The lawyer for the New York nurse accused of killing billionaire Edmond Safra in a 1999 fire in Monaco has vowed to turn the trial into a “European version of the O.J. Simpson circus.”
Famed lawyer Michael Griffith delivered the challenge yesterday, hot on the heels of his client Ted Maher’s desperate plea to a panel of French judges for leniency.
“We’ve thrown down the gauntlet,” Griffith told The Post.
“The Riviera papers are already calling it the trial of the century,” Griffith told The Post, “and I’m promising to make this the European version of the O.J. Simpson circus.”
Safra, 67, who founded the Republic National Bank of New York, was a virtual recluse, hobbled by Parkinson’s disease and other maladies.
He ran his huge financial empire from the penthouse of his posh villa overlooking the Riviera, where he was under the care of an army of nurses.
A bizarre fire broke out in a wastebasket Dec. 3, 1999, trapping the financier and a nurse, killing them both.
The probe of Safra’s mysterious death has produced a twisted web of charges, countercharges and conspiracy theories.
On the case’s fringes, the mogul’s widow – Lily “Gilded Lily” Safra – has been involved in a public war of words with his brothers, while Maher’s wife, Heidi, claims agents for Lily kidnapped her.
The conspiracy theories include charges that Safra was killed by the Russian mob. Speculation also has intensified about the banker’s close relationship to Israeli intelligence.
Paranoid and security-obsessed, Safra recruited his army of bodyguards from the ranks of Mossad.
Meanwhile, Maher, 43, a former nurse at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan, continues to rot in a Monaco prison.
Maher and his lawyers claim he’s a scapegoat for “incompetent” cops and firefighters who botched the billionaire’s rescue.
The nurse apparently is despondent as the months turn into years. He desperately misses his wife and their two children, who maintain a vigil at her parents’ house in upstate Stormville.
A frustrated Maher recently wrote the panel of three judges deciding his fate, admitting he set the fatal fire but insisting it was “a terrible accident.”
“I fully realize how politically charged and biased this case has been,” he wrote. “Does this justify a wrongful outcome of justice or to pass it along to others? Does this allow a blindness to the laws of the country?”
His lawyers have frequently claimed there was no intent or malice, therefore it wasn’t a crime. The distinction could be crucial to the nurse. It could mean going home to his family in a matter of months or spending the rest of his life in a French jail.
“Without the intent, can there be a crime? I was involved in a terrible accident, in which I hold myself responsible for, to a point,” the nerve-wracked nurse wrote. “I am no more an arsonist than anyone here. Is an accident a crime? No, It’s not!
“This is and always will be a terrible accident for numerous parties concerned – nothing more or less.”
However, in the closed-door hearing May 3, the prosecutor asked the court to uphold his decision to try Maher on charges of arson causing death.
Maher’s lawyer in Monaco said the prosecutor admitted he believes Maher didn’t intend to kill the Lebanese-born businessman but should still be responsible for his actions.
Following Safra’s death, his brothers have pressured authorities to consider that Maher may not have acted alone. The “Brothers Safra” – as the European press has labeled them – have hinted darkly that Lily may have been involved in her ailing hubby’s demise. She denies it.
Heidi Maher also has claimed Lily’s agents kidnapped her and took her to the police station where her passport was seized when she arrived on the Riviera shortly after the tragedy.
She charges the police used the passport to get her hubby to falsely confess to killing his ailing boss.
Prosecutors in the tiny principality along the sunny Riviera claim Maher flip-flopped on his story. They also suggest he was currying Safra’s favor by confronting non-existent hooded intruders and then stabbing himself to appear heroic.
Griffith, who has represented scores of Americans in trouble around the world, including Billy Hayes of “Midnight Express” fame, said he is ready to rumble.
“Ted’s plea could make a big difference. It could be his last clear chance to reduce the charge to involuntary manslaughter,” the globe-trotting attorney said. “The top charge carries a 20-to-life sentence.”
He characterized the case as being at a crossroads. Prosecutors will be forced to opt for the lower charge or face a courtroom carnival never seen before in the continent’s sedate courts.
Griffith said he expects a ruling next month.
As a dark cloud descended over the Mediterranean playground, Heidi Maher told CourtTV.com that if the Monaco courts maintain the arson charges, it will be the tiny principality on trial.
“The defense has prepared many worldwide experts to come into the trial to prove it was Monaco’s police and firemen, not my husband, that killed Mr. Safra and Vivian Torrente [the other nurse],” she said. “My husband was trying to save Mr. Safra and Vivian that night. Monaco picked the wrong scapegoat.”