Universal Company, 118
University Club, 262
Valentino, 6, 129, 140, 166, 192, 209, 210–11, 265
Vanderbilt, Cornelius, II, 190
Van Gogh, Vincent, 44, 56–57, 120, 151–52
Vanity Fair (magazine), 14, 214, 256
Vargas, Getúlio, 20, 24, 25, 47
Vaz, Rubens Florentino, 47
Veiga, Gastão, 16, 17, 18–19, 24, 31, 34, 35, 43
Vergé, Roger, 191
Versace, Donatella, 261
Viellard, Henri, 237, 238
Vreeland, Diana, 6
Wall Street Journal, 113–14, 183
Walters, Barbara, 193
Watkins, Annita (Lily’s mother), 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 32, 63, 276, 290
Watkins, Artigas (Lily’s brother), 20, 63, 67, 77, 276–77, 277
Watkins, Daniel (Lily’s brother), 20, 27, 35, 146, 206, 276, 290
Watkins, Lily. See Safra, Lily
Watkins, Malvina (Daniel’s wife), 276
Watkins, Rodolpho (Lily’s brother), 19–20
Watkins, Wolf White (Lily’s father), 16, 18–25, 30, 31–34, 275–76
death of, 34
grave site of, 276–77, 290
move to Brazil by, 20–22
Weiner, Nina, 166, 210, 287
Weiner, Walter, 115, 119, 126–27, 166, 210, 216
Welles, Orson, 40, 43
Wharton, Edith, 190
White, Peter, 113
Wiesel, Elie, 209, 249
Women’s Wear Daily, 6, 7–8, 163, 183, 188–89, 191, 192, 193, 210, 218, 252, 260, 262–63
World Wildlife Fund, 219
Wustrau, Todd, 245–46
Wyatt, Lynn, 7, 192–93, 261, 262
Wyatt, Oscar, 192–93, 262
Yasmin Aga Khan, Princess, 8
Yosef, Ovadia, 163
Zilkha, Ezra and Cecile, 262, 265
Zipkin, Jerry, 6
Zucker, Willard, 147–48, 150, 185–86
Zweig, Stefan, 39
Acknowledgments
I CAUGHT A GLIMPSE of Dominick Dunne on the first day of the Sotheby’s auction of property from the collections of Lily and Edmond J. Safra in New York. In his tortoiseshell glasses and impeccably tailored English suit, he appeared to be deeply absorbed in the catalogue, which featured exquisite European furniture and objets d’art. But upon closer inspection, he was really surveying the crowd for the moneyed glitterati he regularly covered for Vanity Fair.
It was November 2005, and I was preparing to leave for Brazil to begin the research for this book. Dominick had already been writing about Lily and the events in Monaco for at least five years. Standing outside the auction room on the second floor of Sotheby’s on York Avenue, I resolved that I was not going to speak to him until my own work on Lily Safra was complete. I didn’t want to be influenced by his reporting; I wanted to be discreet.
Three years later we met at a dinner, and Dominick was keen to talk about Lily, whom he found endlessly fascinating. I demurred, but a year later we met again and agreed to meet for lunch at Patroon in Midtown Manhattan, where I tentatively handed him part of the manuscript for this book. Our lunches turned into a routine. He always arrived early and would be seated at his table, observing the well-dressed lunchtime crowd, many of whom stopped by to pay their respects to the legendary journalist and author. Over lobster rolls and Diet Cokes, we talked about the Safra case and other stories we were both following. He spoke about his own book Too Much Money, which he was in the process of editing, and which was based on real-life Manhattan socialites.
Lingering over espresso, I summoned up the nerve to hand him a manila envelope with the remaining chapters of my book. I was encouraged by his enthusiastic response to what he had read so far. After lunch, I walked him the few blocks to his apartment on East Forty-ninth Street. It was the last time I saw him. He seemed tired and weak, so I blurted out the only thing I could think of that might make him feel better.
“We all have to keep going,” I told him. “We all have to keep searching for the truth.”
He perked up right away, and took my hand: “You betcha,” he said. “But, it’s up to you now.”
Three weeks later, in late August 2009, Dominick Dunne passed away after a long battle with bladder cancer. I handed in the manuscript to my publisher. I remain forever grateful to him for his generosity and confidence in me.
THE RESEARCH FOR this book was often frustrating and logistically challenging, taking place on three continents. In Rio de Janeiro, my efforts were often confounded by officious bureaucrats and messy archives. I can no longer remember how many times I trudged to the Instituto Médico Legal, the coroner’s office in the down-at-heels Lapa neighborhood, in search of Alfredo Monteverde’s autopsy report. First, I was told that the 1969 documents did not exist. On another visit, I was told they did exist, but that they were on microfilm. However, I couldn’t view the microfilm because the machine was broken. When I offered them a hefty deposit to take the film elsewhere for viewing, they refused. They also refused my repeated offers to pay for the repair of the machine. As with most things in Brazil, at the moment you lose faith that anything will work in your favor, that’s when things magically turn around. And so the Brazilian magic—the jeitinho brasileiro—worked for me a year into my research when the autopsy report, complete with detailed police photographs of the corpse, materialized after a chance encounter with a young lawyer.
I am a great believer in that Brazilian jeitinho—the magic that saw me through four difficult years of research. I am deeply thankful to my neighbor in Copacabana, Gastão Veiga, who vividly recalled his old neighbor and business associate Wolf White Watkins and Lily as a young woman. Rio socialite Ruth de Almeida Prado was also very helpful, and I will never forget interviewing this aged grande dame in her sprawling penthouse, across the street from the Copacabana Palace Hotel, as she sat riveted to a Formula One race on television.
I also want to thank the staff of the National Archives in Rio de Janeiro, who met my difficult requests for information with good humor and rare efficiency. The staff of the Colegio Anglo-Americano, particularly the school’s de facto historian Renée Grossman, generously gave me access to old school records.
Although many people I tried to interview simply refused to speak about the Safra and Monteverde families, others were extremely generous with their time and stories. Maria Consuelo Ayres, president of the Fundação Alfredo Monteverde, was one of these sources, and she spoke to me at length about the early days of Ponto Frio, and the events of August 25, 1969. Thank you to Albert Nasser, Ana Bentes Bloch, Al Abitbol, Victor Sztern, Lourdes Mattos, Sonia Mattos, Rosy Fanto, Masha Monterosa, and Guilherme Castello Branco for their stories of Alfredo, Lily, Edmond, and their families. Marcelo Steinfeld opened up his home on Icatu Street in Rio and allowed me to wander through the second-floor master suite where Alfredo Monteverde spent his final moments.
I am greatly indebted to Laurinda Soares Navarro for welcoming me into her home on several occasions and reliving some of the most traumatic events of her life.
There were dozens of others in both Brazil and Argentina who were extremely helpful with contacts and making introductions to the rarefied universe of South American high society. I am grateful to them and to the medical examiners and retired police officers who guided me through autopsy and ballistics reports in Rio. They are not named here at their own request.
My dear friend Nélida Piñón was an inspiration and a support, and, when I was writing the manuscript, provided me with an office that had a spectacular view of Rio.
Samuel Bendahan, Lily’s third husband, was a great source of insight and information. He was extremely patient and generous with his time, and brutally honest about his own life with Lily. I thank him for trusting me to tell his story for the first time.
In New York, I relied on several sources who wish to remain anonymous.
Eli Attia, Edmond’s architect, was extremely generous with his t
ime. Michael Griffith, one of Ted Maher’s attorneys, was always ready to answer trial-related questions. I am also grateful to Ted Maher for his cooperation and to the other members of his legal team in Monaco.
At Harper Collins, I want to thank Claire Wachtel for her vision and careful editing. I am also very grateful to Julia Novitch and Beth Silfin. For years, David Kilgour has been a brilliant editor and good friend. I thank him for seeing me through this book. Thanks also to my agent Dorian Karchmar and my good friends Serena French, Jean McNeil, Sasha Josipovicz, and Milosh Pavlovicz.
Lauren Ramsby, my first editor at the New York Post, has been a great supporter of me and my work. Thank you also to Steve Lynch, Paul McPolin, and all of my colleagues at the Sunday Post, who are among the finest journalists I have ever encountered.
I am also grateful to Kenneth Whyte, editor and publisher of Mac-leans, who published my news stories from South America during the critical years of research for this book. Thank you also to Priscilla Painton, formerly of Time, for her encouragement, and to Deborah Frank at Departures and Jeffries Blackerby at the New York Times.
Finally, I want to thank my family, who encouraged the move to the other end of the world during the research for this book, even though the frustrations and challenges of life in a foreign country often seemed overwhelming.
About the Author
ISABEL VINCENT is an award-winning investigative journalist currently working for the New York Post. She is the author of Bodies and Souls: The Tragic Plight of Three Jewish Women Forced into Prostitution in the Americas; Hitler’s Silent Partners: Swiss Banks, Nazi Gold, and the Pursuit of Justice; and See No Evil: The Strange Case of Christine Lamont and David Spencer. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times “T” Magazine, the Independent, Marie Claire, L’Officiel (Paris), and many other international publications. She lives in New York City.
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ALSO BY ISABEL VINCENT
Bodies & Souls: The Tragic Plight of Three Jewish
Women Forced into Prostitution in the Americas
Hitler’s Silent Partners: Swiss Banks, Nazi Gold,
and the Pursuit of Justice
See No Evil: The Strange Case of Christine Lamont
and David Spencer
Credits
Jacket photography © Slim Aarons/Getty Images
Jacket design by Chin-Yee Lai
Copyright
GILDED LILY. Copyright © 2010 by Isabel Vincent. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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