The Prince of Paradise

The True Story of a Hotel Heir, His Seductive Wife, and a Ruthless Murder

John Glatt

St. Martin’s Press

Ben Novack, Jr. was born into a life of luxury and opulence. Heir to the legendary Fontainebleau hotel, he spent his childhood surrounded by some of the world’s biggest stars, including Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack, Elvis Presley, and Ann-Margret, who performed regularly at the Fontainebleau’s La Ronde Room. He sat by while his parents entertained presidents and movie stars, as they reigned over Miami Beach in the ‘50’s and ‘60’s, and when the family business went sour he became wealthy in his own right, founding a multi-million dollar business using connections he made at the Fontainebleau.

But Ben, Jr.’s luxurious, celebrity-studded lifestyle would end in another hotel room—a thousand miles away from the one where he grew up—when police found him bound up in duct tape, beaten to death.

Seven years earlier, police found Novack in an eerily similar situation—when his wife Narcy duct-taped him to a chair for twenty-four hours and robbed him. Claiming it was a sex game, he never pressed charges and never followed through with a divorce. Now prosecutors claimed Narcy let the vicious killers into the room and watched as they beat her husband with dumbbells. They also suspected she was involved in the horrendous death of Novack’s mother, just three months before. But it would be Narcy’s own daughter who implicated her to the police—in this twisted case of passion, perversion, and paradise lost.

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Read the Review by Publishers Weekly (February 11, 2013)

Secrets in the Cellar

John Glatt

St. Martin’s True Crime

Josef Fritzl was a 73-year-old retired engineer in Austria. He seemed to be living a normal life with his wife, Rosemarie, and their family—though one daughter, Elisabeth, had decades earlier been “lost” to a religious cult. Throughout the years, three of Elisabeth’s children mysteriously appeared on the Fritzls’ doorstep; Josef and Rosemarie raised them as their own. But only Josef knew the truth about Elisabeth’s disappearance…

For twenty-seven years, Josef had imprisoned and molested Elisabeth in his man-made basement dungeon, complete with sound-proof paneling and code-protected electric locks. There, she would eventually give birth to a total of seven of Josef’s children. One died in infancy—and the other three were raised alongside Elisabeth, never to see the light of day.

Then, in 2008, one of Elisabeth’s children became seriously ill, and was taken to the hospital. It was the first time the nineteen-year-old girl had ever gone outside—and soon, the truth about her background, her family’s captivity, and Josef’s unspeakable crimes would come to light.

John Glatt’s Secrets in the Cellar is the true story of a crime that shocked the world.

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Love Her to Death

The True Story of a Millionaire Businessman, His Gorgeous Wife, and the Divorce That Ended in Murder

John Glatt

St. Martin’s True Crime

A Marriage: Destroyed
They were a picture-perfect family—until a bitter divorce drove Darren Mack over the edge. A Reno millionaire, Mack was ordered by the court to pay his wife $10,000 a month in alimony. Instead, he stabbed her in the garage while their daughter watched TV upstairs.

A Judge: Targeted
The only person Mack hated more than his wife was the family court judge who presided over their divorce. So, after killing his wife, he loaded his gun and went after the judge… and headed for Mexico with a stash of concealed weapons.

A Killer: Wanted
So began an international manhunt for a rage-filled fugitive—featured on “America’s Most Wanted”—that eventually ended in Mack’s capture. In a dramatic trial, the public would learn shocking details of the swinging lifestyle that ended his marriage, the ugly divorce that fueled his anger, and the final straw that triggered his bloody spree.

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Lost and Found

The True Story of Jaycee Lee Dugard and the Abduction that Shocked the World

John Glatt

St. Martin’s True Crime

Then, in August 2009, a registered sex offender named Phillip Garrido appeared on the University of California, Berkeley campus alongside two young women whose unusual behavior sparked concern among campus officials and law enforcement. That visit would pave the way for shocking discovery: that Garrido was Jaycee Lee Dugard’s kidnapper…

Jaycee’s story was revealed: For eighteen years, she had lived in an outbuilding on the Garrido property in Antioch, CA, just two hours away from her childhood home. Kept in complete isolation, she was raped by Garrido, who fathered her two daughters. When news broke of Jaycee’s discovery, there was a huge outpouring of relief across the nation. But questions remain: How did the Garridos slip past authorities? And how did Jaycee endure her captivity? This is the story of a girl-next-door who was Lost and Found.

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Playing With Fire

The True Story of a Nurse, Her Husband, and a Marriage Turned Fatal

John Glatt

St. Martin’s True Crime

A beautiful nurse. A lethal injection. A gruesomely charred corpse. Nothing could have shocked the sleepy community of Morgantown, West Virginia, more than the lurid details that surfaced after a house fire claimed the life of Shelly Michael’s husband Jimmy. Local authorities suspected possible arson. Then they discovered that Jimmy had been dead before the fire even started—paralyzed by a fatal dose of muscle relaxant…

Did Shelly Michael, a respected nurse and mother, kill her second husband and torch her own home? Were the rumors true that she’d had an affair with her husband’s employee only two weeks before the murder? Or did she kill Jimmy simply for the insurance money? Charged with first-degree murder and first-degree arson, Shelly would never stop claiming her innocence—even to this day.

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One Deadly Night

A State Trooper, Triple Homicide, and a Search for Justice.

John Glatt

St. Martin’s Paperbacks

On September 28, 2000, former Indiana State Trooper David Camm made a frantic call to his former colleagues in the state troopers office: He’d just walked into his garage, and found lying on the floor the bodies of his 35-year-old wife, Kim, and their two children, Brad and Jill, ages 7 and 5.

This was the kind of crime that could tear the heart out of a community. The Camm’s lived the American Dream. They had what seemed like a loving marriage, a nice little house with a white picket fence, and two adorable children. To top it all off, David Camm was a pillar of the community who had dedicated his career to the enforcement of the law and the sanctity of human life. Then, this happened.

Three days later, it got worse when police arrested David Camm for the triple murder. Soon, new stories started emerging: stories about mistresses and violent bursts of temper. And as the ugly truth about the Camms’ marriage got uglier and the evidence against David started piling up, two families-and the community at large-took positions at opposite sides of a yawning and bitter divide.

Was David Camm a dedicated, conscientious public servant-the victim of unspeakable tragedy, railroaded by an unfair system? Or was he a cold-hearted murderer who earned his three murder convictions and every one of the 195 years behind bars to which he was sentenced?

Investigative journalist John Glatt finds out in this gripping new book.

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Never Leave Me

A True Story of Marriage, Deception, and Brutal Murder

John Glatt

St. Martin’s Paperbacks

In a quiet community of million dollar homes and shiny SUVs, the Nyce family projected the very image of success. Dr. Jonathan Nyce, an asthma sufferer, had achieved medical breakthroughs that made him rich—and offered hope to countless people. Michelle’s beauty made her an object of desire. And adultery was her husband’s worst nightmare.

Police found Michelle’s Land Cruiser floating in a frigid creak near the family home. When forensic investigators examined Michelle’s horribly battered body, they knew she had not died in the car. Or by accident.

Soon, the truth began to emerge. Of a brilliant man whose beautiful wife had a lover she could not stay away from. Of a family—including three innocent children—pushed to the breaking point. And of one brutal moment, when a man finally ended his torment by horrifically murdering the woman he loved…

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To Have and To Kill

Nurse Melanie McGuire, an Illicit Affair, and the Gruesome Murder of Her Husband

John Glatt

St. Martin’s True Crime

One by one, three waterlogged suitcases were pulled from the Chesapeake Bay. In each were body parts of a man. In a forensics room, the truth was discovered: William McGuire had been horribly murdered and dismembered.

William and his loving wife, a registered nurse named Melanie, had just closed on their New Jersey dream home. Little did William know about the nightmare that was in store… For Melanie had been involved in a long-term affair with a married doctor at the fertility clinic where she worked—and she had plans for the future that didn’t include William.

Investigators believe that on April 29, 2004, Melanie first drugged her husband, then murdered him in cold blood. Three years after America witnessed the details of the suitcase incident unfold—on 48 Hours, Dateline NBC, and ABC Primetime, and in People magazine, among other news outlets—Melanie was convicted of first-degree murder and desecrating human remains. This is the true story of a marriage that turned deadly…

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Forgive Me, Father

A True Story of a Priest, a Nun, and Brutal Murder

John Glatt

St. Martin’s True Crime

Father Gerald Robinson was a pillar of his Toledo, Ohio church-going community. A popular priest, he was especially admired in the city’s Polish neighborhoods for delivering powerful sermons in Polish. In later years, Father Robinson ministered to the sick, and eventually ended up serving as chaplain at Mercy Hospital—where met Sister Margaret Ann Pahl.

Sister Margaret, age 72, was well-loved at Mercy. When, in the hospital’s sacristy, she was found dead with numerous stab wounds to her neck, chest, and head—in the pattern of a cross—no one could believe it: Who at Mercy could have committed such evil? For years, there was no answer…even though questions about the chaplain’s dark past continued to arise. Finally, in 2004, cold-case detectives announced that Father Gerald Robinson, who presided at Sister Margaret’s own funeral, was convicted with her murder.

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The Doctor’s Wife

A True Story of Marriage, Deception and Two Gruesome Murders

John Glatt

St. Martin’s Paperbacks

For months, the young son of Bart and Jennifer Corbin had told people that he was afraid of violence in their posh, suburban Georgia home. Then, on the morning of December 4, 2004, neighbors found seven-year-old Dalton Corbin at their front door sobbing. Until then no one could have seen what was going on behind closed doors: that beautiful Jennifer Corbin was immersed in a cyber-sex lesbian affair—or that Bart, now a wealthy dentist, had a bizarre, frightening past…

Jennifer Corbin’s death looked like a suicide. But the crime didn’t fool young Dalton, and in the coming weeks an even more horrifying story emerged: That Dr. Corbin had been left by a woman once before—and that time he may have gotten away with murder. But this time justice would be served….

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