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(JTA) — Ruth Madoff said in an interview that she and her husband, Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff, attempted to commit suicide in 2008.
Ruth Madoff said that she and her husband made the attempt on Christmas Eve of that year in their Manhattan penthouse by overdosing on Ambien, a common sleeping drug. She talks about the suicide attempt on the CBS news magazine "60 Minutes" airing Sunday.
She said that although she could not remember whose idea the attempt was, she and her husband “were in agreement — we were both sort of relieved to leave this place. It was very, very impulsive.”
The suicide attempt came two weeks after Bernard Madoff was arrested for running a $64.8 billion Ponzi scheme. Three months later he pleaded guilty; he is serving a 150-year sentence in federal prison.
The Madoffs’ son Mark committed suicide last December. His widow, Stephanie Madoff Mack, revealed recently in interviews that it was his second attempt.
Bernie Madoff told The New York Times in an e-mail that suicide “crossed my mind” after his arrest, but he felt he could help make restitution to his victims and he “could not abandon my family.”
Ruth Madoff broke her seclusion at the request of her estranged son Andrew, who had asked her to help promote a new authorized biography, “Truth and Consequences: Life Inside the Madoff Family.” Madoff Mack has also been promoting her own memoir, “The End of Normal.”
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