Believe it or not, I was unprepared for the recently released Netflix documentary Murder in Monaco (2025). I don’t know the first thing about Edmond Safra, the Lebanese Jewish billionaire who died in 1999. Under suspicious circumstances, to say the least. The mystery of what happened to one of the world’s wealthiest bankers remains today.

By Emad Aysha
Even Henry Kissinger was baffled in the docudrama. Nonetheless, I had the advantage of a TV education as a kid. A miniseries I watched way back when was Fatal Vision (1984), starring Karl Malden in a harrowing true crime drama.

Malden plays a bereaved father who dedicates his life to proving his son-in-law killed his pregnant daughter and two granddaughters. Initially, he believed his son-in-law and defended him, then he put together the forensics to prove the man was lying and butchered his own family.

Here’s the cincher. The guilty person was a Green Beret, trained as a doctor in the special forces, and he claimed hippies on acid invaded his house, stabbed him and murdered his wife and kids.

Wouldn’t you know it, the man fingered for Safra’s death was none other than his own male nurse, Ted Maher, who (claimed) he was a Green Beret!

COMPARATIVE STUDIES: The renamed Ted Maher [left] and John Cole [in cuffs] and screen legends Karl Malden and Eva Marie Saint.
I was suspicious of Maher from the word go, in part because of his facial expressions, tone of voice, and body language, but also because of the near-identical scenario he spun about what happened to his patron.

Masked men invaded the penthouse, with the cameras conveniently turned off, ‘stabbed’ him in the gut, then left him to his own demise while they went after Safra.

Then Maher started a small fire in a trash can to set the fire alarm off, and hours later, the cops and firemen showed up with the poor man and his nurse choking to death in the panic room.

Maher isn’t the only suspect, mind you. There’s Safra’s opportunistic wife (the blonde Brazilian Lily), the black widow variety, with a slew of divorces and a ‘suicided’ husband behind her. And also the Russian mafia and/or Russian oligarchs who’d declared an unofficial war against Edmond and his financial partners.

There was also the absence of Safra’s entire team of bodyguards, reduced to one lone guy, his will and the bizarre and inexcusable ‘slowness’ of the rescuers.

It could very well be that Maher was a pawn in a larger game and then was turned into a fall guy. He’s in prison again, in America, for forgery and hiring a killer to bump off his ex-wife. And, despite his protestations of naivety, he was smart enough to escape from his Monaco prison.

He got caught afterwards, through a minor betrayal by the little lady, but was able to get people to help him get out. So he’s brighter than he looks. Just too full of himself, having a hot bath and smoking a ‘cigar’ while on the run in a hotel, with the cops 5 minutes away!

SHATTERED INHERITANCE: Lily Safra (1934–2022) and her soon-to-be-deceased husband, Edmond.

There are other disturbing parallels, to be honest. Maher sounds like an Arabic name, probably why poor Safra trusted him. And, bizarrely, Karl Malden’s character is called Freddy Kassab.

His Green Beret son-in-law, played very deviously by Gary Cole, is a persuasive, charming guy. He completely convinces his new lawyer and fools a new girl into falling in love with him.

Kassab himself was fooled at first. Now for some other cinematic parallels. The Michael Bay movie 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016) is the true story of the assault on the American embassy and the death of the ambassador.

Bay has his usual jingoism in the movie, which is out of place and annoying in such a darn serious and bloody good movie. But apart from that, the film feels historically authentic and is both tragic and uplifting.

You really feel for the idealistic ambassador and the soldiers in the employ of the CIA, especially the ones horribly maimed or killed. It’s the CIA that you both can’t stand and are deathly suspicious of.

It’s not just the arrogant CIA station chief (David Costabile) who treats the soldiers like servants, or the insane bureaucracy that slowed everything down for hours and hours – rapid reaction teams, drones, jetfighters, turning the lights off, etc.

It’s also the CIA bodyguard assigned to Ambassador Chris Stevens (Matt Letscher). They bunker down in the bathroom after the terrorists set the embassy on fire. (Sound familiar?) Then the guard, for some reason, doesn’t wet towels and stuff them under the door.

TARGET HISTORY: Another oddity in '13 Hours' (screenshot) is that the terrorists only use a mortar in their 'third' attempt on the CIA's top secret compound (everybody knows about).

Instead, he takes the ambassador out into the inferno and ‘loses’ him. But even that is done wrong, since you’re supposed to wet towels and put them over you to keep wet and avoid breathing in the fumes. That’s basic fire-drill training and common sense.

Somehow, I don’t think a director as detailed as Michael Bay, with colossal amounts of research, would get something that fundamental wrong. That must be what actually happened, or what the CIA guy said happened.

Oh, Maher’s story about making a small fire to get the alarm going doesn’t add up, again, for common-sense and military-training reasons. If you want to get the sprinklers going to draw attention, you light a match or use a lighter right underneath the thing, not burn paper or tissues.

Hasn’t anybody ever watched the face-huggers sequence in Aliens (1986)? So much for Green Beret training, and that assuming he was a Green Beret to begin with. His being a nurse was probably also a wound to his pride, which would explain the bath-and-cigar episode yet again.

Other curious deaths need to be reinvestigated, such as Robert Maxwell's. He was also heavily involved with Russian oligarchs, the KGB and arms dealing. And you don’t need a scuba squad with a mini-sub to kill him on his yacht.

ARSON ALERT: Matt Letscher as the ill-fated ambassador and 'Arabist' Chris Stevens. (It's always our friends who get eliminated!)

All you need is someone on the inside, someone envious and hungry for money – and recognition. A staff member could have pushed him off, for personal or professional reasons.

In the end, it is always the person you most suspect. Like the butler!