Walter Buczynski jumped from the Delaware Memorial Bridge on Friday after killing his wife, Marci. Buczynski was the Vice President of Fieldstone Mortgage, a Maryland lender with $5.5 billion in subprime loans. The company recently filed for bankruptcy.
Prosecutor Robert Bernardi said Evesham Township police went to the couple’s home in the Marlton section of the township around noon after a male caller asked them to check on Marci Buczynski’s welfare. Her body was found in a bedroom.Authorities would not provide further details on her death, saying only that she was pronounced dead at the scene and that an autopsy would be performed sometime Saturday by the county medical examiner’s office.
About 20 minutes after her body was found, officers from the Delaware River and Bay Authority Police Department received reports that a man – later identified as Walter Buczynski – had parked his car on the bridge and jumped from the span.
Crews continued to search for his body Friday night.
Bernardi said a motive for the murder-suicide was not immediately clear. The couple’s children were being cared for by family members, Bernardi said.
Absolutely tragic. It’s like the thirties all over again.
Mortgage exec kills wife, self [AP]
(Photo: Bob Jagendorf)
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pussy!
sorry i just think that suicide is for cowards.
Have you ever seen the Walter Matthau movie, “Charley Varrick”?
[imdb.com]
This bank manager reminds me of the bank manager in the film, and George Putz reminds me of Varrick, a thief trying to get away from the mob. Only in this case, the mob aren’t a criminal gang, it’s the average citizens wondering what the hell’s been done with their money.
this is so sad.
incidentally, the Delaware Memorial Bridge is a bridge famous for suicides – probably for its effectiveness, as the bridge is so high off the river.
I wonder if he will turn up alive and well. I must be watching too much Monk and Psych.
I doubt it – that bridge is a killer.
How do they even know he jumped if they didnt find his body. Someone else couldve killed his wife and him and stole his car and jumped off the bridge
It must be the subprime mortgages!
If the DNC is listening your talking points are all at the Consumerist, from abortion, to Boosh’s illegal and immoral war for oil, and John McCain personally tainting childrens toys with lead. It’s all in one place!
This one is particularly egregious I mean tell me what it has to do with consumerism ( the supposed focal point of this blog)
[consumerist.com]
@ripple: That seems kid of pointless.
If only he had waited until Bush’s tax rebates were mailed out.
Oh well, at least he didn’t have to pay a toll to go onto the bridge (one-way toll, it’s free from DE to NJ)
Government causes problem, government proposes fixes for problem. Look up ADDI, America Dream Downpayment Initiative of 2003 for details. I sold a house during the 2005 time period, I could not believe the buyer got 100% financing with $10000 cash back for fix ups … A 23 year old kid buying a $250,000+ house.
We all pay for governemtn stupidty, now everybody’s house value gets drop.
Who cares, I got my money out
It’s not like the thirties. Not yet. And that’s what scares me. One incident doesn’t make a data plot.
@snoop-blog: you hardly understand the circumstances under which he committed suicide. Have some respect for the dead. Just because you lived at a homeless shelter doesn’t mean that you have a right to judge people that have lived through a hard time.
Business built on B.S. and ends tragically… hey are we talking about Britney?
@dgcaste: I have to agree with snoop-blog, suicide is for cowards. It is a very selfish act.
@snoop-blog: I wouldn’t want anyone to kill themselves, but it would have been better if he did that first given what happened (murdering his wife).
Woah, that’s scary. It happened in my hometown.
It’s sad that people choose to suicide, it’s really selfish.
how exactly does this relate to consumer advocacy? Sounds more like borderline creepy schadenfreude to me
Why can’t these retards just kill themselves and be done with it?
Murder-suicide is just plain murder. The murderer is too chicken to hang around to face the music afterwards.
@weg1978: Because quite honestly- if an insider to the Sub Prime mortgage industry has possibly driven to such acts it speaks to the level of desperation felt within the industry itself, which in turn will eventually trickle down to the general consumer. As we all know economics can be buggered by irrational fear.
The mortgage industry is incredibly tough right now. So many companies are closing and so many people are out of work. I keep hearing how ‘the industry deserves what it gets’. Well, for every executive that laid down the lending rules, there are thousands who were punching a clock and supporting a family. And these jobs aren’t ‘slipping away’. In the matter of 12 months, tens of thousands of jobs are just gone. He’s not the only one who has killed himself (though he is a sick f*ck for killing his wife). I know the names of others. Imagine waking up in 12 months, you’ve just lost your job, and your industry has shrunk by two thirds. There are no jobs for anybody.
@trollkiller: it’s shallow to consider an act ‘selfish’. we do ‘selfish’ things all day, all the time, and there’s nothing unnatural or sinister about it.
for some people, the only way out is really to kill themselves. I’m not pro-suicide by any means, but if someone wants to end their life they have the choice to do so. what made this situation fucked up in a very particular manner is that he killed his wife first.
@HykCraft: What did she do, kick your dog?
@dgcaste: Well, there are things that are selfish in an innocuous way and things that are selfish in a sinister way.
I’d say that most crimes come from a sinister selfishness. This guy has taken his wife’s life and left his children orphaned.
@girly: I agree with your distinction of selfish acts. but killing himself was not the sinister – it was the murder and the orphaning. if that’s even a word.
He should have killed himself first, not second.
I know this guy personally. Ive met him, and talked to him. He bought out one of my clients a while back. They waited until the third week of the month, fired half the staff, had the other half the staff close out their files then kept commissions for the management.
/Im not gonna miss him.
Golden parachute is just a figure of speech. Turning your assets into an actual parachute made of gold for recreation is not recommended.
1929 all over again.
@dgcaste: Suicide is selfish because it leaves others to clean up the mess afterward. In this case, now some divers will have to put their lives on the line diving in dangerously cold water just to find the body of this guy. Did they have any input into his “choice to do so”?
Damn, down another Bush voter. The way the polls are getting so close, Mitt Romney is going to miss having one less supporter.
Nice to see a jerkwad leave the earth, tho. Wish he did it before ruining so many lives.
@humphrmi:
People that commit suicide don’t think of others, or if they are thinking of others it is a belief that they are doing better for other.
@mad_oak:
not to mention the folks out there earnestly recommending folks NOT go with the ARM or interest only home mortgages. Only to be victims of the public demand for them. I know many people that almost had to beg people not to take them and warned many of this impending disaster. This is really no surprise to anyone now is it? C’mon Interest only home mortgage loans? Who were we trying to kid? Evidently ourselves- no free lunch.
@trai_dep: Buczynski is a Polish-Jew surname and Maryland hasn’t voted for a republican presidential candidate since 1988. I guess your super power is injecting assumptive partisan politics in any situation. That skill will take you far.
@humphrmi: it’s their job, they don’t have to do anything they don’t want to.
@StevieD: people always strive for their survival. the suicide victim thinks, in a sick and/or twisted way, that this is the best way to handle the situation.
@cecilsaxon: going on an ARM or subprime was not necessarily a bad thing. a lot of people did it because they didn’t have the greatest credit to start with, or because they worked on commision-based jobs for less than two years, were transitioning between jobs, or any other transitory situation. after this situation was smoothed out, they refinanced to a fixed-rate loan. as long as the loan officer or bank disclosed the risks of being under such an agreement, and what the client had to do to get out of their ARM and quick, it was a great tool to get the house you wanted fast and then move into the more secure long-term contract.
@mad_oak: It’s already happened to me, only difference is the asshole execs who wrecked my industry didn’t have the decency to kill themselves.
I never understood how people can just dismissively say that suicide is selfish or cowardly. SOmetimes it is the only way.
You want to know what is selfish? People who want someone else to continue to suffer just so they dont have to deal with the feelings of missing someone after they are gone. THAT’S selfish.
However I have very little sympathy for someone who kills another first & then commits suicide.
If I ever get an incurable fatal disease that has a slow, painfull ,wasting-away death…. I would commit suicide. I’d hope the people I knew would not think it is selfish or cowardly.
Wow, it IS like the thirties.
I mean people are taking on debt that they can’t afford, better get everyone else to bail them out.
Do you even know what happened in the thirties?
Apparently, ignorance is blissful and bountiful here tonight.
@forgottenpassword: I think that people who have a fatal, painful disease should have the option to end their lives…I do NOT think that overpaid corporate executives who have ruined countless lives are in that same boat…he committed suicide so that he wouldn’t have to answer for the mess he created. Its not NEARLY the same thing and kind of obnoxious to even suggest the two situations are equal.
@legotech:
I dont suggest that that the the two situations are equal. I just hate it when people make seemingly blanket statements especially concerning suicide. Most people who do never had to walk in the particular person’s footsteps.
AND as I mentioned before… I have little sympathy for someone who maliciously kills another & then commits suicide. I would have thought that making that statement would have made it clear that I was not comparing the two situations as equal.
Mean people suck.
this whole subprime mortgage mess sort of intrigues me. i ask not who got into this mess, i ask who was untouched. the players who were untouched were those who followed the sound investment advice of Warren Buffett, who saw this as a long and convoluted series of untenable risks. everybody else is a f@cking idiot and gets exactly what they deserve. the poorhouse. those who say that they cannot understand investments need to go into t-bills. those who say they do not have the time need to stick their cash into a mattress. the people who lost their money because their investment advisors put them at untenable risk are morons for trusting an idiot. i can certainly see how they would be very unhappy. perhaps they should be shopping for sniper rifles and staking out the local starbucks where the greedy unemployed mortgage writers are hanging out.
The REAL tragedy (on top of the murder of his wife) is that he didn’t land on a pleasure boat full of other greedy scumbags who have systematically ruined the American economy and taken them out along with himself.
I’ll pay for the gas for any of his ilk who want to drive to the middle of that bridge. They can hold hands as they jump.
“Sub-prime” is the right description for these treasonous bastards. “Sub-human” might be even better.
As Lewis Black says, I used to wonder why the French beheaded Marie Antoinette. I don’t wonder anymore.
Next time, I’ll say what I really think.
@dgcaste: Bullsh*t. Maybe maybe I’d give you that in the “my life is so horrible I can’t go on” sense. Maybe.
But the *sshole killed his wife and, I’m sorry, the “I didn’t want her to go on without me” argument doesn’t wash. He arbitrarily decided to end her life – maybe she’d like to have tried muddling along in life, ya know. He wasn’t just selfish, he was also a murderer.
And to the couple of you spouting the “have respect for the dead” nonsense – you EARN respect in life with your actions, it’s not automatic by virtue of kicking off. Get over yourselves.
@lostsynapse: ROFL!
@Jim (The Canuck One):
Well said. He murdered his wife because of business problems? I don’t think so. He was a murderer first, and he took his own life because he was a coward second.
“Absolutely tragic. It’s like the thirties all over again.” Boo hoo. It’s nowhere close.
@forgottenpassword: B.S. Suicide IS cowardly AND selfish. The End. I don’t care how bad you think you have it, there’s ALWAYS somebody in worse shape making it through life just fine. Man up. Save that emo crap for someone else.
And btw, yes, I’ve been there. I’ve been in quite a few situations to which suicide would have been a perfectly valid and understandable response. I’m still here.
@Jim (The Canuck One): I never justified her murder. I’m not even justifying his suicide. I should have been more specific – I’m only speaking about his suicide as his option. He was just a psychopath, like that person earlier that described his or her relationship with him.
@junkmail: “man up” – very mature. Just because you have the moral fortitude to stay alive doesn’t mean he does or should. Being alive for you could mean that you’re too brave to stop trying, or too cowardly to actually commit to the action.
I can’t begin to understand why or how any parent could orphan his own children. No matter what horrible things happen to you your children still need their parents.
Stop saying that subprime loans are the evil of the land. Sure, their abuse was very damaging to the economy, but a subprime loan was a real product with a legitimate use in a limited sense. Poor financial decisions are always going to be made, over-valuation of certain aspects of the economy is always going to happen. I’m basically saying you can’t fix stupid. I know of several people that went subprime when they first purchased, and within 12 months they had repaired their credit and made their job history more robust and got back into a mainstream fixed loan.