The Prince of Paradise

by John Glatt

“After Ben passed away a caveat was filed by May Abad that she was going to contest her mother being appointed as personal representative,” Hoffman explained. “And the court, knowing there was going to be a fight, appointed a curator, someone to handle the administration while the fighting went on. The inventory for the estate is complex, voluminous, extensive. [Ben] was quite a collector.”

  Within hours of Hoffman’s appointment, Narcy Novack and some helpers emptied out four of the six warehouses containing her late husband’s multimillion-dollar Batman collection. She lied to the warehouse manager, saying that Ben was fine and had given his permission for the items to be removed. Then she broke the locks on the warehouses and looted them, driving numerous boxes of collectibles away in a truck.

  “Mr. Novack has six warehouses filled up to the rafters with Batman memorabilia,” Hoffman’s partner, Gary Rudolf, later testified in probate court. “He was supposedly the second largest Batman collector in the world. Narcy Novack went out to the storage facilities [and] emptied four of them.”

  * * *

  The previous day, Thursday, August 13, four New York homicide investigators had driven to Philadelphia to interview Narcy’s brother Cristobal Veliz, now living in an apartment at 1219 Race Street, in the heart of Chinatown. When they arrived at the seedy four-story brick apartment building, they rang his apartment 21’s entrance buzzer, but there was no answer. The detectives eventually tracked down Veliz’s landlady at a nearby Chinese restaurant, who arranged to have her daughter let them into Velez’s apartment.

  When they returned to the building in the afternoon, an investigator recognized Veliz’s old red Porsche parked outside. They were taken upstairs by the landlady’s daughter, who knocked on the door of the apartment. When there was no answer, she used a key to let herself in and called out, “Veliz!”

  Cristobal Veliz immediately came out from a back bedroom. After showing him his police identification, Senior Investigator Edward Murphy explained that they were investigating his brother-in-law Ben Novack’s death. Veliz invited them inside, and Murphy went in with Detective Sergeant Terence Wilson, while Detectives Alison Carpentier and Michael LaRotonda waited in the hallway.

  Sitting at the kitchen table, Murphy asked Veliz if there were problems in Narcy’s marriage, and if Ben had been cheating. Veliz said there had been marital problems a few years earlier, resulting in Ben breaking his sister’s nose. At the time, he had told Narcy not to divorce Ben and to work things out.

  “Within the past year Narcy had told Cristobal about Ben having a girlfriend,” Murphy wrote in his official report, “and Cristobal told her to be patient, that it was normal for men to look outside of their marriage.”

  Veliz said that when he’d stayed with them recently in Fort Lauderdale they had seemed very much in love. He denied knowing anything about the 2002 home invasion.

  Murphy then asked Veliz when he had last spoken to Narcy. Two or three days ago, Veliz replied, adding that whenever they spoke after Ben’s death, she would be crying. When the investigator asked when he had last been in Florida, Veliz said in April, for Bernice Novack’s funeral, which was the last time he had seen Narcy and Ben.

  Murphy then asked if Narcy had ever discussed Ben’s girlfriend Rebecca Bliss. He said yes, and he had told his sister that Ben had made a mistake.

  Then the detectives asked Veliz to accompany them to the Philadelphia Police headquarters, a few blocks away, to give a written statement. He agreed to do so, and went into the bedroom to get ready.

  During the interview, the two detectives had noticed a Western Union money transfer receipt lying on top a pile of other papers on the kitchen table, where they were sitting. Murphy had immediately recognized one of the names on it, Francisco Picado, as Denis Ramirez’s cousin, and an address in Brooklyn he’d visited a week earlier as part of the investigation.

  When Veliz left to get changed, Murphy copied down the details in his notebook.

  Sender, Francisco Picado

  Receiver, Alejandro Garcia

  347-398-3329

  Miami, Fla

  1499 Jefferson Ave

  8/12, $533

  Brooklyn, NY 11237

  tarjeta 9075011

  Nombre Mi Terro

  Chucho

  A couple of minutes later, Veliz walked back into the kitchen and saw Investigator Murphy staring at the Western Union receipt. He did not say a word.

  * * *

  At 5:40 P.M., Investigator Murphy and Detective Alison Carpentier carried on interviewing Cristobal Veliz in a Detective Squad interview room at police headquarters. Veliz gave a one-page written statement before saying he was more comfortable speaking English than writing it and continued orally.

  He said he had first learned of Ben Novack Jr.’s death when his brother, Carlos, called him the next day. Narcy had telephoned later. He said she had never discussed the manner in which Ben had been killed.

  Questioned why he had not come to Florida to be with his sister, Veliz replied that he was a bus driver and couldn’t just take off work.

  He said that Narcy’s house phone had been broken, so he had been calling his brother Carlos’s cell phone to speak to her, as he was staying with her. Investigator Murphy then asked why he didn’t just call Narcy’s cell phone, and Veliz said, “It’s okay. I called Carlos’s phone.”

  Veliz also claimed not to have seen any media coverage of his brother-in-law’s death, and asked how Ben had been killed. The two detectives replied that he had been a victim of an assault that had resulted in death, without going into further detail.

  When Murphy then asked Veliz if he had any idea who might have killed Ben Novack, Veliz replied, “May Abad.” He said that Narcy had complained to him that May drank too much and that her two teenage sons took drugs.

  Veliz was then asked where he was on the morning of Ben Novack’s death. He replied that he had finished his bus driving shift in Philadelphia at 11:00 P.M. on Saturday and had then driven to his girlfriend Laura Law’s apartment in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, to spend the night. On Sunday he had slept in, before taking Laura for dim sum. He had spent Sunday night with her before leaving to return to Philadelphia at 8:30 A.M. Monday, to start an 11:00 A.M. shift.

  At the end of the interview, after Veliz allowed a police doctor to take a sample of his DNA, the detectives asked Veliz to suggest a good Chinese restaurant for dinner, before they returned to New York. He then took them to the Rising Tide, on Race Street, and even offered to pay for their meals, which they declined.

  After the meal and before leaving Philadelphia, the investigators arranged to collect surveillance video from a Western Union office in Chinatown that would provide the smoking gun to break the case wide open.

  * * *

  Early the next morning, Cristobal Veliz drew up outside 1499 Jefferson Avenue, Brooklyn, in his red Porsche.

  “He called me at six o’clock in the morning,” Francisco Picado later testified, “and said the detectives had been to his house the night before and we had to drive to Fort Lauderdale … to see his sister. I didn’t want to drive him again but I ended up going.”

  During the seventeen-hour drive down I-95, Veliz spoke about the attacks on Ben and Bernice Novack, asking the teenager to point the finger at May Abad if police ever questioned him.

  “He told me that he had paid Alex and Joel to assault Ben,” Picado later testified. “My cousin Denis Ramirez had picked them up and driven them to the [Rye Town Hilton] and back. He said that if investigators ever came to me to try and blame it on him, I should tell them it was May Abad who told me to do it.”

  Veliz also claimed that after Gonzalez and Garcia had left the Woodlands Suite, May had come in and cut her stepfather’s throat.

  When they reached Jacksonville, they stopped off at Cristobal’s daughter Karen’s house. He then told Picado to drive back to New York, as his son, Christopher, would drive him to Fort Lauderdale.

  FORTY-FOUR

  STILL ON ICE

&n
bsp; On Sunday, August 16, The Miami Herald carried a front-page story headlined, “Wealth, Privilege, and Murder.” The story, which had a three-column photograph of a smiling Ben Jr. and Narcy Novack sipping champagne, superimposed on top of the Fontainebleau, contained new details about the murder and the bitter battle for Novack’s estate.

  “The violent death of Ben Novack Jr., son of the Fontainebleau founder,” read the story, “has unleashed a vicious family feud and spilled a torrent of tawdry secrets.”

  Breaking her silence, May Abad told reporter Julie Brown that she was so close to her late stepfather, she even called him “Dad.”

  “He was everything to me,” she was quoted as saying. “I never went to my mother for anything. He was the one who always helped me out.”

  May also revealed that her stepfather had set his mistress up in an apartment, paying all her bills. According to Abad, the relationship had become so serious that Ben was planning to meet her family.

  “My mother was very jealous,” said Abad, who denied knowing anything about his affairs until recently. “He had a girlfriend on the side, close to 40.”

  She also discussed the morning of Ben Novack’s death, describing walking into the Woodlands Suite suite to find her mother throwing herself on the floor, screaming, “He’s dead. He’s dead.”

  And she revealed how her mother had failed a lie detector test at Rye Brook Police Station the next day. “She flunked it five times,” May said. She couldn’t understand how she failed the “simple test,” since police merely asked: “Did you kill Ben Novack? Do you know who killed your husband? Where were you when it happened?”

  In the article, May accused her mother of deliberately delaying Ben Novack’s burial while she was considering cremation.

  Narcy Novack refused to be interviewed for the piece, leaving her attorney to respond to her daughter’s damaging allegations.

  “I can only say that I’m troubled by what May’s agenda could possibly be,” said Howard Tanner. “If she had credible evidence, then I’m sure that evidence is being investigated by police.”

  The following day, The Miami Herald published details of Ben Novack Jr.’s last will and testament, revealing that he had left his entire fortune to Narcy. It also noted that if his widow were involved in his murder, most of his estate would go to May Abad’s two sons, with May receiving $150,000.

  “Novack’s body continues to decompose in a Westchester County morgue,” read the story, “as the family battles over where he should be laid to rest.”

  * * *

  At 2:11 P.M. on Monday, August 17, Cristobal Veliz left a voice-mail message on Investigator Ed Murphy’s cell phone, saying that he had something important to tell him. A few minutes later, Veliz called again, and Murphy answered.

  During the conversation, Veliz gave certain details about Ben Novack Jr.’s murder. He also asked for a fax number, saying he wanted to send Murphy something. Murphy gave him the number, and at 2:36 P.M., Veliz sent a letter in Spanish addressed to “Ed Murrly.”

  The translation read:

  I appreciate how professional you acted with me. You asked me a lot of things and I answered what I knew and that is my truth but I have found out other things and if I stay quiet it wn’t [sic] be good. Francisco told me that he did a favor for the daughter of my sister Narcisa. I refer to May Azalea Abad. Of which has me disturbed. It’s really ugly what she’s doing to her mother. The reason May wants everything and wants to run the business that belongs to my sister. Where does she get the money to pay for lawyers and she already moved. I went looking for her to ask her about her bad attitude and I didn’t find her. I believe they are laughing at me.

  She has stolen valuable stuff from my sister. Her and her two kids they drink and have drug problems that you already know. As for the drugs people commit crazy acts.

  If this helps you with something use it. Please use discretion with my name. [May] has a lot of money at this time and is capable of doing something stupid against me. If she doesn’t love her mother me less.

  Cristobal Veliz

  Over the next two weeks, Cristobal Veliz telephoned Investigator Murphy five more times, each time providing additional information about Ben Novack’s murder, implicating his niece.

  * * *

  Now that May Abad was becoming a real threat to Narcy’s inheriting Ben Novack Jr.’s estate, the siblings decided to have her arrested. In mid-August, Alejandro Garcia had been caught robbing a Home Depot store in Fort Myers, Florida, and was briefly incarcerated before posting bail. Soon afterward, Cristobal Veliz summoned Garcia to the Donde Martica Colombian restaurant in Boca Raton for a meeting.

  Over lunch, Jefe offered to pay Garcia $6,000 to plant some weapons and drugs inside May Abad’s black Toyota Tacoma truck.

  “Someone was then going to tip off the police,” said Garcia, “so she would be arrested. He asked me to find a driver for the job.”

  Garcia called his friend Yader Tinako, whom he had recently met in jail, who agreed to drive. Several days later, Garcia introduced Tinako to Veliz, who said he needed a place to stay for a couple of days. Tinako agreed, and Veliz paid him $300 to stay with him and his girlfriend.

  The next afternoon, Garcia and Tinako spent a few hours driving around Fort Lauderdale looking for May’s truck, but were unable to find it. Then Veliz told Garcia that his brother, Carlos, would give him the weapons to place inside May’s truck. He said Carlos would meet him outside a gas station in Boca Raton the next day. He then gave him $100 to buy marijuana to plant with the firearms.

  At the appointed time, Garcia and Tinako arrived at the gas station. A few minutes later, a white Mercedes pulled up next to them and a middle-aged Hispanic man got out.

  “I asked him if he was Cristobal’s brother, Carlos,” Garcia recalled. “He said, ‘Yes. I’m going to give you a canvas bag.’”

  Garcia put the bag into the trunk, then Tinako drove him to his girlfriend China’s apartment in Miami, where Garcia was now living. When they arrived, Garcia took the canvas bag into his bedroom and opened it on the bed.

  Inside were seven different types of firearms, including a Magnum revolver, a 357 Magnum revolver, a pocket-size semiautomatic, and a larger semiautomatic.

  “Each weapon had its own ammunition inside a plastic bag attached to it,” Garcia said.

  That night, Alejandro Garcia went out and, instead of buying marijuana, as instructed, spent the $100 Cristobal had given him on women, crack, and heroin. Later he told Veliz that police had raided his girlfriend’s apartment and seized the marijuana.

  “Cristobal asked what happened with the weapons,” Garcia said. “I said they were hidden. He told me not to worry. He was going to give me money to buy more marijuana to leave in the truck.”

  * * *

  On August 21 the new curator of Ben Novack Jr.’s estate, Douglas Hoffman, wrote a letter to Narcy Novack’s probate attorney, Henry Zippay Jr., asking that Zippay’s client turn over all estate assets immediately. The letter also demanded that Narcy return $105,000 belonging to Novack Enterprises, which she had taken after her husband’s murder.

  “These were the specific proceeds of the New York convention,” Hoffman wrote, “and was the result of cash assets belonging to the corporation being placed into the individual account and control of your client. This transaction was well documented by the New York Police. Both the cash kept by your client and the cash placed into her individual account needs to be returned to the auspices of the corporate entity forthwith.”

  The letter also demanded titles to every single asset belonging to Ben Novack or his company, including “all vehicles, boats, watercrafts, etc.”

  Four days later, Hoffman submitted his first report on the state of the Ben Novack Jr. estate to the Broward County Probate Court. He stated that he had now located Ben’s second cousins, who owned the Novack-Spier family mausoleum in Mount Lebanon Cemetery in Queens, New York. There were four plots available in the mausoleum, but the owner
s were asking $93,000 for just one of them.

  Hoffman had then contacted the cemetery, who told him that there were several plots available just outside the mausoleum for $7,500, including perpetual care.

  “After further negotiations,” Hoffman reported, “the owner of the Novack-Spier Family Mausoleum agreed to the sum of $17,500.00 to be paid to the family owners thereof so as to carry out the decedent’s burial wishes.”

  The curator added that only one plot was now needed, as Narcy no longer wanted to be buried next to Ben, as he had requested. Hoffman asked the court to authorize the purchase of the one cemetery plot and the necessary funeral expenses.

  * * *

  The following day, August 26, Narcy Novack returned to the Bank of America and cleaned out Ben Jr. and Bernice Novack’s three large ten-by-ten safe-deposit boxes. Although she was not authorized to access these boxes, she’d brought along keys. She handed bank employee Colleen Gratz her Florida driver’s license, before signing the card, and Gratz brought her up to the second floor and provided a master key so Narcy could access the boxes.

  After leaving Narcy alone in a private room with the three boxes, Gratz called her superior, Andrea Fernandez, saying she needed to see her urgently.

  “So I went up upstairs,” said Fernandez, “and she showed me the records and said ‘Look at this.’”

  To Fernandez’s horror, she saw that only Bernice and Ben Novack Jr. were authorized to access these safe-deposit boxes.

  “Narcy Novack wasn’t in there,” Fernandez later testified. “So, I said, ‘Where is the customer?’”

  At that point, Narcy Novack came out of the private room wearing a bulging black backpack and clutching a full shopping bag. Fernandez asked her who Bernice was, and without missing a beat, Narcy replied that Bernice Novack was her now-deceased mother-in-law.

  “So I look in the folder,” Fernandez said, “and I found a photocopy of the death certificate from Bernice.”

  She then asked who Ben was, and where he was right now.