Ruth Madoff says couple attempted suicide in 2008

Ruth said in an interview with The New York Times: “I don’t know whose idea it was,but we were both so saddened by everything that had happened. It was unthinkable to me: hate mail,phone calls,lawyers.”

The situation was “just horrific,” she said. “I thought,‘I just can’t,I can’t take this. I don’t know how I’ll ever get through this,nor do I want to.’ So we decided to do it.”

According to Ruth,who has been living in seclusion in Florida,she and her husband “were both in agreement — we were both sort of relieved to leave this place.”

Ruth came under a fierce media spotlight after her husband’s arrest,and she was shunned by lifelong friends who had been his victims.

His victims stretched around the world,with paper losses in the Ponzi scheme totaling $64.8 billion and cash losses nearing $18 billion. Those who lost money in his fraud included major charities,university endowments and thousands of middle-income investors. Many of those investors were members of the Madoffs’ extended family.

More important to them than the media firestorm,she said,was that she had become estranged from her two sons,Mark and Andrew,who had turned in their father to law enforcement officials and precipitated his arrest on December 11,2008. He pleaded guilty three months later and is serving a 150-year sentence.

Christmas Eve had been a sorrowful evening,she said. She and her husband had spent it wrapping some treasured jewellery and a few gift items they wanted to send to loved ones before they died.

Ruth said in the interview that she and her husband had discussed how many pills each should take — she weighed barely 100 pounds,he was heftier and taller — and then they both swallowed handfuls of what she thought was Ambien before climbing into bed.

Although she recalled the emotional pain that evening,she said she was “glad to wake up” from a drug-induced slumber the next day. “I’m not sure how I felt about him waking up,” she added. She said they never discussed suicide again,nor was she aware if Bernard ever made another attempt. “But I have no idea why he didn’t — I don’t know how he lives with it all.”

In an e-mail from prison,her husband acknowledged that suicide “crossed my mind”. Two factors deterred him. He felt he could help in the effort to recover assets for his victims,and he “could not abandon my family.”

Ruth agreed to talk with a Times reporter because her son Andrew had asked her to help promote a new authorised biography,“Truth and Consequences: Life Inside the Madoff Family,” to be published Monday.