Madoff's son commits suicide

Mark Madoff, the elder son of convicted swindler Bernard Madoff, committed suicide yesterday, two years to the day after his father’s arrest.

Madoff, 46, was found at 7.30 am (local time) hanging from a dog leash attached to a pipe in the living room of his Manhattan apartment, while his 2-year-old son slept in an adjoining bedroom, said Paul Browne, a spokesman for the New York City Police Department.

Mark Madoff and his brother, Andrew, were under investigation but hadn’t faced any criminal charges in the Ponzi scheme that led to their father’s jailing. The sons, along with Bernard Madoff’s brother and five directors of the UK arm of Bernard Madoff’s investment firm, were sued on December 8 by Irving Picard, the court-appointed trustee recovering assets for Madoff’s victims.

“This is a terrible and unnecessary tragedy,” Martin Flumenbaum of law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison said in a statement. “Mark was an innocent victim of his father’s monstrous crime who succumbed to two years of unrelenting pressure from false accusations and innuendo.” Mark Madoff had become increasingly distressed in the last week as the second anniversary of his father’s arrest approached and Picard sued his children, according to a person familiar with Madoff and the family. The person wasn’t authorised to speak publicly for the family and declined to be identified.