As Bernie Madoff brags of a safe and almost pleasant prison experience, people outside continue to suffer from his lengthy con- including the widow of Madoff’s son, Mark.
After the scandal, Mark Madoff was unable to make peace with his father’s crimes. Two years after Madoff’s massive fraud was revealed, Mark died by his own hand in his SoHo apartment as his young son slept nearby. That was last December, and Mark’s widow Stephanie Madoff Mack has released a book detailing her pain after the loss of her husband and the disgrace the family had experienced following the scandal.
“The End Of Normal: A Wife’s Anguish, A Widow’s New Life,” out this week, reveals salacious details about both Bernie Madoff and wife Ruth, including the former’s poor boundaries with both family and employees and the latter’s strange eating habits and sordid family history. Madoff Mack says Bernie reached out to her after Mark’s death- adding she’d “spit in his face” if she met him again- and defended himself in the wake of the tragedy, saying:
“I realize that my pain will never take away the loss and suffering that you and the children feel… Stephanie, I can understand your hatred and anger towards me. Nothing I can say will probably change this.
“However I feel I must say some things to you. It is clear that you have bought into the media’s characterization of me. I know that you can’t believe it was ever my intention to hurt my family.”
In an ABC interview ahead of her book launch, Madoff Mack recounts how her calculating father-in-law “stood there in the corner at [her] wedding watching everyone dance, and he knew that everyone in that room was going to get screwed.” Stephanie also says she holds the elder Madoff “fully responsible” for Mark’s death.
