Crime & Safety

Radio Station Manager Remembers Couple Who Committed Suicide "Excited About Life"

"Lynne, always smiling, always well-behaved, polite, respectable, excited about life and the future," said Berthold Reimers, WBAI's station general manager.

The Park Slope couple who committed suicide in their President Street apartment last week were self-help radio show hosts on WBAI and were “always smiling, excited about life and the future,” said the station’s general manager.

Lynne Rosen, 46, and John Liggit, 48, killed themselves sometime last week by using what the FDNY calls “suicide bags.” Police found the couple in their apartment, between Eighth Avenue and Prospect Park West, with plastic bags tied over their heads with a tube inside attached to a canister of helium on Monday, June 3 at 11 a.m.

Rosen, who was also a psychotherapist, ran the radio show “The Pursuit of Happiness” on WBAI on 99.5 FM with Liggit, who was a motivational speaker and musician under the stage name “Jadex.” For the past six years, Rosen and Liggit ran “The Pursuit of Happiness,” which was a call-in show that focused on “self-actualization and personal development, growth and creativity” WBAI’s website said. The hour-long show aired on the fourth Wednesday of each month at 1 p.m.

The couple, who were also life coaches, founded Why Not Now, which according to its website, “provides focused life coaching designed to help foster and encourage your inner strengths, identify hidden and untapped resources, and put you confidently on the path to designing the life you've always wanted to live.”

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Berthold Reimers, WBAI’s station general manager, told Patch that she has worked with the couple for the past three years.  When she heard the news on Monday, she was “totally shocked.”

“Lynne and John were friends of mine. Lynne was especially a very positive person and they worked for the future of this station,” Reimers said. “Lynne, always smiling, always well-behaved, polite, respectable, excited about life and the future.”

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Reimers found the news disturbing and confusing:

“They were the exact opposite in how they ended their lives,” she said. “I was stunned.”

For the last few months, the couple had been working towards expanding their audience for “The Pursuit of Happiness,” bringing in more revenue and getting more airtime.

Back in November, Rosen and Liggit met with Reimers in her office to talk how they could expand their show.

“We had a conversation about their roles here and how to push the show forward. Lynne wanted more time on the air to build an audience. She wanted to make more money for the station and work towards our future,” Reimers said. “They convinced me to give them more time. So I gave them two days a month instead of one.”

Over the past three years, Reimers said that the couple worked to “help the station grow,” which is funded by donations. “Their show always brought in more money than most of our other shows. They were successful.”

And what made their show successful, Reimers said, was the couple’s complimentary personalities.

“What makes a good show is a combination of the hosts and the topic. But, it always comes down to the hosts and they were great,” Reimers said. “They were a self-help program, they offered hope and help and new ways to achieve your goals. It was an over-all positive message and feeling they brought to their listeners.”

Click here to listen to John Littig and Lynne Rosen’s "The Pursuit of Happiness."

Although their show was positive, and they dedicated their lives to helping others improve their life, Reimers said that Rosen had been in pain.

“Lynne had a death in her family recently, she lost a grandparent, and she didn’t take that well,” Reimers explained. “She was focusing on taking care of her family, and she wasn’t as active as she used to be on the air.”

Reimers said that Rosen was just getting back on her feet and on the road to healing when they took their lives.

“For five or six months she was having a hard time,” Reimers explained. “But she recently just started to take on more projects.”

And then on Monday, June 3, Reimers’ producer called her and said that Rosen and Liggit committed suicide together.  

They both left separate notes, police said.

Cops told The Daily News that Liggit’s note stated: “We’re going to do this together,” and that he couldn’t watch Rosen suffer anymore, not giving any context.

Rosen’s note, as The News reported, “basically said she was sorry for doing this.”

Reimers said that she didn’t have any answers to why the couple took their lives:

“There’s nothing logical about what happened here, I was total shocked,” she said.

Listening to Rosen and Liggit’s radio show’s achieves, they talk about taking risks, reinventing yourself, positive change and the importance of “doing something that scares you everyday.”

But, no one will know exactly “why” the couple chose to exit this life.

But, as a next-door neighbor on President Street, Mat Maneri, said, “We hope they are resting peacefully.”

And a good place to leave off is to quote one of Liggit’s songs:

“The games we play, to leave or to stay, beautiful dreams make us live for today,” John Liggit sang in the song “Beautiful Dreams” under his stage name Jadex.


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