Chilling 911 Calls Bare Palm Beach Dad’s Anguish After Finding Teens’ Bodies

Tragic Family: Jennifer Berman, right, shown with her two children, Alex and Jacqueline. Image by instagram
Florida police warned against jumping to conclusions about the apparent murder-suicide of a Palm Beach mother who apparently killed her two teenage children before turning the gun on herself.
Authorities confirmed that Jennifer Berman seemingly gunned down her own children, but urged the public against rushing to judgment about what may have happened, according to local television reports.
“What we have to be cautious of is not to rush to judgment as to how they died. And that is why we wait for the medical examiner,” West Palm Beach Police spokesman David Lefont said.
Police have released the chilling 911 calls made from Jewish dad Richard Berman, as he and a neighbor discovered the lifeless bodies of his two children and their mother’s in an apparent murder-suicide in West Palm Beach on Monday.
“It looks like she’s laid in bed but she doesn’t have a face,” the neighbor told the dispatcher of Jennifer Berman, who had apparently shot and killed her two children before taking her own life.
“I was just touching his head,” Richard Berman said after discovering his son’s body. “He wasn’t waking up. His alarm was on, he wasn’t waking up, there’s blood in his ear.”
Family friends and neighbors have told the media that Jennifer Berman had grown unhinged in recent weeks due to long and stressful work hours and financial woes. Her home had been in foreclosure since 2010.
The couple filed for divorce in 2008, but never completed the process and continued to live together until last year, when Jennifer Berman told courts that her ex-husband was emotionally abusive.
Following the divorce, the parents reportedly agreed to share custody over their children, according to the Palm Beach Post. They alternated custody during the holidays and would spend Hanukkah with their father and Christmas with their mother.
The slain teens attended the selective Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts in West Palm Beach. Classmates told the New York Post that Alex was an accomplished cello player while Jacqueline was a straight A student.
Natalia Powers, a representative from the Palm Beach County School District, told the Forward that grief counselors have been present at the school throughout the week. “They will be there as long as necessary,” she said. “Our main goal is to help our students and faculty members deal with this horrible situation.”
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 2
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 3
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 4
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward ‘Another Jewish warrior’: Fine wins special election for U.S. House seat
-
Fast Forward A Chicagoan wanted to protest Elon Musk — and put a swastika sticker on a Jewish man’s Tesla
-
Fast Forward NY attorney general orders car wash to stop ripping off Jews with antisemitic ‘Passover special’
-
Fast Forward Cory Booker proclaims, ‘Hineni’ — I am here — 19 hours into anti-Trump Senate speech
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.