“THE D.C. MADAM WAS MURDERED!”

The late Brandy Britton

" ... She specifically said that there was a vendetta out on her and that she would likely be 'suicided.' ... Brandy Britton*, who worked for Palfrey and who saw many politicians, was also murdered right before her trial. ... There’s also the case of Sylvia Landry ** ... found hung in her cell [in Texas]. Why would she do that when she had money to gain by writing about these freaks? They need to reopen the Landry case. ... "

larryflynt.com
December 22nd, 2008

The Canal Street Madam - Jeanette Maier

Jeanette Maier, best known as “The Canal Street Madam,” reveals a criminal pattern behind the death of Deborah Jeane Palfrey.

On the morning of May 1, 2008, “D.C. Madam” Deborah Jeane Palfrey was found hanged in a storage shed near her mother’s home in Tarpon Springs, Florida. Local police wasted no time in ruling the death a suicide. But people familiar with the high-end escort service operator’s history and others who knew Palfrey personally suspected the authorities were guilty of a rush to judgment.

The 52-year-old Palfrey had been convicted on April 15 of racketeering and money laundering charges for running a prostitution ring that catered to the Washington, D.C., elite. Throughout her trial in U.S. District Court, Palfrey maintained that her company—Pamela Martin & Associates—provided escort services that were entirely legal.

HUSTLER Publisher Larry Flynt had steadfastly supported Palfrey in her efforts to exonerate herself and expose the hypocrites who had used her services. Based on phone records released by Palfrey, Flynt exposed Republican U.S. Senator David Vitter from Louisiana in July 2007 as a client of the D.C. Madam. Other names eventually linked to phone numbers in Palfrey’s records included former senior State Department official Randall Tobias and highranking military strategist Harlan Ullman. Prior to her death, Palfrey implied that she had information on several other prominent Beltway figures.

Palfrey’s sudden demise immediately generated widespread suspicion of foul play. In an interview after her body was discovered, Flynt told FoxNews.com, “I think the media should be very cautious in treating this as a suicide.” Also expressing suspicion, Fox talk-show host Geraldo Rivera called for Florida Governor Charlie Crist to order a full investigation.

D.C. private investigator Dan Moldea, who knew Palfrey and had worked with Larry Flynt to obtain her information, took the opposite view, claiming she told him she’d sooner commit suicide than go to jail. However, in a recorded interview with radio host Alex Jones shortly before her death, Palfrey declared, “No, I am not planning to commit suicide.”

Speaking with HUSTLER in 2007, Jeanette Maier—the former madam of the Canal Street Brothel in New Orleans—confirmed that D.C. Madam client David Vitter had also frequented her establishment in his pre-Washington years. Now, in the wake of the Eliot Spitzer scandal and the suspicious death of Palfrey, Maier is speaking out about the threats facing women who know too much.

HUSTLER: What was your first thought when you heard about the death of Deborah Jeane Palfrey?

JEANETTE MAIER: She was murdered! There are several reasons: She was looking at 55 years [in prison], but she would only get four to six. She was also working out a deal with someone to write a book. The owner of the condo she lived in said she was leaving with a box of papers. Where did those papers go? She also said to him, “I think people are following me.” That’s why she was going to her mother’s house. Why would a woman go to her mother’s house so her mother could find her dead? She would have hung herself in her condo if she were going to commit suicide that way.

Palfrey allegedly said she would kill herself before going back to jail.

A lot of people facing time will say stuff like that. I’ve said it, but I would never commit suicide. I did time in jail. It was a vacation. Palfrey was looking at only four to six years. There was no reason for that woman to kill herself. She had too much to gain by not doing so. The last interview she gave was on The Alex Jones Show. She’s on tape saying, “I’m not planning to commit suicide. I plan on defending myself vigorously.” She specifically said that there was a vendetta out on her and that she would likely be “suicided.”

Do you think Palfrey was murdered because of information she had, or do you think it was a revenge killing?

I think there was something she was hiding that was bigger than information she had already released. The people in the current establishment have got a lot to hide, and this lady knew a lot about them. There are rumors that Dick Cheney’s name could have been on that list, [although Palfrey admitted that she didn’t know for a fact that he was a client].

What about other cases similar to this one?

Brandy Britton*

Brandy Britton*, who worked for Palfrey and who saw many politicians, was also murdered right before her trial. Hung. She had everything ahead of her. She was young, bright, never talked about suicide; then she’s found hanging. [Britton allegedly was an escort for Randall Tobias.]

There’s also the case of Sylvia Landry **, a Baton Rouge madam. In 1992 she opened up a business, and in ’94 she [allegedly] sent black flowers [to her clients] in the state capital because they were going to give her jail time and weren’t helping her. She escaped a federal prison only to be caught again, supposedly. Then she’s found hung in her cell [in Texas]. Why would she do that when she had money to gain by writing about these freaks? They need to reopen the Landry case.

Why has there been a pattern of hangings as opposed to other methods?

If the police go in with forensics, everything has to be perfect. [In staged gunshot suicides] the victims have to have powder on their hands and perfect aim. There’s too much that would point to murder. So the best thing to do is hang them. Then they can just say, “Oh, well, she hung herself because she was depressed.” But women don’t [usually] hang themselves; that’s a fact. First of all, we don’t know anything about tying nooses, and we like to leave a beautiful corpse.

I once had a contract on my life. The man that was supposed to carry it out actually came to me and told me I was supposed to be killed, hung. But because he knew me, he wasn’t going to do that. Hookers all know that’s how they kill. I know what to expect when they come for me. I have a big knife, just waiting. I’m ready; and believe me, you will find DNA.

What about a Louisiana connection in the Palfrey case? U.S. Senator David Vitter was named and shamed by her information.

I wouldn’t put it past anybody right now. Other than [politics in] Washington, D.C., Louisiana politics are probably the most rotten. They think of us not as ladies, but a bunch of hookers. Just another whore is dead, you know? We are mothers, sisters, daughters and grandmothers. Society has to see us differently, and they have to see the system as corrupt.

I’ve slept with people that shoot drugs and sleep with hookers on the taxpayer’s money. I know because I got a lot of your tax dollars! I asked one city politician as he was sticking a needle in his arm, “When are you guys going to fix the streets?” He looked at his arm, he looked at me and said, “These are the streets.”

If you are found hanged, how will we know it wasn’t suicide?

I would not kill myself that way. I would never hang myself. You got times when your bills are piling up, and you think, I can’t handle all the crap that’s on my shoulders right now. But you make it through and hope for the future. I’m working on a possible sitcom and a couple of book deals. Why would I kill myself knowing that there’s a possibility of me coming into a lot of money? I’ve got a whole future ahead of me, just as Deborah had, just as Landry had. We have no reason to kill ourselves.

What do you recommend to women who know too much, such as Palfrey did, and whose lives may therefore be in danger?

Don’t run, don’t hide and don’t keep quiet. Let everybody know. I said on the radio: If I am found dead, it was them. Make sure you give all your information to somebody you trust. Tell them who you think may be after you. And leave a code for your family. Let people know that if you leave a suicide note, there’s going to be a special mark on that paper, a doodle or something, that means you were forced to sign it. Don’t be afraid to continue living. Show your face, be on TV. They’re going to come after you, so get as much information out there as you can. Make them more afraid of you than you are of them.

http://larryflynt.com/?tag=jeanette-maier
•••
* Brandy Britton

Trial Nearing, Alleged Call Girl Found Dead

Howard Police Probe Apparent Suicide of Former 'Top-Notch' UMBC Professor

By Darragh Johnson
Washington Post
January 30, 2007; Page B01

She was a former college professor who had lost almost everything -- her stellar academic reputation, her financial well-being and her anonymity in the swanky suburban neighborhood where she was accused of working as a high-priced prostitute.

With Brandy Britton's trial planned to start next week, the former University of Maryland Baltimore County professor apparently took her own life over the weekend, hanging herself in her living room, Howard County police say. A family member found the body Saturday afternoon. Police say they do not suspect foul play.

It was a grievous end to a life that friends and colleagues say was once filled with remarkable promise and ambition.

Britton, 43, was the first in her family to go to college, double-majoring in biology and sociology. Her first sociology professor, Sheila Cordray, told The Washington Post last year that Britton was "one of the brightest students I've ever had."

The woman whose looks matched her intelligence may still have possessed the long, blond hair, the glossy pink lips and the glamorous figure of her youth. And she may have still projected the warm, friendly demeanor of a small-town girl from Oregon.

But she was facing the world's toughest truth: She had no idea who she was about to become.

Her trial date on four counts of prostitution -- which she had decided to fight in a jury trial instead of accepting a plea agreement -- was set for Monday. Police would get a chance to air their version of Brandy Britton: that in her $400,000 home at the end of a cul-de-sac where children ride Razor scooters and moms drive minivans with soccer decals, Britton had been selling herself as a call girl.

She called herself Alexis, police said and advertised on a Web site that described Alexis as a "quintessential 'brick house' " and "sophisticated, refined, educated and articulate. She has two Bachelor of Science degrees, one in biology and the other in sociology. She also holds a Ph.D. from an elite university." It continued: "An athlete, cheerleader and dancer in high school, Alexis . . . is extremely flexible in excellent shape."

In a sting, Howard police sent an undercover officer to her house last January and arrested her.

Britton heatedly denied the allegations, but when The Washington Post asked her last year how she had been supporting herself since leaving UMBC in late 1999 and a subsequent job with the Baltimore public schools, she started to answer, then suddenly recommended a book: "Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry."

Fighting on Several Fronts

Her attorney, Christopher Flohr, has been out of his office taking care of his ailing father and had hoped to postpone her trial date. Flohr's partner, William Paul Blackford, heard the news of her death yesterday morning when The Post called. He sat in silence for several moments, then spoke of her other recent court battle: foreclosure hearings on her home.

He talked about Britton's fears that she would lose the house where she had raised two children, now grown, as a single parent and where she had been living with her two potbellied pigs, dog and two cats.

"That is one of the most heart-wrenching processes for a person to go through," Blackford said, continuing to talk, then interrupting himself, as though the news about Britton's death had just sunk in. "This is horribly sad."

Blackford suggested that Britton's state of mind lately was comparable to a starkly clean and ultra-modern home -- as Britton had decorated her living room and den, complete with sleek black leather couches -- and then "there's a stack of magazines in the living room and then there's a hamper," and then the mess has crept across everything.

"Her house," he added, "I think it's fair to say, it wasn't impressive."

Britton was a scramble of complications: She lived in a landscaped home with leaded-glass front doors that disguised the scratched-up carpet and scuffed walls inside. She was a sharp researcher whose dissertation focused on abused and battered women who then found herself, a few years ago, filing domestic-violence charges against her second husband: "He . . . tied me up with strapping tape" and "stabbed me in the neck," she told police.

In a statement yesterday, Flohr said that Britton's death "underscores an important question: Was the public benefited at all by the resources spent on her arrest and prosecution? As we ponder the apparent senselessness of her passing, we must openly wonder about . . . a criminal justice system that seeks to punish a person rather than heal them."

Confusion and Depression

"It's been a descent for Brandy," her mother, Victoria Britton, said last year from her home in Oregon. She did not return calls for comment yesterday.

Victoria Britton had cheered, she said, when her daughter earned a PhD in sociology and arrived in the mid-1990s at UMBC, where she received raises and raves from other professors, who called her work "really top-notch" and "invaluable."

But the raves subsided after Brandy Britton filed a $10 million sex discrimination suit against UMBC -- one mirroring the suit she had filed against her California employer just before joining UMBC. She left the university at the end of 1999.

"I spent my whole life working for that," she told The Post last year, as she talked about her PhD and her identity as a college professor. "It wasn't just a job to me. It was my life."

And now, she continued, she had no idea what would happen next -- or whom she could next become. Her fight with UMBC would keep her from ever teaching again. Already, she believed, "they" were tapping her phones and bugging her home.

It was too much, she said, and she found herself thinking:

" 'I'm going to lay down and die. I'm so depressed.' "

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/29/AR2007012900654.html
•••
** Sylvia Landry

Sylvia Landry opened three escort services: Dial-a-Date, Cosmopolitan and Charlie's Angels. As her client list expanded, Landry’s reputation gained her notoriety and attention in the Bayou state. By 1994, she was earning half a million dollars a year in net profits, with her client list rumoured to reach as high up as the Governor's mansion and perhaps even as far as Washington, DC.

Within two years, Landry's high-profile business ventures landed her in jail. She was arrested and charged with pandering and enticing women into prostitution, including the transportation of minors over state lines for these purposes. But Sylvia Landry was confident that her high-profile clients would pull the necessary strings to keep her out of jail.

Under pressure from authorities, a few of Landry's girls testified against her and her antagonistic attitude certainly didn't help matters. Through it all, Landry refused to turn over her client list. Some in Baton Rouge admired her defiance whilst others pushed for a local ordinance banning escort services. The case seemed to rip the city down the middle.

Landry was convicted on all counts and sentenced to six years in federal prison. She pleaded no contest to the state charges and was sent to serve her sentence in Texas. However, she escaped as soon as she arrived at the federal pen in Bryan, Texas. Three days later, Landry was apprehended less than three miles from the prison.


Whilst waiting for the transfer of Landry to a maximum security facility in Kansas, authorities found the Baton Rouge Madame dead in her jail cell, hanging from a homemade noose fashioned out of a bed sheet and attached to the smoke detector fixture in her cell.

Landry's death was officially ruled a suicide, but around Baton Rouge, many people thought she had been murdered at the behest of some of her more powerful clients. As none of her employees or her clients were ever prosecuted, many Baton Rouge residents still claim that Sylvia Landry was the only victim in an otherwise victimless crime.

http://www.crimeandinvestigation.co.uk/tv_programme/892/Crime_Central_Baton_Rouge_-_Scandal_on_the_Bayou.htm