Madoff with the Money (22 page)

In the months leading up to the formal sentencing of Bernie in late June 2009, the close-knit Madoff family remained tight-lipped, refusing to make any public statements, except through attorneys as many of them came under scrutiny for their intimate business connections to the patriarch-felon.

On her visits to see her jailbird hubby at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan, Ruth Madoff, the once coiffed and beautified matriarch of the now embattled and infamous dynasty, looked drawn and pale and thinner than her usual sprightly 100-pound self, and was mum whenever journalists approached.

On one such visit, however, an aggressive ABC News field producer pursued Ruth on camera and asked whether she had anything to say to her husband's many victims. “I have no response to you,” she said, and then it was reported that she had added, “Fuck you” under her breath as she got into a taxi. Her purple language was not out of character. Bernie's longtime secretary, Eleanor Squillari, asserted that Ruth could speak “very harshly to people. If Bernie said something to Ruth that annoyed her, she'd say, ‘Go fuck yourself,' or ‘I don't give a shit.' That's the way they talked to each other.”

To make matters even worse than having been branded Bernie's trash-talking moll, Ruth had been banned from her chic Upper East Side Manhattan hair salon, Pierre Michel, where she'd been a VIP client for a decade, getting her conservative and preppy bob cut and colored—at 69, the gray naturally was starting to show. After the
New York Post
ran a “Page Six” gossip item declaring that “Bernie Madoff is costing his wife her looks,” a representative for the salon, which billed itself as a “magnet for celebrities, socialites, fashionistas, and trend-setters” said in a statement:“The Pierre Michel salon's clients are among some of Manhattan's most elite. Unfortunately some of those clients were victims of the Madoffs and therefore Pierre Michel didn't feel comfortable having her in the salon.”

While Ruth had not been charged with any crimes, she had now been sentenced to the hardship of finding an upscale Manhattan salon that didn't have Madoff victims as clients—a difficult task indeed—and one that would treat her in the manner to which she was accustomed.

She wasn't the only Madoff woman who was so snubbed. Not long after Bernie was arrested, Peter Madoff 's wife, Marion, was said to have been in a tony salon in Manhasset, on Long Island, and was overheard “talking about going on a vacation,” according to Madoff victim Sherry Fabrikant. “Two of my friends were there and were disgusted, and they told me,‘We left.'” The salon in question declined to confirm or deny that Marion Madoff was a client.

The only Madoff family member who granted the author an interview (in response to a message from the author) was Jennifer Madoff. Not only was Jennifer a victim of Bernie's fraud, but she was also a widow whose young husband, Roger Madoff, Peter and Marion's son, had died on April 16, 2006, from leukemia at the age of 32.

The lengthy death notice that appeared in the
New York Times
the next day had loving eulogies from Madoff family members and friends. There were even some kind remarks from those who would be Bernie's victims, among them his close friend, the Boston philanthropist Carl Shapiro, who later came under investigation, and Susan Blumenfeld, Bernie's interior designer who also had the task of helping Ruth choose her wardrobe, and who along with her developer husband, Edward, lost millions. Roger's cousins, Mark and Andy Madoff, wrote, “Our dear Roger, you fought bravely to the end, never losing any of the wonderful spirit of you. . . . You will be in our hearts forever.” His parents called him their “most special, courageous son. . . . May you rest in peace. We love you. XOXO, Mom and Dad.”

After Roger died, Jennifer Madoff had self-published a touching, inspirational, and often humorous memoir he had written while he was dying entitled
Leukemia for Chickens: One Wimp's Tale about Living through Cancer
.

Thinking of himself as “the black sheep of the family,” young Madoff had reluctantly left a career he loved—writing about and covering business news for Bloomberg News—to work in a new Madoff family venture called Primex Trading at the behest of his father. He described himself as “becoming the last of my generation of Madoffs to succumb to joining the family firm.” Peter Madoff envisioned Primex to be a virtual reality type of Big Board. “My father is an entrepreneur and always looking for new ideas,” Roger said in his book. “My father had become enamored with this concept and had laid the groundwork for the project.”

Because of the Madoff firm's sterling reputation back in 1999 when Primex was born, two giants of Wall Street—Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs—had joined in the venture. But Roger had once told a friend in an e-mail, “This job is killing me.”