died. may thought the time had come. for years ben had been asking her to consider becoming his legally adopted daughter. she thought it would be the perfect father s day gift for him. i started thinking, you know, bernice had just passed and it would be something nicese for h, you etknow, to be like, okay, y do have a daughter, you know, because i do feel like i am his daughter to this day. so it never got legally changed. all of the paperwork is still on his desk. it never got attended to because of the brutal event three months after bernice s passing. ben, narcy and may were putting on another of their big conventions at ath hotel in new york s suburban westchester county. just after 7:30 sunday morning, july 12, 2009, the last day of the convention, hotel security got the urgent call. something very bad hade happen in one ofve the suites. a 58-year-old man had been found bound and bludgeoned to death in the bedroom.
the two hit men had confessed. admitting to killing ben number ovak jr. they claimed ben s wife and her brother paid them to do it. but still, no charges had been filed as police continued to investigation and then the hit man alejandra garcia dropped a bombshell, he claimed he also killed someone else on orders from narcy and her brother almost a year earlier and had gotten away with. it the murder for hire, none other than ben novak s 87-year-old mother bernice, the one time queen of the off and on blue died three months earlier in what cops and the medical examiner ruled was an accidental death, a slip and fall getting out of her car. how he kill her? a monkey wrench, he took what appeared to be a baseball swing and hit her several times to the head. garcia said he got paid $600 for the job.
its day. king ben and queen bernice lived in b a penthouse suite, then alg came their prince, ben novack jr. he was a spoiled kid, he was a brat. ben jr., don t call him benji, would be trotted out to shake hands with the likes of jft and then back up to the hotel room. the kids who came to the birthday party were complete strangers to him, just kids who were passing through the hotel. the friendless, lonely boy, lost himself in the fantasy world of batman. the super hero became an obsession. even as an adult ben jr. was still amassing a floor-to-ceiling collection of batman more batman memorabilia, but there was no holding off the real world and change. as the rat pack faded away, so too did thed fontainebleau. by the late 70s, miami beach
narcy disappearance, she and her children get what is under the will. so that is good defense. the jurors decide who is going to get the money. not just narcy but daughter may. there is an incomplete investigation done in this case. i m not claiming that anyone else committed the murder. the defense is that narcy did not commit the murder. the detective says may knew nothing about the will until after the murder. i didn t know my name or the boy s names were in the will. and after a nine week trial, they were found guilty of racketeering and conspiracy in the death of ben novak jr. and mother bernice, acquitted of one charge involving the theft of ben s diamond bracelet. for the crime that conspirators almost got away with, the murder of bernice novk, the conviction had a mandatory life sentence for both. the best part is bernice could finally rest in peace. narcy spoke by telephone to
miami beach. no, we need to go back 50 years or more when caddies with tail fins were pulling into the newest, glitziest hotel on the east coast. the fontainebleau. miami should be a great city. a hotel wheeler dealer ben novack built it and they came. steven gaines wrote about it in his book fool s paradise . it became a destination for the major stars who were appearing at the fontainebleau, and lots ofhe movies were shot there as well. novak was the king. he found a queen in a former w coca-cola model named bernice with her beauty and effortless charm, bernice turned out to be the perfect hostess to greet the celebrities, gangsters the perfect host es to greet the and just plain guests who made the fontainebleau the scene of