How The Gilded Lady took secrets of her billionaire husband's death to her grave: Four marriages, a violent suicide and a fatal fire shrouded in mystery. As Lily Safra dies at 87, RICHARD KAY recalls the socialite whose life was dogged by scandal

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Right to the end, when she was 87 and her body ravaged by cancer, she remained as enigmatic as ever. Marriages had brought Lily Safra untold riches, social success and a nickname she could never shake off — ‘The Gilded Lily’.

But she very carefully took one thing to her grave in Switzerland yesterday: the inside story of how her billionaire fourth husband met his death in a fire in his Monaco penthouse. The events of that night remain shrouded in mystery almost 23 years later.

When Edmond Safra died from smoke inhalation after locking himself in a ‘panic room’ in the early hours of December 3, 1999, he was one of the world’s richest and most secretive private bankers. As a result of his death his much-married widow, a friend of Prince Charles, became one of the wealthiest women on the planet with a fortune of more than £3 billion.

Three years later a former U.S. soldier, who worked as a nurse to the reclusive Safra, was convicted of causing his death after a bizarre scheme to win his employer’s favour backfired. He admitted starting a fire in a wastepaper bin, claiming there were intruders and hoping to win the Safras’ gratitude by ‘saving’ them. But the fire raced out of control.

Rumours, however, continued to persist about what happened inside the heavily fortified Belle Epoque building, where the Lebanese-born banker had a 20-room duplex apartment. Obsessed with security, he carried blue gems in his pocket to ward off the evil eye and he used the lucky number five on his car licence plate, EJS 555.

Right to the end, when she was 87 and her body ravaged by cancer, she remained as enigmatic as ever. Marriages had brought Lily Safra untold riches, social success and a nickname she could never shake off — ‘The Gilded Lily’

According to conspiracy theorists, the luck he had so assiduously nourished ran out because he had finally made one enemy too many. These theories suggested his death was either the work of the Russian mafia, Colombian drug cartels or Japanese business associates who suspected he had cheated on them in a deal. His stupendously rich widow, Lily Safra, whose life had already been struck by tragedy, found that she too could not escape rumour and innuendo.

It emerged that just weeks before the fire, she had moved the Mossad-trained security guards protecting her husband to the family estate in France. Videotape from key security cameras was also said to have gone missing. And it was revealed that this was not the first time one of her husbands had died in mysterious circumstances.

When her second husband Freddy Monteverde committed suicide in 1969, it was alleged he had managed to shoot himself in the heart not once but twice, yet investigators at the time recovered only one bullet. It was also claimed detectives had lost the two main pieces of evidence: the gun and the bullet.

Later still it became known that two months before his death, Safra had changed his will, cutting out his two brothers and leaving control of his fortune to Lily. Safra’s three sisters also went to court in Geneva claiming that his widow was obstructing their £14 million-a-head inheritances from her husband’s will.

But while all this may have been perfect material for a movie script, evidence was scant. And if the implication was that Lily was involved in her last husband’s death, no one could provide a motive or even an explanation of why she might have chosen a nurse to start a blaze when she could not possibly have known how long it would take the fire service to enter the apartment once the alarm had been raised.

Lily Safra never gave an interview on this or any other subject and got on with her life. She moved to London and used her considerable wealth to support charities favoured by the Prince of Wales.

Edmond Safra pictured with his wife Lily Safra. When Edmond died on 3 December 1999 he left the bulk of his fortune to Lily who - with the money left to her by two previous husbands - became one of the richest women in Britain

But old habits die hard. She bought a 12,500 sq ft Belgravia mansion and had it fitted out with a bombproof basement, armoured windows, sensors and 35 security cameras.

The daughter of a Scottish-born railway engineer who had emigrated to Brazil to cash in on the South American railway boom, Lily met Safra when she sought his advice on how to invest the £200 million she had inherited from her second husband.

They married in 1976 at a glamorous high society wedding attended by Ronald and Nancy Reagan and the Aga Khan. In the early 1980s they settled in New York, becoming key members of Manhattan’s social elite and friends with the likes of shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, ballet star Mikhail Baryshnikov and Frank Sinatra.

Dainty and willowy thin, Lily with her immaculately coiffed blonde hair, couture wardrobe and diamond and platinum jewels, was known for her lavish parties and her unfailing philanthropy.

She was also famously generous, once sending all her friends Manolo Blahnik shoes after having her secretary secure their sizes. Meanwhile, the couple embarked on a property spending spree purchasing lavish homes in Belgravia, the South of France, Paris, Geneva and Monte Carlo.

John Fairchild, snooty publisher of fashion magazines W and Woman’s Wear Daily, cattily wrote of the Safras’ ‘meteoric rise’ to social power: ‘They have taken the Riviera . . . New York, the Metropolitan Opera, Geneva — all in a space of five years. What’s next?’

By all accounts theirs was a happy marriage. But for all his accomplishments, Edmond Safra was plagued by claims that his success had come through gold, drugs and currency trafficking, money laundering and organised crime. In the treacherous world of international banking where he had earned his fortune from clients who wanted their names kept out of the spotlight, such insinuations were easy to make.

The rumours had made him obsessively security conscious. He was also in poor health. In the 1990s he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and soon required round-the-clock nursing care. According to figures close to the family, his increasing paranoia may have been linked to the drugs he took to control his Parkinson’s. He was also spending more time at the Monaco mansion.

When police finally gained entry to the blazing apartment, they found Safra and one of his nurses dead in a bathroom which had been designated a panic room.

Mrs Safra, who had her own suite of rooms separated from her husband’s by reinforced doors, escaped unscathed. She failed to persuade him to leave after ringing him on a mobile phone and assuring him there were no intruders.

Convinced it was an inside job, Monaco police arrested male nurse Ted Maher, an ex-Green Beret soldier. Maher confessed and was convicted of arson causing death. Since then he has changed his story and claimed his confession was extracted under pressure.

Maher’s claim that there really was a conspiracy against Safra came as lawyers for Lily were acting to force the withdrawal from sale of Empress Bianca, a novel by Lady Colin Campbell. The book which the publishers said was a work of fiction was regarded by Mrs Safra as a thinly veiled account of her life and defamed her. It was subsequently pulped.

Prince Charles meets charity organiser Lily Safra at Somerset House in London, Thursday 11 July, 2002

But Lily Safra’s extraordinary life story was indeed the stuff of literature. She was born Lily Watkins in 1934 in Rio de Janeiro where her father Wolf White Watkins had emigrated from Surrey and started a rail track construction company. Her mother was a Jewish émigré from Poland.

The family were comfortably off but by no means rich. What she lacked in wealth, she made up for in slim beauty and charm. She was also intelligent and could speak at least five languages.

Young Lily had her pick of men. Often described as petite and porcelain-like, she was a popular dance partner at the Clube Israelita Brasileiro, the Jewish community centre in Rio she frequented as a teenager. But the boys she met there were not marriage material in her parents’ eyes.

To fend off unsuitable suitors, her parents whisked her to Uruguay, where her mother’s family lived. There she met Mario Cohen, an Italian-Jewish man nine years her senior whose family had a successful hosiery business. They married in September 1952, and quickly had three children.

But the marriage was not happy and after divorcing Cohen — and obtaining a generous settlement — she married Alfredo ‘Freddy’ Greenberg, who later changed his name to Monteverde, head of a Brazilian electrical distribution business. But he was a manic depressive and four years after they wed, he killed himself leaving his widow a considerable fortune.

His death was investigated at length by Brazilian authorities but no evidence of foul play was found. Lily placed her inheritance in the safekeeping of Edmond Safra, the 37-year-old head of Banco Safra in Brazil, a workaholic with a reputation for financial wizardry.

Safra became besotted with the beautiful widow and it was noted that with all her money, she could not be after him for his. But their courtship was rocky; his family was said to disapprove of the lively Lily and when he broke things off, she responded dramatically.

In Acapulco in 1972 she married a Moroccan-born British businessman Samuel Bendahan. It was claimed that her purpose was to make Edmond jealous. If so she succeeded for within two months the newlyweds split up.

Then the real party began. With her fourth marriage, Safra moved into the role of international socialite. The union was wittily described as ‘the irresistible combination of a lady with a past and a man with a future’.

A prenuptial agreement was reportedly drawn up , with a friend calling it a ‘merger’. But the marriage proved durable and happy.

Lily now counted the world’s richest and most famous among her friends, everyone from Valentino to Prince Charles and Camilla. But not all her life was gilded.

Lily Safra and Sir Elton John attend "An Enduring Vision" the 7th Annual Elton John Aids Foundation Benefit at Cipriani Wall Street on November 11, 2008 in New York City

In 1989 her son Claudio and three-year-old grandson were killed in a car crash, a tragedy from which she never recovered. Afterwards she threw herself into socialising, philanthropy and spending — as well as maintaining her wide-eyed youthful looks. In 1988, the Safras had purchased a huge villa on the French Riviera, once owned by the King of the Belgians and where Lily spent $2 million in decorator fees on her bedroom alone.

Eight years later, the couple moved into the 10,000 sq ft apartment in Monaco, Soon after Edmond’s death, Lily settled in London where in 2001 she sat next to Prince Charles at a dinner in the Buckingham Palace picture gallery for the most generous American donors to his charities.

Thanks to her chequebook they became friends and she also gave £8 million to Somerset House to refurbish the courtyard fountains. After the 9/11 attack she donated £600,000 to the victims.

Latterly she supported medical charities, particularly research into Parkinson’s disease.

Increasing ill health saw her move from London to Geneva.

Her rift with Safra’s brothers never healed. They did not attend the reception after his funeral and matters worsened over her decision not to bury Edmond in the family-owned plot in Israel but in Switzerland, where yesterday her coffin joined his.