Heidi Maher picked up the ringing telephone in her upstate New York home at about 9 p.m. Tuesday and heard the familiar voice of Ted Maher, the husband she thought was quietly serving his 10-year sentence for two deaths in the French principality of Monaco.

Ted Maher, however, wasn't calling from Monaco.

He was at a hotel in Nice, France, and in need of money to further finance the daring escape he and his cellmate made Tuesday night from a castle-like prison overlooking the Mediterranean.

"I told him no. I'm not going to aid and abet you," Heidi Maher said Wednesday, still numb from the call she says ended when her husband slammed the telephone down angrily.

Details are still emerging, but French police apprehended Ted Maher a few hours later in the same Nice hotel from which Maher apparently called his wife and others in the U.S. and Monaco. His cellmate, an Italian awaiting trial in Monaco on charges stemming from a robbery, was still at large as of noon ET.

Maher, 43, was convicted in December of arson causing death and sentenced to 10 years in prison. On Dec. 3, 1999, Maher stabbed himself, set a fire and made up a story about being attacked by hooded intruders who invaded the penthouse apartment where Maher and other private-duty nurses cared for billionaire banker Edmond Safra.

Believing there were intruders, police kept firefighters from launching a full-scale rescue attempt for an hour after Maher was taken to a hospital. By the time firefighters located Safra and nurse Vivian Torrente in a dressing room, both had succumbed to the toxic fumes fueled by a fire Maher admitted setting in a wastepaper basket.

French police told the Associated Press that Maher and his cellmate sawed through prison bars to make their escape. Monaco's 50-cell House of Arrest is a modern and relatively comfortable facility, but was considered secure. Until now.

"This is a difficult prison to get out of. They would have had to saw through two sets off bars and climb down a wall," said Michael Griffith, a New York lawyer who assisted Maher's defense team during the trial. "Evidently, Ted holed up in a hotel room and was calling everyone. I think that's how they tracked him."

Donald Manasse, a French-American lawyer representing Maher, told Courttv.com by phone that his assistant was waiting to see Maher this afternoon to talk about what comes next. Maher will probably have to decide whether to fight extradition to Monaco, which he has always maintained made him a scapegoat for the police's failure to let firefighters launch an immediate rescue.

"I cannot confirm or deny the details, because I don't have them," Manasse said. "He is in Nice. He is not going to be automatically sent back to Monaco."

Maher has been awaiting a ruling from Monaco's highest court on an appeal of his conviction and sentence. It is unclear how the escape will affect his parole, for which he could be eligible in less than two years.

"If they had brains, they would just let this guy go. He's just been a pain in their ass," said Griffith.

Griffith represented another American whose escape from a foreign jail inspired the motion picture "Midnight Express." Facing life in prison for possession of hash, Billy Hayes risked getting shot on sight when he escaped from a Turkish prison and made his way to Greece and freedom.

"I feel bad for the guy," Hayes, now living in California, said Wednesday. "Everyone talks about escaping, but there is a vast space and fear between thinking and talking about it and actually doing it. It sounded like he got real stupid."

Hayes said that in his own case he had nothing to lose. He was either going to stay in prison for life, die escaping or be free. Maher, however, could see the light at the end of his tunnel.

Manasse said he suspects that Maher felt truly wronged by his treatment by the judicial system in Monaco, a small sovereign state known worldwide as a playground of the rich and famous.

"It's a new wrinkle in a very perturbing case to begin with," Manasse said. "I haven't talked to him yet, but my sense is that he felt that [he] is paying the price for other persons' mistakes and the sentence was harsher because of that. He doesn't feel the sentence was fair."

Heidi Maher, left to care for the couple's four children, said she and Ted Maher have been discussing divorce.

"Maybe he thought he has nothing more to lose," she said.