In case you missed it, the Times this weekend ran a lengthy profile on Bernard Madoff.
The aritcle, which firmly establishes Madoff as a Jew, paints him a a diabolical stone cold liar who "murdered" his victims wallets, while living a double life based on deceiving everyone he knew. He has the mind and triats of a pathological serial killer, the article suggests.
To recap, if I read it correctly, the article is saying that Bernard Madoff was a Jew:
“He grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in “Laurelton, a close-knit, Jewish enclave where he and his friends ate ice cream at the local five-and-ten and attended activities at the community center.”
He belonged to a Jewish fraternity:
“Mr. Madoff, after graduating from high school in 1956, spent a year at the University of Alabama, where he joined Sigma Alpha Mu, a Jewish fraternity.”
He had OCD:
According to a former employee, who requested anonymity because of continuing litigation and because, he said, regulators have told Madoff employees not to speak to the media, Mr. Madoff scouted the office for potential filth. Once, when he spotted an employee eating a pear at his desk in New York, this person said, Mr. Madoff spied some juice dripping onto the gray carpet.
“What do you think you are doing?” this person recalls Mr. Madoff demanding. Eating a pear, the employee replied. Mr. Madoff ripped the soiled carpet tile from the floor, then rushed to a closet to retrieve a similar swatch to replace it.
And he could have been a serial killer if he had just aimed higher on the crime list:
All of which has led some forensic psychologists to see some similarities between him and serial killers like Ted Bundy. They say that whereas Mr. Bundy murdered people, Mr. Madoff murdered wallets, bank accounts and people’s sense of financial trust and security.
Like Mr. Bundy, Mr. Madoff used a sharp mind and an affable demeanor to create a persona that didn’t exist, according to this view, and lulled his victims into a false sense of security. And when publicly accused, he seemed to show no remorse.
Television footage of Mr. Madoff entering his Park Avenue apartment building after federal authorities charged him with fraud in December doesn’t seem to show a man exhibiting any sorrow or regret. With a battery of reporters asking him whether he felt remorse, he declined to respond and pushed his way into his building. (Thus far, his only public apology has apparently been in letters left in his lobby for fellow tenants who suffered through the media circus outside their building.)
To some extent, analysts of criminal behavior say, defining Mr. Madoff is complicated by the wide variety of possible explanations for his scheme: a desire to accumulate vast wealth, a need to dominate others and a need to prove that he was smarter than everyone else. That was shown, they say, in an ability to dupe investors and regulators for years.
Like the former F.B.I. agent Mr. McCrary, Dr. Meloy cautions that he has not met Mr. Madoff and can’t make a clinical diagnosis. Nevertheless, he says individuals with psychopathic personalities tend to strongly believe that they’re special.
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