In a wonderful expose posted on the NY Times Dealbook site, Diana Henriques and Peter Lattman tell of a publisher and his promising real estate newsletter, Sonar Report.  Up before dawn, the publisher scoured the news to gather items for that day’s edition and, at 9:04 am ET, sent it out to his e-mail subscribers.  Unknown to almost all of his subscribers, that publisher was Mark David Madoff.

Less than 24 hours after sending his e-mail, he hanged himself in his downtown Manhattan apartment, leaving behind a life of burdens and blessings.  The blessings appeared to be sustaining him, even on that final day, according to those closest to him.  They recall a man who was patiently building a new business, talking regularly with close friends, spending time with his wife and four children and, even in the last hours of his life, walking his dog, an affectionate Labradoodle.

    Burdens Are Ever Present.   But behind that screen, the burdens of life as Bernie Madoff’s son - the continuing suspicion from the public, the harsh accusations in numerous lawsuits, and his exile from the world of Wall Street - were steadily becoming unsustainable.  According to a person who had remained close to him since childhood, “The pressure of the last two years weighed on him enormously.  He was deeply, deeply angry at what his father had done to him - to everybody.  That anger just seemed to feed on itself.”

The burden had eased as the public’s fierce interest in the case seemed to fade, this person said. But the spate of lawsuits filed last week by the Madoff trustee included a troubling one against his children and “cases against a lot of smaller people, many of whom he knew, some of whom were relatives,” the person continued.  “It reopened the wounds. It must have just been more than he could bear.”

Mark Madoff, 46, had also been named in at least 9 lawsuits that sought to recover millions of dollars in damages and muddied his professional reputation, friends said.  And he was troubled by news articles that repeatedly - and, according to his lawyers, falsely - portrayed him as being under criminal investigation for some role in his father’s epic crime.  

To continue, please click onto:   [NYT Dealbook, "Mark Madoff's Name...", 12/16]