Deborah Jeane Palfrey
(credit: AP)
Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who allegedly ran an upscale escort service, reads a statement outside federal court after her arraignment on federal racketeering charges March 9, 2007. Palfrey, born March 18, 1956, reportedly feared a long jail sentence and hanged herself May 1, 2008. Her suicide notes were released by police on May 5, 2008. In them, she told her sister to take care of their mother. And, to her mom, she wrote “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 and very much alone woman.”