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Dateline NBC

Family Affair

Dateline NBC

NBC News

True Crime, Culture, Social, Society & Culture, News

4.438K Ratings

🗓️ 20 January 2021

⏱️ 44 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this Dateline classic, the scion of the family behind the famous Fontainebleau Hotel on Miami Beach, Ben Novack Jr., grew up with the likes of Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack. But his murder years later in a New York hotel, launches an investigation that would lead to surprising places and turn his stepdaughter’s life upside down. Dennis Murphy reports. Originally aired on NBC on October 12, 2012.

Transcript

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0:00.0

I am being followed. There are threats on my life. I know we're in danger. I know we are.

0:07.0

It's a riveting mystery that started in a place of glamour. It became a destination for the rap patch for Frank Sinatra.

0:18.0

And ended in a case of murder. The wealthy heir to this legendary hotel dead.

0:24.0

He was my father. He is the only father ever knew.

0:27.0

Now police said she was next. Someone in the shadows gunning for her.

0:33.0

My suspicions are growing and growing by the minute.

0:36.0

Who was behind all this? Plenty of suspects and plenty of motives. Anger, jealousy, greed.

0:42.0

Someone had 10 million reasons to kill.

0:46.0

We look back and said, my god, I couldn't believe what I saw.

0:50.0

A final terrifying twist.

0:52.0

I see my mother with a crowbar.

0:54.0

Will you see it coming? Tonight, family affair. Here's Dennis Murphy.

1:05.0

If ever there was a little girl lost, it was Mayabond.

1:10.0

From when I was little, I was always in the way.

1:14.0

She survived a mother-daughter relationship quite unlike any you've ever heard.

1:19.0

My mother is like trying to hug a cactus. You will eventually get hurt.

1:24.0

And if the intersection of blood and money intrigues you,

1:28.0

pull up a chair and stay awhile because there's plenty of both just ahead in this story.

1:33.0

It's really an amazing, unusual, frightening story.

1:37.0

What ended so badly in a darkened hotel room with a curtains drawn,

1:41.0

has its beginnings really in the warm sands of South Florida.

1:46.0

Not the South Beach of today. With its hot bodies and pulsating dance clubs,

...

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