The Prince of Paradise

by John Glatt

  He acknowledged that Ben and Narcy Novack had an unconventional marriage, as jurors listened in rapt attention. “We’re going to get to the amputee sex,” he told them. “We’re going to get to the deviant sex. This is not about whether this was a normal marriage. But the fact remains it worked for them.”

  Tanner said the only evidence against his client came from “two lying monsters,” and that everything that had happened inside the Woodlands Suite at the Rye Town Hilton was uncorroborated.

  “Narcy Novack was not in the hotel room,” he declared. “She had absolutely nothing to do with Ben or Bernice Novack’s deaths.”

  * * *

  After a brief recess, the government called its first witness, now-retired Fort Lauderdale Police Department detective Steve Palazzo. Although the jury could hear nothing about the 2002 home invasion, Palazzo was able to describe how Narcy Novack had brought her husband’s photo collection of naked female amputees into police headquarters.

  “Did she show you any of them?” prosecutor Elliott Jacobson asked.

  “Yes,” replied Palazzo. “She told me she wanted to bring to my attention photos that would show the unusual sexual desires of her husband. There were real old photos and magazines. Some of the women were undressed and missing limbs. She said they were into bondage and he was into fantasies about having sex with amputees.”

  Palazzo said Narcy had described hers and Ben’s marriage as “a sick, vicious cycle,” saying she had walked out on him on many occasions.

  Then Howard Tanner asked if some of the photographs had been Polaroids, intimating that they had been taken by Ben Novack himself.

  “They may have been,” he replied.

  That night, The Miami Herald’s Julie Brown asked May Abad her feelings about the prosecution strategy of accusing her of masterminding the killings.

  “The whole thing is a joke,” she said. “They are making a circus out of this. To me, they are going to say whatever they can to save their own asses.”

  * * *

  On the second day of the trial, Ben Novack Jr.’s estate lawyer, Carl Schuster, testified that Narcy Novack would have inherited far more if her husband died than in a divorce. The Fort Lauderdale attorney said that under the Novacks’ 1991 prenuptial agreement, Narcy would have received only $65,000 plus moving expenses in a divorce. But under his June 2006 will, she stood to gain millions.

  “Financially,” said Schuster, “she would have been better off if he was dead.”

  Later that morning, federal marshals led Rebecca Bliss into court to testify about her affair with Ben Novack Jr. The heavily tattooed former prostitute and pornstar, who was in custody in Michigan for DUI and nonpayment of child support, had been granted immunity by the government to testify.

  Looking pale and haggard with her messy brown hair tied back and curls falling into her face, Bliss seemed nervous and uncomfortable. As Bliss took the stand to be sworn in, Narcy Novack glared at her across the courtroom from the defense table.

  Under assistant U.S. attorney Andrew Dember’s direct questioning, Bliss described how in early 2008, Ben Novack Jr. had answered her online “escort ad.” After an exchange of e-mails and phone calls, they’d met for a two-hour sex session and he had paid her $600.

  “The first date was just sexual relations,” she told the jury, “but we got a lot closer.”

  In early June, she said, Novack persuaded her to give up prostitution and move from Miami to Fort Lauderdale, promising to support her and find her a place to live. He installed her in a luxury hotel spa for two weeks while she looked for an apartment.

  He then signed a lease on a luxury condo in the Marina Bay Club, a short drive away from his home, telling her to furnish it at his expense.

  “He asked me not to work anymore,” she told the jury, “not to continue to escort. He paid for all my food and utilities.”

  Bliss testified that although her sugar daddy paid for everything and was very generous, she rarely saw him. During her year there, they had sex “maybe twice.”

  She told the jury they were in love, and that Ben Novack had promised to leave Narcy for her and get a divorce.

  “As his girlfriend,” Bliss told jurors, “I was being very patient.”

  Then, in January 2009, Bliss received a barrage of furious calls from Narcy Novack. “She asked, did I know he was married,” Bliss testified. “I said, yes, I did. She told me there were a lot of other girls and I wasn’t the only one.”

  She said Narcy then offered her $10,000 to break off the relationship and never talk to her husband again. Bliss refused.

  At this point, Judge Karas overruled Howard Tanner’s objection, allowing Bliss to testify that Narcy Novack had told her, “If she couldn’t have him, no other woman was going to have him.”

  In an often-hostile cross-examination, Tanner ridiculed the idea of love between Bliss and Ben Novack.

  “You put yourself out there as a prostitute?” Tanner asked.

  “Yes,” Bliss replied, unfazed.

  “You charge three hundred dollars an hour to have sex, is that your stated price?” he continued.

  “Yes, you have to set the price the same as the other girls in Florida. But I have limits on what I will do.”

  Then, referring to the $10,000 she claimed Narcy had offered her to stop seeing Ben, Tanner questioned whether it had been enough money. “How much would it have taken?” he demanded to know. “Everybody has their price.”

  “I told her there wasn’t one,” Bliss replied. At the defense table, Narcy Novack stuck a finger in her mouth, as if she were about to throw up.

  On Wednesday morning, two burly marshals led Alejandro Garcia to the witness stand. He was wearing thick black wraparound sunglasses and an Orange County, New York, jail jumpsuit.

  For the next five days, through two Spanish-language interpreters, the government’s star witness would describe, without a hint of emotion, coldly killing Bernice Novack and then her son, Ben.

  Under assistant U.S. district attorney Elliott Jacobson’s questioning, Garcia told the jury that in March 2009 he’d been recruited by Melvin Medrano to assault an old woman. Soon afterward, he said, Medrano had introduced him to Cristobal Veliz, at the Miami car wash where Garcia worked. Jefe, as he knew him, was organizing the job for his sister Narcy Novack, and would pay him $1,000.

  After several failed attempts and after drinking two bottles of rum, Garcia had sneaked up behind Bernice Novack’s car and attacked her with a monkey wrench in her garage.

  “She looked at me and she screamed,” he testified. “And right away I hit her.”

  Over the next several days, he described Cristobal Veliz’s preparations for the next attack, on Ben Novack, for which Garcia would be paid $10,000. As Medrano had been deported back to Nicaragua, Veliz had recruited Joel Gonzalez for the attack.

  Garcia told the jurors that the original plan had been to castrate Ben Novack, but that had changed to cutting out his eyes. He said Veliz told him the reason was so that Narcy could continue running Convention Concepts Unlimited, using her disabled husband’s business expertise to help her.

  On Friday morning—the fifth day of the trial—jurors heard the gruesome details of the July 12, 2009, attack on Ben Novack. Garcia described how a cell phone call from Narcy Novack had been the signal to go to the Rye Town Hilton, and how she had let them into the suite.

  “I went to one side,” Garcia testified. “Joel went to the other side without making noise. And we started to beat up the man. We grabbed the dumbbells and started to hit him on the chest, the ribs, and the abdomen.”

  “Did you strike him anywhere else?” prosecutor Jacobson asked.

  “Yes,” replied Garcia. “I hit him in the face. In the head. But that was not the plan.”

  “Why did you do it?” Jacobson asked.

  “Because he wouldn’t quiet down,” Garcia said matter-of-factly.

  Garcia testified that Narcy had then handed Gonzalez a pillow to muffle h
er husband’s screams.

  After Gonzalez had duct-taped Novack’s hands and feet, he walked out of the bedroom.

  “Then I took the utility knife,” Garcia said, “and I cut out the man’s eyes.”

  “Who told you to do that?” Jacobson asked.

  “Cristobal did,” Garcia replied. “The plan was to cut his eyes.”

  As Ben Novack was still “groaning and complaining” on the floor, Garcia said he decided to gag him. He wrapped the heavy gray duct tape around the back of his head and mouth so tightly that Ben Novack finally choked on his own vomit and died.

  Then Narcy Novack had asked Garcia if he had cut her husband’s eyes.

  “I said yes,” Garcia testified. “She said, ‘Are you sure, he won’t be able to see?’ I said, ‘If you want I can keep cutting more,’ and she said, ‘It’s fine.’”

  He then described how Narcy had gone back into the bedroom as he and Gonzalez were washing up in the wet bar area.

  “She gave me a thick gold bracelet with some initials in diamonds,” he said. “I put it in the pocket of my pants.”

  Garcia said the plan had been to tie up Narcy and make it look like a robbery, but she suddenly changed her mind.

  “When I went looking for her with the duct tape,” said Garcia. “She wasn’t there anymore.

  On Friday afternoon, Garcia testified that a few months later, Cristobal Veliz had offered him $6,000 to plant some guns and drugs in May Abad’s truck. He eventually collected seven firearms from Veliz’s elder brother, Carlos, at a garage.

  Then, a few weeks later, at another meeting, Carlos had handed him a photograph of Narcy’s daughter, May Abad, offering him $3,000 to beat her up and leave her a cripple. But before Garcia could go through with it, he was arrested on November 18, 2009, for Ben Novack’s murder.

  On Sunday night, Carlos Veliz—who has never been charged with anything—gave an interview to the Journal News denying any involvement in the case.

  “I sleep every night with my head very quiet,” he said. “I don’t have to be worried. I’m not involved whatsoever.”

  * * *

  On Monday, April 30, Alejandro Garcia was back on the stand for the start of the second week of the trial. Prosecutor Jacobson asked him about the deal he had made with the government to testify against the two defendants.

  “What do you understand of the agreement?” Jacobson asked.

  “That whatever I say,” he replied, “cannot be used against me.”

  Jacobson told the jury that on April 7, 2010, Garcia had pleaded guilty to interstate domestic violence and to his role in the murders of Ben and Bernice Novack. Under the agreement, Judge Karas would take into account his part in killing Bernice Novack at sentencing.

  “Other than pleading guilty,” Jacobson asked, “what are your obligations?”

  “To tell the truth,” he replied.

  Then Cristobal Veliz’s attorney, Larry Sheehan, stood up to begin his cross-examination.

  “Was it you and Joel Gonzalez’s intention to kill Ben Novack?” Sheehan asked.

  “No,” replied Garcia.

  “Despite hitting him twenty to thirty times with barbells?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “How many times have you hit him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Have you ever seen a picture of what Ben Novack looked like after you hit him?” Cristobal Veliz’s attorney asked.

  “No.”

  The attorney then showed the jury a series of gruesome color photographs of Ben Novack’s trussed-up body, including one particularly gory close-up of his slashed eyes. Several members of the jury looked away in horror. Narcy Novack put her head in her hands.

  “That’s how Ben Novack looked,” Sheehan stated.

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember,” Garcia replied.

  “He was bleeding,” Sheehan continued. “You had cut his eyes. Both eyes.”

  “I don’t know,” Garcia said. “I can’t tell you. First I saw like water. I imagine it is fluid in the eye.”

  “And then blood?”

  “That’s right.”

  “A lot of blood?”

  “That’s right.”

  On Tuesday, Narcy Novack’s attorney Howard Tanner cross-examined Garcia, who had now been on the stand five days.

  The attorney noted that Garcia had still not been charged with Bernice Novack’s murder in Florida, where he still faced the death penalty.

  “As a condition of the [government] agreement,” Tanner asked, “you are not required to plead guilty to killing Bernice Novack?”

  “Not yet,” Garcia replied.

  “There’s a specific understanding that the State of Florida can’t punish you if you were to plead guilty to Bernice Novack’s death?”

  “Well, I’m not to be punished again.”

  “As part of the cooperating agreement,” Tanner continued, “the State of Florida is prohibited in seeking the death penalty?”

  “That’s right,” Garcia agreed.

  Under Tanner’s questioning, Garcia admitted meeting prosecutor Elliott Jacobson numerous times to discuss the questions he would be asked at trial, the last time as recently as two Friday’s ago.

  “You told them the answers you were going to give at this trial?” the defender asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Is it fair to say that as you sit here today, you would do anything to avoid a life sentence? Is that fair to say, sir?”

  “I don’t know what you mean by ‘anything,’” Garcia replied angrily.

  “You would certainly lie, as you have in the past, to avoid a life sentence. Isn’t that correct?”

  “I did that in the past, but then I told the truth. I already swore to tell the truth, and up to this moment I have.”

  Just before the lunch break on Wednesday, Alejandro Garcia was dismissed from the stand after five and a half days of testimony.

  The eighth government witness was Miami hair salon owner Gladys Cuenca, who had rented a small space in her trailer to Garcia. She said he had allowed Cristobal Veliz and Joel Gonzalez to sleep on his floor for several days at the beginning of July 2009.

  The elderly woman testified that Veliz hardly spoke to her while he stayed in her trailer, but installed a new showerhead and made other bathroom improvements while there. She also testified how Veliz had her register in her name two of the vehicles used in the Ben Novack killing, and that she had briefly assumed ownership of his Nissan Pathfinder before Veliz took it back.

  * * *

  On Thursday, May 3—the ninth day of the trial—Joel Gonzalez took the stand. Over the next two days, Gonzalez, now twenty-nine, would give his account of the brutal killing of Ben Novack Jr. in fluent English, attempting to minimize his role in it.

  Describing the attack at the Rye Town Hilton, Gonzalez testified that Narcy Novack let them into the fourth-floor suite. When Ben Novack woke up and fought back at the beginning of the attack, Gonzalez said he became “startled” and “backed off.” Narcy Novack had then ordered him back into the bedroom, handing him a pillow to muffle her husband’s screams.

  “Mr. Garcia was still hitting him with the dumbbells,” Gonzalez said. “I placed a pillow over Mr. Novack’s face.”

  As the attack continued, Gonzalez said, he’d stepped back into the parlor twice more, and each time, Narcy had ordered him back to help Garcia. Finally, she had instructed him to go tell Garcia to cut her husband’s eyes.

  “Had anyone ever told you that was part of the assault plan?” Dember asked.

  “No,” Gonzalez replied.

  After leaving the hotel, Gonzalez testified, Garcia had told him to forget what had happened in the suite.

  “I was feeling pretty bad,” Gonzalez said. “I was feeling pretty disgusted with myself.”

  After being arrested in July 2010, Gonzalez said that Cristobal Veliz had offered him $150,000 to implicate May Abad in her stepfather’s death. The offer had come while they wer
e both incarcerated in Westchester County Jail. He was promised another $150,000 when Narcy Novack was freed.

  “Mr. Veliz advised me to place the blame on someone else,” Gonzalez said.

  After refusing to commit himself, as he had secretly cut a deal with the government, he encountered Narcy Novack on the way to a federal court hearing.

  “She asked is it hard to set her free,” Gonzalez testified, “and do her this favor. That I was the only one who could set her free.”

  In his cross, Larry Sheehan pointed out that although he might have felt disgusted that Garcia had cut out Ben Novack’s eyes, Gonzalez had still taken the money.

  “In Miami,” said Sheehan, “did Mr. Garcia go out every day doing crack?”

  “Yes,” Gonzalez said, “Mr. Garcia was spending a lot of money on crack and prostitutes. He was bringing prostitutes back to the apartment where we lived.”

  In his cross-examination, Howard Tanner asked why he had left the bedroom during the attack on Ben Novack.

  “I felt bad. I felt guilty. I had a lot of emotions,” Gonzalez replied. “I didn’t want to be around what was going on.”

  “Yet you went back into the room,” Tanner countered, “because you were told to by a fifty-three-year-old lady?”

  “Correct.”

  “Did she threaten you?”

  “No.”

  “You continued to take part in the assault?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know that Mrs. Novack,” Tanner said, “had absolutely nothing to do with the plot to assault and kill Ben Novack?”

  “No,” Gonzalez said.

  * * *

  On Monday, May 7—the eleventh day of the trial—the jury heard from some of the peripheral members of the conspiracy. Cristobal Veliz’s son-in-law, Denis Ramirez, testified how he drove the two killers to the Rye Town Hilton on July 12, 2009, in a borrowed Lincoln Town Car. The thirty-seven-year-old Nicaraguan-born truck driver testified that he had sold Veliz his 1994 Ford Thunderbird for the Ben Novack job, but it had broken down. Then he had arranged to borrow a former girlfriend’s Town Car as a replacement.