The Daily Mail apologized to Lily Safra and clarified to readers that the newspaper didn’t mean to “suggest” that Lily Safra had any involvement in the death of her husband, Edmond Safra. “We accept that there is no basis for such a suggestion and apologise for any distress caused,” the Mail wrote in its Jan. 11 apology.
Edmond Safra, a “billionaire banker,” was killed in 1999, CNN reported at the time. American nurse Ted Maher was “convicted of arson leading to the death” of Safra, the Associated Press reported in 2002.
One of Lily Safra’s other previous husbands, Alfredo Monteverde, “died in 1969 of two gun-shot wounds to the chest,” according to the New York Post.
According to Tabloid Watch, which spotted the apology, the Sept. story, “So who DID murder Gilded Lily Safra’s billionaire husband?” isn’t on the Daily Mail website anymore.
Press Gazette reported Jan. 5 – almost a week before the apology – that Safra had “launched a legal action” against the Daily Mail’s publisher for libel. Among Safra’s complaints about the story, “the article included two misleading headlines, with a photograph designed to put her at the very centre of allegations over the ‘unsolved’ murder of her husband.”
Mail on Sunday had published a story that was “strikingly similar” to the Daily Mail story and already apologized to Safra, Press Gazette noted.