“The past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past.”
William Faulkner’s famous quote comes to mind as the one-year anniversary of Deborah Jeane Palfrey’s death approaches. On May 1, 2008 the 52-year-old D.C. Madame was found hanged in a shed behind her elderly mother’s Florida home. Local officials quickly classified it as an apparent suicide after finding hand-written notes at the scene. It should have been the tragic end of a lurid sex scandal involving high-priced call girls and their top-secret-clearance johns, including a U.S. senator and at least two high-ranking State and Pentagon officials.
A year later, however, a few troubling loose ends still won’t tie. There’s the May 14, 2008 AP story quoting the manager of Palfrey’s Orlando condo building, who said she told him that people were following her and she was afraid for her life – a strange comment for someone who would take it herself just four days later.
After her indictment on money laundering and racketeering charges, Palfrey filed a court memo on Sept. 10, 2007 asking for a pretrial conference “to consider matters relating to classified information” she intended to use in her “public authority” defense. The Justice Department’s “Criminal Resource Manual” says such a defense is used when a defendant “alleges that he/she committed the crimes charged in response to a request from an agency of the government.”
The memo also describes a “honeypot” – a trap set by a female intelligence officer or a prostitute clandestinely working for the government intended to “capture, kill or compromise a person… using sex as the lure” – and says there was “much more than supposition” to back up her claim that there was a hidden reason Pamela Martin & Associates had been allowed to operate unmolested for 13 years right under the noses of more than 50 law enforcement agencies.
Palfrey’s plan to invoke “equitable collateral estoppel” – which prevents one party (the government) from taking a different position at trial than it did at an earlier time if the other party (Palfrey) would be harmed by the change – clearly implies a prior clandestine relationship. If she was a spook, she would have been legally prohibited from revealing it publicly, leaving her in a legal Catch-22 if her handlers pulled the plug.
Then there’s her will, purportedly found in her Vallejo, CA home, that left part of her $2 million estate to The Innocence Project – a public policy organization founded by former attorney general Janet Reno at Yeshiva University’s Cardozo School of Law and dedicated to exonerating those who are wrongfully convicted. Yeshiva made the news recently when it lost more than $100 million invested with its trustee, Bernie Madoff. A spokesman confirmed that Palfrey made “a few small donations,” insisting that there was no other connection. However, I found out later that she had pleaded with the Innocence Project for help with her defense – and was rebuffed. Why would she leave a bequest to a group that refused to help her in her time of greatest need?
When I asked attorney Preston Burton, now representing her mother, if Palfrey had been working for anybody else at the time of her arrest, he declined to comment, citing attorney/client privilege.
A status hearing on Palfrey’s still-unsettled estate is scheduled for 11 am Thursday before U.S. District Court Judge James Robertson – the same judge who refused her request for a classified hearing. A settlement – which would conveniently avoid a public trial – is expected, leaving lots of unanswered questions.
Barbara F. Hollingsworth is The Examiner’s local opinion editor.
