Significant Others - Bonus Episode: Laurie Sandell on Ruth Madoff

Episode Date: August 24, 2023

Bonus Episode: Laurie Sandell on Ruth MadoffIn this month’s bonus episode, Liza is joined by Laurie Sandell, author of Truth and Consequences: Life Inside the Madoff Family, to discuss Ruth Madoff and her role in the Madoff scandal. Laurie and Liza dive into who Ruth Madoff was as a person, her relationship with Bernie, and if she has any regrets.We’re working hard on Season 2! Until then we will be releasing special bonus episodes from time to time. Want to support the show? Rate and review wherever you listen to your podcasts, and keep sending suggestions of Significant Others you’d like to hear about our way at [e-mail]!

Welcome to Significant Others. I'm Liza Powell O'Brien. While we inch ever closer to Season 2, we are continuing with our series of monthly bonus episodes in exploration of our theme. And when it comes to Significant Others, it's hard to think of one who is more notorious, in recent history at least, than the wife of the disgraced financier who perpetrated the largest Ponzi scheme in history. Ruth Madoff is kind of a personal fascination of mine, and today I am lucky enough to be talking about her with a woman who knows her quite well, as she literally wrote the book on the Madoff family, author Laurie Sandel. Laurie, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me, Liza.

I'm curious about what drew you to this subject matter. Researching and writing a book is such a huge investment of time. And I'm wondering why you would choose to make that investment in telling the story of these particular people. Well, aside from the fact that I was living in New York, you know, in 2008 when the scandal erupted, and I think pretty much everybody was fascinated by and curious about this scandal. It dominated the headlines when I was living in New York. I had written a memoir about my own father, who's kind of a mini Bernie Madoff, if Bernie Madoff weren't famous, rich, or successful. And I sort of came to this

story very organically, you know, reading from my memoir in a reading series on stage. It just so happened that Katherine Hooper, who was then engaged to Andrew Madoff, was in the audience. Oh, wow. And my memoir came out in September of 2009, and this all imploded, exploded in the news in December of 2008. So it had been less than a year. I was also working as a journalist at the time at Glamour magazine doing celebrity interviews. I don't, even though I, you know, I wasn't an investigative reporter, I don't think there was a journalist on earth that would not have jumped at the chance to spend time, you know, speaking to these people and sort of seeing what this was all about.

So did they approach you? So Catherine approached me backstage after my reading, getting her book signed. And she said, you know, your father is a lot like my father-in-law. And her friend said, kind of elbowed her and said, you know, tell her who your father-in-law is. And she said, Bernie Madoff. who your father-in-law is. And she said, Bernie Madoff. And she shortly after that invited me to have a coffee at her apartment with Andrew Madoff. They had moved into this $4.4 million apartment on the Upper East Side just four days before Bernie confessed. So it was still totally devoid of furniture, newly, just had just moved in. And so I went over there very much feeling like,

you know, I'm about to meet with someone who's complicit in this entire thing, Andrew. I thought what everybody thought in New York and the world. So I didn't really get in front of Ruth until a few months later. In the beginning, it was just your father's a con artist, my father's a con artist. How did you handle this? How did you handle the fallout with your family? It was obviously, again, very different because I was not in the public eye. I wasn't scrutinized. I didn't have paparazzi stationed on the rooftops across from my apartment.

But I did know what it felt like to have a father that I really looked up to and worshipped, you know, just completely fall from grace and to find out that he was taking out credit cards in my name. So there was a lot of personal injury and betrayal that I experienced. So Andrew felt very, he just felt a kinship with me. And I felt upon meeting him that he seemed really honest and forthcoming. And I just had a feeling, my immediate feeling, just my sort of instant Malcolm Gladwell style, you know, instant feeling was, oh, wow, he seems like a really nice, honest guy. But on the other hand, so my spidey senses weren't going off. But on the other hand, you know, I also believed that my father was innocent until I did some research.

So after that, there were a couple of months where they just were inviting me to things. They invited me to their first Thanksgiving in the wake of the scandal. Wow. And I went to that. And so who was there? There was an assortment of people that were all new friends of Andrew and Catherine's. They had sort of been just meeting people in the wake of this. Every one of Andrew's friends was wiped out by his father. You know, his father had pulled all of his friends into this, not to mention all of their family.

And even though Andrew did have some friends, you know, stick by him. In fact, I think he had a lot of his friends stick by him. This first Thanksgiving was just that very fraught, strange. So I don't think there were people there that had known them even more than three months. So it was very strange. And also, again, there wasn't any furniture. It was just like a really empty, strange place to be. The curtains were always drawn because of paparazzi. What an interesting impulse for them to decide to host in that moment. Well, a lot of that was Catherine, you know, Andrew's fiance. They would have gotten

married, but they couldn't because Andrew was still in the middle of a divorce from his first wife. And because there couldn't be a division of assets in the wake of the scandal, he really wasn't ever able to marry. So they considered themselves married down the line. But Catherine, you know, was this person who just, she really kind of saved Andrew's life. You know, she was the one who swooped in and said, you didn't do anything. Hold your head up. Go out there. Make friends.

Meet people. Don't, you know, feel like you did something wrong. And his brother Mark reacted exactly opposite to that. You know, Mark was more like Ruth. He sort of buried his head in the sand. He was reading nonstop blog posts about himself saying, why don't you kill yourself, you know? And so he felt utter despair. Andrew felt utter despair as well, but he had this strong person by his side. So, and then I was getting up the courage to ask them if I could write a Wall Street Journal kind of a lifestyle piece like about my father and his father and just this burgeoning, you know, whatever it was.

Connection. Connection, acquaintanceship. And then Mark died by suicide in December of 2009, one year to the day that Bernie confessed. Wow. nine, one year to the day that Bernie confessed. And so at that point, I just gave up any aspirations of writing about it because it was just so tragic and horrible. And again, even at that point, I didn't start to feel like, oh, they must be innocent in all of this. I just, I didn't know. So the next year, early in the next year, like January or February, Catherine approached me to write a book about her company, Black Umbrella. It was an emergency preparedness company where they would sort of take people's files and keep them off site.

She had done a lot of survival training. She's now remarried to a Navy SEAL. Oh, wow. Kind of ironic that she became a personal security specialist. It's very ironic and it became a personal security specialist. It's very ironic and it's not lost on her. And so she ended up feeling like there was this elephant in the room that had to be written about first. And so they asked me if. Ruth, of course, is Bernie's longtime wife, Ruth Madoff. And I find her entirely fascinating. And so you, I will not make you relive the entire history of how you came to write this book and what it took, but I know you spent a considerable amount of time

with Ruth in person, in private even. And so how much time did you spend with her? Well, first of all, it was always in private. Ruth couldn't really go out much in public, needless to say. I first met her when Catherine took me, invited me to join Catherine, Ruth, Andrew, Ruth's granddaughter, Emily, and Emily's camp friend down in the Florida Panhandle. Ooh, that camp friend's got some stories to tell. Can you imagine? She's got some stories. My camp friend.

So it was down in the Florida Panhandle in this town called Seaside, which is this really interesting little town. And it's kind of lost. It's sort of frozen in time, you know, chalkboard signs and people walking in their bikinis down the boardwalk holding ice creams, things like that. And for Ruth, it was a place where nobody knew who she was. And Catherine had discovered this town earlier and had found it really interesting. So they were just in this pretty modest house.

I went down there. I met Ruth. And I found her to be not at all what I had experienced of her in the news, in the press. Which was? A cool, patrician, blonde, you know, rich beyond anyone's wildest imagination, always with a sort of grim look on her face. She is really in in many ways, like a typical Jewish grandmother. Very, very down to earth, simply dressed, nervous, very anxious. I mean, she reminded me a lot of my mother, to be honest. Wow.

And she was eager to please. She also is afraid of the press and afraid of anyone recognizing her. afraid of the press and afraid of anyone recognizing her. The only reason she was even willing to meet with me was because Andrew had, since Bernie's confession a year earlier, had refused to see his mother. Mark never saw his mother again after the day of the confession. He jumped up and ran out of the room and Ruth never saw him again. And she tried to connect with him. Oh, absolutely. But both sons, first they weren't allowed to speak to her per their lawyers. And then Mark started emailing with her secretly because he had always been a mama's boy. He

just spoke to her all the time. And, you know, his first wife who I interviewed, Susan Elkin, had said, what, you know, what college kid calls his mother every day? You know, that was Mark. And so, and I found her to be, and at the risk of sounding like I'm apologizing for her or I just swallowed whole whatever theory she gave me, that really wasn't it. I very much thought she was involved and complicit when I first met her. I mean, that was the assumption I went with. much thought she was involved and complicit when I first met her. I mean, that was the assumption I went with. But she really came across as this kind of funny, slightly bawdy, you know, Jewish grandmother. And so there was a Vanity Fair article which had described her as a foul-mouthed

curmudgeon. And she took issue with that because she knows she's foul-mouthed, but she curses affectionately. And I experienced it. It's like I'm walking down the boardwalk with her and there's some gorgeous woman walking by in a bikini and she's like, look at how good she looks in that bikini, that bitch. Just things like that. Right. The old spiky love. Yeah. Yes. The old spiky love. She's also very fear-driven, afraid of being assaulted on the street. She was afraid of being written about in the press, afraid of running out of money, afraid of getting a chip in her tooth because she might have to replace it and she wouldn't know how to do it. And most of all, over anything, afraid of being recognized.

And she obviously lived in a state of financial terror. She had been left with $2.5 million, which by anyone's standards is a lot of money. That's what was determined to be the amount her inheritance from her parents would have grown to. But it immediately was eaten up by lawyers. So when I met her, she was on a very modest government allowance. At one point, we walked into a little beach shop and she wanted to get a birthday gift for her granddaughter. And she picked up this like plastic, you know, stretchy necklace and kind of dropped it when she realized it was $30. And then she decided to buy it, you know, but everything was like,

she's checking every apple for a price and that kind of thing. And then she's also incredibly self-critical. I'm a moron. I'm an idiot. Oh, God. You know, just every sentence had after she would say something about what a moron she is, you know, she would just say, oh, God. Whose voice do you think that was from her? Such a good question.

Was it her father, mother? You know, it's hard to say. Was it Bernie? Well, it's 100% Bernie because her father, she really adored. And he was this accountant who was very straightforward, Saul Alpern. And he, her only major issue was that when she turned 12 and started to develop, her father like pulled away from her and no longer was her, she wasn't like daddy's girl anymore. It's a very common story. Is it?

Yes. A lot of girls go through that father loss in that moment because it just gets very complicated and confusing for all involved. When puberty strikes, it is no picnic for anyone. Well, the irony is that that's exactly when she met Bernie. So she met Bernie when she was 12 and she was at some basement party that had been set up to look like a nightclub and they'd installed a jukebox and tables. And Bernie was a local life guard and she just kind of spotted him across the room and was instantly smitten. Was he older? He was three years older. So he was 16, she was 12. I mean, that's a pretty big... Actually, she was 13 and he was 12, a huge difference.

And she kind of hung out, you know, in the shade of his lifeguard chair all summer in her little ruffled pink bikini. And she just said they palled around and they got married when she was 18. And he was relentlessly critical of her, just nonstop. She said, I was a teenager, you know, I had a pile of clothes on the floor from the day before. And then on top of that pile were all the clothes I'd tried on for that day. And Bernie would freak out. I mean, this is the man who measured, you know, the Venetian blinds and made sure they were all exactly straight, you know, in his office. OCD? Yes.

OCD, he had sensory issues. You know, he couldn't wear elastic in his underwear, things like that. Interesting. So, okay, so you spend all this time with her. And what was the most surprising thing for you that you learned about her as a person? Okay, I think the most surprising thing was realizing, and I sort of have to get into the is she guilty or is she innocent thing first for you to sort of fully understand this. But first I'll say that she really never coveted wealth or being wealthy. You know,

she once said to me, I don't miss anything except my friends. And I really believe that's true. You know, I think if Ruth had married some accountant and just lived her life on Long Island with kids and grandkids, she would have been just as happy as she was with Bernie. So your vision of her is that she was truly victimized by him. Yes. Now, I'll make a caveat to that. But, okay, so in terms of whether she was victimized by him, you know, I came to this conclusion not only after interviewing her, but mostly also after interviewing Andrew. The lead financial reporter of the New York Times came to this conclusion. The FBI came to this conclusion.

You know, it just was really, everybody agreed that Ruth could not be held liable for, you know, what her husband did. And the truth of the matter is, all of these lawyers that represented people who really stood to reduce their sentences, if they could give up Ruth or Andrew or Mark, nobody was able to. I think that Bernie, it's so backwards, but I think he really kind of, quote unquote, protected his family by not involving them. But more importantly, his brother, his brother was involved. But he, you know, Andrew felt that he used his sons as a shield. You know, it was like he wanted everybody in the family business, not complicit in the crimes, but in the family business. And Ruth, you know, people find it almost impossible to believe that she didn't know because she was you know at a certain point going

into the office maybe in the 80s working on her philanthropy and her father was an accountant and her father was an accountant but also she um they is it i read it may not be true but i read that they didn't spend a night apart uh or more than one night apart was that true um like after a certain point because i know there were infidelities. Right. So I had read that one of, when Bernie's mistress wrote that book. Cheryl Weinstein. That one of the reactions, I don't know if it was Ruth's reaction or if it was just a reaction in general, was like, but how?

Right. We had a policy of never being apart for more than a night. How could he have done this? I don't remember her telling me that they had never been apart and that's entirely possible, but she definitely said, but how is this possible? She said, I knew where he was at every minute. I knew his whole schedule, you know, and so she thought that was impossible. My husband once said to me during a long, boring cab ride. We were reading a tabloid because it was in the car, and there was a blind item about a comedian who was having an affair. And he turned to me and he said, if you ever learned that I was having an affair, is there some small part of you that

would be impressed with my time management skills? And I said, no. That's the answer to that question but thank you for asking yes the blind item was not about him we know that it was not no um you know I became even though I did feel that it was absolutely possible she didn't know I mean I only have to look at my own mother to see what it looks like to have someone who's doing all kinds of devious and criminal things and to really not know. And you probably can only speak to your personal experience. But, you know, when you talk about obfuscation and blind spots, there are different kinds, right? Like there are different, there's a spectrum of them.

And there's the willful ignorance of, I just don't ask when he comes in late, for example. Or the, you know, then there's the more blatant kind of actively turning away from evidence if you happen to find it. And I'm just thinking of like the cliches of discovering an affair. But if you find a handkerchief with lipstick on it in a pocket when you're doing laundry and you choose not to follow up on that, that's a different level of willful ignorance than he told me he was going to the office every day, and it turns out he was sitting in a train station, you know, for example. So in your experience, how many different layers of that can exist? There are several layers, 100%. And I don't think there's any one black and white answer to it. I do think let's talk about willful ignorance for one second. I think at one point in our conversation, and remember, this is in my book, at one point in the conversation, she said, I was such an idiot. I must have known on some deep level about the Cheryl Weinstein thing. Because she said, I don't know, I thought maybe he did play around, but he was there for us, and he was a dad, and he was such a family man. And so she sort of looks into herself and thinks maybe that was there.

But more importantly, in terms of the scandal itself, this is a woman who watched her very young boyfriend, then husband, build a successful lawn sprinkler business at 18. Take the first $5,000 he made and open up, you know, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities. Trading penny stocks, right? Yes. And she watched him do that. She watched him, you know, become president of NASDAQ. She watched the most successful financiers, you know, in the world give him their money to manage. So it really wasn't. And also their upward mobility happened very gradually. They stayed in this house in Roslyn that they bought for, you know, originally for $300,000 until the boys were out of high school, you know, and then they moved up. And then they moved up.

But the private jet, the much ballyhooed $10 million ring that she wore, none of that was until the last few years. Interesting. Andrew once said that when one of his investors had died and there was a yacht that Bernie had consulted and had helped consult on and had made it really beautiful, Andrew kept saying, why aren't you going to try to buy the yacht? And he just wouldn't even talk about it. And Andrew later thought maybe he just couldn't have anything that flashy, you know? Because even at the end, when they were living in this penthouse, you know, on Fifth Avenue, and they had all of this, all of the toys and cash and prizes, they still were somewhat modest in the way that they lived compared to the world they were in. And Ruth always was, you know, cardigan sweaters and jeans and flats and just never more fancy than that. So, and they flew coach until, yes, until they started flying private. You know, in the later years, they flew coach. So, you know, you can see how for Ruth,

it just looked like a successful businessman who was just doing really well and building his way up in the world. It's also making me think of how often in the popular conversation we look, especially when it comes to our political leaders, we look to the wives to be confidence cues for us. Like, oh, you know, I think I can trust him because he has a partner who's with him. And the idea, I don't know that anyone ever

considers the idea that a spouse or a partner is using public response or even collegial response to the person they're supposed to know better than anyone else to help them make decisions. they're the person they're supposed to know better than anyone else to help them make decisions. That's a fascinating inversion that I had not considered until you just said that. That's really interesting. So you had asked about blind spots, and there's more things I wanted to tell you about that that I think you'll find interesting. Yes, blind, right. So we're talking about blind spots and there's more things I wanted to tell you about that that I think you'll find interesting. Yes, blind, right. So we're talking about blind spots. Yeah. So first we had talked about the willful ignorance, then I was talking about sort of the actual ignorance. You know,

her biggest blind spot was Bertie, you know, no question about it. She just really loved him. And the thought of divorcing him or leaving him, A, she didn't want to be alone. But B, she felt like it was just wrong. And there was an email that Mark had sent to her. Sorry to interrupt you for one second. Had she ever had cause to consider divorce until this moment? I'm assuming we're talking about after the scandal is broken. He's been hauled off to jail. he's been prosecuted, he's confessed, everything has fallen apart. And in that moment, people close to her are probably urging her to consider divorce. But up until then, there had been no reason for her to think about that? Well, there is no reason because, you know,

of her generation. I mean, she's a member of the silent generation. She was, it would have been out of the question. I mean, she absolutely saw this as till death do us part and you don't kick someone when they're down and you don't abandon them. But she was pretty miserable at times in her marriage. You know, when she had her boys and she was living in Roslyn, you know, Mark had colic and she, it was just a complete overwhelming surprise to her how difficult and lonely it was to be a young mother in the suburbs and bernie was in manhattan all day at work and she was in the suburbs with two little boys and she was pretty miserable even though she you know things got easier she adored her children and adored her family. She just had a very hard time in her early years of motherhood. So, and then, you know, Bernie wasn't very nice

to her, but she acted a little bit like a sort of battered woman, you know, who just accepted her fate and allowed him to heap abuse on her. She didn't, you know, fight back or... Complain? No, she just... In the time, I'm sure she did not. Right. I mean, I think she just sort of saw that as her lot and she tried to please him. She just really tried to please him. And then after the scandal broke and Mark and Andrew left the penthouse right after Bernie confessed and never saw him again, you know, they were really pressuring her to divorce him.

And even though I don't think it would have made any kind of difference in the public eye, Andrew feels that had she done it right away and sort of the way they turned him in right away, they think that she may have had some of her friends and that she may have had, even though all of them were wiped out by her husband. I think one of the hardest things for her was that she was incredibly well-liked. She's a likable woman, you know, and as much as people hate her, they refuse to like her, you know, it's like she, if you're in her presence and you're hanging out with her, she is a likable woman and very, you know, self-effacing and down to earth and being so loathed by the public was so hard for her.

That's interesting. Yeah. And she refused, refused, refused to divorce Bernie. In fact, Mark had sent her this email. There was a period where they were secretly emailing. Even Andrew didn't know about it because he would have been furious at Mark. And she sent this email to Mark saying, I need to clarify my position to you so maybe you can understand what is going on for me. You accused me of choosing dad over you and Andy. I don't believe I've made that choice. I've not chosen dad and not you. I've never condoned or diminished

the agony that dad has caused to everyone I know and love. Clearly our lives have been destroyed. And then she goes on to say, I write one or two letters a week and I get a few phone calls from him. I don't see this as a decision to give up my family. You've given me up. And I pray one day you might understand I have not chosen one over the other. I miss you all terribly. Why can't you understand? He's still a human being suffering and it's only going to get worse. I don't expect you to pity him, but I just can't let him rot in there. I've been thinking as you're talking, we may have more to say on this blind spot subject, but do you think she ever

truly apprehended what her husband did? You know what? So I would say on some level, no, even though, again, her own sister, her child, you know, both her children are now dead. Mark died by suicide. Andrew died from a recurrence of mantle cell lymphoma five years later. And he firmly believed that the cancer came back because of all the stress. And she, even in the wake of Mark's death, you know, in the wake of Mark's death, she came to LA and Andrew came to LA. And they met in this apartment that I was staying in, where she was staying with me. And Andrew brought with him a copy of Madoff's Other Secret by Cheryl Weinstein. And his goal from that meeting was to make his mother see reason and get her to leave his father. And he started reading her passages from the book.

And what's so interesting is that I had spoken to Ruth about the victims and about what he had done. I mean, people had died by suicide, you know, not only her son, other people, you know, people had, as everybody knows, their entire life savings gone and they didn't give it to him. They gave it to some other financier who then gave it to him, teachers, janitors. And it's not to say that I didn't feel a level of sympathy from her for them, but it wasn't what you would want to hear from her because she was so just trying to numb herself with the drinking. She just couldn't face it. And most of all, she couldn't face, as she said to me several times, I can't bear to think of him as a monster. This man that I had children with and who I loved for

50 years. So when I hear these pleas from the children to divorce him, I feel like they're really asking for her to stop loving him. 100%. And that's what she couldn't do. 100%. And I wonder if there is, I mean, it's almost romantic in a way to say there's a level of love that's so big that,

you know, truly unconditional. No matter what a person does, you can't not love them. But I don't know if that's what this was, or if this was, I can't bear to understand it enough to let me stop loving him. I think she deeply loved him. However, this was what I found really interesting. When Andrew read me those, read her those passages in front of me from this book, and they were so detailed. They just had to be true. It was like, you know, I don't know how

much she exaggerated, but I mean, I don't know. So this is a child sitting with his mother in the midst of the worst family catastrophe probably that a person could imagine and forcing her to listen to the text of his father, her husband's mistress's account of her affair with him. Description of his father's genitalia. I mean, we're talking really specific. Cheryl Weinstein wanted the world to know, yes, I did sleep with him. And it was an ongoing affair. I think it was 14 years. That is a crazy scene. Yes, it was. I can't believe you were there for it. I know. And she was smoking up a storm.

In fact, I had my first cigarette in five years with Ruth Maynard. Wow. And she didn't bolt and she didn't tell him to shut up and stop reading. She did. She didn't bolt, but she several times said, stop it, stop it, stop reading. I can't take it. I don't want to hear this. But then she would come around for a minute and you would see a glimmer break through and she would say, I'm going to divorce him. I'm going to leave him. You know, this is, it was like, you said, did you see the compassion for the victims or did you see this sort of understanding? And I was like, not to the level that I would have liked to have seen, but here this was raw. You know, she was so hurt and so

devastated. I'm not saying that lends more sympathy to her because it took this. But to me, it just shows me how incredibly numb and shut down she was. So now, as we know, sadly, both of her children are dead. Bernie himself is dead. She has survived thus far. And what can you tell us about or what do you know about her life in the interim since we were all keeping our eyeballs focused on this family? Well, when this was all going on and when it first died down a little bit, there was a friend who lived in Europe but kept an apartment in Florida

who allowed her to sort of crash on her couch in Florida. So I also visited her in that apartment. And actually, it's where I was there when Bernie called, collect call from prison. And so what was she like when she answered? And actually, it's where I was there when Bernie called, collect call from prison. And so what was she like when she answered? Was she like a high school girl answering the phone for her sweetheart? It was the most mundane.

Interesting. Just as though he was in his office. It was like, oh, hi, Bernie. Oh, did you need more as the canteen? Blah, blah, blah. Everything was just very... What was he asking her for? Hes? Yeah, maybe he needed... Not funds because she had no funds to funnel to Bernie Madoff, I assure you. She was just asking him about his health. Are you taking your vitamins? It was like the typical conversation between people who've been married for 50 years. And I was just sitting there like, wow. And so during that time, she

started to volunteer for Meals on Wheels. It just gave her an opportunity to not so much be a do gooder, but to communicate, just to sort of have some kind of interaction with a human being that isn't yelling at her. And, you know, it did make her feel good and it allowed her to sort of say, well, at least there are other people that need help more than I do. You know, it's like, what else can you do? Yeah, smart. And then those friends kicked her out of that place too because the paparazzi got wind that she was there. And so she had to leave. Eventually, what's been reported in the press most recently is that she's living in Connecticut in a $4 million home that belongs to her daughter-in-law, her former

daughter-in-law, Mark's first wife, Susan Elkin. Susan did take her in for a time, and that was because of Susan's kindness. Susan is a lovely, wonderful woman, and she has these two children who are Mark's first set of children. And she has these two children who are, you know, Mark's first set of children. And the second set of children Ruth is not allowed to see. You know, she was cut off from them from the scandal on. That was his second wife, Stephanie, who wrote a book as well. And she eventually, you know, was moved to like a home. She's not in that place anymore. All right. This might be speculative, but do you think she had any regrets at all? you know, was moved to a, like a home. She's not in that place anymore. All right. This might be speculative, but do you think she had any regrets at all?

Not entirely speculative because she did talk to me about some of her regrets. So Ruth, you know, had she not gotten married so young and just become a wife and mother, I think she probably would have become like a foodie or maybe a chef. She wrote, co-wrote a cookbook, a kosher cookbook, which is actually still available on Amazon. Oh, my God. And she loved food and cooking and that kind of thing. And she always said, you know, my biggest regret and my biggest mistake is that I sort of just gave my life over to a man. I didn't continue my education. I didn't, you know, have a career. And it's one of my biggest regrets. Do you think she would have had that feeling

even if things hadn't gone terribly off the rails? Yes. I think, again, product of her time. And she felt, you know, she wanted to immerse herself in something. And she did immerse herself in being a wife and a mother and, you know, working with these charities. But she also was creative and she would have liked to have explored that. I wonder if she had had a daughter, if she would have steered her in a different direction or if that would have not, if instinct would have kicked in, you know, to repeat the old patterns. It's interesting. I mean, that's a good question because what all the boys did was they were into fishing. I mean, that's a good question because what all the boys did was they were into fishing. It was like a very, they were very much spending 12 hours a day on this like small fishing boat where everybody would get seasick. And she said, you know, we were playing Legos for 12 hours at a clip.

And it wasn't necessarily what she wanted to be doing, but it's what Bernie wanted to do. Well, let that be a lesson to us all. Cultivate your own interests, ladies. Yes. Anyone else who might need to hear that message. For those of us that find ourselves at the receiving end of one of the biggest financial frauds in history, we should make sure to have another career. Always good advice. Okay. Well, Lori, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for coming and sharing all of your nuggets of wisdom and insight and come back again sometime.

Thank you so much, Liza. It's been a pleasure. We will continue releasing bonus episodes right up until season two comes out. So do be sure to hit the subscribe button. And as always, we welcome any and all suggestions for upcoming episodes. You can email us at significantpod at gmail.com. Thank you so much for listening.