Palm Beach Murder-Suicide Mother Depressed Over Relatives’ Deaths

The mother blamed for killing her two teenage children before taking her own life in Florida earlier this week was suffering from depression after a series of close family deaths, a cousin has told the Palm Beach Post.
“I don’t think she would have done any of this if her mother was still alive,” the unnamed cousin reportedly said of Jennifer Berman’s Monday morning murder-suicide. Berman had also recently lost her grandmother and father.
On top of that, she had recently undergone a nasty divorce and was set to lose her home only a few months later.
According to the cousin, Berman had threatened suicide in the past, though her threats were never taken seriously.
Just before the horrific murder-suicide, Berman sent emails to her ex-husband Richard Berman and other family members saying that she was planning to harm her children and herself. By the time Richard Berman had reached the home, his two children and their mother were already dead.
“She was crying out for help for so many years and I feel she was neglected,” the cousin reportedly said. “The kids didn’t have to lose their lives and Jennifer didn’t have to either.”
A funeral will be held for the children, aged 15 and 16, on Sunday. Richard Berman, a luxury Realtor, is asking that donations be made out to the school that the children attended.
“If we can help get any children get the dreams Alex and Jackie had, then this has some value, then at least there’s some good that could come from this,” Berman’s spokesman JJ Kaufman told the Palm Beach Post.
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
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 3
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 4
Fast Forward Cory Booker proclaims, ‘Hineni’ — I am here — 19 hours into anti-Trump Senate speech
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Senate rejects Bernie Sanders’ proposal to block some weapons sales to Israel
-
Fast Forward Sotheby’s to auction earliest known kiddush cup
-
Opinion Trump’s new tariffs on Israel are a BDS dream come true
-
Fast Forward Jerusalem Post editor Zvika Klein, arrested in ‘Qatar-gate,’ says he’s being unfairly prosecuted for his reporting
-
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.