December 18, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Hodges Usry
Some language in French and Italian with subtitles
Culture Representation: The documentary film “Murder in Monaco” features a predominantly white group of people (with one Asian person) discussing the controversial murder case of Lebanese Brazilian billionaire banker Edmond Safra, who was killed during a fire in his Monaco home on December 3, 1999, at the age of 67.
Culture Clash: Even though Safra’s personal nurse was convicted of and served time in prison for the arson responsible for the fire, the nurse maintains that he did not kill Safra, and there are have been other theories of who caused Safra’s murder.
Culture Audience: “Murder in Monaco” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of true crime documentaries about murders that have conflicting theories about who caused the murders.
The documentary “Murder in Monaco” will make viewers’ heads spin with how it explores different theories of who caused the 1999 death of billionaire Edmond Safra. The movie has compelling interviews with flamboyant personalities. However, “Murder in Monaco” needed tighter editing, because of a few of the people who are interviewed tend to overshadow the narrative with their own biased agendas.
Directed by Hodges Usry, “Murder in Monaco” begins by giving a background on Monaco, the European country that is considered a playground for the wealthy. Safra was Jewish but was born in Lebanon and was also a Brazilian citizen. His wealth came from his family’s banking business. Safra died in his Monaco mansion (named the Belle Epoque) during an arson fire on the night of December 3, 1999. He was 67.
His wife Lily Safra, whom he was married to since 1976, was in another part of the mansion at the time, and escaped unharmed. Edmond, who had Parkinson’s disease, was being looked after that night by two of his personal nurses: Vivian Torrente and Ted Maher. Edmond and Torrente were both found dead from smoke inhalation in the mansion’s penthouse. Maher, an American who had relocated to Monaco for this job, was taken to a hospital with stab wounds in his abdomen and his left thigh. Maher claimed that home invaders stabbed him.
The documentary focuses on the three main theories of who murdered Edmond:
(1) The Russian Mafia. In May 1999, Edmond had reported Russian Mafia money laundering to the FBI. The documentary includes news reports and interviews with people saying that Edmond was paranoid that he would be assassinated in retaliation for reporting these crimes to the FBI.
(2) Ted Maher. He eventually admitted to starting the fire. People have speculated he had intended to stage the fire, in order to save Edmond, look like a hero, and possibly get large financial rewards for saving Edmond.
(3) Lily Safra. Edmond had changed his will weeks before his death to cut out his brothers from his inheritance and have Lily as the primary beneficiary of Edmond’s fortune.
Curiously, even though Edmond had about 25 security guards/bodyguards working for him, they were not on duty protecting him at the time that he died. The documentary has an anonymous interview with someone with the alias Mr. X, who is identified as the person who was working as Edmond’s security chief in 1999. Mr. X claims that Lily told him to give all of the security personnel the night off on December 3, 1999. Mr. X says that when he told Edmond about this unusual demand, Edmond told him to ignore Lily’s orders. However, Mr. X says he was fired by Lily when he defied Lily’s orders.
Maher, who legally changed his name to Jon Green sometime in the 2010s, is interviewed in the documentary. He explains how he got the job working for Edmond as a personal nurse. Green/Maheer says that he and his then-wife Heidi were living in New York City and working as hospital nurses when the nurses at their job went on strike.
The couple decided to earn some extra money as nannies, and they ended up taking care of kids whose parents were caterers to wealthy people, including clients Edmond and Lily Safra. These parents told Green/Maher that there was a job opening to be a personal nurse for Edmond Safra and recommended Green/Maher for the job. Green/Maher says Lily interviewed him for the job, and he was quickly hired.
In the documentary, Green/Maher gives a hard-to-believe story that contradicts some of his previous statements that he gave in court when he went on trial for the arson. Maher initially told police that he was attacked by unidentified home invaders and lost consciousness multiple times. Maher said he had been hit over the head with a lamp. In fact, there were no signs of an intrusion. Maher denies that he stabbed himself.
Green/Maher says in the documentary that investigating police forced him to sign a false confession that was in French, by threatening to harm his then-wife Heidi. The police said that Green/Maher was given an English translation of the confession before Green/Maher signed it. However, in the documentary, Green/Maher admits that he set the fire by lighting paper in a trash can because he says that Edmond ordered him to sound the alarm during the “home invasion.” Green/Maher says that the only alarm he knew how to trigger was the smoke alarm, which is why he says he started the fire.
When asked who he think plotted to have Edmond killed that night, Green/Maher says in the documentary he thinks it was “the Russians,” but that Lily could have been involved too. Green/Maher also says that days before Edmond died, he was kidnapped by unidentified Russians, who held him captive in a van. Green/Maher says these so-called kidnappers forced him to go along with a plan for the alleged home invasion.
In the documentary, Green/Maher adamantly states that he’s not lying and says he had no reason to kill Edmond. He describes working for Edmond as his “dream job.” He also says that in the days leading up to Edmond’s death, he had been looking for a new place to live because Green/Maher had gotten employer approval to have his wife and kids relocate from New York City to Monaco.
Heidi Maher, who was Green/Maher’s wife at the time, declined to be interviewed in the documentary, but she is seen making comments in archival footage, some of which look like home movies. In the footage, she is seen growing increasingly frustrated and eventually mistrusting of him. She divorced him before he went on trial in 2002.
Before the divorce, Heidi dropped a lawsuit against the Lily Safra, whom she had accused of using intimidation tactics against her when she had traveled to Monaco after Green/Maher had been arrested. Green/Maher says he believes that Lily paid off Heidi because he says that Heidi bought a penthouse condominium and paid for it in full shortly after dropping the lawsuit. The documentary mentions that there is no proof that Lily paid Heidi anything.
Even though Green/Maher knows how to tell interesting stories, he’s not the most reliable narrator in this documentary. He also implies that Lily had something with why it took more than an hour for the fire department to respond after he said he made an emergency phone call for help during the fire. There has never been any proof that the fire department was paid or given an incentive to delay responding to the fire, as Green/Maher seems to imply.
Green/Maher went on trial in 2002. He was convicted of the arson that caused the fire, and was sentenced to nine years in prison when he could’ve gotten a maximum sentence of life in prison. Green/Maher couldn’t stay out of trouble for long after he was sentenced to prison. On January 31, 2003, while he was scheduled to be transferred to a prison in France, Green/Maher and fellow inmate Luigi Ciardelli (who is interviewed in the documentary) escaped from their Monaco prison by using saws and making rope out of trash bags. Ciardelli describes Green/Maher as a con artist who makes bad decisions.
Green/Maher was caught within seven hours of this escape because he made the foolish mistake of using a borrowed credit card number to check into a hotel in Nice, France. The credit card owner was a priest in the United States whom Green/Maher had called to confess that he had escaped from prison and needed money to pay for a hotel. Green/Maher also said that he called Heidi after escaping from prison, but she abruptly ended the call because she said she didn’t want to get in trouble for aiding a fugitive.
The priest and Heidi both contacted authorities about these phone calls, which led to Green/Maher quickly being captured and arrested again. An additional nine months was added to his prison sentence for this botched prison escape. In the documentary, Green/Maher bitterly complains that he made the mistake of trusting the people who turned him in for the prison escape. This blame is an indication that he’s probably a narcissist who likes to always make himself a victim in the problems that he causes.
Lily (a Brazilian native who came from a middle-class family before she married into wealth) died in 2022 and filed lawsuits against many people or companies that suggested she caused Edmond’s death. Edmond was Lily’s fourth husband. Two of the people who got sued by her are interviewed in the documentary: a British Jamaican aristocrat/author named Lady Colin Campbell and investigative journalist Isabelle Vincent. Campbell (who is very haughty, impatient and bossy in this documentary) is described as a Safra family friend. In the documentary, Campbell calls Lily a “praying mantis” (an insect predator).
Campbell and Vincent say they think Lily should have been a suspect in Edmond’s death. Vincent, who covered the case extensively for the New York Post, talks about going to Brazil to uncover details about Lily’s mysterious background, including the suspicious death of Lily’s second husband, a wealthy businessman named Alfredo Monteverde. Monteverde died in 1969, within weeks of changing his will to make Lily the primary beneficiary of his fortune. Monteverde died of two gunshot wounds to his chest. His death was officially ruled a suicide.
Someone who says they believe Green/Maher is Michael “Mike” Griffith, who was Green/Maher’s attorney for the arson charges and represented him during Green/Maher’s trial in 2002. Griffith is another “larger than life” personality in the documentary who makes a big show of trying to convince people what they think the “truth” should be. Griffith makes some comments that indicate that he thinks Lily was somehow involved with Edmond’s death or she at least paid people off who knew too much.
Another person interviewed in the documentary is Sonia Herkrath, who was Edmond’s nursing chief of staff. Herkrath is described in the documentary as someone who clashed with Green/Maher when they worked together because of employee rivalry. Herkrath describes Green/Maher as having a “Jekyll and Hyde” personality. Not surprisingly, she thinks Green/Maher is the only person responsible for Edmond’s death and that Green/Maher was rightfully convicted of the arson. In the documentary, Green/Maher admits that he and Herkrath didn’t like each other, but he denies that he was trying to get her job.
“Murder in Monaco” director Usry occasionally appears on camera in the documentary, especially during the last 20 minutes that detail how, in 2022, Usry got involved in another criminal case where Green/Maher says he was falsely accused. The outcome of this unexpected twist in the story won’t be revealed in this review, in case people want to see the documentary and find out the details there. However, Usry does admit on camera that he got emotionally attached to Green/Maher and was inclined to believe him until the 2022 string of incidents that made Usry question Green/Maher’s credibility.
Perhaps the biggest flaw in the documentary is how it focuses so much on Safra’s death, it completely downplays that someone else died in the same room that night: his nurse Torrente. The documentary does not include her personal story at all, which comes across as distasteful to ignore who she was, as if the documentary’s filmmakers didn’t think she was important enough to mention beyond her name. A little more information about her would’ve gone a long way to showing respect for this victim.
Other people interviewed in “Murder in Monaco” are American businessman Bill Browder and Monaco attorney Sandrine Setton. They don’t have much to add to the story. Browder says he and Edmond had a joint venture called the Hermitage Centre, which did a lot of business with Russians. The Hermitage Centre ended up losing “$900 million of our clients’ money,” according to Browder. Browder says that Edmond made Browder feel paranoid that they were both going to be killed by disgruntled Russians, and Edmond encouraged Browder to hire more security personnel.
Setton was a young and relatively inexperienced attorney when she represented Green/Maher before American defense attorney Griffith was hired for the arson case. She says that she and Griffith fundamentally disagreed on the defense strategy. Griffith wanted to claim that Green/Maher’s signed confession was false and coerced. Setton says that she believed that it would be better for Green/Maher to not claim that it was a false and coerced confession, so that Green/Maher could possibly get a lighter sentence if he pleaded guilty.
The format of “Murder in Monaco” uses many of the same stereotypical true crime documentary elements, such as overly dramatic music, repetitive footage, and quick-cutting editing. The interviewees have their titles related to the case shown in large-captioned letters (such as “THE NURSE,” “THE INVESTIGATOR,” “THE ARISTOCRAT”), as if this documentary were a game of Clue, and you have to guess which character committed the crime and where and how.
“Murder in Monaco” will probably irritate viewers who expect true crime documentaries to give definitive answers to questions that remain in crime cases. Green/Maher gets a little too much screen time, considering what is revealed about him at toward the end of the movie. However, for people who appreciate documentaries that show various theories in a crime case and let viewers make up their own minds, then “Murder in Monaco” is a satisfactory but not an outstanding documentary to watch.
Netflix premiered “Murder in Monaco” on December 17, 2025.