Ruth Madoff: 'Not a Day Goes By When I Don't Ache'

Ruth Madoff said in a statement today she’s “embarrassed and ashamed” of her husband’s crime, the Wall Street Journal reports—and anyone who believes she’s shown “indifference or lack of sympathy” in her silence has perceived “exactly the opposite of the truth.” “To say that I feel devastated for the many whom my husband has destroyed is truly inadequate,” she notes. “Like everyone else, I feel betrayed and confused.”

“In the days since December, I have read, with immense pain, the wrenching stories of people whose life savings have evaporated because of his crime,” Madoff says of husband Bernard. “The man who committed this horrible fraud is not the man whom I have known for all these years.” While “nothing I can say seems sufficient,” she continues, “please know that not a day goes by when I don't ache over the stories that I have heard and read.” (More Ruth Madoff stories.)