BIOGRAPHY -- Page 23
Matt reached a point where he was wondering why he bothered getting up in the morning. He was unemployed since the collapse of Nelson & Murdock, and strangely wasn’t receiving any offers from other firms for his services. His neglect of Glori reached a breaking point where she actually broke up with him by sending an audio tape in the mail, since he never returned her calls. Oddly 
enough, this wasn’t the worst bit of mail that arrived that day. Matt’s finances were now under audit by the IRS and the last two mortgage payments on his brownstone hadn’t been received by the bank. On top of all this, Matt received a hand delivered subpoena to appear before a grand jury. As a defendant.
Nick Manolis, a twenty-year veteran of the police force, came forward with testimony that Murdock 
illegally manipulated a witness’s testimony in a criminal case. Matt found himself facing criminal charges of perjury. He went to Foggy for help, and Nelson put on a spirited defense of his friend and partner. By the conclusion of the trial, Matt was not sentenced to prison, but he was forcibly removed from the New York Bar and was banned from the practice of law. By this point, Matt was dazed and paranoid about the wreckage of his life, fearing everybody was against him. He shut out Ben Urich, refusing to comment to the press. His assets were completely frozen by the audit and he was on the verge of losing his home. All of which could have been written off as a disastrous series of coincidences until his brownstone was destroyed in an explosion. This gave Matt a moment of true clarity as he realized everything up until that point had been orchestrated. The Kingpin knew who he was.
Karen Page’s starlet career in Los Angeles had gone poorly. After a good role or two, Karen stopped getting reputable job offers. She fell into pornography, making degrading films in order to make money for heroin, as she had also become a junkie. Down in Mexico, looking for her next score, Karen finally sold information about Matt’s secret identity in exchange for drugs. The 
information slowly made it up the food chain until one of Kingpin’s lieutenants brought it directly to him. The Kingpin confirmed the information to his satisfaction, then murdered everybody Karen Page had spoken to about Daredevil’s identity, keeping the information solely to himself. Fisk owned the bank. The IRS and the New York Bar could be manipulated with leverage. Diverting potential clients was easy. Nick Manolis had a terminally ill son who needed treatment. Slowly, steadily, the Kingpin set the dominos in motion to utterly demolish everything in Matt Murdock’s life. [Daredevil (1st series) #227]
Out on the streets, Matt used the last $10 to his name to rent a hotel room. He obsessed about taking revenge on the Kingpin, and couldn’t bring himself to trust anyone else, for fear of how deep Fisk’s corruption had reached into his life. Foggy, Glori and Ben were worried about Matt, but he refused to ask for help, even becoming delusional enough to call Operator from a pay 
phone and imagine a conversation with Foggy egging him on. When three thugs tried to rob him on the subway, Matt lashed out at the criminals, but then he also beat up a cop when the officer tried to stop him. Fisk’s agents monitored all this, and the Kingpin knew Daredevil was already a broken man before he arrived at Fisk Tower.
Matt was escorted into Kingpin’s training room when he arrived. He tried to fight Fisk, using the cop’s stolen baton and his own rage carrying him through the early part of the fight, but Matt Murdock simply had nothing left to fight for and eventually crumbled under Kingpin’s steady hands. As the coup de grace, Fisk arranged for Murdock’s final legacy. A taxicab was stolen and Kingpin beat the driver to death with the police baton carrying Murdock’s fingerprints. Matt was put behind the wheel of the taxi, unconscious, and dropped into the East River. Drenched in whiskey, 
the doors corroded shut to prevent escape, Matt Murdock was left to inevitably drown in the taxi cab, which would inevitably be found and judged as the final, ignominious end of a disgraced former lawyer. As Kingpin planned, days passed before the taxi was reported missing, discovered and the wreckage dredged from the river.
But inside, there is no corpse. [Daredevil (1st series) #228]
Matt Murdock was alive, but not well. He began living on the streets of New York, half out of his mind and broken by the Kingpin’s machinations. Even Turk and Grotto managed to overpower him when they crossed paths. He had been beaten, stabbed, hit by a car, tossed off a bridge and caught pneumonia from the East River. Murdock stumbled back to Fogwell’s Gym, where his father trained, and finally collapsed. He was discovered by Sister Maggie of the Clinton Mission Shelter, who brought him to her church so he could recover physically and mentally. As his bones mended and the fog began to clear from his mind, Matt began to feel human again. He also began
to remember the last time he encountered Sister Maggie, visiting him in the hospital just after his accident, where he promised to consider his blindness a blessing. As he recuperated in his bed at the mission, Matt asked Maggie on a whim, “Are you my mother?” She said no, but her heartbeat told a different tale. [Daredevil (1st series) #229-230]
Life had gone on without Matt Murdock. Ben Urich found out about Nick Manolis and his son’s expensive heart treatment. When Manolis’ boy died anyway, he was prepared to go on the record admitting he lied about Murdock. A nurse named Lois was planted by Kingpin near Manolis and beat him into traction and broke the bones in Urich’s hand for even thinking the name Matt Murdock. Ben was traumatized into losing his nerve, at first. When Manolis called him from the hospital, intent on continuing his testimony, Ben heard the nurse Lois strangle Manolis to death over the phone line. This depravity was enough to renew Ben’s determination to tell his story, and he went to the police about Manolis’ death. Foggy and Glori had moved on together, and Foggy received a new job at a prestigious law firm which (unbeknownst to him) was owned by the Kingpin. Foggy’s new life was interrupted by the return of Karen Page. Karen had been on the run since Mexico, dodging Kingpin’s kill teams aiming to wipe out anybody in the chain who handled the information she sold about Matt’s identity. In a moment of clarity between heroin, Karen realized how badly she betrayed Matt and needed Foggy’s help finding him.
The Kingpin remained unnerved about Murdock surviving the taxi and made one last plan to draw 
him out. He requisitioned a psychotic inmate who he would send to kill Foggy Nelson while dressed up as Daredevil. Kingpin’s men visited Melvin Potter’s costume shop to get the outfit made. Matt was finally recovered enough to get back into action and he bounced between his friends to ensure their safety. He visited Melvin and assured him to make the costume, and nobody innocent would be hurt because of his contribution. Matt shadowed Ben and his police escort back to Ben’s apartment, where Lois intended to finish him off for defying the Kingpin. Thanks to Matt, Ben and his wife Doris were saved, and Lois went into custody. Things got complicated at Foggy’s apartment when Karen’s drug dealer boyfriend, Kingpin’s kill team and Kingpin’s psychotic in a Daredevil costume all converged. Despite all this, Karen and Foggy were saved and Matt privately reunited with Karen. [Daredevil (1st series) #231]
Despite everything they had been through, Matt forgave Karen. He was willing to give up on the 
legal field and his life before now, so long as they had each other. In the days that followed, as Karen finally detoxed, Matt found them a simple home in Hell’s Kitchen and got a job as a diner cook. He took the Daredevil costume off of the inmate but couldn’t quite bring himself to put it on. At least, not until Fisk pushed one more time. Using his connections with a corrupt general, the Kingpin purchased the services of Nuke, a super soldier he could deploy for his cause. Nuke was dropped into the middle of Hell’s Kitchen with no fanfare, using a machine gun and rocket launcher to cause as much chaos as possible to draw out Daredevil. He succeeded. The Devil rose from Hell’s Kitchen to defend it and took the fight to Nuke. After getting his measure, Daredevil threw Nuke off a building, electrocuted him with power lines and finally beat him senseless with his own rifle.
Daredevil surrendered Nuke to the Avengers, acting under federal authority, but the aftermath left Hell’s Kitchen a war zone. Matt and Karen did what they could to help Sister Maggie and the church until Captain America arrived. Cap took the idea of a wayward super-soldier personally, and Matt told him to look into the connection between the so-called “terrorist,” the military and the 
Kingpin. Nuke attempted to escape from custody while Cap was at the Department of Defense. Daredevil arrived on the scene as Nuke was being shot up by his own helicopter escort to keep him from talking. Daredevil got the dying Nuke to Ben Urich at the Daily Bugle, leading to a massive expose outing the Kingpin’s dirty dealings. People began to talk, too many to be silenced all at once. Fisk faced numerous charges which he either got dismissed or tied up in court, but his public image as a legitimate businessman was horribly tarnished and his hold over his criminal empire was precarious at best. [Daredevil (1st series) #232-233]