by John Glatt
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FOR KEN CRICHLOW
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In its glittering heyday, the Fontainebleau was the gold standard in luxury hotel grace and sophistication. With its sweeping Art Deco design, antique French décor and furniture, the landmark hotel put Miami Beach on the map in the 1950s and ’60s.
Built by the legendary hotelier Ben Novack Sr., the Fontainebleau laid the groundwork for today’s Las Vegas. Indeed, casino mogul Steve Wynn often stayed there as a boy, learning valuable lessons for his future dream palaces.
For almost two decades Ben Novack Sr. and his ex-model wife, Bernice, reigned over Miami Beach. Always larger than life, they entertained presidents, heads of state, and movie stars at their dazzling Miami palace. World-class entertainers such as Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and Jerry Lewis played the La Ronde Room, and iconic movies like The Bellboy, Goldfinger, Scarface, as well as an episode of The Sopranos, were filmed there.
In January 1956, Ben Novack Jr. was born and became the Prince of the Fontainebleau. Known to one and all as “Benji,” he grew up in his father’s seventeenth-floor luxury penthouse with room service at his beck and call. The little prince may have been spoiled and petted by the likes of Sinatra and the Rat Pack, but he received scant attention from his parents.
Naturally nervous, Benji grew up with a revolving door of nannies and housekeepers and developed a chronic stammer, which would plague him for life.
When Miami Beach fell out of fashion in the 1970s, Ben Novack Sr. went bankrupt, eventually losing his beloved Fontainebleau in 1977. A few years later, he died a broken man.
Ben Jr. then launched a convention-planning business and made millions, having absorbed considerable knowledge from his father. But in 1991, he fell in love with an Ecuadorian stripper named Narcisa Veliz, embarking on a roller-coaster marriage that would ultimately claim his life more than a quarter of a century later.
In April 2012, the final chapter in the long, strange story of the Fontainebleau Hotel was written in a federal courtroom in White Plains, New York. I attended every single day of the stunning nine-week trial, where Narcy Novack and her brother Cristobal stood accused of orchestrating the brutal murders of Ben Novack Jr. and his eighty-six-year-old mother, Bernice.
It played out like classic film noir, as the two siblings absolutely denied any involvement in the murders, claiming they were innocent pawns who had been framed by Narcy’s daughter, May Abad.
In recounting the story for this book, I have used personal interviews, police records, and trial transcripts to report the events leading up to the murders of Ben and his mother. Regarding the alleged 2002 home invasion, I reviewed police records and interviewed participants, but no charges were ever brought, Narcy denied any wrongdoing, and evidence of the incident was excluded from the murder trial.
* * *
During my two years of exhaustive research for this book, I was helped by many people, some of whom wish to remain anonymous for obvious reasons.
I would especially like to thank Ben Novack Jr.’s aunt, Maxine Fiel, and his cousin Meredith for all their help. I especially enjoyed the afternoon I spent with them in upstate New York. I also owe a huge debt to Detective Sergeant Terence Wilson of the Rye Brook Police Department, for all his support and encouragement. I also received invaluable help from Ben Jr.’s close friend and mentor Charlie Seraydar, who was there for many of the key events in this book.
I would also like to thank Lenore Toby for sharing her memories of her time managing the Fontainebleau during its declining years, and her reminiscences of Ben Novack Sr. During our stay in Miami Beach, my wife Gail and I also shared a memorable brunch with Lenore and her charismatic late husband, Dr. Bernard Simmons.
Many thanks also to Ben Novack Jr.’s first wife, Jill Campion, who gave me a unique perspective on the Fontainebleau and Ben’s early life, as he was getting his business started.
My gratitude also to: Eddie Argondizza, Chief Gregory Austin of the Rye Brook Police Department; Guy Castaldo, former mayor of Miami Beach; Alex Daoud, Dixie Evans, Scot Fleming, Pat Franklin, Mark Gatley, William and Rebecca Greene, the Reverend Temple Hayes, Douglas Hoffman, Cynthia Johns, Ed Kelly, Melanie Klein, Alan Lapidus, Rabbi Alan Litwak, Dr. Barbara Lunde, Richard Marx, Joe and Peter Matthews, Steve Palazzo, Sergeant Colin Pfrogner, Prince Mongo, Dr. Larry Robbins, James Scarberry, Donald Spadaro, Larry Sheehan, Howard Tanner, and Vincent Zurzolo.
I also owe gratitude to: Allen Alter, Jonathan Bandler, Tom Delehanty, Christine Fillmore, Bob Gilmartin, Susan Giordano, Dena Goldstein, Candace Eaton, Herb Hadad, Anthony Mercurio, Joe Occhicone, Special Agent John Sullivan, Chuck Stevenson, and Joe Viola.
As always, I would also like to thank my editors at St. Martin’s Press, Charles Spicer, April Osborn, and Yaniv Soha for everything that they do, as well as Jane Dystel and Miriam Goderich of Dystel & Goderich Literary Management, for their invaluable help and advice.
I also want to thank David and Diana Hayes for all their hospitality during my Spring 2011 week in Fort Lauderdale, as well as Chris Bott in Miami.
Much thanks also to my wife Gail; Jerome, Emily, and Freddie Freund; Debbie, Douglas, and Taylor Baldwin; Trudy Gerstner, Gurch, Danny and Allie Tractenberg, Cari Pokrassa, Virginia Randall, Roger Hitts, Ena Bissell, and Annette Witheridge.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Epilogue
Also by John Glatt
About the Author
Copyright
INTRODUCTION
When retired police chief James Scarberry heard in July 2009 that Ben Novack Jr. had been brutally murdered, with his eyes gouged out, he was not surprised. On the contrary, he had foreseen the event seven years earlier, when he told his old friend to leave his beautiful wife, Narcy, or he would die. Scarberry’s warning came after the former Ecuadorian stripper hired thugs t
o beat up her wealthy forty-six-year-old husband, whose father had founded the legendary Fontainebleau hotel in Miami Beach. After mercilessly binding and gagging him with duct tape, the hired hands had held him at gunpoint for twenty-five hours while Narcy ransacked the family home.
On her way out, Novack’s forty-five-year-old wife boasted that she could have him killed anytime she chose.
“If I can’t have you, then no one will have you,” she snapped at him. “You’re not dead now because I stopped them.”
Then she disappeared with more than $400,000 in cash and Novack’s collection of Batman collectibles, worth millions.
After breaking free, Novack first called Chief Scarberry, who had once worked security for Ben Jr.’s father at the Fontainebleau. Scarberry then used his contacts in the Fort Lauderdale Police Department to launch a criminal investigation.
An active member of the Miami Beach Police Department Reserve and Auxiliary Officer Program for more than thirty years, Ben Jr. told detectives that Narcy had organized the home invasion and that he still feared for his life. Then he hired a lawyer and initiated divorce proceedings.
When brought in for questioning, Novack’s statuesque wife told detectives another story. She claimed that they were both into hardcore sexual bondage and had been role-playing. The one-time exotic dancer then stunned detectives by emptying out onto a table a brown accordian file full of her husband’s huge collection of amputee porn magazines, including his own photographs of naked disabled women.
Within hours of Narcy’s police interview, Ben Novack Jr. had called off the divorce, refusing any further cooperation with detectives. Then he welcomed his wife back into their home, explaining to police that they had started marriage counseling to get their relationship back on track.
Baffled friends wondered if Narcy was blackmailing him by threatening to reveal his bizarre sexual secrets and ruin his thriving $50-million-a-year convention business.
“I told him,” recalled Scarberry, “Benji, you’re nuts. This girl could have had you killed, and you’ve got to get out of that relationship.”
Ben Novack Jr. had refused to listen, so Chief Scarberry ended the friendship, and the two had not spoken since.
* * *
It was ironic that Ben Novack Jr. should die in a hotel room, for, a half century earlier, his father, Ben Sr., had built and run the legendary Fontainebleau hotel, transforming Miami Beach into the glamour capital of America and drafting the blueprint for today’s Las Vegas.
Benji, as everyone knew him then, had grown up in the luxurious seventeenth-floor penthouse, pampered by nannies and fussed over by the likes of Frank Sinatra, President John F. Kennedy, Bob Hope, and Ann-Margret.
“He was the Prince of the Fontainebleau,” explained his cousin Meredith Fiel. “Anything that Ben Jr. wanted, Ben Jr. got.”
ONE
COMING TO MIAMI BEACH
One hundred and ten years before the home invasion, Ben Novack Jr.’s paternal grandfather, Hyman Novick, first arrived in New York from Russia, seeking a new life. The poor Jewish teenager, who spoke only Russian and Yiddish, married a girl named Sadie, who was six years his junior. Sadie was first-generation American, born in New York from Russian parents.
The young couple settled down in Brooklyn, and Hyman, a cloth cutter by profession, opened a clothing store. In 1903, when Hyman was twenty-five and Sadie nineteen, they had their first child, Miriam. A year later they had a son they named Joseph, followed in 1905 by another daughter, Lillian. Two years later, Sarah gave birth to Benjamin Hadwin, who completed the family.
Between the 1910 and 1920 censuses, Hyman Novick lost his clothing shop and was reduced to driving a New York City taxi cab. Sadie was a homemaker, but their eldest daughter, Miriam, age seventeen in 1920, supplemented the family income by working as a stenographer. According to the 1920 Census, twelve-year-old Benjamin and his older siblings could all read and write.
A few years later, Hyman moved his family to the Catskill Mountains and went into the resort hotel business. He and Sadie founded and operated the Laurels Hotel and Country Club on Sackett Lake, five miles from Monticello, in the heart of what would soon become the “Borscht Belt.”
All the Novick children helped out with the hotel, which was soon thriving. They worked in various capacities, with Ben at the front desk and his big sister Lillian in the kitchen.
As a young boy, Ben almost drowned in the Laurels outdoor pool, an incident that resulted in his having to wear a hearing aid for the rest of his life.
After their father died in the mid-1930s, Ben and his elder brother, Joseph, took over the hotel. But they argued and soon split up, with Ben moving to New York City and going into the retail haberdashery business with a man named Kemp.
The handsome Ben arrived in the city in the midst of the Great Depression. To get ahead, he Anglicized his name to “Novack.”
He and Kemp opened a clothing store on Sixth Avenue called Kemp and Novack, but it was short-lived. Brusque and arrogant, Ben Novack soon fell out with his partner, and the two sold the store and went their separate ways.
It was during this time that Novack first met a young retail store designer named Morris Lapidus, who would later play a pivotal role in designing the Fountainbleau hotel.
“I believe [Ben] was also in the black market tire business,” said Lapidus’s son, Alan. “But my father never elaborated on that.”
* * *
Two thousand years ago the Tequesta tribe first settled South Florida. They stayed until the sixteenth century, when explorer Juan Ponce de León arrived, claiming the land as a Spanish colony. In 1763, Spain handed Florida to Great Britain in exchange for Havana, Cuba. Twenty years later, Britain returned Florida to Spain in return for the Bahamas and Gibraltar. After the American War of Independence, Spain ceded Florida to America as part of the 1819 Adams-Onis Treaty, making it part of the United States.
Seventy years later, a rich Cleveland widow named Julia Tuttle bought 640 acres on the north side of the Miami River. In 1895, Tuttle persuaded Standard Oil tycoon Henry Flagler to bring his railroad to Miami and build a new town with a luxury hotel. On July 28, 1896, a few months after the railroad arrived, the City of Miami was officially incorporated.
If Julia Tuttle was Miami’s mother, Carl Fisher was undoubtedly the father of Miami Beach.
Born in Indianapolis in 1874, Fisher made a fortune co-inventing Prest-O-Lite, the acetylene gas used in car headlights for night driving. After selling out to the Union Carbide Company for millions, Fisher devoted himself to the new sport of auto racing, buying the Indianapolis Speedway in 1909 and making a second fortune.
Three years later, Fisher moved to Miami, coming to the rescue of a New Jersey avocado grower, John Collins, who had begun constructing a two-and-a-half mile wooden bridge between mainland Miami across the causeway to Ocean Beach, to bring his avocados to market. Unfortunately, when the bridge was only half finished, Collins ran out of money. So Fisher struck a deal to lend him the $50,000 he needed to finish, in return for two hundred acres of uninhabited swampland Collins owned on the island.
Thus, on a handshake, was Miami Beach born.
Jane Fisher would later claim that the first time her husband set foot on the beach, he picked up a stick and drew a diagram in the sand, declaring that he would build the world’s greatest resort on that very site.
Although the conditions were daunting (horseflies, snakes, and rats), Fisher’s vision knew no bounds. He purchased another 210 acres and, over the next few years, set about taming the wild, primeval terrain. First he drained the swamps, pouring in acres of sand to form solid new ground on which to build. His motto: “I just like to see the dirt fly.”
At first Fisher couldn’t even give his Florida real estate away, as nobody wanted to live there. So he staged a whacky publicity stunt to turn Miami Beach’s fortunes around.
In 1921, president-elect Warren Harding was vacationing in Miami Beach when Fisher arranged to have a baby e
lephant named Rosie be Harding’s golf caddy as a photo opportunity. The press loved it, and a picture of the smiling future president and his pachyderm caddy on Miami Beach made the front pages coast to coast. The shot caused an immediate sensation, transforming Miami Beach overnight into “a place you had to see to believe.”
Fisher also persuaded his eclectic circle of friends—which included mobster Al Capone, newspaper publisher Moe Annenberg, and racehorse owner John Hertz—to build spectacular winter homes on the beach.
From 1920 to 1925 there was an unprecedented land boom in Florida, with Miami’s population almost quadrupling. In 1925, Fisher’s estate was valued at $100 million, and he celebrated by constructing Lincoln Road as the jewel of his Riviera resort.
The following year, Fisher turned his sights on replicating his success in Montauk, at the eastern tip of Long Island, New York. But this endeavor never took off and, along with the Great Depression, virtually wiped him out.
* * *
By the time Ben Novack arrived with his new wife, Bella, in February 1940, using the $1,800 he had received from liquidating his and Kemp’s New York clothing store, Miami Beach was thriving. The rest of America might have been struggling in the Great Depression, but Miami Beach had become the winter retreat for the rich and famous. In 1941 the Duke and Duchess of Windsor vacationed there, attracting worldwide publicity in the wake of Edward’s abdication from the British throne. Other famous regulars included Walter Winchell, Damon Runyon, and Eleanor Roosevelt.
Miami Beach had recently been dubbed “the ultimate Babylon” by influential New York Tribune columnist “Luscious” Lucius Beebe, and Ben Novack was determined to exploit it for all it was worth. But, initially, he was uncertain where to begin.
Legend has it that he started out selling expensive watches to the wealthy tourists and snowbirds now flocking to Miami Beach in the winter. He also dabbled in the import-export business, reportedly running a fleet of banana boats to and from Cuba. Before long, he gravitated back to the hotel business he had grown up in.
With his silver tongue, Novack easily persuaded some business partners to put up $20,000 for a one-year lease on the Monroe Towers on Collins Avenue at Thirtieth Street. He then spent a year fixing up the 111-room hotel, while Bella worked as a chambermaid.
