Deborah Jeane Palfrey, known in the tabloid press as the "D.C. Madam," has reportedly killed herself to avoid going to prison. On April 15, she was convicted on charges of money laundering, using the mail for illegal purposes and racketeering, stemming from running a call-girl ring that served D.C.'s political elite.
The highest-profile client who had been revealed thusfar was Louisiana Senator David Vitter, who had paid prostitutes to diaper him as part of sexual fantasy games.
Palfrey had previously threatened to expose her high-profile clientele.
''I am sure as heck am not going to be going to federal prison for one day, let alone, you know, four to eight years here, because I'm shy about bringing in the deputy secretary of whatever,'' Palfrey told ABC last year when she released phone records that revealed some of her clients. ''Not for a second. I'll bring every last one of them in if necessary.''
Senator Vitter, military strategist Harlan Ullman, and Randall Tobias, a former senior State Department official, were among those identified as potential defense witnesses. The defense was not allowed to call any of them at the trial.
I say that Palfrey "reportedly" killed herself because we don't know the extent to which she may have been coerced. Even though she evidently left suicide notes in her own hand and presumably conducted the hanging herself, we may never know what threats from people with something to lose, perhaps to harm others, may have prompted the act.
Palfrey had previously rejected the notion of suicide as a response to the shame of her arrest.
One of the escort service employees was former University of Maryland, Baltimore County, professor Brandy Britton, who was arrested on prostitution charges in 2006. She committed suicide in January before she was scheduled to go to trial. Palfrey said last year that she, too, was humiliated by her prostitution charges, but said: ''I guess I'm made of something that Brandy Britton wasn't made of.''
Serious official investigations should commence as to the events leading up to Palfrey's death. I submit that if it were a liberal Democratic Senator with a kinky fetish whom a madam had publicly threatened to blackmail, and who them committed suicide, such investigations would commence.
In the meanwhile, it will be interesting to see the extent to which the supposedly "equal opportunity" salacious popular media picks up on the closing chapter of this story. Will Sen. Vitter even be asked to comment? Will cable news run two minutes on the story every half hour? Will John McCain be asked to distance himself from David Vitter?
I think that we already know the answers to those questions.
Aside from the obvious issues that this suicide raises, including
* the craven hypocrisy of substantial numbers of leading Republican "moralists"
* the pickiness of the media in deciding what salacious stories become news
* the way that the court system can be used to prevent a thorough airing of facts, as well as -- witness Bill Clinton's problems of the mid-to-late 1990s -- to amplify them
it's a good moment to remind ourselves that while prostitution may be a victimless crime in theory, in reality it often does have victims, and these are overwhelmingly the diaperers rather than the diaperees. Deborah Palfrey, like Brandi Britton, is dead. You're not going to hear much about it. There are various plausible solutions to the problem of prostitution -- from legalization to decriminalization and taxation to focusing on customers rather than providers to whatever fevered robot dream is in Glenn Reynolds's head -- but the closing of this chapter should remind us that the present approach is not working. The women tend to die; the famous clients tend to get away largely unscathed.
Update: a lot of people are upset at the diary and/or the title. I don't have a lot of clear explanations yet as to why; mostly general condemnations. If the notion that the main points identified in the above blockquote are unimportant, I disagree. If it's the mention that Palfrey ran a call girl service, had Vitter as a client, and her call girls evidently diapered him at his request, then with respect I disagree that those details are disrespectful towards Palfrey. The first is beyond dispute; the second she wanted brought out at trial, and the third is critical to the main question: why is cable news ignoring a story that would be running non-stop if Vitter had been a Democrat?
That said, I'm sorry for people's negative reactions, and if I see any convincing argument that the question of selective media coverage should not be raised in conjunction with this case, I may consider deleting. So far, I'm not convinced.