Sentencing Monday for Fla. woman in family killings

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — A woman from Florida, convicted of orchestrating the fatal beatings of her millionaire husband and his mother, is hoping she’ll get out of prison some day — some day in the distant future.

Narcy Novack of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and her brother, Cristobal Veliz of Brooklyn, N.Y., were to be sentenced Monday morning in federal court in White Plains, N.Y.

They were convicted in June of hiring hit men to carry out the 2009 beating deaths of Ben Novack Jr. in New York and Bernice Novack in Florida. Ben Novack was the son of the man who built the Fontainebleau hotel in Miami Beach.

The U.S. attorney’s office has asked Judge Kenneth Karas to impose life sentences. Prosecutor Elliott Jacobsen wrote in court papers that Novack and Veliz “engaged in the very worst criminal conduct imaginable.”

Veliz’s attorney has not responded. But Novack’s lawyer, Howard Tanner, told the judge that federal guidelines would be satisfied with a 27-year sentence. Novack is 56.

“She would be released from prison an elderly woman with virtually no possessions or home,” Tanner wrote. But a sentence short of life in prison would give her at least “a chance of reformation and rehabilitation,” he said.

Prosecutors said Narcy Novack feared that her husband would divorce her, and that a prenuptial agreement would bar her from the multimillion-dollar family estate. Her motives were “hatred, greed and vengeance,” the sentencing memo says.

One key witness at the trial was Rebecca Bliss, a former prostitute and porn actress, who said she was having an affair with Ben Novack when he was killed.

She said Narcy Novack offered her $10,000 to end the affair. According to Bliss, Novack said that, “If she couldn’t have him, no other woman was going to have him.”

The government said Novack recruited her brother and he hired a group of thugs who testified about slamming Bernice Novack in the teeth and head with a plumber’s wrench and beating Ben Novack with barbells and slicing his eyes with a knife.

Veliz testified at length, denying any involvement and blaming Novack’s daughter, May Abad, for the killings. Abad’s two sons stand to inherit the bulk of the family estate, which includes Ben Novack’s large collection of Batman memorabilia.

Narcy Novack did not testify.

In addition to the murder charge, the defendants were convicted of domestic violence, stalking, money laundering and witness tampering.