MIAMI (AFP) — "DC Madam" Deborah Jeane Palfrey lamented the "modern-day lynching" she suffered when convicted of running a high-end prostitution ring, and said she would rather die than go to jail, according to suicide notes released Monday by police.
"I want you to know how very much I love and appreciate you," Palfrey began her anguished and apologetic farewell to her mother, who found Palfrey's body May 1 hanging by a nylon rope in a shed of the elderly woman's mobile home in Tarpon Springs, Florida.
Palfrey, 52, was convicted last month on federal racketeering charges for running a prostitution ring for the rich, famous and powerful, including members of Congress and other Washington power-brokers.
She was awaiting sentencing in July, and faced a reported maximum of 55 years in prison although she was expected to receive a substantially lighter sentence.
"I can't sufficiently express to you how badly I feel for this burden I am leaving you with here," she said in the handwritten note.
"However, I cannot live the next six to eight 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 and very much alone woman."
In a separate note to her sister "Bobbie," she wrote: "You must comprehend there was no way out, i.e. 'exit strategy' for me, other than the one I have chosen here."
A third hand-written note said merely "Do Not Revive. Do Not Feed Under Any Circumstance."
All three notes were dated April 25, six days before her death, which the Pinellas County Medical Examiners and Tarpon Springs police ruled a suicide.
A final post-autopsy report is due next week, and toxicology reports are pending, police captain Jeffrey Young said in a statement.
Young said the mother and sister confirmed the notes were written by Palfrey.
Palfrey's agency -- Pamela Martin and Associates -- which she insists was a legal escort service, is said to have catered to a broad cross-section of private and public elite, including NASA officials, several US military brass, and World Bank and International Monetary Fund executives.
Her arrest last year had Washington on tenterhooks, amid rumors and speculation about which movers and shakers might be on her powerful client list.
In 2007, conservative Louisiana Senator David Vitter apologized after being exposed as a former customer, and the head of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Randall Tobias, stepped down after being identified as a patron.
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