A tormented woman who struggled with the horrific bludgeoning death of her newspaper heiress mother climbed a railing of the Tappan Zee Bridge and then flung herself over the side — 15 years after her murderous stepfather jumped from the same span.
Police last night were searching the murky Hudson River for tragic Annie Devoy Morell, 38, daughter of Anne Scripps Douglas, whose 1994 death came at the hands of her second husband, Scott Douglas.
Morell plunged from the bridge Thursday, minutes after stopping her car on the Rockland County-bound right lane at around 8 p.m., family members yesterday told The Post.
A note was found in her car, and State Police Investigator Joseph Becerra said the case is being treated as a suicide.
Morell was a carefree 22-year-old when her mom — great-great-granddaughter of James E. Scripps, who founded the Detroit News and owned several Midwest papers — died after a vicious 1993 New Year’s Eve beating by Douglas.
Anne Scripps had married Douglas, a housepainter with a violent temper, after her divorce from Annie’s father, Wall Streeter Anthony Morell.
Annie had returned home from a party to find herself locked out of the family’s swank Bronxville home. When nobody responded to her repeated knocks, Annie, fearing the worst of her hot-headed stepdad, called police.
Cops found her mother unconscious, sprawled across the bed in Annie’s room. She’d been brutally bludgeoned in the head, and died six days later.
Annie’s stepsister, Tory, then 3, was in the home at the time of the attack.
Douglas fled and abandoned his car on the Tappan Zee. Unable to find a body after several days, police believed Douglas had faked his death and launched a worldwide manhunt.
Three months later, Douglas’s decomposed body washed ashore in The Bronx.
After his body was found, Annie told the Westchester Journal News, “The nightmare is over.”
But her uncle, Kevin Haggerty, said Annie never fully recovered.
“She’s just always distraught, she’s been having issues back and forth, as anybody would expect,” he told The Post yesterday. “Through her whole life, that’s a bad memory.”
One friend said Morell’s grade-school son had recently gone to live with his dad, Paul Petrillo, in Eastchester so the child could attend a school near there.
Petrillo last night declined to comment.