Sara James Correspondent • Profile

MONTE CARLO - Edmond Safra and Ted Maher are an unlikely pair of characters to be cast together in a tragic murder mystery.

Safra was a spectacularly wealthy banker from Lebanon whose family business catered to the moneyed elite.

Maria Bartiromo: It was just high business, big money, incredible wealth, on a global scale.

The other lead actor, Ted Maher, was living life on a much more ordinary scale -- married with young children and a nursing job in New York.

Ted Maher: We lived in upstate New York in a house that I built. My wife and I both worked full-time.

These two profoundly different worlds collided --- with devastating results -- in, of all places, Monte Carlo. The sun-drenched Riviera.

It was a story that made headlines around the world -- a rich banker killed in a bizarre penthouse inferno. His American nurse was at the center of the mystery.

Now, more than eight years later, crucial questions remain about what really happen here.

And tonight, in his first network television interview, that nurse offers new details, and new information -- including his answer to the most perplexing question of all. Is he a killer, a hero, or a victim himself?

Long before the world wondered anything about Ted Maher, he was a young man who needed the Army to pay for college.

Ted did well in the military, from Ft. Bragg to the Special Forces to the Green Berets.

Sara James, Dateline NBC: That's the elite.

Ted Maher: Yes, it is. You really don't have to prove yourself to anyone else after that.

Ted had been a medic in the Special Forces, and after the Army decided to return to school to become a nurse.

That's where he met his wife Heidi.

After graduation Ted took a job working with premature infants in neo-natal intensive care.

Ted had one child from a previous marriage. He and Heidi had two more.

Ted Maher: In fact, the two littlest children, personally delivered.

Sara James, Dateline NBC: What was that like for you?

Ted Maher: It was probably one of the most special moments in my life.

It was a far less remarkable moment, however, that would set Ted’s quiet life on a dramatic new course.

One day at work at the hospital, he found a camera that belonged to the parents of newborn twins who'd been discharged. He mailed it back with a note wishing them well.

Sara James, Dateline NBC: And so by being a Good Samaritan, suddenly you came to the attention of the Safras?

Ted Maher: Correct. The daughter of Mrs. Safra was the godmother of these two twins.

Sara James, Dateline NBC: Had you heard of Edmond Safra ?

Ted Maher: Never.

Sara James, Dateline NBC: Seen his name in the papers?

Ted Maher: Never.

Sara James, Dateline NBC: Knew that he was a big banking magnet?

Ted Maher: No.

Sara James, Dateline NBC: Indeed -- a billionaire?

Ted Maher: No.

Sara James, Dateline NBC: None of that?

Ted Maher: No.

Edmond Safra, head of Republic National Bank, was not exactly a household name in America, except perhaps among those in the know on Wall Street.

Maria Bartiromo, CNBC: He was doing business with incredibly wealthy individuals in dangerous parts of the world, and he knew that this was highly, highly confidential business. So, he was very secretive.

Edmond came from a long line of Safra bankers, a family of Sephardic Jews who left the Middle East and catered primarily to wealthy, Jewish communities around the globe.

Reporter Bryan Burroughs wrote a book about Edmond Safra.

Burroughs: The hallmark of Safra's banks was always discretion. That, you know, you could tell your secrets to one of Edmond’s men and the secret police wouldn't barge down your door that night.

But Safra's Trusted bank became embroiled in a legendary business scandal that threatened to tarnish his image.

In 1983, Safra briefly merged his firm with American Express. When the merger didn't work out, rival executives at American Express spread unsubstantiated rumors that Safra was laundering money for organized crime.

The betrayal reinforced the banker's distrust of outsiders.

Bryan Burroughs: It's almost like he and his family had a gene for paranoia. Even before the American Express scandal broke, they saw boogiemen behind every bush.

Edmond Safra's reported paranoia increased later in life with the onset of Parkinson’s disease.

With his vast fortune, the ailing banker could afford a staff of nurses for round the clock care.

There was a position open and the Safra's offered Ted a job. Impressed with his good deed, they'd also found his experience appealing: a qualified nurse who'd also been a military man, someone who could be counted on to watch the boss's back..

To Ted, it sounded like a dream job. The pay was more than $200,000 dollars a year.

The job came with another perk: an all-expenses paid opportunity to see the world from the vantage of a billionaire. Ted would be caring for Mr. Safra when he was in New York, and, for months at a time, in the south of France where the Safra's owned a penthouse in the heart of Monte Carlo.

Ted would be separated from his family for long stretches, but the offer was too good to refuse.

Sara James, Dateline NBC: You felt lucky.

Ted Maher: I felt blessed. I mean, it wasn't a matter of being lucky. It was almost like a blessing.

It was the summer of 1999. Ted Maher packed his bags and headed to Monte Carlo with his dream job waiting.

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