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A number of questions remain unanswered, and Lily Safra's attorney, Marc Bonnant, has requested access to the police files. "We would like to have all the details of the nurse's confession," he explains. "Was it credible and complete? What exactly pushed him to do what he did? How many fires did he set? Are there any inconsistencies in his confession?"
Safra's bank last year alerted the FBI to money-laundering operations emanating from Moscow, and Safra was widely reported to have obsessive fears for his life (Bonnant denies the fears). His security guards were recruited from among veterans of Israeli army special units. The night of the fire, however, Safra's entire security force were posted at his nearby villa; Safra was said to have wanted it that way, but it seemed a glaring lapse to leave him without a single guard. According to a Republic National bank spokeswoman, security chief Shmuel Cohen rushed to the apartment after the blaze started, but police initially blocked his access because he lacked the proper keys and I.D. to convince them who he was. Had Cohen got in quickly, she suggests, he may have been able to open the bathroom door or persuade Safra to come out.
The decision to bring Maher into the Safra household was the biggest blunder of all. The New York Times said Maher was offered the job after he returned a camera left by a close Safra associate. Bonnant says Maher had been carefully vetted through "in-depth background checks" and a personal interview with Mrs. Safra. "The fact that Maher is unstable became apparent to us only after the accident," Bonnant told TIME. "Nothing in Maher's files showed the slightest trace of mental instability."
Maher must have provided the files. Co-workers at New York City's Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, where the former Green Beret worked for nine years, describe him as a caring professional. But his former landlord in Auburn, Maine, Colby Dill, remembers Maher mostly for his aggressive behavior. "When you were in the apartment, you wanted to make sure the door was between you and him," says Dill. "He made threats."
Maher's closest neighbor in East Fishkill, N.Y., his most recent U.S. residence, describes him as "a miserable bastard" who turned a property-line dispute into an open feud. "Maher and his wife would stand outside my house and scream curses and give me the finger," says Leonard Levelle, 70, recalling that the police had to be called in to mediate several times. On one occasion, says Levelle, "Maher knocked me down, started hitting me with his forearm and told me he would get a gun and kill me." Maher's first wife Marla, who divorced him in 1991, alleging spousal abuse and drug use, told friends he had threatened to kill her and liked to play Russian roulette.
Safra's people offered Maher $600 a day to care for the ailing banker. Maher, who was reportedly making $60,000 a year at Columbia-Presbyterian, leaped at the chance. He took a leave of absence from the hospital, bade farewell to his second wife Heidi and three sons and joined Safra's staff five months ago. In that short time, he learned to love his boss and, in what Maher's lawyer calls "the sad gesture of a sick man," sent him to a smoky death.
--With reporting by Helena Bachmann/Geneva, Ed Barnes/East Fishkill, Joel Stratte-McClure/Monte Carlo and Tom Witkowski/Boston