The Man with Two Names

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Now in your video, I'll do all the good for everything. [MUSIC] John Green does what John Green does, right? He's a charmer. He's a smooth talker.

“I think he could talk his way in anyone's life.”

But need the surface, there's something really dark. Is this a man who just happens to have really bad luck? Or is he a bad guy? He's a bad guy. Big good times together.

I never felt like I'm with a bad person.

I think he's unlucky. I think he's unlucky. We were so happy when he met Kim Lark his wife. They went skiing together, they loved dogs together. I had not seen him so happy in all these years that we've known him.

I think John Green saw Dr. Cameron saw dollar signs. You think he targeted her? Yeah, I do. It all turned sour really quick. They were not only separating, but he took the dogs.

She loves her dogs. Those are her babies. It's like if he had taken her children. He's dealing with your dogs. He's kidnapped in your dogs.

“Oh, I was scared to death that he would get rid of them.”

[MUSIC] Now it became just one thing after another. He's on the road, on the road and on the run. What the dogs? He's actually arrested in San Antonio.

He's at the thief. He's a liar, a con artist. At any county detention center, I met John. He kept asking me if I knew somebody that could kill his wife. Socialist, my husband, in jail talking with somebody

about the various different ways to kill me and take care of the body. Do you believe that this was a real plan? Yes.

This isn't the first time he's been in question of a heinous crime.

If he did it once, he can do it again. [MUSIC] Who was this man, really? He wasn't John Green. His real name was Ted Mahr.

And he had been convicted of an arson resulting in the death of a billionaire. [MUSIC] So much of it still remains a mystery. I mean, this guy's story is just crazy. [MUSIC]

In memory of the reports, the man needs two names. [MUSIC] Carl's Bad New Mexico, a small city dwarfed by a vast dirt red desert. [MUSIC] It was home to John Green in 2017.

That was the year of routine medical exam would become a turning point for him. And his new doctor Kim Lark, the very first day when he walks in. How would you have described him? Smiling, happy, wanted to talk, just kind of made you feel comfortable.

Months later, they began texting, then dating. He liked everything that I liked. We started skiing together. We started riding bikes together. Early in their relationship, Kim says,

Green told her about his troubled past. [MUSIC] That he had been falsely accused of arson more than 20 years ago. Causing the deaths of two people, including a billionaire banker in Monte Carlo. [MUSIC]

“I believe Tim, at first, I kind of believed his side of the story.”

She says she wanted to believe the best about the new man in her life. He said all the right things. He did all things that I needed my best friend to be. By the time they married on Valentine's Day, 2020, they'd already settled into a comfortable life.

Kim had a lucrative medical practice, an $800,000 retirement account tucked away, and a home on four acres outside of town. At that time, did you realize what he was capable of? No, I had no idea. I think he's motivated by money, motivated by power.

has spent years reporting green story for a new series dreaming on the epic online platform.

He likes skiing. It's just like he was a chameleon.

“She says the man who calls himself John Green has led a life of deception.”

He's been able to fool a lot of people and caused a lot of trauma. Trauma, that would eventually crumble their marriage. It's just a few years as Kim. Just 'cause he's so willing to lie, cheat, steal. In April 2022, Kim noticed her checkbook was missing.

That's when the bank called, and said, "Hey, did you write this check?" She learned that her husband, seen here on bank security footage,

was trying to cash thousands of dollars in checks by forcing her name at banks all over town.

Kim filed for divorce and changed the locks on her house. About a month later, he stole something else from her that mattered a lot more than money. Is Kim not in your dogs? My dogs and my vehicle, yeah. Storm, zero and felony are not only precious pets.

They're extremely valuable, highly trained search and rescue dogs says Kim. And she is their trainer. And we have a really special bond. My dogs are with me 24/7. For years, Kim and her K9 companions have assisted FEMA during national disasters

and law enforcement at crime scenes.

He could have taken anything except my dogs.

And zero was pregnant at the time. I really was scared to death. Kim believed her estranged husband might have taken the dogs to Texas, and she found someone there who could help. Able Penya had 26 years with the FBI before he retired,

and founded a non-profit called "Project of Centers." Doub find missing people.

“What is the difference between looking for missing people and missing dogs?”

Dogs don't maintain a paw print online. It's more challenging to try and find dogs. It was more than a month before he got a good tip, and it wasn't about the dogs, but about green himself. On June 13, 2022, Penya called law enforcement for help,

staking out a parking lot in San Antonio. Shortly after green arrived at a BMW, authorities arrested and charged him with forgery and larceny. He had changed his appearance, shaving his head. I ran over to the vehicle, looked in the back windows,

to see if the dogs were there, the dogs were not there. But Penya had another lead, and headed to a nearby house belonging to the aunt of one of green's friends. I'm not going to door, and I'm greeted by an older woman. She was like, "I know why you're here. Come on in."

He found Kim's dogs in a back bedroom, and by then, "Zero had multiplied."

“There were now eight puppies in a box, and how did you feel?”

I was ecstatic. Able Penya took all 11 dogs to his house and waited for Kim to arrive. My girls were so happy to see me. I was so relieved.

It was a fantastic ending. Kim was so thankful she named one of the puppies, able after the man who had found them. Did you think at that point? You had it all behind you?

Yes. The fourthary in Larsonie Charges landed John Green here, locked up in the Eddie County Detention Center in Carl's Bad, where he met this man, Greg Markham, detained on drug charges. Was he angry with Kim?

Oh, he's furious with her. Markham says they bonded over a chess board. I played chess with him every day. Got to know the guy. He kept asking me if I knew somebody that could kill his wife.

Greg Markham says he saw an opportunity to make John Green his pawn. And I was like, "You know what, man?

I'll do it. How do you want it done?" So, did you promise to kill his wife?

“I said, "Oh, yeah, man, I'll do it. I'll do it for you."”

Were you going to? No! No! Markham says he's a con man, not a hip man,

and was never serious about killing Kim Lark.

It's a little bit of my own, it's me and my dog. He desperately needed bail money, he says, "To save his dog Atlas from being youth and eyes." He's like, "I got to convince this guy to bomb me out, so I can go take care of my dog, make sure he's okay."

He says, "Gream paid for the bail." Once he was convinced that I was going to do it, he dealt with his wooden stop talking about it. Let's talk about it again. What are you going to do?

“Markham says Green had a specific way he wanted his wife to die.”

He concocted a lethal plot to poison Kim. Forcing her to drink water lace with fentanyl to look like an overdose. Yeah, I suppose to mix up fentanyl, pills, and make sure she drank the whole water bottle.

If she refused as Markham, Green's grizzly plan was to aim a gun, not a Kim, but at her beloved dogs. And she'll do whatever you want done. John Green fiercely denies all of it, and was determined to fight the charges against him,

as he had before, in another courtroom, on another continent. 26 years earlier, a war in Inferno and golfed a Monti-Carlo poundhouse, killing the billionaire and his private nurse. At the fiery center of that mystery, was the very same man, with a very different name.

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isn't the only place where this man made headlines. One of the world's richest bankers died today, and it isn't the first time he was accused of a major crime. An American male nurse, and Kim Lark is not the only woman who loved him. I've saved every rose.

You can be. Every rose he's given you since you've known him? Yeah. It was 2002 when I first met Heidi Wastrell. She was married to the man who would one day become John Green. His name then, Ted Maher.

That name would become known around the world. The couple lived in New York and had two children together, meeting in nursing school. What kind of nurse is he? He's a neonatal intensive care nurse.

Some pictures with kids. Just some of the infants that he took care of. Ted told her about his time serving as a special forces-green per day. He seemed to find by intensity and compassion.

He always put others first.

He used just so loving, so caring, you know, and I wanted someone like that. His compassion was on display in the summer of 1999, in the neonatal unit where Ted worked. When two grateful new parents connected him to the job of a lifetime,

to take care of a rich banker who we never heard of to be his private nurse. He had Parkinson's disease. Edmund Safro was that rich banker, and he wasn't just regular rich. He was one of the richest men on earth.

The bank Safro owned it. Living with his elegant wife Lily in this penthouse above this bank branch. Here in the Monte Carlo district of glittering diamond-sized monaco. Tucked along the exclusive French Riviera.

Obviously we've never seen the world, you know, like that.

So when Safro made the offer, Ted couldn't refuse,

We thought, well, this is just temporary,

“and we have the rest of our lives to get together afterwards.”

It was that October when Maher's fascinating new job, brought him to Monaco. It was just a different world, he kept saying. He liked it, he liked Mr. Safro very much, they got along well. Maher sometimes worked the night shift at times with nurse Vivian to Rente.

Along with his private duty nurses, Safro also kept a personal security force for a protection. We didn't know who this man was, it was all new to us. December 3rd, 1999.

I was getting the kids off to school in the morning as usual,

and I got a phone call, and it was Ted's sister,

“who sounded upset and crying, she asked me to turn on the news.”

Two masked men armed with knives, invaded the Riviera penthouse of Edmund Safro. It was a startily report about intruders and a fire in the Safro penthouse. Just five weeks after husband left for Monaco, the billionaire who brought him there and nurse Vivian to Rente were dead. Autopsies would determine they had both died from smoke poisoning,

and Ted was wounded and bloody. Ted would tell authorities a story that would be discussed and debated for years. He said that intruders broke into the penthouse, attacked and stabbed him, that he scrambled to get help while his boss took shelter in a bathroom. Ted says he lit a small fire with a candle and paper towels in a trash basket,

thinking the fire department would respond quickly. He knew the smoke detectors were direct access to the fire department, so he wanted to set that off. Back in New York, Heidi was worried and she contacted Safro's office. She wasn't surprised at what she heard.

They said that Ted was indeed a hero that night. I said that's Ted. And within hours, Heidi headed to Monaco. I was to go straight to the hospital to see Ted. Did you?

No. Instead, soon after arriving, Heidi says she was intercepted by police. She had been told that Ted acted like a hero. That was about to change. As police questioned her, Heidi says it became clear that they thought her husband might be a killer.

She led just as they took her passport and used it as a weapon against Ted. When my passport was taken, they brought it to Ted to get him to confess for this. And he was told then that I was stripped searched and tortured. And I would not be allowed to leave the state of Monaco back to our family. She said that threat caused Ted to falsely confess.

He would now say there were no intruders that he had taken a knife and that he had stabbed

himself to make it look like he had tried to save his powerful boss from attackers.

They're saying he gave himself a light-a-cain injection prior to stemming himself and light-a-cain what? Dead with no man. And Heidi says the confession he signed was written in French, which Ted did not understand. I feel they wanted a nice clean ending to this quick. It would be good for the state of Monaco to have their citizens feel safe. Ted was locked up charged with arson and intentional act, leading to the death of his

afferend to Rente. He faced life in prison if convicted a trial. This is someone I know. I know he didn't do this.

“What if everything he learned in history class was only half the story?”

I'm Dr. Critty bought host of Hidden History. Every Monday, I go where history gets mysterious. Vanish civilizations, doomsday prophecies, paranormal phenomena, and events that science still can't fully explain. On Hidden History, I treat these moments like open case files. Not miss, not superstition, just incomplete explanations, waiting for closer look. Listen to and follow Hidden History, available now wherever you get your podcasts.

and Ted was now being blamed. I've known him now 13 years. He would never hurt anyone.

“Monaco's chief prosecutor says an American male nurse confessed to starting the fire that killed”

Sanford and another nurse. The death of Edmund's afferend exploded into a sensational story that would fascinate authors, Jennifer Thomas, and her husband Bill Hayes. If you saw this on the screen, it'd be gone. None of this makes sense. It doesn't happen. There were allegations, none of them substantiated. The might have supported Ted's original claim about intruders.

Talk that Safra had enemies that he had been the victim of a Russian mob hit. Safra had an

awful lot of connections to Russia, and rumors were inflamed by a suspicious discovery. Heidi told us that the night of the fire, Safra's private force of security guards were oddly not on sight. Was that usual unheard of? There were also whispers about Safra's stylish wife, Lily. The rumors about her and her previous husbands, Lily had been married four times, with one other husband also deceased, prompting more conjecture. She's rumored to be a black widow.

Who has inherited a lot of money from her husbands? But police believe Ted was responsible for two deaths. It would take three long years to bring Ted to trial. Hello. Hi. Hi. How are you doing? Okay. And in that time, Heidi was only occasionally able to speak to Ted from his prison on the Mediterranean Sea. I'm not an artist or a murderer. It goes to go to get the reason that it's done in my entire life.

“I try to be strong, because I know he needs my snake too. Never forget this fight you never.”

I love you. I love you. They're happiness of a man in a flight height. It doesn't consist of in my ass, but in what I retain and hold it my heart. I just wish this wasn't my life. We're going to the prison that was on their roof. New York lawyer Michael Griffith joined Ted's defense team. Griffith had made a name for himself defending Americans abroad. Ted Marr became a client and a tough one. Can we go through some of the odd things about this

case? Is there any evidence other than what Ted said initially? Any evidence of two intruders? There was no evidence that I know of any intruders. Instead, Griffith would argue that Ted

did what authority said. He stabbed himself and set the fire, but that he never intended for anyone

to die. He was just trying to make himself look like a hero. Ted is the fireman who started the fire. Fireman who started fire is doing not to hurt people, but to save people. Are you saying that you believe Ted actually did start the fire? Cut himself to make himself look like a hero?

“I believe that's what Ted did. Did he actually tell you he did this himself?”

Yeah, he told me that he did this to himself and that's the basis of our defense. Griffith contends that no one would have died that night if police and firefighters had gotten to the victims faster. It took them about two and a half hours to reach saffron and torrente. But authorities say they got to the scene in minutes, but had to be careful and slow their response because Ted told them they were violent intruders inside. He's total libel of the circumstances

that he created. In 2002, a turning mark benign spoke to 48 hours. He represented saffron's widow Lily. He says the rumors about her are false. It's not only it's not true, obviously. It is scandalous. Lily is devastated by what happened. November 2002, Heidi traveled to Monica was the trial we get. Ted was facing possible life

They have the reputation of Monica on the line and they would never risk that.

She wasn't happy when Ted testified that there had been no intruders and that he had in fact stabbed himself and she was furious that Griffith allowed Ted to take the blame for something she believes he didn't do. Heidi believes with all her heart, the Ted didn't do this. That he's been forced to say he did it. I mean, what's the truth here? Well, all I know is

“his Ted is by client. I know what Ted has told me. He was told this is the best way to go.”

Heidi, I don't know what to tell you. All I know is I'm doing my job, based upon what my client told me and I guess you're going to have to... And this is our life. This is your life. This is the life. Ted, my heart was convicted of arson leading to the death of two people. Yeah, we were disappointed in the... He was sentenced to ten years. Heidi. To Heidi, it was the end of life as she had known it.

Yeah, she's upset. And then in January, just seven weeks after the trial, Ted called Heidi

“from outside the prison. Ted said, it's me. I'm out. He had cut the metal bars, scaled down the”

prison walls and escaped. I said, you're joking and he says, no, I'm out. He asked for money and I said, no, and he got angry at me. Ted's freedom was short-lived. The next day, he was back in custody. Heidi was furious that he would risk so much, including having his sentence extended. She says her faith and Ted had run out. I don't need him and I don't want him. I did the best I could to bring him home,

but now it seems like he's doing his own job of screwing up. Heidi filed for divorce. As for Ted, he was released in 2007.

“When he landed at JFK, the woman who had believed in him was nowhere to be found.”

But Ted would eventually find others in his corner, those authors, Jennifer Thomas and Bill Hayes. Together with Ted, they would write framed in Monte Carlo. Ted was back to insisting that while caring for Edmund Safra, he was attacked by violent intruders.

What they had accused him of doing didn't make any sense why anybody would do that in the first place.

And so everything he said made perfect sense when he told us the story. What Thomas and Hayes found intriguing was a report in a French newspaper. According to La Figaro at an unrelated hearing, a judge who served on Ted Myers' case had claimed Ted's sentence had been predetermined before the trial even began. And in your mind, the real story is this guy was set up. 100%.

Back in the States, Ted was alone. Steady work, tough to find. Especially if your name was Ted Maher. I'm that new name, Dawn Green.

It is first 10 years back in the United States.

John Green tried to shed his alter ego, Ted Maher of Monaco. He found a new job driving trucks and began a new romance with Dr. Kim Lark, who he went on to marry in 2020. But the marriage crumbled and in 2023, Green found himself facing a new charge, solicitation to commit first-degree murder. Dr. Lark is a big name in this town. She's well-known by a lot of people.

Green was still behind bars for forging those checks and stealing the dogs. When detective Garrett Silva of the Attic County Sheriff's Office began investigating the alleged

Greg Markham was hired by John Green to kill his wife.

It was a charge that Green vigorously denied, when investigators interviewed him in September of 2023. "On the harming, Dr. Lark, is there anything that we need to be aware about

“for her safety and/or yours? No, that's what we're not. I think you know what we're going with this.”

Do you think that I'm going to have somebody harm Kim? That's what we're not." But authorities weren't persuaded. John Green's trial began on March 3rd, 2025. Prosecutor Martin Wolvesson called his star witness Greg Markham to the stand. "Mr. Markham did John Green instruct you on how I used to carry the murder house?"

"Yes, in great detail." Kim Lark took us through the house where it was supposed to happen. "What's he supposed to do? Turn off the power to the house." "I've been on my tradition for 19 years. I knew how to do that." "And where was he going to be?"

“"He was supposed to be hiding in the cardboard."”

"Now, this used to be a cardboard here." "Well, he said, she's kind of pretty frail. You're a big guy." Markham says the plan was for him to overpower Kim and grab the gun she kept in the center console of her car. "Apparently he was going to bring me into the house." "He told him how to control my dogs?"

"Yes, so you're raising your hands up as high as you can get and you've yelled down my own ears as loud as you can and slam your hands down and then dog stop." "And they won't move until given another command." According to Markham, Green also told him where he could find Kim Lark's safe. And you would only know that if somebody told you. "Right. There's no way you would."

“But defense attorney Blake Dougger told the jury.”

Greg Markham is no angel and that they shouldn't believe a word he says. "One of the greatest powers you have today is the power to judge someone's favorite." Greg Markham is an individual with a checkered past who really tried to take advantage and did take advantage of John Green. But the state presented evidence they say proves Greg Markham was telling the truth.

A diagram Markham made with similarities to the interior of Kim's house. He testified John Green had detailed it to him as part of the murder plot. "It used to describe the long hallway beside the back door." And prosecutors had evidence that Green was in a hurry to get money to pay Markham for the hit. Jail calls between Green and author Jennifer Thomas, who was managing his finances while he was

behind bars. Green called her multiple times asking her to wire $2,500 to an intermediary.

First, he said he wanted the money to buy a trailer, but his story kept changing.

Thomas eventually did what Green asked, but she was stunned when she learned the prosecutors believe the money was really partial payment in a murder for hire. "You had gotten the money for him." "I was freaked out." She said she and Hayes were relieved when the DA decided they had not knowingly done anything wrong.

Blake Dugger insisted his client didn't either. Arguing even Greg Markham's diagram wasn't damning because it could have been cooked up after a casual conversation with Green. "It is not a crime for a man to proud of this crime, how it's how it's supposed to be." John Green didn't testify, and Dugger didn't call any witnesses, believing that prosecutors had failed to prove their case. After just two days, it was in the jury's hands.

"I was feeling good. I was feeling good." The jury deliberated for only about an hour. "We found a defendant, John Green, guilty."

They convicted him of solicitation to commit first-degree murder.

His lying personally caught up with him. Judge David Finger sent his John Green, aka Ted Mahr, to nine years in prison.

for Ted Mahr. New Mexico authorities barred our cameras from the prison, but in March of 2020-6, Ted's attorney Blake Dugger arranged a video visit with him and Ted allowed us to interview him. "Did you try to hire someone to kill your wife?" "No way, you did not have fully enough. I shouldn't be here. By the contrary, I am here."

Once again, Ted says he was framed. He would never instruct someone to hold a gun to a dog's

haddy says, and he claimed that he only gave Greg Markham the $2,500 to help rescue Markham's dog, not to murder Kim. "You don't pay someone any $2,500 to kill anybody. That is absolutely ridiculous."

“But how then did Markham seem to know so much about the layout of Kim Lark's house?”

"But this was the basic layout." Markham made us a diagram too. "I knew where the cheesemour and we compared it to the house itself. It wasn't exactly a match, but there were disturbing similarities." It shows where the power source is, right? "And where the safe was? Is that right?" "Yes." He did a drawing of her house.

"How would he have those details if you didn't give it to him?" "That drawing was not all in all.

There was a hundred percent factual." "Did you have a dining room?" Ted echoed what his lawyer argued in the trial. "Whatever Markham knew about the Holmes layout, came from innocent conversations."

“"I explained how I did read books on electrical panels, and I turned on how I turned out”

a bookcase to produce safe and a high level so she would have to bend down." In fact, he told us he was a doding husband, devoted to making life easier for Kim. "You said you loved Kim Lark." "I still weren't her." He admitted he forged her signature on a check, but said as the marriage crumbled, he had no income and needed money, and he said he had a right to the dogs,

since his divorce settlement with Kim hadn't been finalized yet. "Those dogs were still convenient to be borrowed from the male." Just like he once claimed to Monaco, he told us he's an innocent and fundamentally good man,

“taken advantage of by others. "As you sit here today, do you feel responsible for Edmund's”

office death?" "No, I go." "But the couple who once believed Ted Mars, rock formations of innocence, now wonder what really happened on the December night in Monte Carlo that ended with a death of a billionaire and his nurse." "There is a chance." "In my mind now that he didn't orchestrate that." Bill Hayes still believes Ted told the truth about intruders attacking him that night, but Hayes and Thomas agree that when it comes to Ted's

plot to kill Kim Lark, the plot they say he's sucked them into, he is guilty as charged. "I feel betrayed." "I would want to know why, why you lied."

And while we may never know the whole truth for sure, we found evidence that Ted had

hedged one of his most basic claims which he repeatedly made over the years. "Where you, in fact, special forces and a green beret." "I went through all three planes." "You're saying you went to the training." "I finished the three programs." "Come on, Ted. Don't double talk here." "I never was assigned to a unit as a green beret." "So you never served as a green beret." "I served. I went down in the special forces. Yes, I did."

If Ted Mars didn't give us a straight answer, the army certainly did. Telling us, quote, "There is no evidence that theodore Mars served in this special forces." "He's a thief. He's a liar. A con artist." "And Kim Lark says she's worried she hasn't seen the last of him." "When he gets out, I'll be in trouble."

"Does Kim Lark have a reason to be scared of you?" "I don't think I can bring her." "There's no telling what he may do." Detective Garrett Silva, who helped piece the murder solicitation case together, was promoted to Sergeant with a K9 unit. He told us that if he were in Kim's position,

"I don't trust anybody. I'm always on alert."

“She told us Ted has demanded money as part of their divorce and she's infuriated.”

"Kim admits that anger can be lonely." "Mum fell belt." But anyone who knows Kim knows

what just going for a ride. She's never really alone. "Kim, do they follow you everywhere?"

“"Yes." "Oh my god, that makes me laugh." "Dob's just want to be with you all the time."”

"And you can trust them." "Yes." "Yes." "Okay."

[Music]

“John Green, aka Ted Maher, appealed his conviction and was denied. He's scheduled for release in 2029.”

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