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Narcy Novack is charged in her husband’s fatal beating. |
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — The wife of a Florida travel executive who was beaten to death in a suburban New York hotel let the killers into the room and handed them a pillow to put over his face, according to prosecutors, who unsealed an indictment yesterday.
The victim was Ben Novack Jr., 53, son of the founder of the storied Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach.
Narcy Novack, 53, her brother, and two others were indicted in the July 12, 2009, slaying at the Hilton Rye Town in Rye Brook, 20 miles north of Manhattan.
“The plot that led to the brutal death of Ben Novack was a family affair,’’ US Attorney Preet Bharara said at a news conference in the federal courthouse in White Plains.
He said investigators are also looking into the death of Ben Novack’s 86-year-old mother, Bernice, of Fort Lauderdale. Her death has been ruled an accident, although she suffered a broken jaw and blood was found on her car and the walls of her house.
The indictment in Ben Novack’s slaying says that Narcy Novack opened the door to two killers, who beat and slashed her husband, and that she then gave the two men a pillow to hold over his face as he was being attacked.
One man who prosecutors say was involved in the attack was not among those indicted and is identified in the indictment only as a coconspirator. That could mean he is cooperating with investigators. Bharara would not say whether that man had been charged separately.
Narcy Novack was arrested yesterday at her home in Fort Lauderdale and was arraigned at the federal courthouse there. She did not enter a plea and was held pending a bail hearing set for Wednesday.
Her Florida lawyer, Robert Trachman, said she would not fight her extradition to New York. Her New York lawyer, Howard Tanner, who has asserted her innocence in the past, declined to comment.
© Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.
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