In what appears to be an suicide, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who was charged with running a high-priced call girl ring under the guise of an escort service, was found in the shed of her mother's house, which was 20 miles northwest of Tampa, hanging from a nylon rope from a beam in the shed's ceiling, according to police.
Palfrey was convicted of money laundering, using the mail for illegal purposes and racketeering but she had not been sentenced yet. She was scheduled to be sentenced July 24.
Her mother, Blnche looked in the shed after taking a nap and found her daughter's body and called 911.
Handwritten notes , including a suicide note, were found at the scene, and she left other chilling clues with the biographer Dan Moldea, who spoke to her last year, according to Time magazine:
“She wasn’t going to jail, she told me that very clearly. She told me she would commit suicide,” author Dan Moldea told Time soon after news broke … “She had done time once before [for prostitution],” Moldea recalls. “And it damn near killed her. She said there was enormous stress — it made her sick, she couldn’t take it, and she wasn’t going to let that happen to her again.”
More from ABC News.
Channing Phillips, the spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in the District of Columbia, said that under sentencing guidelines, Palfrey faced about five or six years in prison.
Sympathies go out to her mother.
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