingly, Benji never presses charges, but he did file for divorce a few days later. But then eventually, he rescinded the divorce and the two stayed married for another seven years up until the day of Benji's death. When police asked Benji's friends, okay, if this is their history, like, why did he stay with Narcy, like, we're wondering why she stayed, but why did he stay? And they were like, well, Benji really loved her. Like, despite all of these affairs he's having, he really did love her. And ultimately, he didn't want to let her go. He wanted their marriage. So let's just say, when police are uncovering all of this, they realize none of this is looking good for Narcy. And her 30-year-old daughter may know that as well. In fact, she so convinced that her mother was involved, she actually agrees to work with the police in any way she can. She passes a polygraph so the police feel they can trust her. She gives them a lot of intimate details about the history of Narcy and Benji's relationship. This is kind of how police end up finding so much out about them. But then three days after the murder, the unthinkable happens. Narcy and May returned to Florida. Narcy settles back into her waterfront home she'd shared with Benji. And one afternoon, May comes over to collect her stuff from the house because at this point their relationship is fractured again and she's like, I want nothing to do with my mother. But while she's there, May goes into Benji's home office to see if there's any evidence in there against her mother that she could give to police. And according to May, that is when Narcy bursts in and comes after her with a crowbar. Chases her own daughter around the house, calling her a traitor and trying to attack her. Now, when a friend is called to the house, they arrive to May screaming at her own mother, you murdered Benji, after which Narcy waxed May with the crowbar on her arm, leaving her with a huge giant bruise. And the friend is like, okay, everyone calm down. Now, the police know that Narcy looks basically as guilty as it gets, but everything they kind of have on her is circumstantial. So the following day on July 16th, the Fort Lauderdale police do what May couldn't, they get a search warrant for the estate and look for anything that might implicate Nancy or anyone else for that matter. They seize security footage from the house paperwork documents, computers, bills, day planners, and interestingly enough, they seize five rolls of duct tape. But the biggest break comes six days late, six days late, when the police receive an anonymous letter that was written in Spanish translated in English, it says in part. You're not going to read it in Spanish for us? Okay, it says in part, quote, this crime without a doubt was committed by the wife of Mr. Novak and her brother. Remember how you said that you thought she hired someone to do it? Okay, the letter goes on to say that Narcy's brother, Ristoball, it's spelled literally it sounds like it should be crystal ball. Yeah, do you pronounce it right? It's an axon over the oh, yeah, Ristoball, Valise hired two hitmen to kill Benji. So Narcy could inherit her husband's 10 million dollar estate. I mean, as far as like two peas in a pod criminals like Bonnie and Clyde, Narcy and crystal ball is quite the name. Yeah, you could go infamous of that. So, the police pay a little visit to Crestville, who is living in Philadelphia and working as a bus driver at the time. He lets them into his home, saying he knows absolutely nothing about his brother-in-law's murder, but is happy to talk. As the police sit down at his kitchen table, they see something. The tables covered with these Western Union receipts for wire transfers, but the wire transfers are not to him, they're from him, to at least two other people. One of them was a man named Alejandro Garcia in Miami, who had received $500 from Crystal Wall after Benji's death. So, the police search their databases for Alejandro Garcia and they find he has a record and he has only one eye. So it is going to make him easier to spot. What if they were a patch? So with that, they start looking at surveillance footage from the hotel. The weekend Benji was killed. They are looking for someone with one eyeball on this surveillance footage. >> That shouldn't be too hard. >> Exactly, that's why I said easy to find. Sure enough, there's Garcia at the hotel on the Friday that Benji and Nancy arrived in Ryebrook, New York, so this random dude is at the hotel and they've traced him all the way through her brother's receipts, but he's not alone. He's actually with another man. One police eventually identified as Joel Gonzales, also from South Florida. Now, all of this takes a bit of time. So when police finally tracked down Garcia and Gonzales for questioning, it's November 2009. It's been four months since Benji was murdered. Now, all the while, Narcy's been selling off Benji's Batman memorabilia and other valuables, one by one, to amass her own little fortune while she still lives in his house. But now, with these two potential hitmen in an interrogation room, a lot of the lingering questions about this case start to unravel. At first, Garcia says he's never even been to New York or left the state of Florida for that matter, which police know as a lie. Eventually tells the police he doesn't want to talk because he's scared for his family that the people who had hired him in this case are very dangerous. And after some negotiation with the two, they reach a deal in exchange for their testimony against Narcy and Cristobal. And with that, they agree to talk in here is what they say. Narcy had offered to pay these two men she had met through her brother, $15,000 and fly them up to New York to murder her husband. He was Narcy who let them into the hotel room that July morning right after Benji fell asleep. They came up on either side of him with a set of weights and began hitting him while he slept. Oh my God. They then moved him to the floor, taped him up. And meanwhile, Narcy not only watched the entire thing, but they say she directed it as well, she's the one she's insane. She's the one who told them to gouge out Benji's eyes. And they're like, we don't actually know why. We just did what she said. I mean, she was paying us holy crap. But then she handed them a pillow to muffle her husband's screams and headed down to the lobby to get breakfast and create an alibi for herself. But the most shocking part about all of this and Garrett caught on to this a lot sooner than he thought. And then I thought you what I was hoping to leave this as a twist. Benji was not the only target. But the two men said, Narcy had actually paid them to kill someone else before Benji's mother. Yep. Bernie Snowvac. So I was right. Yeah. Oh my God. I wanted it to be a twist. You get you. You gaslit me. I don't know how you figured that out so fast. I don't know how you figured that it was two hitmen. You just gaslit me for 40 minutes. You lied to me. I believed you after you told me that I had to. You wouldn't know where it was going. Actually, you gaslit the entire audience. That's crazy. Yeah. Those who knew Bernice had always suspected something else that happened. Wait, that's insane. Narcy's nuts. Yeah. He's nuts. There was blood inside her car as well as smears of blood on the wall. Oh, long heard or get rid of her. Plus a neighbor of hers, a former Miami Dolphins football player said he noticed something odd in the weeks before Bernice's death. Strange men had kind of been lurking around her home, almost casing the place. And one time the neighbor approached them to ask what they were doing and they just ran off. So then two months after that, Bernice's tragic series of false happens and she dies. We know that was no accident. So by July of 2010, a year after Benji's murder, there was finally enough to arrest Narcy Novak and her brother, Cristobal, and then they would have the two actual hitmen testify against them at court for a lower deal. And it was revealed around this time that the author of that anonymous letter, the Spanish one, to police was actually their own sister. So Narcy and Cristobal's own sister turned them into the police. They were tried together in 2012 with their hired hitmen testifying against them as start witnesses. The prosecution said Narcy was basically afraid that Benji was going to leave her for Rebecca. She just found out about that. And because of their prenuptial agreement, she would only walk away with $65,000. But if she killed Bernice and Benji so he couldn't run away with his lover, she would then inherit the bulk of his estate. However, the defense kind of does their thing, calls into question all of the things. But in the end, Narcy and Cristobal were both convicted of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, domestic violence, stalking, money laundering, and witness tampering. They were each given life in prison without the possibility of what about the, I'm curious about. Garcia and Gonzalez, correct. Because of his deal, he was given 17 and a half years behind bars, Garcia. Now Gonzalez was only given 10 years in prison for his cooperation. This is because of something called the Slayer rule in Florida. Narcy was disqualified from inheriting a dime of Benji, Novak's estate, even though like on paper, she would inherit it because everyone else is dead. So instead, all of his money went to her daughter, May, and her two sons. I mean, I feel so bad for the daughter too. Oh my gosh. This is bittersweet because while Benji may have made some enemies along the way, the one person who really adored him and looked up to him her whole life was May, I mean, Benji had kind of become her father. Also, I feel bad for the mom. The mom that that Bernice. Like maybe she was right. Maybe she knew that Narcy was bad this whole time. And I mean, at the end of the day, Bernie Steyes, Benji dies. May has her two sons, but like, she's lost her mom, her uncle, her grandmother. Yeah. So it's like, she's kind of lost family as well because of her mom and uncle's choices. And that is the murder, the absolutely insane murder of Benji Novak. It actually is devastating that he beat these odds, built this entire fortune. You know, had loved this daughter just for his wife. What is wrong with people? It's just crazy. Also, she's just a lunatic. The fact that she watched and directed it, I just absolutely lunatic. Loki, I think she hated it because of all of his affairs. But like I said back to the beginning, if this had been an issue since day one, you just don't kill people. It's a bottom line. Yeah, you just gotta get out. Bottom line if you don't kill people. Yeah. She could have left. You wanted to go for her? Only $65,000. Beat's life in prison. Agreed. All right, you guys. That is our episode this week and we will see you next time with another one. I love it. I hate it. Goodbye. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible all-day comfy grip. No tightness. No stickiness. No residue. Just plump, dewy, hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. 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