plenty of suspects and plenty of motives, anger, jealousy, greed. someone had 10 million reasons to kill. >> we look back and said, my god, i couldn't believe what i saw. >> you're not going to believe it either because in this case, there is a final terrifying twist. >> i see them with a crowbar. hello and welcome to "dateline." ben novack jr. was a successful entrepreneur and the wealthy son of a famous miami businessman. then he was found bound and bludgeoned to death in a new york hotel room. who wanted ben novack dead? in this case there was no shortage of suspects or possible motives, but a mysterious letter would lead detectives in a direction no one expected. here's dennis murphy with "family affair."ne >> if ever there was a little girl lost, it was maya bod. >> from when i was little, i was always in the way. >> she survived a mother/daughter relationship quite unlike any you've ever heard. >> my mother is like trying to hug a cactus. you will eventually get hurt. >> and if the intersection of blood and money intrigues you, pull up a chair and stay awhile because there's plenty of both just ahead in this story. trwh >> it's really an amazing, unusual, frightening story. >> what ended so badly in a ly darkened hotel room with the curtains drawn, has its ha beginnings really in the warm sands of south florida. ♪♪ not the south beach of today with its hot bodies and pulsating dance clubs. that's all a marketing reinvention of a much older 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 citya >> a hotel wheeler dealer named ben novack built it and they came.no steven gaines wrote about it in his book "fool's paradise". >> it became a destination for d the rat pack, frank sinatra. the major stars were appearing at the fontainebleau. and lots of movies were shot there as well. >> novack was the king. and he needed a queen to preside over his aqua-colored palace. he found one in a former coca-cola model named bernice. with her beauty and effortless charm bernice turned out to be the perfect hostess to greet the celebrities, togangsters and ju plain guestsan who made the fontainebleau the scene of its day. king ben and queen bernice lived over the store in a penthouse suite. and then along came their young prince, ben einovack 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 vips. then it was back up the hotel elevator to home. birthday cakes came from room service. >> and 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 disliked by his father's help lost himself in the fantasy world of batman. the superhero became an obsession.su even as an adult, ben jr. was still amassing a floor to be ceiling collection of batman memorabilia. he even bought a batmobile from the old tv show. but there was no holding off the real world and change. justal as the rat pack faded aw, so too did the fontainebleau. by the late '70s miami beach was regarded as a stale place for old people. ben novack sr. lost the hotel to bankruptcy and died not long afterwards.os the son, ben jr., all grown up now, stayed in the hospitality business and made his mark. he created a company run out of his home here that organized re conventions in big hotels. like his father, he was a hard-nosed businessman. and in time, he was grossing $50 million a year. and like his father, he needed someone like his mother to mix h and mingle with the clients.on he found that woman in a recent emigre from ecuador. her name wasro narcy and she haa little girl called may. >> why do you think they became a couple and not just passing in the night? >> my mother's a lot of fun. she definitely partied. >> when ben jr. met her, she was partying for tips as a strippere in a sleazy miami club, supporting herself and her little girl. >> she did pretty well with it, i guess? >> she did very well. my mother is a survivor. she adjusts to pretty much anything. >> narcy left behind her stripper pole to marry ben novack jr. but the little girl felt like so much excess baggage in her mother's relationship. she was dispatched to boarding school at the age of 8. ns >> did you feel you'd been shipped off? >> kind of. >> you had a tough childhood, huh? >> best thing is that it's over. >> ben jr. and her mother liveds in a $2 million ft. lauderdale n estate with a boat out back. his elderly mother bernice lived not far away.mo but may, the stepdaughter, was never going to be a rich man's a trust fund kid. she grew up tough and hard, estranged from her mother, paying her own way with bartending and waitressing jobs. she had two children young and sweated the bills. it was the grandchildren that ultimately thawed some of the ice between mother and daughter. >> she may have been a horrible mother, but she was the best grandmother. she did everything with them. >> and ben jr. warmed to may. the one-time lonely prince belatedly seemed to recognize a kindred spirit in lonely neglected may. >> he saw me as his daughter and i did see him as my father. and he had 2340 children of his own.y >> ben, after his own stunted childhood, finally found in his grandchildren some kids who wanted to play with all his batman stuff. >> he did a lot of the grandfather things with them. a lot of, i think, why we saw so much of each other was because of those two boys. >> when she was in her late 20s, ben jr. asked may to become parr of his very successful convention organizing business. she would work alongside her mother and his mother, bernice. it had taken 20 years, but they were finally becoming a family.i >> you know, when i actually became older and got into the business, he was always there, guided me and showed me how to do things. >> then sadness. in the spring of 2009 bernice, in her late 80s, had apparently slipped and taken a nasty fall getting out of her car. she struggled to the house and died.ou may thought the time had come. for years ben had been asking h her to consider becoming his legally adopted daughter. she thought it would be the perfect father's day gift for ld him. >> i started thinking bernice had just passed. and it would be something nice for him, you know, to be like, okay, you do have a daughter.o because i do feel like i am his daughter to this day. so it never got legally changed. all the paperwork is still on his desk.ll >> 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 a hotel in new york's suburban westchester county. just after 7:30 sunday morning, july 12th, 2009, the last day of the convention, hotel security got the urgent call. something very bad had happened in one of the suites. a 58-year-old man had been found bound and bludgeoned to death in the bedroom.d ben novak jr., the one-time prince of the fontainebleau, had been murdered. ad coming up -- the investigation begins. >> the comings and goings of every room, every guest. >> 450 rooms. >> when "dateline" continues. 50s >> when "dateline" continues o t. when you have a two-inch lift. when you have goodyear duratrac tires. when you have rancho shocks and an integrated dual exhaust. when you have all that, the last thing you'll need... is a road. the chevy silverado trail boss. ready to off-road, right from the factory. these are real people, not actors, who've got their eczema under control. with less eczema, you can show more skin. so roll up those sleeves. and help heal your skin from within with dupixent. dupixent is the first treatment of its kind that continuously treats moderate-to-severe eczema, or atopic dermatitis, even between flare ups. dupixent is a biologic, and not a cream or steroid. many people taking dupixent saw clear or almost clear skin, and, had significantly less itch. don't use if you're allergic to dupixent. serious allergic reactions can occur, including anaphylaxis, which is severe. tell your doctor about new or worsening eye problems, such as eye pain or vision changes, or a parasitic infection. if you take asthma medicines, don't change or stop them without talking to your doctor. so help heal your skin from within, and talk to your eczema specialist about dupixent. if your financial situation has changed, we may be able to help. how do we ensure families facing food insecurity get access to their food? 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>> this was a targeted individual. >> is it also true his eyes were gouged out? >> yes. yes. >> sergeant wilson learned that the victim was ben novack, jr., a man that meant nothing to him. the murdered man's wife and stepdaughter had been escorted to a nearby hotel room so investigators could take their statements. the wife of 20 years, narcy, told sergeant wilson that her husband had been up all night working on convention details and didn't go to bed, she thought, till about 6:30 in the morning. she said she'd then gone downstairs around 7:00 to oversee getting breakfast organized for the convention guests. >> could you verify for instance that the wife was indeed at the breakfast by a security camera? >> yes. we did have our own video confirm what she was saying. >> the stepdaughter, may abad, who managed the company money on these road trips, confirmed her mother's story of coming down to pitch in with breakfast. >> i was thinking, there is a lot of people. there is 2,000 people down here. i'll take any help i can get. >> after the breakfast rush, narcy says she called her husband up in the room, no answer. >> then she comes back up around 7:30 or so and finds him? >> yeah. >> she told the detective she tripped over the body, then bolted from the room shrieking for help. security arrived as did hotel manager jeremy morris. >> our security guard was holding narcy at the end of mr. novack's feet and narcy was continuing to lunge towards the body, howling and screaming at the top of her lungs. >> when narcy told police about the timeline of the morning, the computerized room key card confirmed her recollection. >> her card was used to get in the room at 7:40, but from just after midnight -- >> there had been no activity up to that point. >> no activity opening to go into the door. that right away tells you that well, then the door opened from the inside. >> if narcy had been downstairs helping with breakfast, and no key other than the wife's had opened the door since midnight, who then had admitted the killer or killers? an early on mystery. may meanwhile had been summoned by the hotel manager to her stepfather's suite. >> i asked them, what happened? and they're just like he's gone. you know. and i'm like, what do you mean he's gone? just try -- go do something. >> the hotel guards wouldn't let her in the room. >> one security officer was talking to another one. he said it's a blood bath in there. >> a blood bath that sent her mother into hysterics. >> she's emotional, she's wailing, tears. >> she is throwing herself on the floor. then she said, i think they're after all the convention money. she's like it had to have been a robbery, they know we carry a lot of money, somebody must have been watching us. >> unusually, ben novack's convention business ran on cash, bags of it. the exhibitors would turn over their dollars to the stepdaughter may and her assistants on site. this weekend they'd taken in more than $100,000. now, that money wasn't being kept in a hotel safe behind the front desk. rather, it was stashed in closets, under the beds of the staff members. question, had an insider who knew how they'd gone about their business decided to rip off the company by torturing ben to cough up the cash? >> they had around 110,000 in cash. >> you're in motivation country right now, right? >> we're trying to figure out, what's going on. >> they didn't get anything from him. so of course i'm scared. you know, not just for myself but for the staff. >> and if someone had been roaming the hotel hallways with money and murder on their mind, there were 2,000 potential suspects. a detective's nightmare. >> we decided we were going to download the locks of the entire hotel. >> you're kidding. the comings and goings of every room -- >> 450 rooms. it took him two weeks to do it. >> the hotel was bristling with security cameras, but unfortunately for the investigators none in the hallway outside the murder room. one of the first things the cops did was round up all that cash and get it stored in the hotel safe until the banks opened in the morning. then sergeant wilson posted a guard at the hotel room being shared by the mother and daughter. before that sunday night was over, the two women would have another round of questioning with the detectives. >> they totally grilled me. and you get mad. so of course i was fighting back. >> they were asking you the questions, did you do this? >> correct. you know, one of the cops told me, we have to ask these questions. i'm like, do you have to get like right here and ask the questions? >> allison carpentier was a veteran westchester county detective. she joined the investigation and led some of the questioning. >> may, the daughter, what did you make of her? >> pretty much i got the feeling that she was being honest with me, but you never know. people are deceptive. >> the cops went through narcy's story once again, hoping for some overlooked detail or investigative nugget. >> she is the grieving -- all of a sudden widow. >> exactly. we need that information. she's the last person that saw mr. novack. >> narcy told detectives there was something of value missing, a gold bracelet that spelled out ben's name in diamonds. an expensive rolex watch was still on the bed lying in a pool of blood as well as an unexplained broken stem from a cheap pair of sunglasses. and then there was the matter of her husband's huge batman collection and a rare comic valued at $43,000 he was planning on selling that weekend. >> batman might have been a motivation for murder, his passion in life. >> uh-huh. >> he had a valuable comic and somebody else wanted it. >> correct. >> wanted the value of it. >> correct. >> sunday was over. on monday, the cops would hear about the novacks' tie me up sex games. on monday, when mother and daughter started to go for one another's throats. coming up -- >> as i'm sitting there my suspicions are growing and growing by the minute. >> when "dateline" continues. >> when "dateline" continues when you've got a business, you don't want to worry about slow internet or confusing cybersecurity. so get comcast business internet with fast, reliable speeds, and add the advanced security of comcast business securityedge. it combines the speed you need with threat protection. plus there's 24/7 support. it's internet and advanced security - made simple. so bounce forward - with comcast business. get started with a powerful internet and voice solution for just $64.90 a month. and ask how to add comcast business securityedge. call today. ♪♪ who had bound, gagged and bludgeoned to death ben novack, jr.? >> to see it, it was overwhelming. i mean, to see it and just thinking, oh, my god. >> in this case, the detective's art of victimology would play a big role. finding out who the murdered person was as well as the people in his circle of friends and families, his enemies. >> this is the address here. >> detective alison carpentier along with detective terry wilson would eventually piece together an unflattering family portrait. >> in the beginning we didn't know if an affair, was this a domestic, was this just a random act? >> they cobbled together the story of ben jr., the wealthy son of a famous miami beach man with his eccentric batman collection. the wife from modest beginnings. the stepdaughter welcomed late to the family circle. >> we were still learning the dynamics of the family, how may was a stepchild. it took a long time for us to learn more about the family. >> the novacks came off like candidates maybe for the cast of a bad reality show, but good old-fashioned robbery still looked like motive number one in the homicide. >> ben novack jr. was a hard-charging businessman. a lot of guys didn't like his style. >> that's correct. >> he could have cultivated enemies along the line. >> there were a lot of people that didn't like him. >> on the monday after the sunday morning murder, police took narcy and her daughter to the morgue to identify ben jr.'s body. was that when may started to get the creeps about what ha happened? watching her stone-faced mother watch. >> i'm throwing up in a garbage can. detectives are like right there and everything else. and we all turn around and she is just staring at him. there was no emotion at all from her. >> that monday, late into the night, narcy and her daughter were interrogated by the detectives. >> i should have been there. and i wish i got killed with him. >> detective carpentier broached the sensitive subject of the couple's sex life. >> i know this is hard. you want to speak to me alone? >> yeah. >> okay. >> with the male detective out of the room detective carpentier managed to win narcy's trust. narcy confided that ben was into bondage. >> and when he let you tie him up, does he like his hands behind his back or in front? >> he likes his hands at the back because -- >> now here he'd been tied up. >> right. >> in the homicide. did you think, well, is this a sex game gone wrong? >> we brought it up to her and i did confront her with that during the interview. >> ben is found in a way that he enjoyed sexually -- >> no. no, no. when i left ben -- >> uh-huh. >> -- he was not tied up. >> i just found it odd that the way he finds pleasurable he is killed in the same way. >> because she was the spouse, the questions for narcy got sharper as the night wore on. was she in on the murder? >> if i'm being asked if i let anybody in, no i don't let them in. >> all the while may had been outside eavesdropping on her mother's interrogation, getting chills. >> may said to me that somebody told her it was a blood bath. i don't remember anything blood. blood is red. >> just listening to her talk to detectives, nothing was making sense. >> when she heard her mother describe tripping over the body and reaching down to touch ben, alarms went off. she had seen her mother shortly after that. >> i'm looking at her and there's no blood on her. >> in a scene that was described to you as a blood bath. >> as a blood bath, correct. and i'm looking at her from head to toe, there is -- >> you don't see any evidence. >> i don't see any evidence on you. >> what are you thinking? what's going on? >> my suspicions are growing and growing by the minute and then i'm thinking that i am this horrible human being for even thinking that my mother could do anything like this. >> for 14 relentless hours, homicide detectives tried to pin back narcy novack's ears grilling her as though she'd masterminded her husband's murder. >> did you have anything to do with your husband's death? >> no. >> she never ate anything. she never drank anything. and she never went to the bathroom. the detectives would come in, question her, she would just keep flowing. nothing fazed her. >> question, had ben hired a kinky escort girl to tie him up? narcy scoffed at the idea and told the detectives to tone it down. >> i want you have compassion, please. have mercy. if there is an electrical chair and i'm a suspect, give it to me right now. put me out of my misery. i want to die. >> shortly after 9:00 p.m., detective carpentier brought up the idea of a lie detector test. >> i take a hundred lie detectors. i'll do whatever you want me to do. >> at this point i'm hoping i am completely wrong. if she takes this polygraph test and she passes then i'm just going crazy in my own head. there's no way she did this. >> may also agreed that night to be polygraphed. but then narcy got cold feet about taking hers. >> and the daughter is saying to her daughter, what is wrong with you? why don't you just take the lie detector test? what's the problem? >> the mother finally agreed to the polygraph. may would pass her test but -- >> how did the lie detector test go for narcy? >> it didn't go well. >> she flunked it all the way through? >> yes. >> when the cops were finally done with the two of them for the night, may confronted her mother. >> i asked her to her face -- >> what, did you have something to do with this? >> i did. i got in her face and they had pictures of like the crime scene and stuff and i smacked them in her face. >> you think your mother has killed ben jr.? >> i think she definitely had something to do with it. you know, i didn't think she did it herself personally. >> the cops had only started to peel back the many layers of the novack family story. there was still so much about these people they didn't know. coming up -- >> i see my mother coming at me with a crowbar. >> when "dateline" continues. flea and tick protection, and it's easy to see why. it protects for a full 30 days, prevents the infection that causes lyme disease... ...and is safe to start protecting puppies as early as 8 weeks. but your vet doesn't just prescribe it to her patients... ...she also trusts nexgard to protect her own dog. and she knows that its beef-flavored deliciousness makes it #1 with dogs. ask your vet about nexgard, and why it's #1 with pretty much... everyone. finally moved in. it's a great old house. good bones, wraparound porch. the pipes are... making strange noises. ♪bagpipes♪ ♪bagpipes♪ ♪bagpipes♪ even the plumbers couldn't help us. nope. at least geico makes bundling our home and car insurance easy. which saves us a ton. for bundling made easy, go to geico.com. hello. i'm dara brown. here's what's happening. saturday white house officials confirmed that president biden visited his close friend former kansas senator bob dole. dole recently announced he will soon be undergoing treatment for stage 4 lung cancer. and next week former president donald trump is set to make his first public appearance since leaving office. trump will speak at the conservative political action conference in orlando, florida. the full line-up of the annual gathering of conservative speakers has not yet been announced. now back to "dateline." welcome back to "dateline." i'm craig melvin. was narcy novack involved in the grisly murder of her wealthy husband ben? the new widow told detectives ben enjoyed it when she tied him up, similar to the way he'd been found. she also failed a lie detector test. even so, investigators had no evidence linking her to the crime. but there was one person who was convinced of narcy's guilt. her own daughter. may abad. and she was about to put herself at risk to prove it. here again is dennis murphy with "family affair." >> the cops were spooling through hours of hotel security cam footage. looking for what they weren't exactly sure. the footwork team of a homicide investigation was under way. >> we're leaving the doors open as far as we're concerned. everything is on the table until the investigation either stalls or, you know, someone's arrested. >> the body of ben novack jr. was with the medical examiner. mother and daughter attached now by blood only returned to florida separately. may had her own agenda, telling the cops she would help them any way she could. she was collecting her things from her parents' house when she stopped in the guest cottage where ben had his home office. she was snooping through his files for the detectives, when she turned to see her mother upon her like a fury. >> i see my mother coming at me with a crowbar. very quickly she swung it and i picked my arm up and she got this whole end on me with the crowbar. >> it was literally the final blow for may. >> she was calling me a traitor. >> she knew that you were giving evidence against her. >> uh-huh. >> could you have backed off at that point? could you have been a good little daughter and fallen in line? >> no. it's not in me. i knew what she had done was wrong, even though she was my mother, i knew she was wrong. >> the battleground between mother and daughter then moved from the novack house to the courthouse. a take no prisoners fight over the will. may was giving the cops her theory. her mother had murdered her stepfather for the inheritance. narcy as the beneficiary stood to get an estate estimated at $10 million, lock stock and batmobile. >> at this point my mother was to get everything and i was like, she's going to get away with this. >> may filed a civil lawsuit against her mother, arguing the probate court shouldn't award narcy ben's money because she had him killed. the judge ended up freezing ben's assets while the court looked into the daughter's allegation. so the big money was on ice, but may said her mother had already by then illicitly cleaned out safe deposit boxes kept by ben and his mother. >> was she on the list of people that had the key to get in the box? >> no, she was not. >> she told them a story. >> she did. >> my husband is out in the car waiting? >> mm-hmm. >> and he'd been dead for a week at that point. >> yeah. >> narcy was seen leaving the bank with a duffle bag. with police scrutinizing her every move and may hounding her, narcy hired new york attorney howard tanner. he says narcy did have authority to go into those safe deposit boxes. he also disputed may's contention that narcy was involved in her husband's death. >> she had absolutely nothing to do with it. and she -- when she discovers ben novack she acted consistently with how anyone else would act in that situation. >> and the defense attorney urged anyone looking at this case to follow the money in ben's murder. down there in the fine print of the will, it shows that may, the daughter, may have had her own reasons for wanting ben dead and her mother accused. >> may abad and her children were the next in line. >> if somehow narcy was removed from the line of inheritance, the daughter, may abad, would get $10 million through her children. >> that's correct. >> with narcy out of the picture, may would get a flat $150,000 and her two boys the rest of the $10 million estate. narcy began offering her own theory of the crime -- may did it. >> when she realized the finger was being pointed on her, she accused me. >> of arranging to kill ben. >> correct. >> for the money. >> uh-huh. >> the mother and daughter finger-pointing accusations continued without ceasefire, even as they interred ben in his family mausoleum. narcy hidden beneath sunglasses and a scarf and hat ignored the daughter. the mother was flanked by armed bodyguards. the daughter brought her sons. >> one of my mother's bodyguards flashed his guns at my kids. >> i'm packing in case there's any doubt? one of those kinds of gestures? >> yeah. i saw the extent of everything when she threatened her own grandkids. and i always said she would never do anything to her grandkids. she loves these kids. >> there was mother/daughter war. bad blood for sure, but the detectives were about to learn there was another close relative of interest in this toxic family portrait. and more crimes to investigate, perhaps even another murder. coming up -- -- a clue that could turn the case upside down. >> this is shocking and it could be a big break. >> when "dateline" continues. we're carvana, the company who invented car vending machines and buying a car 100% online. now we've created a brand-new way for you to sell your car. whether it's a year old or a few years old. we wanna buy your car. so go to carvana and enter your license plate answer a few questions. and our techno wizardry calculates your car's value and gives you a real offer in seconds. when you're ready, we'll come to you, pay you on the spot and pick up your car, that's it. so ditch the old way of selling your car, and say hello to the new way at carvana. you could take your ulcerative colitis treatment in a different direction. talk to your doctor about xeljanz, a pill, not an injection or infusion, for adults with moderate to severe ulcerative colitis when a certain medicine did not help enough. xeljanz is the first and only fda-approved pill for moderate to severe uc. it can reduce symptoms in as early as two weeks, improve the appearance of the intestinal lining, and provide lasting steroid-free remission. xeljanz can lower your ability to fight infections. before and during treatment, your doctor should check for infections, like tb and do blood tests. tell your doctor if you've had hepatitis b or c, have flu-like symptoms, or are prone to infections. serious, sometimes fatal infections, cancers including lymphoma, and blood clots have happened. taking a higher than recommended dose of xeljanz for ra may increase risk of death. tears in the stomach or intestines and serious allergic reactions have happened. you could take your uc treatment in a different direction. ask your gastroenterologist about xeljanz. is skincare from around the world better than olay? 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then seemingly out of nowhere an anonymous letter fluttered onto the desk of a detective hundreds of miles away from the crime scene. miami springs, florida, investigators, gary personally knew nothing of the ben novack case and his department wasn't involved. >> there's people obviously that heard the name and knew about him, the grooint bleu and all. i wasn't one of them. i didn't know anything about it until i talked to detective wilson in new york. >> the letter, written in spanish, was nothing less than a blueprint to the murder. naming names, citing motivations. >> this is shocking and it could be a big break. >> sergeant wilson up in westchester couldn't wait to see it. >> whoever wrote this letter obviously had information, inside information. >> looking back, that letter had the whole story. the greed, the inheritance, the obstacles in the way of the inheritance. >> the facts in that letter were on the money. >> here is the gist of the letter. it claimed narcy's brother, a man named christianity bam ve had hired thugs to kill ben novak jr. sergeant wilson and his team paid an unannounced visit to the brother at his place in philadelphia. >> we apparently had caught him off guard and he told us to sit down and he would be more than happy to answer any questions we had. as we sit down, we sit at this kitchen table and on the kitchen table is littered with papers. >> wilson and another detective spied something atop the heap. zblaichltz western union receipts. this is all out in the open. this is too good to be true. like pinch me. and we're holding a conversation with him trying to not focus on the table because we don't want to draw attention to it. >> when narcy's brother briefly left the room, sergeant wilson's partner furiously copied down, names, dates and receipt numbers. why would narcy's brother, a bus driver just scraping by, be wiring loads of money to one particular person in miami? >> one of the names on the receipts is garcia, right? >> alejandro garcia. >> but the surname garcia in miami is like murphy in boston. >> yes, it is. >> they began running it all down. and security cameras picked up narcy's brother wiring the money from philly. but at the receiving end np mime yipn't. . . . many. n't cameras were on the fritz. no luck in getting pictures of this garcia guy picking up the money. so they moved on to the brother's cell phone records and found frequent calls to a woman in miami. turns out the phone belonged to garcia's ex-girlfriend and he had been using it. they talked to her. >> where the big break came was she said he had a defective eye. >> a garcia with a bad eye. the data base search was narrowed. >> now we have some sort of physical description to see if this individual was arrested and lo and behold he was. >> so garcia with a bum eye comes gooichts. -7 >> and that's him. >> and we get a photo. >> now the detectives were on a roll. with alejandro's garcia mug shot before them, they rerack the security tapes before the day of the murder. >> this is the main entrance. here they come. >> bingo. there was garcia in the dark shirt with somebody else. his ex-girlfriend said he always wore sun glasses to protect his bad eye but he wasn't wearing them on that day. >> you see the two of them walking very fast out. alejandro with the bag. alejandro doesn't have his glasses on anymore. >> with the broken frames which is are now -- >> well, apparently as the victim reacts to assault, he hits alejandro in the face, breaking the glasses. the glasses fall on to the bed. >> they rewound the tapes even further back to the first day of the convention and there they were again. garcia, in sunglasses and a yellow shirt and the other guy casing the hotel. in one chilling scene, they check out their future victim, ben novack jr. in the lobby. >> and in less than 48 hours, they're going to murder this guy. >> in less than 48 hours they're going to murder this guy. >> the second man is id'ed as joe gonzalez of miami. wilson and his team had two targets and started with the apparent leader, garcia. >> we started to hunt him down. >> the miami hunt didn't take long. garcia was picked up on an outstanding warrant. the new york cops braced him. garcia denied ever being in new york. >> we saw video in the hotel. security camera. >> detectives had some surprises to smoke out their one-eyed suspect. they showed him stills from the security cam footage. garcia and his suspected accomplice in the hotel. the capper was a tape recording of a phone call between the detective and narcy's brother cristobal. in the call, narcy's brother sounding all cooperative says he wants to help the cops and gives them the name alejandro garcia as a person good for the murder. garcia listens silently as the brother threw him under the bus. 12k3w4r50i6r7b8g9sds >> he told me who did the murder. he told me you, you did it. >> he denied being the hit man in that interrogation, but the message was clear. get on board now, confess, or take the fall. >> he will be booked on charges of murder. >> meanwhile, the evidence against narcy's brother was piling up. cell phone tower records showing him near the hotel on the morning. evidence he'd provided a getaway car and driver. >> the street boss was handling everything going away was cristobal beliz. >> and who was the boss of bosses? with a $10 million motive, there was only one answer for the cops. narcy novack had ordered the hit on her husband. >> obviously he reported to narcy or worked at the direction. >> what started as a small suburban village investigation was now a multi-state conspiracy case. the decision was made to let federal prosecutors take the complex conspiracy to trial. 12k3w4r5i67b8g9d hint man 12k3wr5r7s gonzalez dwriefrmd. testify against narcy and her brother or go away to prison for what would likely be life sentences. the two confessed to being the hit men in a murder for hire scheme. then garcia shocked the prosecutors. there was something else. a second murder they didn't know about. and if they didn't act fast he said a third was on the way. coming up -- just who was in the cross-hairs? >> there was a hit out on me. [ traffic passing by ] sorry, bud. thanks. switch to progressive and you can save hundreds. you know, like the sign says. alright, back to work. my husband and i have never eaten healthier. shingles doesn't care. i logged 10,000 steps today. shingles doesn't care. i get as much fresh air as possible. good for you, but shingles doesn't care. because 1 in 3 people will get shingles, you need protection. but no matter how healthy you feel your immune system declines as you age, increasing your risk for getting shingles. so what can protect you? shingrix protects. for the first time ever, you can protect yourself from shingles with a vaccine proven to be over 90% effective. shingrix is a vaccine used to prevent shingles in adults 50 years and older. shingrix does not protect everyone and is not for those with severe allergic reactions to its ingredients or to a previous dose. the most common side effects are pain, redness, and swelling at the injection site, muscle pain, tiredness, headache, shivering, fever, and upset stomach. talk to your pharmacist or doctor about protecting yourself with shingrix. shingles doesn't care. but you should. about protecting yourself with shingrix. i'm a verizon engineer. we built our 5g nationwide so millions of people could do what they love in verizon 5g quality. and in parts of many cities, we have ultra wideband, the fastest 5g in the world. this is 5g built right. only from verizon. ♪♪ the two hit men had confessed, admitting to killing ben novak jr. they claimed ben's wife narcy and her brother paid them to do it, but still no charges had been filed as police continued to investigate. then the hit man, alejandro garcia dropped the bombshell. he claimed he also killed someone else on orders from narcy and her brother, almost a year earlier. and he had gotten away with it. the murder for hire, none other than ben novack's 87-year-old mother, bernice. the one-time queen of the fontane bleu died three months before ben in what florida cops and the medical examiner ruled was an accidental death. a slip and fall getting out of her car. >> how does he kill her? >> he had a monkey wrench and 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. but why kill ben's 87-year-old mother? because in ben's will in place at the time, if he died first, his mother, not his wife narcy would be the primary beneficiary. but with bernice dead, there was nothing standing in narcy's way. >> had they not tried to kill ben and succeeded in killing ben, they probably never would have been caught. >> and there was more. when detectives arrested garcia, they learned that still a third murder would be in the works. someone else provided for in the will. narcy's daughter, may. >> she was in serious peril. >> i always believed she was, i couldn't prove it to anybody. when we sat down with garcia and learned that there was a hit out on may, that became concerning. >> a battered photo of may was found in garcia, the confessed hit man's wallet. he was told she would be the next job. >> well, may freaked. she needed to move apartments asap. and told federal prosecutors she didn't have the money. the feds told her they would get her the money but the paperwork would take time. detective allison carpentier didn't think there was time. >> and here came a moment of big moral dilemma, ethical dilemma for you as a person and an officer. >> yes. it was hard. >> what did you decide to do? >> i decided to give her the money and tell her to move. >> your money from your bank account. >> yes. >> the westchester detective loaned may $5,000 of her own money. may promised to pay her back. when prosecutors learned of it, they removed detective carpentier from the case. the defense, they admonished her, would call it buying witness testimony. >> i said i can't sleep at night knowing that if i wake up tomorrow morning something happens to may and her children and i did nothing. >> i am very grateful to her because if i didn't move when i did i wouldn't be here today. >> almost a year after ben's murder, narcy was indicted and walked before the cameras of "america's most wanted." she and her brother cristobal were charged with racketeering and conspiracy for two murders, witness tampering and a host of other charges. >> the plot that led to the death of ben novack was a family affair. >> when the trial got under way in federal court, garcia, the hit man, testified in ice cold detail how he killed ben novack jr. >> so how did they get into the room? >> narcy opened the door and let them in. >> prosecutors argued that morning there was a small window of opportunity for narcy to let the hit men in and direct the assault on her sleeping husband. >> the victim is in bed. they get right in position. they signal. one, two, three and then boom. then the assault starts. >> they're banging him in the head. >> they hit him all over the head. they hit him in the ribs. i mean, brutally. >> the two hit men use small hand weights to pummel ben. narcy looked on. >> then there is a point in time where i guess he's making sounds, moans, and she tosses a pillow in to keep him quiet. >> then they say that narcy tells them to cut out his eyes? >> she did. >> at midtrial the case against narcy's brother was solid. a long trail of wire transfers, credit card receipts and cell phone records connected him to the hit man. but for narcy, it was primarily the hit man's word against hers until the jury heard about narcy's secret cell phone. on the morning of the murder, garcia testified that narcy called her brother while they waited at a gas station near the hotel. >> narcy makes a call from that phone at 6:39 in the morning to say come on in. >> the coast is clear. >> coast is clear. that becomes huge because it's her calling cristobal to say bring the killers in. >> that puts her right at the top of the plot, the conspiracy. >> yes. >> and there's yet another twist here. would you be surprised to learn that there was another woman in the story, a person named rebekah bliss. bliss, a south florida tattoo artist and sometime porn actress, was having an affair with ben jr. he put her up in a nice waterfront apartment and told bliss he was going to leave his wife for her. narcy, the story goes, learned of the affair and called bliss, saying if i can't have him no one will. six months later he was dead and without eyes to ever look at another woman. >> this case was about money and it was about narcy not wanting to be replaced. >> when defense attorney howard tanner put on his case, he zeroed in on the hit men's credibility and their motivation in testifying. he also attacked their allegation that narcy was in the room during the murder. >> they themselves stated they would do anything to help themselves. in my book, they would have been willing to lie. >> is narcy in the room? >> absolutely not. >> how about the disturbing direction she allegedly gives them, gouge his eyes outs? >> it just didn't happen. >> the defense also suggested that narcy's daughter may could have somehow been involved in the murder so she and her sons could inherit ben's estate. >> may abad had narcy novack in her way. if narcy novak disappears, she takes and her children take under the will. those are facts. >> so that's the defense? jurors consider who is going to get this money here and it's not just narcy novack, it's the daughter here, may. >> there was an incomplete investigation done in this case. i'm not claiming that anyone else committed this murder. the defense here is that narcy novack did not commit this murder. >> detectives concluded that may knew nothing about ben's will until well after the murder. >> i didn't even know that my name or the boys' names were in this will. >> after a nine-week trial narcy and her brother were found guilty of racketeering and conspiracy in the death of ben novack jr. and his mother, bernice. they were acquitted of only one charge, involving the theft of ben's diamond bracelet. for the crime the conspirators almost got away with, the murder of bernice novack, the conviction carried a mandatory life sentence for both. >> the best part was that bernice could finally rest in peace. >> after the verdict, narcy spoke by telephone with "dateline" from prison. she said she would never done anything to harm her husband ben and was innocent of all the charges. sergeant terry wilson and his team of detectives, the prosecutors won their case with some big assists from may abad. now her mother is gone and will spend the rest of her life in prison. >> she didn't see what she had in front of her. she had her daughter. she had two grandkids that totally loved her. and now she has nothing. >> and greed and some amount of jealousy presumably is driving this. >> absolutely. no matter what, i love my mother. she was my mother. she had grandkids that adored her, that would have done anything for her. and they did. and she just threw it all away. threw it all away for money. >> if you go to miami beach, the fontainebleau is still there. all spruced up with a new lease on life. and may has a fresh new outlook on the rest of her life, too. >> come here, buddy. >> in 2011 may welcomed a new little guy in her life. a son. she named him ben after the lost prince. the namesake he never got to meet. >> that's all for this edition of "dateline." i'm craig melvin. thank you for watching. i'm craig melvin. >> and i'm natalie morales. >> and this is "dateline." >> it's shocking. you just kind of go into crisis mode. i don't think they knew exactly what had happened other than that he was covered in blood. she was just broken and lost. there is a murderer out there. and it's terrifying. >> it was supposed to be an anniversary celebration. 32 years together. >> they were in love, even after all those years. they were very happy together. >> suddenl