Convicted Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff has lost yet another thing during his lengthy incarceration for the complicated, long con he ran on investors that cost many their life savings.
Wife Ruth has not been to visit her jailed spouse at all this year, and sources with inside information on the Madoff family say the suicide of son Mark in December was the turning point for Ruth. Just after Mark’s body was discovered around Christmas in his downtown Manhattan apartment- where he had been staying alone with his toddler, who was unharmed- a lawyer for the younger Madoff said in a statement his client was an “innocent victim of his father’s monstrous crime who succumbed to two years of unrelenting pressure from false accusations and innuendo.”
It appears that Ruth’s abandonment of Bernie is a last-ditch effort to salvage her relationship with her remaining son while she can. A Madoff biographer commented on Mrs. Madoff’s decision and said that Ruth’s dedication to her husband was the cause of strife between the not-jailed Madoffs. Diana Henriques, author of Bernie Madoff: The Wizard of Lies said:
“Ruth has not seen Bernie since Mark’s suicide 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.”
The Madoffs have been married for 52 years. Bernie Madoff met his wife in high school in the fifties, and the pair married in 1959. Bernie Madoff is now 73, and serving a 150 year long sentence in a North Carolina prison.
