Navy News, opinions, editorials, news from Iraq, photos, reports - Navy Times

D.C. Madam suicide notes released

TARPON SPRINGS, Fla. — The so-called “D.C. Madam” says in suicide notes that she couldn’t bear to go to prison, and apologized to her mother and sister.

Florida police on Monday released the two notes Deborah Jean Palfrey wrote before she hanged herself in a shed outside her mother’s mobile home in Tarpon Springs last week.

Palfrey was convicted April 15 by a federal jury of running a prostitution service that catered to members of Washington’s political elite — including Sen. David Vitter, R-La. — and employed a Naval Academy instructor, Lt. Cmdr. Rebecca Dickinson, as a call girl.

Palfrey had denied her escort service engaged in prostitution, saying that if any of the women engaged in sex acts for money, they did so without her knowledge.

She was convicted of money laundering, using the mail for illegal purposes and racketeering.

Palfrey faced a maximum of 55 years in prison and was free pending her sentencing July 24.

She said in a note to her mother that the case was a “modern-day lynching.” She said she didn’t want to come out of prison “broken, penniless and very much alone.”