Palfrey's Death—Unsolved Forever!

The DC Madam is dead. Long live the ATF...

Deborah Jeanne Palfrey went from nowheres-ville wallflower to US Pimp. Her call girl service catered to Washington's most powerful men, (and Senator Vitter, too) making her rich and powerful. Of course, in her biz, it also made her anonymous and loathesome. Everybody dislikes a cat house before and after they do business there. It's the downside to the sex trade.

So when Palfrey got busted, she did what any self-respecting service provider would do, given the disrespectful treatment a hooker gets at the precinct: she opened the "little black book." A Madam, like a gangster, is supposed to keep her mouth shut and go to jail. But a gangster gets respect where a hooker does not. So publicity demonstrates the only power she has over her circumstances, making famous clients sweat like the pigs they are.

So Palfrey named a few names and went to court. She threatened, in a loser-ish kind of way, to pull out all the stops if she got sent up the river. But when she was convicted, she quietly killed herself. Flash back a year or so to one of Palfrey's "operatives," as it were, Brandy Britton. Like Palfrey she had an unfortunate life, and when she was busted as a call girl, threatened to tell everything about everybody. She too committed suicide instead.

I have decided it's not a coincidence—the two suicides and the timing of the two events, that is. I have seen too many movies with Gene Hackman as the bad guy to accept that these gals were too dumb to go on when they held the Ace. I declare here and now they were executed by secret government agents whose job it is to destroy ordinary people whose lives intersect the soft, stinky underbelly of men in power.

It's quite simple, really. Whistle blowers are kept in check by the fear of reprisal. Reprisal is death. Guys like Bill Clinton don't hesitate to kill you, so you can just imagine how the Dicks (Nixon, Cheney, Armitage) respond. Nixon killed the Black Panthers, the Kennedys and Marilyn. Cheney shot a guy in the face and made him apologize. If you're that macho, imagine your reaction to some call girl's threat.

Yup. "Suicide" in her mother's shed. If you believe this, you need more time with the facts. And at the movies.