Billionaire Lily Safra, widow of banker Edmond Safra, is no stranger to mysterious deaths, and a new book details the curious demise of another of Safra’s four husbands.
“Gilded Lily,” by The Post’s Isabel Vincent and due out from HarperCollins on June 29, reveals suspicious details surrounding the apparent suicide of her second husband, Alfredo Monteverde, a charismatic Brazilian businessman who had troubles with depression.
Monteverde died in 1969 of two gun-shot wounds to the chest, but investigators at the time recovered only one bullet, Vincent reveals. They also found no gunpowder on Monteverde’s hands at the scene.
Vincent, who combed through Brazilian police records, discovered that despite their concerns, detectives quickly lost the two main pieces of evidence — the gun and the single bullet.
Monteverde died after returning from a lunch with Lily, where they discussed divorce proceedings and how to split time with Alfredo’s adopted son and Lily’s two sons and daughter.
The book does not implicate Lily, who was not even home at the time of the shooting, in Monteverde’s death.
In December 1999, Edmond Safra, Lily’s fourth husband and one of Monteverde’s bankers, died in a fire at his Monte Carlo apartment. The blaze was ruled an arson, and his nurse, Ted Maher, was convicted of setting the fire. Maher served eight years in a Monaco prison.
Vincent did not speak with Safra for the book or make contact with her. But Safra has been known to come after her critics.
In 2005, Safra claimed that a book by Lady Colin Campbell, “Empress Bianca,” was a defamatory, thinly veiled version of her life, and threatened legal action. The book was then pulped in Britain by its publisher, Arcadia. “Empress Bianca” was published in America in 2008 after changes were made to the text.