The Epstein Files

I once covered the execution-style murder of Ben Novack, the son of the late Ben Novack, Sr., the builder of famed Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach. Ben Jr. was found dead in a hotel in upstate New York in July 2009. He was beaten, bound and gagged — and, as if to send a message, his eyes were gouged out.

Ben Jr. was among the last in a long line of iconic hoteliers who built one of America’s most famous playgrounds: Miami Beach. A tall, bearded man with obsessions for Batmobiles and prostitutes, Ben Jr. spent his boyhood years rubbing elbows with U.S presidents, movie stars and some of the most famous sports heroes in history. At the time of his death, he was running a successful convention planning business. Some 1,000 people attended the Amway convention at the hotel where he was found dead in Rye Brook, NY.

The murder mystery deepened after I found an obituary for his mother, Bernice, who had died just three months before. Bernice, a former Coca-Cola model who became the matriarch of the Fontainebleau, had lived out her days in her upscale Fort Lauderdale home, amid the treasures of her glamorous past, including a piano from Frank Sinatra and photos of her with Elizabeth Taylor.

Bernice and Ben Novack Sr.

Ben Jr. found his mother sprawled in her utility room, face down on the floor, wearing a nightgown drenched in blood. He was her only child and the sole heir to her estate.

Strangely, her autopsy had not been completed, although it had been three months. Fort Lauderdale police had asked that it be put on hold, but I kept asking and, after some prompting, the medical examiner issued his ruling. Bernice had died as a result of several “consecutive falls” in her Fort Lauderdale home. Investigators said she likely experienced “dizziness or confusion” and fell, fracturing her skill, breaking her jaw, her finger and several teeth. The death was ruled accidental.

The photographs showed blood spattered from the car in her garage, through her utility or mudroom, kitchen, living room and bathroom. It didn’t seem like an 87-year-old woman could fall that many times, let alone get up and stumble from room to room bleeding all over the place.

I remember questioning this conclusion, and being told that it was just “a coincidence” that Bernice died in such a violent way just three months before her son was slaughtered.

The medical examiner and Fort Lauderdale police stood by their ruling on Bernice’s death, no matter how many questions I asked or stories I wrote. With each new piece of evidence I found, I believed it even less. The Fort Lauderdale police were so frustrated by my quest to prove that she too was murdered, that they complained to my editors and told other journalists that I didn’t know what I was talking about.

I later found that — had the police questioned the next-door neighbor, a former Miami Dolphins linebacker, they would have discovered that he had chased away an intruder from Bernice’s home a few weeks earlier.

Almost a year to the day of Ben Jr.’s slaying, his wife, Narcy, was arrested for his murder. And one of the hitmen she hired confessed to beating poor Bernice to death with a monkey wrench. By killing both of them, Narcy stood to inherit the entire estate.

During my investigation, I consulted with several veteran homicide investigators. One of them said something I will never forget: “There is no such thing as a coincidence.”

So when investigators told me that Jeffrey Epstein hanged himself in his jail cell, just weeks after he told prison officials that his cellmate had tried to kill him, then he was placed on suicide watch and released on a night when his new cellmate had mysteriously been moved to another prison, I was skeptical.