This has to be one of the most sensational cases I have learned about in recent times. The documentary revolves around the murder of billionaire Edmond Safra and his nurse, Vivian Torrente, in his Monaco penthouse. For those of you who do not know about Edmond Safra, he was a Lebanese-born private banker who had a great connection with some of the richest people in the world, such as Hollywood stars and the Royal Family of Monaco. He was a Jewish man who had set up a successful business empire and had multiple properties in various corners of the world, Monaco being one of them. Safra always had a fear that he would be killed by terrorists or the “bad guys”. This is the main reason why he has tight security around him. One of the contributing reasons for this was his age, due to which he was on medication. The medications made him paranoid about his death. Additionally, he had a total of seven nurses taking care of him. One of his nurses was Ted Maher, a former Green Beret and a nurse by qualifications. Ted was the reason behind Edmond Safra’s death. On 3rd December 1999, Maher claimed that there were two intruders in the penthouse who stabbed him while he tried to stop them. He then handed his cell phone to Vivian and told her to call for help. Edmond and Vivian, meanwhile, went and hid in the panic rooms. Ted then went near one of the nursing stations and set a toilet paper on fire in order for the fire alarms to go off. However, the fire soon became big. By the time any help could arrive, Edmond and Vivian were dead. Ted was the first suspect in this entire plot and was arrested. It was later revealed that he had done it deliberately in order to get some attention for himself. All the stabbing was done by himself to catch people's attention. He basically wanted to take the credit for saving Safra, although he never expected the fire to get out of control.
This whole plot is told to us by Ted Safra himself, along with many others involved in the case of those who knew Edmond Safra personally, which makes it all the more interesting to watch. It is uncommon to see the convict himself/herself appear in the documentaries, but Netflix got lucky and gave us the man himself to tell his story. Ted, however, tells the story as if it weren’t about him and rather from a third-person perspective. Now I don’t know if that is how it was supposed to be told or if it was a coincidence, but whatever it is, it felt weird.
Other than that, we are given a lot of information about Edmond and Ted in great depth. This helps us to become familiar with the overall background of the story. For example, I didn’t have much information about Edmond, but because we are shown in detail, it became easier to understand Ted’s motive overall. The pacing of the archived images, along with videos and everything shown to us, makes the entire plot intriguing. The pacing is kept in a way that makes everything gripping. It is like you are eagerly waiting to know what happens next. For those of you who like watching such genres, this is a good watch as it will keep you on your toes all in all.
Final Score- [7/10]
Reviewed by - Neerja Ch
Follow @NeerjaCH on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times