OLGA GINZBURG FOR THE NEW YORK POST
Tally Wiener sleeps in Bernard and Ruth Madoff’s bed. Now it’s for sale, asking $18,000.
She bought the custom-made, four-poster, canopied bed — dressed with a floral headboard — in 2010. That’s when household items owned by Bernie and Ruth were being auctioned off, with the proceeds going toward restitution for the victims of Bernie’s $68 billion financial fraud.
Now, by pure coincidence — just as the latest book about Madoff is hitting the shelves — Wiener is thinking about moving. She has previously tried to sell the bed on eBay, and is making another push to part ways with her Madoff stuff.
“I got carried away at the auction,” said Wiener, who ended up buying about $30,000 worth of Madoff memorabilia and furnishings that year.
She was then a bankruptcy lawyer working on the Madoff case for the liquidators of a feeder fund.
Wiener attended the auction to check out Madoff’s letterhead. “I thought it would be funny to send a letter on Madoff stationery,” she told The Post. “But it went for a lot, like $1,900.”
Instead, she found herself drawn to the furniture, which had graced the Madoffs’ 4,000-square-foot penthouse at 133 E. 64th St. As for that home, it’s back on the market for $15 million, according to a May 2024 listing update from StreetEasy, with the unit repped by Brown Harris Stevens. It asked a higher $18.5 million in 2022 before being taken off the market later that year, StreetEasy also shows.
In 2010, Wiener bought three matching couches and a kind of cabinet called a linen press, where the Madoffs housed their television set. “It has a hole in the back to fit their TV,” Weiner said. “It wasn’t a flat-screen TV.”
And, of course, she acquired the bed, described in the auction catalogue as a “George III Inlaid Mahogany and Satinwood Tester Bed with intense sun fading, early 19th century.” (A tester is a kind of canopy.)
Shortly before the auction, Wiener had moved to a top-floor one-bedroom rental on the Upper West Side. She occasionally stubbed her toe on her metal bed frame. Her old couch had a paint stain.
“I thought the Madoffs’ bed was beautiful,” she said. “I basically bought a bunch of nice stuff at a great price. I started bidding and winning, and it was exciting. Maybe that’s the way people lose their shirts at the poker table. I wasn’t like a cannibal trying to eat the heart of Bernie Madoff.”
The bed’s estimated selling price was $8,000 to $11,400, but fellow auction-goers showed little interest. The bed cost Wiener only $2,250. “People pay more for beds at Mattress Firm,” she said.
The bed became a media darling, sparking giddy news coverage. Now, 14 years later, Wiener even makes an appearance in Richard Behar’s new book, “Madoff: The Final Word.” The book says Wiener bought the bed in order to return it to Ruth.
Not quite, Wiener told The Post. A news anchor, catching her by surprise, asked what she was going to do with the bed. “I was like a deer in the headlights,” she said. “I felt the gravity of the forfeiture of Ruth’s bed because of the crimes her husband had committed, and I said I would give it back if she wanted it.”
She was unable to get through to Ruth, however, receiving no response to messages sent through a series of lawyers.
“I felt bad for Ruth, and thought she also was a victim,” Wiener said.
Wiener met Behar at an auction preview, and the two later met up at the Brooklyn Navy Yard with movers to pick up the items she had bought.
“I had no idea that Rich was the beneficiary of a Madoff investment,” Wiener said. In the book, Behar notes that he was gifted money from some of Bernie’s early wins through his Aunt Adele.
Behar declined to comment.
Ruth, 83, is still alive and reportedly in an assisted living facility. Bernie, 82, died in prison in 2021, serving a sentence of 150 years for his elaborate Ponzi scheme — the world’s biggest financial fraud ever.
As for the bed, it must be disassembled to be moved.
“It was adorable when they set up the bed — like something out of a Disney movie,” Wiener said. Luckily, it fit through the doors of her building and inside the bedroom of her 350-square-foot apartment, with no overhead light fixture or ceiling fan to interfere with the canopy.
The bed requires a non-standard mattress with cutout corners to accommodate the bedposts. Wiener doesn’t have one — she sleeps on down and feather padding on the original box spring.
Fitted sheets don’t fit — so she uses flat sheets tied around the bedposts. “Other owners of canopy beds tell me their sheets have ties at the bottom,” she said. “I sleep very soundly in the bed. I’ve never had a yucky feeling about it.”
Wiener has periodically tried to sell the bed and other Madoff memorabilia on eBay. Last year, she sold the Madoffs’ kiddush cup for $750 and their Wedgewood mortar and pestle for $200.
She is also listing several copies of Ruth’s cookbook — featuring kosher restaurant recipes — and Bernie’s Hofstra University alumni achievement award.
An engraved Tiffany mantel clock could have historic value. It was a gift thanking Bernard for “his distinguished service to the financial industry and his invaluable contributions.” Wiener is selling it as-is — it no longer keeps time.
“One day, that could go in a museum,” she said.
Though the bed is currently listed for $18,000, the price is negotiable. Wiener’s eBay store, AberdeenshireYarns, started out as a yarn store and is shared with her mother, who ran a knitting studio. Wiener — who also knits and who now works as an environmental lawyer — plans to contribute a portion of the proceeds to the Madoff Victim Fund, which compensates victims who invested through intermediaries such as feeder funds.
The matching curtains are included with the bed, but the box spring is not. “If I sold the bed,” Wiener said, “I think I would get into that with a knife to see if the Madoffs hid cash or jewels there.”