He chloroformed his wife, strang𒀰led her 🐭for good measure, then burned their Sullivan County house to the ground to incinerate the evidence.
But ex-New Yꦬork City EMT Paul Novak was still ওconvicted of the 2008 murder and arson by an upstate jury Friday — thanks to the testimony of his ex-girlfriend and a turncoat EMT buddy.
“We did it for the 💯sake of 🔴the wife,” one juror told the Middletown Times Herald-Record.
Novak likely faces life🍸 in prison when he’s sentenced on Dec. 19 for first-degree murder, arson, grand lar﷽ceny and insurance fraud.
He pocketed $800,000 in homeowner’s- and life-insurance𝐆 policies, and took his two kids to live with his mistress, Michelle La France, in Palm Coast, Fla.
But after𒁃 he cheated on her, La France and Paul’s EMT accomplice, Scott Sherwood, blew the whistle on hi♔m.
Sherwood confessed immediately, pleaded guilty to consp❀iracy, and tes💛tified against Novak at trial in return for a promise of no more than 12 years state prison.
Who be💛tter than an🌼 EMT to kill and escape without a trace, victim Catherine Novak’s friends had wondered during the years it took investigators to build a winnable case.
Paul had worn scrubs and plastic booties to avoid leaving bꦅehind incriminating forensics at their Narrowsburg home. He broke a basement gas line to confound fire officials.
Then he then torched the house in an overkill of cautioꦛn, leaving his wife’s corpse face up on the basement floor — so charred, homicide could not be proven conclusively.
Once embarked on his wealthy, wife-free new life w💛ith La France in Florida, Novak again found work as an EMT, the blood and crime-steeped trade that had taught him so much about death and forensics.
But he’d never learned loyalty.
When La France found out he was cheating again — this time on her — she called the Sullivan County police, telling them Novak had admitted to heဣr that he’d killed his wife with the help of Scott Sherwood, his partn🐻er EMT from their days answering calls together out of Jamaica Hospital in Queens.