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When Robert Maxwell went over the side of his yacht, he took his secrets with him. His sons Kevin and Ian later stood trial but Maxwell's defrauded pensioners and the public were denied the dissection of Maxwell's crimes that a lengthy trial would bring.
They didn't get to see and hear him in the dock and weren't able to witness him being pulled apart on skilful cross-examination. The fact that his boys were acquitted only added to the sense of a lack of, to use that frequenty repeated word, closure.
Bernard Madoff is similar. Yes, he will receive a lengthy jail term but his guilty plea means his victims may never know the full detail of what he termed "one big lie".
On Wall Street, in the City and in the homes of the investors he skinned, there is still shock at his confession. It was only on 10 December, that he broke down in front of his sons, Andy and Mark, and they called in the authorities.
Barely four months later he is heading for jail and the sancturary that will bring. It's creditable on one level that the US process is so speedy (in this country, the file would still be in its infancy, far away from heading to the Crown Prosecution Service) but it seems indecently quick.
And while his sentence is far longer than anything he would receive in the UK, it's a number ultimately without meaning. He's 70 and he will die in prison. Whether he gets 100 or 150 years doesn't matter: it's a headline number, that's all.
What it doesn't bring is completion. There is a nagging suspicion of calculating genius at work. Madoff's not done a deal with the authorities. There was nothing to gain from him doing so.
At his age, lopping a few decades off his term was neither here nor there. The bargain they would want would be to provide evidence that may implicate those around him. It may come in time but this way Madoff gets to choose what he says. He goes to his cell leaving investigators wondering.
From the moment his boys alerted the Securities and Exchange Commission and its officials contacted the FBI, there has been a feeling of Madoff being in total control.
He got bail, so while his clients were struggling with the enormity of their loss, he resided at his East 64th Street luxury apartment in Manhattan.
For his safety, he had guards and he was issued with a bullet-proof vest. His public utterances were non-existent. He's not displayed any emotion, save for an occasional thin smile that would do the Mona Lisa proud. It's impossible to determine what he is thinking, what he knows.
Was his arrest just too simple, too orchestrated? Apparently, the first Andy and Mark knew anything was amiss was when their father said he was paying bonuses from the hedge fund operation they ran with him (they worked in its trading arm) earlier than usual. The business had made good profits and he wanted to reward people. When they pressed him on the timing, he suddenly cracked. It was over. There's no remorseless detective, no whistleblower to give us the evidence we seek. The immediate reaction is to suppose it's impossible. No one could defraud some of the most financially-sophisticated brains in the world of $50 billion over many years and do it alone.
That takes little account of Madoff's capacity for organisation. This was someone, who, in his dressing room at home kept 16 shirts all the same blue and 12 identically cut grey suits. His shoes were neatly arranged on racks in one style, one colour. He hated curves. Everything in his life had to be in straight lines. His drinking glasses were straight, his pencil holders were straight and his waste bins were straight. The blinds had to cover the windows, just so - there could be no overlap, no short-fall. His computer screens had to be 90 degrees to the desk.
In his London office, he installed a camera so he could see from his computer in New York if employees were sloping off for long lunch-breaks. He was consumed by twitches. He was always tapping his jacket pocket. He was obsessed with weight and would attack someone for putting too much on when they had gained a few, barely discernible pounds.
There was plenty in Madoff's make-up to suggest order and intricacy. Investors should, possibly, have thought him more than a little weird. But Madoff was selling them greatness. They weren't putting their money into his funds because his returns were ordinary. He was offering them the extraordinary: the ability to yield a consistent profit even when markets pitched and reared.
Madoff wasn't any old hedge fund manager. He made his name in the 1960s when he took on the imperious New York Stock Exchange and won. The NYSE liked its stocks to be mighty and well-known; Bernie, as everyone called him, from Bernard L Madoff Securities, concentrated on broking shares in lesser, newer companies. He brought to his work incredible zeal, not only pushing his clients but also taking on the system. His reputation, hard to believe today, was as a scourge of traditional vested interests, a crusader against WASP establishment corruption. He was the excluded Jew who looked after his own and railed against the rest.
Madoff thought the NYSE imperfect and elite so he came up with a more open, transparent method of trading, involving computers and viewable screens. His technology-based initiative grew into NASDAQ, the fast-growing alternative to the NYSE. Given his NASDAQ pedigree, there was little reason, or so they thought, for his later hedge fund customers to doubt him. He was extremely careful to keep everything tight. He preyed on his fellow Jews, so a Madoff investment became known as the "Jewish bond." He stuck within a narrow social boundary. The Palm Beach Country Club and other such closed places were his hunting ground.
That exclusivity was his selling point. His clients believed they were being let in on a secret, that they were joining a very exclusive organisation. The emphasis on keeping things nice and tight was added to by his insistence on maintaining relatives on the pay-roll. His niece, Shana, was the compliance officer.
Even his choice of a small-time auditor, rather than a flash, expensive firm was seen as part of the mystique. Today, of course, it's held up to ridicule. Accusing fingers are pointed at his sons, his wife, Shana, his accountants and advisers. They must have known, they must have had an idea of what the boss was up to. With him behind bars, the detectives will carry on their gargantuan task.
His victims fear that with Madoff locked away, the investigators will not bring the same degree of effort. In London, for instance, the Serious Fraud Office inquiry into his UK operations has barely begun. His colleagues here say they were in the dark. Trying to prove otherwise will be a formidable time-consuming task.
Madoff is bound for jail but the believer in straight lines may keep his inscrutable smile.
