The Prince of Paradise (30 page)

T
HIRTY-
E
IGHT

“FINISH HIM OFF!”

At 3:00
A.M.
on Sunday, while Ben Novack Jr.
was still at work in his suite, Cristobal Veliz pulled up in front of 1499 Jefferson Avenue in his Nissan Pathfinder.
He called Denis Ramirez, saying he was waiting outside.
After hastily dressing, Ramirez came downstairs and got into the borrowed black Lincoln Town Car and followed his father-in-law’s Pathfinder to a gas station to fill up.

They then proceeded to the Crossbay Motor Inn, where Alejandro Garcia and Joel Garcia had packed and were ready to go, wearing their “professional-looking attire.”

At 4:06
A.M.
Gonzalez checked out of the motel and walked out with Garcia to the Pathfinder, putting their bags in the trunk.
Garcia, wearing his fake Valentino sunglasses, kept his backpack, which contained all the weapons for the attack.

Then they got into the Lincoln Town Car, which Ramirez drove, following Veliz in his Pathfinder to the Rye Town Hilton.

Driving in convoy, the vehicles took the Belt Parkway, crossed over the Whitestone Bridge, and took the Hutchinson River Parkway to Rye Brook in Westchester County, New York.

It was still dark when they arrived at the Rye Town Hilton at 5:10
A.M.
There was a light on in the Woodlands Suite, where Ben Novack Jr.
was still working at his computer.

“We showed Denis [Ramirez] the area inside the parking lot where he was going to wait for us,” Garcia later testified.
“Then Cristobal said we needed to wait for a cell phone call from his sister, to tell us when we could attack the man.”

Ramirez then drove the Town Car behind the green Pathfinder off the hotel grounds and to a gas station in Port Chester, just five minutes away.
Veliz parked the Pathfinder on the road, while Ramirez stopped the Town Car by a Dumpster on the gas station forecourt.

Then the conspirators all waited nervously for Narcy Novack’s call.

While Ramirez went inside the gas station to buy cigarettes, Garcia and Gonzalez got into the Pathfinder for final instructions.
The previous day, Garcia said he would need a bottle of rum for the job, and Veliz had promised to bring one along.

“[Cristobal] said, ‘I have a present for you,’” said Garcia, “and he gave me a bottle of rum.
I said I’m going out to buy a bottle of soda and start drinking.
I was nervous.”

After buying the soda, Garcia got back into the Town Car with Ramirez and started drinking the rum cocktail.
As the rum began taking effect, Ramirez started teasing Garcia about having beaten up an old lady in Fort Lauderdale.

“I said the lady had died,” said Ramirez.
“He got upset and said that Cristobal had to pay him more money because the old lady [had] died.
Cristobal [had] told him she hadn’t.”

By the time Joel Gonzalez returned to the Town Car after smoking a cigarette, Garcia had worked himself into a frenzy.

“Mr.
Garcia was very angry,” Gonzalez recalled, “and wanted to know if it was true [about the old lady dying].
He said, ‘Don’t mess with me!
Don’t play with me!’
Denis [Ramirez] was laughing and joking and not telling him if the old lady had died or not.”

*   *   *

At around 6:30
A.M.
, it was just getting light when Ben Novack Jr.
turned off his computer, stripped down to his boxer shorts, and got into bed for a couple of hours’ sleep.

Investigators believe that Narcy waited until Novack fell asleep before sneaking out of bed and into the adjoining room, where she quietly called her brother’s cell phone at 6:39
A.M.
, setting in motion their murderous plan.

After her call, Cristobal Veliz summoned Garcia to the Pathfinder, announcing, “She’s ready.
Let’s go.”

Garcia walked back to the Lincoln Town Car, took a long drink of rum, and told Ramirez to drive back to the Rye Town Hilton.

*   *   *

At 6:45
A.M.
Denis Ramirez drove the Lincoln Town Car onto the grounds of the Rye Town Hilton and parked on a service road.
Garcia told him to keep the engine running, so they could make a quick getaway.
Then he and Gonzalez emptied out their pockets so nothing incriminating could fall out, before getting out of the Town Car and walking toward the hotel.

*   *   *

Inside the hotel, associate events director Angelica Furano had just arrived at the ballroom to help with breakfast.
She was alarmed to discover a crowd of Amway attendees already lining up by the registration desks, with no Convention Unlimited staff to take care of them.

At 6:54
A.M.
she called Ben Novack Jr.’s cell phone, asking him to send someone to the registration desk immediately.

“He answered the phone,” recalled Furano.
“He told me to call Nando [from Amway] and have him go to the registration.
He sounded fine … normal.”

After hanging up, Ben Novack Jr.
went back to sleep.

*   *   *

The two killers entered through a side door, went up two flights of stairs, to the fourth floor, and turned left, as they had done two days earlier.

It was around 7:00
A.M.
when they approached the Woodlands Suite.
Narcy Novack was waiting in the doorway, gesturing to them to hurry up.
She was dressed in a smart brown business suit, but had not done her dyed red hair or her makeup.

She ushered them in through the double doors and closed them.
Then she put her index finger to her lips and made a shushing sound, pointing toward the bedroom.
Inside, they saw Ben Novack Jr.
fast asleep in bed, wearing only gray Hanes boxer shorts and black socks.

Then Narcy led the two men to a kitchen area, where Garcia placed his backpack on the counter and took out the dumbbells, duct tape, and gloves.

Both men removed their dress shirts and shoes, and while they were changing, Narcy told Garcia to remove his sunglasses.
He ignored her, as the light hurt his eyes.

Finally, they put on the sports gloves and picked up the dumbbells, gripping them hard.

As they tiptoed past Narcy and into the dark bedroom, Garcia whispered that on the count of three they would attack.

Then they took their positions on either side of the double bed, where Ben Novack Jr.
was asleep.
Garcia quietly counted to three.

“We grabbed the dumbbells and started to hit him hard,” Garcia later testified.
“On the head, the chest, the ribs, and the abdomen.”

Ben Novack woke up and started screaming, as he desperately tried to defend himself, furiously lashing out at Garcia.
In the struggle, he broke an arm off his attacker’s Valentino sunglasses, and his own gold Rolex watch came off, both falling onto the bed.

As Novack frantically fought back, Gonzalez got scared and walked out of the bedroom, leaving Garcia alone with Ben Novack.

“Narcy was angry,” Gonzalez said.
“She ordered me to get back there and help [Garcia].”

When Gonzalez returned to the bedroom, Narcy handed him a pillow and told him to use it to muffle Ben’s screams, as he was making too much noise.

On the bed, Ben Novack was grappling with Garcia, who was still beating him with a dumbbell.
Gonzalez put his knee onto the mattress, leveraging all his weight to smother Novack with the pillow.

“Mr.
Novack swerved to the left and hit [Garcia] in the neck with his fist,” Gonzalez recalled.
“I dropped the pillow and left them wrestling with each other and walked out of the room.”

Narcy was furious to see Gonzalez leave again, and screamed at him to go straight back and help his friend.

When he came back he found Ben Novack on the carpet, with Garcia standing over him and still pounding him hard with the dumbbell.
As Novack was no longer moving and was just moaning in agony, Gonzalez said it was enough.
Garcia stopped, and apologized for losing control.

Then, while he held Ben Novack down, Garcia told Gonzalez to duct-tape Novack’s hands behind his back and his legs together.

“I taped his legs, and there was no resistance,” Gonzalez recalled.
“He was breathing very hard.
There was a lot of blood coming out of his mouth.”

Then, for the third time, Gonzalez went back to the kitchen, where Narcy was pacing nervously.

Alone in the bedroom, Garcia stood over Ben Novack, who was hogtied on the carpet, and took out the utility knife.

Then, grabbing a large clump of Ben Novack’s long, thick hair, Garcia lifted up his head and thrust the sharp blade into Novack’s left eye and turned it sharply.
Ben Novack moaned in anguish.
Then Garcia took out the knife and plunged it into Novack’s right eye and twisted it.

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.

T
HIRTY-
N
INE

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 out 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.”