Real Housewives of New Jersey star's ex speaks out for first time about role in book that led to famous table flip

Kevin Maher, subject of the controversial book "Cop Without a Badge," finally tells his story on a new episode of Investigation Discovery's "Hollywood Demons."

Former confidential informant Kevin Maher is finally dishing on his involvement in one of the most iconic moments in reality television history: The Real Housewives of New Jersey's infamous season 1 table flip.

"I've never, ever really spoken about my relationship with Danielle Staub," Maher says on "Housewives Gone Bad," the latest episode of Investigation Discovery's new docuseries, Hollywood Demons. But it was Maher's prior relationship with the RHONJ star that set her castmates off in the season 1 finale.

On the 2009 episode "The Last Supper," Staub's costar Teresa Giudice called Staub a "prostitution whore," alleged that she was "engaged 19 times," and flipped the cast's dinner table in a rage. The scandalous moment transformed the fledgling Real Housewives franchise from a novel experiment in reality programming to a ratings juggernaut.

The fracas all stemmed from a series of events recounted in a 1996 book by Charles Kipps called Cop Without a Badge, which tells Maher's story of working for several years as a confidential informant for the FBI, DEA, and other law enforcement agencies. Maher eventually became involved with a woman named Beverly Ann Merrill, whose rap sheet allegedly includes charges of extortion, kidnapping, and drug possession. Merrill eventually changed her name to "Danielle Staub."

The behavior attributed to Staub in Cop Without a Badge made all of her RHONJ costars uneasy, but Staub's repeated denial of all but two of Kipps' claims — that she changed her name and was arrested — enraged Giudice to the point of provoking a physical confrontation.

The reverberations of the table flip continue to ring throughout the Bravo-verse and the broader television landscape, but Maher himself never appeared on the show. Maher decided to tell his side of the story on "Housewives Gone Wild."

Maher recounted that he was embedded with a Miami-based drug dealer named John in 1986. John one day told Maher, "I want you to meet this girl, Beverly Ann Merrill. She's really interesting, you're going to love her." Maher claimed his first meeting with Merrill led to "super sexual relations," and the pair began dating.

In the docuseries, Maher alleged that the night after they met, Staub revealed she was "facing prison" and started to cry, leading Maher to disclose his status as a confidential informant. "She could have easily gotten up and told all these guys, and I wouldn't have known, and I would have walked right into my own demise," he reflected. "You know what the Colombians would do if they ever found out I was an informant?"

Maher further claimed Staub never filled him in on why she was facing arrest. "I felt sorry for her, and I wanted to help her, and I did. I looked at this 25-year-old girl from upstate Pennsylvania, thinking she was way out of her league, she doesn't know what she's doing." Staub helped Maher turn over a drug dealer to the police, he alleged, and the majority of the charges she was purportedly facing were dropped.

The couple was married in 1988 and divorced the following year, Maher said, adding that he was shocked when he eventually learned of the charges Staub was allegedly facing.

According to the ID series, a man Staub was romantically involved with in 1986 allegedly kidnapped a young man from Buffalo, beat him, held him hostage for two days, and stole $25,000 worth of cocaine. The couple tried to extort the man's father, but he called the FBI, which apprehended Staub and the man, seizing 6 kilos of cocaine and $16,000 in cash, according to news reports about the incident.

Staub was charged with multiple felonies, all but one of which were dropped when she agreed to cooperate with law enforcement. She eventually served five years probation. Staub previously told PEOPLE that she was only an "accessory" in the incident, stating that she never worked as a sex worker and never had a cocaine problem. The RHONJ star also denied involvement in the kidnapping, but has admitted to being arrested and speaking with the victim's father, according to the ID series.

Entertainment Weekly has reached out to Staub for comment.

"It's just dawning on me now, 40-something years later, that she probably looked at me, like, playing me the whole time, that I helped her with her court case," Maher reflected. Following their split, the two would be linked again when Kipps' book on Maher was published in 1996, but Maher claimed he never saw Staub again until the first season of RHONJ hit the air.

"I get a call saying, 'Hey, you're on this TV show, Real Housewives, They're flashing your book!'" he recalled.

Staub returned for the show's second season, but departed thereafter. She returned again as a friend of the cast in 2017, staying for three seasons and managing to reconcile her earlier conflict with Giudice.

Staub revisited the drama around Cop Without a Badge in a 2024 interview on the Straightened Out podcast.

"I wanted to bring it up. I did not do that successfully, and what it ended up doing is promoting a confidential informant's words in a book," she said, describing those words as "like a journal of an 8-year-old jaded ex."

"When they're promoting that book and putting a stamp on that book, it's revisiting that for me every single time — when I see a table flip and that book's on there," Staub said. "So did I want that to happen? No. I wanted to be able to speak to them as grown-ups."

"Housewives Gone Bad," the fourth episode of Investigation Discovery's new series Hollywood Demons, premiered April 14. Hollywood Demons airs every Monday through April 28 from 9-11 p.m. ET on ID and streaming on Max.