With its hot bodies and pulsating dance clubs. Thats all a marketing reinvention of a much older miami beach. No, we need to go back 50 years or month when caddies with tail fins were pulling into the newest, glitziest hotel in the west. The fountain bleu. Steven gaines wrote about the era in his book fools paradise. It became a destination for the rat pack, frank sinatra, major stars were a at the fountain bleu, and lots of movies were being filmed there as well. He needed a queen to preside over his palace. He found one in a former cocacola model named bernice. With her beauty and effortless charm, bernice turned out to be the perfect host to entertain the gangsters and guests who made the fountain bleu in its day. They lived in the hotel in a penthouse suite. Then came along a young prince, ben novak, jr. Ben jr. Would be trotted out to shake the hands the likes of jfk, then it was back in 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 passing through the hotel. The friendliest lonely boy disliked by his fathers help lost himself in the fantasy world of batman. The superhero became an obsession. Even as an adult, ben jr. Was still a massing a floor to 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. Just as the rat pack faded away, so, too, did the fountain bleu. By the late 70s, miami beach was regarded as a stale place for old people. Ben novak, sr. Lost the hotel to bankruptcy and died not long afterwards. 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 conventions and big hotels. Like his father, he was a hardnosed businessman, and in time he was grossing 50 million a year. And like his father, he needed someone like his mother to mix and mingle with the clients. He found that woman in a recent emigre from eduador. Her name was marci and she had a little girl named may. Why do you think they became a couple and didnt just pass in the night . My mother was a lot of fun. She definitely partied. When ben jr. Met marci, she was partying for strips in a sleazy nightclub. She did very well. She did very well. My mother could adjust to just about anything. Marci left her stripper positively to marry ben novak, jr. But her daughter felt in the way in her new relationship. She was sent to a boarding school at the age of 8. Did you feel shipped off . Kind of. You had a tough childhood, huh . Best thing is that its over. Ben jr. And her mother lived in a 2 million estate with a pool in back. But the stepdaughter was never going to be a rich mans 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 onetime lonely prince be latedly seemed to recognize a Kindred Spirit in neglected may. He saw me as a daughter since he had no children of his home, and i saw him as a father. She had kids who wanted to play with all his batman stuff. He did a lot of grandfatherly stuff with them. 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 be part of his conventional organizing business. She would work alongside her mother and his mother bernice. It had taken 20 years, but they were finally becoming a family. 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 through the house and died. May thought the time had come. For years ben had been asking her to consider becoming his legally adopted daughter. She thought it would be the perfect fathers day gift for him. I started thinking bernice had just passed and it would be something nice for him, you know, okay, you do have a daughter. 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. It never got attended to because of the brutal event three months after bernices passing. Ben, marci and may were putting on another of their big conventions in a hotel in northwestern suburban nassau county. Just after the convention, the hotel got an urgent call. Something very bad had happened in one of the suites. A 58yearold man had been found bound and bludgeoned to death in the bedroom. Ben novak, jr. , the onetime prince of the fountain bleu, had been murdered. So, then, who might want ben novak dead . Investigators are writing up a long list of possible suspects. Was it a business deal gone bad . Or someone after his fortune . Maybe it was someone closer to home. The search begins when we come back. And it wasnt going to be easy. We decided we were going to download the locks of every room in the hotel. The comings and goings of everybody. 150 rooms. When Family Affair continues. Al hair removal can be costly. Challenge that with olay facial hair removal duos for fine or coarse hair. First a pretreatment balm then the effective cream. For gentle hair removal at far less than salon prices. Theres no place like home. For gentle hair removal at far less than salon prices. Have given way to sleeping. Tossing and turning where sleepless nights yield to restful sleep. And lunesta® eszopiclone can help you get there. Like it has for so many people before. 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Oh no, its actually my geico app. See . I just uh paid my bill. Did you really . From the plane . Yeah, i can manage my policy, get roadside assistance, pretty much access geico 24 7. Sounds a little too good to be true sir. Ill believe that when pigs fly. Ok, did she seriously just say that . Geico. Just click away with our free mobile app. Until its completely clean. Lysol toilet bowl cleaner gives you maximum coverage from the rim down to the water line to kill 99. 9 of germs. And removes stains better than clorox toilet bowl cleaner with bleach. So if you want to do the whole job, lysols got you covered. Lysol. Mission for health. And for an incredibly clean and fresh bowl with every flush, try the no mess automatic toilet bowl cleaner. The sprawling hilton hotel in rybrook, new york was host to 2,000 amway conventioneers that summer in 2009. One of the suites had become a homicide scene. Sergeant terry wilson from the local police would lead the investigation. I couldnt believe what i saw. I went in the room and there was the victim hogtied on the floor, and it was a bloody mess. What does that tell you . This was a targeted individual. Is it true that his eyes were also gouged out . Yes. Yes. Sergeant wilson learned that the victim was ben novak, jr. , a name that meant nothing to him. The murdered mans wife and stepdaughter had been escorted to a nearby hotel room so investigators could take their statements. The wife of 20 years, narci, told Sergeant Wilson that her husband had been up all night working on Convention Details and didnt go to bed, she thought, until about 6 30 in the morning. She said she had 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 abod, who managed these companys road trips, confirmed her mothers story who came down to pitch in for breakfast. I was thinking, there is a lot of people. Theres 2,000 people down here. Ill take any help i can get. After the breakfast rush, narci called her husband up in the room. No answer. She comes back up around 7 30 or so . Yeah. She told detectives she tripped over the body, and then bolted from the room slehriekin for help. Security arrived, as did gary norris. Narci was trying to lunge toward the body, howl and go screaming at the top of her lungs. Our car was just getting to the road at 7 40. But just after midnight there had been no activity up to that point. Opening going into the doors. That tells you right away, the door opened from the inside. If narci had been downstairs helping with breakfast and no other key opened the door since midnight, who, then, had admitted the killer or killers . An earlyon mystery. May, meanwhile, had been summoned to by the Hotel Manager to her fathers suite. Hes gone. I said, what do you mean hes gone . Just try and do something. Security guards wouldnt let her in the room. They said its a bloodbath in there. A bloodbath that sent her mother in hiss ter ysterics. She was absolutely going crazy. She said, they must be after our money. They know we have bags of it. This weekend they had taken in more than 100,000. Now, that money wasnt 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 had gone about their business decided to rip off the company by torturing ben to cough up the cash . They had around 100,000 in cash. So youre in motivation country right now, huh . Were trying to figure out whats going on. They didnt get anything from him, so im scared not only for him, 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 detectives nightmare. We decided we were going to download the locks of the entire hotel. Youre kidding. With the comings and goings of every room. 150 rooms. It took him two weeks to do it. The hotel was bristling with Security Cameras, but unfortunately none 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. Theyre asking you the question, did you do this . Correct. And one of the cops even told me, we have to ask you these questions. And i said, do you have to get like right here to ask the questions . A detective had joined the investigation and led some of the questioning. May, the daughter, what did you make of her . Pretty much i got the feeling she was being honest with me. But you never know. People are deceptive. The cops went over narcis story again, hoping they overlooked some nugget of information. All of a sudden shes a widow. We needed that information. She was the last person to see mr. Novak. Narci told detectives there was something of value missing, a cold bracelet that spelled out mr. Novaks name in diamonds, and an unexplained broken stem from a cheap pair of sunglasses. Then there was the matter of her husbands 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. Uhhuh. He had a valuable comic and somebody else wanted it. Or wanted the value of it. Correct. Sunday was over. On monday the cops would hear about the novaks tiemeup sex games. On monday, when mother and daughter started to go for one anothers throat. Coming up, they should have been united in grief. Instead, there would be a feud sparked by a single troubling moment. As im sitting there, my suspicions are growing and growing by who had bound, gagged and bludgeoned to death ben novak, jr. . To see it, it was overwhelming. Im just thinking, oh, my god. In this case, the detectives art of victimology would play a big role, figuring out who the murderer was, as well as his circle of friends and family. The two detectives would eventually piece together an unflattering family portrait. In the beginning we didnt know was there an affair, was it domestic, was it a random act . They conjured the story of ben novak, jr. , a man with an he can eccentric batman collection, a stepchild brought in late to the family circle. It took us a while to learn about the family. The novaks came off as candidates, maybe, for the cast of a bad reality show, but he still looked like number one target in a homicide. He could have culminated a lot of enemies along the line. There were a lot of people who didnt like him. Following the murder, detectives took narci and may to the morgue to see his body. Im throwing up in a garbage can, detectives are there and everything else, and we all turn around and shes just staring at him. There is no emotion at all from her. That monday, late into the night, narci and her daughter were interrogated by the detectives. I should have been there. Detective kecarpentier broacd the subject of their sex life. She let it out that he liked bo bondage. Here he had been tied up in the homicide. Did you think, well, is this a sex game gone wrong . We had brought it up to her and i did confront her with that in the interview. Ben is found in a way that he enjoys sexually. No, no, no. When i left ben, he was not tied up. I just found it odd that the way he finds pleasurable, hes killed in the same way. Because she was the spouse, the questions for narci got sharper as the night wore on. Was she in on the murder . If im being asked if i let them in, no, i dont let them in. All the while, may had been outside eaves dropping on her mothers interrogation, getting chills. May said to me that somebody told her it was a bloodbath. I dont 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. Im looking at her and there is no blood on her. In a scene that was described to you as a bloodbath. Correct. And im looking at her from head to toe. But you dont see any evidence on her. I dont see any evidence on her. What are you thinking . My suspicions are growing by the minute, and then im thinking im this horrible human being for even thinking my mother could do Something Like this. For 14 relentless hours, detectives tried to pin back narci novaks ears, trying to make it look like she masterminded the murder. She never ate anything, she never drank anything, and she never went to the bathroom. Detectives would come in and question her, she would just keep going. Nothing fazed her. Had an escort girl tied her up . She scoffed at the idea. Short of after 9 00 p. M. , detective carpentier brought up the idea of a Lie Detector Test. I take a hundred lie detectors. Ill do whatever you want me to do. At this point im hoping im completely wrong. If she takes this polygraph test and she passes, then im just going crazy in my own head. Theres 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 the mother, what is wrong with you . Why dont you just take the Lie Detector Test . Whats 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 didnt go well. She flunked it all the way through. Yes. When cops were finally done with the two for the night, may confronted her mother. I asked her to her face. Did you have something to do with this . I did. I got in her face, and they had pictures of 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. I didnt think she did it herself personally. The cops had only started to peel back the many layers of the novak family story. There was still so much about these people they didnt know. It turns out there were a few things may herself didnt know. But when we come back, she is about to find out. I see my mother coming at me with a crowbar. When Family Affair continues. 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The cops were spooling through hours of Hotel Security cam footage, looking for what they werent exactly sure. The footwork of the Homicide Investigation was under way. Were leaving the doors open as far as were concerned. Everything is on the table until the investigation either stalls or someone is arrested. The body of ben novak, jr. Was with the medical examiner. Mother and daughter attached now by blood only return to florida separately. May had her own agen