Mark Madoff's Suicide

Bernie Madoff may currently be housed in the Butner Federal Correction Complex in Butner, North Carolina but with news this morning that his son Mark took his own life is there really any doubt that Bernie ‘killed' his own son? I think not.

I feel sorry for the Madoff family and all those impacted by Mark Madoff's suicide. Although I believe Bernie is evil incarnate, my faith principles hold that every life is precious. The loss of life–especially a relatively young life–is truly tragic. The taking of one's own life strikes me as the most tragic. Why do I feel that?

Anybody impacted by death knows that the healing process requires closure. With suicide, there never truly is real closure.

“Why?” “Why?” “Why?”

Why did Mark Madoff choose to end his own life? We may likely never know. Did he have information that could have helped victims of the Madoff scam? Should we read anything into the fact that Mark Madoff took his life two years to the day that his father turned himself in to authorities? While I do feel empathy for his immediate and extended family, I have even greater empathy for others who also have not received closure since December 11, 2008. Who might those be? The truly innocent victims of Bernie's scam.

While lives may go on, the lives the innocent Madoff victims knew prior to December 11,2008 ended on that fateful day. Those innocent victims fortunate enough to find closure somehow may have been able to move on with their lives. Regrettably, I believe there are so many out there this very day who have not found that closure.

I have untold empathy for these people.

How might they find closure? I personally believe closure for them would be much less driven by monetary rewards — although I will not discount that factor completely — and much more a function of knowledge and justice. What really happened at Bernard Madoff's operation? Who knew what, and when did they know it? Why was nothing done? Will real justice ever be served?

Is America as a whole and are the innocent Madoff victims specifically supposed to be satisfied by internal self-reviews undertaken by our financial regulators overseeing Madoff's operations? If there are any innocent Madoff victims reading this, I ask you if the information provided to date has brought you closure?

You deserve that closure. I hope you get it.

Here's hoping that somehow somebody will come forth to bring a full and total transparency — and in turn closure — to the Madoff scam. Here's also hoping that there is no more loss of life as a result of the Madoff tragedy.

Larry Doyle

Please subscribe to all my work via e-mail, an RSS feed, on Twitter or Facebook.

I have no affiliation or business interest with any entity referenced in this commentary. As President of Greenwich Investment Management, an SEC regulated privately held registered investment adviser, I am merely a proponent of real transparency within our markets so that investor confidence and investor protection can be achieved.