Transcripts For KNTV Dateline NBC 20130114

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 agenda, telling the cops she would help them any way she could. She was collecting her things from her parents house, when she stopped in the guest cottage where ben had his home office. She was snooping through his files for the detectives when she turned to see her mother upon her like a fury. I see my mother coming at me with a crowbar. Very quickly she swung it and i put up my arm and she got the full end with the crowbar. It was literally the final blow for may. She was calling me a traitor. She knew you were giving evidence against her . Uhhuh. Could you have backed off at that point . Could you have been the good little daughter and fallen in line . No. Its not in me. I knew what she had done was wrong. Even though she was my mother, i knew she was wrong. The battleground between mother and daughter then moved from knot vac house to the courthouse. A take no prisoners fight over the will. May was giving the cops her theory. Her mother had murdered her stepfather for the inheritance. Narcy, as the beneficiary, stood to get an estate estimated at 10 million, lock, stock and batmobile. At this point my mother was to get everything, and i was like, shes going to get away with this. May filed a civil lawsuit against her mother, arguing the Probate Court shouldnt award narcy bens mother because she had had him killed. The court ended up freezing bens assets while they looked into the allegation. So the big money was on ice. But by then her mother had illicitly cleaned out accounts kept by ben and her mother. She told them a story . She d. My husband is out in the car waiting . Uhhuh. And he had been dead for a week at that point. Yeah. Narcy had been seen leaving the bank with a duffel bag. With the police scrutinizing her every move and may hounding her, they hired an investigator. He disputed mays contention that narcy was involved in her husbands death. She had absolutely nothing to do with it. When she discovered ben novak, she acted consistently with how anyone else would act in that situation. The defense attorney urged anyone looking at this case to follow the money in bens murder. Down there in the fine print of the will, it says may, the daughter, may have had her own reasons for having ben dead and her mother accused. May and the children were next in line. If somehow narcy were removed from the inheritance, may would get about 10 million. With narcy out of the picture, may would get a flat 150,000 and the two boys the rest of the estate. Narcy started to offer her own opinion of the crime. May had done it. So she accused you of doing it. Uhhuh. For the money. Yuhhuh. The mother and daughter finger pointing continued even as ben was put into the family mausoleum. The mother was flanked by armed body guards. The daughter brought her sons. One of my mothers bodyguards flashed his guns at my kids. Im packing in case there is any doubt . One of those kind of gestures . I saw everything when she threatened her own grandkids. I told myself she would never do anything to these grandkids. She loves these kids. Bad blood for sure. But detectives were about to learn there was another close relative of interest in this toxic family portrait and more crimes to investigate. Perhaps even another murder. Coming up, from out of the blue, a twist, a clue that could turn the case upside down. This is shocking and it could be a big break. 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Ooh, baby, can i do for you today . Try align today. Ooh, baby, can i do for you today . Ive got two tickets to paradise l set . Pack your bags, well leave tonight. Uhh, its next month, actually. Eddie continues singing to tickets to. Paradiiiiiise no four. Remember . Whoooa whooaa whooo you know ronny, folks who save hundreds of dollars by switching to geico sure are happy. And how happy are they jimmy . Happier than eddie money running a travel agency. Get happy. Get geico. Fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more. Mother and daughter each had a 10 million motive for murder as detectives saw it. But Sergeant Harry wilson was focusing on narcy. He knew he didnt have enough to charge for her husbands murder, at least not yet. She had an alibi for the assumed time of the murder. The case against her was circumstantial. So somebody else must have gotten into the room and killed her husband. But who . Then seemingly out of nowhere, an anonymous letter flut tered onto the desk of a detective a thousand miles away from the crime scene. Miami springs investigator gary fl flutter knew nothing about the novak case. There were people who knew the name, the fountain bleu and all. I didnt know anything about it until i talked to detective wilson in new york. The letter, written in spanish, was nothing but a blueprint to the murder, naming names, citing motivations. This is shocking and it could be a big break. Sergeant wilson up in westchester couldnt wait to see it. Whoever wrote this letter obviously had information, inside information. Looking back, that letter had the whole story. The greed, the inheritance, the obstacles in the way of the inheritance. The facts in that letter were on the money. Heres the gist of the letter. It claimed narcys brother, a man named cristobal barlese had hired some thugs to kill him. We apparently caught him off guard. He said if they sat down, he would be happy to answer any questions they had. We sat down at the Kitchen Table and the Kitchen Table is littered with papers. The detective and others spied something on top of the heap. Theres Western Union receipts. This is all out in the open. This is too good to be true. Like pinch me. Were holding a conversation with him, trying not to focus on the table because we dont want to draw attention to it. When narcys brother briefly left the room, Sergeant Wilsons partner furiously copied down names, dates and receipt numbers. Why would narcys brother, a bus driver just scraping by, be wiring loads of money to one particular person in miami . One of the names on the receipt is garcia, is that right . Garcia. Being a garcia in miami is like being a murphy in boston. Yes, it is. They began running it all down, and Security Cameras picked up narcys brother wiring the money to philly, but at the receiving end in miami, the cameras were on the fritz. No luck getting pictures of this garcia guy picking up the money. So they moved on to the brothers cell phone records and found frequent calls to a woman in miami. It turns out the phone belonged to garcias exgirlfriend, and he had been using it. They talked to her. Where the big break came was she said he had a defective eye. A garcia with a bad eye. The database search was narrowed. Now we have some sort of physical description to see if this individual is arrested, and lo and behold, he was. So garcia with the bum eye pops up. And we get a photo. Now the detectives were on a roll. With alejandro garcias mug shot before them, they reracked those Hotel Security tapes from the day of the murder. This is the main entrance. Here they come. Bingo. There was garcia and the dark shirt was somebody else. His exgirlfriend said he always wore sunglasses to protect his bad eye, but he wasnt wearing them on that day. And you see the two of them walking very fast out, alejandro with the bag. Alejandro doesnt have his glasses on anymore. With the broken frames, which are now apparently, as the victim reacts to the assault, he hits alejandro in the face, breaking the glasses. The glasses fall onto the bed. They rewound the tapes even further back to the first day of the convention, and there they were again. Garcia in sunglasses and a yellow shirt and the other guy casing the hotel. In one chilling scene, they check out their future victim, ben novak, jr. , in the lobby. And in less than 48 hours theyre going to murder this guy. In less than 48 hours theyre going to murder this guy. The second man is i. D. D as joe gonzalez of miami. They started with garcia. We started to hunt him down. The miami hunt didnt take long. Garcia was picked up on an outstanding warrant. The new york cops braced him. Garcia denied ever become in new york. Hes on video in the hotel. Detectives had some surprises to smoke out their oneeyed suspect. They showed him stills from the security cam footage. Garcia and his suspected accomplice in the hotel. The capper was a tape recording of a phone call between the detective and narcys brother kr cristobal. He says he wants to help the cops and gives the name alejandro garcia. Alejandro listens silently as the brother pushed him under the bus. Cristobal told me you did the murder. He denied being the hit man in that interrogation. But the message was clear. Get on board now, confess or take the fall. Hes going to be booked on charges of murder. Meanwhile, the evidence against narcys brother was piling up. Cell phone Tower Records showing him near the hotel on the morning of the murder. Evidence he provided a getaway car and driver. Who was in charge of this gag, the conspirators . The street boss that was handling everything that was going on was cristobal berlise. And who was the boss of bosses . With a 10 million motive, there was only one answer to the cops. Narcy novak had ordered the hit on her husband. Obviously he reported to narcy with his direction. It was now a multistate conspiracy case. The decision was made to let federal prosecutors take the complex conspiracy to trial. The suspected hit men, garcia and gonzalez, were offered a deal. Testify against narcy and her brother or go away to prison for what would likely be life sentences. The two confessed to being hit men in a murder for hire scheme. Then garcia shocked the prosecutors. There was something else. A second murder they didnt know about. And if they didnt act fast, they said, a third was on the way. Coming up, just who was in the crosshairs . There was a hit out on me. This detectives personal quest to save this daughter in danger [ female announcer ] now get high Speed Internet at home on our newly expanded advanced Digital Network, a connection you can count on. At t uverse high Speed Internet offers more speed options, reliability and wifi hotspots than ever. Go to our website below to get uverse high Speed Internet for just 14. 95 a month for 12 months with a oneyear price guarantee. Its all the speed you need all at a great price. Our newly expanded advanced Digital Network gives you more of what you enjoy online. And with at t, our wireless gateway turns your home into a private wifi hotspot that connects your wifi devices and can even save on your smart phone data usage at home. Go to our website below to get at t uverse high Speed Internet for just 14. 95 a month for 12 months with a oneyear price guarantee. That includes access onthego to our entire National Wifi hotspot network, with over 30,000 hotspots. At t uverse high Speed Internet. Now on our newly expanded advanced Digital Network, a connection your whole house can count on. This is the brother. The two hit men had confessed, admitting to killing ben novak, jr. They claimed bens wife narcy and her brother paid them to do it. But still no charges had been filed as police continued to investigate. And then the hit man, alejandro garcia, dropped a bombshell. He claimed he also killed someone else on orders from narcy and her brother almost a year earlier, and he had gotten away with it. The murder for hire none other than ben novaks 87yearold mother bernice. The onetime queen of the mountain bleu died three months before ben, and what florida cops and the medical examiner ruled was an accidental death, a slip and fall getting out of her car. He had a Monkey Wrench and he took what appeared to be a baseball swing and hit her several times in the head. Garcia said he got paid 600 for the job. But why kill bens 87yearold mother . Because in bens will in place at the time, if he died first, his mother, not his wife narcy, would be the primary beneficiary. But with bernice dead, there was nothing standing in narcys way. Had they not tried to kill ben and succeeded in killing ben, they probably never would have found out. And theres more. When they collected from garcia, they found out another person was in the mix. Narcys daughter may. I figured there was, but i couldnt prove it to anybody. Then when we found out there was a hit on may, that became concerning. A battered photo was found in garcias wallet. He was told she would be the next job. Well, may freaked. She needed to move apartments asap and told federal prosecutors she didnt have the money. The feds told her they would get her the money, but the paperwork would take time. Detective Allison Carpentier didnt think there was time. Here came a moment of moral dilemma, ethical dilemma for you as a person and an officer. Yes. It was hard. What did you decide to do . I decided to give her money and tell them off. The detective loaned may 5,000 of her own money. May promised to pay her back. When prosecutors heard of it, they removed detective carpentier from the case. They would call it buying witness testimony. I couldnt sleep at night knowing that if they didnt wake up the next morning, i had done nothing. If it wasnt for her, i wouldnt be here today. Almost a year after bens murder, narcy was indicted and walked past the cameras of americas most wanted. She was arrested for conspiracy, witness tampering and a host of other charges. The charge that led to killing ben novak was a Family Affair. Garcia, the hit man, testified in icy cold detail how he killed ben novak, jr. How did they get into the room . Narcy opened the door and let them in. Prosecutors argued that morning there was a small window of opportunity for narcy to let the hit men in and direct the assault on her sleeping husband. The victim was in bed. They got right in position. They signal, one, two, three, and then boom. Then the assault starts. And theyre banging him in the head. They hit him in the head, in the ribs. Brutally. Ztz t the two hit men used small hand weights to pummel ben. Narcy looked o. I guess there is a time when hes making moans and she toss tosses a pillow in. Did she tell them to gouge out his eyes . She d. For narcy, it was primarily the hit mans word against hers until the jury heard about narcys secret cell phone. On the morning of the murder, garcia testified narcy called her brother while they waited at the gas station near the hotel. She makes the call from her phone at 6 30 in the morning to say, come on. Thats huge because its her calling cristobal and bringing the killers in. Yet theres another twist here. Would you be surprised to learn there was another woman in this story . A person named rebecca bliss. Youre looking mighty sexy today. Thank you. Bliss, a south florida tattoo artist and sometime porn actress, was having an affair with ben jr. He put her up in a nice waterfront apartment and told bliss he was going to leave his wife for her. Narcy, the story goes, learned of the affair and called bliss, saying if i cant have him, no one will. Six months later, he was dead. And without eyes to ever look at another woman. This case was about money, and it was about narcy not wanting to be replaced. When defense attorney Howard Tanner put on his case, he zeroed in on the hit mens credibility and their motivation in testifying. He also attacked their allegation that narcy was in the room during the murder. They themselves stated that they would do anything to help themselves. In my book, they would have been willing to lie. Is narcy in the room . Absolutely not. And how about the absurd direction she gives them . Gouge his eyes out. It just didnt happen. Narcy objected that her daughter may could somehow be involved in the murder so she and her sons could inherit the estate. If narcy novak disappears, she takes, and her children take under the will. Those are facts. So thats the defense . Jurors consider who is going to get this money here . And its not just narcy novak, its the daughter here, may . There was a complete investigation done in this case. Im not claiming that anyone else committed this murder. The defense here is that narcy novak did not commit this murder. Detectives concluded that may knew nothing about bens will until well after the murder. I didnt even know that my name or my boys names were in this will. After a nineweek trial, narcy and her brother were found guilty of racketeering a conspiracy in the death of ben novak, jr. And his mother bernice. They were acquitted of only one charge involving the theft of bens diamond bracelet. In the conspiracy the murderer almost got away with, murder of ben novak, the conviction carried a life sentence for both. Z the best part was bernice could finally rest in peace. Narcy spoke to dateline from prison. She said she never would have done anything to harm her husband ben and was innocent of all the charges. Terry nelson and his investigators won the big case. Now her mother was gone and would spend the rest of her life in prison. She didnt see what she had in front of her. She had her daughter, she had two grandkids that totally loved her, and now she has nothing. And greed and some amount of jealousy presumably is driving this. Absolutely. No matter what, i love my mother. She was my mother. She had grandkids that adored her that would have done anything for her. And they did. And she threw it all away for money. If you go to miami beach, the fountain bleu is still there, all spruced up with a new lease on life. And may has a fresh new outlook on the rest of her life, too. A new little guy in her life, a oneyearold son. She named him ben after the lost prince. The namesake he never got to meet. Thats all for now. Im lester holt. Thank you for joining us. Good sunday morning. The president s nominee to lead the defense department, former senator chuck haigle is under intense scrutiny and he as the white house try to push back against Critic Office his Foreign Policy views. This morning, someone who supports the hagel nomination, the former secretary of state, general colin powell, here to speak exclusively to us. General powell, good morning, welcome back to the program. Good morning, david. Welcome to be here. I want to start on chuck hagel. Why do you think he should be confirmed . I think there are a number of reasons. First, i think he has had a very, very distinguished Public Service record that he can stand on. There are a lot of comments about Different Things he said over the years and i think he will have a chance to respond to all those comments as the confirmation hearings. But it might be useful just to stand back and take a look at this man overall a young man who volunteered to go to vietnam. They wanted to send him to europe, a nice, safe, place, he wanted to go to vietnam. He and his brother went. They were both wounded, he was wounded twice. Came back to vietnam, went to school on the gi bill, Veterans Administration. From there went to other things in life. He supported president reagan in his run for office and as a result of that, he received an appointment as Deputy Director of the veterans aminute station to show you the kind of courage this guy has what happened he believes in he quit after one year because he felt the Veterans Administration was not doing a good job for veterans answered couldnt take that went back to private life. Started a cellular company. In those days, it was something rather remarkable and new. Made a for chuchblt did very, very well. And he continued to serve. And while he was running that cellular company, he also was president of the uso, which was in trouble. So this is a guy who knows veterans, knows the troops, knows the uso. And when people say, well that doesnt necessarily make him a good candidate for secretary of defense, i will tell you who thinks that makes him a good candidate for secretary of defense, the men and women in the armed forces of the United States and their parents who know that this is a guy who will be very careful about putting their lives at risk, cause he put his life at risk. He know what is war is and he will fight a wars if thes necessary but a guy that will do it with great deliberation and care. Beyond that he went back to nebraska, ran for senate. Became a senator. Said he would only serve two terms. Only served two terms. And when he was elected the second time, he was elected with 83 of the vote. This is a guy respected by his fellow citizens of nebraska. Served here for a total of 12 years. And what did he do when he left the senate . He came became an ac testimony knick georgetown, school of foreign service, teaching the new leaders. He also has been cochairman of the president s intelligence advisory board. He is alsos on the defense policy board. This is a gentleman who knows all of these issues in depth. He is a fellow who speaks his mind. He sometimes