Brandy Britton, the former assistant professor charged with prostitution, died in an apparent suicide this weekend, Howard County police said. She was 43.
A relative found Britton hanged to death Saturday in her Ellicott City home.
Police said no signs of foul play were found, but the home contained other evidence that supported the finding of suicide.
Her apparent suicide comes days before Howard County authorities were set to evict her from her nearly $600,000 Ellicott City home and as she waited to stand trial on four counts of prostitution.
A notice posted on Britton?s front door Monday set her eviction date for Thursday. Her criminal trial was slated to begin Feb. 5.
In the last interview she gave, Britton told The Examiner of the downward spiral her life had taken since she was arrested Jan. 17, 2006, and accused of being a prostitute.
Britton, a former assistant professor of sociology and anthropology at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, resigned amid controversy from the university in 1999.
Without a steady job and mortgage payments piling up, Britton became desperate, she said.
“I got physically sick during the foreclosure objection,” she said in an October interview. “I knew they wanted to get my house.”
In recent years, Britton also had struggled with an abusive second husband, who twice pleaded guilty to assaulting her.
“I needed income to pay my mortgage payment, so I got into this relationship,” she said. “To make a long story short, his behavior escalated, and he got more and more violent. Then I spent the next four years trying to escape from him.”
Britton stressed the personal turmoil of losing her house and facing criminal charges. She questioned whether county authorities had the right to force her from her home.
“They foreclosed on my property illegally,” she said. “There was real misconduct here.”
Police said in 2006 that Britton had turned to prostitution.
Britton operated a Web site called Alexisangel.com that stated Britton charged a minimum of $300 an hour for modeling and providing companionship, police said.
In her last interview, Britton denied that she was anything more than a high-end escort, who was paid for companionship and conversation that would not necessarily lead to sex.
“I thought I would hate the job … ,” she said. “But I really liked it and I made some really good friends … . It?s a long story, but as a feminist, it made me see things differently. They love their families and their kids. They?re good guys that really love their wives.”
Britton?s attorneys, Christopher Flohr and William Blackford, released a statement late Monday about her death.
“Brandy was and always will be a good, kind and generous soul who will be dearly missed by her friends and family, but her death underscores an important question: Was the public benefited at all by the resources spent on her arrest and prosecution?” they wrote.
