Murder in Monaco is an intriguing 2025 documentary film streaming on Netflix that dives deep into the mystery surrounding the death of Edmond Safra, the billionaire banker who was seemingly murdered in his penthouse in Monaco, which is ironically considered the safest country for the wealthy. Through interviews with various investigative experts and acquaintances of the family, and even the prime accused himself, the film presents each of the possible theories behind the death of the billionaire and then also uncovers a recent and simply bizarre indirect development in the case. Overall, Murder in Monaco is a well-made documentary film that is bound to hook and impress any fan of the true-crime genre.
Who was Edmond Safra?
Edmond Safra was a Lebanese-Brazilian banker who managed to amass tremendous wealth and influence through his contributions in the personal banking sector. Born in Lebanon, Edmond belonged to a revered Jewish family that originally hailed from Syria and already had a hand in the banking industry. By the time Edmond was a teenager, his father, Jacob, had already successfully established his private bank, the Banque de Credit National S.A.L., and so he joined the family business and learned the ropes. At a significantly young age, Edmond was able to earn a few million dollars through the business and started his own Trade Development Bank in Geneva, through which he targeted the super-rich, whom he found to be the most lucrative clients.
As the business grew and he eventually set up the Republic National Bank of New York, Edmond Safra continued to target the same clientele on a global scale, with most of the billionaires in the wealthiest countries in the world, like Monaco, Luxembourg, and Switzerland, putting their faith in him. The businessman became the private banker to the rich and the famous, with numerous film stars, politicians, and socialites all over the world putting their money in his bank. In turn, Edmond Safra himself became a public figure who was often spotted at charity events, and he was named one of the 200 richest men in the world by Forbes.
However, what is now perhaps the first thing that comes to mind with the mention of the name of Edmond Safra is the mysterious manner of his death in the early hours of 3rd December, 1999. After growing wary of professional and personal rivals, Edmond and his wife, Lily, moved to the principality of Monaco, which is considered not just a tax haven but also the safest place for billionaires. He quite literally sheltered himself behind the safe confines of bulletproof shutters in the windows and numerous security cameras, all put in place at his penthouse to prevent attacks.
However, on the 3rd of December, 1999, two masked men reportedly managed to enter the penthouse, most possibly from the luxurious hotel just beside the building, and they wanted to either abduct or kill Edmond Safra. While Lily Safra managed to flee the scene somehow, Edmond took shelter inside the panic room with his nurse, Vivian Torrente. But when the perpetrators set fire to the penthouse before leaving, the toxic fumes seeped into the panic room as well. By the time firefighters could respond to the emergency, Edmond Safra was found to have died from asphyxiation while sitting on a sofa inside the panic room, while Vivian lay dead from the same cause on the floor.
Why was the Russian mafia suspected?
As the deaths of the billionaire and his nurse had clearly taken place under mysterious circumstances, the Monaco police immediately started an investigation to find the two culprits who had supposedly broken in and caused the fire, and also the bigger gang behind them. There was no dearth of theories as to who could have been involved, since Edmond Safra had very openly made a number of enemies throughout his professional career. The very first perpetrator that everyone believed to have been involved was the Russian mafia, and the police as well as the media started to consider this angle very seriously. Through a business partner named Bill Browder, Edmond Safra had made some significant professional deals in Russia, and he was believed to have gotten involved with some shady figures along the way. Safra and Browder had set up a joint venture in Russia called the Hermitage Capital Management, which had grown from 25 million dollars to a billion dollars in just a few months’ time.
However, when the Russian government devalued their currency in 1998, the venture reportedly lost 900 million dollars of the money their clients had invested through them. As a result, Safra and Browder immediately wanted to leave the Russian market, which seemingly upset quite a few politicians in power, including a younger Vladimir Putin, who wanted foreign businesses to keep supporting the country through this transformative phase. Around the same time, numerous foreign businessmen were being killed on the streets of the major cities in the country. There was also a push at the time to have oligarchs, who were essentially backed by and intricately connected with the government, invest in businesses that would drive the new Russia forward.
Safra and Browder had invested in a Russian oil company called Sidanco, 96% of which was owned by the oligarch Vladimir Potanin, and according to Browder, Potanin was trying to claim 75% of what he and Safra had made during their tenure together. They were being pushed into accepting the deal, and when they took a strong stance against the oligarch, there were clear attempts to harm and threaten the bankers. Soon after, Edmund Safra had also notified the FBI about how certain members of the Russian government were trying to launder money through his and a rival bank in the US, which was soon proven to be true. It was primarily at this time that Safra grew extremely concerned about his safety, and he appointed bodyguards and security officers for himself as well as for Browder. Therefore, the theory that the Russian mafia had hired assassins to kill Edmond Safra at his own penthouse was the very first one that came to everyone’s minds, although there was nothing concrete found to support the belief.
Who did the police arrest as the prime suspect?
As the Monaco police concluded their brief investigation, they revealed some astonishing details and a theory behind the real cause of the billionaire’s death, and they also provided evidence to support the same. There was really not much proof of anyone having broken into the penthouse on the night of the incident, and footage from the security cameras would have helped. Although numerous cameras were placed all over the house, both inside and outside, the specific footage that could have shown the perpetrators had been mysteriously deleted from the system. It was primarily because of this that the police suspected an inside job, or at least an act of negligence, and they officially held Edmond Safra’s male nurse, Ted Maher, responsible.
Ted Maher, who appears extensively in Netflix’s Murder in Monaco, was a former Green Beret who had become a professional nurse after returning to the United States, and it was through a wealthy client that he was working for at the time that he first got in touch with the Safras. At the time, Edmond was in search of a nurse who could assist him in his troubles with Parkinson’s disease, and Ted applied for the job only because of how well he would be paid, even though it would keep him away from his wife and children. The fact that Ted had previous experience in the military was all the more impressive to the family, as he could be a nurse and a personal bodyguard to the nervous banker, and so he signed up. According to him, both he and the Safras liked the arrangement, and his boss agreed to let Ted bring his family to Monaco when he asked him a few months later.
However, the authorities revealed that they were confident that it was Ted who had started the fire inside the penthouse in order to create a fake dangerous situation from which he would rescue his boss and be a heroic figure to him, in order to gain financial or other benefits. According to them, Ted had started the fire in a bin, which set off the initial alarms, and then let the flames spread to the rest of the house, while he claimed that two intruders had broken in, making Edmond and Vivian take shelter inside the panic room. He also stabbed himself in the stomach twice, according to the police, to make his story about the intruders sound more convincing, but was ultimately unable to save his boss as he had originally planned, because he had fainted from his injuries.
Through his lawyer, Ted Maher claimed that he had indeed started the fire in the bin to trigger the fire alarms, which he believed was the only way to get the authorities alerted. He also claimed that nobody in their right mind would have stabbed themselves in the stomach just to carry out a ridiculous plan. But the authorities fought back by stating that Ted had gone through the exact medical training required for someone to know how to injure themselves without causing damage to internal organs during his time as a Green Beret. He had also worked at Las Vegas casinos as a security officer and had proper knowledge about how to get rid of security camera footage. Most importantly, the police had presented an official document in which Ted Maher had confessed to the crime, but the perpetrator kept stating that he had been forced to sign the document, which he could not even understand because it was all in French.
Could Edmond’s wife, Lily, have been involved?
A third and equally interesting theory cropped up later on, and it involved Edmond’s rather suspicious wife, Lily Safra. A Brazilian national, Lily came from a humble background, but had managed to climb her way to the very top of the social hierarchy through her multiple marriages, some of which had quite suspicious endings. For example, her second husband, Alfredo Monteverde, was one of the richest businessmen in Brazil when they married, but he died under extremely suspicious circumstances a couple of years later. Alfredo was found dead in his bedroom with two bullet wounds to his chest, and the official autopsy ruled it a suicide, even though it was simply bizarre that a man could have shot himself in the chest twice. Most believe that there was some foul play involved in the death, which had been carefully covered up, and the only person to gain significantly from the death was the widow, Lily.
Only a few weeks before Alfredo’s death, he had changed his will to cut out his sister, Rosita, completely and instead leave everything to his wife, and so Lily inherited his wealth and business after his demise. Similarly, only some time before Edmond Safra’s death, he too had changed his will to exclude his brothers, who had always disliked Lily, as they considered her too lowly for the family, and had left everything to his wife. Therefore, it was once again only Lily Safra who stood to benefit from the mysterious death of Edmond, as she inherited 4.8 billion dollars and also the ludicrously expensive Villa La Leopolda on the French Riviera. Interestingly, Lily seemed to go to great lengths to frame Ted Maher as the sole perpetrator in the arson. She is believed to have paid an unknown sum of money to Ted’s wife, Heidi, when she had come to see her husband in Monaco, in order to turn against Ted and part ways from him.
It is also possible that Lily had been in cahoots with the Russians, as both of them wanted Edmond Safra dead. When Lily decided to sell the Villa La Leopolda, the interested buyer turned out to be Mikhail Pokhorov, another Russian oligarch, who paid around 50 million dollars in advance for the deal. Interestingly, the deal fell through, and surprisingly, Lily decided to not return the 50 million, with Pokhorov apparently making no objections either. This could very well have been a kind of payoff between the two sides. It is also believed that Lily Safra had paid the head nurse at their house, Sonia Herkrath, to provide false testimony against Ted Maher during the trial. Lily could also never give any serious story about how she had exactly escaped the house on the fateful night, which made her look all the more suspicious. But whatever secrets she might have had, Lily Safra took to the grave in 2022, at the age of 87.
How Were The Authorities Indirectly Responsible For The Death?
Irrespective of what had been the actual cause of the fire, there can be no doubt that the authorities at Monaco could also be held responsible for the deaths of the billionaire banker and his nurse. In the early hours of December 3rd, the police had been alerted about a possible break-in at the penthouse, at around 4:49 am, following which there had been numerous more calls made to the authorities. While inside the panic room, Vivian Torrente had made multiple calls to Sonia Herkrath for help, and the head nurse had kept alerting the authorities about the situation, but they simply could not reach the penthouse in time. By the time the firefighters reached the place, there was a confusion about whether the perpetrators were armed, and so the police had to search through the entire building and mark it safe before the firefighters were allowed to enter.
It was ultimately at 7:45 am, 3 hours after the initial call had been made to the police, that the firefighters breached the panic room, where they found Edmund and Vivian dead. Had the two been exposed to the toxic fumes for a shorter time, and had they been rescued by the firefighters earlier, the two would have survived. However, the authorities were not held responsible, and some still claim that there might have been an even bigger cover-up, considering the importance of Edmund Safra. Although he did condemn the Russian attack in Ukraine in recent times, the ruler of Monaco, Prince Albert, has always been a very close friend of Vladimir Putin, and so some believe that the prince himself could have had a part to play in a potential political assassination and the eventual cover-up.
Ted Maher was ultimately found guilty of the arson that caused the death of the billionaire and his nurse in the court trial, and he was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Bizarrely, the judge who had reached this ruling, Hullin, came out to state a few years later that he was involved in an act of systemic corruption in which he already decided whom to charge even before the trial began. Hullin admitted that the Ted Maher case had been part of this corruption, and that Ted was already decided to be held responsible for the arson even before the trial, which was basically just a fake show of justice. This further pushes the theory that the authorities could have very well been involved in something sinister. Even if not, they were clearly in a hurry to cleanse the image of Monaco at all costs, and so Ted Maher was ultimately made the fall guy, irrespective of whether he had actually committed the crime.
What is the new development in Ted Maher’s life?
While in prison in Monaco, Ted Maher had unbelievably escaped from prison to take shelter in Nice, from where he called up his wife and his priest, both of whom informed the police about the situation, since this hasty decision taken by Ted was extremely immoral and wrong according to them. This was when Ted turned vengeful against his wife, Heidi, who soon officially divorced him and cut him out of the lives of their children. He was sent back to Monaco prison, and a few months were added to his sentence for his audacious escape. Eventually, Ted was released sometime in 2013 or ’14, following which he returned to the USA and changed his identity to Jon Green. But shockingly, he once again got in trouble with the law in 2022, when he became a fugitive after being charged with burglary, larceny, forgery, and fraud. Only some time later, the police found enough proof to charge him with murder for hire, as Ted had supposedly paid an inmate to find and kill his fourth wife, Kim Lark. He was ultimately caught in 2024 and sentenced to 9 years in prison in 2025, and the earliest he can be released from jail is 2031. Investigations carried out by the filmmaker in Murder in Monaco also suggest that Ted Maher had never been a Green Beret and that he had built his entire life on a web of lies. This adds an even more complicated layer to the already complicated case of Edmond Safra, the billionaire banker who seemingly had far too many enemies.
