The widow of Fort Lauderdale millionaire Ben Novack Jr. is among four people who will be charged in his brutal July 2009 murder in an upstate New York hotel room.
Narcy Novack was arrested early Thursday in Fort Lauderdale, and later made an appearance in a South Florida Federal courtroom, where she was denied bond.
According to indictment documents, Narcy Novack, her brother and two accomplices will face charges in New York including stalking and conspiring to commit interstate domestic violence.
Federal prosecutors in New York plan to hold a news conference Thursday afternoon to discuss the charges in more detail.
Ben Novack, the 53-year-old heir to Miami Beach's Fontainebleau Hotel estate, was found beaten and killed in his Rye Brook, N.Y. Hilton hotel room on July 12, 2009.
According to the documents, Narcy Novack led the killers into the hotel room and even handed them a pillow to smother her husband as they beat and slashed him to death.
The indictment claims Narcy Novack, her brother, Cristobal Veliz, and two other men, Denis Ramirez and Joel Gonzalez, had hatched the plan a month earlier. Gonzalez and another co-conspirator had even taken a scouting trip to the hotel two days before the killing.
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Narcy Novack told police she had discovered her husband's bloody body in the room, his hands and legs bound with tape.
The couple, who were married for 19 years, were in New York for a convention. Novack was the President and CEO of Convention Concepts Unlimited, based in Fort Lauderdale.
Immediately considered a person of interest in the murder, Narcy Novack's behavior shortly after the murder was nothing short of bizarre.
She took her husband's extensive collection of Batman memorabilia, the country's second-largest, and hid it as she and her daughter bickered over her husband's estate.
Weeks earlier, Narcy Novack had gained access to her deceased mother-in-law's safe deposit box without authorization.
Bernice Stempel Novack, father to Ben and husband of Fontainebleau founder Ben Novack Sr., was found dead in her Fort Lauderdale home in April after she fractured her skull in a fall.
While Bernice Novack's death was ruled accidental, family members have expressed doubts, pointing to the fact that the 86 year old had once told police that she thought Narcy was trying to poison her.
