| Page 2 of 4 < > |
Operator of D.C. Call-Girl Ring Is Dead in Apparent Suicide
TOOLBOX   Resize Text
 Save/Share +
COMMENT
|
Discussion Policy
CLOSE
On Thursday, police in Tarpon Springs, 30 miles north of St. Petersburg, said Blanche Palfrey called 911 shortly before 11 a.m. to report a gruesome discovery in the white shed outside her residence in the Sun Valley Estates Mobile Home Park.
Capt. Young said at a televised news conference that the elder Palfrey awoke from a nap and began looking around for her daughter. He said she noticed a tricycle in the yard that was normally in the shed.
"Upon entering the shed located on the west side of the residence, Blanche Palfrey discovered her daughter, Deborah, apparently hanged herself using a nylon rope from a metal beam on the ceiling of the shed," Young said.
Young said police found "approximately two" suicide notes in the mobile home, along with "some type of notebooks that had just notes to the family and so forth."
According to neighbors, Deborah Palfrey did not socialize and rarely left the mobile home, where Blanche Palfrey has lived for 14 years.
Young said that when the mother and daughter woke up Thursday, "they were both kind of tired. The mother said, 'I'm going to go take a nap real quick.' And that was the last she had talked to her."
He said Blanche Palfrey -- the diminutive woman with short curly hair who often accompanied her daughter to court during her trial last month -- had "no indication" that Deborah Palfrey intended to end her life. Young said Blanche Palfrey told police that her daughter did not appear anguished "to the point of committing suicide."
The U.S. attorney's office in Washington, which prosecuted Palfrey, offered condolences to Blanche Palfrey in a short statement Thursday but 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 through."
