SAFRA GUARD CLAIMS COP BUNGLE LED TO FIRE DEATH (Ted Maher Alert)

NY POST via Yahoo ^ | By PHILLIPE DUPUY and BRAD HUNTER

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SAFRA GUARD CLAIMS COP BUNGLE LED TO FIRE DEATH

Tue Nov 26, 3:52 AM ET

Billionaire Edmond Safra's former head of security blamed cops yesterday for the tycoon's death in a bizarre blaze at his Monaco mansion.

One of the financier's nurses, Ted Maher, is on trial for causing the deaths of the 67-year-old Safra and another nurse, Vivian Torrente, by setting a wastebasket ablaze in December 1999.

Maher, of Stormville, N.Y., claims he set the fire only so he could be a hero when he rescued banking tycoon Safra.

Security man Samuel Cohen testified that he arrived at the residence 20 minutes after learning his boss was in peril.

The former Mossad agent said he spent a half-hour trying to convince police he was the security chief and had a key to Safra's locked penthouse.

"It was a nightmare for me because nobody listened and nobody accepted my help," he said.

"If they had let me inside when I first arrived at 5:20 a.m., we could have had Mr. Safra and Vivian Torrente out of there."

Finally, Cohen fled from the cops and raced to the fifth floor.

The bumbling cops, he said, then handcuffed him, thinking he was a terrorist.

He said the police also delayed firefighters - and when they were finally allowed to enter, they couldn't find the billionaire and his nurse.

But a police inspector took the witness stand to justify the over-caution shown by Monaco cops.

"Because of the personal life of Mr. Safra, you could expect an armed [terrorist] attack," police Inspector Van Den Corput told the court.

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More Photos. Reports have been scarce....

Yahoo! News Photo Matches

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	American nurse Ted Maher sits in the box at Monaco's courthouse Thursday Nov. 28, 2002, during his trial for the arson death of his billionaire employer Edmond Safra on Dec. 3, 1999. Authorities are seeking life in prison for Maher, who claims he never expected the fire he started in a small wastebasket in Safra's luxury Monaco penthouse to rage out of control and kill Safra and another nurse. (AP Photo/Lionel Cironneau) - Nov 28 7:16 AM ET
	American nurse Ted Maher, right, talks with his American lawyer Michael Griffith at Monaco's courthouse Thursday Nov. 28, 2002, during his trial for the arson death of his billionaire employer Edmond Safra on Dec. 3, 1999. Authorities are seeking life in prison for Maher, who claims he never expected the fire he started in a small wastebasket in Safra's luxury Monaco penthouse to rage out of control and kill Safra and another nurse. (AP Photo/Lionel Cironneau) - Nov 28 7:16 AM ET
	American nurse Ted Maher, second from left, talks with his American lawyer Michael Griffith at Monaco's courthouse Thursday Nov. 28, 2002, during his trial for the arson death of his billionaire employer Edmond Safra on Dec. 3, 1999. Authorities are seeking life in prison for Maher, who claims he never expected the fire he started in a small wastebasket in Safra's luxury Monaco penthouse to rage out of control and kill Safra and another nurse. (AP Photo/Lionel Cironneau) - Nov 28 7:16 AM ET
	Monaco police officers flank American nurse Ted Maher in the dock at Monaco's courthouse Thursday Nov. 28, 2002, during his trial for the arson death of his billionaire employer Edmond Safra on Dec. 3, 1999. Authorities are seeking life in prison for Maher, who claims he never expected the fire he started in a small wastebasket in Safra's luxury Monaco penthouse to rage out of control and kill Safra and another nurse. (AP Photo/Lionel Cironneau) - Nov 28 7:15 AM ET
	American nurse Ted Maher (C) charged in the arson death of his billionaire employer Edmond Safra three years at Monaco court, November 28, 2002. Maher is accused of setting fire to Safra's luxury penthouse in a twisted attempt to make himself look like a hero and ingratiate himself with Safra. Safra, the 67-year-old founder and principal stock owner of the Republic National Bank of New York, and another nurse, Viviane Torrent, died December 3, 1999 from suffocation in a smoke-filled bathroom where they had sought refuge. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard - Nov 28 6:53 AM ET
	American nurse Ted Maher, charged in the arson death of his billionaire employer Edmond Safra three years ago arrives at Monaco court, November 28, 2002. Maher is accused of setting fire to Safra's luxury penthouse in a twisted attempt to make himself look like a hero and ingratiate himself with Safra. Safra, the 67-year-old founder and principal stock owner of the Republic National Bank of New York, and another nurse, Viviane Torrent, died December 3, 1999 from suffocation in a smoke-filled bathroom where they had sought refuge. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard - Nov 28 6:52 AM ET
	American nurse Ted Maher (R), charged in the arson death of his billionaire employer Edmond Safra three years ago chats with his lawyer Michael J. Griffith of the USA as he arrives at Monaco court, November 28, 2002. Maher is accused of setting fire to Safra's luxury penthouse in a twisted attempt to make himself look like a hero and ingratiate himself with Safra. Safra, the 67-year-old founder and principal stock owner of the Republic National Bank of New York, and another nurse, Viviane Torrent, died December 3, 1999 from suffocation in a smoke-filled bathroom where they had sought refuge. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard - Nov 28 6:53 AM ET
	American nurse Ted Maher, charged in the arson death of his billionaire employer Edmond Safra three years ago arrives at Monaco court law November 28, 2002. Maher is accused of setting fire to Safra's luxury penthouse in a twisted attempt to make himself look like a hero and ingratiate himself with Safra. Safra, the 67-year-old founder and principal stock owner of the Republic National Bank of New York, and another nurse, Viviane Torrent, died December 3, 1999 from suffocation in a smoke-filled bathroom where they had sought refuge. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard - Nov 28 6:50 AM ET

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Here's some slightly new infoI dug up. It talks of Lily Safra and Sonia Herkrath's testimony. http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,5552506%255E401,00.html

'Panic room' death prompts inquiry

From The Sunday Times's Matthew Campbell in Monaco
November 25, 2002

HUSH fell over the court as the world's wealthiest widow took the witness stand. Was it true, asked the judge, that she blamed the Monaco police for the death of Edmond Safra, her billionaire husband, rather than the man on trial for his killing?

The diminutive figure of Lily Safra, who inherited a fortune to rival that of Britain's Queen Elizabeth, casts a big shadow over court proceedings following Safra's mysterious death in a fire at his penthouse three years ago.

She has secured some of the best legal brains in Europe to help unravel the facts, although the story unfolding in a church-like courtroom last week hinted more at simple, human frailties than international intrigue.

Staring at Lily from the dock was Ted Maher, an American former Green Beret and one of a dozen nurses employed by the former king of private banking. He confessed to starting the fire that engulfed Safra's Monaco residence as part of a bizarre scheme to "rescue" his boss from fictitious intruders.

The plot foundered, argued the defence, on the inability of Monaco police and firemen to coax the famously paranoid Safra from the fortified "panic room" in which he had hidden and where he died from smoke inhalation.

Sonia Herkrath, another former nurse, last Friday testified that on the day after the blaze in December 1999, she had heard the Uruguayan-born Lily complain that "it was the Monaco police that killed my husband".

Lily, a neatly groomed figure in a black trouser suit, fixed her dark, mascara-lined eyes on the judge. "I was desperately upset after the death of someone I adored," she said, explaining her criticism of the police.

So global and secretive was Safra's banking empire that imaginations have run rampant in conjuring up potential assassination plots involving Russian mobsters or Palestinian hitmen. Instead, the court heard how Maher stabbed himself in the chest and thigh before warning his boss that masked men had broken into the flat.

Hoping to be rewarded as a "hero" for raising the alarm, he lit a fire in a wastepaper bin to set off a smoke detector before alerting the night watchman downstairs.

Maher said police "time-wasting" was as much to blame as him for the "terrible accident", which also claimed the life of Vivian Torrente, a nurse who died with Safra.

Various police witnesses did little to dispel this impression with their accounts of the rescue effort. They included a laborious exploration of a cavernous underground carpark where they exploded a "suspicious-looking" battery charger while Safra was suffocating on the sixth floor. Policemen also handcuffed Safra's chief of security as he tried to go to the aid of his boss.

Lily said: "I thought I could save my husband by doing something." She had to limit her efforts, however, to addressing him on the telephone. "I told him the police were there and that everything was all right and he should stay calm."

Herkrath said she too had spoken to Safra on the phone. "I told him and Vivian (Torrente) to get down low, put water on towels and place them over their mouths," she added. The advice was intended to protect them from the fumes but they did not appear to have followed it.

The defence will argue that marks discovered on Torrente's body suggest Safra, fearing intruders were waiting outside to kill him, restrained her from leaving the room, making him as much to blame for her death as Maher.

Maher's lawyers hope to embarrass Lily this week over a payment made to Torrente's family in the US. They will argue it was aimed at sidestepping a potentially much more expensive wrongful death lawsuit the family had considered bringing against the Safra family.

The Australian