I wanted to be hero, says nurse in Monaco trial of century

THE nurse stumbled, stabbed and bleeding, out of the elevator of his billionaire employer’s luxury penthouse.

There had been an attack, he told the building's night watchman, call the police.

So started a dramatic and bizarre chain of events that ended with the death of banker Edmond Safra, one of the world's richest men, and now sees the nurse in court, facing a possible life term in what the principality's leading newspaper dubs Monaco's Trial of the Century. In proceedings this week, the real story of what happened that fateful dawn of December 3 1999, is emerging. It turns out there was no attack. Instead, American nurse Ted Maher admits, he stabbed himself and started a fire that raged out of control, leading to the deaths of Safra and another nurse from smoke inhalation.