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The new October issue of Vanity Fair has come out. This month Dominick Dunne did write about the Safra case. Here is the excerpt -

"One of the many inexplicable things about the death of Edmond Safra in Monte Carlo in December 1999 is why he didn't come out of the fortified bathroom where he suffered an excruciating death, along with Vivian Torrente. Granted, he was overmedicated and paranoid, according to sources close to him, and one of his nurses told me he had terrible nightmares, screamed in his sleep, and was terrified of being murdered. But even though the smoke that would slowly kill him and his nurse kept seeping in under the door, he refused to open it. Now there's a new twist in the story. Apparently, Torrente, a 50-year-old married Filipina from New Jersey, did try to get out of the bathroom. In the recently translated French autopsy report, there are indications that a struggle may have taken place between Safra and his employee.

According to information I have received, there was Safra DNA under Torrente's fingernails and Torrente DNA under Safra's fingernails. Furthermore, there were unexplained bruises on Torrente's body, as well as "combat-like" bruises on the back of her neck. I have long known about the back-of-the-neck bruise, but I had not heard about the other ones until recently. There was also blood in her thyroid, and Safra's blood was on her bra and undergarment.

Several diaries back, I wrote that there had allegedly been an immediate payoff to Torrente's widower by the Safra estate. Even as I write, the famous medical examiner Michael Baden, whom I met at the O.J. Simpson trial, is studying the autopsy report. Baden and a host of other expert witnesses -- on fire, police work, security, medical care, safe rooms -- have joined the team being put together by Michael Griffith, the American lawyer representing Ted Maher. Griffith, who gained international fame as the lawyer for Billy Hayes, who was busted for drugs in Turkey in 1970 and whose story was made into the film "Midnite Express", intends to prove that had it not been for the incompetence of the Monaco police and fire services Safra and Torrente would still be alive."