Originally Published:Wednesday, October 26th 2011, 5:21 PM
Updated: Wednesday, October 26th 2011, 5:29 PM
Bernie Madoff's
wife claims she and the Ponzi schemer tried to kill themselves with a
Christmas Eve pill overdose - and she's glad they failed.
In her first extensive interview, 60 Minutes."
"We had terrible phone calls. Hate mail, just beyond anything, and I said, 'I just can't go on anymore,'" she recalled in an excerpt that aired last night on "CBS Evening News."
The night before Christmas, they swallowed a bunch of pills - the sleep aid Ambien and possibly the sedative Klonopin - in their $7 million Manhattan penthouse.
Madoff said she didn't wash the pills down with booze because she worried she would vomit.
"We took pills and woke up the next day," she said. "... It was very impulsive, and I am glad we woke up."
Her son Andrew suggested it wasn't impulsive.
Ruth Madoff sent him a package of jewelry and other sentimental items before the suicide attempt, breaching a court order. He learned about the suicide pact when he later asked his mother about the package.
"She told me that she and my father had planned to kill themselves ... they put that package together beforehand and sent it out," he said.
The Madoffs' other son, Mark, killed himself last December on the second anniversary of his father's arrest, hanging himself in his SoHo apartment while his young son slept.
Mark's widow, Stephanie, who is promoting an autobiography, says she blames her father-in-law for her 46-year-old husband's death.
Bernie Madoff is serving 150 years in prison after pleading guilty to the biggest Ponzi ripoff in history, which bilked many investors of their life savings.
Madoff, who as a young woman bore an inexplicable resemblance to Paris Hilton, dated Bernie in high school, and one friend told New York magazine in 2009, "I never knew Ruth without Bernie; it's like bacon and eggs." After world learned of her husband's fraud — of which Ruth always claimed ignorance — she was "one of the most reviled figures in New York," wrote Sheelah Kolhatkar in that piece.During Bernie's final court appearance, Ruth was invoked repeatedly by his victims, almost as if she'd forced him to steal from them. "It pains me so much to remember my husband, a fine physician, getting up in the middle of the night and going into the hospital … so that Bernie Madoff could buy his wife a Cartier watch," seethed one. "Your wife rightfully so has been vilified and shunned by her friends in the community … You have a marriage made in hell," said another. The Internet mobs have been almost rabid in their treatment of her. "Time to burn this witch," reads a typical comment....Something about the way she carried herself—her highlighted hair, the upturned collar and petite physique—played into the stereotype of the pampered, free-spending wife.
What's the archetype for the pampered wife who finally breaks free after remaining loyal? And would said wife on a new journey in life be played by Diane Keaton or Diane Lane?
In her first extensive interview, 60 Minutes."
"We had terrible phone calls. Hate mail, just beyond anything, and I said, 'I just can't go on anymore,'" she recalled in an excerpt that aired last night on "CBS Evening News."
The night before Christmas, they swallowed a bunch of pills - the sleep aid Ambien and possibly the sedative Klonopin - in their $7 million Manhattan penthouse.
Madoff said she didn't wash the pills down with booze because she worried she would vomit.
"We took pills and woke up the next day," she said. "... It was very impulsive, and I am glad we woke up."
Her son Andrew suggested it wasn't impulsive.
Ruth Madoff sent him a package of jewelry and other sentimental items before the suicide attempt, breaching a court order. He learned about the suicide pact when he later asked his mother about the package.
"She told me that she and my father had planned to kill themselves ... they put that package together beforehand and sent it out," he said.
The Madoffs' other son, Mark, killed himself last December on the second anniversary of his father's arrest, hanging himself in his SoHo apartment while his young son slept.
Mark's widow, Stephanie, who is promoting an autobiography, says she blames her father-in-law for her 46-year-old husband's death.
Bernie Madoff is serving 150 years in prison after pleading guilty to the biggest Ponzi ripoff in history, which bilked many investors of their life savings.
Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison for his $65
billion Ponzi scheme. Henriques, whose book was released Wednesday, is
being quoted
in British tabloids saying, "Ruth has not seen Bernie since [their son]
Mark's suicide [in December 2010] and I think the remnants of the
family will now pull together. Ruth visiting him in prison was a major
impediment to her being reconciled with them." (She isn't quoted
actually saying they have separated, so take it with a grain of salt,
but the not visiting for six months thing has to mean something.)
Madoff, who as a young woman bore an inexplicable resemblance to Paris Hilton, dated Bernie in high school, and one friend told New York magazine in 2009, "I never knew Ruth without Bernie; it's like bacon and eggs." After world learned of her husband's fraud — of which Ruth always claimed ignorance — she was "one of the most reviled figures in New York," wrote Sheelah Kolhatkar in that piece.During Bernie's final court appearance, Ruth was invoked repeatedly by his victims, almost as if she'd forced him to steal from them. "It pains me so much to remember my husband, a fine physician, getting up in the middle of the night and going into the hospital … so that Bernie Madoff could buy his wife a Cartier watch," seethed one. "Your wife rightfully so has been vilified and shunned by her friends in the community … You have a marriage made in hell," said another. The Internet mobs have been almost rabid in their treatment of her. "Time to burn this witch," reads a typical comment....Something about the way she carried herself—her highlighted hair, the upturned collar and petite physique—played into the stereotype of the pampered, free-spending wife.
What's the archetype for the pampered wife who finally breaks free after remaining loyal? And would said wife on a new journey in life be played by Diane Keaton or Diane Lane?
