D.C. Madam: A Washington Witch Hanging

Author: markw  //  Category: People, Politics/Religion

Photo FrauBucher

Dr. SUSAN BLOCK
counterpunch.org

Ding dong, the DC Madam is dead
Hung from the rafters of her mother’s shed.
Hide under yer covers, Ye Dicks and Ye Johns!
Ye Senators and Prosecutors, Ye Media Cons!
There’s blood on yer hands, though you pretend to be clean,
Ye’ll always be haunted by the Ghost of Deborah Jeane…

The D.C. Madam wasn’t sentenced to death by hanging, but she might as well have been. All of the Johns and Dicks she serviced, including apparently, U.S. V.P. Cheney, covered their guilty dickheads and looked the other way, as police, prosecutors and judges vilified, harassed and condemned her, turning her into a “red meat” sacrifice for the sadistic entertainment of the Religious Right in the Coliseum of the American Media. Read more

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We haven’t heard the last of the DC madam

Author: markw  //  Category: People

Publishers Weekly
Literary agents Marianne Strong and Jason Allen Ashlock are discussing doing a documentary on Palfrey with producer Beverly Camhe, and they have also commissioned legendary biographer C. David Heymann and Gerry Visco to “pen a book looking inside the sex industry, with Palfrey as the touchstone. Perhaps her life won’t have been taken in vain,” Strong told us.

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Clinton, Cheney on D.C. Madam’s List?

Author: markw  //  Category: People, Politics/Religion


By Victor Thorn
American Free Press

Click here for more on Deborah Palfrey

Has another name been added to the long list of government-sponsored murders, with possible chief suspects belonging to the Bush-Clinton crime cabal? And, although police Captain Jeffrey P. Young revealed that at least two apparent suicide notes were discovered, suspicions are running high that foul play was involved in Palfrey’s hanging.

For starters, less than 10 percent of all female suicides are by hanging. According to journalist Mick Gregory, “of all female suicides, very few are by hanging. It’s been out of fashion for 100 years.”

What propelled this story into the national headlines was a client list of 10,000 to 15,000 names that included Washington’s political and business elite, including officials from the IMF and World Bank, corporate CEOs, White House and Pentagon employees and lobbyists.

Palfrey’s “little black book” of telephone numbers weighed 46 pounds and had already caused the resignation of Randall L. Tobias, deputy secretary of state to Condoleezza Rice. Others named in these phone logs were Bill Clinton’s former advisor Dick Morris, along with Harlan K. Ullman, the man who came up with “shock and awe.” Read more

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ABC News shielding Cheney after D.C. Madam death?

Author: markw  //  Category: People


Gustav Wynn
What makes intelligent debate impossible is the lack of detail available so far. We’re told the letters were penned a few days before her body was discovered hanged in he mother’s shed, left on a nearby motel stand, though we don’t know when investigators first saw them. Police say relatives confirmed her handwriting, but we know virtually nothing about her physical condition or other clues. Her autopsy was conducted quietly though a final report is due this week after toxicology results.

Palfrey’s note had a number of clichéd expressions used, including “modern day lynching”, referring to her trial and a darkly ironic reference to her subsequent manner of death. Among her known clients were current Louisiana Senator Vitter, and former AIDS Czar Randall Tobias but Dick Cheney’s number, reported earlier was summarily un-reported after a turnaround by ABC News.

ABC anchor Sam Donaldson has also been rumored, along with a law partner of Rudy Giuliani, associates of Jack Abramoff’s and many more Pentagon, DC and corporate insiders on a list of 10,000 calls. More on this story
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Deborah Palfrey, D.C. Madam: Just Another Suicide?

Author: markw  //  Category: People

Palfrey had another two months before sentencing in July. Despite the plethora of unanswered questions, the improbable suicide—not only the manner but timing—of both Palfrey and her associate, Brandy Britton; and their deaths so near to lengthly trials threatening the exposure of high-powered officials, are events that will soon fade forever from the public’s ephemeral memory hole.
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Death and the D.C. Madam: Call girls speak out

Author: markw  //  Category: People

Photo dogfrog

Salon.com Though Palfrey’s death is complicated, not to mention controversial, it does offer us some insight into the experience of sex industry workers, who bear the burden of a double life and the toll of secrecy. I contacted three women, currently chronicling online their past and present lives as sex workers, to speak to them about their reactions to Palfrey’s harrowing tale and how sharing their own stories might keep them from a similar kind of darkness.
More on this story
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Deborah Palfrey, D.C. Madam suicide notes

Author: markw  //  Category: People, Politics/Religion


Deborah Palfrey’s suicide notes were released today by Florida police. The notes are dated April 25th, nearly a week before her death. There’s no official word about whether the handwriting on the notes was analyzed, but Palfrey’s mother and sister identified her handwriting. The Police say the notes were found on a nightstand in the bedroom where she’d been staying. One of the notes reads: “Do not revive. Do not feed under any circumstances.” Police announced that the medical examiner’s office officially ruled Palfrey’s death a suicide by hanging. A toxicology report is pending.

In the note to her younger sister, Bobbie, Palfrey expressed her love and told her to “be strong for mom. “Also, you must comprehend that there was no other way out, i.e., ‘exit strategy,’ other than the one I have chosen here,” she wrote. “Know I am at peace, with complete certainty, I believe Dad is standing watch — prepared to guide me into the light.”

Palfrey had another two months before sentencing in July. Despite the plethora of unanswered questions, the improbable suicide—not only the manner but timing—of both Palfrey and her associate, Brandy Britton, and their deaths so near to lengthly trials threatening the exposure of high-powered officials, are events that will soon fade forever from the public’s ephemeral memory hole.

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Geraldo: DC Madam Palfrey’s Murder

Author: markw  //  Category: People, Politics/Religion


Click here for more on Deborah Palfrey

Fox News’ Geraldo has Alex Jones on to examine the evidence that shows that DC Madam Deborah Jean Palfrey was murdered– despite the official claim that she committed suicide.

Jones points out the numerous statements Palfrey made in refutation of suicide, as well as the criminology that women rarely hang themselves, generally preferring pills.

Geraldo and two co-hosts admit they agree with Alex Jones– that claims of Palfrey’s suicide are “stinky” and suspicious and that the case should be further investigated.

One woman even says that the John’s on Palfreys list– including many high-level politicians– should be revealed and prosecuted.

Palfrey’s hi-rise apartment manager in Florida says he saw Palfrey only days before her death when she told him a contract may be out on her life. Additionally, she made arrangements to secure her apartment for the next six years– the approximate time she expected to be in prison–seemingly pointing to the idea that she expected to stay alive.

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Palfrey Suicide: Cheney, Halliburton, are they linked to D.C. Madam?

Author: markw  //  Category: People, Politics/Religion

Photo Belltown Messenger

An April 11, 2008, entry made on the Independent Media Center website, posted by Styve, who credits the author as Wayne Madsen report, wrote on the developments of the “Washington Madam” trial at the US District Court in Washington, DC. “The Justice Department’s witnesses,” according to the web entry, “not only showed that prosecutors were compelling testimony from erstwhile hostile witnesses in return for immunity from prosecution but that the identities of the escorts of the defunct Pamela Martin & Associates escort agency were top flight professional women….”

The entry goes on to identify the escorts as: Navy Lieutenant Commander Rebecca Dickinson, 38, a former Annapolis Naval Academy Supply Officer, Dr. Rhona Reiss, 63, who was an escort at age 56, of Gaithersburg, Maryland, holding a doctorate in higher education, and Dr. Brandy Britton, 43, an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore Campus who used the escort name “Alexis;” Brandy Britton was found hanging in her home in January 2007. “It is not known,” the entry goes on, “if the Justice Department prosecutors had pressured Britton into testifying in the Palfrey case before her alleged ’suicide.’ Britton’s work for the agency may have directly [led] into the Annapolis office of Maryland Republican Governor Bob Ehrlich. It was a link that US Attorney for Maryland Tom DiBiagio was following before he was fired by the Justice Department.”

If true, here’s what’s interesting:

Since the beginning of the selective prosecution of Palfrey, common with the Bush Justice Department, it has been revealed that Pamela Martin escorts were highly-prized as assets for both the CIA and companies like Halliburton that were trying to leverage escorts to either obtain information from clients, particularly foreign leaders and businessmen visiting the Washington, DC area.

Halliburton was, according to WMR’ sources, a top client of the Pamela Martin agency, known for its discretion. At the trial on April 10, prosecutor Butler was interested in the type of sex performed by Dickinson on her clients. WMR has, in the past, hinted at the type of sex requested by one top escort agency client but, based on the government’s harassing of escort witnesses, we feel that it is time to present all what we now know. It is no secret that many of the escorts brought whips and handcuffs to trysts with clients. It is also known that Vitter enjoyed escorts changing his diapers after he defecated in them.

Although it appears that Cheney first became aware of Pamela Martin escorts though their work for Halliburton and its subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root…what is not known is that Cheney personally contracted in some of their services. In fact, Cheney reportedly was so fond of one that he arranged a political appointment for her in the Department of Agriculture shortly after the 2001 inauguration.

Cheney, according to knowledgeable sources involved in the Palfrey trial, paid at least one escort to straddle a glass top table and defecate on it while Cheney peered at the bowel “evacuation” from underneath.

Read more on this story.
Click here for more on Deborah Palfrey.

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D.C. Madam was under intense government surveillance

Author: markw  //  Category: People, Politics/Religion

Susie Bright, writer, audio-show host, interviewed Deborah Palfrey for 10 Zen Monkeys in late August 2007. “…[Deborah Palfrey] complains that she’d run her service for 13 years without so much as a peep of trouble from the police until [October 2006]…. And then all hell broke loose — just four weeks before the crucial 2006 elections. Under pressure, and suspicious about the timing of her bust, Palfrey eventually decided to go nuclear. She published the phone list of everybody who’d used her services.”

Deborah Palfrey:

For 31 months I was being observed! Any good vice cop will tell you that a simple prostitution bust or investigation takes no more than a few days to a few weeks to a few months to put together — from start to finish. It doesn’t appear that I was being looked at for prostitution-related activities, as much as I was being watched for my own personal and professional actions. My banking, my business affairs, my personal acts. So as for the question: why me and me alone? I think it’s logical to conclude that there was something that I had, or knew, that they found to be very valuable.

Who are they? We don’t know. Is it the GOP? Is it this administration? Is it Homeland Security? Is it the CIA? Who is “they”? We don’t know who they are…

When we were quiet as church mice — from last October 4, when the search warrant was executed, until March 1, when I was criminally indicted — we went to them on three occasions. We went to them in late October/early November, again in mid-January after New Year’s, and then finally at the last pre-indictment conference in late February. And we did everything — beg, plead, threaten, and cajoled the Assistant US Attorneys in this case. We asked them, “What is it that you want? What is going on here?” But they would not talk to us! They stood us up for an appointment. They did the most rudimentary motions work that they had to do… They wouldn’t hand over discovery! They stonewalled, stonewalled, stonewalled. And they were able to do so procedurally in the civil phase of this. We got nowhere.

At the very end, at this last pre-indictment conference in late February, we took the now famous photocopy of one page of that August, 1996 phone bill. And we said, “Look. We’ve got 46 pounds of this.

…October was one month before the very crucial November election of last year, when both the Senate and House went Democratic, and the balance of power in this country shifted. And, here I was, after 13 years, this very routine life… They must’ve watched me and thought I was the most boring person in the world. And all of the sudden, I start making these rather unusual or aberrant moves. I put my house of 15 or so years on the market. I closed my business rather unexpectedly — it wasn’t really unexpected, but if you’re watching me from afar, it would be a flag. My 13-year-business was shut down. And then I wire money — $70,000 — over to Germany, and make a little trip to Germany.

Which by the way was picked up on one of those Homeland Security terrorist watch programs — the ones which are supposed to be watching the terrorists?

They were watching me. Read more on this story.
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Memoir: Heidi Fleiss’ Advice for the then alive D.C. Madam

Author: markw  //  Category: People

Photo satanoid

Radar Online: “I know she’s probably being swallowed up alive, and a lot of people can’t take that weight on their shoulders,” says rehabilitated Hollywood madam Fleiss, “but she’s naming names and that goes against my principles—I realized I’d sunk my ship, but I wasn’t taking anyone with me.”

Palfrey’s lawyer has dropped a not-so-subtle hint about his next target, too: politico Dick Morris, whom he says he plans to depose in another civil proceeding, the Washington Post reports. Which raises another point for Fleiss: the fact that Palfrey is in hot water while the men who were allegedly her clients get slaps on the wrists. “There is a double standard, and I’m sure she [Paltry] feels that way,” says the former madam….
Read more

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Deborah Palfrey: “I’m being followed”

Author: markw  //  Category: People

Photo Francesco di Fazio

WESH.com reports the building manager of a Central Florida condo said he spent time talking to Deborah Jean Palfrey on Monday as she packed to go to her mother’s house and she did not seem suicidal…She often told him she believed she was being followed and he thinks there may have been some former clients of her escort service who wanted her dead.

“She insinuated that there is a contract out for her and I fully believe they succeeded,” her building manager said. Palfrey’s Lexus is still parked in the Park Lake garage and the staff said on Monday, she asked about making sure her condo fees would continue to be paid during what Palfrey anticipated would be six years in prison. See Video

Before her death, Palfrey is quoted in The New York Times as telling ABC: ”I’m sure as heck not going to be going to federal prison for one day, let alone four to eight years, because I’m shy about bringing in the deputy secretary of whatever. Not for a second. I’ll bring every last one of them in if necessary.”

And one can’t help but be suspicious when comparing the similarities in the events of Brandy Britton’s (a previous Palfrey employee arrested on prostitution charges in 2006) last days before her alleged suicide by hanging. In an Examiner article dating back to October 23, 2006, titled “Sex, lies & Ph.D.”, she speaks of being harassed by local police, claiming her sex clients are doctors, judges and politicians. “I don’t want to talk in the living room,” she says to a reporter, her voice hushed. “I think it’s bugged.”

ConnieTalk.com
points out:

But while the media has reported over and over again a quote from Dan Moldea - who told Time that Palfrey said she’d commit suicide before going to jail - little to nothing has been republished of her interview with The Alex Jones Show, in which she repeated multiple times for the record that she had no intention of suicide and planned to fight her case. She also implied that she found it suspicious that one of her former employees, Brandy Britton, committed suicide before her own trial in January.

“She was a very upbeat person, a very positive person,” Palfrey had said. “She was going into court, she was ready to fight ‘em…she was absolutely not going to give in…and all of a sudden…she committed suicide. And her family members, her friends say that this was extremely abnormal, she was not in a frame of mind to commit suicide, that perhaps she knew something.”

Women simply don’t hang themselves. At least in Marylin’s alleged suicide, her death was fashioned in the manner habitually employed by women: an overdose. Click here for more on Deborah Palfrey

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Murder speculation grows in DC Madam case

Author: markw  //  Category: People, Politics/Religion


Click here for more on Deborah Palfrey

Kimberly Guilfoyle, who previously served as an Assistant District Attorney at the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office from 2000 to 2004, currently anchors The Lineup, a weekend crime show that airs on the Fox News Channel. She expresses serious doubts that Deborah Palfrey committed suicide, finding it very peculiar, as I do, that a previous Palfrey employee, former University of Maryland, Baltimore County, professor Brandy Britton, arrested on prostitution charges in 2006, also hung herself before going to trial. Women rarely hang themselves. Kimberly Guilfoyle previously anchored Court TV and was a legal analyst/commentator for CNN and ABC.

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DC Madam: “They will make it look like suicide”

Author: markw  //  Category: People, Politics/Religion, Video


Audio from Alex Jones Radio Show
Click here for more on Deborah Palfrey
WASHINGTON BREATHES BIG SIGH OF RELIEF
“In an interview last year, Palfrey vowed to fight the federal prosecutors who brought the charges against her. “They just destroy you on every level, financially, emotionally, psychologically,” she said, but still she refused to accept any deal they offered. The Audio interview is with Alex Jones.”

What’s even more intriguing is an additional suicide related to this case: “Former University of Maryland, Baltimore County, professor Brandy Britton was arrested on prostitution charges in 2006. Before going to trial, Britton [also] committed suicide in January by hanging herself in her home in an upscale neighborhood between Baltimore and Washington”. Two suicides both by hanging. Women don’t normally hang themselves. Palfrey reportedly told author Dan Moldea last year that she wasn’t going to jail. “She told me that very clearly,” says Moldea. “She told me she would commit suicide,” Moldea told Time. Yeah, OK.

This from Prison Planet:

DC Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey predicted she would be “suicided” on several occasions both recently and as far back as 17 years ago - comments that now appear ominous in light of the announcement that the former head of a Washington escort service allegedly killed herself today. During several recent appearances on The Alex Jones Show, Palfrey also said that she was at risk of being killed and that authorities would make it look like suicide. She made it clear that she was not suicidal and if she was found dead it would be murder. Palfrey had threatened to release the names of well-known clients of her upscale call girl ring in the nation’s capitol, and had indicated that Dick Cheney may be one of them. “We now know it goes at least as high as a United States Senator,” Palfrey told The Alex Jones Show, “I’m hearing rumors now from other people that there are other possibilities in that stratosphere so to speak, on that level.”

Read more

This from a Fox News Interview:

Flynt said he believes that in her quest to avoid prison time — her sentencing hearing had been scheduled for July — Palfrey was prepared to release one or two final names connected to her case. “She had a lot of names, and I know she was holding on to them for a reason,” Flynt said. He said he knew some of the clients’ names, and they include big-hitters in the political and media worlds. None of those names came to light, though, because they didn’t fit the mold that Flynt was pushing for: politicians who said one thing and did another. Only Vitter, Flynt said, appeared to match that description. But Flynt hinted at much juicier material to be unearthed.

“Let me put it this way, there were more Democrats on it than Republicans,” he said, supporting his theory that the only reason this case was of interest was because of the number of Democrats who could be targeted by the Bush administration.

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