Dear Readers,

Today marks a departure from the regular financial columns I write.

My dear friend Karen Bernstein, a Grammy and Emmy award winning documentary film maker, attended the Madoff court hearing yesterday morning and shared some journal notes that are worth reading. Bernstein went with two interns she is working with on a documentary production tentatively entitled "Forgiveness" for PBS. 

Here are Bernstein's thoughts:

When I arrived at the Park Row area near all the courthouses yesterday, I asked the driver to stop near what appeared to be a crowd that could be gathered for the Madoff hearing.

As it turned out I was in front of the long NY Supreme Court steps and the crowd consisted of a television film crew with a scene in progress! I kept wondering why the lawyers were getting their faces touched up and their coats brushed off.

Around the corner I found the District Court and on that Pearl Street there was bifurcated beehive, media on both sides of the entrance, completely filling both cordoned areas. How these cameramen deal with foldable ladders on top of the big rigs they carry on their shoulders is beyond me, and they do it every day.

Neither of my interns had made it in to the main courtroom so all three of us were in the spill over area just as interesting. Mostly press people there but an interesting mix of victims and onlookers.

Those members of the press that weren't typing away on their laptops were running interns or production assistants back and forth between the live remote trucks outside and the courthouse. Most heads scanned the room like submarine scopes, looking for elderly, Jewish couples that could be interviewed after the hearing finished.

At one point an elderly orthodox Jewish man came in to the room and there was a near simultaneous swoop of heads to the right.

The hearing started and all you could hear was the tip tip tip of people on their laptops. All 11 charges were read and detailed with fines and possible imprisonment terms.

Then Madoff was asked to rise and read what must have been a 4 page guilty statement....he seemed relieved to me, like a man who had lived such lies, perpetuated inhumane crimes of greed, but could finally now rest with his confession.

He did not seem racked with guilt and delivered the speech without a quiver in his voice. He stumbled a few times but there was nothing emotional about it. Instead we were just made aware that he had not written the speech.

But it was a confession, through and through. It missed any mention of his family and how they must have been involved or conspiracy with SEC and banking officials. He refused to touch on this and will leave all that digging to the US District Attorney's office and the press corp.

The Judge opened the podium to victims who wished to testify against the recommendations of the court. Since the court was accepting the government's recommendations of 150 years in prison, no bail, no chance for parole, there was little the victims could object to but three people did approach.

 They objected to the lack of a conspiracy charge/ charges but took that loophole as an opportunity to make statements. The most memorable moment for me was seeing a man approach the podium in his white shirt which glowed on the closed circuit TV screen. He introduced himself by last name which sounded like Nuremberg and there was a loud murmur throughout the press core (turned out to be Nierenberg, a documentary filmmaker).

He opened by walking towards Madoff in a calmly dramatic way which just flummoxed the court guards, and insisted that the accused face his victim. You can read about the account in the Times today but it was the single most profound act I have ever seen in a Courtroom, even those television court room dramas. Madoff turned and did make eye contact with him. Later Nierenberg recalled that Madoff seemed a hollow man.

Talking to Nierenberg in the court hall, I thought, both are now hollow men. Poor guy looks devastated.

What struck me most in speaking with victims afterwords, including Nierenberg, was how the fierce anger and outrage was almost immediately sublimated by a sense of guilt.

One woman told us that her husband had been very close to Madoff before he died and though she found what Madoff had done unforgivable, there was obviously more to the relationship. Perhaps her husband had brought in new investors to please Madoff? Something happened there that kept her up at night.