Bernie Madoff’s sister, Sondra Wiener, and her husband were found dead on Thursday in their home in Boynton Beach, Fla., in what the authorities said was an apparent murder-suicide.
The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office said deputies responded to a 911 call and found Ms. Wiener, 87, and her husband, Marvin, 90, both dead from gunshot wounds.
The Medical Examiner’s Office personnel “arrived on the scene and took possession of both Marvin and Sondra,” according to the sheriff’s Facebook page and Twitter account. The cause of death will be determined by the Medical Examiner’s Office.
Though the social media accounts of the Sheriff’s Office included the names of the couple, a statement from the office identified only Ms. Wiener and said the family “had invoked Marsy’s Law for the male,” which provides protections for crime victims.
Bernie Madoff, who perpetrated one of the largest Ponzi schemes in Wall Street history and began serving a 150-year sentence in 2009, died last year in a federal prison hospital. Mr. Madoff’s older son, Mark, died by suicide in his Manhattan apartment early on the morning of Dec. 11, 2010, the second anniversary of his father’s arrest.
In 2009, Ms. Wiener’s son, David Wiener, told The New York Post that his mother was among the thousands of people victimized by Mr. Madoff. The losses from his scheme, on paper, totaled nearly $65 billion.
