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Husband of 'E.T.' Murder Victim Was Disowned by His Millionaire Parents

By  James Fanelli and Murray Weiss | October 29, 2015 7:58am 

 Gail Mark, a housewife and mother of a 3-year-old girl, was brutally murdered in her Murray Hill apartment in 1982. Her killing has never been solved. However, the sister of Gail's husband recently said in an affidavit that her brother was responsible for her death.   
Gail Mark's Mother Holds Family Photos of Her Slain Daughter.
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FOREST HILLS — His parents didn’t want anything to do with him.

The multimillionaire husband of a housewife whose brutal murder 33 years ago remains unsolved was disowned by his own mother and father.

In the last two decades of their lives, the parents of Franklin Mark wrote instructions barring him and his sister Ann Boyarsky from having anything to do with them in the event they were physically or mentally incapacitated.

“I don’t want Franklin Mark or Ann Mindy Boyarsky, to be appointed my, or my [spouse’s] guardian or conservator, or should they have anything to do with us,” the parents, Samuel and Marcia Mark, each wrote in signed documents on July 11, 1991.

“Under no circumstances do we want Franklin Mark or Ann Mindy Boyarsky to gain access to our residence, or any of our possessions.”

Franklin’s wife, Gail, was fatally stabbed and strangled in the couple's Murray Hill duplex on Dec. 30, 1982. NYPD detectives in two separate investigations considered him a prime suspect but never arrested or charged him because of a lack of evidence.

Earlier this month, the NYPD decided to re-investigate the case after DNAinfo New York revealed Boyarsky said in an affidavit that she believed her brother was responsible for Gail's death.

'INTENSE ARGUING'

DNAinfo reported on Monday that before her death, Gail had complained about her rocky marriage and had told a confidant that she feared Franklin would stab her.

Court records and interviews with people who know Franklin, a successful businessman and landlord, show that other family members and tenants also feared and loathed him.

Franklin’s other sister and brother-in-law, Sharon and Warren Levine, took out a temporary restraining order against him in 1998 in Washington State, claiming he was stalking them, according to court records and sources.

Sharon Levine and Boyarsky are also waging a legal battle against him and his daughter in Manhattan Surrogate’s Court, accusing him of siphoning $10 million from their incapacitated mother before her death.

"Franklin is the type of pr--- who would rip the skin off your back and then swear it was his own custom made clothing," said a source close to the Mark family.

Franklin declined to comment for this story.

His lawyer, Ben Brafman, said his client was innocent.

"If you were being investigated for a serious crime that you did not commit, you would do well to have a lawyer represent you who knows his way around the criminal justice system so that you do not end up being ‎indicted for something you did not do," Brafman said when asked why Franklin hired him.

ROOTS IN FLUSHING
Samuel and Marcia Mark raised their three children in Flushing.

Samuel, a Czech immigrant and decorated World War II veteran who helped liberate concentration camps in Europe, ran a lucrative garment manufacturing business in Manhattan and amassed a fortune worth at least $23 million.

While the family appeared to be living the American dream, they had their demons, according to sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The three children endured physical and emotional abuse at home, the sources said. The toxic environment even led Boyarsky to leave home when she was teenager, according to sources.

Franklin and Boyarsky were close in the early 1980s. They were partners in Manhattan restaurants and Boyarsky even introduced him to his second wife a year after Gail's death. But the siblings' relationship eventually soured over business dealings and other disputes.

By 2008, none of the children seemed to interact with their parents, court records show.

Franklin had not seen his mother and father in more than a decade. Boyarsky had no contact with her parents and Levine said she hadn’t visited them since October 2006, when they accused her of stealing.

Samuel and Marcia appeared to wash their hands of their children long before that. The parents wrote the 1991 documents denouncing Franklin and Boyarsky around the time Franklin bought out his dad from the garment business, a source said.

As of 2008, Samuel and Marcia had also written wills that explicitly stated that their children should not receive any of their fortune. Instead they intended to leave all of their money to United Jewish Appeal, a nonprofit.

The 1991 documents, the wills and the general estrangement between parents and children were outlined in guardianship proceedings in 2008 in Queens Supreme Court.

At the time, the city’s Department of Social Services asked a Queens Supreme Court judge to appoint guardians for Samuel and Marcia to handle their financial affairs after the Queens District Attorney’s Office raised concerns that the elder Marks’ diminished mental states made them prone to financial exploitation.

The Queens DA got involved after Samuel and Marcia claimed on several occasions to their local NYPD precinct that people, including their daughter Ann, were stealing from them.

The Queens DA didn’t substantiate any of the allegations and never brought any charges. But the DA investigation triggered the city’s intervention, which led psychiatrists and social workers to evaluate the Marks' mental faculties and physical health.

Samuel was diagnosed with dementia and physical ailments, including heart disease. Marcia was found to be suffering from dementia and paranoid delusions, court records show.

Eventually, a deal was reached in which Marcia and her lawyer, Mitchell Lapidus, were appointed co-guardians of Samuel and his finances. The guardianship proceeding involving Marcia was discontinued after a subsequent evaluation determined that she could take care of her finances.

Samuel died in 2009 and Marcia died in 2014.

LANDLORD ISSUES

Franklin, who lives in a townhouse a block from Gracie Mansion, has also rubbed people the wrong way in his professional life. Records show he has owned or owns rental properties in Murray Hill, the East Village and in Atlantic Beach, L.I.

A relative of Gail who also asked not to be identified said in 1981 Franklin allowed her to live in a house behind an East Village apartment building he owned. In exchange, she acted as a super making repairs in apartments.

However, Gail’s relative said she was kicked out when she refused to help him get a tenant to move out.

“That’s how he operated,” the relative said. "He would harass tenants out of the building, creating an inhospitable environment."

Another former tenant said he heard Gail and Franklin’s marriage unraveling.

When Franklin and Gail were married, they lived in an East 28th Street building that Franklin owned.

A former tenant in the building described how he heard from his unit the couple having nightly shouting matches.

“They were always fighting,” said the tenant, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. “I heard them fighting through the floor, saying ‘You fat f---.’ It was really intense arguing.”

Another tenant who sued Franklin in 1992 called him a deadbeat for refusing to install lighting in a stairwell to his basement apartment in an Atlantic Beach property. The tenant injured his back falling down the stairwell.  

"He just like looked down at people," said the tenant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "He never treated anybody with respect."