Narcy Novack and Ben Novack Jr. - Part 1 - Love Marry Kill

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Rich Tina.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
And if there's one thing we've learned and over twenty.

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Years of marriage, some days you'll feel like killing your husband.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
And some days you'll feel like killing your wife.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Welcome to love, Mary.

Speaker 3 (00:12):
Kill Hey Tina, Hey rich How are you taking good?

Speaker 1 (00:29):
How are you?

Speaker 2 (00:30):
I'm doing great?

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Great?

Speaker 3 (00:31):
Good to hear good.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
You seem very perky today?

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Sure am. I hope all you listeners enjoyed that theme
song because apparently you all love it so so much
and it's just the best ever.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
They do love it. I love it too. I think
it's great.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
If you don't follow us on Instagram. Recently, I posted
a poll because I'm not even like being like cute snarky.
I really don't like her theme song. I've made that
pretty clear year.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Since you really tried to. It's been evinced people that
we should change it.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
I haven't given up, but I posted a poll and
everyone was like, I love it, Yeah, don't change it. Yeah.
It was at least ninety percent, and there is a
fair amount of people that answered the pole. So thank
you so much for participating in that poll and keep
enjoying using our theme song fun because they don't normally
listen to the podcast, but I think I was clicking

(01:24):
over because now we're on YouTube. I clicked over to
YouTube just to see how things were going over there
and a little quiet, but it was I had to
hear the theme song, and I was like, you still
maintain that you love it?

Speaker 2 (01:38):
I really do love it. I think it's very It's
just I feel.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
Like we're kind of perky and the song just is
just such a downer.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
I don't think it's a downer at all. It makes
me remember our glorious wedding day.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
You are so wrong because we played music like Weezer, right,
and we play Weezer, and we played they might be giants,
they might be giants. It was a very festive occasion,
and that song is not a festive This.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Song does make you think of weddings.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Okay, well, enough about that, you one. I hope you're happy.
I hope all you listeners are happy to well.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
I have a consolation prize for you, in the form
of a snack. Okay, would you are you hungry?

Speaker 1 (02:14):
You know what, I am very hungry today. I go
through days where I'm like I could eat or not,
and then some days I just want to eat. Like
a side of beef, and today is a site of
beef day, so that's good. Yeah, I brought you the
side of beef.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
Costco corn muffins.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
You shut up. You are the worst husband in the universe.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
We went to Costco yesterday together.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah you do. You had to, like you want everyone
to be impressed that he went to Costco. Ladies listeners,
He's gone to Costco three times in his entire life.
Who goes every week? Twice a week? Me, I know,
I'm just I'm just cheesing.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
He's a wonderful I brought the corn muffins.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
It was funny because we went to Costco and whenever
anyone goes with me grocery shopping, I always say you
can get whatever you want because I'm just always so
happy to have company. Yeah, and when you put we
a lot of times don't always, but we get the
like a thing of Costco muffins, and we won't go
into the new smaller sized Costco muffins because we all
feel a certain way about that in our house because

(03:14):
we used to cut them in half and I would
like throw them in the freezer and like you could
get a blueberry muffin whenever you want. I don't like
the new ones as much, so I guess I wouldn't.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
Yeah, you said you weren't going to go into it,
but you did, but.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
Well a little bit. But anyway, you could have picked
any muffin, and you picked the cornffins. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
I love corn bread, I really do, and.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
These I actually really hate corn bread. I don't know why.
I just really don't like it. Yeah I do, So
tell us how you felt about the corn muffins.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
I think they were great. I think really good. Yeah,
but let me bring out the real snacks I bought you.
They're really not that much more exciting. I think part
two snack you're going to be really excited about. But
but part one, I brought you some buffalo Cheetos crunchy.

Speaker 3 (03:50):
I mean Cheetos buffaloes.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
I've never had that.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
Can I apologize? I need to offer apology to you
for calling you the worst husband in the universe, because
that might have been a slight exaggerator.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
I was pretty sure you were joking about that. But
then I also, because this episode is going to drop
right around Easter, I brought you some peeps party cake
flavor peeps Peep.

Speaker 1 (04:09):
Yeah, you're back to the worst husband on the planet
of all the kids in all the world. When have
you eaten a peepe?

Speaker 2 (04:18):
I've eaten many peeps in my life.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
So the other night we were sitting at the dinner
table and our kids were like, don't buy peeps. Do
not buy peeps for the Easter baskets. And our kids
are definitely too old for an Easter basket, but they
still get an Easter basket. But yeah, they the peeps
are great. I just like the doing the peeps. If
you've never done this before, you take up two peeps
and you give them, put like stuff a toothpick in

(04:41):
their beak, and then you put them in their microwave,
and I don't know, I don't remember how long.

Speaker 4 (04:45):
You do it.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
Because it looks like they're bad like their sort. You
don't remember this.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
I remember putting them in the microwave, but I don't.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
If you do, like with a toothpick, and it looks
like they're battling dueling. Oh okay, all right, so you're
going to make me eat what flavor is.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
The cake flavored? Okay, we'll be right back. What did
you think about the buffalo crunchy Cheetos and the party
flavored Peeps.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
I'm gonna have to go with no, no.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
No, no, I'm both. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
Really, I mean I love I really love Cheetos, which
I'm embarrassed to say as an adult like I but
the Buffalo I am not. I'm not a fan. And
the peep you know that it tasted like a normal peep.
The party cake didn't impress me much.

Speaker 2 (05:34):
Wow, Okay, I'm sorry to disappoint you.

Speaker 3 (05:36):
I think you'll appreciate you.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
I think you'll like part two, Sack, let's just do it. No,
I brought I made it part two intentionally so you
would have to come back for part two.

Speaker 1 (05:44):
You were worried.

Speaker 2 (05:46):
I'm always a little worried. Give us a rating.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
When I walked into the room, you were like recording
on your own. I was like, all right, i'll see
you later.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
Give us your rating for your for the Cheetos.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
The Cheetos, I would go like four out of ten
and the peeps, sorry peeps, a one out of ten.
Oh my, how about you.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
I would give the Cheetos a seven out of ten
and I'd give the peeps a seven out of ten. Wow,
I can both and I think they pair really well
together because the cheetos are a little spicy, and then
the peep afterwards is really very kind of cools your
mouth off, so I'd recommend them together.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
And you also brought me a gas station soda, so
that was very nice. If you thank you, You're welcome.

Speaker 2 (06:29):
You are not the worst husband. No, all right, well
we should talk about the case of Ben Novak Junior
and Narsi Novak. This is a recommendation from our listener,
and thank you and for the recommendation. Super interesting case.
I don't know why I seem to gravitate toward cases
that are about wealthy people, because I'm just sort of
fascinated by like people who have a lot of money

(06:51):
and just screw up their lives in one way or another.
So this is another example of that. And if I
have a content warning for this case, it's that everyone,
almost everyone in the story is a horrible person. It's
nice to be able to say, like the victim was
a great presence. No, not in this case. You're not
going to like anybody noted. In the early morning hours

(07:12):
of July twelfth, two thousand and nine, screams rang out
through the Hilton Westchester in Ryebrook, New York. Narsy Novak
sobbed atop her husband's mangled body. Tape was stretched across
his face. Both of his eyes had been gouged out.
Ben Novak Junior was dead. He was the heir to
a fortune built on an iconic American institution, an eccentric

(07:33):
and abrasive millionaire who managed to alienate nearly everyone he met.
With a drug habit, multiple mistresses, and a jaw dropping
collection of jewelry and pop culture memorabilia. He lived a
life of excess. There was a long list of people
who might have wanted him dead. It was the second
family tragedy in a short period of time. Ben's mother
had died only three months earlier, seemingly due to a fall.

(07:56):
Rumors were floating around the family. Narsy and Benja Junior
had always had problems, but people couldn't help wondering had
she finally had enough of his running around. Benjamin Novak
Senior was born to a Russian Jewish family in nineteen
o seven. He was the youngest of four children. His
parents were Sadi and Hyman Novic. Ben would later change
his last name americanizing it to Novak instead of Novic.

(08:20):
Hyman ran a hotel in the Catskill Mountains in the
southeastern part of New York State. The area was commonly
referred to as the Borscht Belt or the Yiddish Alps,
as it was the premier vacation destination for Eastern European
Jewish immigrants. Many other hotels and resorts at this time
would bar Jews from entry, which left a big opening
in the market, a hole which was filled by many

(08:41):
Eastern European Jews who immigrated to the area and started
their own hotels. Ben's father died in the mid nineteen
thirties and he took over operation of the hotel along
with his older brother. But Ben wasn't good with teamwork.
He and his brother fought a lot, and eventually they
had a falling out. So Ben moved to New York
City and started Kemp and Novak, a clothing supply haberdasherie.

(09:04):
This business failed as Ben had another falling out with
a business partner. You'll see that as a theme as
the story goes on. Ben had a hard time getting
along with people, and that also passed along to his son,
Ben Junior as well.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
So I just asked you if they only made hats,
because I thought Habitasherie meant a hat maker.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
And that's what I thought as well.

Speaker 1 (09:25):
The Google says that it is a maker of men's.

Speaker 2 (09:29):
Yeah, clothing and accessories. Yeah. I had the same thing
in my mind that haberdashery meant a hat store. But
apparently that is not the case. After Ben's haberdashery failed,
he liquidated all of his assets so that he had
some money to use to relocate. In nineteen forty, he
and his new wife, Bella Novak, relocated to Miami Beach, Florida.
He got very lucky with his timing because upon arrival,

(09:51):
he and multiple business partners purchased the Monroe Towers Hotel,
which the United States government then rented out for use
as a military training after the Pearl Harbor attacks. Ben
used the profits from Monroe Towers to purchase four other hotels,
which in turn the army paid him to rent out,
so he effectively became a hotel magnate off the back

(10:12):
of government subsidies. Wealth changed Ben almost overnight. He started
wearing nice suits and shaving his mustache in the French manner.
He was already a jerk prior to arriving in Miami.
But afterwards he really became a tyrant. He was cold
blooded and spiteful and double dealing. He would often try
to stiff people who worked for him.

Speaker 1 (10:31):
I'm sorry, what is shaving a mustache into the French manner? Mean?

Speaker 2 (10:36):
I just sent you a picture, but it's very much
like a like just a neat, kind of thin mustache,
like very well well groomed.

Speaker 3 (10:43):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (10:43):
Ben and Bella adopted a two year old son named Ronald,
but Ben was an adoptive father in name only. He
was far too busy with his hospitality business, and he
often had to take long trips to New York City
for business. He claimed. In nineteen fifty one, he abruptly
divorced Bella he had fallen in love with another woman,
a model named Bernice Stemple. Bernice was born in nineteen

(11:06):
twenty two in the Upper West Side of New York City.
She was one of two daughters born to William Stemple
and Rowena Stemple. Bernice's father was a wealthy playboy who
made his fortune in New York's insurance business. He didn't
take his wedding vows seriously and could often be found
around town cavorting with any woman who looked his way.
Rowena decided who could play at that game, and she

(11:28):
began an affair with William's best friend. When William found out,
he threw Rowena out of the house. Their divorce became
tabloid fodder for the local press. William won custody of
his two daughters, Bernice and Maxine, but he had no
interest in actually raising them. Custody was more of a
prize or a point of spite. He didn't want Rowena
to have the kids, but he didn't really want them either,

(11:51):
so William sent Bernice and Maxine to live with his sisters.
The ants weren't equipped to raise the kids either, so
these extremely wealthy children were sent to an orphan instead
of simply being allowed to be raised by their mother.

Speaker 1 (12:03):
This is horrible.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
This is what I mean when I say that almost
everyone in this story is a horrible person, Like they
just no interest in raising their kids. Just ship them
off somewhere and let someone else raise them.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
So Rowena wanted the children, but he wanted to win
the court battle more.

Speaker 2 (12:21):
Yes, exactly right.

Speaker 1 (12:23):
Oh that's horrible.

Speaker 2 (12:24):
Bernice became painfully shy due to the intense emotional trauma
this upbringing inflicted upon her. As young women, both Bernice
and Maxine were quite striking, turning heads wherever they went
with their red hair and freckles. When she finished school,
Bernice was on her way to a career as a secretary,
but then fate intervened. She was spotted by a talent
scout on the street who offered her a job as

(12:45):
a model. She began working for Conover Model Agency, the
business which basically created the concept of supermodels and coined
the phrase cover girl. Bernice modeled for the Coca Cola
company and Old Gold Cigarettes. She became, for a period
the face of Coca Cola. She would often frequent the
Stork Club, a speakeasy turned Manhattan nightclub famous for its

(13:07):
wealthy and glamorous clientele think of it as Studio fifty
four before Studio fifty four. Frequent patrons included Lucille Ball
and Desi Arnez from The I Love Lucy Show.

Speaker 1 (13:18):
You really you have to tell people where Lucille Ball
and Devinez Junior Chi.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
I know everyone as as much history of you know,
watching old TV shows as you and I might, but
also the Roosevelts, the Vanderbilts, Ava Gardner, Ernest Hemingway, Frank Costello.
Pretty Much any movie star, politician, or mobster who wanted
to feel important came to the Stork Club. It was
the sort of place Bernice would become intimately familiar with

(13:43):
later in life.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
Then first met Bernice in a nightclub, not the Stork,
but the La Martinique a few blocks west. The thirty
eight year old bought champagne for her table and bragged
about his plans to build a hotel empire. Bernice was
not particularly impressed by this sweaty, married, middle aged man
who had to yell over the music of the nightclub

(14:05):
to speak with her. To see Bernice again, Ben hired
the Conover agency and made up a photo shoot. He
said he wanted an all American girl with red hair
and freckles, describing Bernice's appearance to a tea. A week later,
Bernice arrived at the shoot and found Ben there smiling.
Bernice must have been impressed by Ben's tenacity, because she

(14:26):
began seeing him every time she came to New York
for business.

Speaker 2 (14:29):
You imagine, just like having the money to make up
a modeling photo shoot just so you could hire a
girl that you like.

Speaker 1 (14:36):
It seems a little manipulative, if you ask me a
little bit. Bernice was already married when she first met Ben,
to a middle class man named Arthur Dreysen, who had
been sent to fight in Europe shortly after their wedding.
His absence, not to mention his lack of wealth, destined
theirs to be a short marriage. Drawsen took the break
up well, and the two remained friends for the rest

(14:56):
of their lives. Bernice's affair with Ben lasted for seven
years before he finally divorced Bella and tied the knot
with Bernice. They married in New York in nineteen fifty two.
Bernice's father refused to allow Rowena, her mother, to attend
the wedding. In marrying Ben, Bernice gave up a profitable
modeling career because he insisted that she stopped working. She

(15:18):
moved to Miami Beach, away from everybody she knew. She
soon found herself in the midst of a personal crisis.
Ben didn't have much time for her, as he was
deep in the weeds developing his next hotel. His business
partners and their wives were all much older than she was,
so she didn't have much in common with them. She
grew extremely lonely and spent most of her time in

(15:38):
her bedroom. Bernice's sister Maxine had this to say about
Ben quote, Bernice married a man just like our father, controlling,
self centered, and not particularly sensitive. Ben opened the Fountain
Blow Hotel in nineteen fifty four. It was a big deal,
becoming the most famous hotel in Miami and up to
that point, the most luxurious. Named it after the Fontainbleau

(16:01):
Palace in Paris, though whenever Ben pronounced it, he always
called it the Fountain Blue instead of the Frends pronunciation Fontainebleau.

Speaker 2 (16:09):
And I think, honestly, most people call it the Fountain Blue.
I've been to this hotel for conferences before, and I've
always heard people refer to it as the Fountain Blue Hotel.

Speaker 1 (16:18):
That's what I thought, too, But I can't say words
in English, let alone French. So bear with me.

Speaker 2 (16:26):
I'll do the best week.

Speaker 1 (16:27):
Well, you do it pretty well. I think you had
French in like high school. I've never had French. I
should probably do like the French duo lingo or whatever.
So he had never actually been inside of the Paris Fontainbleau.
He seemed mostly interested in channeling the idea of an
old world palatial luxury. There was no sign outside of
the Fontamblau to advertise the purpose of the building. Then

(16:49):
liked it that way and thought it lent the building
a similar majesty to European chateaus. Those never had signs either.
He thought, if you didn't know what the building was,
then you didn't belong there. The Fountain Blow was famous
for its unique curved shape, which set it apart from
other hotels in the area. Ben took all the credit
for the design. He claimed that he was struck by

(17:10):
inspiration while sitting on the toilet and sketched the plans
out right then and there for two hours while his
pants were still around his ankles. Thank you for including
all of this extra detail.

Speaker 2 (17:23):
So hopefully it creates a little picture, yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:26):
That you don't want, while it's a good story. The
architect Morris Lappetis disputes this claim. Given his tendency for big,
blustery exaggerated claims, Ben was probably not actually responsible for
the design. Morris Lappetist spent years of his life working
on the fontain Blow for next to nothing. Novak paid
him an insultingly low wage, taking advantage of Lappetus's passion

(17:50):
for the project. Lappets put up with it because he
knew the project could put him on the map, make
him far more famous, and lead to better jobs. He
basically bankrupted him himself building the Fontain Blow, and even
took out personal loans to complete the construction. Meanwhile, Ben
Novak was making money off of the graft while he
told his financial partners that he was paying Morris Lapidis

(18:12):
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the project, In actuality,
he had only paid Lappetis eighty thousand, with an additional
handshake deal for seventy five thousand dollars to be paid
upon completion. Ben pocketed the difference for himself. So this
is a year's long project.

Speaker 2 (18:28):
Yeah, I think it took two years to build that.
I'm sure there was more time before they started building
for the design. So yeah, definitely length A lengthy project.

Speaker 1 (18:37):
When the construction was finally completed and Lapidis asked for
his additional seventy five thousand dollars, Ben pretended that he'd
never made any such deal. Lappetis so strung out and
tired from all the work and stretched so financially thin
completely snapped. He chased Ben around the hotel grounds and
a jacked him. People had to pull the two apart

(18:57):
when lappet Has explained the situation. They were curious that
Ben would try to con them out of their money.
Lappetis eventually got paid, but he and Novak became lifelong enemies.
Moore's Lapidus would later design the rival Eden Rock Hotel
right next to the Font and Blow for Ben Novak's
real estate enemy, Harry Muffson. Is a form of revenge

(19:18):
for being stiffed. Ever spiteful and not to be outdone,
Ben strategically built a seventeen story blank wall on the
Font and Blow property to block the sunlight from hitting
the eden Rock Pool during peak sunbathing hours. This became
known as the Spite Wall. There was only one large
window in the wall, which was strategically designed to give

(19:40):
line of sight from Ben and Bernice's dining room to
the eden Rock Pool area. Ben loved looking out as
the shadow crept over the pool, sending sunbathers scurrying away
to sunnier locations.

Speaker 2 (19:51):
That's crazy, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (19:53):
Its Banyana.

Speaker 2 (19:54):
There were lawsuits over this whole thing too, But I
don't think I don't think Muffson ever succeed getting the
wall removed.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
Really, it's not still there though, is it.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
It is still there, but it's not just a wall.
He actually built or somebody actually built another tower right
next to like where the wall is, so it's not
just a blank wall blocking the sunlight. But there is
a building there blocking the sunlight.

Speaker 3 (20:16):
Wow, that is nuts.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
The Fontain Blow became the its spot in the nineteen sixties.
The store Club for Miami Beach JFK would stay there
and was rumored to have stayed there with Marilyn Monroe.
Frank Sinatra was a frequent guest, which led to his
entire social circle becoming regulars. The rat Pack and the
Mob were now font and Blow staples, and with the

(20:38):
Mob's presence, drugs and prostitution followed. A steady supply of
cocaine and marijuana was available for those who wanted it,
and call girls could easily be found in the hotel's
poodle room lounge. Then and Bernice Novak became unbelievably wealthy.
Bernice had more jewelry than she knew what to do with,
including a massive diamond necklace personally gifted to her by

(21:00):
Frank Sinatra. Ben began calling himself mister Fontaineblow in day
to day conversation. Can you describe the font and blow
to us?

Speaker 2 (21:09):
It's beautiful, beautiful property. I think since this time that
we're talking about the case, it went downhill and then
it got renovated at some point. So what I saw
was after it was renovated and modernized, but a beautiful hotel,
very luxurious, very swanky. I was there at a conference
once and it was just a beautiful place.

Speaker 1 (21:29):
Did you see Sammy Davis Junior and drink Sinatra?

Speaker 2 (21:33):
I didn't. I think it might have been a little
mare time. No, not Dean Martin either.

Speaker 1 (21:38):
We'll be back after a break. I apologize for what
I said when you tried to give me corn muffins.
Sometimes I'm a little snarky and I'm just saying in
a jokey manner, and I feel like it comes across
as like I'm a really mean.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
I know that you're joking, so that's the main thing
that matters. I think pretty much everybody knows you're joking
to me.

Speaker 1 (22:07):
Let's go back to the case now, Okay.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
Bernice gave birth to Benjamin Novak Junior in nineteen fifty six. Benji,
as everyone called him, was faded to become a little monster.
Neither of his parents had any time for him. Whenever
Halloween rolled around, he was sent trick or treating in
a chauffeur limo.

Speaker 1 (22:27):
He was raised a rich boy.

Speaker 2 (22:28):
He was raised in a five star hotel with free
room service and cleaning whenever he wanted it. Basically, he
grew up with a staff of servants at his beck
and call. He was constantly exposed to the lifestyles of
the rich and famous, so he bore witness to drug use,
excessive drinking, and prostitution. At an early age, he was
taken care of by a strict German nurse named Bella,

(22:49):
who did everything for little Benji, including wiping his mouth
when he would eat. She also forced the naturally left
handed boy into using his right hand, which traumatized him.
According to real relatives, Benji was extremely poorly socialized and
had no manners whatsoever. He was incapable of interacting with
other children, who usually couldn't stand to be around him.

(23:10):
When he had tantrums, which was often everyone was afraid
to be near him. The few times he stayed with
his aunt Maxine and her children, she was horrified by
the child's behavior.

Speaker 1 (23:20):
It sounds like you're being overly harsh to poor little
Ben here.

Speaker 2 (23:23):
I don't think so. I think he was a little monster.
Ben and Bernice weren't raising their kid because they were
too busy cheating on each other a lot, like a
ridiculous amount. It was more Ben seeing other women than
Bernice seeing other men, but they were both doing it.
This reached a boiling point when Bernice slept with one
of the musicians headlining a performance at the Fontain Blow.

(23:44):
Ben found out, had the man beaten and threw him
out of the hotel. Divorce proceedings went forward. It took
a long time for the legal battle to settle, but
eventually Bernice was freed from Ben's shackles. She moved out
of the Fonta Blow, maintaining only a perfunctory presence in
her son's life, and devoted most of her time to
the Science of the Mind Church. As Benji grew older,

(24:05):
he developed a stutter so bad that he was practically nonverbal.
He basically couldn't communicate with anybody, especially not kids his
own age. He filled the social hole in his life
with Batman. He became obsessed with the sixties television show
starring Adam West. I had to include a little bit

(24:34):
of the Batman core memory.

Speaker 1 (24:36):
And this is really funny, Like, obviously I was not
a child of the sixties, but it was as a
rerun later. I remember as a little kid, whenever we
would watch Batman, I had a special dance that I did.
You know, it was like the Batman Dance song, and
I did it every time just to annoy my sister
and I would like to do it right.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
For the teav That is really funny.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
While we're on a tangent, you mentioned the Science of
the Mind church, which sounds like a cults type situation.
Was that the case.

Speaker 2 (25:09):
I don't think it's so much of a cult as
more of like a kind of a New Age type religion.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
So they were probably really happy to have a wealthy
divorce a in their presence.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
Yes, I'm sure Benji's Batman hobby led him to an interest,
maybe even an obsession, with stopping crime. He started hanging
out with all of the ex cops who worked security
at the font and Blow. It quickly became understood among
the security staff that keeping their jobs was contingent on
their willingness to babysit Benji. When he was fifteen years old,
Ben Senior arranged for Benji to go out on a

(25:42):
weekly ride alongs with the police. Since he had become
so obsessed with the idea of being a crime fighter
when he grew up, and since Ben Novak Senior was
such an influential guy and all of the retired cops
went to the Fontain blow for security work, there was
an unofficial employment pipeline which he presided over. The police
department had no choice but to let the kid ride along,

(26:04):
though the actual working cops had much less patience for
him than the Fontainblau security did. Eventually, Benji applied to
join the Miami Beach Police Department. He did so when
he was in the midst of working on a bachelor's degree.
He was accepted into the Southeast Florida Institute of Criminal
Justice in nineteen seventy four. He went through the mandatory
one hundred and sixty hours of training, graduated, and officially

(26:27):
became a member of the police department, a reserve officer.
Two ten hour shifts per month, so not a full
time officer. When his shifts rolled around, nobody in the
department wanted to ride with him. He had an incredibly
grating presence, was very high maintenance, entitled, whiney and rude.
On top of all that, he drove like a crazy
person in the squad car, making anyone unlucky enough to

(26:49):
find themselves in the passenger seat afraid for their life.
He had already been in a car accident once the
previous year, accidentally ramming his Ford Thunderbird into an ambulance.
He got off scott free, probably because of his dad's connections.
But Benji needed a job outside of his two shifts
per month roaming the streets wearing a badge and gun,

(27:10):
so his dad appointed him vice president of the Fontainbleau.
The position came with a salary, a company car, and
a luxury apartment inside the hotel.

Speaker 1 (27:18):
So he's like twenty three, twenty four maybe, and she's
vice president of this massive hotel.

Speaker 2 (27:25):
Yeah, which he has lived in his whole life.

Speaker 1 (27:27):
What could go wrong?

Speaker 4 (27:28):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (27:28):
Exactly.

Speaker 1 (27:29):
Sounds like the staff just adores him too, right, with.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
Free reign to do whatever he wanted in the hotel,
he would often play security guard. He could be found
prowling the halls looking for trouble, his police radio in
hand turned to full volume. All of the actual security
guards hated him. To give you an idea of Benji's appearance,
he was six foot three inches tall, towering over his father.
He had long black hair and a big, bushy beard,

(27:54):
neither of which were ever combed or groomed. He wore
oversized nineteen seventies style glass, a style that he preferred
for the entirety of his adult life. While ben Novak
Senior was a man who placed stock in old world
ideas of glamour and class, preferring a tailored suit and
a tie, and the occasional Trilby hat, which is similar
to a fedora. I had never heard of a Trilby

(28:16):
hat before myself. Benji exclusively wore Hawaiian shirts halfway buttoned up.
His furry chest was always prominently displayed to the world.
If he really had to dress up, you might see
him wearing a black T shirt under a blazer. There
was a rumor, never explicitly confirmed, that Benji had lost
his virginity very early in life to one of the
escorts who hung around the poodle room lounge. Given his

(28:39):
tendency to pester the staff of the hotel until they
did what he wanted lest he tell his father about
their disobedience, it adds up that he might have propositioned
one of the escorts and leveraged his father's influence to
make it happen. He certainly had a type that was
similar to the poodle room women, tall, glamorous, voluptuous. When
he got a little older, he had a rotating roster

(28:59):
of women who he'd see almost exclusively sex workers, showgirls,
and strippers. He brought his favorites to his friend, doctor
Larry Robbins, a plastic surgeon for breast augmentation surgeries. He
was always adamant that he picked the size of the implants,
and that he watched while Robins performed the surgery.

Speaker 1 (29:17):
Well, this is a little creepy.

Speaker 2 (29:19):
It's a lot creepy. His first serious relationship of note
was with Jill Campion, a twenty nine year old former showgirl.
Benji was only twenty at the time, but he had
lied and told her that he was thirty. With his
massive beard, he could pass for older. He had also
at this point gotten a handle on his stutter. Benji
was very controlling and much like his father, he was

(29:40):
unfaithful from the very beginning, regularly cheating on her with
a flight attendant. He insisted upon Jill being as skinny
as possible. He made her take diet pills and would
often choose her clothing for her. Jill's friends, surprise, surprise,
hated Benji. He was rude and brash and had no filter.
He would often tell Jill's friends that they ought to
change the way they dress, or he would criticize how

(30:03):
they wore their hair. At this point, along with the cheating,
he also developed a taste for cocaine. He always had
a bag on him and he would even sniff the
stuff when he went out on patrol. He liked using it,
of course, it got him high, but he also liked
just having it. It kept people coming to him. He
had something that people wanted, which in turn made him
feel wanted and powerful. Even though he was a terrible boyfriend,

(30:27):
Jill saw something in him and decided to move in
with him. After dating for two months, He proposed to
her soon after, in what is probably the least romantic
way to propose to someone. He simply left a ring
on her dresser, never even verbally asking her to marry him.

Speaker 1 (30:44):
So she said yes. Apparently she just started wearing the
ring in that guess, so very strange. The fontam Blow
started to hit harder times in the late nineteen seventies
after several changes in the hospitality market. Disney World opened
up in Orlando, siphoning business away from Miami Beach. Las
Vegas became the new crazy party destination with the added

(31:05):
bonus of legal gambling, so those seeking debauchery were less
inclined to make the trip to Florida. Cruises were becoming
a lot more popular as well, with more fun and
novelty to offer vacationers compared to the krusty old font
and Blow. The font and Blow was great if you
were a mobster, old school rep retpac guy, or a

(31:26):
sleazy politician looking to hire a sex worker in the
poodle room, but that's not enough to build a whole
business on where it mattered. The font and Blau was
being outclassed, and their once handsome, French inspired decorp now
just looked dated. So the way you're describing this, it
became kind of like the cdmotel in town where maybe

(31:47):
illegal activities happened.

Speaker 2 (31:49):
Yeah, and I think the whole town kind of went
downhill a little bit too, because people were going to
other other places, more so than Miami Beach at that time.

Speaker 1 (31:56):
With less money pouring in, Ben Seniors stopped paying his taxes.
It turns out the IRS doesn't like it when you
do that.

Speaker 2 (32:03):
Don't do that if you're thinking about it.

Speaker 1 (32:05):
They began investigating the Fontainebleau, and by nineteen seventy six
they informed Ben's Senior that he owed one point three
million dollars in back taxes. He either needed to pay
up or the hotel would be auctioned off to the
highest bidder by the government. Ben Senior managed to scrounge
up two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to pay off
some of the debt and keep the lights on for

(32:26):
a little longer, but the financial toll was being felt
by the staff and guests. The font and Blow staff
stopped receiving health coverage. Their paychecks were late if they
came at all. The bartenders were told to pour cheap
champagne into the dom Perignon bottles. The local three point
fifty five union for hotel workers went on strike due
to the poor treatment. Ben's Senior handled that how you

(32:48):
would expect, threatening to fire them and hire new employees
who wouldn't complain. Frank Sinatra, wanting to preserve the memory
of his old haunt, tried to buys Ben's Senior out
and take over the hotel, but Ben Senior was stubborn
as always and refused to even think about it. This
led to a knocked down fistfight between the two men.

(33:08):
Sinatra would never return to the Fontainblue Wow. In January
nineteen seventy seven, the Fontainbleau went into state court receivership,
now owing twenty seven million dollars in back taxes, Ben
Senior filed for a Chapter eleven bankruptcy just to stay
at the Helm a little longer. He was allowed to

(33:29):
keep running the hotel as if it were normal, but
it was no longer the bastion of five star luxury
it was once famous for. Employees were not being paid,
the bed sheets weren't even being washed. Seeing the writing
on the wall, Novak moved all of his assets into
offshore accounts, trying to hoard as much wealth as possible
as he could for the eventual doomsday when he would

(33:50):
be ousted from the Fontain Blow. That day came in
nineteen seventy eight, when housing developer and land barn Stephen
Muss bought the hotel. He hired Hilton to manage the
day to day of the hotel and put a large
sign outside for the first time in its twenty four
years of operation. Ben Senior was devastated. Here he was

(34:11):
mister Fontenblau, who had lived in the hotel for decades,
kicked out of the building he had made into his identity.
Ben Senior moved in with his sister and sued to
have his alimony payments to Bernice terminated now that he
didn't have an official income. Of course, this was just
legal acrobatics. In reality, he had plenty of money. He

(34:31):
began drowning his sorrows, drinking himself into oblivion. While not
quite as upset as his father, Benji wasn't happy about
the change in ownership either. He had been hoping to
eventually inherit the Fontenblou. Now he didn't even have the
make work job his dad had given him. He downgraded
to working for the health and beauty and multi level
marketing company Amway. International. He had a forty five thousand

(34:54):
dollars per year salary, running conventions and entertaining board members.
Benji and Jill Mary in nineteen seventy nine in an
Orthodox Jewish ceremony. Joe and through the conversion process a
few months earlier for Benji. The two never took a honeymoon.
Benji was too busy with work. He did find time
to head out on a business trip immediately after their ceremony.

(35:15):
Though Bernice was displeased by the marriage, feeling her son
could do better than some former show girl, and she
made her distaste for Jill well known to anybody who
would listen. She also didn't like the age gap and
felt Benji ought to be with someone closer to his
own age. Jill, of course, didn't actually know Benji's real age,
or at least not until they were married. One night,

(35:36):
he confessed to Jill that he'd bled about his age
and that he was ten years younger than he said
he was. It suddenly made much more sense to Jill
why Bernice had been so cruel to her. Benji and
Jill tried to buy a house together, but Bernice got
on the way confined to his forty five thousand dollars
annual salary. Benji was dependent on his mother for her
most large expenses. Bernice would only help her son purchase

(36:00):
a house if Jill's name was kept off the deed,
So no house for them. So forty five thousand dollars
a year, this is like nineteen seventy eight ish. That's
still a very good salary.

Speaker 2 (36:12):
Bad, but yeah, I think he was still just getting
started though.

Speaker 1 (36:15):
One day, Jill found girafts for divorce papers in their apartment.
She confronted Benji with them, and he told Jill that
they were forgeries. His mother had been bothering him so
much about his marriage to Jill that he'd lied to
her and told her that they'd gotten divorced. Jill couldn't
stand how controlling Bernice was and how ben humored her interventions. This,

(36:35):
on top of constant cheating, led to a real divorce
only two years after they'd gotten married. Benji turned his
amway job into something bigger. Leveraging his name and family reputation,
He courted other corporate clients, organizing conventions for them as well.
He started his own company called Convention Concepts Unlimited. Bernice

(36:55):
now on the board of the Science of the Mine
Church joined Benji's company. In a scene your position, she
used her leadership role in the church to register Convention
Concepts Unlimited as a religious organization exempt from taxes.

Speaker 2 (37:09):
That's pretty shady, I'll say.

Speaker 1 (37:12):
Be also applied to become a detective, but he was
rejected due to the remaining vestiges of his stutter, which
came out under stress. This was a problem for police work,
which requires constant communication over the radio in stressful situations.
His father was no longer in a position to pressure
people to promote his son. To scratch the itch, Benji

(37:33):
formed his own private security company called Eagle. It functioned
primarily as a partner corporation for Convention's Concepts Unlimited, offering
security services for corporate events and conventions, but also offered
other services such as discreete surveillance for divorce attorneys. Now,
whenever he wanted to play detective, Benji had the opportunity

(37:54):
to spend the night staking out the home of a
suspected cheating spouse.

Speaker 2 (37:58):
He really really wanted to fight crime bad.

Speaker 1 (38:01):
Yeah, he really did. So he's got these two businesses.
It's kind a lot going on here, so what is
the convention's concepts unlimited?

Speaker 2 (38:10):
So it's basically like an event planning organization, like companies
that need to put on a convention or whatever. He
would help organize the convention and manage it.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
Did he kind of hand that over to his mom
and that became her project.

Speaker 2 (38:23):
No, I think they worked on it together, and I
think the security company was just sort of a side
project and he would just, you know, his convention company
would hire his security company to do security at the
conferences that he managed. In nineteen eighty three, Benji was
out at a strip club with his cop buddies, something
he did a lot, especially post divorce, and found himself
enthralled by a blonde Ecuadorian stripper who called herself Sylvia.

(38:47):
He was generous with his money and slipped quite a
lot of cash into her thong. As he was leaving,
he handed Sylvia his business card and told her to
call him. Sylvia was a stage name. The woman's real
name was Narcisa Vali Pacheco, but everyone just called her Narsy.
She was supposedly born in nineteen fifty three, but we
have no tangible proof of that, and she was known

(39:08):
to lie about her age. Narsy was raised in Guadyakiel,
the largest city in Ecuador. Her family wasn't completely impoverished,
but they were definitely on the poorer side. One of
eight children, she toughened up quickly out of necessity. When
she was twenty three, Narsy emigrated from Ecuador to the
United States, settling down in Hyalia, Florida. She was following

(39:29):
in the footsteps of several of her older siblings who
had made the move before her, and ended up in
New York or Naples. She brought with her her husband
and their two year old daughter, may Abad. The husband
was not in the picture for very long. The marriage
broke up soon after they arrived in Florida. Now a
single mother with bills to pay and a mouth to feed,
she became an exotic dancer to make ends meet. The

(39:51):
club she danced at was called Folly's International. Her coworkers
found her unpleasant. She was easily angered and poorly mannered,
so she was a perfect matt for Benji.

Speaker 1 (40:02):
Think you read a little hard on poor Benji.

Speaker 2 (40:04):
She called him, dialing the number on his business card.
Once she learned he was the son of the ben
Novak senior and the heir to a small fortune. Within
two months of meeting Benji, Narsy moved in with him.
But there was a catch. He didn't want May, her daughter,
living in his home. Narsy was fine with that one
less responsibility for her and her relationship with May wasn't

(40:27):
good anyway, There was no love lost. It was probably
for the best for May to get away from her mother,
who was allegedly sadistic and physically abusive. She would sometimes
whip May with electrical cords or make her kneel on
the sharp edges of crushed beer cans.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
What the heck.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
At eight years old, May was shipped off to Naples, Florida,
where she lived with Narcy's sister. So, yeah, yet another
person in the story who just doesn't want to raise
their kid and just like, yeah, not interested in doing that.

Speaker 1 (40:56):
Well, it sounds like May was better off, yes, out
of the picture.

Speaker 2 (40:59):
Anyway, Yeah, absolutely. Meanwhile, ben Novak Senior was continuing his dissent.
He was not handling his absence from the limelight. Well,
he was in a wheelchair, becoming forgetful, rarely appearing in public,
and no longer wearing his trademark tailored suits. However, he
never stopped carrying on his affairs with much younger women. Once,

(41:20):
while in his seventies, he began a fling with an
eighteen year old, even accompanying her to her high school prom.
Saw this, No, I wish I did. I'll try to
find some, but I have not come across any. But
I can't even It just boggles my mind. Seventy some

(41:41):
years old.

Speaker 1 (41:42):
Yeah, why would an eighteen year old once?

Speaker 2 (41:46):
I don't know. I don't know. And in his final
years he could often be seen arm in arm with
the former Miss Uruguay.

Speaker 1 (41:53):
He must have had a really good personality.

Speaker 2 (41:55):
I bet he did. In a bid for a new
business venture, he bought a supermarket in Boynton Beach, a
neighborhood in the Miami area, and renovated it, turning it
into a high end restaurant. It was going to be
called Alcatraz and themed around the idea of prison.

Speaker 1 (42:11):
Prisons are known for great food that people would want
to pay money for.

Speaker 2 (42:16):
Yes, yes, the diners would be inmates, taken to their
cells where they would be served prison food. It was
a terrible idea and it was a miserable failure.

Speaker 1 (42:26):
So he goes from the Fontain blow to serving prison food.

Speaker 2 (42:30):
Yes. The nicest thing anybody had to say about it
was that it was different.

Speaker 1 (42:35):
It's like the zoo, like when we would go to
the Toledo Zoo and like they have the restaurant in
the cage and I'm talking about it.

Speaker 2 (42:40):
Oh, yes, yeah, very very much.

Speaker 1 (42:42):
You got hamburgers right, hot dogs.

Speaker 2 (42:45):
In July nineteen eighty four, Benji was promoted to detective
after receiving commendations for chasing a dots in which was
veering around on the road erratically. When Benji apprehended the
man inside, he immediately confessed to a string of auto thefts.
It was a case of being in the right place
at the right time more than any actual police work,
but Benji was very proud of it. In nineteen eighty five,

(43:08):
ben Novak Senior had a major stroke and was sent
to the hospital. He died a week later, his heart
and lungs had failed due to complications created by the stroke.
He was seventy eight. He was buried in New York
in his family plot. Miss Uruguay tried her hardest to
get a piece of the will, but unfortunately for her,
it pretty much all went to Benji.

Speaker 1 (43:28):
Do you know how much was it? Millions?

Speaker 2 (43:30):
Yeah? I think his estate was estimated to be worth
about ten million at that time.

Speaker 1 (43:35):
So probably about thirty million today.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
Yeah, we'll be back after a break.

Speaker 1 (43:46):
Now folly in control of his family's estate and no
longer reliant on his mother for money, Benji went hogwild.
Any semblance of humility or human decency. I thought you
said he didn't have any human decency.

Speaker 2 (43:59):
I don't oh if he did, but at.

Speaker 1 (44:01):
This point it seems to have left him. He bought
a luxury yacht fifty feet long, which he called White Lightning.
So yachts, I know, very a lot is fifty fifty
feet as a relatively small yacht.

Speaker 2 (44:13):
I mean, it sounds like a perfect size for me.
But I guess in the grand scheme of things, if
you look at, you know, the wide variety of yachts
that are out there, it's probably.

Speaker 1 (44:23):
On the smell. Quick Google search told me fifty two
one hundred.

Speaker 2 (44:26):
Feet of the average yacht size.

Speaker 4 (44:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:29):
He would often have Narsy pose on the bow as
some sort of living figurehead. He bought a private island,
had a share of a private jet, though he still
had a flight commercial because he always managed to make
the pilots mad with his ill mannerisms. Once he brought
Nursey Intouble plastic surgeon for a nose job, but when

(44:49):
she woke up along with her new nobles, she had
giant breast and plants put in without her knowledge or consent.

Speaker 2 (44:57):
It's horrible, really horrible and horrible that he could find
a doctor who would do that.

Speaker 1 (45:01):
Absolutely, Narsy put up with a law from Benji. She
took the breast and plants and stride along with his
crass behavior, his mother's constant disapproving jabs, and the occasional
violent altercations. Ultimately, she enjoyed the incredible access to extravagant wealth.
She loved having a closet full of more designer shoes
than she could ever possibly wear. But where she always

(45:24):
drew the line was infidelity. Whenever she discovered Benji was
seeing another woman on the side, and he was always
seeing another woman on the side, she would go nuclear,
threatening to burnt down their house. Bernice hadn't liked Jill,
and her interference was what ultimately led to the end
of that relationship. She hated Narsy in the company of

(45:45):
her friends and loved ones. She would refuse to even
speak Narsy's name, and she had no longer any financial
leverage over Benji, so she couldn't control him the way
she used to. And even though Benji was a cold,
unaffectionate son, often not even calling her mom, he just
called her Bernice, she still desperately loved him and wanted
to be in his life, so she bit her tongue

(46:06):
and chose her battles. When Benji asked Narsi to marry
him in December of nineteen ninety, instead of objecting to
the marriage completely, she instead only insisted that Narsi convert
to Judaism. Benji's company, Convention Concepts Unlimited, had now become
very profitable and popular. In nineteen ninety, the value of
the business was now three point two million dollars, with

(46:29):
profits being squirreled away in offshore accounts. That's a lot
of money and Benji didn't want to share control of it,
so he had Narsy sign a prenuptial agreement. If they
were divorced within the next ten years, she would receive
none of the estate. After those ten years, she would
receive a single payout of sixty five thousand dollars in
the event of a divorce. That sounds like a poultry

(46:51):
sum compared to his networth. Yes, for sure, she would
be excluded from all life insurance, any trusts, and after
his death the estate would move into z session of
his next of kin, which would be as mom Bernice.
Since ben had no children. In the prenup, there was
a stipulation made that this could all be superseded by
Benji's last will and testament if he wished. Narcy reluctantly

(47:13):
signed the agreement. Narsy began lying about her past to
fit in better with her luxurious surroundings. She claimed to
have been from a wealthy Ecuadorian family and that she
was the daughter of a shrimp farming magnate. She also
claimed that she used to be a fashion designer. May
Narsi's daughter, had a child when she was only sixteen
years old. Narsy was now a grandmother. She hadn't even

(47:37):
been interested in parenting, but something about becoming a grandmother
seemed to have softened her a bit. May and her
child would now visit occasionally. Benji, for the most part,
seems to have disliked his stepdaughter, but would occasionally throw
work her way as a favor to Narcy. She would
sometimes stop in and do jobs at the convention's Concepts
Unlimited offices, where Benji's mother, Bernice could often be found,

(48:00):
and may formed a bond of sorts over their mutual
hatred of Narsy. In early nineteen ninety four, Benji and
Narsy moved to Fort Lauderdale. They renovated a house there
from top to bottom, turning it into more of a compound.
They had an enormous fish pond in the back left
over decor from the funt and blow, and a dock
for Benji's boat. A big house for Benji to fill

(48:21):
with all of his Batman memorabilia. Since childhood, Benji had
an all encompassing obsession with the comic book character Batman.
In the nineties, he'd started amassing a massive, world class
collection of all things Batman. He went on massive spending
sprees on eBay and would often frequent comic conventions. Every morning,

(48:42):
boxes would pile up on the porch. The large house
was soon filled with Batman collectibles. They literally could not
stuff any more Batman memorabilia under the roof. That sounds really.

Speaker 2 (48:54):
Class sounds like your dream house, doesn't it.

Speaker 1 (48:56):
He rented out warehouses so he could store everything. The
collection would eventually grow so large that it filled four warehouses.
The rarest, most expensive stuff stayed in Benji's house, which
he transformed into his own personal Batman museum. His father
had the fontain blow, Benji had Batman. Another collection Benji amassed,

(49:19):
but which he was far more secretive about, was his
extensive collection of amputee pornography. Thousands of photographs of men
and women without limbs, naked or scantily clad, being fitted
for prosthetics.

Speaker 2 (49:33):
That is a fetish I did not know existed.

Speaker 1 (49:36):
That is very niche sure. Benji's sexual appetite was voracious
and diverse. He and Nursey would often engage in bondage.
He enjoyed amputee porn, and he always had two or
three other women in apartments around the Miami area. He
paid their rent and bills and bought them groceries. The
arrangement was that they'd stop and every once in a while,

(49:57):
and they'd show him a good time. Benji's cheating became
more obvious as time went on, and is previously mentioned.
Whenever Narsy caught wind of infidelity, she exploded. Their arguments
grew worse, sometimes getting so violent that the interior of
their house would be torn apart. I hope none of
their Batman memorabilia was daking the same thing. Their fights

(50:18):
became increasingly physical. The bruises were sometimes so bad that
Narci couldn't hide them with makeup. In nineteen ninety nine,
Bernice became convinced that Narcy was trying to poison her.
Bernice noticed that every time she drank water which Narcy
had given her or had put in the fridge of
the office, her throat would nearly swell shut.

Speaker 3 (50:37):
She'd have difficulties.

Speaker 1 (50:38):
Swallowing and breathing. She told those around her about it,
but nobody took Bernie seriously. They found the idea that
Narsy might poison anybody preposterous. But it wasn't just pernice.
There were at least two separate instances of Benji going
to the hospital after eating food prepared by Narsi.

Speaker 2 (50:56):
In two thousand and two, Benji found out that Narci
had cheated on him. Even though he'd been cheating on
her for their entire marriage, he was still boiling with rage.
Benji decided he wanted out of the relationship and started
making preparations for divorce. Narsi was not about to let
Benji leave her with the paltry sixty five thousand dollars
in the prenup, not when his estate was worth millions.

(51:17):
At one a m on June ninth, two thousand and two,
three armed men burst into Narsi and Benji's bedroom. Benji
went for the handgun he kept in his night stand,
but was stopped as Narsi shouted to the men, look out,
he has a gun on his night stand. One man
pinned him to the bed, another put a pillow over
his face. The third took the gun from Benji's hand

(51:38):
and smashed him in the head with it. Narsi rushed
off to disable the house's alarm system while the men
tied him to a chair. When Narsi returned to their bedroom,
she threatened Benji. She told him that she was going
to slice his penis off and throw it in the
canal behind their home. She never made good on her threat,
but it was enough to keep Benji quiet and obedient

(51:58):
Over the next day. While Benji was indisposed, Narsi ransacked
their house. She took several hundred thousand dollars worth of cash,
family heirlooms, jewelry and antiques, multiple guns, business records, Benji's
precious Batman memorabilia, and she even took his precious amputee pornography.
As Narsi was leaving her spoils in a large moving van,

(52:20):
she removed Benji's blindfold. She told him that she would
call a neighbor in a few minutes once she was gone,
and would have them release him. Then, she said, if
I can't have you, then no one will have you.
The men that helped me will come back and finish
the job. I can have you killed any time I want.
You're not dead now, only because I stopped them. After
being set free, Benji wasn't sure what to do. He

(52:43):
was worried about calling the cops, as he thought the
men who had raided his home may still be watching him.
If they saw the police coming up his driveway, they
might come back and kill him. But after talking it
over with his mother and a former cop friend, he
decided to file an official report. He rang the Fort
law Dderdale Police Department, asking them to show up in
unmarked cars and to keep a low profile. When detectives

(53:06):
arrived on the scene, they found Benji covered in cuts,
his wrists still raw from the binding. He told them everything,
showed them the damage, and enumerated his stolen property. He
made sure they knew exactly how much money was taken,
four hundred and forty thousand dollars. Bernice drove to the
house as well to make sure Benji was okay. She
mentioned to the police that she suspected Narci had tried

(53:28):
to poison her in the past. In fact, earlier that afternoon,
just hours before the home invasion, she had ingested water
that Narci had been in contact with, and her mouth
was still numb. The police ordered her to the hospital
and they took the water bottle in question for evidence.
Benji called Narci and tried to negotiate with her over
the phone, hoping to at least get her to return

(53:49):
his money, if nothing else. The detectives working the case
also called Narci's cell. She agreed to come into the
police station for an interview. She wanted the police to
know her side of the story, feeling there were likely
some things Benji wasn't sharing with them. When Narsi arrived
at police headquarters. She brought an accordion file in with her.
She emptied it out in front of the detective working

(54:11):
the case. It was Benji's collection of amputee pornography. She
told the police that they would fight all the time,
that he'd broken her nose. At one point. She told
them about the breast implants that were forced upon her.
Quote is a vicious circle. I have left him twenty times,
or forty times or fifty times. She'd had enough of it,
so she was moving out. That's why she had the

(54:32):
moving truck. And those men that Benji claimed tied him up,
they were just laborers who she had hired for moving help.
As for the marks on his wrists, those were just
from their routine sexual bondage. He had willingly submitted to
being tied up. Narsi had just chosen not to untie
him as she was moving out, to make it easier
on herself. The business records were ammunition for divorce proceedings,

(54:54):
and she also claimed that she had only taken five
thousand dollars in cash, not the four hundred and forty
thousand Benji had claimed. The detectives noted several discrepancies in
Narci's story and pointed them out to her. She changed
her story over the course of the interview and eventually
admitted to threatening Benji, but she claimed they were just words,
just meant to scare him. She would never actually cut

(55:16):
his penis off. The detectives called Benji and told him
about the reams of amputee porn that Narcy had shown them,
and how his fetish would certainly be made a part
of the public record if he decided to pursue charges
against her. If Benji could manage to convince Narsi to
return his property without police involvement, it might be better
for everybody. So Benji hired a private investigator named Pat

(55:38):
Franklin to find Narsi. The two had first met when
Benji was a teenager at the Fountain Blow. Benji told
Pat two separate stories about the events of June ninth.
In the first story, he said that he, Narsi and
another woman were engaged in a threesome. They had him
tied up at the foot of the bed, and he
had been watching them have sex. Then, while he was

(55:58):
tied up, the armed men charged arged in He didn't
know what happened to the other woman. In the second story,
Benji said that he was just asleep. The two men
jumped on the bed, covered him with a sheet and pillows,
and beat the crap out of him. He went for
the gun, then Narsi shouted, warning them. The entire time,
Narsi was on the phone with a man called Lou,
an ex boyfriend who had just gotten out of prison

(56:20):
who Narsi had dated back when she was working as
an exotic dancer. Pat Franklin likely concluded that he wasn't
going to get the complete truth out of Benji. He
decided the important part was to just do what he
was paid for, track down Narsi and find Benji's stuff.
It wasn't hard. Pat called Narsi and she immediately agreed
to meet. They convened in a diner. Pat called Benji

(56:43):
and put him on speaker phone, then handed the phone
to Narsy. Benji and Narsi started speaking to each other
in baby talk. Narsi apologized, said she'd make it all
up to Benji and started crying him, begging him not
to prosecute her for the home invasion. Benji agreed to
drop all the charges as long as his belongings were returned.
When Narsy hung up, she immediately stopped crying and winked

(57:06):
at Pat. Then she led Pat to the storage unit
where she had been keeping all of Benji's stuff. Among
the piles of boxes and furniture, there was an accordion folder.
Narsy made sure to show Pat everything inside. Wanting to
humiliate her husband, Benji officially dropped all the charges, signing
a form at the police station. Whatever was the truth

(57:26):
of what happened on June ninth, two thousand and two,
it was a harbinger of things to come, things that
we will talk about in part two.

Speaker 1 (57:34):
Well, no one has been killed, so they lived happily
ever after.

Speaker 2 (57:38):
You can go on believing that until we get to
part two.

Speaker 1 (57:41):
Part two is going to be how they got back together.

Speaker 2 (57:43):
Benji went into therapy and dealt with his issues, and
Narsi went to marriage counseling and all worked out. Yeah,
and Narsi reconciled with her daughter.

Speaker 1 (57:54):
May now you've given it all away. Now no one's
going to come and listen a part too.

Speaker 2 (57:59):
You should definitely come back to part two. What do
you think so far of ben Junior, Benji and Narsi?

Speaker 1 (58:05):
They are a couple of characters.

Speaker 2 (58:07):
They certainly are.

Speaker 1 (58:08):
When we tell all these stories about these people that have,
you know, like these fetishes, and you know, there are narcissisms,
and I just feel so boring and normal. I think
the apt porn, I mean, that's really that is very
disturbing stuff. I've I really didn't know that I existed.

Speaker 2 (58:25):
Yeah. Same, So I wasn't lying in the beginning when
I said that almost no one in this story is likable.
I think may Narcie's daughter. We haven't talked about her
a lot, but I think she's about the only one
that has sort of has, you know, some reading good redemption.
Arc Yeah, pretty much. I do feel like we've been
a little bit hard on Benji throughout this story. But
I don't know, do you do you feel any sympathy

(58:46):
for him just because of his upbringing? Obviously he didn't
he wasn't brought up in the best of circumstances, but
he's also seems like he was a real jerk and
not a great guy.

Speaker 1 (58:56):
Yeah, sure, I mean I have empathy for any one
who had a hard upbringing, just because you grow up
with money and you know, and everything is given to
you on a whim. I mean, I can still have
empathy for you. It's hard to grow up with absentee
parents and not have you know, love and yeah, someone
there for you all the time.

Speaker 2 (59:16):
I also wanted to know how you felt about a
seventy plus year old man going to prom with an
eighteen year old.

Speaker 1 (59:22):
That's a real head scratcher for me. I mean, I'm
sure he was. I was just going to say a
great guy, but we know that that's actually not the case.
Maybe it was just kind of like a joke, or
maybe he just paid for everything. I don't it's hard
to imagine.

Speaker 2 (59:36):
It is a real head scratcher.

Speaker 1 (59:38):
Maybe it was just the novelty of the whole thing.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (59:42):
I don't know. Well, there is a lot more to
come in part two, so be sure to come back
and join us.

Speaker 1 (59:52):
Should we have a Love Mary Kill convention at the
funt and Blow.

Speaker 2 (59:56):
I think we should. Yeah, I think do it all right,
Everybody meet us at the onto.

Speaker 1 (01:00:00):
The week of November, second week of November.

Speaker 2 (01:00:04):
Sure, that gives us plenty of time to plan it
all out. Sure, we'll see you there. I had kind
of a crazy work experience a couple of weeks ago
that I wanted to share. It was pretty I don't know,
kind of scary in a way. I'm a little nervous
to talk about it, but I think I think it's
past now. But I was hiring someone for a job,
and so I was interviewing different people in the way

(01:00:24):
that because you're very important, very important. So the way
it works when you're hiring someone is we have a
recruiter in our company who does, like the initial interview
with people, and then if if the recruiter thinks that
it's someone worthy, then they'll send them on to me
and I'll do the next interview, and then if I
think they're good, then I'll get like some of our
executives involved, and then make a decision. So we are

(01:00:45):
interviewing a bunch of different candidates, and our recruiter sent
me this candidate. I'm going to call him Bob, not
his real name. I interviewed Bob, and I was sort
of like he was okay. He wasn't the best candidate
in the world, but he wasn't bad either. He was
kind of in the middle. But at the end of
the day, I didn't I didn't love him like I
had other candidates. I liked better, and he sort of
gave me a vibe that I was just like I

(01:01:07):
didn't love. So I told our recruiter, now, let's let's
reject this guy and move on. And so our recruiter
we always like close the loop with candidates so they're
not left hanging, so he contacted him and said, yeah,
we've decided not to move forward. The next day, our
recruiter messaged me and he said, just just so you know,
I woke up this morning and I had like seven

(01:01:29):
missed phone calls from Bob, this guy, and he said,
I thought I thought that he was it was maybe
a butt dial or something like that, like in the
middle of the night. So he called him back and
he said the guy was like slurring his words and
was like really angry that we had rejected him, and
basically like told our recruiter Michael to f off and

(01:01:50):
hung up on him. So the recruiter told me this
because he's like, I just want you to know just
in case you may hear from him or something. Sure enough,
the next morning, I wake up to like ten emails
from this guy that are like horrible, like I can't even.

Speaker 1 (01:02:06):
Can you read some of them? Please please, I.

Speaker 2 (01:02:08):
Mean, I I can. Maybe I'm gonna have to. I'm
gonna have to skip a lot of words, but I'll
sure I'll read you one.

Speaker 4 (01:02:16):
All right.

Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
I'm gonna read this one, and I just a warning
for people who are sensitive. There are some words in
here I would never ever use. I'm just gonna read them, though,
because this is what he wrote. The subject line of
the email is your hatred of Christians, which I had
no idea of his religion. We never talked about religion
on the phone. But anyway, you both think you can

(01:02:36):
and this is to me and the recruiter. You both
think you can mock God and act like him on
earth by judging others and determining their life outcome. Fuck
both of you. You will be sent to eternal damnation
and have a pineapple shoved up your ass in hell
every day. The best thing is here. He signs his

(01:02:56):
email best Bob. So, yeah, I woke up to like
all these emails the next morning, and it was it
was pretty freaking out.

Speaker 1 (01:03:07):
You were a little freaked out.

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):
Luckily he lives far away, so I wasn't like, you know,
super concerned about my safety. But still that's like very
strange behavior. I've never had anything remotely like that happen.

Speaker 1 (01:03:18):
Yeah, I think the Bobers may have a substance abuse problem.
And we wish him well. I hope he he found
a job, and I hope things went better for him.

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
I would I hope no one hired. I mean, I
wouldn't want to hire. I thought about it because I
didn't really dislike him. I thought, boy, if we had
hired this guy, like what a disaster that would have
ended up being. But I do hope he gets help
because he obviously has some pretty serious issues.

Speaker 1 (01:03:44):
I mean, it's tough out there. It's tough finding a
job right now.

Speaker 2 (01:03:46):
And yeah, but anyone who's ever like interviewed and looked
for jobs, you get rejected nine times out of ten.
Like it's just the way that the whole thing works.
So if you're going to react like that every time
you get rejected, you're in for a hard time. But
we we like blocked him. Luckily, he didn't have my
phone numbers. He had the recruiter's phone numbers.

Speaker 1 (01:04:04):
Oh okay, that's why you got the emails.

Speaker 2 (01:04:06):
Yeah, he was calling the recruiter over and over again,
and we we we blocked him everywhere. I blocked him
on LinkedIn and haven't heard anything in over two weeks now,
so I'm hopeful that he has just moved on.

Speaker 1 (01:04:17):
Yeah, you mentioned at the beginning of this episode that
you've done several cases about people who have a lot
of money, and I'm just curious if you had, you know,
ten million dollars or well, I guess thirty million dollars,
would you buy a yacht, would you charter a private plane?
What would what would be your you know, biggest indulgence.

Speaker 2 (01:04:39):
That is a really good question. I've honestly not really
thought about it much.

Speaker 1 (01:04:43):
Yeah, because you know, we're never going to have a
million dollars, probably.

Speaker 2 (01:04:47):
Not, But the main I mean, to me, the main
thing would be buying like a house that we really
really loved in a location that we really really loved,
like a beautiful house on the shores of Lake Michigan.

Speaker 1 (01:04:58):
Yeah, that would which which I think we always thought
would be like that was always kind of our dream,
and I think we've slowly realized that it's probably not
going to happen because real estate keeps going up, and yeah,
that's we have a lovely house though, So I feel
like Honestly, I was just thinking about this the other day.
And this is going to sound cheesy, so forgive me,
but I was looking around and I'm like, you know,

(01:05:20):
I mean, our life isn't perfect, but we really couldn't
ask for much more. Yeah, for sure, you know, we've
we've got our health, We've got you know, beautiful children.
You know, we've got more than enough of everything. So
even though we're not multimillionaires, we're you know, yeah, really
about all you can really ask for.

Speaker 2 (01:05:36):
Well, now I feel like you've tricked me by asking
what I would do if I had thirty million dollars.
You came back and said, well, I don't. I don't
need anything.

Speaker 1 (01:05:44):
By all the corn muffins in the world for you,
we would have just a corn muffin closet just for you. Actually, listeners,
I we sit here. You know, it takes us probably
two or three times as long to record as the
episode is. And I was bored when you were going
to the room and I ate some of the corn muffin.
I welln't wasn't as bad as I had it was
going to be. It's tasted more like like a moist

(01:06:06):
muffin than a corn muffin and I'm going to create
the cheetos to like.

Speaker 2 (01:06:11):
Yeah, you've been lunching on the little bit.

Speaker 1 (01:06:13):
Yeah yeah, So anyway, sorry for roasting you, but I'm
not sorry because I think you deserve. You need to
be roasted.

Speaker 2 (01:06:22):
I know I need to be humbled.

Speaker 1 (01:06:23):
You used to be roasty like you like to be roast.

Speaker 2 (01:06:26):
I would miss it if I wasn't roasted by you.

Speaker 1 (01:06:31):
Before we go. I just want to give a sincere
thank you to all of you for continuing to support
us and encourage us, and for your friendship and support.
It means the world to us.

Speaker 2 (01:06:41):
I wish we could give all of our listeners a
big hug.

Speaker 1 (01:06:43):
Yeah I do too, because we really do, genuinely appreciate.

Speaker 2 (01:06:47):
Yeah, it means so much to us every time we
hear from you, every time we get feedback, and just
knowing that you're out there listening to us.

Speaker 1 (01:06:53):
And I know we say it a lot, but we
can't say it enough because there wouldn't be a podcast
without your support.

Speaker 2 (01:06:58):
Very true. If you'd like to listen to part two
of this story right now, you can join us on
patreon dot com slash Love Marykill. We have one tier
at five dollars a month, which gets you early ad
free access plus a monthly bonus episode.

Speaker 1 (01:07:11):
Please rate, review, follow and subscribe. Find us on social
media or YouTube, or send us an email at Lovemarykill
at gmail dot com. I almost give my personal email
until next time.

Speaker 4 (01:07:24):
Don't kill your wife and don't kill your husband.

Speaker 1 (01:08:11):
That opened the Fontaine Blow Hotel in nineteen fifty four
was some big to you.

Speaker 2 (01:08:18):
It did a great job.

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Narcy Novack and Ben Novack Jr. - Part 1

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Narcy Novack and Ben Novack Jr. - Part 1