A Murder in Monaco: How a Trusted Insider Betrayed a Billionaire Banker

For Edmond Safra, December 3, 1999, should have been an unremarkable night. One of the world’s richest private bankers, Safra had retreated to his penthouse apartment atop Monaco’s Belle Époque building, a waterfront residence fortified with state-of-the-art security. The 67-year-old Lebanese-Brazilian financier, known for building Republic National Bank of New York and for advising governments, the social elite and international institutions, had lived for years under heavy protection due to fears about his safety.

But that evening proved to be unusual. His large force of heavily-trained bodyguards was not on duty at his Monaco residence but had been moved to his lavish French villa several miles away. Some trusted staff were with him, including two nurses who had been attending to him following recent health problems. 

Within hours, Safra and one of his nurses, Vivian Torrente, would be dead. Their deaths came not from an outside threat but from a fire deliberately set inside the residence by another member of Safra’s own household staff. And the reasons behind that act—part delusion, part desperation, part misguided attempt at heroism—would make the case one of Monaco’s most sensational criminal investigations.

The terror began shortly before dawn. Ted Maher, a 41-year-old former Green Beret turned private nurse, claimed that he was sitting at the apartment’s nursing station when he was attacked by two masked intruders and stabbed several times before blacking out. When he came to, he told his fellow nurse, Vivian Torrente, about the attack and instructed her and Safra to take refuge in a safe-room style bathroom designed to shield occupants from attack. Safra, who had Parkinson’s disease, was unable to move without assistance.

Maher rushed downstairs to alert security and was then taken to the hospital. Police arrived soon after, but for reasons that confounded everyone who reviewed the case, made no immediate effort to go up the apartment. Meanwhile, Torrente and Safra were making increasingly urgent phone calls about a fire in the apartment, but Safra, convinced that there were still intruders in his home, would not leave the safety of the bathroom. 

His wife, Lily, who was in a bedroom on the other end of the apartment, managed to escape. When Safra’s chief of security arrived at the Monaco residence and tried to go upstairs, police, convinced he was part of a plot, arrested him. It took nearly three hours from when Maher first appeared in the lobby for firefighters to make their way upstairs. Inside they found Safra and Torrente, dead from smoke inhalation, their bodies charred.

As news spread of Safra’s tragic end, rumors started as quickly as the fire had. The billionaire banker had certainly made enough enemies, people murmured. Perhaps it was revenge for his cooperation with U.S. authorities investigating Russian mob activities. Perhaps it was a business deal gone sour—after all, Safra had completed a multi-billion dollar sale of his business just weeks earlier. Some even gossiped that the crime might have something to do with the troubled relationship between Safra’s two brothers and his wife.

Within days, however, Monaco authorities reached a very different conclusion. The fire had been deliberately set by Maher. There were no intruders, no break-in attempts, and Maher’s wounds were self-inflicted. Under intense interrogation, Maher admitted his bizarre motive. He told investigators that he feared losing his job due to tensions with a senior nurse on staff and aimed to impress his boss. Maher had only recently been hired to join the Safra team and was worried that his job might be at risk. He planned on setting a small fire that would allow him to “rescue” Safra and emerge a hero. In his telling, Safra, known for generosity toward those who proved their loyalty, would be deeply grateful. Maher believed this would secure his job and impress his wealthy employer.

Maher stabbed himself to bolster his story about intruders and then set the fire in a trash can, but it quickly grew out of control. His actions sent the emergency response into chaos: police searching for attackers, firefighters delayed by misdirection and Safra—trusting Maher’s claims—staying barricaded in the safe room that ultimately became a trap.

The 2002 trial drew massive international attention. Safra’s prominence in global banking, combined with Monaco’s reputation for secrecy and elite privilege, created a spectacle. Maher admitted to setting the fire, but said he was not trying to kill Safra, who he admired. During his trial, reports emerged that Maher’s father suffered from schizophrenia.

Maher was convicted of arson resulting in death and sentenced to 10 years in prison. In January 2003, Maher and a fellow inmate made a daring escape. Maher later revealed that he had asked his sister to hide hacksaw blades in the binding of a book that was brought into the prison by an unwitting priest who regularly visited Maher. He and his fellow inmate used the blades to cut the windows of their cell and smuggled trash bags as a rope to lower themselves from the cell. They made it to nearby Nice, France, before the pair were captured the next morning.

Maher was released in 2007 and returned to the U.S. Shortly after, he recanted his confession, stating that he had been stabbed by armed intruders and had set the fire to summon help. He said French authorities had forced him to sign a confession written in French after hours of harsh interrogation. He blamed the ineptness of the response by Monaco authorities and their delay in entering the apartment for Safra and Torrente’s deaths. 

Maher legally changed his name to Jon Green and settled in New Mexico but failed to put his past behind him. In 2023, he was imprisoned on larceny charges for stealing his estranged wife’s car and her dogs, and forging checks in her name. While in prison, he hatched another bizarre scheme, enlisting a fellow inmate, Greg Markham, in a plot to murder his wife. Prosecutors alleged that he paid Markham’s bail to secure his release. In exchange, Markham would break into Maher’s wife’s home and poison her with fentanyl, allowing Maher to inherit her life insurance, retirement funds and her home. The plot unraveled, and in 2025, Maher was convicted of a single charge of solicitation to commit first-degree murder and sentenced to nine years in prison.

Safra’s death reverberated far beyond Monaco. As one of the world’s most influential private bankers, he had played a central role in shaping international finance. Yet the circumstances of his death continue to invite debate.

Despite Maher’s stunning reversal and claims that he was forced to confess to a crime he did not commit, there remains no evidence of outside involvement on that tragic December evening. No assassins, no shadowy financial enemies and no sophisticated attack on one of the world’s wealthiest men.