 Ruling offers glimpse into mind of nurse who set fatal fire |
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What was going through the mind of an American nurse when he set fire to the luxury European home of a billionaire?
A newly translated court document offers the first glimpse into the motivations of Theodore Maher, who now faces trial in Monaco for the 1999 blaze that killed banker Edmond Safra and another nurse, Vivian Torrente. Maher, a 44-year-old registered nurse from upstate New York, was under tremendous job stress and wanted to impress Safra, his employer, but had no clear idea what he hoped to accomplish when he set the blaze, according to the document, a new English translation of a 47-page court ruling issued in the tiny French principality of Monaco. "The fire was very small and I did not think that the fire in such a small trash can was going to do all this," Maher told an investigating magistrate in 2000, according to the June 18 ruling provided by the defense to Courttv.com last month. "Moreover, there were windows in the room, so I could not imagine that Mr. Safra and Vivian could die."
At the time of the incident, Maher blamed the fire and self-inflicted knife wounds on non-existent intruders into the Safra penthouse.
Maher eventually confessed to setting the Dec. 3, 1999, fire but maintains that the deaths of Safra and Torrente would have been averted if police had not blocked firefighters from launching a rescue attempt until long after Maher was rushed to a hospital.
The June ruling, which is being appealed, upheld a prosecutor's decision to try Maher for arson-murder. If convicted, Maher could get as much as life in prison, but his lawyers are still trying to get the charges reduced to the equivalent of involuntary manslaughter, punishable by no more than six years.
So if Maher was not trying to harm anyone, what was he trying to do? Why did he start the fire, stab himself and concoct a story about intruders?
The Motive
Maher was becoming increasingly insecure about his $600-per-day job caring for Safra, a 67-year-old Parkinson's disease sufferer. He described this job anxiety to investigating magistrate Patricia Richet during closed-court sessions totaling more than 100 hours, according to the ruling.
What finally pushed him, the document says, was a comment made by one of Maher's superiors comparing him to a famous Tom Hanks character.
"Oh, my God. We hired a Forrest Gump," one of Safra's top aides, Anthony Brittan, allegedly said the evening before the fire after learning that Maher had walked about 35 miles one day to a town in northern Italy.
The words stuck in Maher's mind as he sat watching his sleeping patient during the wee hours of Dec. 3, 1999.
Seated in the master bedroom of Safra's posh penthouse apartment in Monaco, Maher assessed his situation.
Maher had not seen Forrest Gump, but he knew the comparison between him and the slow-on-the-uptake character was not a compliment.
There was also friction with Sonia Herkrath. Though not technically Maher's boss, Herkrath had control of the nurses' work schedule and could make their lives difficult if she didn't like them. And she didn't like Maher, whom she considered just another "flavor of the month," who had gotten into Safra's good graces by returning a camera a friend forgot in New York six months earlier.
Herkrath was allegedly responsible for the departure of 17 other nurses in the previous 16 months, and Maher did not want to become number 18. He believed she was intentionally providing him with wrong information, causing him to make mistakes that had not gone unnoticed, and she frequently altered his scheduled between day and night shifts with little or no notice.
Maher felt tremendous job stress since arriving in Monaco, but the pay was good, and he wanted to stay or leave on his own terms. Even without the work pressures, Maher was conflicted about whether he should return to his wife, four children and job in the neo-natal unit at Columbia Presbyterian Center of New York Hospital.
Heidi Maher, a nurse herself, wanted her husband to come home. A threatened strike at Columbia Presbyterian never materialized, and the six-month leave he had taken as a way to avoid the strike was coming to an end.
Something had to be done to relieve the pressure. Ted Maher settled on a plan that would have profound implications, according to the court ruling laying out his statements in detail, as fellow nurse Vivian Torrente relieved him at 3 a.m. on Dec. 3, 1999.
The Fire
After leaving Safra in Torrente's care, Maher returned to the nurse's station and into an adjoining bathroom.
Using a piece of sandpaper, Maher gave himself several scrapes on his face to simulate an assault. Then he injected himself with 6 milliliters of Lidocaine, an anesthetic later detected in a sample of his blood, to numb the pain from what he was about to do next.
Using a folding, black-handled knife, Ted Maher stabbed himself in his leg and abdomen — not deep enough to do any real damage but enough to cause noticeable bleeding.
Maher used a flashlight to get Torrente's attention. He told her there were intruders in the apartment and gave her instructions to lock the doors and use his cellphone to alert police.
Maher then used a scented bathroom candle to set what he thought would be a small, controlled fire under a smoke detector in the nurse's station, according to the document. He figured the alarm would attract the attention of Safra's security staff, who would put out the fire.
"I lit a paper towel from the flame of the candle. I put the towel inside the waste paper basket and I made sure it was underneath the smoke detector in the middle of the room," Maher is quoted as telling the investigative judge. "I made sure that the waste paper basket was right underneath the detector. The chair was far away and the closet doors were closed ... I did not use anything to [accelerate] the fire."
But the fire did accelerate, burning at more than 800 degrees Fahrenheit, according to a fire expert's report. Safra and Torrente, who locked themselves in a dressing room while police searched the two-story residence for intruders, were overcome by toxic fumes and died, autopsies confirmed.
The Trial
Maher's trial will focus on his actions, their consequences and whether he could have the deadly outcome.
One of his lead lawyers in Monaco, Donald Manasse, told Courttv.com this week that he cannot discuss statements and actions attributed to Maher in the court ruling because the defense team still believes that the court's pretrial investigation was procedurally flawed and violated Maher's rights.
Manasse confirmed, however, that Maher was feeling work and home pressures and that his "poor relationship" with Sonia Herkrath, the scheduling nurse, weighed on his mind.
"I don't think we have a good handle on what his motivation might have been. He was having difficulty on the job and did have difficulty with this woman Sonia," Manasse said. "He had never been threatened with being fired. I think he had more of a concern that he was being misunderstood and that his true value to his employer was being belittled."
In fact, according to the June court ruling, Maher thought a lot that night about proving his worth to Safra.
"During his duty from 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. with Edmond Safra, [Maher] wondered about the way he could prove to him that he wished him well and that he had good intentions about him," the ruling says. "He thought of injuring himself, then [saying] that an individual had entered the apartment and that help needed to be called."
"At the same time, he was thinking about his humiliation from Anthony Brittan's words ... 'Oh, my God. We hired a Forrest Gump,'" the ruling continues. "According to Theodore Maher, these words had triggered this off in his mind."
Although Safra was listed 199th among Forbes magazine's 200 richest men of the world, Manasse said there were no indications that Maher hoped to be rewarded financially by appearing a hero to his employer.
"I think he wanted them to understand that he was a true, professional nurse and that he was very devoted," Manasse said. "He has always said that he wanted to show his devotion to Mr. Safra ... Ted had absolutely no malicious intent. It was to secure his position, not to eliminate it."
Monaco's chief prosecutor, Daniel Serdet, could not be reached for comment and has not responded to telephone and faxed messages from Courttv.com this summer. A secretary at Monaco's Palace of Justice said Serdet does not speak English.
Among other things, prosecutors argued successfully before the principality's Court of Appeals that Maher's failure to extinguish the fire after his stated goal of activating the smoke detector was achieved provides support for his indictment on a charge of "willfully setting a fire in such a way to spread said fire to lived-in premises, resulting in the deaths of two persons found there."
"That's basically what it all boils down to," Manasse said of the charges. "They're saying he should have seen the unforeseeable."
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