Netflix’s Murder in Monaco revisits one of the most bizarre and controversial deaths among the super-rich: the 1999 blaze in which billionaire banker Edmond Safra and one of his nurses died in his Monaco penthouse. The 90-minute documentary, directed by Hodges Usry and released December 17, 2025, dives deep into the crime, the investigation, and the trial that followed.
Safra, a Lebanese financier and the founder of Republic National Bank of New York, was 67 and was suffering from Parkinson’s disease when he died from smoke inhalation after a fire ravaged his penthouse. Alongside him, Vivian Torrente, another nurse on staff, also perished.
For decades, the cast sparked conspiracy theories involving international money laundering, enemies, Russian mafia retaliation, and political intrigue, as Safra had cooperated with the FBI in investigations into global tax evasion schemes. Yet official investigations and court proceedings ultimately placed blame on Ted Maher, an American nurse who was caring for Safra at the time.
In the documentary, the evidence is presented chronologically, from Maher’s account of the intruders, the subsequent retraction, and the tragic spread of the fire. At the start, we start to believe Maher’s version of the story, from him being kidnapped and forced into a fake confession, but the facts and events after the trial throw away that belief.
This leaves us to question whether Maher was truly the sole architect of the tragedy, or whether there was another hidden conspiracy at play.
Ted Maher’s Complex Testimony and Trial
Ted Maher, as the Murder in Monaco and other sources also reveal, was no ordinary nurse. Before working for Safra, he was a Green Beret who retrained as a neonatal nurse. He was hired only months before the fire, reportedly, and was being paid an unusually high daily rate for his caregiving duties.
According to the version accepted by Monaco authorities and now largely presented in the Netflix documentary, Maher initially told police that two hooded intruders had stabbed him and started the fire, stabbing him and causing him to rush downstairs to alert security while directing Safra and Torrente into the steel-reinforced bathroom, which acted as a panic room
However, as Michael Griffith, his American lawyer, and Maher himself revealed, he was kidnapped a day before the incident by masked men who spoke in a Russian accent. They demanded that he leave one of the shutters open in the penthouse and showed him photos of his wife and kids in America to blackmail him.
While Maher claimed that he was not supposed to be on duty that day and had been rescheduled accidentally, the chief of the nursing staff, Sonia Herkrath, revealed in the documentary that this was not the case. According to Maher, two masked men showed up and attacked him while he was waiting in the gym room. While he tackled one man, the other stabbed him twice, causing him to faint.
When he woke up, he alerted Safra and Vivian, making them go to the secure room. Safra instructed him to ring the alarm in his room, which Maher was unaware of. So he chose to use a waste paper bucket and lit some tissues on fire, right under the fire alarm, causing it to ring. He then went down the lift, where he apparently fainted.
Edmund Safra | Credits: Murder in Monaco/Netflix
When he woke up, he was told that Safra and Vivian were dead and was instructed by some police officers to sign a written confession, which was in a language he could not read, although this was said to be false by Maher’s attorney in Monaco.
As Griffith revealed in the documentary, he was contacted by Maher’s then-wife, Heidi. On the call, Heidi revealed she was contacted by Lily Safra’s staff (the wife) and was told to come to Monaco with their fare paid by Monaco. On the way from the airport to the hospital, they were suddenly taken to the police station, and from there they were allegedly kidnapped.
Their kidnappers kept them in a hotel room under surveillance for three days, where their passports were taken. Back in the hospital room where Ted woke up, he was told by the detectives to sign documents about being responsible for the deaths. There, he was shown the passport of his wife, threatening him that if he didn’t sign, his wife wouldn’t be allowed to go back home.
While Heidi refused at the last minute to go against Lily in court, Maher continues to claim that he was the scapegoat and that Lily was also allegedly involved.
He signed the papers, and a trial took place. Although Griffith wanted to defend using Maher’s original confession, Maher’s Monacon attorney claimed it would be better to use the confession that was being played in the media: one where Maher stabbed himself, lit the fire, all to be the big rescuer and a hero in Edmund Safra’s eyes.
In December 2002, Monaco’s criminal court convicted Maher of arson causing death in the blaze that killed both Safra and Torrente, sentencing him to 10 years in prison. Maher, however, maintained that the deaths were ultimately accidental and partly the result of delayed access by police and firefighters, since Safra and Vivian were alive when the authorities got there.
However, years later, the judge involved in the case revealed that the verdict was already set before the trial started. Even the investigative reporter at the New York Post, involved in the documentary, Isabel Vincent, claimed that Ted did not get a fair trial. In a way, from the way the trial took place and judging from the documentary, Ted Maher can be seen as a scapegoat.
Where is Edmund Safra’s Killer, Ted Maher, Now?
Edmond Safra and Lily Safra in the documentary | Credits: Murder in Monaco/Netflix
The truth behind Ted Maher’s trial and testimony is a lot more complex, as Murder in Monaco later reveals. Even when the judge claimed that the trial was rigged from the start, Maher still served his whole term.
While the documentary builds it as if Maher was innocent and Lily Safra or the Russians, or the Monacon authorities as behind the death of Edmund Safra, the details revealed later turn the case upside down.
As the creator, Hodge found out, Maher went missing for months after the interview he gave for the documentary. He was reportedly being hunted by police, and as Hodge found out, the charges were burglary, larceny, forgery, and fraud. While Maher kept claiming he was innocent on the phone calls he made to Hodge, the trial revealed something else entirely.
After Monaco, Maher had legally changed his name to Jon Green and attempted to resume his life, including a renewed career in healthcare. However, his nursing license was revoked in 2013 by the Texas Board of Nursing after he failed to disclose his criminal past (via Biography).
He had reportedly broken into the office of his ex-wife, stolen cash and a gun, and committed other thefts, resulting in his arrest. In 2023, he was found guilty on multiple charges, including forgery and solicitation of murder, having allegedly paid another inmate to kill his ex-wife and steal her money, and was given an additional nine-year sentence.
As of 2025, Maher (still using the name Jon Green) is incarcerated in a medical correctional facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he is also receiving treatment for throat cancer.
While Maher continued to deny all charges, Hodge also discovered that his military career was also a sham. He had claimed to be part of the Special Forces and the Green Berets. However, as Hodge found out, Ted Maher had not completed the Special Forces medical course and was not a Green Beret.
These details really put into perspective how much of Ted Maher’s testimony was true or not. Is he a serial liar telling tales, or was he really a victim as he claims to be?
What are your thoughts about the same? Let us know in the comments below.
Murder in Monaco is now streaming on Netflix.
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