[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- In certain places in southern florida,
Your name means everything.
- And that's the way miami beach was.
- And one name in particular carries a lot of weight
Down here--
The novacks.
- Bernice novack was a beautiful woman
And owner of the fontainebleau hotel.
It was a world renowned hotel.
- She said, I have diamond earrings
That frank sinatra gave me.
- She was a doting mother to benji,
And he was the only son,
The prince of the fontainebleau.
He wanted to be better and bigger
Than anybody else in this country.
- So just imagine the talk
When tragedy befalls this famous family.
- She was laying on the floor, covered in blood.
They had ruled it an accidental death.
- Ben was not convinced that that was the case.
He said to me, if she fell, she fell all over this house.
There's blood everywhere.
- Nobody deserves to die like that.
- And that's just the beginning
Of this sordid tale
About the collapse of a southern dynasty...
- I got a call telling me that he was murdered up in new york.
- That pulls two yankee detectives from new york
Into a murder investigation,
The likes of which they have never seen before.
- Something was very suspicious.
- Who could want to hurt this family this much?
["just another ghost"]
♪ ♪
- ♪ oh, child ♪
♪ come home to the gallows pole ♪
- Keeping up appearances is everything in the south,
Especially in a place where high society
Meets sinful decadence.
- Miami beach is a playground for the rich and famous,
The wealthy.
- It's always been a tourist attraction,
Clubs and restaurants.
- But sometimes the shinier the surface,
The more sinister the secrets that lie beneath.
- The avarice, the glamor, very shallow.
No substance.
And it has an allure, and it's dangerous.
♪ ♪
- And no one knows that better than the novack family.
- They built the fontainebleau hotel in 1953, 1954.
And the fontainebleau was the place to go.
It was a world renowned hotel.
- A lot of movie stars stayed there,
And it was known as a very luxurious hotel.
- Eventually, the novacks sold the fontainebleau,
But they will always be associated with the hotspot.
Now 53-year-old benji novack has parlayed his pedigree
Into his own successful business.
- He took all his knowledge of what he had learned
And seen in the hotel industry,
And he had started convention concepts.
They hosted conventions nationally and in the islands.
And it grew into
A multi-million dollar endeavor.
Everything about ben was
Go big or go home.
- But ben's not just looking out for himself.
He has a family to take care of.
His loving wife, narcy, of over 20 years,
And his grown stepdaughter, may,
Who he all but raised as his own.
- They came as a package.
It was ben, narcy, and may.
- Narcy and may are right by his side
When his mother, bernice, dies unexpectedly
From what was determined to be
A slip-and-fall accident in her home.
- There was no doubt in my mind,
With the loss of his mother,
That he would be forever changed.
He said, I know there's something wrong here.
My mother didn't just fall,
But it was ruled accidental.
- Benji struggles to accept the circumstances
Surrounding his mama's death,
But he has limited time to grieve.
He is putting together one of the biggest conventions
Of his career in new york.
But he finds the time to make a phone call
To an acquaintance who is a private investigator.
- When he called me, his voice was very stressed,
And ben wanted me to get involved
In investigating his mom, bernice's, death.
So I said, well, ben, I'll get involved.
And he said, all right, well, I have a project
Coming up in new york.
He had to set up a convention.
- Benji has to be on site for the convention,
So he and pat make a plan to connect when he returns.
Shortly after, benji, narcy, and may
Pack their bags and head north,
All the way up into yankee territory.
But this show isn't going to go as planned.
[phone ringing]
- When I got the call in the morning
From the rye brook police patrol officer on the scene
At the hotel, I couldn't believe it,
What they were relaying to me.
The wife, she found her husband
On the floor, beaten to death.
♪ ♪
When I got to the scene, the victim was on the floor,
On his stomach.
His legs are taped.
His arms are behind him and taped.
He was in a gray pair of underwear.
And then he was taped around the mouth.
A lot of blood all over the bed and on the floor.
You could see his eyes were all deformed.
His eyeballs were cut out.
It was just a really horrific scene.
The victim's wife was in the room.
She said the victim was ben novack.
♪ ♪
- Narcy has been joined by her daughter may,
And they all relocate away from the crime scene.
- May was distraught.
Narcy was extremely calm. She never cried.
She was just in shock, I believe,
When we first interviewed her.
The hotel had given us an empty room to use
For some of our interviews.
- May waits outside while detectives talk to her mother.
- Narcy tells us that ben received a phone call
A little after 6:30 in the morning
From one of the hotel staff
Saying they were having a problem with breakfast.
The staff couldn't keep up with the washing
Of all the utensils for the convention.
And narcy says to him,
I'll go down, and I'll handle it.
She says she kisses her husband
And says she loves him,
And she goes downstairs to talk with the hotel staff.
She came back up approximately at 7:30 in the morning.
Not long.
She calls out to him and doesn't have a response.
She walks into the bedroom and found her husband.
♪ ♪
- She ran right out the door into the hallway
And started banging on doors, screaming her lungs out.
♪ ♪
- Narcy offers to pay for all our overtime,
Just to please solve this.
She describes a loving relationship with her husband
And that he was the love of her life.
And she doesn't know what she's gonna do without him.
- Despite narcy appearing to be in a state of shock,
Detectives have to ask if she has any idea
Who could have done this to benji.
- She said he was like a real hard-nosed businessman,
And everything was about the business.
- He commanded respect, and he angered quickly.
But there was really no business associates
That she was pointing fingers at.
- With no real leads to follow,
Detectives decide it's time
To give benji's grieving widow a break.
- So the next person that I wanted to talk to is may abad.
- Detectives interview may separately
While narcy waits in another room.
- May cried when we first interviewed her.
- She said her and ben got along very well.
They were actually very close.
He was grooming her to take over the business
Because he trusted her, and she was very loyal to him.
And she was a hard worker.
And she knew how to run the business.
I asked her where was she the night before.
Did she see ben the night before?
And she told us everything.
Very forthcoming.
- May swears she didn't go anywhere near
Benji's room that morning.
- May was, right away, I want you to focus
Your attention on where it needs to be.
And if you need to clear me, then you need to do that.
- Detectives have what they need
From narcy and may for now, so they ask the two women
To hold tight while they head back to the crime scene.
May makes a phone call to deliver the horrible news.
- I got a call from may abad,
And may told me that they had found ben dead.
It hit me like a sledgehammer.
Benji and I, I would consider to be best friends.
I was best man at his wedding.
There weren't too many other people
That spent as much time together as we did.
- Detectives wilson and carpentier
Have their work cut out for them,
As they join the csi team
To analyze the crime scene further.
- You could tell that the attack of ben novack
Started while he was on the bed
And then he was pushed down to the ground somehow.
Ben was a substantial sized man.
And we're thinking in order for them
To duct tape his hands, duct tape his mouth
And his feet, we're thinking maybe
It's more than one person in this room at the time.
- There was a rolex watch there that wasn't taken.
There was a cartier watch that wasn't taken.
To think that it was just a regular robbery
Is sort of absurd.
The brutality of the whole thing,
And then to not take anything.
We are going through that whole suite
Dusting, fingerprinting, dna swabbing, photographing.
We were looking for something that he was assaulted with,
But we couldn't find anything.
- With a crime this violent,
It's hard to imagine no one heard anything.
And yet a canvass of the floor proves no one did.
Detectives returned to the room
To examine how the killer got in.
- There was no signs of forced entry into the suite at all.
- You're looking for maybe the key area
Was tampered with in some way.
Is there anything to show that the lock didn't close properly?
We checked that. The lock was closed properly,
And the door wasn't easily opened.
We could find nothing to say that
Anybody entered that room by force.
- Your spidey senses go up because, well,
How did somebody get in the room to assault him?
- It was a hotel room, so you had to swipe in
Or the door to be left open. [lock beeps]
- I happen to have a lot of knowledge of that hotel
Because I've done so many cases there.
You can get information from the door locks.
That would confirm who entered the room.
♪ ♪
- Coming up...
- The biggest thing we had gotten back
Was the information from the door locks.
That was huge.
- She is the only one that swipes into the room.
♪ ♪
- And we're like, we can't believe this.
- ♪ come home to the gallows pole ♪
- ♪ judgment day shall come ♪
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- When hotel heir and convention king
Benji novack has been found brutally murdered,
Detectives want to know
Who swiped into his hotel room that morning.
- My biggest thing was,
I wanted those locks interrogated.
The guy comes with this machine,
And he downloads all the information
That's on each lock.
And you can find out who entered the room
At what time, what dates, so on and so forth.
That was huge.
The lock says the key was used to go in the main doors
At about 7:30,
And that's when ben was discovered
In the condition he was in.
So there was no other entries,
No other keys used to get into the room.
- The only one that swipes into the room
Is narcy novack,
The key that was assigned to narcy novack.
- Right then and there,
We started to focus our attention towards narcy.
We kept everything open,
But there's no way that somebody
Could get into the suite
Without being let in or using the card.
- Did ben open the door?
But if he opened the door, he was found in his underwear.
So he would have had to open the door
And then go back and lay in his bed.
- Detectives now want to see if there's any truth
To the story narcy told them about that morning.
So they asked the hotel
If they have any surveillance video.
- So, unfortunately, the hotel had very limited video,
Very few cameras, maybe 10 cameras in the whole hotel.
- Detectives determine there are no cameras on the floor
Where benji and narcy had been staying,
But there is one in the lobby on the way to the room
Where breakfast is being served.
- So then we checked the video downstairs
To its recording and the date and the time,
And it correlated with what narcy told us.
- Narcy's timeline checks out.
But as she and may have retired to new hotel rooms
After a long day, detectives make a plan
To bring them to the station in the morning
For more questioning.
But there's no rest for detectives.
- We never sleep the first couple days of a homicide.
So you go all night long.
Nobody really likes to go home
While there's still questions out there.
♪ ♪
- Detectives are chomping at the bit
To get to the bottom of the mystery of how killers
Gained access to benji's hotel room.
Once they get narcy and may down to the station
The next morning, they question them separately
And start by asking narcy to tell them her story again,
Listening for any inconsistencies.
- She said that she walks in and goes in to wake him up,
And she called out to him.
And then she turns the light on
Because he had the blinds pulled,
So it was pretty dark in the room.
And she tripped on the body.
So now she's changing her story from the beginning,
That when she found the body,
She ran right out into the hallway.
- Even more, this slight variation
Doesn't track with what detectives
Observed at the crime scene the day before.
- Narcy was very well-dressed for that day.
She was dressed up.
From what I remember, she had no blood on her.
- We had taken her clothing as part of evidence,
Because she did enter the scene before we did,
Just to make sure we didn't miss anything.
- There was blood all over the place,
But yet she had no blood on her shoes, on anything.
And that starts leading you to a point where
You start to have doubts.
It just didn't make sense.
- And so we had asked narcy
If she would submit to a lie detector test.
If she's innocent and we can focus
Our attention somewhere else,
Let's just move that train along and do it.
- Narcy readily agrees, and detectives escort her
To the polygraph room across the hall.
- As she gets into the room,
Narcy starts to make every excuse
Why she can't take the test.
She wasn't feeling good.
Maybe she's tired.
Maybe tonight's not a good day.
I think I should come back tomorrow.
- Detectives in the north, just like in the south,
Share a glance when someone so close to the victim
Resists taking a poly.
May does more than that.
- May starts flipping out on her.
She's like, why won't you take a polygraph?
You have nothing to do with this.
Why won't you take one?
And then narcy finally agreed to do it.
- So now we're thinking, this is gonna take
Our investigation into a whole nother level.
♪ ♪
- ♪ come home to the gallows pole ♪
- ♪ judgment day shall come ♪
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- Narcy novack is in the hot seat,
Getting ready to answer questions
About her husband's murder,
And she's as nervous as all get-out.
- The polygrapher went easy on narcy.
They asked her a couple of easy questions,
And she got very agitated.
- We had issued the polygraph test to her five times.
And all five times, she failed.
May finds out, and may got really mad.
She stormed in the room and said,
If you did this, ma, how could you do this?
And she actually went after narcy.
♪ ♪
- It got so bad, to the point--
We had to separate them, physically.
♪ ♪
- Detectives observing the mother-daughter dynamic
Set their thinking about may.
- At that point, my impression was that
May abad was not involved
In what happened to ben novack.
She was just too forthcoming.
There would be no reason for her to do something to him.
- It also strengthens their suspicions of narcy.
- We didn't have enough to arrest her.
You can't be arrested for failing a polygraph test.
It's not admissible in court.
She says I'll be back tomorrow at 11:00 in the morning,
But instead, she goes right to the airport
And books herself a trip back to florida.
♪ ♪
We all look around the room, and they say,
Ok, what's the next flight out of jfk for florida?
- There are no arrests in this case,
But we do know that 53-year-old ben novack, jr.,
Died from blunt force trauma.
- Word of benji's murder
Has been circulating throughout the south.
So these new york detectives are met with
A heavy dose of southern hospitality
When they arrive, especially from
The florida department of law enforcement.
- They were definitely partners in this whole investigation.
They had cars for us.
They assigned investigators to each one of us.
- After all, benji novack is a local celebrity.
So no one's gonna rest
Until they know who killed him.
And that goes for benji's friends too.
- We started to get calls
From some of ben's police officer friends.
- When I learned ben had been murdered,
It's almost like one of those slow motion pictures
Where you see frame by frame, and as it speeds up,
You make those connections and go,
It's only three months after his mother's death.
In my mind, there was a relationship
Between the mother's death and ben's death.
And so I felt it was required of me
To notify the investigators of everything
That I know about benji novack.
♪ ♪
- To new york detectives, a mother and son
Unexpectedly dying only three months apart
Sounds suspicious, indeed.
- So we asked to go over bernice novack's case folder.
We felt maybe we'll find something in bernice's death
That leads us to the person that kills ben.
- While chasing down the tip from charlie,
Detectives interview bernice's friend
And neighbor who was there the day her body was found.
- Bernice had moved up here from the fontainebleau,
And she just wanted a more normal life.
She was just a very intellectual,
Happy-go-lucky person.
Over the years, we got very close.
On that particular morning,
Every time that I called bernice,
There was no answer.
And that alarmed me a lot.
So I woke my husband up,
And we walked over across the street.
And there, I saw where she would sit and eat her dinner.
The tv was on.
All the lights were on.
But we didn't see her anywhere.
So we turned around and left and came home and called ben.
He and narcy pulled up not long after that.
And then my husband and ben went inside the house.
Narcy and I did not go in.
We kind of stayed at the front door.
♪ ♪
And then ben started yelling,
Oh, my god, my mother.
- The fort lauderdale police are called to the scene.
Charlie goes as a friend.
He's no longer on the force.
- Bernice's body was on the floor.
The blood first starts is in the car,
Bleeding into the utility room,
Which was attached to the kitchen.
And I'm talking swaths of blood,
5 to 6 feet across.
♪ ♪
- Detectives that were there, they said
She had a lot of injuries on her body.
Her teeth were all bashed in.
She had broken knuckles.
She had-- her head had injuries to it.
It looked like she laid in her house alive for many hours,
Probably trying to get help,
Because you see blood marks throughout the house
Like she was crawling for help.
- Bernice had died such a horrible death,
All by herself at night, alone like that.
Nobody deserves to die like that,
And she certainly didn't.
She was a very good person.
- Despite the horrific scene,
There are no signs of foul play.
- Nothing was taken.
Nothing was broken.
No windows, no forced entry, no nothing.
No noise.
Nobody heard anything.
- Fort lauderdale detectives investigating the case
Believe that bernice simply fell,
And her death is ruled accidental.
- If we just read the report,
We probably would have not taken it further.
But the pictures told a whole different story.
What became evident to us as investigators,
We noticed that there was blood spatter in her vehicle
That would only come from an impact wound.
We noticed she had injury to her hands
That we felt might be defensive wounds.
- The way the case was done and the outcome that
They came up with, it was baffling.
It was quite clear to us
That there was something more to that case.
I contacted my equivalent
Down in fort lauderdale detective division.
I said, my team and I firmly believe that she was murdered,
And you need to reopen this case.
He was like, absolutely not. No.
Because by opening the case, they admit guilt,
That they screwed it up.
- But that doesn't deter
Detectives wilson and carpentier.
- Within two days after ben's death,
We pretty much were on the thought
That bernice was also killed.
♪ ♪
We didn't have one homicide.
We now have two.
You have to step back and question, like,
What's happening to this family?
Is somebody out to ruin the whole family?
- At that point, we were focusing on narcy
And trying to come up with somewhat of a motive.
- So what are we missing?
At this point, we were thinking there's a lot
About this family that we need to find out.
♪ ♪
- ♪ come home to the gallows pole ♪
- ♪ judgment day shall come ♪
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- As folks mourned the death of not one,
But two members of the novack family,
New york detectives wilson and carpentier
Found themselves smack dab in the center
Of a southern mystery.
- Who could want to hurt this family this much?
And if you thought it was somebody
From ben's business sense,
Why would they go after his mother?
♪ ♪
Narcy novack was always in our sights as a suspect.
It was narcy novack who'd found her husband dead.
And the morning that ben is killed,
The only one that swipes into the room is narcy novack.
And then after she failed the polygraph test,
She goes back to florida.
- And when benji's closest confidants
Reach out to detectives,
It seems they are on the right track.
- I wasn't surprised when I heard that ben was murdered.
The first thing I did was I said,
You better check the wife.
- Benji's friends pat and charlie tell detectives
That they've been keeping an eye on narcy for years,
Ever since an event that happened seven years before.
♪ ♪
- At approximately 2:00 in the morning,
I get a phone call from ben.
He's in a panic.
And he says, the maid just helped me escape.
Five guys broke into my room, forcefully kicked in the door.
They robbed me.
And I think narcy was involved.
And he said when they busted in the door,
She yelled, look out,
He has a gun on his nightstand.
They had taped him and tied him with rope,
And they put rope around his neck
And tied that to the back of the chair.
He said, they stole all my business records.
They stole the safe, and narcy is gone.
♪ ♪
I said, we need to find her,
Find out where they took all this stuff.
Let's call pat franklin.
- I got a call.
It was a Saturday morning, probably around 7:30.
First thing I said was, well, did you call the police?
- Pat convinced him to make a police report
With the fort lauderdale police department.
He didn't give them all the details,
Other than a home invasion robbery.
- You see, benji wanted to try and resolve this
Off the books.
- Ben tells me, I want you to find my wife.
She's involved in this.
And I want you to find that safe,
Because there's $300,000 inside that safe in cash.
♪ ♪
And I said, well, give me her phone number.
And I convince her that it would be better for her
If I just meet with her privately,
Instead of involving the police.
♪ ♪
- Narcy agreed to meet pat
At a nearby greasy spoon diner,
Where she spills the beans.
- She said to me that she was in it from the beginning,
And she did it.
She had rented a u-haul and that she got
Some friends together that helped her.
- Narcy goes on to explain why she orchestrated
The violent attack on ben.
- And then she started to tell me what kind of man he is.
You know, what he does with me,
And he has me do disgusting things,
And he's terrible.
And he likes to have other men have sex with me and watch me.
And that whatever she can obtain monetarily,
She has earned.
She paid her dues by putting up with him
For 20 years.
- Narcy asked pat to accompany her
To a nearby storage facility.
She had something she wanted to show him.
- She unlocks the padlock.
I lift open the roll-up door,
And there's all these boxes and a safe.
And there's an accordion folder that was water stained
And beat up, and said, here, you want to see
What kind of man you work for?
♪ ♪
And I opened up the thing and saw the polaroids
And different pictures.
There are several photographs, mostly of
Bikini-clad women who were amputees.
♪ ♪
- It wasn't just one fetish. It was numerous fetishes.
His sexual desires and his fetishes of amputees.
♪ ♪
- And I feel that she was holding on to this
As a trump card for her, because I don't think
Anybody would want that kind of thing
Exposed in a courtroom.
- She knew a lot of ben's secrets,
And he was afraid of embarrassing his family name
If she let those secrets be known.
- So having something like this go public,
Which involved behind closed doors
Of a bedroom relationship with your wife,
Regardless of how it takes its turns,
He was being painted as a sexualized freak
Who would do things with his wife
That nobody would normally agree to
Or admit that it occurs.
But in life, it does.
- Pat negotiated the safe return
Of benji's business files and the problematic photos,
And in return, narcy got to keep
Half the money in the safe.
He also notified the fort lauderdale police,
And they closed the case on the novack home invasion.
- Unfortunately, benji was of the opinion
That he could fix this.
He allowed her to come back to the home.
He justified it by saying that they were
Going to a marriage counselor.
They were gonna work this out.
- But if she could do this once,
Why not do it twice?
So little by little, we're piecing it all together.
But it takes a while for an investigation
To go to an arrest.
Then we learned from ben's police officer friends,
Ben is also having an affair.
He has a woman that he's been seeing for quite a while.
Her name was rebecca bliss.
So we're thinking, was he gonna leave narcy novack?
And did she know about that?
♪ ♪
- Coming up...
- Narcy has hired somebody to hurt ben in the past.
She would do it again.
We go all the way back to the days
We secured all the video cameras in the hotel.
- And they're staring right into the camera.
So he decided to cooperate and tell us everything.
♪ ♪
- ♪ come home to the gallows pole ♪
- ♪ judgment day shall come ♪
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- When detectives learn that
Benji novack was keeping a mistress
And her name is rebecca bliss,
They track her down for an interview.
- When we interviewed rebecca bliss,
We learn that ben is keeping her as a kept woman,
And he pays for everything for her
For quite a while before ben's death.
- Rebecca is in mourning for more reasons than one.
- Ben was really in love with rebecca bliss,
And he was gonna leave narcy.
We learn that narcy novack has known about rebecca bliss
Because narcy had contacted her,
Asking her questions about the relationship.
- So narcy knew that benji was keeping a mistress.
And she has a history of using violence to get back at him.
To detectives, that's means and a motive.
But since narcy likes
To have other people do her dirty work,
Like when she had her friends carry out
The home invasion years ago,
Detectives start looking for accomplices.
- We wanted to reach out to her immediate family.
Her brother cristóbal, at the time,
Was living in philly, pennsylvania,
And we drove out there to interview him.
Cristóbal was living alone in his apartment.
He welcomed us into his home.
- He has us sit down at this kitchen table.
And he goes, let me go throw a shirt on,
And he goes in the other room.
And we're looking on the table,
And then we see these money orders.
- You could see that they were sent to somebody in florida
Under the name of alejandro garcia.
So we jot down some information
And figure we'll look him up a little later.
- When cristóbal returns,
Detectives pretend like they didn't see anything
So they can get some more information from him.
- We keep it nice because we want to keep
The communication open.
He drove a bus for a living from here to different areas.
At the time of the homicide, he told us he was on a run.
- Shortly after the interview concludes,
Detectives return to the office
To look up the name on the money orders.
- We started running the name through the system.
And wouldn't you know, boom,
We had a hit of a guy in the naples area of florida.
We find pictures of a driver's license, criminal record.
He's got a screwed-up eye.
He was arrested on a larceny charge,
And he did time in their jail.
- Next, detectives look back through the hours
Of surveillance footage that they collected from the hotel,
Hoping to find a match.
- What was the biggest for us is,
We were lucky enough to find alejandro in the hotel.
- Alejandro was in the lobby of the hotel,
And he wasn't alone.
- We notice a very stocky man.
- They're in this-- like, a little vestibule,
The two of them.
And they go like this,
And they're staring right into the camera.
- Could these be the hitmen
That narcy and her brother cristóbal paid to kill benji?
Without an active address on file,
Detectives look to alejandro's phone records
To try and track him down.
- Based on his phone records, we find out
Who is alejandro's close circuit.
Who's he calling frequently?
We see a woman's name in fort lauderdale.
We go back to florida, and we pick her up.
She gives us a little feedback about alejandro
And where he stays and where he frequents.
- So detectives start pounding the pavement
To see if anyone knows alejandro
Or has seen him lately.
And they don't go empty-handed.
- We're walking on foot, knocking on doors.
If you see this guy, you know, $20 for you, $20 for you.
And we get a call and say he's at a gas station right now.
And he was picked up without incident,
Never fought, and taken in to fdle's headquarters.
- Between the money orders and the hotel video,
Detectives are building
A solid case against alejandro,
And they make sure he knows it.
- We said to him, look, alejandro,
You gotta understand something.
The first guy in the door gets the best deal.
So he decided to cooperate and tell us everything.
- Alejandro starts from the very beginning.
- Cristóbal came across them at one of those car washes.
And he said the mastermind was narcy.
The street boss, if you wanna call him that, was cristóbal.
He was managing the pieces on the street.
- Detectives are eager to hear about benji's murder,
But alejandro insists this story starts months before.
- And then we find out alejandro
Was hired to kill bernice first.
- He gave us bernice's death on a silver platter.
♪ ♪
- ♪ come home to the gallows pole ♪
- ♪ judgment day shall come ♪
[dramatic music]
- Hired hitman alejandro garcia is in custody,
And he's singing like a sinner.
Turns out detectives were right.
Benji and his mama bernice's murder
Were connected, after all.
- So he describes bernice's homicide
And tells us he got paid $600 to commit it.
He said, I had instructions
To make sure I bust out her mouth.
He brought a monkey wrench into the garage
When she pulled the car in.
He sneaks down and crouches down
And comes up while she opens her door,
And he takes the wrench and busts her in the face.
♪ ♪
- She was just out, and then he leaves.
- Alejandro believed he'd done what he was hired to do--
Kill bernice-- but he was wrong.
- She wakes up, goes back into the house.
- You see blood marks around the house
Like she was crawling for help.
♪ ♪
It was a sad ending
To a beautiful life that she lived.
♪ ♪
- Then, just like a bad penny, cristóbal turned up again.
- Cristóbal véliz approaches alejandro a little later
And says, I have another job for you in new york.
♪ ♪
- Alejandro insisted that this time,
It was a two-person job,
So he brought his friend joel gonzalez along.
- Once we locked in on joel,
We canvassed the area where he was from.
Joel felt the grip.
We were all over, looking for him.
And he turned himself in to miami-dade pd.
- Joel is, in fact,
The other man in the hotel video.
And now that both he and alejandro are in custody,
They give detectives the story of benji's murder.
- On the day of ben novack's death,
Narcy novack actually makes the call,
Telling them he's laying down.
Come on in.
It's time to go.
- Alejandro and joel arrive around 6:30 that morning,
And narcy lets them in, which is why
The hotel door didn't show anyone entering the room.
- She made them strip down to their underwear.
♪ ♪
She directed them to where ben was sleeping
In the adjoining room.
And she told them to attack him.
♪ ♪
And she watched while he was gagged
And beaten with barbells.
♪ ♪
When they thought they were done,
They entered into the main room to wash up,
And she directs them to go back into the room
And cut his eyes out.
That was the most ruthless thing that I heard.
And the feeling was, is because he had
Looked at other women instead of her,
And she no longer wanted him to be able to do that.
♪ ♪
- And a little after 7:00, because he was already dead,
They all left the room together.
- Narcy's seen on camera on her way to breakfast,
Followed by alejandro and joel moments later.
As a result of this confession,
Both men are charged with murder.
Soon after, narcy novack
And her brother, cristóbal véliz,
Are arrested for plotting the murders
And hiring the hitmen.
And it's determined that may abad
Had nothing to do with either murders.
- May considered ben a father.
There was a true love of a father and a daughter.
- Narcy was a cold-blooded killer.
Cristóbal came off to me as a sleazy snake
Who couldn't look you in the eyes.
Scum and vile, evil people.
- Narcy and cristóbal stand trial together
For the murders of ben and bernice novack,
Where they plead not guilty.
The prosecution lays out all the evidence,
Including the motive behind the double murders
That they discovered upon reading benji's will.
♪ ♪
- It's either love of money, right?
For this one, it was both. [laughs]
She was very concerned that ben was gonna leave.
- She was gonna get cut out of everything.
- So narcy decides to exact revenge
And get her due in one fell swoop.
There was only one problem.
Bernice was going to inherit
A large portion of benji's estate.
- They kill him, then it goes to bernice.
So they, very cleverly, killed her first.
♪ ♪
- Both narcy and cristóbal are found guilty
And sentenced to life in prison.
In exchange for their testimony
At narcy and cristóbal's trial,
Alejandro and joel plead to lesser charges
And receive 17 and 10 years, respectively.
- The motive here is simple greed and vengeance,
And I find that evil to the core.
I don't have any closure on this,
Because ben was a friend,
Bernice was a friend.
And I go to bed and I think,
What a terrible way to die.
- Narcy is the coldest, shrewdest,
Most calculating murderer that I've ever encountered.
Narcy represents the sin of the south.
♪ ♪