The Prince of Paradise

by John Glatt

  When Garcia came back into the parlor, Narcy asked him if he had cut Ben’s eyes. After confirming that he had, she asked if he was certain Ben would never see again. Garcia said he did not think so, but offered to cut the eyes some more. Narcy said that would not be necessary.

  At this point, Gonzalez walked into the bedroom and saw what Garcia had done to Ben Novack’s eyes. He came back into the parlor looking shaken.

  “Did you do that?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Garcia replied.

  Inside the bedroom, Ben Novack Jr. was still alive, making weak groaning noises.

  “Finish him off,” Narcy reportedly ordered.

  So Garcia returned to the bedroom and wrapped duct tape around Ben Novack’s head and mouth so tightly that he choked on his own vomit and died.

  * * *

  At the wet bar at the far end of the parlor, Narcy handed the two killers towels. She then turned on the faucet so they could wash off her husband’s blood. While they were cleaning up, she went into the bedroom and took off Ben’s wrist his treasured gold bracelet, which had “BEN” spelled out in diamonds. She handed the bloody bracelet to Garcia, who put it in a plastic bag and then into his backpack.

  After the attackers put back on their dress shirts and shoes, Garcia returned to the bedroom to retrieve his sunglasses, which had come off during the attack. They were on the floor by Ben Novack’s dead body, now lying facedown in a growing pool of blood. But Garcia forgot to take the smashed temple piece, leaving it on the bed alongside Ben’s blood-soaked Rolex.

  The original plan had been for them to tie up Narcy, leaving her in the suite with Ben to make it look like a robbery. But Narcy had changed her mind, suddenly announcing that they would all leave the suite together.

  Less than ten minutes after they’d first entered the Woodlands Suite, the two killers left with Narcy Novack. After she closed the double doors, they all turned right into the hallway.

  Garcia and Gonzalez took a left exit into a stairwell, and Narcy Novack continued down the hallway.

  * * *

  At the bottom of the stairs, the killers came out, made a wrong turn, and got lost. They walked around the entire hotel to the swimming pool, searching for the way out.

  They wound up in the main lobby, where they spotted Narcy Novack wheeling a small suitcase. Then, as they walked out at 7:11 A.M., both men were photographed by the hotel’s video surveillance camera.

  One minute later, they were photographed again, walking out into the parking lot and toward Denis Ramirez, who was waiting in the Lincoln Town Car to whisk them away.

  At 7:14 A.M., as they made their getaway, Ramirez called Cristobal Veliz, informing him the mission had been accomplished. Veliz in turn called Narcy, telling her that Garcia and Gonzalez were safely out of the hotel and would soon be on their way home to Miami.

  THIRTY-NINE

  THE GRIEVING WIDOW

  At 7:09 A.M., Narcy Novack appeared in the corridor between the ballroom and the kitchen pulling her large roller bag, and was caught by a hotel surveillance video camera. Prosecutors believe that during the last couple of days, she had scoped out the hotel, carefully noting where the CCTV cameras were placed.

  Although there were already long lines of people outside the ballroom, snaking up to the fourth-floor guest rooms for breakfast, Narcy calmly planted herself directly in front of another surveillance camera in the corridor. For the next eighteen minutes, she stood with her distinctive suitcase, calmly making calls on her cell phone. She appeared completely unaware of all the frenzied Amway breakfast activity around her.

  At 7:19 A.M., Narcy called May Abad, who was still in her room, and spent two minutes and thirty-nine-seconds on the phone. Then, at 7:31 A.M., she called Ben’s cell phone for a forty-two-second call, as part of her elaborate alibi. At 7:33 A.M., she called her daughter again, a forty-eight-second call. Then she wheeled her case out of the corridor and disappeared out of camera shot.

  A few seconds later, she arrived at the Amway registration desk, where Angelica Furano was standing by the entrance of the Port Chester Suite.

  “I apologized for calling Mr. Novack so early,” Furano recalled, “and I was sorry if I woke him up. [Narcy] said he had been up all night working and had just gone to sleep.”

  Furano told her that because of the huge crowd, the hotel had run out of china plates and mugs, and was resorting to plastic ones. Narcy said she would tell Ben, who would be furious.

  She then wheeled her case over to the registration desk, where the Convention Concepts Unlimited staff had started to arrive.

  “She was coming to the table … like she was in a rush,” recalled Leslie Goyzueta. “She looked … a little bit flustered. I was really surprised to see her there, because typically, on a Sunday morning, Narcy and Mr. Novack wouldn’t come downstairs.”

  When May Abad came over to hug her, Narcy pulled away.

  “May said, ‘You look like shit,’” said Goyzueta. “[Narcy] said Mr. Novack had rushed her out of the room to take care of the breakfast. She wasn’t wearing makeup. She always wore makeup.”

  After spending five minutes at the registration desk, Narcy announced that she had to “go and wipe my ass,” and wheeled her heavy suitcase toward an exit stairwell on the right.

  “There was a young Hispanic man there,” said Goyzueta, “and he tried to help her down with the suitcase. She just said no and went downstairs.”

  Detectives believe that Narcy, who could easily have taken an elevator to the Woodlands Suite instead of carrying the heavy case up the stairs, had other intentions. They think she now dumped the secret 954-816-2089 cell phone, with all her incriminating calls to her brother Cristobal Veliz. They also suspect that Veliz may have been at the hotel to collect the phone personally from Narcy.

  * * *

  At around 7:40 A.M., a seventy-four-year-old Amway guest named Rigoberto Wilson was on his way to breakfast when he got lost. Suddenly he saw Narcy Novack wheeling her suitcase along a fourth-floor corridor wearing her brown jacket and slacks. He immediately recognized her from the previous night’s banquet, where he had been told she was running the convention.

  Wilson then followed Narcy, thinking she was probably on her way to the breakfast. She stopped at an exit door and turned around to see Wilson a few feet behind her.

  “She saw me and I saw her,” he later testified. “She was frightened.”

  Narcy opened the exit door and went through it, and Wilson walked past. He went downstairs through another exit, and got even more lost, searching for the dining room.

  * * *

  A few minutes later, Narcy Novack came back to the fourth floor. She went to the Woodlands Suite, letting herself into the bedroom at 7:45 A.M. with her key card. She went inside, walking past her husband’s bloody remains and into the parlor, where she took off her brown jacket and left her suitcase.

  Then she came back out and left the door ajar, sitting down in the corridor to decide on her next move.

  Suddenly Rigoberto Wilson reappeared, still searching for the dining room.

  “She was leaning against the wall in the hallway,” he recalled. “She looked toward me and started screaming, ‘Help me! My husband!’”

  Wilson asked what was wrong, and she ignored him and started pounding on the nearby guest room doors.

  Then Wilson noticed one of the doors to the Woodlands Suite was open, so he went in to investigate, surmising that that’s where she had come from.

  “I saw blood on the bed,” he later remembered. “The man was tied up, with his feet and arms tied behind his back. He had duct tape over his mouth. He was facing down with his head turned to the left and there was blood around his neck.”

  Wilson then took out his cell phone and began taking photographs of Ben Novack’s smashed-up body, as he could still hear Narcy screaming in the corridor. He took a close-up of Ben’s head, another of his whole body, and a third of some of his jewelry.

  Then he came back o
ut to find a crowd had gathered in the corridor around Narcy Novack, who was still screaming hysterically. Wilson remembered she had been wearing a brown jacket and had had a suitcase when he’d first seen her, which she no longer had with her. So he went back into the suite to look for them.

  “I said to myself, ‘That’s the lady who was rolling a suitcase. She must have gone out to give it to someone,’” he explained. “Then I went back into the room with the dead body to look for the suitcase.”

  Unable to find it, he came out again, where Narcy was still screaming, “My husband! My husband!”

  “I went into the room for the third time,” said Wilson. “Then the lady came in and looked at the dead body. She opened her legs, as if she wanted to get on top of him, and started pulling on his shoulders, screaming, ‘Why! Why!’”

  He watched in astonishment as Narcy began beating her husband’s lifeless body on the shoulder blades with her clenched fists.

  “Then she got on top of him, as if she was riding a horse,” said Wilson. “She sat down on his buttocks and grabbed his arms but she couldn’t lift him.”

  Finally, Wilson asked Narcy in Spanish if she wanted to tell him something. When she ignored him and carried on screaming, he left.

  * * *

  At 7:50 A.M., Rye Town Hilton Hotel security officer Mark Rivera received a call, reporting a heart attack in the Woodlands Suite. He ran to the fourth floor, where he saw a crowd outside.

  “The door was ajar and I went in,” said Rivera. “The first thing I saw was Mrs. Novack down on her knees [and] over the body. There was no one else in the room. She was screaming, ‘Why me! Why is this happening?’”

  Then he saw Ben Novack facedown in a pool of blood.

  “My first reaction was to calm down Mrs. Novack,” Rivera explained. “I was trying to remove her from the body so nothing would be tampered with.”

  The tall, muscular security officer then picked up Narcy, carrying her over to a chair behind her husband’s body.

  “She kept trying to get back to Mr. Novack,” he said. “I kept her right there.”

  While Rivera was restraining Narcy, the hotel’s security chief, Louis Monti, arrived, closely followed by acting manager Jeremy Morris.

  “I walked in and Mark [Rivera] was physically holding her back,” Morris later testified. “They were both on their knees and he had his arms wrapped around her. She was crying and saying, ‘Why!’ She was hysterical, yelling and screaming.”

  When Monti saw Ben Novack’s battered body facedown on the carpet, he felt ill.

  “Mr. Novack was duct-taped on the floor in his underwear,” Morris remembered. “There was blood all over the bed.”

  After ensuring that the police were on their way, Monti left the suite to secure the scene, and made sure no one else came in.

  At 7:56 A.M. Kerri Conrad and Alex Miller from Rye Brook Emergency Services arrived at the hotel, responding to a 911 call reporting a heart attack. They parked their EMS truck by the lobby and went straight to the Hilton security station. They were directed up to Room 453, where Rye Brook police officers Neil Moore and Mark Rampolla had arrived three minutes earlier.

  “It was incredibly crowded,” Conrad recalled, “and there were people all over the place. I went into the [bed]room and saw he was facedown on the floor with his arms behind him. There was blood on the sheets.”

  Conrad then put her hand on Ben Novack’s bloody neck, under his thick gold necklace, noting the congealed blood in his matted hair and in his eyes, and checked his pulse.

  “I didn’t feel anything,” she said. “He was flatlined. I hooked him up to a heart monitor and checked the body temperature. He was maybe room temperature. He was blue. Cyanotic. It was obvious he was dead.”

  After Officer Neil Moore tilted the body over so Conrad could look at the face, she officially pronounced Ben Novack Jr. dead at 7:59 A.M.

  Then she went into the adjoining parlor, where Narcy Novack was sitting on a couch.

  “I offered my condolences,” Conrad said. “She grabbed my wrist and said, ‘Are you sure he’s dead?’ I said, ‘I’m sure.’ She had no emotions. She did not seem upset.”

  * * *

  It was at that point that May Abad called duty manager Jeremy Morris’s cell phone, asking what was going on. Without elaborating further, he invited her up to the Woodlands Suite. A couple of minutes later May Abad rushed into the parlor and asked her mother what was happening.

  “He’s dead! He’s dead!” Narcy screamed at her daughter.

  “May seemed stunned,” said Rivera. “She wasn’t crying. There was blood everywhere. What was weird was the daughter asked the mother, ‘Where’s the money?’ Mrs. Novack couldn’t answer because she was so upset and crying.”

  At 8:05 A.M., May Abad called Matthew Briggs in his room, informing him that Ben Novack was dead. He immediately rushed up to the fourth floor and saw Jeremy Morris in the hallway, who confirmed the news.

  “I ran into the parlor area,” Briggs recalled. “May was distraught, crying and screaming. She was on the couch … going back and forth hugging [Narcy].”

  Narcy told him to go and get the money collected at the convention immediately and put it in the hotel safe-deposit box.

  Then a wheelchair arrived to move Narcy Novack to Room 481, diagonally across the hallway, to get her away from her husband’s body.

  “She couldn’t walk,” Rivera said. “She was very upset, so I wheeled her in the wheelchair to another room.”

  Outside in the hallway, May Abad told her mother to pull herself together.

  “May told her to shut up and stop it,” said Morris, “or it was going to make her throw up. She seemed to be upset at her mother’s behavior.”

  * * *

  Downstairs at the Amway registration desk, things had quieted down after breakfast, as the guests went off for the first event of the day. The three remaining Convention Concepts Unlimited staffers were unaware of the drama taking place upstairs.

  “The girls and I were going to take turns for breakfast,” said Leslie Goyzueta. “Maria and I left to go to the hotel restaurant.”

  They were just about to start eating when Matt Briggs burst into the restaurant, demanding their convention cash immediately.

  “Matt seemed flustered, alarmed, and scared,” Maria Gallegos recalled. “I had never seen him like that before.”

  When she asked him to tell them what was wrong, Briggs looked at them with tears in his eyes, saying, “Ben’s dead.”

  “We were in shock,” Maria said. “We started to cry.”

  After handing over the blue pouches full of money, they returned to the registration desk and tried to compose themselves.

  * * *

  After picking up the killers, Denis Ramirez sped off toward Brooklyn to meet up with Cristobal Veliz. He took I-287 toward the Tappan Zee Bridge and got on the New York Thruway going south toward the Triborough Bridge.

  Soon after they got in the Lincoln Town Car, Alejandro Garcia said that Ben Novack had broken his Valentinos, and he showed Joel Gonzalez the sunglasses, now missing an arm. He asked Gonzalez to sell him his identical pair, but he refused.

  Gonzalez then asked Garcia why “he had to do that” during the attack. When Ramirez asked what Garcia had done, Garcia replied that he had taken out Ben Novack’s eyes.

  “I remember Mr. Garcia looking at the reaction in my face,” said Gonzalez. He said, ‘Don’t think about what happened. The worst part is over.’”

  Then Cristobal Veliz called, telling Ramirez to take the Tuckahoe Road exit and meet him at a gas station in Yonkers. Soon after they arrived there, the green Pathfinder suddenly appeared and parked in front of them.

  Garcia got out to speak to Jefe, taking the backpack containing the bloody dumbbells and the utility knife. He threw it into a Dumpster at the back of the gas station.

  He then returned to the Town Car and told Ramirez to follow the Pathfinder to Brooklyn. Cristobal Veliz then led Ramirez
south along local roads and over the Triborough Bridge into Brooklyn, finally stopping at the Apex Bus garage, where Veliz occasionally worked.

  Then the two attackers got into the Pathfinder, took off all their clothes, and changed into clean ones.

  “I had the undershirt I had worn when I attacked Señor Novack,” said Garcia. “I needed to take it off because it stank. It had a bad smell.”

  Garcia then tried to clean all the blood off himself.

  “He was wiping down his feet,” Gonzalez recalled. “He had a lot of blood on his toes, socks, and shoes.”

  * * *

  After learning that Garcia and Gonzalez were safely out of the Rye Town Hilton, Cristobal Veliz had telephoned Francisco Picado and woken him up. He told him to get dressed and meet him at the Dunkin’ Donuts at the intersection of Knickerbocker and Myrtle avenues, Brooklyn, saying he would pay him $500 to drive his hit men back to Miami.

  At around 8:30 A.M., Veliz parked outside the Dunkin’ Donuts, while Ramirez stopped next door in a Burger King parking lot. The two killers got out of the Lincoln Town Car and went over to the Pathfinder. Garcia sat in the front passenger seat, while Gonzalez got in the back.

  Veliz then paid them off in $100 bills, handing Garcia $7,000 and Gonzalez $3,000. He told them to count the money to make sure it was correct, which they did.

  “After Cristobal paid me, I told him I was very nervous,” said Garcia. “I said I need to get out of here. I need to go to Miami. He told me don’t worry, Frank is coming, and he’ll take you.”

  * * *

  Just before 9:00 A.M., Francisco Picado appeared at the Dunkin’ Donuts on foot and went straight over to the green Pathfinder. He asked Veliz for money for gas and tolls to Miami. Veliz replied that Garcia would take care of expenses.

  Then, as Picado climbed into the driver’s seat of the Pathfinder, Veliz told him to drive carefully to Miami and have a safe trip.

  Several minutes later, Picado was driving along Bedford Avenue when Garcia announced he had to get rid of something.