The Prince of Paradise

by John Glatt

  He testified that his father-in-law had offered him $1,000 to do the driving, but he had only received $100.

  Then Ramirez’s cousin Francisco Picado, now twenty-two, testified how he had driven the killers back to Miami after Ben Novack’s murder. Under assistant U.S. attorney Andrew Dember’s direct questioning, Picado claimed he had found out about the assault only during the drive to Miami, when Garcia showed him Ben Novack’s bracelet and told him about the brutal beating.

  “He said [he had] just come from beating [Ben Novack] up,” Picado told the jurors. “Joel tied him up with duct tape and held him down while [Garcia] had cut out his eyes.”

  Picado, who had cut a deal with the government in return for immunity, also recounted his role in Bernice Novack’s murder. He admitted knowing about the plan to assault the old lady, and to renting the red Scion to be used in the attack.

  “[Cristobal] said his sister was basically paying him to pay someone to assault her mother-in-law,” Picado testified.

  On Tuesday morning, when Larry Sheehan questioned Picado about his testimony regarding never meeting May Abad, Narcy Novack suddenly slumped forward and broke down in tears.

  Howard Tanner then asked for a brief recess so his client could compose herself. After the jury was excused, Narcy suddenly turned toward Picado, yelling, “I’m innocent, and you’re helping him!”

  Then she turned to prosecutors, shouting, “When are you going to arrest that guy? This is not right.”

  A female marshal led a still-weeping Narcy out of the courtroom and into a holding pen, where she threw a tantrum and started screaming.

  Fifteen minutes later, when Narcy was brought back into the courtroom, Elliott Jacobson complained to Judge Karas about her behavior. “She maybe upset,” said the prosecutor, “but I get to do my job free of intimidation.”

  “Why don’t you arrest the witness!” Narcy yelled back at him.

  Once again, Howard Tanner apologized on behalf of his client, saying he was sure his client had nothing personal against Jacobson. “She was just venting and it wasn’t a threat,” he told Judge Karas. “I’ll tell her to vent to me right now.”

  Then Narcy stood up and apologized to the judge. “This is your courtroom,” she told him. “I’m sorry, Your Honor. I just feel I’m treated unfairly. I’ve taken a lot. I’ll try my best.”

  Judge Karas sternly told her that he would not tolerate any further outbursts.

  “These are serious allegations,” he said. “I understand you and Mr. Veliz are feeling a lot of pressure, but nothing will be directed at the government for doing their job. You and I will just have to agree to disagree about whether you’re being treated fairly. You may not like the evidence that’s come in. You may not like what the witnesses have said. But what you are not here to do is disrupt this trial.”

  * * *

  That night, Narcy Novack telephoned Channel 12 reporter Tara Rosenblum from Westchester County Jail, claiming the trial was “unfair” and she was being persecuted.

  “I was sobbing and poking holes at my skin,” she told Rosenblum, “bracing myself so I wouldn’t go up there and grab [Garcia] and say, ‘Why? Why? Why?’ I have never met [Garcia]. I have never seen [Garcia]. I can swear to you on a stack of 17 bibles.”

  During the thirty-five-minute interview, she also dismissed Rebecca Bliss’s claim that Ben had ever loved her. “Whatever she says,” said Narcy, “doesn’t prove anything, because I know him longer than she did.”

  At the end of the interview, Narcy appeared to question her brother Cristobal’s innocence, saying she would be “devastated” if he had been involved. “I know my brother and he’s not a criminal,” she said. “I think someone used him.”

  Next morning, Larry Sheehan called for a mistrial, saying the interview had jeopardized his client Cristobal Veliz’s right to a fair trial. Judge Kenneth Karas denied this request, saying there was no reason to believe any of the jurors had seen it. But he said he was concerned that Narcy Novack was “inflicting legal wounds” on her brother.

  He then issued a gag order, banning Narcy from speaking to the media for the duration of the trial.

  “This is not a permanent ban,” Karas explained. “After the verdict she can comment all she wants.”

  * * *

  At the start of the fourth week of the trial, prosecutors called a procession of witnesses who had been at the Rye Town Hilton the morning of Ben Novack’s murder. Rigoberto Wilson testified about Narcy Novack’s strange behavior outside the Woodlands Suite, before following her inside to discover Ben Novack’s bloody body trussed up in duct tape.

  He testified that rather than call 911, he started taking photographs with his cell phone. This seemed to take prosecutor Andrew Dember off guard.

  “Why did you take pictures?” Dember asked.

  “I like taking pictures,” Wilson replied.

  He then described how Narcy had straddled Ben Novack’s facedown body, shaking his shoulders and repeatedly screaming, “Why!”

  Prosecutors then called paramedic Kerri Conrad, who had pronounced Ben Novack dead. In damaging testimony to the defense, she testified that Narcy Novack was emotionless about her husband’s death.

  The government’s next witness was Angelica Furano, who had been the Rye Town Hilton’s events manager in July 2009. Under prosecutor Andrew Dember’s direct, she told of a conversation that she had had with Ben Novack late Friday night at the Amway convention.

  “Did Mr. Novack tell you about his future plans for the company,” Dember asked.

  “Yes,” Furano replied. “He said he was very proud of May and all the hard work she had done.”

  She testified that Novack said he would soon be retiring from his company’s day-to-day operations, and his stepdaughter would be taking over.

  In his cross, Howard Tanner noted that Furano had told investigators about this conversation only four days after the trial had started.

  Then, in further damaging testimony for the defense, Hilton security officer Louis Monti testified that the killers had not used key cards to enter the Woodlands Suite, which proved that somebody must have let them in. He had checked the two locks for the suite, and they had not been used between Saturday midnight and 7:45 Sunday morning, when Narcy Novack had returned from breakfast.

  On Tuesday, May 15—the sixteenth day of the trial—the government began calling investigators and CSI forensic experts to tell the jury about the murder investigation.

  Criminal investigator Richard Corvinus of the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office testified that Alejandro Garcia’s cell phone listed contact numbers for Narcy Novack, Cristobal Veliz (under the name “Jefe”), and Carlos Veliz.

  Joselyn Chernjawski of the Westchester County Forensic Laboratory testified about the voluminous DNA testing done in the Woodlands Suite, and on evidence recovered from it. Not surprisingly, the only blood that had yielded DNA profiles came from Ben Novack.

  To bolster Narcy Novack’s claim that the broken arm of the Valentino sunglasses belonged to her, Tanner questioned the absence of Alejandro’s Garcia’s DNA on the arm. Chernjawski explained that all the blood on it had made it impossible to swab a DNA sample.

  In redirect, Perry Perrone observed that there was also no forensic evidence that Narcy Novack had ever touched the glasses.

  “Correct,” the forensic investigator replied.

  * * *

  Just before afternoon recess on May 16—the seventeenth day of the trial—prosecutor Elliott Jacobson handed each juror a series of FBI Situational Information Reports, under a stipulation agreement with the defense. For the next fifteen minutes the jurors read the three FBI reports, which contained a list of unsubstantiated accusations against Ben Novack Jr., presumably coming from his widow.

  Most explosive was an October 1, 2009, “Criminal Activity Alert” for the Miami Division claiming a possible affair between Ben Novack and May Abad.

  “Ben Novack may have had a romantic/abus
ive relationship with his stepdaughter May LNU,” the FBI report read. “Narcy Novack reportedly found explicit love letters from May LNU to Ben Novack. Narcy allegedly gave a package containing the letters to her lawyer.”

  Another listed Ben Novack Jr.’s alleged criminal activities, claiming his employee Joe Gandy supplied him with “baseball-sized quantities of cocaine.”

  It also mentioned his partnership in Jerry Calhoun’s Entertainment Coaches of America company, noting that Calhoun’s spread in Leesburg, Florida, was equipped with a runway for Calhoun’s $5 million private jet.

  “Calhoun and Novack utilized this aircraft for trips to Mexico,” the report stated, without elaborating further.

  The report also stated that Narcy Novack had observed her husband viewing “online child pornography,” and he was physically abusive toward her.

  “He offered to pay her $500,000 if [she] agreed to a divorce,” the report read. “She refused the divorce because she [had] helped build their very lucrative business.”

  The report also mentioned Narcy’s “two trusted associates,” Bob Walton and Robert Hodges, aka Prince Mongo. It observed that after Ben Novack’s death, Narcy spent two hours on the phone with Walton.

  The next day, these allegations would make front-page headlines all over America. But the jury would be left wondering about their significance, as no further mention of them was made at trial.

  * * *

  At the beginning of the fifth week of the trial, the jury was shown gruesome photographs of the horrendous injuries sustained by Bernice Novack and her son, Ben.

  On Tuesday, May 22, Dr. Khalil Wardak of the Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office testified that he had visited the death scene at Bernice Novack’s home in April 2009, and had immediately suspected foul play.

  He told the jury that the eighty-six-year-old woman had injuries all over her body, including a 3.5-centimeter left frontal skull fracture. The bone of the skull had been pushed against her brain, an injury that would have required a tremendous amount of force and was inconsistent with a fall.

  Dr. Wardak testified that he had told the Broward County Medical Examiner he had made a mistake in his finding of accidental death.

  “Did you express your concern,” Howard Tanner asked in his cross.

  “Yes, I did,” Dr. Wardak replied.

  The following day, the acting Westchester County Medical Examiner, Dr. Kunjlata Ashar, took the stand, detailing Ben Novack’s appalling injuries and his torturous death.

  Under prosecutor Perry Perrone’s direct examination, Dr. Ashar illustrated Novack’s injuries for the jury, using color photographs from the murder scene. Several members of the jury turned away, as the uncensored photographs were displayed on monitors in front of them. The medical examiner testified that Ben Novack had still been alive when his eyes were gouged out.

  During the autopsy, she had found his last meal still in his bronchial pipe, and explained that his multiple rib fractures had made him vomit. She said the duct tape over his mouth had made him choke to death.

  “Is it unusual for a man to ejaculate when he’s dying?” Perrone asked.

  “Not at all,” the medical examiner replied.

  Dr. Ashar said in May 2010, at the request of federal prosecutors, that she had reviewed Bernice Novack’s autopsy and police reports.

  “It didn’t take me one day to determine this wasn’t an accident,” she said. “I came to the conclusion almost immediately.”

  As the trial entered it’s sixth week and the government started wrapping up its case, there had been much speculation that May Abad would take the stand against her mother and uncle. Ultimately, prosecutors were confident that they had a sufficiently strong case without putting her through such an ordeal.

  * * *

  On Thursday May 24, the government called its forty-ninth witness, senior investigator Edward Murphy of the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office. Under Andrew Dember’s direct, the retired New York City homicide detective told jurors that he had first sat down to interview Narcy Novack on the evening of Sunday, July 12, 2009, about twelve hours after her husband’s killing.

  During the interview, Murphy said that Lieutenant Christopher Calabrese of the Westchester County Police Department had entered the hotel room with a Rolex watch and the broken arm from a pair of sunglasses.

  “He showed [the arm] to her,” Murphy testified, “and asked if she recognized it. She said, ‘Yes, they’re from my glasses. They’re Valentinos.’”

  When Calabrese asked how the piece had gotten on the bed, Narcy replied that her husband had been trying to fix them.

  “She said she had broken them on the plane over from Florida,” Murphy said. “Ben bugged her to let him fix them.”

  When, Lieutenant Calabrese asked where the rest of the glasses were, Narcy said she must have left it on the plane. When he asked how Ben could have fixed them, then, Narcy did not reply.

  “He asked her again,” Murphy said, “and she said she didn’t know.”

  Later that day, jurors were shown an August 12, 2009, Philadelphia Western Union video showing Cristobal Veliz wiring $500 to Alejandro Garcia, with Francisco Picado’s forged signature on the form.

  Murphy said that the next day, Veliz had been wearing the same T-shirt and baseball cap as in the video, when he (Murphy) and three detectives had arrived at his Philadelphia apartment to interview Veliz.

  Murphy told the jury that while Veliz was out of the room changing he spotted a receipt for a money transfer on a table, showing the $500 payment to Garcia. He had quickly copied down the details, recognizing Francisco Picado’s 1499 Jefferson Avenue address in Brooklyn.

  “If it was significant,” Murphy said, “I didn’t want him to know I’d seen it.”

  In his cross-examination, Howard Tanner asked about Murphy’s interview with Narcy on the evening of her husband’s murder.

  “Is it fair to say she appeared visibly distraught?” Tanner asked.

  “You’ll have to explain that,” the investigator replied. “What do you mean?”

  “She was crying,” Tanner said.

  “Not when I was with her,” Murphy said. “When I first saw her I expressed my sympathy for her loss. She was calm. She was in control. She said she would do anything to find out who killed her husband.”

  At the end of the day, before Judge Karas recessed for the long Memorial Day weekend, Howard Tanner expressed concern about his client’s mental condition. “I want to put on record that she has been visibly disturbed all day,” he said. “She has been crying throughout the day and I have not been able to communicate with her. It may be she’s just having a bad day.”

  Then Tanner asked the judge for time to prepare Narcy to take the stand in her own defense, in the event she decided to do so. “If she’s going to testify,” he told the judge, “I’m going to have to have her ready, because Mr. Jacobson will have a lot of questions.”

  * * *

  On Tuesday, May 29, the jury returned from the four-day Memorial Day recess, as the trial entered its sixth week. The government now wrapped up its marathon case by presenting an elaborate four-hour-long PowerPoint presentation. Prepared by the government’s fiftieth and final witness, Dean DeLitta, a Cisco Systems cell phone expert, it would irrefutably link the two defendants and the killers to one another during both murders.

  The jury watched as DeLitta tracked Cristobal Veliz and the two killers in real time, driving to the Rye Town Hilton on July 9, 2009, for a reconnaissance mission. Then he showed the jury how they had returned to the hotel two days later for Ben Novack’s murder.

  The government’s coup de grace was the 6:39 A.M. call from Narcy Novack’s secret phone to her brother Cristobal, launching the attack. The presentation graphically illustrated her call from the hotel bouncing off a cell tower less than a half mile away to Veliz’s phone at a Port Chester gas station just five minutes away from the Hilton. The records showed it was the only call her secret
954-816-2089 cell phone would make that morning.

  The presentation also tracked Alejandro Garcia’s and Melvin Medrano’s cell phones on April 4, 2009, the night Bernice Novack was murdered. It showed numerous calls between them and Cristobal Veliz that night.

  The voluminous cell phone records corroborated much of the two killers and their accomplices’ testimony. Under defense cross-examination, DeLitta conceded, however, that there was no way of knowing what was said during the phone calls or even who was making them.

  On Wednesday at 11:50 A.M. DeLitta was excused, and the government rested its case against Narcy Novack and Cristobal Veliz after almost twenty-five days and fifty witnesses.

  FIFTY-THREE

  THE DEFENSE

  After the lunch recess, Cristobal Veliz took the stand in his own defense. With newly cropped receding hair and wearing a new shirt, his first change of clothing since the start of the trial, Veliz would spend the next four days testifying through two Spanish-language interpreters.

  Veliz told his attorney, Larry Sheehan, that May Abad had reached out to him as a teenager after an incident with Ben Novack Jr. “She asked me for help,” he testified, “so I went down [to Florida] to help her.”

  Judge Karas refused to allow Veliz to tell the jury what he claimed his niece had said, except that it had led to a conversation between him and Ben Novack.

  “As a result of what May had told you,” Sheehan asked, “did you see a change in Ben and May’s relationship?”

  “It changed a lot,” Veliz replied, “because she seemed to take control over him.”

  “How?” Sheehan asked.

  “She would ask him for gifts,” he said. “Everything she wanted she would get.”

  In early July 2009 he had encountered May at a barbecue at Keyling Sanchez’s house in Miami, and they had had a conversation.

  “We can’t say anything about the conversation,” Sheehan said, “but would it be fair to say she was speaking loudly?”

  “She was almost out of control,” Veliz said. “She was very upset.”