The Prince of Paradise

by John Glatt

  On the way from the Westchester County Correctional Center, Gonzalez had been placed in a holding pen with Narcy. “She asked me if it was hard to set her free,” said Gonzalez, “and to do her this favor. I was the only one that could help her. The only one that could give her freedom. She was reiterating what Mr. Veliz had said.”

  Later, at the hearing, Howard Tanner asked Judge Karas for a sixty-day adjournment, in order to review discovery turned over by prosecutors. Then, as the attorneys discussed possible dates for the next status hearing in late February, Narcy Novack became visibly agitated.

  When Tanner told the judge that he would be out of town for the week of February 20, Narcy exploded, startling the courtroom. “While you’re away,” she snapped at her lawyer, “I’m going to be locked up here in Valhalla.”

  Judge Karas then set the next status hearing for February 10, and Narcy and the other defendants were led out of the court by bailiffs.

  After the hearing, Tanner told reporters that his client was understandably frustrated by having to remain behind bars until her trial. “Nobody’s happy being in jail,” he explained. “Jail is a new experience for her.”

  * * *

  On Thursday, February 10, 2011, Joel Gonzalez was conspicuous in his absence at the next status hearing. This time Narcy Novack appeared more composed, chatting to Howard Tanner throughout the brief hearing. Sitting behind another table were Cristobal Veliz with his lawyer, Stephen Lewis, and Denis Ramirez with attorney Ismael Gonzalez.

  Joel Gonzalez’s absence went unmentioned by both Judge Karas and prosecutor Elliott Jacobson.

  During the hearing, Jacobson told the judge that he would soon decide if the government would file additional charges against Narcy Novack and the other suspects in connection with Bernice Novack’s murder. He said a grand jury was now considering new federal charges, and might issue a superseding indictment in the next few weeks.

  After the hearing there was much speculation that Joel Gonzalez had already pleaded guilty, strengthening the government’s case even more.

  “Whatever it is, if he’s admitted anything,” Howard Tanner told reporters, “I don’t believe that he will hurt my client, because my client continues to assert her innocence.”

  One week later, Denis Ramirez threw in his cards and pleaded guilty, too. He admitted to driving Garcia and Gonzalez to the Rye Town Hilton for what he believed was to be an assault and robbery.

  In federal court, Cristobal Veliz’s thirty-six-year-old son-in-law and the father of his grandchildren pleaded guilty to conspiracy and domestic violence charges. He denied knowing that Ben Novack Jr. was the target for murder, and claimed he thought he was driving the two men to the hotel to commit a violent robbery. During the hearing, prosecutors named their star witness and Ben and Bernice Novack’s confessed killer, Alejandro Garcia, for the first time.

  Federal prosecutor Jacobson also revealed further new details about Ben Novack Jr.’s murder. It had been Narcy Novack, he said, who had made the crucial call to the killers at 6:39 A.M. from the Hilton Hotel, instructing them to proceed. Then, about half an hour later, she had let them into the hotel suite to commit the murder.

  Two weeks later, the Journal News reported an unidentified law enforcement source claiming that Garcia had told investigators that Narcy’s oldest brother, Carlos Veliz, had offered him money to murder Ben Novack Jr. Carlos, who had not been charged, denied having anything to do with Ben’s murder.

  “They are dealing with people who have a rap sheet up to the ceiling,” Carlos told the Journal News. “One thing I know, my name will not dance in that (jail). I’ve got nothing to do with it.”

  FIFTY

  FRUSTRATION

  On Tuesday, April 5—the second anniversary of Bernice Novack’s death—federal prosecutors finally charged Narcy Novack with orchestrating the murder. In an eleven-count superseding indictment filed in White Plains federal court, Novack and her brother Cristobal Veliz were charged with racketeering in the April 2009 death and with attempting to have Alejandro Garcia killed so he couldn’t testify against them. Narcy Novack was further charged with laundering $95,000 out of the $105,000 she took the day after Ben Novack Jr.’s murder.

  “This indictment alleges racketeering acts that run the gamut from murder to robbery to obstruction of justice,” said U.S. attorney Preet Bharara. “A bloody and corrupt chain of events for which the defendants will now have to answer to a jury.”

  Prior to the media learning of the new charges, Maxine Fiel had received a courtesy call from the Westchester County prosecutor.

  “I knew she had been killed,” an elated Fiel told Journal News reporter Jonathan Bandler with regard to her sister’s death, “and felt it was me against the world. But now it’s an indictment. I hate to think of my sister and the fright she felt that day. [Narcy’s] an evil woman and I hope she never sees the light of day again.”

  * * *

  Three days later, Narcy Novack and Cristobal Veliz were arraigned on the new charges at White Plains federal court. They both pleaded not guilty.

  At the hearing, federal prosecutor Elliott Jacobson dramatically upped the stakes, revealing that the government was now considering charging the siblings with murder in the aid of racketeering, which can carry the death penalty.

  Narcy sat next to Cristobal, the two flanked by their respective attorneys. She wore an orange prison jumpsuit; her lank brown hair was streaked with gray. Carlos Veliz’s wife, Melanie Klein, also attended, sitting quietly in the back row of the public gallery.

  As Prosecutor Jacobson told Judge Kenneth Karas that the government was now considering a capital case, Narcy suddenly became animated. She began wagging her finger at Howard Tanner as the prosecutor explained that if the death penalty were brought into play, the Capital Crimes Unit would come in to review the case, which could delay the trial for months.

  “This process is glacial,” Judge Karas noted.

  At 4:59 that afternoon, Prosecutor Jacobson sent an e-mail to Howard Tanner and Stephen Lewis, giving their clients one final opportunity to plead guilty before he went ahead with the new capital charges.

  “It is our intention,” Jacobson wrote, “to proceed with several violent crime in aid of racketeering counts (including a murder in aid of racketeering count) in a superseding indictment. These counts were approved by the Department of Justice this afternoon.

  “We will hold off returning the superseder until 9:00 A.M. on Monday, April 25, 2011. Please contact me if you wish to resolve this matter by plea.”

  * * *

  The morning of the deadline, Cristobal Veliz wrote a letter to Judge Kenneth Karas informing him that he had now fired his attorney, Stephen Lewis. He accused Lewis of trying to railroad him into pleading guilty and testifying against his sister, and telling him that his case was already lost. Veliz’s letter also made a series of unsubstantiated allegations against Ben Novack Jr., May Abad, and Denis Ramirez’s cousin Francisco Picado.

  Veliz claimed that his niece had told him that Ben Novack had raped her in 1991, when she was growing up. In 2009, Veliz claimed, May had told him she’d caught her stepfather receiving oral sex from one of her sons. He said he had confronted Ben Novack with May’s accusation, but he had denied it.

  “[Her] anger … caused her to send people to kill Ben,” Veliz wrote. “She’s claiming the money that belongs to her mother as a personal reward for the traumatic rape that she went through and also what Ben did to her son.”

  Veliz also claimed that Ben Novack had made “strange videos” about “handicapped females in wheelchairs” having sex.

  “My only fault in this matter,” Veliz told Judge Karas, “is that I should have been honest with my sister and told her what had happened.”

  * * *

  At the next status hearing, held on Friday, May 6, Prosecutor Elliott Jacobson told Judge Karas that the Department of Justice needed a further six weeks to decide whether to seek the death penalty. If it became a capital
case, the defense would have to bring in new attorneys, experienced in death penalty cases, to join the defense teams—a process that could take months.

  With attorney Stephen Lewis also announcing that he would no longer be representing Cristobal Veliz, things would be delayed even further, as a new lawyer would have to be brought up to speed on the case.

  After the hearing, Judge Karas met with Veliz and Lewis in his chambers to discuss Veliz’s letter. It was decided by “mutual agreement” that Veliz would get a new attorney.

  * * *

  A few months earlier, Bernice Novack’s home had been put on the market, with an asking price of $875,000. And in May, her treasured possessions, including many from the Fontainebleau, were sold off.

  The grand piano that Frank Sinatra had supposedly given her fetched $6,897.97, and the prized bronze and marble statues that had once adorned the hotel went for a total of almost $19,000. The remaining jewelry that hadn’t been taken by Narcy sold for nearly $15,000, and her dresses and other clothing, $5,350.

  The sale made a total of $182,983.37, less the appraisers’ 20 percent commission, giving her estate $146,386.70.

  “They cleared everything out of the house,” said Rebecca Greene. “It was so sad to see these total strangers going into that house and taking Bernice’s things. She was such a private person, and to have total strangers go in there and box it all up and take it away in U-Hauls was just devastating.”

  * * *

  On May 19, Cristobal Veliz took his case to Supreme Court judges John Roberts and Stephen G. Breyer. In a letter written on his behalf by Laura Law, he appealed for justice.

  “I am a wrongly accused man,” he stated. “I have not been involved in any way in the crime that I am arrested and jailed for. The legal system has been treating me badly.”

  He accused his former attorney Stephen Lewis of teaming up against him with prosecutor Elliott Jacobson, and the FBI and the Westchester County District Attorney of conducting a “lousy” investigation without “a single clue or evidence.”

  He copied the letter to the New York Post, the New York Daily News, El Diario, and the Journal News, but not one story appeared.

  * * *

  On Thursday, June 23, Narcy Novack was back in White Plains federal court with Cristobal Veliz. Throughout the status hearing, at which prosecutors announced that the Justice Department had still not made up its mind about the death penalty, Narcy appeared visibly upset and agitated. Wearing a cream prison outfit, her brown hair tied back with a blue ribbon, she repeatedly shook her head in annoyance.

  “I’ve instructed her that there’s no basis for a bail application,” Tanner explained to the judge. “She’s frustrated.”

  “I understand,” Judge Karas replied.

  At the end of the hearing, as Narcy was being led out of court by a bailiff, she banged the government’s table in anger and glared at the prosecutor.

  A few minutes later, outside the courthouse on Quarropas Street, Laura Law handed out to the reporters assembled there a protest letter from Cristobal Veliz.

  * * *

  Each week, Laura Law, who worked as a nurse at a Brooklyn hospital, caught a bus to Westchester County Jail in Valhalla, New York. In the morning she would visit Cristobal Veliz, and then walk over to the women’s jail to see Narcy Novack in the afternoon.

  Narcy had now been locked up for a year, having little to do with the other inmates. She spent her days working on her case in her cell, remaining in daily touch with her brother Cristobal by mail. She kept a strictly kosher diet inside the jail.

  “She doesn’t share a cell,” said Laura Law. “She don’t want to talk to nobody over there. She’s just living alone because she doesn’t like the other people.”

  Law said that Narcy had started writing a book about her once-glamorous life with Ben Novack Jr., giving her version of his murder.

  “She writes it down like a story book,” said Law. “She likes to show it to me. She says it’s a very good story and that it might be a movie one day.”

  FIFTY-ONE

  “A SICK, VICIOUS CYCLE”

  On July 16, 2011, The Miami Herald carried a recap of the case, headlined “The Novack Murders: A Tale of Greed, Sex, Betrayal and Shocking Brutality.” In the story, reporter Julie Brown interviewed defense attorney Howard Tanner, who insisted that Narcy Novack was totally innocent and that prosecutors had no evidence against her.

  “The puzzling thing,” said Tanner, “is that prosecutors are making deals with people who are admittedly involved in the murder of Ben Novack, and they are going after Narcy, who had nothing to do with the murder … They are making deals with a variety of devils.”

  Two weeks later, at a status hearing, Prosecutor Elliott Jacobson told Judge Kenneth Karas that the government would not be seeking the death penalty, but would be asking for a mandatory life sentence instead. Narcy Novack had no visible reaction to the news.

  Jacobson said that he was still pressing ahead with a new superseding indictment, including murder in aid of racketeering, which would be ready in a couple of weeks.

  “Naturally my client is frustrated by the whole process,” Tanner told the judge, who replied that he “appreciated” that.

  The judge officially appointed defense attorney Larry Sheehan to represent Cristobal Veliz.

  Toward the end of the morning’s hearing, Jacobson complained to the judge about defense attorney Tanner’s recent interview with The Miami Herald, taking exception to his saying that prosecutors were making a deal with “a variety of devils.”

  Judge Karas issued a gag order on attorneys giving any further interviews to the press, saying he was concerned that it might prejudice the jury pool for the upcoming trial.

  * * *

  On Tuesday, September 20, the long-awaited second superseding indictments were filed against Narcy Novack and her brother Cristobal. The six new felony counts included one of murder in aid of racketeering, alleging that the two were part of an interstate plot to enrich themselves. It carried a mandatory life sentence without parole if they were found guilty.

  Two weeks later, Judge Kenneth Karas set an April 16, 2012, date for the murder trial to begin. After Narcy was formally arraigned on the new charges, pleading not guilty, Howard Tanner announced he was considering asking the court for separate trials, as there was a “good basis” to do so.

  At the hearing, Veliz’s arraignment was postponed after he told the judge he had not yet discussed his plea with his new lawyer, Larry Sheehan. Then, against Sheehan’s advice, Veliz held up a copy of the letter he had written to Judge Karas and waved it around.

  “They did this, not me,” he declared angrily. “I’m not guilty.”

  Two weeks later, Veliz was arraigned on the new charges; he pleaded not guilty to all of them. He also asked Judge Karas for permission to leave Westchester County Jail for a few hours so he could marry his fiancée, Laura Law (already described as his wife in his letters), at a nearby town hall.

  “You want to marry Laura Law?” the judge asked.

  “Yes, please,” Veliz replied. “Please give me the opportunity.”

  Judge Karas said he would check with federal marshals, and told the defendant to “hang in there.”

  * * *

  On November 15, Ben Novack Jr.’s collection of Batman comics and other collectibles was auctioned off in Beverly Hills, California. In a three-day auction, his rare comic book collection fetched a total of $268,000, including a record $101,575 for a restored 1939 Detective Comics No. 27, which marked the very first appearance of Batman.

  * * *

  In mid-February 2012, Maxine Fiel hired top genealogist Harvey E. Morse to investigate the Novack family tree and prevent her nephew’s fortune from going to May Abad and her two sons. Fiel’s attorney, Mark Hanson, then petitioned Broward County Probate Court, asking it to decide exactly who the rightful heirs to Ben Novack Jr.’s millions were. He said the Novack family’s purpose was to “cut off [Narcy’s] b
loodline,” so neither she nor any of her descendants could profit.

  “The law as a matter of public policy,” attorney Hanson said, “does not want the murderess to benefit in any way under the will.”

  Hanson, who is based in Daytona, Florida, already claimed to have located three of Ben Novack Jr.’s cousins, who could lay claim to his now estimated $10 million estate.

  Fiel said the last person Bernice would have wanted to inherit her money and valuable jewels was her daughter-in-law. “Not one of my children or I have ever discussed the money,” she said. “I want justice. I want that woman [Narcy] put away forever and never [to] see the light of day.”

  Asked by a local Miami TV station for her comment, May Abad lashed out at her stepfather’s family. “They have no dignity whatsoever,” she said. “All they’re after is the money. Where have they been all these years?”

  * * *

  On Friday, February 28, at a pretrial hearing, it was revealed that Narcy Novack had been receiving regular visits at the Westchester County Jail from criminal attorney Gary Greenwald, whom she had put on a retainer. Her longtime attorney Howard Tanner had found out only a day earlier, after Greenwald asked Judge Karas to allow Narcy to use her assets to pay his, Greenwald’s, fees.

  Tanner was also unaware that two months earlier Narcy had transferred the ownership of a 1995 Mercedes to Greenwald, who had registered it in the name of a consulting firm he ran. In January Narcy had also transferred $18,797.05 from an insurance policy to the lawyer.

  The portly attorney, based in Chester, New York, arrived in court with a female assistant carrying a bag of jewelry valued at $200,000, which Greenwald claimed belonged to Narcy Novack.

  In August 2010, Narcy had signed an affidavit claiming to be penniless. Since then, Tanner had been representing her at a fraction of his normal fee as a public defender.

  “I’ve received a letter giving some indication that Mr. Greenwald now represents Miss Novack,” Judge Karas said. “With the trial date fast approaching, I find it perplexing.”