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D.C. Madam Apologizes To Mom, Sister In Letters

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By STEPHEN THOMPSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 5, 2008

Updated: 05/05/2008 06:38 pm

TARPON SPRINGS The release of two suicide notes and the preliminary findings of an autopsy today confirmed what most already had concluded – that Deborah Jeane Palfrey, aka the D.C. Madam, had killed herself by hanging.

The suicide notes – one to her mother, the other to her sister – reveal Palfrey, 52, couldn't stand the thought of being sent to prison after she was convicted in federal court last month of money laundering and racketeering, among other charges.

She operated a Washington D.C. prostitution ring that catered to the rich and powerful, and made more than $2 million. At her sentencing, which was scheduled for July 24, she faced a maximum sentence of 55 years in prison.

"I cannot live the next 6-8 years behind bars for what both you and I have come to regard as this 'modern day lynching,' only to come out of prison in my late 50s a broken, penniless & very much alone woman," Palfrey wrote her mother, Blanche Elizabeth Palfrey, 76, in one suicide note.

It was her mother who found Palfrey on Thursday. Palfrey had hung herself from a metal beam, in a shed next to her mother's mobile home in the Sun Valley Mobile Home Park.

Palfrey apologized to her mother in advance for killing herself.

"I can't sufficiently express to you how badly I feel for this burden, I am leaving you with here,'' the suicide note says. However, such remorse was outweighed by the toll Palfrey believed prison would take on her.

To her sister Bobbie Palfrey, she wrote: "You must comprehend there was no way out i.e. 'exit strategy' for me other than the one I have chosen here." She told her sister to be strong for their mother.

Palfrey had served 18 months in a state prison after one of her earlier escort services, started from San Deigo, crashed and she was arrested in 1990, according to the Washington Post. After her release, she started a new enterprise, which federal authorities started investigating in 2004, culminating in her conviction last month, the Post has reported.

Palfrey believe her mother would not live long enough to see her release from prison, and she didn't believe her sister Bobbie would likely be able to "shoulder the responsibility of a sister who will be nothing but a mere shell of her former self" after her sentence was served.

Bobbie picked up the telephone at her mother's mobile home Monday, but said neither she nor her mother would be commenting.

Deborah Palfrey also believed death would bring her peace, and that her deceased father would be on the other side "standing watch – prepared to guide me into the light,"

her suicide to her sister reveals. Her father, Frank Palfrey, worked for a grocery company and died in 2002.

"I will see you and mom again someday," she wrote to her sister, "Rest assured if possible I will watch over each of you from the other side." The notes are dated April 25, a week before she was found.

The Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner's Office has ruled Palfrey's death a suicide by hanging. Detectives have reached the same conclusion.

"There's nothing to indicate anything other than a suicide in this instance," Tarpon Springs police spokesman Jeffrey Young said.

When asked about "a little surprise" Palfrey told her mother she had left her in a Bank of America account, Young said that information, along with everything else Tarpon Springs detectives have found, was being shared with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, which handled the federal case against her.

Palfrey also left instructions to the effect that she was not to be revived.

Reporter Stephen Thompson can be reached at (727) 451-2336 or spthompson@tampatrib.com.

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