Really? Is there a Disease of Heiressism? After two weeks of this sort of dull debate — replete with interactive slideshows and YouTube video montages — about whether dead-in-her-bed trust-fund temptress Casey Johnson was a desperate junkie or an unfortunate diabetic, New York magazine brings us the story of another doomed lady of privilege: Annie Morell Petrillo.

When Ms. Petrillo died last September, I remember reading a few short articles on the New York Post and the Daily News websites, all in small print, on the side or near the bottom: ”Daughter of Murdered Scripps Newspaper Heiress Commits Suicide.” It was clear that not much was known about her — a divorced woman in her early 40s who had jumped off the Tappan Zee Bridge. Still, a critical piece of  background information was inserted into all of these briefs. Her mother, Scripps publishing heiress Anne Scripps Morell, had been bludgeoned to death in 1993 by Annie’s stepfather, who had subsequently driven to the Tappan Zee Bridge to end his own life before he could be arrested for the crime.

Jesus. All the evidence you needed for the outright tragedy and absurdity of life was right there, compounded into the life of one poor woman and now oozing out from all sides of a buried brief. Most people — well, I honestly have no idea what most people would have done, but absent a photograph of a gorgeous dead girl or a name recognition factor more that was somewhat more boldface, I think most people probably just did an “OMG, whoa” eyebrow-raise and kept on news-surfing. But for me — a fervent newsgatherer of all things relating to crime, mental illness and family dysfunction — this was the equivalent of a end-of-season TV cliffhanger.

I web-searched every article I could find about Anne Scripps’ murder, looking for insight about how her violent death had affected her daughter. And it was all there, completely textbook. Just college-aged at the time, Annie Petrillo had been the one who had discovered her mother’s body. The one who had gone out that night to a party, leaving her mother at the hands of her violent stepfather. As far as I could see, her suicide was brought on at least partially by post-traumatic stress disorder. Make that extreme, searing, whiteout, blackout, never-ever-in-a-million-years-forgive-yourself trauma. For 16 years, this woman must have lived in her own torture chamber of personal pain — it’s a wonder she hung on that long.

Because it was this immensely sad and perhaps inevitable suicide, the story was not the kind journalists obsess over like an intricate jigsaw puzzle, nor was it newsworthy in the sense that Annie Petrillo was a public, or even glamorous, figure. Celebrity O.D.s routinely get front-page, full-panel-discussion media coverage for months at a time, guaranteeing that the ensuing narratives of tragedy and self-destruction will answer the question (supposedly) ringing in our minds: why? But when suicide is the apparent culmination of a lifetime of true, abject pain, brevity is an acknowledgment that reporting has limits. No need to go there. Yikes, in fact.

I suppose I’d figured this out in the weeks after Annie Petrillo’s suicide, when my lingering questions went stubbornly unanswered by the media. Her particular personal tragedy  — that is, how deeply and debilitatingly her mother’s murder had wounded her  — would, and could, never be told. She had taken them with her when she left the world. Fittingly, she had jumped into the water, signifying, perhaps, a determined depressive’s desire to vanish into the the deep, swirling well of lost humanity. Now there’s a phenomenon that can’t be tied up in a nice little narrative.

So it was a surprise when I saw the New York article yesterday, several months after Petrillo’s suicide and without any interim coverage.  Peppered with details about her divorce, her boob job and her drinking problem, it was the kind of story I might have pored over in the days after the news of her death, conditioned to crave such gratuitously gossipy follow-up details. But publishing this kind of story at a late date seemed like a desperate move on New York’s part. Rude, even. Because I had gotten to feeling that it was actually nice that Anne Scripps Douglas’ remaining family members had gotten some privacy this time, as opposed to their last tragedy that ended up as a movie-of-the-week.

I have been thinking about this in conjunction with the recent headlines about Facebook’s privacy policies and user interface. Privacy will likely be one of our most treasured dignities in this digital world.