'D.C. Madam' Palfrey Found Dead in Fla.

By Allison Klein and Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, May 1, 2008; 3:56 PM

Deborah Jeane Palfrey, convicted last month of running a high-end prostitution service in Washington, apparently committed suicide in Florida, officials have confirmed.

Authorities were called today to a mobile home park in Tarpon Springs, Fla., where they found a body in a residence belonging to Palfrey's mother. The St. Petersburg Times reported on its Web site that Palfrey was staying with her mother, Blanche Palfrey, at the Sun Valley Estates Mobile Home Park, at 167 Cypress Ave. The paper reported that Blanche Palfrey contacted police about the death about 10:52 a.m.

The elder Palfrey positively identified her daughter as the woman who committed suicide by hanging, police said. Blanche Palfrey awoke from a nap and began to search for her daughter, according to the police account. She went outside and noticed that a tricycle normally kept in the shed beside the mobile home had been moved. She went inside and discovered her daughter hanging by a nylon rope from a metal beam on the ceiling of the shed.

Palfrey, 52, was free while awaiting sentencing June 25 on federal racketeering charges. A federal jury convicted her April 15 of running a Washington area call-girl ring in the guise of "a high-end erotic fantasy service," rejecting her argument that she was unaware for 13 years that female escorts she employed were performing sex acts with clients for money.

Authorities said the body was found in a small storage shed on the west side of the home. They said that they found handwritten suicide notes and that there are no signs of foul play. Tarpon Springs police said they are working with the sheriff's and medical examiner's offices to determine the cause of death.

"This is tragic news, and my heart goes out to her mother," said lawyer Preston Burton, who represented Palfrey during the trial.

Dubbed the "D.C. Madam" after her indictment created a swirl of publicity a year ago, Palfrey had said she hired socially polished, college-educated women to indulge her customers' fantasies through "quasi-sexual" game-playing only.

The jury in U.S. District Court sided with prosecutors, who said Palfrey knew her clients were paying $250 an hour for full-fledged sexual encounters. The panel made its decision after hearing from various call girls and clients in a week-long trial. Palfrey did not testify.

Palfrey's mother often accompanied her to court last month. An employee at the mobile home park said that Palfrey had been visiting there recently.

Writers Dan Moldea, who interviewed Palfrey several times for a possible book about her experiences, said today that Palfrey told him three times that she would kill herself rather than return to prison. She had served an 18-month term in California in the early 1990s for running a prostitution service and told Moldea that it was "just a horrible, horrible period for her," the writer said.

"The first time she did time, it damn near killed her, she told me," Moldea said. "She wound up in a fairly tough prison, and the stress caused some sort of an illness, and it was a very debilitating illness that affected her eyesight."

Moldea said that, in three interviews last spring and summer, after she was indicted, Palfrey told him: "I'm not going back to jail. I'll kill myself first. I'll commit suicide before I go back to jail."

"Those were her exact words," he said.

The U.S. attorney's office had said that under sentencing guidelines, Palfrey probably faced a prison term of four to six years.

Palfrey ran her business, Pamela Martin & Associates, by telephone from her California home, and authorities said she grossed about $2 million from 1993 to 2006, splitting the money about evenly with her escorts. They said she employed at least 132 women over the years, dispatching them nightly to clients in homes and hotel rooms in the Washington area.

The recent conviction was not Palfrey's first dust-up with the law. She was convicted of running a prostitution ring in California 17 years ago and spent 18 months in jail.

Considering Palfrey's history, Assistant U.S. Attorney Catherine Connelly had asked Judge James Robertson last month to order her locked up until sentencing. But the judge declined, saying Palfrey is an "intelligent woman" who knows she would be punished if she tried to "flee the country."

Staff Writer Paul Duggan contributed to this report.

Suicide or a 'Chico Wang'? Just asking.

She was ugly.

A lot of people wanted her dead. Maybe one of them got to her mom's pad and took her out before the contents of her rolodex made it to the press.

Methinks she was "suicided". Dead pimpettes tell no tales.