A New Mexico jury convicted Jon Green, also known as Ted Maher, of soliciting the murder of his estranged wife, Dr. Kim Lark. Prosecutors said Green, while jailed, worked through an accomplice to arrange a fentanyl-based poisoning scheme and a plan that would
A former nurse who believed she had found a future free of danger now lives with a different kind of vigilance: three years after a marriage unraveled over missing money and stolen dogs, Dr. Kim Lark is preparing for what she calls the unfinished business of a man she says never stopped lying.
Jon Green. known earlier as Ted Maher. was convicted of solicitation to commit first-degree murder after a trial that began on March 3. 2025.. Judge David Finger sentenced him—again using the name Jon Green. also known as Ted Maher—to nine years in prison.. With time served. he is scheduled for release in 2029. and his conviction leaves Lark and others still wrestling with a question that has shadowed him for nearly 25 years: what really happened in Monte Carlo on Dec.. 3, 1999.
Green’s court case in New Mexico was built on the claim that. while he was behind bars for earlier conduct. he reached outside jail to arrange the killing of his estranged wife.. The charge arose after law enforcement began investigating an alleged plot made with his jail mate Greg Markham.. Detective Garrett Silva of the Eddy County Sheriff’s Office said Markham was hired by Jon Green to kill his wife and that the charge Green denied when investigators interviewed him in September 2023.
At trial, Prosecutor Martin Wolfson called Greg Markham as a witness.. Markham testified that Green instructed him in detail on how the killing was supposed to be carried out. with Lark herself describing the intended steps in what prosecutors characterized as a plan to stage the attack.. Lark testified Markham was supposed to turn off the power to the house and that Markham—who said he had been an electrician for 19 years—knew how to do that.. Markham said Green planned for him to hide in the carport and then overpower Kim Lark. including by grabbing the gun kept in the center console of her car.. Lark also testified that Markham had planned to be controlled by verbal commands so the dogs would stop moving until given another command.
Prosecutors also tied the alleged plan to the layout of Lark’s home.. Markham testified that Green showed him where to find Lark’s safe. and Lark said there was no way Markham would have known that unless someone told him.. Defense attorney Blake Dugger pushed back. telling the jury Greg Markham is an individual with a checkered past who tried to take advantage of Jon Green.. Dugger argued the state’s evidence—including a diagram Markham made with similarities to the interior of Lark’s house—was not proof beyond credibility. contending even that diagram could have been cooked up after conversations.
The prosecution’s story included money moving through jail calls.. Greg Markham said Green needed bail money. and testified Green paid for bail once Markham convinced him to bond him out so he could care for his dog. Atlas. before it faced euthanization.. Later. prosecutors described a different urgency: calls between Green and author Jennifer Thomas. who managed his finances while he was behind bars. as Green tried to wire $2. 500.. Green asked Thomas to send money to an intermediary. initially saying he wanted to buy a trailer. with his story shifting.. Thomas told investigators she was stunned when she learned prosecutors believed the money was really partial payment in a murder for hire.
Green did not testify, and Dugger did not call witnesses. After just two days, the jury deliberated for about an hour before convicting Green of solicitation to commit first-degree murder.
On the day sentencing followed, Judge David Finger imposed nine years in prison.. Dr.. Kim Lark told the court and others that his lying had “finally caught up with him.” Green. who goes by both names in the record—Jon Green and Ted Maher—has continued to insist he was framed. including in connection with the Monaco arson case that made his earlier identity infamous.
The sequence of events described across both cases depends on the same set of claims: Green portrays himself as the target. while prosecutors and those around Lark describe a pattern of deception tied to money and coercion.. In New Mexico. that pattern is reflected in the allegations tied to the $2. 500 jail calls. the instruction of a murder plan with details about Lark’s home. and the use of dogs as leverage; in Monaco. it is mirrored by Green’s long-standing assertion that the 1999 deaths were the result of intruders and that authorities forced a false confession.
Long before the New Mexico courtroom, Green’s life was shaped by a blaze in Monte Carlo.. The story begins with Ted Maher. a neonatal intensive care nurse Heidi Wustrau said she met in the late 1990s. when he was living in New York and working as a nurse before traveling to Monaco to care for billionaire Edmond Safra. who had Parkinson’s disease.. Heidi said Safra was one of the richest men on earth and that his penthouse in the Monte Carlo district of Monaco sat above a bank branch.. Safra’s private security force was part of the arrangement, and multiple private-duty nurses worked with him, including Vivian Torrente.
On Dec.. 3. 1999. Heidi said she was told by a phone call from Ted’s sister. who asked her to turn on the news.. A CBS News report from that time described masked men armed with knives invading the Riviera penthouse and included a fire.. Five weeks after Safra’s husband left for Monaco. both Safra and nurse Vivian Torrente were dead. with autopsies reportedly determining both died from “smoke poisoning.” Ted was described as wounded and bloody.
Ted’s account to authorities later became a long-running point of contention.. He said intruders broke into the penthouse. attacked and stabbed him. and that he lit a small fire with a candle and paper towels in a trash basket because he believed the fire department would respond quickly. using the location of smoke detectors near access to the fire department.
Heidi’s later allegations added to the dispute.. She said police intercepted her soon after she arrived in Monaco and that. during questioning. it became clear authorities believed Ted might be a killer.. She alleged police took her passport and used it as leverage against Ted by presenting it to him to obtain a confession.. She said she was told she would be strip searched and tortured and that she would not be allowed to leave Monaco.
Heidi said she believed Ted was forced into a false confession and that the confession he signed was written in French, which Ted did not understand. She said she thought authorities wanted “a nice clean ending” quickly.
Ted was ultimately convicted in Monaco.. He faced life in prison if convicted at trial and was sentenced to 10 years, according to the story.. Heidi said she believed Ted would not get a fair trial in Monaco, citing the reputation of Monaco.. She described the trial and Ted’s testimony that there had been no intruders and that he had stabbed himself.
In January 2003, Heidi said Ted escaped from prison by cutting metal bars and scaling down prison walls.. She said Ted called her from outside prison and asked for money, and she refused.. She said he was back in custody the next day and that she felt his faith in Ted had run out.. Heidi then filed for divorce.
Ted was released in 2007.. By then. he had found new allies in authors Jennifer Thomas and Bill Hayes. and the three worked on “Framed in Monte Carlo. ” described as a collaboration arguing Ted’s Monaco story was truthful and that a judge’s sentence may have been predetermined before trial.. The account in this reporting states that a French newspaper article. “Le Figaro. ” referenced a claim by a judge involved in Ted Maher’s case that the sentence was predetermined.
In the United States, Ted Maher struggled to find steady work, and, according to the account, adopted the name Jon Green. He began driving trucks and started a relationship with Dr. Kim Lark, who later married him on Valentines Day 2020.
Lark met Green in 2017 after a routine medical exam became a turning point. She described him as smiling and happy, and said that within months of meeting he began texting and dating her. She said he liked “everything that I liked,” and that they started skiing together and riding bikes together.
She said she did not realize what he was capable of when they married. She also said she believed his account of his past, including that he had been falsely accused of arson more than 20 years earlier that caused the deaths of two people in Monte Carlo, including a billionaire banker.
Their marriage, however, unraveled in the shadow of that history.. In April 2022, Lark said she noticed her checkbook was missing.. She said the bank called and asked whether she wrote a check.. She described Green’s appearance on bank security video trying to cash thousands of dollars in checks forged with her name across banks in town.. She filed for divorce and changed the locks.
About a month later, Lark said Green stole something she described as more valuable than money: her dogs.. She said Storm. Zero. and Felony were highly trained search and rescue dogs and that she and the dogs had a special bond.. She said the dogs assisted FEMA during national disasters and also worked with law enforcement at crime scenes.. She said she was terrified because Zero was pregnant at the time.
Lark said she believed Green might have taken the dogs to Texas. and sought help from Abel Peña. an FBI retiree who founded a nonprofit. Project Absentis.. Peña said finding dogs is harder than finding missing people because “dogs don’t maintain a … a paw print online.” On June 13. 2022. Peña called law enforcement for help staking out a parking lot in San Antonio.. Shortly after Green arrived in a BMW, authorities arrested and charged him with forgery and larceny.. The account says he had changed his appearance by shaving his head.
Peña later said his dogs were found not in the parking lot area but at a nearby house belonging to the aunt of one of Green’s friends.. He said Zero had multiplied, with eight puppies now in a box.. Peña said he was “ecstatic” when they found the dogs. and Lark described relief when her dogs were reunited with her.. She said she named one puppy Abel, after the man who found them.
Green’s case then intersected with another threat story while he was locked up.. Lark’s alleged plot against her, prosecutors say, grew out of conversations in custody.. Greg Markham, who was detained on drug charges, testified about a connection to Green centered on desperation and, later, coercion.. Markham said Green was furious with Lark and that Green kept asking Markham whether he knew someone who could kill his wife.. Markham said he told Green he couldn’t find anyone and offered to do it instead if Green wanted.
Markham testified he wasn’t serious about killing Lark and said his main goal was to obtain bail money to save his dog Atlas from being euthanized.. He said Green paid his bail and then. once convinced Markham would be freed. Green continued pushing him to talk about the plan.. Markham described a scheme in which Green allegedly wanted poison to make Lark’s death look like an overdose: forcing her to drink water laced with fentanyl to resemble a fatal overdose.. Markham also said Green planned that if Lark refused. the gun would be used not on Lark but on her dogs.
Green denied the plot and told authorities he would fight the charges. In this account, he was later convicted and sentenced.
After the conviction, Green pursued an appeal and was denied. The New Mexico Corrections Department barred cameras from the prison, but the reporting says that in March 2026, Ted’s attorney Blake Dugger arranged a video visit and that Green agreed to be interviewed.
In that video call, Green denied trying to hire someone to kill his wife.. He said he only paid Greg Markham $2,500 to help rescue Markham’s dog, not to murder Kim.. Green argued Markham’s knowledge of the house could have come from conversations.. Markham’s diagram—shown in the reporting—was described as showing where the power source was and where Lark’s safe was located.
Lark, speaking in the video call account, asked how Markham would have those details if she did not share them. Green’s response emphasized his own account of renovating electrical panels and placing a safe at a high level.
Green admitted forging Lark’s signature on a check, but said that, as the marriage crumbled, he had no income. He also said that his rights to the dogs were still tied to a divorce settlement that hadn’t been finalized at the time.
Even as Green insists he is innocent, Lark says she fears what may happen once he is out.. She told investigators and others that he demanded money as part of their divorce and that she is infuriated. and she said she does not trust anyone and remains on alert.. She also said the dogs follow her everywhere and that she is “always on alert” because. as she puts it. she does not trust people.
Detective Garrett Silva. who helped piece together the solicitation case and was promoted to sergeant with the K9 unit. said that if he were in Lark’s position. he would keep a dog by his side for protection.. Silva’s comments align with what Lark described: she is still living with the protection of her search-and-rescue dogs.
For the jury and the judge. the question of what Green meant to do has been answered in the form of a conviction for solicitation to commit first-degree murder.. For Lark and for those who once believed Ted Maher’s Monaco account. the conviction leaves another unresolved point: whether the earlier fire in Monte Carlo was a set-up—and whether the same man could carry out a plan involving death. money. and dogs.
Jon Green Ted Maher Dr. Kim Lark solicitation to commit murder Greg Markham New Mexico trial Edmond Safra Monaco arson search and rescue dogs fentanyl plot sentencing