Missing Drifter Claims Fontainebleau Millions

Ronald Novack is now being cared for by money earned by his mother's estate.

By JANIE CAMPBELL

Updated 8:34 AM EDT, Sun, Jan 31, 2010

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The family saga was already strange enough: the father, Ben Novack, Sr., dreamed up a cresent-shaped hotel while on the toilet and built the famous Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami before plunging into bankruptcy.

His second ex-wife, Bernice Novack, was a flame-haired foster child-turned-Salvador Dalí model who suspected her daughter-in-law of poisoning her.

Their son Ben Jr. was a millionaire Batman freak, artificial limb fetishist, and unlawful restraint victim whose body went unclaimed for weeks after he was bludgeoned to death -- possibly thanks to his wife -- in July.

But the family tree would take another unexpected turn: a long-lost and presumed dead son adopted by Novack and his first wife, Bella, turned up eight years after his mother's death to claim what he thought was $100,000 from her estate -- and wound up with millions.

Ronald Novack, now 62, never enjoyed the his half-brother did growing up in a penthouse suite. When Ben, Sr. and Bella divorced, his father all but erased Ronald from his life: he was given $1 in an afterthought to his father's will while Ben, Jr. got the rest.

And Ronald had long been mentally troubled. He refused to take medication, and was living in the woods, sleeping in cars, and panhandling. When his mother died and a piece of Miami property she'd been awarded in the divorce from Ben, Sr. had to be passed along, he was MIA.

"We looked for him for years," said his cousin Craig Einhorn, the estate's trustee. "We thought he fell into a ditch and was eaten by an alligator."

Two days before a judge was to declare him dead, Novack turned up at the Broward County Courthouse. In the time it took lawyers to verify his claim, he'd disappeared -- only to return again with a note.

"Please be advised," it read, "that I, Ronald Marc Novack, is alive and well."

"And rich," it could have continued. In the meantime, Einhorn had sold Bella Novack's property for a whopping $7.5 million -- seven million over its appraised value, after the real estate slump, and in spite of a 99-year lease locked into prices set over 70 years ago.

Einhorn won't say where his cousin is now -- "any information that gets published might make people go out and take advantage of him" -- but he says Novack is well taken care of under the terms of the trust his mother set up: $400 a week, $5,000 on the anniversary of her death, and health care and emergency provisions covered.

"Here is someone who could have had everything and he was living on the streets," said Einhorn's mother, Leah. "Mental illness is such a tragedy. It's so sad, because if he took the medication, he could have had a wonderful life."

Or maybe not. If there's one thing the family's story proves, it's that money can't guarantee a happy ending.