A credit was omitted from the photo of Brandy Britton's home that appeared on the front of the May 21 Style section. The photo was taken by staff photographer Mark Gail.
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The House With The Lights On
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They also snapped handcuffs around her slim wrists and took her off to the lockup in Jessup.
Twelve hours later, just before midnight Jan. 17, Britton's dress, coat and shoelaces were returned to her, and she crossed the street to a gas station and called a cab. She'd been booked on four counts of prostitution, each carrying a maximum one year in jail and/or a $500 fine. Misdemeanors. Such cases rarely go to trial.
Britton says she's not guilty and denies the charges. She was framed, she says. It's a clever con job, perpetrated by her second husband.
Her trial has been rescheduled for Thursday. She is still interviewing attorneys.
An anonymous complaint of "prostitution activity" at her landscaped, two-story home in Ellicott City got the vice squad's interest in March 2005.
The caller described "an unusual amount of vehicle traffic" at Britton's house and added, "all of the visitors were male and rarely stayed for more than an hour," police wrote in their request for a search warrant.
The caller also offered a Web site where, police said, they found pictures of "Dr. Britton," noted that she "is listed as 'Alexis,' " calls herself a "natural 38D," advertised to a clientele "that appreciates class with a refreshing down to earth attitude" and gave a phone number.
Police "removed 4 bags of trash" from Britton's curb and found, according to their warrant application, "numerous condoms." They found another Web site, Alexisangel.com, now offline, with pictures and a biography that seemed to match Britton -- proof, police wrote, that Britton "had opened her own agency with other girls working for her."
Then, in December, a "concerned" woman called. She complained that "her husband had been visiting a prostitute," police wrote. "She had confronted her husband, who was spending between $300.00 and $500.00 a month on Britton . . . for sex and fellatio.' "
In a quiet corner of suburbia, where the houses are tidy and the children remarkable -- Britton's neighborhood high school boasts the highest SAT scores in a county with some of the highest SAT scores and household incomes in the region -- this was rare, salacious intrigue.
For months, Bonnie Sorak and other residents on Shirley Meadow Court had speculated about the goings-on at the home of the woman known to take walks at midnight, string Christmas lights at 4 a.m. and always buy candy when schoolkids went door to door. Lately, neighbors had noticed, men in golf shirts driving Lexuses and other nice cars seemed to be frequenting the house. Sorak had idly wondered if Britton was dealing drugs. Another neighbor had joked that she must be turning tricks.
Now, as Sorak pulled up to her house, her two small children in the backseat, she spotted police. Hurriedly closing the garage door behind her, she called her husband: "The SWAT team is over there now."
