In the winter of 2003, Ted Maher had begun his 10-year prison sentence for killing banker Edmond Safra and a fellow nurse.

He'd confessed to staging an attack and setting a fire in the billionaire's penthouse.

But alone inside his Monaco cell, Ted felt like a man unjustly convicted.

Desperate and determined, he began plotting his escape -- and not through a court of appeals.

One January night, the former Green Beret made a run for it.

Ted Maher: And I sawed myself through seven layers of bars. And I was on my way to freedom.

Sara James, Dateline NBC: Pretty impressive. Except you didn't get very far.

Ted made is way on foot over the border into France, but he was quickly re-captured after just seven hours on the lam.

His sentence was extended by 10 months, but he was released last summer, after eight years behind bars.

So what does Ted now say really happened inside the Safra penthouse that night?

Well, exactly what he told police initially -- that he was stabbed fighting off two masked intruders.

He admits to setting a small fire -- but says he did so simply to summon help in a moment of panic.

Ted Maher: We didn't have any panic alarm. We didn't have any alarm. The only alarm I thought of-- my God, smoke alarm.

Ted says that just before he stumbled down to the penthouse lobby, he put a candle and some Kleenex in a trash can and placed it under a smoke alarm in the nursing station.

Ted Maher: This was a small contained smoke signal, if you will, in a small container.

Sara James, Dateline NBC: Why didn't you just call police? Why didn't you just dial whatever the Monaco equivalent of 911 is?

Ted Maher: Didn't have a clue. Never prepared, didn't even have a clue. Never even thought about it.

Ted blames the slow response by the Monaco police and fire departments for letting that small trashcan fire grow into a deadly inferno.

A government report says firefighters were hampered by the very things Edmond Safra had installed to make his home secure: the steal shutters and bullet-proof glass. And says their slow response was partly due to Ted’s fake story about armed intruders.

But today Ted insists he was attacked that night--- and says the notion that he'd stab himself to look like a hero is utterly ridiculous.

Ted Maher: I don't think so.

Sara James, Dateline NBC: Why would you do it? Doesn't make sense.

Ted Maher: There's no motive there at all.

Sara James, Dateline NBC: Unless you're unstable.

Ted Maher: Yeah, unless you're unstable.

Sara James, Dateline NBC: Are you mentally unstable?

Ted Maher: I don't think I was unstable. No, absolutely not.

Ted Maher’s reversal re-opens the questions about those mysterious intruders. If they existed, who were they? And how did they penetrate the Safra apartment undetected?

Well, Ted has been keeping something secret -- until now.

His tale of the Safra assassination attempt now includes a kidnapping -- a threatening episode that he says took place two days before the attack.

Ted claims his first encounter with the intruders actually occurred on his day off nearby in Nice, France. A man stopped Ted on the street while a van pulled up alongside them.

Ted Maher: I was pushed into the van by the man that was on the sidewalk--

Sara James, Dateline NBC: They abducted you.

Ted Maher: Correct.

Sara James, Dateline NBC: Threw you in the van.

Ted Maher: Correct.

Ted says his abductors wore masks, had a gun and spoke in thick Mediterranean accents.

Ted Maher: I was told some very specific things. And I said, "I don't know what this is all about, but I’m not going to do anything to hurt anyone." And I was told that I only had to do one thing.

That one thing? Ensure that a window shutter, or steel valance, was left open near the nursing station.

Ted Maher: And I said, "I’m not doing anything to-- endanger anyone." at that point, I was shown pictures of my family.And I couldn’t believe what I was shown.”

Sara James, Dateline NBC: You're telling me somebody has pictures of your family back in New York that they're showing you in the back of a van in the south of France.

Ted Maher: Yes.

Sara James, Dateline NBC: These were surveillance photos.

Ted Maher: Yes, they were. It scared the hell out of me.

Sara James, Dateline NBC: Edmond Safra had a crack security team. Why not go to them? Why not tell them the security of Edmond Safra is compromised and your family has been threatened?

Ted Maher:  My primary motive for my silence was because of the safety of my family, and I wasn't going to put them at risk

Ted went to work the next night.

He says the window shutter he'd been warned about was already open.

He believes the men who stabbed him came in through that window. And says all he is guilty of is trying to protect his family, as well as his co-worker and boss.

Ted Maher: I believe that I stopped an assassination attempt on his life that night.

But so many years after his arrest, after signing a confession, and after a trial that ended in conviction, would anyone believe Ted’s story now?

Michael Griffith: I believed that what he was telling me was the truth.

Attorney Michael Griffith of South Hampton, N.Y., represents Americans imprisoned abroad. Most notably he was the defense lawyer in the sensational case that became the movie “Midnight Express."

Griffith got involved in Ted’s defense after he was contacted by Amnesty International.

Michael Griffith: He told me about the intruders. I told him that I could bring the Justice Department into this operation and possibly have the FBI contact the Monaco authorities to do a real investigation.

Sara James, Dateline NBC: You saw this as, "Hey, maybe he signed a confession. But who believes a confession if it's signed in a language he doesn't even speak?"

Michael Griffith: Sara, I stay up at night dreaming I’m going to get a case where a client signs a confession in a foreign language.

Griffith says he tried to convince Ted to publicly renounce that confession before his case went to trial.

But Ted was afraid he'd get more jail time if he changed his story, yet couldn't prove his version of events.

Griffith: I thought it was terrible. I thought it was disgraceful.

Sara James, Dateline NBC: Are you saying, then, that Ted Maher is not responsible for the death of Edmond Safra and Vivian Torrente?

Michael Griffith: I’m saying, that's exactly correct. The Monaco police, who were incompetent, whose actions permitted this little fire in a waste paper basket to be unattended…

Sara James, Dateline NBC: And to become an inferno that consumed a penthouse and took the life of Edmond Safra and his nurse.

Michael Griffith: Exactly. And the lawyers in the case permitted the confession to go in that Ted stabbed himself three times, which is ridiculous.

Griffith says that not only was Ted the victim of bad legal advice, but that the entire case against him was a sham designed to protect the state of Monaco.

Michael Griffith: Monaco presents this fiction that they're the safest place in the world. There was a rush to judgment. They wanted Monaco’s reputation of being safe and secure to be maintained.

Sara James, Dateline NBC: So, you feel like a sacrificial lamb.

Ted Maher: I was a sacrificial lamb for that country's image. There's no getting around that. It's so obvious.

Ted and his American lawyer say that not only was he railroaded in the investigation, but also that the trial was rigged from the start.

And last summer, a Monaco judge came forward with evidence to back them up. The judge, who approved Ted’s indictment, says he was part of a secret meeting where the prosecutor and one of Ted’s very own Monaco attorneys agreed in advance to fix the verdict and sentence.

An official investigation is underway.

The prosecutor on the case and Ted’s Monaco attorneys all say the trial wasn't fixed, and point out that Ted’s conviction was ultimately decided by a 6-person jury.

But there's one other lawyer who thinks the trial and conviction Ted Maher was an orchestrated sham.

Pompeyo Realuyo: It was a badly scripted play.

Sara James, Dateline NBC: Badly scripted play?

Pompeyo Realuyo: Yeah.

Attorney Pompeyo Realuyo is an international tax attorney who also handles high-profile pro-bono cases. He flew to Monaco to watch the sensational Safra trial on behalf of nurse Vivian Torrente’s family.

He thinks the case was rigged in order to downplay something else tragic he believes happened that night: that Edmond Safra -- terrified and paranoid -- forced his nurse to die with him.

Popeyo: Safra was guilty of involuntary homicide by preventing Vivian from escaping.

Torrente's autopsy report contains what could be evidence of a struggle, bruising around the neck --details her family says have never been fully investigated.

Genevieve Torrente: It obviously suggests that there was a struggle. That maybe she was trying to leave. But she was kept from leaving.

An attorney for Safra's widow Lily calls that "absurd" and suggests that the bruises might have come from Safra leaning on his nurse while being moved.

But to Ted Maher and his lawyer, that's just one of many unanswered questions from the early morning of Dec. 3, 1999.

Michael Griffith: Look, no investigation was ever done by the Monaco police, OK. Monaco police, if you're listening, do your investigation and maybe you'll find out what really happened.

What might a new investigation find? That assassins had in fact had penetrated that the Safra apartment that night? Or that Ted Maher’s story falls apart before their eyes....

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