Operator of D.C. Call-Girl Ring Is Dead in Apparent Suicide

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Police: 'Palfrey Confirmed Suicide'

Police in Tarpon Springs, Fla., held a news conference Thursday confirming that 'D.C. Madam' Deborah Jeane Palfrey committed suicide by hanging.

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The U.S. attorney's office in Washington, which prosecuted Palfrey, offered condolences to Blanche Palfrey in a short statement Thursday and declined to comment further.

Lawyer Preston Burton, who defended Palfrey at the trial, also declined to discuss her death beyond saying, "This is tragic news, and my heart goes out to her mother."

Palfrey's civil attorney, Montgomery Blair Sibley, who was helping her fight a government effort to seize her assets, called her death "a great personal tragedy" and said, "I don't have any comment except to say that I'm devastated."

The medical examiner in Pinellas County will make an official ruling on the cause and manner of Palfrey's death when police finish their investigation, Young said.

"Obviously, the mother's very distraught," he said. "Discovering your child in this state is not something anybody wants to go to."

ABC News reported on its Web site that Deborah Palfrey said in an interview last year that she would never return to prison.

"I sure as heck am not going to be going to federal prison for one day, let alone, you know, four to eight years," ABC quoted her as saying.

Appearing on ABC's "20/20" program a few months after her indictment, Palfrey spoke of Brandy Britton, a former college professor who hanged herself in her Howard County home in January 2007 shortly before her scheduled trial on prostitution charges. Palfrey said Britton had once worked for her.

"She couldn't take the humiliation," Palfrey said. "Her whole life was destroyed."

Moldea said Palfrey's 18-month California prison term was a terrible memory for her.

"The first time she did time, it damn near killed her, she told me," he said. "She wound up in a fairly tough prison, and the stress caused some sort of an illness that affected her eyesight. It was just a horrible, horrible period for her."

After Palfrey was released, Moldea said, "she began looking forward to what she was going to do with her future. Although she had a college degree, she viewed herself as a convicted felon who couldn't do anything else. So she came to Washington and got back into the business again."