Jewish Child Survives Mom’s Suicide Plunge

Image by Via Facebook

By Anne Cohen, Seth BerkmanMarch 15, 2013

Image by Via Facebook

A Harlem mother jumped eight stories to her death with her 10-month-old son strapped to her chest —miraculously, the baby survived.

Cynthia Wachenheim, 44, landed on her back allowing baby Keston to roll away unscathed after the impact, the New York Daily News reported Wednesday.

Wachenheim, left a 13-page suicide note for her husband, Hal Bacharach, the report added.

“The note said she was not happy and she talked about what she planned to do,” a source told the Daily News.

In the note, Wachenheim is “saying to her husband, ‘I love you. I’m making you suffer. You’re going to think I’m evil,’” the source added.

From the note, largely incomprehensible according to the Daily News, police learned that Wachenheim believed her child had cerebral palsy.

Bacharach, 48, was at already at work when his wife jumped, the report stated. According to the New York Post, the couple had been arguing in their apartment at the Sutton co-op at 147th Street and Bradhurst Avenue.

“When I came home they were arguing, and I actually stopped to listen and he was screaming at her, screaming at her and the baby was crying,“ a neighbor of the couple told Pix 11 News (see video below). “He just kept saying ‘Why wouldn’t you pick up the phone? Why? Why?’”

Witnesses to the scene were badly shaken.

I heard a scream, a scared scream,” witness Steven Dominguez, 18, told the New York Post. “I noticed a woman was falling. As she was coming down, she was coming down on her back. I saw the baby bounce on her chest and fall to the concrete. The baby started crying.”

A volunteer emergency recovery unit was called to the scene to gather the victims remains, to honor the Jewish precept of burying a body whole.

According to the Daily News report, a police source said the mother was taking antidepressants, possibly pointing to post-partum depression.

Wachenheim, a graduate of Columbia Law School was “on maternity leave from her $118,000-a-year job in the city court system,” the report added. She worked there for over 15 years. She attended B’nai Jeshurun and volunteered with the American Jewish World Service. She had also worked in Pakistan, advocating for women’s rights.

Anne Cohen was the Forward’s deputy digital media editor. When she’s not looking for the secret Jewish history of Voodoo in New Orleans, or making lists about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she writes for The Assimilator. She graduated from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism with an M.S. magazine concentration in 2012.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO