'I Abhor Injustice,' Alleged Madam Says

"As the old saying goes, 'I need to dance with the guy who brung me,' " she wrote in an e-mail to a Washington Post reporter. "I have promised ABC News that the '20/20' interview will be an exclusive one. I am sure you can understand my situation."

For all the attention she is attracting, Palfrey retains an air of mystery. She has dropped intriguing hints about herself over the years but demurs when asked for an interview about her life.

"I am not a quitter," Palfrey wrote in another e-mail to The Post. "Additionally, I abhor injustice, on any level and in any forum. I frankly persist despite life's barriers. It is no more complicated than this."

She sees herself as an entrepreneur being railroaded by an all-powerful government, in a "David and Goliath scenario." Prosecutors have made much of her history: In 1992, she pleaded guilty to attempted felony pimping. She started her Washington business while on probation in California.

The little that is known about Palfrey comes from court records in California and Washington, interviews with acquaintances and a series of e-mails. Through her writing -- facile, self-assured, with triple exclamation points for emphasis -- she shows contradictions and gumption, a woman who says she lives by "the Golden Rule" and who describes herself as sophisticated, a perfectionist and "a cat person" who will not go away without a fight.

Old friends can't decipher the contrasting images.

"I thought I was a pretty good friend in high school," said Debbie Blozik, who lives in Birmingham, Ala. "But I'm thinking now how many things I really didn't know about her."

Home was Charleroi, Pa., population 5,000, which sits on a hillside overlooking the Monongahela River, south of Pittsburgh, its older homes clustered on steep streets.

The elder of two girls, Palfrey was born in 1956 to Frank Palfrey, who worked for a grocery company and died in 2002, and Blanche, a homemaker now living in Florida. The family resided for a while in Orlando but returned to Charleroi when Palfrey was 10, to a modest house with striped awnings on Shady Avenue.

Neighbors viewed "Debbie" as a bright, attractive girl. In high school, she was a majorette. She performed a modern dance solo in the senior talent show. But before graduation, she left abruptly, finishing in Florida. She said that she couldn't take the bullying anymore.

Palfrey graduated with a bachelor's degree in criminal justice from Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., attended a year at what is now Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego and completed a nine-month paralegal course.

She got into the escort business in San Diego, she said, because she was "appalled and disgusted" by how "seedy, lazy and incompetent" other escort agencies were, she wrote in court papers. An avowed teetotaler, she said she did not like the drug-related atmosphere in the other agencies.