Bernie Madoff's daughter-in-law recalled the final months before her husband killed himself and the agony he had endured, saying she plans to someday tell her kids that their disgraced financier grandfather "drove their father to his death."
In the year before the suicide, Madoff's daughter-in-law Stephanie Madoff Mack wrote in her upcoming book that her husband was distraught over the $64 billion Ponzi scheme -- the biggest in US history -- that his father Bernie had pleaded guilty to running.
As a result, Bernie Madoff, now 73, had been sent to federal prison for 150 years.
Mark obsessively followed every scrap of news about the Madoff scandal. Every single picture of Bernie came down in our home. One day I came across Mark cleaning out a closet," Mack wrote in the book, "The End of Normal: A Wife's Anguish, A Widow's New Life," which will hit bookstores tomorrow.
On another occasion, Mack wrote that her husband had tried to totally erase Madoff from their lives.
"'What are you doing?' I asked, pulling a suede jacket I loved out of the garbage bag he was filling.
"'My father gave it to me,' he answered grimly, stuffing it back in the bag."
Mack wrote in the book, excerpts of which appear in this week's People magazine, that she will tell her two kids that their grandfather was evil.
"I will tell them what he did to so many innocent people, and how he drove their father to his death when they are mature enough to understand such horrors," she said.
The excerpts come just days after ABC News said it will air the first-ever interview with Mack on this Friday's 20/20.
"He couldn't get out, he was so betrayed and so hurt by Bernie," she said.
"I hate Bernie Madoff," she added. "If I saw Bernie Madoff right now, I would tell him that I hold him fully responsible for killing my husband, and I'd spit in his face."
Mack said her father-in-law's arrest had a quick impact on her family.
"The emotional blow changed [Bernie's son] Mark from the very first day. His athletic shoulders curled inward, hunching him like an old man, and his handsome face aged overnight. ... The smile that made me fall in love with him disappeared altogether," she recalled.
Mack, 37, was married to Madoff's son Mark, who hanged himself in December 2010 inside their SoHo apartment while their 2-year-old son, Nicholas, slept nearby. Mark Madoff, 46, had committed suicide while Mack and their daughter Audrey were away at Disney World.
Mack wrote that her husband struggled to keep it together emotionally -- although he had previously tried to kill himself in 2009 by trying to overdose on Ambien sleeping pills after the Ponzi scheme had been uncovered in December 2008.
At the time, Mark Madoff had even left a note that read, "Bernie: Now you know you have destroyed the lives of your sons by your life of deceit. F--k you."
Mark Madoff even encouraged his wife to take his daughter to Disney World after Audrey had turned four a month earlier in November.
"Mark was thrilled for her, and I felt a twinge of guilt about leaving him with the baby," Mack recalled in the book.
"Do you wanna come?" I offered.
"Naw, it should be an all-girls thing," he said. "Nick and I will be having wild parties."
Once on the trip, Mack said the situation worsened. A Wall Street Journal article with the headline "Madoff's Kin Eyed as Probe Grinds On" left him angry and depressed. The newspaper article was about Mark and his brother Andrew's possible involvement in the massive scam that swindled investors out of millions.
The brothers headed up a highly successful stock trading operation two floors down in the same office building their dad ran his investment business.
"No idea [the article] was coming out. I am beyond devastated," he wrote to his wife.
"I can not take this anymore!!!" she texted back, according to the excerpts.
Mark replied: "I'm doing my best to hold it together. I need your help."
Mack said she told her husband she's be turning off her phone and that "he could reach me through the hotel switchboard if needed."
Mack wrote: "At 4:14 a.m. on Dec. 11, 2010 -- the second anniversary of his father's arrest -- Mark sent three e-mails. I found two when I woke up around 6:45. The first said 'Help' in the subject line. 'Please send someone to take care of Nick.' The next, sent three seconds later, was blank with these words in bold in the subject line. 'I Love You.'"
What happened next, Mack said, is something she'll never forget.
"My mother's cell phone rang, and I heard her gasp. "Oh my God." She turned to me, stricken. 'He's dead, Stephanie. He's dead!'" she wrote.
Mack said her stepfather had found Mark's body "hanging from the steel beam" that ran through the living room.
"He had fashioned a noose out of our dog Grouper's leash," she wrote. "A snapped cord from the vacuum cleaner was on a table nearby; apparently it had taken two tries. Nick was sleeping just a few steps away."
Mack also recalls telling Mark's mother Ruth that she no longer wanted to see or hear from her again.
"I do still think of Ruth often," she said. "I don't regret my decision to honor Mark's wishes and cut her off, but I wonder it I will ever face her again. My heart softens and hardens."
This book gives a different insight into the devastation that media and public perception can bring. It was a courageous step to share these events and hopefully it will remind people that things arent always how they seem.
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