A PRIVILEGED WITNESS

Ted Maher’s story started with a dream job and ended in tragedy. How did it go from so great to so horrible?

 

It was the perfect storm of unimaginable coincidences. I got the so-called “dream job” by being at the right place at the right time and doing the right thing, which was returning a lost item to its owner. Then I ended up spending almost ten years in prison for being in the right place at the right time as the perfect scapegoat.

The most sickening part to realize is that any of the sequence of events that occurred—many of which defy logic—could have changed the course of this entire saga. Remove one factor from the equation and the result would have been completely different. Instead, all the factors combined with exponential effects.

 

You signed a confession stating that you stabbed yourself to fake an attack. Why confess to something you didn’t do?

 

I signed a document written in French, a language I don’t speak, not knowing what the document said. But the Monaco police had my wife in their custody at the time. They were dangling her passport in front of me. They would only let her go home, back to the States and to our children, if I signed that damn piece of paper. The well-being of my family is everything to me. They were the reason I took the job with Safra in the first place. If signing a document presented to me as my statement was the only way to serve their best interests in those circumstances, I wasn’t going to argue.

 

Why didn’t you recant your confession during the trial?

 

My Monegasque lawyers insisted that recanting a confession was legal suicide in Monaco. They said I might even be put away for life if I did. By sticking to the confession and basically accepting a plea deal, I’d be done with the whole thing in a few months. It’d be the “short and easy” way to put the matter to bed. The short and easy way back to my family. When the highly esteemed and renowned U.S. attorney Michael Griffith joined my defense team, the first thing he wanted to do was retract my confession. But I refused to even consider it. I was willing to say or do whatever was necessary to get out of there—even accept a guilty plea although completely innocent.

 

What was life like, spending almost ten years in a Monaco prison—which was in reality intended as a short-term jail?

 

It wasn’t life; it was an existence. Dominick Dunne indicated that my prison in Monaco was “deluxe,” that I had a nice view from which I could see the boat traffic on the Mediterranean, the reflection of the moon on the water and well-tended gardens below my window.

Nothing could be further from the truth. My window was the size of a postage stamp. My view consisted primarily of a series of bars. If I looked beyond all those layers of iron, I could occasionally see the top of a ship. The only time I saw “green” was when they transported me to be interrogated. This “deluxe” prison wasn’t even equipped with a proper yard, because it wasn’t intended for long incarcerations. They basically had a cage in a basement for exercise.

I’ll admit the food was good—they had three chefs for between five and fifty inmates! But even that had a flip side: I ended up on cholesterol medication, because of all the cheese.

Perhaps other people in my position would have considered suicide. It’s hard to hang on to hope or maintain the will to fight when you know you’re innocent and believe you can’t prove it. But I wasn’t going to give up and I certainly wouldn’t allow the truth to be buried for good by killing myself.

 

After spending almost a decade in prison for something you didn’t do, how did that not break you?

 

I still had three children to get back to, to take care of. But now everything was going to be even harder. Now I had a prison escape added to my already-complicated legal problems. Not to mention that I had caused embarrassment for Monaco’s authorities; therefore, as useful as I had been as the perfect scapegoat for the horrible mess that resulted in the death of Safra and my fellow nurse, Vivian Torrente, my presence was getting uncomfortable for the Principality.

But through it all, I kept telling myself and whoever would listen that, no, they weren’t going to break me. I would get out of this mess and the truth would come out. I was a Green Beret. You don’t get that title without an above-average dose of strength and determination.

 

Your jail escape was more dramatic than any seen in movies, fiction books, or elsewhere. How did you have the courage to enact such a complex plan?

 

After that joke of a trial, which confirmed I was in the hands of a justice system guided by Monaco’s “high and mighty” and their need to keep the principality’s image untarnished, I knew I’d never get out of there, alive, through the proper legal routes. Honestly, I was more concerned about my ability to survive in a Muslim-controlled French prison than survive a jailbreak.

Especially after I got confirmation from the U.S. State Department that, well, they could and would help me if (and only if) I “somehow” managed to show up at an American Embassy, it was clear what I had to do.

 

What was your biggest mistake during this entire saga? That is, if you could do one thing differently, what would it be?

 

Everything I did throughout this entire saga was with the strong belief that it was the best way to proceed at the time and the only way to protect my family. Therefore, put in the same situation, I would be forced to do almost everything the same way again.

With 20-20 hindsight, I would have stayed with Safra and Vivian in the bathroom. But I truly thought they would be safe in there and I needed urgent medical attention or else I would have died. Yet, I still would have stayed with them—regardless of the consequences to myself—had I known what was going to happen.

 

What do you hope to achieve by writing this book?

 

To have the truth come out and get my name cleared. Even after coming home, I haven’t been able to go back to nursing. Even after changing my name, I kept getting fired because employers or co-workers would recognize me from still-airing TV shows featuring my case.

More than anything else, I want my children to know the truth and understand that I’m not the person they talked about in the news. My only chance to have a relationship with them is to make sure they know the truth.

 

What is your goal with the rest of your life—a life that has had a big portion stolen from its prime?

 

I want the truth to come out. It’s the best revenge I could hope for. But I don’t see it as revenge. It’s more about letting the world know how the most prestigious tax haven on earth operates.

And of course I want to clear my name once and for all. I want a chance to go back to a job I loved and was damn good at: pre-natal nursing. But mostly I want to clear my name for the sake of my children. I want my two youngest children, whom I haven’t been able to talk to since my release, to know what really happened. I want them to know the real me.

The truth will set me free, so that’s what I’m pursuing—with the strength and determination suitable to a Green Beret.