On Christmas Eve 2008, two weeks after Bernard L. Madoff confessed to running history’s largest Ponzi scheme, he and his wife, Ruth, attempted suicide in their Manhattan penthouse.

Mrs. Madoff 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 continued. “And 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 Mrs. Madoff, 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. It was very, very impulsive.”