Bernie Madoff and his wife unsuccessfully attempted suicide by ingesting pills after it was revealed that he had ripped off investors out of millions of dollars, according to a new bombshell interview.
In the only interview Ruth Madoff has given about her husband’s crimes, she told CBS’s “60 Minutes” that both she and the the disgraced financier were so distraught over the crimes that they attempted suicide together.
“I don’t know whose idea it was, but we decided to kill ourselves because it was so horrendous what was happening,” Ruth Madoff said. “We had terrible phone calls. Hate mail, just beyond anything and I said ‘…I just can’t go on anymore.’”
So the couple took a bunch of pills on Christmas Eve in 2008 — a mix of Ambien and Klonopin, she recalled.
She did not drink alcohol with them for fear of vomiting.
“I took what we had, he took more,” she recalled, according to excerpts of the taped interview released today.
“That added to the whole depression,” Madoff said, referring to the fact that it was the holidays.
The pills ultimately didn’t work.
“We took pills and woke up the next day….It was very impulsive and I am glad we woke up,” she said.
Before ingesting the pills, Ruth Madoff said she sent a package to their son Andrew, breaching a court order before making the suicide pact.
In the package were sentimental items, including jewelry. Three years later, Andrew asked his mother why she had sent him the jewelry.
“She told me that she and my father had planned to kill themselves…they put that package together beforehand and sent it out,” said Andrew Madoff.
The full interview will air this Sunday.
Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in federal prison for masterminding the $64 billion Ponzi scheme.
His other son, Mark, hanged himself in December 2009, a year after the scandal broke.
With Newscore