A newly divorced, distraught mom, of two teens killed her children and took her own life. Jennifer Berman, 51, and her two children Alex, 16, and Jacqueline, 15, of West Palm Beach, were found by the children’s father, Richard Berman, Monday morning.
After receiving an e-mail that read “she did the best thing for our family,” Berman headed to the house while telling the 911 operator that his “ex-wife said she was going to harm the kids.” She also sent an e-mail to a cousin saying she was going to kill the kids and herself.”
The couple divorced in December, just a couple of weeks after Jennifer’s mother died last fall. Her husband was no longer in her life and financially she couldn’t afford to keep up the house payment and lost it to foreclosure. According to WPEC-TV, West Palm Beach, not being able to pay her divorce lawyer, she was forced to sell her late father’s watch just to make ends meet.
Jennifer was once a realtor, but was forced to work 12 hour overnight shifts as a nurse just to support her children.
According to court documents filed in court in May by Jennifer Berman, “the husband has not paid the mortgage on the former marital home during the entire time of the dissolution of marriage proceeding,” and “has not contributed to the support of the wife or of the minor children and refusing to buy toilet paper, buys food for himself and keeps them where the wife and children cannot access them.”
Richard Berman is a successful realtor who sells multi-million dollar homes in South Florida.
The children were very talented musicians with a bright future. They attended Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts in southern Florida. Grief counselors were at the teens school to help students understand and come to grips with what happened. The police haven’t determined a motive to the tragedy.
“A couple of days ago, she was different,” Marian Sklodowski told WSVN-TV. “You could see it in her face, there was something missing, something disturbed in her mind. The conversation, the language, the eyes… something was missing.”
“Going through a divorce, foreclosure, a lot of that stuff which, it’s an upsetting thing when you’re going through a divorce and having to sell the beautiful house in this neighborhood, and it’s just, she just seemed like she had been upset lately,” family friend Brian Mc Manus told WSVN. “You can’t fathom, you can’t understand what’s going on in someone’s head for things like that to happen.” For jobs at WPEC-TV, click here.
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