New York ? Bernard Madoff’s victims got what they wanted to see, but not what they wanted to hear.

Saying he was “deeply sorry and ashamed,” the disgraced financier pleaded guilty Thursday to perhaps the biggest swindle in Wall Street history and was led off in handcuffs to begin serving a sentence expected to be up to 150 years in prison.

While some bilked investors were delighted by the spectacle, the bigger questions were left unanswered: What happened to all the money, people’s life savings, their college tuition, as much as $65 billion in all? Who helped him pull off the fraud that turned a well-respected investment professional into a symbol of Wall Street greed amid the economic meltdown?

“So he spends the rest of his life in jail — is that justice? People’s lives are ruined,” said Adriane Biondo of Los Angeles, one of five members of her family who lost money with Madoff. “Where’s the money, Bernie?”

Because Madoff pleaded guilty as charged, without any kind of deal with prosecutors, he is under no obligation to cooperate with them. As a result, some legal experts and others have speculated that he is sacrificing himself to protect his wife, his family and friends.

“He’s trying to save the rest of his family,” said investor Judith Welling. “We need to find out who else was involved, and we need, obviously, to freeze the assets of all those people involved to help the victims.”

The 70-year-old financier who was once chairman of the Nasdaq exchange will be sentenced June 16 on 11 counts, including securities fraud and perjury. He could also be fined and ordered to pay restitution to his victims and forfeit any ill-gotten gains.

“I am actually grateful for this opportunity to publicly comment about my crimes, for which I am deeply sorry and ashamed,” Madoff — a dapper figure, clad in a charcoal-gray suit, with swept-back, wavy gray hair — said in his first public comments about his crimes since the $65 billion scandal broke in early December.

In a long, detailed statement delivered in a soft but steady voice, Madoff implicated no one but himself in the vast Ponzi scheme. He said he started it as a short-term way to weather the early-1990s recession, and was unable to extricate himself as the years went by.

“I realized that my arrest and this day would inevitably come,” Madoff said in a courtroom crammed with many of the investors he cheated out of billions of dollars.

U.S. District Judge Denny Chin promptly revoked the $10 million bail that had allowed Madoff to remain free since he confessed to his sons three months ago. In ordering him jailed, the judge said Madoff had the means to flee and an incentive to do so because of his age.

The courtroom erupted in applause after the judge announced Madoff would go directly to jail — the drab, windowless high-rise Metropolitan Correctional Center next door to the courthouse to await sentencing. But that did not slake his victims’ anger.

DeWitt Baker, an investor who attended the hearing and said he lost more than $1 million with Madoff, said: “I’d stone him to death.”

The public fury toward him was so great that he was known to wear a bulletproof vest to court. Before the court hearing Thursday, helicopters circled above the courthouse, and federal officers with automatic weapons stood outside. Investors signed in before entering the courtroom.

Prosecutors gave assurances they are investigating Madoff’s wife and other family members and employees to determine what role, if any, they played in the scam.

“A lot of resources and effort are being expended, both to find assets and to find anyone else who may be responsible for this fraud,” federal prosecutor Marc Litt said.