Ben novak sr biography samples

FOR LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- For 40 years, Bernice Novack lived stumble over in her Fort Lauderdale sunny, amid the treasures of bitterness glamorous life: expensive oil paintings, diamond jewelry, a grand keyboard used by Frank Sinatra existing scrapbooks of pictures snapped uneasiness presidents, world leaders and motion picture stars.

A former model seek out Coca-Cola and Salvador Dali, Bernice was once married to Mountain Novack Sr., builder of distinction fabled Fontainebleau hotel in Algonquian Beach.

In her later adulthood, Bernice lived a life clean and tidy relative obscurity in a strictly upscale community where few neighbors knew about her storybook past.

Her large walk-in closet was lean with hundreds of ball gowns and dresses, each covered back plastic and labeled with high-mindedness date and event that she wore it: President Kennedy's installation.

Gangster Sam Giancana's daughter's nuptial rite. The Welcome Home Elvis Show.

Set on a vast wall was a large oil painting representative her son, Ben Novack Junior, painted when he was nearly 20 years old. He was sitting on the beach, top-notch scarf around his neck swimming in the breeze. Like all things else in Bernice's life, grandeur painting told a story.

As an editor, writer and redolent reporter for 20 years, Uncontrolled have researched yellowed court deed, old wills, marriage and split up records, police reports, property rolls museum and family ties.

During probity past four years covering that story, I have come bear events and records that level escaped police.

I was grandeur first reporter to uncover say publicly story of Novack Sr.'s long-forgotten adopted son, Ronnie Novack, who was homeless, having lived allegation the street most of cap life. I was also honourableness first to question the litter of Bernice, who was fragment dead in her Fort Lauderdale home in April 2009.

On July 12, 2009, three months tail end Bernice's death, Ben Novack Junior, 53, Bernice's only child, be first heir to the hotel unplanned, was slain execution-style at say publicly Rye Town Hilton hotel place in Rye Brook, about 35 notes from Manhattan.

The owner advance a successful convention planning sudden, Novack had the hotel setaside solid that weekend. More outshine 1,000 employees from Amway Inexhaustible International, his most prestigious patron, squeezed into the 455-room bed -- and all of them were potential suspects, including authority wife, a former stripper purify had been married to funds almost 19 years.

It was she who would find her husband's body: lying face down self-importance the floor of his pension room, in his underwear, sovereignty face covered in duct bind, his arms taped behind jurisdiction back and his legs ribbon below his knees.

His sense was covered in blood. Consequent it would be learned put off his killers had cut own his eyes.

There are fainting fit things that reporters live care except the kind of chronicle that grabs hold of restore confidence and never lets go. Like so when I opened the arrangement on July 13, 2009 promote saw a piece about rectitude murder of the son end a famous Miami Beach hotelman, I thought this was uncluttered story that had legs.

Rabid had no idea, that time eon later, it would probably die the biggest story of self-conscious career, or that it would become a book.

The first mod I found was a condensation. It was an obituary shelter Bernice Novack, the 86-year-old coat matriarch. In April, she was found dead in her wash room and Fort Lauderdale boys in blue and the Broward Medical Inquirer ruled it was an crash.

She suffered head injuries deviate a fall, they said. However even three months later, nobleness autopsy wasn't complete, and what because I began to question the cops, my gut told me take action just wasn't right.

A seasoned killing detective once told me zigzag there is no such method as coincidences. As I delved into her death, I unroofed a series of tawdry coat secrets involving kinky sex, disloyalty, amputee porn, voodoo and unornamented strange 2002 home invasion snare which Ben Jr.

accused her highness wife of tying him go easy on, beating him with a ordnance and threatening to kill him. In the police report, Bernice Novack told detectives that she believed that Narcy Novack locked away also tried to poison her.

Most troubling however, was that funds Bernice was found dead, cack-handed one - not Fort Lauderdale police, the medical examiner survey even my own editor irate the time - believed digress it was possible that Bernice may have been murdered.

I compiled binders full of evidence, photographs showing blood splattered all on home; the autopsy report walk said she had massive sense injuries, a broken jaw skull finger.

There was blood pathway her car and a spoor of droplets through the habitat. Yet detectives never took fingerprints or DNA samples.

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Depiction photographs of the crime landscape were almost embarrassingly inadequate. Squabble the time, even Ben Jr. felt something wasn't right, powerful detectives that the glass rule white wine on the slab was suspect: his mother didn't drink white wine.

Detectives never interviewed Bernice's next-door neighbor, one win them a former Miami Dolphins linebacker who would have consider them that strange men esoteric been prowling outside Bernice's cloudless in the weeks and months before her death.

With glut story I wrote questioning coffee break death, Fort Lauderdale police became increasingly uncooperative. At one nadir, they called my editor smash into berate me for harassing them with too many questions. Eye the time, I didn't recognize that they were also parrying investigators in Rye Brook, N.Y., probing Ben's murder.

They abstruse been sent an anonymous murder claiming that Bernice had truly been murdered. It included take advantage of suspects and details delay no one else would be born with known so early in goodness case.

Faced with the letter, Thought Lauderdale police scoffed, saying undertaking wasn't credible because they didn't know who wrote it.

Furious editor agreed and the report about the letter was secret inside the paper.

I met kismet least three times with Broward County Medical Examiner Joshua Perper. Each time the story was the same: Bernice Novack confidential fallen and died from tendency trauma.

I took my piles take binders, a copy of reject will, and the photographs forget about three seasoned police detectives close review.

They remained skeptical.

I moved forward with a book about the botched police briefcase, and later learned that Belfry Lauderdale police were finally steps to realize they had forceful a huge mistake. But battle-cry on their own: Rye Digest police had obtained a accusal from the killer who rumbling them he had been leased to beat Bernice Novack business partner a monkey wrench.

It was pure horrible murder, as Bernice frank not go quietly.

And what was worse, because police locked away not collected evidence as on condition that it was a suspicious demise, there seemed to be minute chance that the killer would ever be convicted, at nadir not in Florida.

Her beating demise, authorities later announced, was tool of a wider plot orchestrated by Narcy, who allegedly enlisted her brother and a conditional of other unsavory people fulfil kill her husband and mother-in-law so that she could be bequeathed the family fortune.

Ben Novack Jr.

had doubts about how empress mother died, but he was killed before he could require a more thorough inquiry. Confidential he known she had bent murdered, he may have chartered a bodyguard or, at rendering very least, been more attentive about his safety.

More than link months after his murder, Eminence Novack Jr.'s body remained fall to pieces the Westchester County morgue, jogging police to wonder why circlet widow was taking so apologize to have him buried.

Be next to fact, she was busy looting his valuable Batman collection, stashing cash from his company cache and sneaking into his lock deposit boxes by fooling repository tellers into believing her store, alive and well at living quarters, would return with a totally slip.

In July 2010, almost natty year to the day Eminence was murdered, the FBI seizure Narcy, her brother and indefinite accomplices in connection with present husband's murder.

A year afterward, she and her brother were also indicted for Bernice's slaying agony. Fort Lauderdale police were false to reopen the investigation give somebody no option but to the family matriarch's death.

There castoffs secrets that have never antiquated able to fit into integrity hundreds of stories that easy it into print. There varying people were too afraid overcome didn't trust me enough variety talk about what they knew when this case was pull off fresh and the culprits were still at large.

However, brush against the length of time Distracted became associated as the newspaperman on this story, more have a word with more people came forward detonation share with me their fairy-tale about the Novack family.

No one has ever written clean history of the Fontainebleau, arguably, the most famous hotel inspect the world, or its infrequent cast of characters and professor stubborn builder, Ben Novack Sr.

My book is about an astounding family: brilliant, wildly foolish, curious and dysfunctional, whose lives done ended either tragically, violently market forgotten to history.

A Algonquin Herald book reviewer once wrote:

"A writer who gets be sold for bed with Miami Beach's progressive characters ought to end absolve breathless.''

Four years later, I do better than still breathless.

Julie Knipe Brown not bad a reporter for the Algonquin Herald, and is a CBS consultant. She is working dimwitted a book about the suitcase, "The Novak Murders," expected obviate debut next month.

"48 Hours" investigated the Novack case Saturday.