312. Murder of the Hotel Heir - Benji Novack

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You're listening to an ono media podcast. Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder with my husband. I'm Hayton Moreland. And I'm Garam Moreland. And he's the husband. And I'm a husband. We have some great news. We have some new merch that is just dropped.

“And honestly, the design on this one, really good.”

A few new designs, go and check it out, mwmhshop.com.

I'm reading good on our socials and it'll be everywhere, all of our Instagram and everything. Yeah, go check them out. I'm just going to say my favorite one is the handprint one, which if you go check it out, you'll know what I'm talking about. Cool.

All right, do you have a 10 seconds for this episode? I do have one, but it was kind of related to bagels, so I'm not going to say it because you guys might be getting sick of bagels, hawk, but I do have another one. I was thinking about the other day how weird it is that we all just have social media. Like we all just can see each other 24/7. We just make like videos and posts and everyone looks at it.

I don't know, is it going to like black me or moments? I was just thinking about it and like I cannot imagine what the world's going to look like 10, 15, 20 years from now. It's kind of a strange concept. I mean, I know for the most part, I mean, I didn't really grow up with that and have social media and talk was like 16. I mean, I had a big set of Facebook before, but it's just so different now.

“Like because of our phones, it's just a weird concept. I don't know, you know what I'm saying?”

Just this fake world that like, what's like real, but like it's, it's just so digitalized. It's not really that real though. I mean, to an extent, I guess. I mean, it's like, yeah, but I mean, like, it's just us. Like, it's like, yeah, I get that real. It's just, I feel like most people actually think social media is the real world. And I just don't, I don't think it is.

You're saying, I mean, honestly, eventually we're all going to turn into like a ready player, one type status. It's going to be love that movie. By the way, one of my favorite movies. Okay, it's going to be nuts. Oh, my gosh. I have to say real quick. Love Burger King. I'm a big Burger King fan. Okay. I lived in Spain for a few years. There wasn't any McDonald's. There was Burger King Burger King was everywhere. I ate so much

Burger King, a big Burger King fan. I'm hearing their coming back. They're making a comeback on social media. So pretty excited about that. I'll leave that as my 10 seconds. If you like, if you haven't had Burger King, go and try it. If you don't like Burger King, go and try it again. Nice. I'm ready for the episode or the case.

“Burger King, if you want to sponsor me, like, I don't have to give me much. Just like free food,”

please, like all, all, just free food. I'll put a big Burger King bag right here. When I was like a freshman in high school, I had to have dance right after school, but I danced at a club so it was different from school. And I carpooled with some girls and we would get in the car and drive from school to dance and barely, we would, in between, we would swing

through the Burger King drive through. Why don't you have, why don't you try again? You never told

me this. That's a little bit stuff. And we would get, like, a chicken thigh and a hamburger and we would all split it because we didn't, it's not like we were rolling in money and able to buy fast food every day. Okay. And so we would just get this smallest thing and just split, like, pass the hamburger around the car and take a bite and we would be late to dance every single time and we always would tell our instructors that we got stuck at a train because it was a really, like, major train

intersection that was that we had to cross through dance and every time would be, oh, sorry, the train. It's good though, right? Yeah, that's just my only experience with Burger King. Oh, okay. And they had fry sauce in Idaho. That's an Idaho Utah thing, babe. I know, but I was just saying not a lot of fast food joints had fry sauce. I could go for a water right now. Not okay. Well, let's hop into today's case. Our sources for this episode are oxygen.com and

we see Miami.com just as.gov. ABC news.go.com. CBS news.com archive.fbi.gov. Palm Beach post.com group media and crime library.org. All right, we have an air to a luxury hotel chain, a model

these things have in common? Batman. Their twists and turns in today's episode. One so unimaginable,

“it feels like it came directly from the pages of a thriller novel. But today's case is not a work”

of fiction. It is the devastating reality of a family whose legacy was tarnished, whose dirty laundry was aired out publicly to dry, who was betrayed by those closest to them in a story that even the best fiction novelists couldn't conceive of on their own. So now, I want to take you back to the 1960s, where a young Benji Novak is living in Miami Beach, Florida. More specifically, he's actually living at the prestigious Fontainebleau hotel. Now, back around this time Fontainebleau

was like the four seasons, but better. It was the place to see and be seen, especially in the 1960s in Miami Beach. I mean, ranked Sinatra and the Rat Pack had stayed there, as did Marilyn Monroe,

“John F. Kennedy, it appeared in a handful of movies, including the James Bond film Goldfinger.”

And it eventually even earned a spot on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. But for most people, this hotel was just a stopover point. They vacation destination. But Benji and his family were different because they lived there full time. And well, they actually owned the place. So we have a little Zach and Cody situation going on here. Benji's dad, Ben Novak's senior, was a real estate investor, but after a few flops in New York City,

he moved his family down to South Miami Beach during World War II, built a small hotel. That eventually led to his next property, the Fontainebleau, which opened in 1954, is two years after Benji was born.

“Now, as for Benji's mother, Bernice Novak, her story was arguably even more interesting.”

She was a foster child-turned model who had done everything from Coca-Cola campaigns to working with the famous painter, Salvador Dali. Now, Bernice and Ben's senior had met in New York back in the late 1940s, and by that point, Ben's senior was already actually living down in Florida, but with so many frequent trips to the big apple, the two of them fell in love. The only problem was Ben's senior was actually still married at the time. Now, Bernice quickly

called things off when she learned that her boyfriend was still married. But a year or so later, Ben came knocking on her door with a divorce certificate and said, "Hey, now can we date?" And by 1951, the two of them were married. By the 1960s, they were living in the penthouse suite

of their new prestigious hotel with their only child Benji. Basically, living a very glamorous lifestyle.

They would get dressed up, had downstairs each evening to wine and dine the famous guests who were coming through. Again, this is everyone from world leaders to famous celebrities. We kind of would be crazy life. I mean, he literally is London Tipton. For young Benji, he felt like this was actually a pretty lonely upbringing. He didn't venture out of the hotel much, most of his meals were made by hotel staff, his friends were limited to the other younger guests that were just passing through

the hotel. On vacation, it wasn't like a neighborhood where he had consistent neighbors. He could play with.

Earth day parties were actually often just filled with strangers and children he had never met before.

And when he went trick or treating, the family's chauffeur took him alone. And as a way to keep himself company, Benji actually developed a love for the Batman comics and began collecting memorabilia. To the point where in his later years, he would come to actually have the second largest known Batman collection in the world. It's cool. But over time, the charmed, sheltered lifestyle also made Benji a little particular. Those who knew him said he was a tiny

tyrant. He was spoiled. He was kind of difficult to work with. Quality that never really left him. Even after that fancy lifestyle came to a screeching halt in the 1970s. Again, he's just still a child. And that is when his dad and his mom filed or divorce. Now, by this point, the hotel

bankruptcy. He was taken away from the Novax by the courts. And then suddenly Benji and his mom

“Bernice were now off on their own. But Benji used his father's missteps to fuel his own fire.”

So when Benji was just around 22 years old, he started his own company that would grow into a lucrative corporation. Now, the one thing Benji had been seeing and studying his whole entire life was the hospitality business. Actually, luxury hospitality business. So it made sense that he would follow down that path later in life. He created a company that organized hotel conventions

all across the country. At one point, his company was even valued at $50 million. And it was around

the same time that Benji found the person he wanted to share his wealth and his life with. An exotic dancer in her early 30s named Narcissa Pacheco, or Narcy. She went by Narcy. Now, Narcy was born in Ecuador.

“She had a daughter of her own, 10 year old. And while she wasn't exactly the person”

everyone pictured Benji marrying one day, the two said they felt wildly in love. And by 1991, 35 year old Benji and 34 year old Narcy were married. And Narcy quickly took on the role of the established wife. Her daughter, who's named Mei, was sent off to boarding school as Narcy helped Benji with his company, going with him on business trips, consulting on different projects. Benji eventually bought

them a multi-million dollar estate in expensive cars. So Narcy was now basically said to live the

pretty woman lifestyle. She was kind of taken in. She was getting beautiful furs and flashy jewelry. And as Mei, her daughter, got older. She also got closer with Benji, her stepfather, seeing him more as a father that she never really had. And after growing up and then eventually having two kids of her own, two boys, Mei ended up taking on a role at Benji's companies, even helped patch some of the holes she had in her own relationship with her mother. So things were kind of

going well for the family, but the one person who vocally did not approve of Benji's family was his own mother, Bernice. Okay. Now, by the year 2009, okay, they've been together, they've grown up a bit. Benji's father had passed away. The hotel had found a new owner,

had undergone a $500 million renovation. And 87-year-old Bernice was kind of now just living in

obscurity. For the past 40 years, she had been residing in a home in Fort Lauderdale. Amongst the relics of her past, fancy gowns that she'd once wore to presidential inaugurations, a grand piano that was once played by Frank Sinatra, scrapbooks of photos from her heyday at the hotel they once owned, and an oil painting of her most treasured possession. Her son Benji sitting on the beach with his scarf around his neck. Now, as her only child, she and Benji were close and stayed close,

which was why no woman would ever be good enough for Benji in Bernice's eyes. No, it's interesting that, I mean, this still happens today. You hear about all these insane crazy toxic mother-in-law stories. It's just wild to see it. Like, I've watched them on Instagram and on TikTok, TikTok, my gosh, I'm turning into a boomer, but it's wild to, it's wild to see them and watch them. Like, there are some crazy mother-in-law out there. And there is this stereotype,

which I'm saying stereotype, because I don't know if there's any like proven statistics on this, but there is this stereotype of like, moms of boys. Like, a mom is boy. Yeah, and then then becoming a monster in law, because like this, they almost have this weird attachment. Attachment to their son, where they don't want a woman to replace them. I don't want to say it's ancestral, but it definitely is a little different than like, women with their daughters.

“Yeah, for sure. In a way. Uh-huh. At least that's the stereotype, okay?”

, but what I want to do is not to get into the world's world's world's world, because with credit, so simply like again. Or you're now your credit on your own income. Your credit is just online.

I'll buy it. Hi, is this catching? That's it? Safe. Viso Stoia.

“Holy dang it's a ruck. Yeah, it's custom. Those else will be in. So obviously, when he”

had met NRC and then they decided to get married, this was hard for Bernice. In her own eyes, she did not want a former exotic dancer. Someone who she saw as lower than them to now have this beautiful marriage and get to like live this beautiful fancy life that she believes her son had

built on his own and was now just giving to a girl. So NRC and Bernice had never gotten along.

But as I said, these two state married, they raised me. She ended up having kids. She's now working for Benji. So basically, now that Bernice was reaching almost 90 years old, it seemed like she kind of decided to just shut her mouth and accept that this relationship was real as she's coming to the end of her life. They had been married for 18 years at this point. But on April 6, 2009,

“any lingering issues Bernice had became meaningless because that day, 90-year-old Bernice”

was found dead in the laundry room just off of garage. Okay, here we go. So when police responded,

they say, you know, it came from a series of false she had taken after trying to get out of her car.

So Benji took the loss hard. But he kept focused on his business, which was probably a welcome distraction. And in July of that year, he was called to New York to oversee a convention in the town of Rybrook. It's about 30 miles outside of the city. So on July 10th, Benji, NRC, and May, all flew north to stay at the Hilton in Rybrook where the convention was being held. It was definitely an all-hands-on-deck situation as the conference was going to host over 1,000

people. This was pretty big for their business. So from the 11th into the 12th of July,

“Benji worked all night tying up loose ends, working on other projects, and then the convention”

kind of wrapped up that morning. Now, according to NRC, he had stayed up working until 630 AM

that Sunday morning before then finally crashing. And NRC said around 715 AM, she went downstairs

at the hotel to get some breakfast. And this is something hotel security footage did confirm. Because again, we are now in 2009. She returns to their room about 30 minutes later, and according to her, she walks in to a horrifying scene. Benji, her husband of 18 years, who had just lost his mom not too long ago, was face down on the floor of the hotel, covered in blood. Wait, okay, so the mom died? Yes. And then shortly after the sun died.

Yes, on a work trip with his wife and his wife's daughter basically his stepdaughter who also worked for him. At a hilton, by the way, which is just a little ironic, considering he grew up in one of the most infamous hotels. So, we're at a point where there's like one suspect. Well, the mom's death was from false. She wasn't murdered. The police said she fell. Oh, okay, so I guess technically we can have two suspects. The sun could have killed the mom and then killed himself. Or you think

the mom was murdered. Yeah, obviously the mom was murdered. No, she just died from falling. She was nice. It's confirmed. She died from falling. Yes, like police found her dead, and then said she died from a series of falls. She was 90 years old. That's very common. Have you seen life alert? Yeah, I just find it suspicious that we're doing it episode about murder. I'd murder. And the mom just fell down the stairs and died. locked out the stairs

where did you get the stairs from? I don't know. She said she fell. He fell while getting out of her car and trying to walk it to her house. That's even worse. No, there's no way. Okay, so wait on, I need the clarification, was she for sure like they claimed that like an accident like she fell and died? Yes. Okay, so she dies on April 6th. And it just so happened that the sun died a couple weeks later. Not a couple weeks. July 10. Okay, so a couple months? Yes. See, that's just

it. And a hilton. That's suspicious. I'm not saying, I mean, I guess, if they rolled into an accident, whatever, it's just the true compound cast, little suspicious. For me, it's just like his mom dies in this house that she has lived in forever after her marriage and name getting kicked out of this

you know, she peeked. She peeked when she lived in this house and or when she lived in this hotel, they ran it and met all these famous people and then she left. And then, you know, a couple months later, he dies at a hilton. It's just the whole like hotel thing to me. From your films. No, no, no, it's just the theme of a hotel. Like he's raised at a hotel, she dies surrounded by this dream life at a hotel. Yeah, I get it. And then he goes to a hilton because his entire company is

based off of hotels. Yeah. He's at a hilton with his stepdaughter and his wife. And okay, let me just

“keep going because not only is he like dead. Okay. So it's that morning. Remember, he worked the whole”

weekend. They all had. He's stayed up till 6.30 a.m. She goes down each breakfast. We see that on camera. She comes back up just 30 minutes later. Okay. The continental breakfast. Yes, walks into their hotel room. Benji is face down on the floor. Okay. He's covered in blood. His head is covered in duct tape.

What the? His arms are taped behind his back. Oh my god. And his legs are basically taped

wrapped together below his nuts and saying his arms are cut off. His head is cut. That's not. So Narcee is like calls the police who arrive a little before 8 a.m. And they discovered that the scene was actually far more gruesome than Narcee had really mentioned on the phone. Like she calls and says, my, you know, my husband, he's dead. But when they show up, Benji is not okay. He's duct taped,

“but he's hogtied on this floor, right? He also has been bludgeoned so badly. 20 of his ribs are”

cracked. Oh my gosh. His mouth is taped shut so tightly and violently like you choked. Yeah. And even worse, his eyeballs. Oh, no. Nope. Had been gouged out of his head. This is not normal. I mean, none of this is normal, but this is next. Yeah. This is crazy. Right. So because of the blood stains that were on the bed, police believed he was actually attacked in his sleep. Like someone heads snuck up on him in this room and hit him multiple times before he either fell or they moved him

to the floor. And no one heard this? Not that like not that they know of a media. Also we know how thin a hotel walls are. Yeah. I've had some bad experience. Thank you for telling me no one's heard this. Yeah. This is like a pretty brutal attack. Like even if he was attacked in his sleep, this is nuts. It feels insane. So police also think this was too complicated to job for one person. They think this was like a hit. Hey, I'm gonna let you keep going. There's cameras everywhere. There's

gotta be footage. But they can't tell at first whether this was a robbery or not, mainly because 53-year-old Benji's Rolex is still there lying in a pool of blood near him. However, a gold bracelet

with diamonds that Benji never took off. Like his signature bracelet was missing. Now police

realize whenever you're dealing with a victim that's kind of this high profile that has this much wealth, that a lot of people knew he was here at this convention, you have a lot of potential suspects. In fact, the hotel had thousands of people staying there for a convention Benji had planned, meaning a lot of people knew where to find him that morning. But the convention was over that day. So people were waking up. This is 8 a.m. people are going to be waking up checking out

and taking off to head home, which meant police had to work fast because their suspects could leave. And one of the early leads they look into comes from NRC, who actually mentions to police, Benji's Batman collection. And I don't know if they're like, does he have anything of value or anything, but somehow this gets brought up, which includes get this an actual functioning replica of the 1960s Batmobile and four warehouses full of memorabilia estimated at a total of over $1

million. Okay. A lot of money, but I'm not going to lie. I thought I was going to be like

“at 20 million or something crazy. Well, this is what she says. She's like the only thing I”

can think is, he's dealt with some shady people when it came to buying and selling Batman, memorabilia. Apparently there was one person he was dealing with who even came to their house and Fort Lauderdale and got upset when they were negotiating prices over a comic book. This isn't the lead, it's something else. And she's like, it's also wasn't unusual for my husband to have amounts like large amounts of cash when he would meet these people to buy memorabilia.

that, you know, he was into this stuff that he did carry large amounts of cash on him,

“wanted to rob him or maybe he had been planning to meet someone, you know, to do one of these”

exchanges. So the police keep Narciss Statement in mind, but they learned that Benji's convention company operates in cash as well. According to colleagues, he often kept large sums of money hidden in hotel rooms in case he needed it during the conferences for something. That weekend in particular, he had a hundred and ten thousand dollars taken out of company funds for incidentals. And I don't know if this was like a company card before a company card became as like often used

as it is now, so it was like they would just pull a chunk of cash for a convention and be like, if we have any companies like expenses, we'll just pull from this cash instead of using a company card. That's a good question. I would or no, I would say that's not normal, but it could hold.

“Maybe they just didn't want taxes. That just seems crazy. That much cash seems not normal,”

because you can write checks. Right. But like I said, just that's going on for that. That seems insane. Either way, after Benji's death, a majority of that cash is missing, but whether that was like stolen or spent, we don't know. Plus, as we heard earlier, Benji wasn't exactly the easiest person to deal with. A lot of the qualities and habits he had made earlier in life really stuck with him. And because of that, Benji had made quite a few enemies in business. And all of us to say,

this was going to be a pretty long list of potential suspects and motives. So the police would have

to scratch people off one by one. But it's a hotel. There's a billion cameras. There's no way

that this can be that complicated. Maybe cameras in the elevator, but might not be in the like hallways. Oh, sure. I feel like I feel like they're has to be, right? We're going to find out in a second. Police also learned early on, like pretty early on in the investigation from a tip while talking to people in Benji's life that he didn't just love to like collect Batman, memorabilia, as his hobby. He actually also had a hobby of stepping outside of his marriage, as well.

I would not consider that a hobby. So it's no secret. Benji was a bit of a party animal. And through that, he had met several women over the years that he had been intimate with. This is something

that Narcee always suspected and eventually confirmed. The two had always stayed together through

this habit he had. But it did make Narcee jealous, paranoid over the years. However, when Narcee tells police something about Benji's sexual preferences, it sets off alarm bells for them. And maybe this is why she wasn't as like descriptive on the 9-1-1 call because she tells them, oh no, he, he was into bondage, like bondage games. He liked to be tied up. And since Benji was found with his hands and legs bound, his mouth covering his tape, police are wondering, okay, does this have

“something to do with that side of his life? Is that why we found him like this?”

I mean his eyes are gouged out, so I'm not sure about that one. So I guess, right? Like a part of it? I mean, like, if you know he's into this and this is how he's found, obviously that feels like a connection.

Yeah, get that. Uh, this is basically what brings police to learn about a woman named Rebekah Bliss.

This was a porn actress that Benji had been seeing since the previous year, 2008. But this wasn't just some fun on the side for Benji, supposedly the two of them had fallen in love. Eventually Benji even moved Rebekah from Miami where she was living to be closer to his current home in Fort Lauderdale. But in early 2009, Nancy caught wind of Rebekah and Benji's relationship and according to Rebekah, Narcee actually called her one day, threatened or saying, she couldn't have

Benji, then nobody could. Narcee offered Rebekah $10,000 to end the affair with her husband. But after speaking with Rebekah, police realized it wasn't her that had the motive to kill Benji, the two were in love. She's not really gaining anything by losing him. And they learned when they talked to her that Benji had even mentioned divorcing his wife for her, like he was like, "We're gonna run away." So instead, home police learned about all this, the person they filled with the real motive

was Narcee. And the more the police start to look at Narcee, who was seen on camera eating

makers. Oh, you're asking me, oh, okay. I don't know. Do you have an answer? Or are you just asking?

Well, what are you at a hotel corner on Rebekah's? I don't know, but is it? No, I'm just trying to imagine what she was eating. Oh, I don't know. While her husband was being hogtized. Sorry, I don't know. That was her. I was confused there. Maybe she got the little cereal latte. I mean, like you left me on a cliffhanger there. So let's keep this. Sorry. It was a role. So the more police look at Narcee, the more distrustful she begins to see.

Narcee, the narcissist. In fact, that's not what I said. What? That's not what I said. It's what I said. Okay. Okay. I said it.

“Who are you? What is? I have. Is it? Yeah. I want to date, what do you say?”

Like, who do you think you are? I am. Did you say? Yeah. It's so good. Okay. We need to get it. Sorry. We need to lock in. We need to lock in. Take you, though. This is not normal. So in fact,

the suspicion around Narcee started almost the second police that arrived at the crime scene.

Because when Narcee called 911, she told the operator that she thought her husband had died in their hotel room from a heart attack. So I'm police show up there. Like, okay. And when Narcee and her daughter May went to the medical examiner's office later to officially identify Benji's body, May told police. She was a little worried about her mother's cold response. May said, you know, I was overthrowing up in the trash can. And my mother was just sitting there

with no motion at all. Oh, that would, that would be horrible. Narcee told investigators repeatedly that she had nothing to do with her husband's murder. And at one point, she even said, she wished

that she had been there. So she could have just died with him. But during her first interview

with the police, she's acting pretty strange. The interview Narcee for nearly 12 hours. And during that time, she refused to take a break. She didn't drink water. She didn't take a bathroom break. She knew you'd get a cup of coffee. She sat there all night, stiff as a board, insisting over and over the shoe was innocent. But the evidence was an exactly matching up those claim. For starters, the door to the Novax hotel room showed zero signs of a break in our force entry.

So if someone had gone in and somehow done this in the 30 minutes, she was downstairs, making her waffle, they didn't, they used a card. Like they used a key card to get in.

“Yeah, I mean, I think she's probably innocent within the fact that she didn't commit the murder,”

but she definitely hired somebody to do it. And you think he was murdered before she went down she went down to do her alibi or you think it happened while she was down there. Yeah, one of those probably while she was down there, but I'm not sure. We know that these hotel key cards actually register when I guess opens the door to their room, not when they leave. Still, the key cards showed there was no activity on either Benji or Narcisse

keys between midnight the evening before and 745 AM when Narcisse said she returned from breakfast and found Benji dead, meaning that door was an open between that time, at least, not until she came back from back, from breakfast and used the unlock. Someone either was already inside the room from the night before or someone let the attacker in,

“maybe Benji. And remember, it was obvious to the police, though, that Benji seemed to have been”

attacked while he was asleep. So they don't believe he got up and let the attacker in, which means the attacker was hiding in the closet or Narcisse let the attacker in. Yeah. So the police build a timeline from other witnesses. One worker at the hotel says they last booked to Benji on the phone around 654 that morning to say there was a problem with overcrowding for breakfast. So the hotel is like, no, we know he was a live at least at 654 because we

talked him on the phone. And then around 717 Narcisse is seen on that security footage in the hotel dining room. So not in the elevator or the hallway just in the dining room. And then 740, she's returning to the room on security footage as well. So if Narcisse left someone in, it was likely between 654 after he hung up from talking to the hotel staff. And 717, again, when she left, well, when she was eating her breakfast. So unless she let them in earlier

without Benji's knowledge, and then they just hit out in the room all night. So the day after the murder police ask Narcisse to undergo a polygraph test. It doesn't come back in her favor. It shows signs of deception. Still, it's not enough to charge her with a crime. So they keep digging into Narcisse and Benji's past. They find some pretty eventful moments. Before Narcisse and Benji

where she had called Benji and threatened to burn down his house if he didn't stop pulling around

“with other women. I mean, valid, right? Yeah, like valid. But also don't marry him. If this is”

out of it, this is something he just loves to do. But valid. You're signing up first.

Oh, it was before they got married? Yes. Oh, okay. You know, you're signing up for some heartbreak here. But also valid to be like, don't think the best. Right. So after they get married, Benji had threatened to divorce Narcisse on at least one occasion. But in 2002, things got really wild. When Benji found himself the victim of a home invasion, he was tied up for 24 hours as burglars stole around $350,000 worth of cash and items from his house. This is in the first time.

This first time he was bound pretty similar to when he was found dead. He was gagged his feet and hands were tied. Now after the burglars released him, Benji called a friend said, hey, I just was robbed

“and tied up. And I'm not calling the police because I'm pretty sure that Narcisse orchestrated”

this entire thing. Oh, my gosh. He said, I'm pretty sure he's, she's fed up with me cheating

and instead of leaving, she wants to prove a point. Now, shockingly, Benji never presses charges.

But he did file for divorce a few days later. But then eventually, he rescinded the divorce and the two stayed married for another seven years up until the day of Benji's death. Well, when police asked Benji's friends, okay, if this is their history, like, why did he stay with Narcisse? Like, we're wondering why she stayed, but why did he stay? And he were like, well, Benji really loved her. Like, despite all of these affairs, he's having he really did love her and ultimately he didn't

want to let her go. He wanted their marriage. So let's just say, when police are uncovering all of this,

“they realize none of this is looking good for Narcisse. And her 30-ish-year-old daughter, Mae,”

knows that as well. In fact, she's so convinced that her mother was involved. She actually agrees to work with the police in any way she can. She passes a polygraph to the police fully contrast her. She gives them a lot of intimate details about the history of Narcisse and Benji's relationship. This is kind of how police end up finding so much out about them. But then three days, after the murder, the unthinkable happens. Narcisse and Mae returned to Florida. Narcisse

settles back into her waterfront home she'd shared with Benji. And one afternoon, Mae comes over to collect her stuff from the house. Because at this point, their relationship is fractured again. And she's like, I want nothing to do with my mother. But while she's there, Mae goes into Benji's home office to see if there's any evidence in their against her mother that she could give to police. And according to Mae, that is when Narcisse bursts in and comes after her with a crowbar.

Chases her own daughter around the house calling her a traitor and trying to attack her. Now, when a friend is called to the house, they arrive to Mae screaming at her own mother, you murdered Benji after which Narcisse waxed Mae with the crowbar on her arm, leaving her with a huge giant bruise. And the friend is like, okay, everyone calm down. Now, the police know that

Narcisse looks basically as guilty as it gets, but everything they kind of have on her is circumstantial.

So the following day on July 16th, the Fort Lauderdale police do what Mae couldn't. They get a search warrant for the estate and look for anything that might implicate Nancy or anyone else for that matter. They seize security footage from the house, paperwork documents, computers, bills, day planners, and interestingly enough, they seize five rolls of duct tape. But the biggest break on six days like, on six days later, when the police receive an anonymous

letter that was written in Spanish, translated in English as in part. You're not going to read it in Spanish for us? Mm-hmm. Okay, it says in part, quote, this crime without a doubt was committed by the wife of Mr. Novak and her brother. Or how you said that you thought she hired someone to do it. Okay, the letter goes on to say that Narcisse's brother, restore ball. It's spelled literally. It sounds like it should be crystal ball. Yeah, do you pronounce that right? It's an actual ball.

Over the, oh, could he stew by the. Yeah, restore ball, police hired two hitmen to kill Benji.

two peas in a pod criminals like Bonnie and Clyde, Narcisse and Crystal Ball is quite the name.

“Yeah. Yeah. You could go infamous with that. So the police pay a little visit to”

Crystal Ball who is living in Philadelphia and working as a bus driver at the time. He lets them into his home saying he knows absolutely nothing about his brother-in-law's murder, but it's happy to talk. Now as the police sit down at his kitchen table, they see something. The tables covered with these Western Union receipts for wire transfers. But the wire transfers are not to him. They're from him to at least two other people. One of them was a man named Olihandro Garcia

in Miami who'd received $500 from Crystal Ball after Benji's death. So the police search their databases for Olihandro Garcia and they find he has a record and he has only one eye. So it is going to make him easier to spot. What if he were a patch? So with that, they start looking at surveillance footage from the hotel that we can Benji was killed. They're looking for someone

“with one eyeball on this surveillance footage. That shouldn't be too hard. Exactly. That's why”

I said he's easy to find. Sure enough, there's Garcia at the hotel on the Friday that Benji and Nancy arrived in Rybrook, New York. So this random dude is at the hotel and they've traced him all the way through her brother's receipts, but he's not alone. He's actually with another man. One police eventually identified as Joel Gonzalez also from South Florida.

Now all of this takes a bit of time. So when police finally track down Garcia and Gonzalez

for questioning, it's November 2009. It's been four months since Benji was murdered. Now all the while, Narshi's been selling off Benji's Batman memorabilia and other valuables won by one to amass her own little fortune while she still lives in his house. But now with these two potential hitmen in an interrogation room, a lot of the lingering questions about this case

“start to unravel. At first, Garcia says he's never even been to New York or left the state of”

Florida for that matter, which police know is a lie. He eventually tells the police he doesn't want to talk because he's scared for his family that the people who had hired him in this case are very dangerous. And after some negotiation with the two, they reach a deal in exchange for their

testimony against Narshi and Chris Oball. And with that, they agreed to talk in here's what they say.

Narshi had offered to pay these two men she had met through her brother, $15,000 and fly them up to New York to murder her husband. It was Narshi who let them into their hotel room that July morning right after Benji fell asleep. They came up on either side of him with a set of weights and began hitting him while he slept. Oh my god. They then moved him to the floor, taped him up, and meanwhile, Narshi not only watched the entire thing, but they say she directed it as well.

She's insane. She's the one who told them to gouge out Benji's eyes. And they're like, we don't actually know why. We just did what she said. I mean, she was paying us. Holy crap. But then she handed them a pillow to muffler husband screams and headed down to the lobby to get breakfast and create an alibi for herself. But the most shocking part about all of this and Garrett caught onto this a lot sooner than he thought. And then I thought you would. I was hoping to

leave this as a twist. Benji was not the only target. The two men said Narshi had actually paid them to kill someone else before. Benji's mother. Yeah. Her knees know that. So I was right. Yeah. I wanted to be a twist. You get you, you gas lit me. I don't know how you figured that out. So about I don't know how you figured that you two hit men. You just gas lit me for 40 minutes. You lied to me. I believed you after you told me that. I had you. You would know where it was going.

Actually, you gas lit the entire audience. That's crazy. You tricked me.

Those who knew Bernie said always suspected something else that happened. That's insane.

Narshi's nuts. Yeah. He's nuts. There was blood inside her car, as well as smears of blood on a long herd for get rid of her. Plus, a neighbor of hers, a former Miami dolphins football player, said he noticed something odd in the weeks before Bernie's death. Strange men had kind of been lurking around her home almost casing the place. And one time the neighbor approached them to ask what they were doing. And they just ran off. So then two months after that, Bernie says,

tragic series of false happens, and she dies. We know that was no accident. So by July of 2010,

Cristobal, and then they would have the two actual hitmen testify against the McCourt for a lower

“deal. And it was revealed around this time that the author of that anonymous letter, the Spanish”

one to police was actually their own sister. So Narshi and Cristobal's own sister turned them into the police. They were tried together in 2012 with their hired hitmen, testifying against them as

start witnesses. The prosecution said Narshi was basically afraid that Benji was going to leave her

for Rebecca. She'd just found out about that. And because of their prenuptial agreement, she would only walk away with $65,000. But if she killed Bernie's and Benji, so he couldn't run away with his lover, she would then inherit the bulk of his estate. However, the defense kind of does their thing calls in to question all of the things. But in the end, Narshi and Cristobal were both convicted of murder conspiracy to commit murder, domestic violence

stalking money laundering and witness tampering. They were each given life in prison without

the possibility of what about the, I'm curious about, yeah, Garcia and Gonzalez. Correct. Because of his deal, he was given 17 and a half years behind bars, Garcia. Now Gonzalez was only given 10 years in prison for his cooperation. This is because of something called the Slayer rule in Florida. Narshi was disqualified from inheriting a dime of Benji Novak's estate, even though like on paper, she would inherit it because everyone else is dead. So instead,

all of his money went to her daughter, Mei, and her two sons. I mean, I feel so bad for the daughter too.

Oh my gosh. This is better sweet because while Benji may have made some enemies along the way, the one person who really adored him and looked up to him, her whole life was Mei. I mean, Benji kind of become her father. Also, I feel bad for the mom, the mom that died. Bernice. Like, maybe, she was right. Maybe she knew that Narshi was bad this whole time. And I mean, at the end of the day, Bernice dies, Benji dies, not. Mei has her two sons, but like, she's lost her mom,

her uncle, her grandmother. Yeah. So it's like, she's kind of lost family as well because of her mom and uncle's choices. Yeah. And that is the murder, the absolutely insane murder of Benji Novak. It actually is devastating that he beat these odds, built this entire fortune, you know, had loved this daughter just for his wife. What is wrong with he? I was just crazy. Also, she's just a lunatic. The fact that she watched and directed it,

“I just stopped a little lunatic. Loki, I think she hated it because of all of his affairs,”

but like I said back to the beginning, if this had been an issue since day one, but you just don't kill people. It's bottom line. Yeah, you just got to get out. You don't kill people here. She could have left. You wanted to be the worst her. Only 65,000. It's life in prison. Great. All right, you guys, that is our episode this week. And we will see you next time with another one. I love it. I hate it. Goodbye.

Welcome to National Park After Dark, where you're hosts Cassie and Danielle. Join us every Monday as we visit a new park through stories of true crime, animal attacks,

“fatal accidents, miraculous survivors, and other incredible tales that you need to hear to believe.”

Our hope is that by sharing inspiring tales in our passion for protecting our planet's wild places, inspires you to explore them yourselves. Find us on your favorite podcast to streaming platforms, watch us on YouTube, and follow our adventures on all socials at National Park after Dark. And remember to enjoy the view, but watch your back.