Lily Safra, the wealthy widow of banking billionaire Edmond Safra, had a near miss in St-Tropez with Lady Colin Campbell, whose “Empress Bianca” is a thinly veiled fictionalization of the Brazilian jet-setter’s life.
Michael J. Griffith — the New York lawyer who represented Ted Maher, the nurse who served eight years in jail for the 1999 arson fire that killed Edmond — had just had dinner with Lady Campbell on a friend’s yacht when he spotted Lily walking out of the trendy Le Quai, in front of the docked boat.
Lily was getting into her limo while a bodyguard held the car door — and, in a real twist of irony, sitting right behind the limousine was a fire engine. In Campbell’s book, it’s suggested the main character set fire to her apartment, killing her husband and his nurse.
“Truth is stranger than fiction,” Griffith told friends at New York’s Da Tommaso Restaurant.
Lily previously sued the London publisher of Campbell’s roman à clef, forcing the 2005 book to be re-called and destroyed.