'B&T' Subject Narcy Novack Is in Jail for Life

Narcy Novack is already one of the most infamous convicted murderers of the early twenty-first century. Now she's the subject of her own Lifetime movie, Beautiful & Twisted , and it's not really a spoiler (unless you consider real life to be a spoiler, in which case you may be watching a little too much fictionalized true crime shows on Investigation Discovery) to say that the film will end in bloody murder and a very long prison sentence. The real Narcy Novack is still in prison, and even though her murders took place in 2009, she wasn't even seen in court or convicted until 2012, so she's still at the start of her life sentence.

As portrayed in the film, Novack was a shrewd manipulator from the get go, who went after Ben Novack not just for his money but because he was a total sucker who was so easily distracted by her amazing looks, her history as a stripper, and her embrace of his philandering. In real life, things between Ben and Narcy didn't stay loving for long, and eventually they became estranged, but their marriage lasted 21 years, from 1991-2012, when Novack was convicted of murdering her husband and mother-in-law.

Quickly, Narcy, as the estranged wife, became the number one suspect for Ben's suspicious death. And she was so desperate to avoid jail time and get her hands on that money that she threw her own daughter under the bus during the trial, claiming that May Abad was the one who would truly benefit from killing Ben. In a fitting twist, Abad did end up inheriting the fortune after Novack was put away.

Judging from the Lifetime trailer, Novack was just shy of an evil genius. And as much as I love a good Amy Dunne female supervillain in fiction, in real life bad guys are a lot more fallible — see the actual Novack, who was ratted out by the associates hired by her brother, Cristobal Veliz, her accomplice, to do the actual dirty work.

In the highly publicized trial in 2012, Novack lost her case and was sentenced to life in prison, according to the NY Daily News, for charges "including racketeering, domestic violence, stalking, money laundering and witness tampering." She also famously didn't sit in the courtroom during her sentencing, but I can't imagine that going from the promise of millions to spending the rest of her life in jail made her all that excited.

But there's no reason to worry that the Fontainebleau fortune could somehow end up in Novack's old, old hands if she gets out of jail as a much older woman. Slayer's law prevents a murderer from financially benefitting from the person whom they killed, so the Novack family fortune is in safe hands.

Image: Jack Zeman/Lifetime