Theodore Maher (born June 9, 1958, Auburn, Maine) is an American registered nurse (an ex-Green Beret) convicted of arson in a 1999 fire that killed Edmond Safra and a nurse, Vivian Torrente, at Safra’s penthouse apartment in Monaco. In October 2007 Maher was released after serving eight years in jail. In television interviews after release, he has maintained his innocence.
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Ted Maher was born in Maine and lived there and in California before his family settled in Upstate New York when he was 12. After serving a stint in the U.S. Army in the mid-1970s, the former Green Beret received nursing degrees from Dutchess County Community College and Pace University. A brief marriage produced a son, Chris, now 18.[1] While studying at the Dutchess County Community College Maher met his third wife, Heidi Wustrau. The couple lost contact for two years but started dating in 1991 while both attended Pace University and worked at Columbia Medical Center of New York Presbyterian Hospital. They wed on December 12, 1993 and the marriage produced two more children, Ian, 11, and Amber, 9.[1] The family made their home in Stormville, N.Y., about 70 miles north of Manhattan.[2]
While working as a registered nurse at the neonatal unit at the Columbia Medical Center, Maher developed film from a camera he found left behind in a discharged patient's room. The camera's owners, Laura and Harry Slatkin, were grateful to retrieve the first photographs of their newborn twins. Harry Slatkin offered Ted the "job of a lifetime."[3] Shortly thereafter Maher interviewed with the personal assistant to Edmond Safra, a banker and billionaire based in Monaco who required private nursing care for Parkinson's and other ailments."[3]
According to Heidi Maher, the Safras liked that Ted was an ex-Green Beret and thought he could be both a bodyguard and a nurse. The Safras offered Ted Maher a contract at $600 per day,[4] more money than he had ever made, but he’d have to leave for Monaco right away. With a hospital strike looming and legal bills mounting from a visitation battle with his ex-wife regarding his oldest son, Maher ultimately accepted the job in early August.[3]
Safra, the 67-year-old founder and principal stock owner of the Republic National Bank of New York, had Parkinson's disease and required constant care. On Dec 3rd 1999, Maher was scheduled at the last minute to work the overnight shift caring for Safra with Vivian Torrente (one of eight nurses who looked after Safra) at Safra's Monaco penthouse at La Belle Epoque, a four-story bank and two-story flat at 17 Avenue D'Ostende. Here is the chronology of events that took place that night:[3]
Immediately after his arrest Maher claimed two intruders had gained access to the apartment and that he had fought them off, receiving stab wounds. He had informed the other nurse, Vivian Torrente, of the assailants and had given her his cell phone to call for help. He ordered her to take Edmond Safra into the secure dressing room while he went to the nearby nursing station, where he lit toilet paper in a trash basket to set off a smoke alarm, with the intention of alerting outside people that there was a problem.[5] Maher then made his way, bleeding and feeling faint, downstairs to the lobby of the building to get help. But while police and firemen got to the building, they didn’t get to Edmond Safra and Vivian Torrente until it was too late.[5]
A few days later on December 7, Monaco's chief prosecutor, Daniel Serdet, announced that Maher had confessed to starting the fire "to draw attention to himself" as he was "jealous" of Mr. Safra's seven other nurses. In addition, his stab wounds had been self-inflicted. Maher had slashed himself twice with his own switchblade - once in the thigh and once in the stomach - to corroborate his story about the intruders.[6] On December 6 Safra was buried in Geneva.[7]
The case was a sensation for Monaco, a tiny Mediterranean principality better known for sumptuous casinos, Formula One racing and tax breaks that attract the world's rich and famous. The riviera’s leading newspaper, Nice Matin, dubbed it Monaco's "Trial of the Century".[8][9] During his trial, Maher confessed to setting the blaze but said he never expected the fire to rage out of control and that the fire was part of a bizarre plan to ingratiate himself with Safra.[9] Maher testified that he’d started the blaze in a small wastebasket, expecting it to set off a fire alarm that would bring help and allow him to reap the credit for saving his employer.[9]
There had also been friction between himself and Sonia Herkrath, Safra’s head nurse. Though not technically Maher's boss, Herkrath had control of the nurses' work schedule and could make their lives difficult if she didn't like them. And she didn't like Maher, whom she considered just another "flavor of the month," who had gotten into Safra's good graces by returning a camera a friend forgot in New York six months earlier.[10] Herkrath was allegedly responsible for the departure of 17 other nurses in the previous 16 months, and Maher did not want to become number 18. He believed she was intentionally providing him with wrong information, causing him to make mistakes that had not gone unnoticed, and she frequently altered his scheduled between day and night shifts with little or no notice.[10]
Fearing the loss of his well-paid job, just six weeks after arriving in Monaco, Maher hatched the idea of setting the fire to ingratiate himself with his boss and earn a promotion. The prosecution described how Maher cut himself with a knife and then set a fire in a wastepaper basket. He called for rescue and told authorities that two masked intruders were in the apartment. But rather than extinguish the fire, Maher let it spread, the prosecution charged, leading to the two deaths. Prosecutors also said that his tale about intruders delayed the work of firefighters.[11]
American lawyer Michael Griffith, who had previously represented Billy Hayes[12] - an American whose escape from a Turkish jail inspired the motion picture "Midnight Express" - volunteered to assist with Ted Maher’s defense. Griffith based their defense on the notion that, whilst Ted did set the fire, he never intended to harm anyone. “It was a stupid, most insane thing a human being could do,” says Griffith. “He did not intend to kill Mr. Safra. He just wanted Mr. Safra to appreciate him more. He loved Mr. Safra. This was the best job of his life.”[5] Maher maintained that the deaths of Safra and Torrente would have been averted if police had not blocked firefighters from launching a rescue attempt until long after Maher was rushed to a hospital.[10] Lawyers for Safra's widow, Lily, argued Maher should be judged for his actions, not his intentions.[11]
In December 2002 Maher was convicted in the arson deaths of Edmond Safra and Vivian Torrente and sentenced to 10 years in prison. The prosecution had requested 12 years in prison for Maher. The charges carried a maximum penalty of life in prison. "He directly caused the deaths of Mrs. Torrente and Mr. Safra," said head prosecutor Daniel Serdet. "He trapped the victims."[11]
On the final day of his trial Maher called Safra "the best employer I ever had," and said he did not mean to cause his death or the death of the other nurse. "What's happened is and always will be a terrible accident", reiterating earlier testimony, in the hours before the verdict. Maher's wife was in court, as was Safra's widow.[11]
Less than two months after being sentenced, on 22 January 2003 Ted Maher and his cellmate, an Italian awaiting trial in Monaco on charges stemming from a robbery, sawed through the bars on their cell, and then, using a rope made of black garbage bags, climbed out and escaped overnight. Maher made it 15 miles to Nice, where he holed up in a hotel and made telephone contact with people in the US, including his wife, his lawyer and his priest; they gave him up to the police, who apprehended him seven hours later.[8][13]
Parallels were drawn between Maher's escape and the one carried out by Billy Hayes, a previous client of Griffith, who had also made a daring escape while being held in an overseas prison in 1975. In Hayes's case, he was facing life in prison for possession of hashish, and, risking getting shot on sight, he escaped from a Turkish prison and made his way to Greece and freedom.[12]
Maher served an additional nine months which were added to his sentence for escape. He was released in October 2007 and returned to the United States. [14] In a series of interviews on American Court TV, Maher maintained his pretrial statements were coerced, threats were made against his family by authorities, and to this day maintains his innocence. The late Dominick Dunne did comprehensive investigations on the case for courtroom television and was not completely convinced that Ted Maher was responsible for Safra’s death. Dunne's doubt centered on the fact that it took two and half hours for firefighters to reach Safra and his nurse. How so, wondered Dunne, especially when Edmond Safra’s wife Lily (who was in her bedroom on the other end of the apartment) was somehow able to get out? These two holes in the facts surrounding the case did not make any sense to Dunne. [15]
Maher was imprisoned in Monaco for over two years before his trial began, resulting in a considerable amount of controversy and speculation surrounding the case. Days before his death, Safra finalized the sale of his Republic National Bank to HSBC Holdings plc for billions.[16] He was a jet-setter who kept company with statesmen like Shimon Peres, the former prime minister of Israel.[4] But his business made him some potent enemies as well. In 1998 his Republic Bank made a report to the F.B.I. that began an investigation into the possibility of a vast Russian money laundering that came to focus on the Bank of New York and ultimately helped break a $6bn crime ring.[17][18]
The increasingly security conscious Safra employed a small army of guards, said to be trained in Israel by intelligence units.[4][18] None of his security team were, however, on duty on the night of the fire, which both enabled Maher to carry out the arson attack and hampered police and firefighters' efforts to gain access to his heavily fortified penthouse. Upon arrest, Maher initially fabricated the story that two intruders had penetrated the apartment and that he had fought them off, receiving stab wounds. This cover story, combined with Safra's involvements with the F.B.I., quickly led to rumours that the incident had been a well-executed Russian mob hit, leaving Maher as the patsy.[19][20]
Once the trial was underway, however, Maher's own testimony claimed that he had acted alone, motivated by self-interest and paranoia and specifically out of fear of losing his highly rewarding job. This claim was later repudiated, and Maher alleged he was forced to confess during his initial hospitalization. [21]
Allegations in 2007 by Judge Jean-Christophe Hullin that the outcome of the trial itself had been manipulated or fixed through collusion between Hullin, chief investigative judge on the case, along with Monaco's chief prosecutor and a member of Maher's state-appointed defence team [22] remain unresolved.