A week after Mark Madoff's suicide, there's word of his Ponzi schemer dad's reaction in federal prison. A recent inmate told the Post that Bernie Madoff looked "like someone had shot him in the stomach" after learning his 46-year-old son killed himself. "He was crying, and he was very distraught. No one was messing with him. They knew what had happened."
Mark Madoff hanged himself with a dog leash, with his two-year-old son sleeping in another room, in his Soho apartment. The elder Madoff had not spoken to his son since admitting to him and his other son Andrew that his multi-billionaire investment firm was a "big lie." Currently serving a 150-year sentence at Butner Federal Correctional, Madoff was called to the chapel last Saturday, which the inmate said was a signal something bad happened, adding, "Everyone was speculating that someone might have killed his wife." Then, "[Madoff] didn't come out of his cell. He didn't even go to the chow hall. He didn't talk to anyone for a couple of days... Two of his pals [in his prison clique] gave him their sympathy, but there was nothing else they could do."
Another insight: "[Madoff]'s upset that his wife hasn't come down to see him because of [her] fears that the media is at the prison, and that she'll be harassed... He thinks the family is trying to avoid the media." Well, the son's wife decided not to have a funeral apparently for fear of a media circus.
The stigma of Bernard Madoff's crime left Mark Madoff in a tailspin: One of his friends told the NY Times, "The pressure of the last two years weighed on him enormously. He was deeply, deeply angry at what his father had done to him — to everybody. That anger just seemed to feed on itself," while another said, "He had always been so proud of his name and being the guy who was Bernie Madoff’s son. And then afterwards all anyone ever saw in him was that he was Bernie Madoff’s son."
