Deborah Jeane Palfrey seems to have followed one of her former employees to suicide — a fate she once prided herself on having avoided.
Brandy Britton, 43, died by suicide in January 2007, days before she was scheduled to stand trial on prostitution charges and be evicted from her $600,000 suburban Baltimore home. Before her death, Palfrey said Britton, a former University of Maryland Baltimore County professor, was one of her employees.
“She wasn’t making enough money, so she decided to do a little moonlighting,” Palfrey said during an interview with newsmagazine “20/20.”
“I guess I’m made of something that Brandy Britton wasn’t made of,” Palfrey said after she learned of Britton’s apparent suicide.
In her last interview before her death, Britton told The Examiner she previously worked for an escort service called East Coast Elites, but she never mentioned Palfrey or her firm, Pamela Martin & Associates.
Britton’s Howard County police file made no mention of Palfrey or her escort service. Police said Britton was working alone when arrested in January 2006, and they have not connected her case to Palfrey.
After Britton’s death, Howard police turned over more than 186 pages of their investigative file into Britton’s alleged criminal activities to The Examiner, including client lists dating from Nov. 16, 2005, to Jan. 8, 2006.
Although Britton said her clients included “police, lawyers and judges,” her notes don’t appear to include the names of prominent people.
They do contain many partial names and code names, including notes for appointments with men identified only as “Robert,” “Bernard” and “David.” Next to their names, she sometimes wrote the callers’ purported occupations, such as “Dr.” or “Accountant.”
