She wrote a 13-page, handwritten suicide note on small pages of notebook paper then strapped her 10-month-old baby to her chest and jumped 8 stories to her death, the baby lived.
“The note said she was not happy and she talked about what she planned to do,” a source said. In the note, she is “saying to her husband, ‘I love you. I’m making you suffer. You’re going to think I’m evil,’” a source said. “She thinks she’s a failing mother.” On the last page, she refers to postpartum depression. She was supposed to see a therapist, but she did not. “As the note goes on, you get the idea she’s explaining why she’s going to do it,” the source added.
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A Manhattan lawyer, Cynthia Wachenheim, 44, landed on her back after taking the leap, and her baby, Keston, was in a harness attached to her front. As she hit the ground the child bounced off his mom on impact and then rolled away from her motionless arms with only minor injuries.
“I heard a small scream when she was in the air,” said witness Steven Dominguez, 18. “I noticed something falling, but I didn’t want to believe it was a person.”
Dominguez, who teared up as he spoke, said the landing made a horrifying sound.
“It was a loud bang,” he said outside the woman’s building on Bradhurst Ave. near W. 147th St. “It sounded like a big piece of wood hitting the floor.” — “When I got closer, I saw the baby crying,” he said.
Police learned — not from the note — that Wachenheim was convinced her baby had cerebral palsy, although doctors said there was nothing wrong with him, said the Daily News.