Alleged Madam Abhors 'Injustice' 

2007-04-29 
Posted By: Intellpuke 


"Miz Julia" doled out a steady stream of advice, both practical and
philosophical.

From her California home, she e-mailed tips to the 132 women who
worked across the Washington, D.C., area for the firm Pamela Martin &
Associates. Her newsletters, now excerpted in court records, were a
virtual how-to manual for avoiding all kinds of trouble in a business
said to specialize in erotic fantasies.

"One never quite knows where evil, i.e., the vice squad is lurking in
this business," read one arch entry from 1995. "The misogynists get a
real kick out of surprising (shocking) you girls, when you give them
the opportunity!!! . . . Therefore, you are to lock, double lock,
triple lock all doors!!! ... Figure it out, before they 'get
cha'!!!"

Miz Julia was the pseudonym for Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the woman at
the center of a sex scandal that has caused a deputy secretary of
state to resign and has lawyers calling around town trying to keep
their clients' names out of public view. A one-time law student,
Palfrey ran for 13 years what she insists was a legal escort service.
Federal prosecutors allege she was providing $300-an-hour
prostitutes, and a grand jury indicted her in February on federal
racketeering charges.

Palfrey piqued fascination - and anxiety - by first threatening to
sell phone records that could unveil thousands of clients, and then
handing them over, apparently for free, to ABC News. She is scheduled
to appear tomorrow in U.S. District Court in the District of
Columbia.

On Friday, Randall L. Tobias resigned as deputy secretary of state
one day after confirming to Brian Ross of ABC that he had patronized
the Pamela Martin firm. Speaking Saturday on "Good Morning America,"
Ross said Tobias told him Tobias' number was on Palfrey's phone
records because he had called "to have gals come over to the condo to
give me a massage." There had been "no sex," Ross quoted Tobias as
saying, and that recently he has used another service, "with Central
American gals," for massages.

Tobias, who is 65 and married, was director of U.S. Foreign
Assistance and administrator of the U.S. Agency for International
Development. He previously held a top job in the Bush administration
overseeing AIDS relief, in which he promoted abstinence and a policy
requiring grant recipients to swear they oppose prostitution.

Palfrey's flamboyant attorney, Montgomery Blair Sibley, said Friday
that he has been contacted by five lawyers recently, asking whether
their clients' names are on Palfrey's list of 10,000 to 15,000 phone
numbers. Some, Sibley said, have inquired about whether
accommodations could be made to keep their identities private. ABC is
expected to air a report on Palfrey and her clients on "20/20" on May
4, during sweeps.

More revelations are in the offing. Ross said the list includes the
names of some "very prominent people," as well as a number of women
with "important and serious jobs" who had worked as escorts for the
firm.

The disclosures have been made sparely and artfully. Two weeks ago,
in court documents about calling former clients to testify on her
behalf, Palfrey named Harlan K. Ullman, an academic whose main claim
to fame was a scholarly paper he wrote more than a decade ago on the
military strategy known as "shock and awe." Responded Ullman: "It
doesn't deserve the dignity of a response."

Sibley also filed notice that he intends to depose political
consultant Dick Morris in a separate civil proceeding. Morris would
not comment.

Palfrey also declined to comment on either Tobias's resignation or
other names that could arise.
"As the old saying goes, 'I need to dance with the guy who brung me,'
" she wrote in an e-mail to a Washington Post reporter. "I have
promised ABC News that the '20/20' interview will be an exclusive
one. I am sure you can understand my situation."

For all the attention she is attracting, Palfrey retains an air of
mystery. She has dropped intriguing hints about herself over the
years but demurs when asked for an interview about her life.

"I am not a quitter," Palfrey wrote in another e-mail to the Post.
"Additionally, I abhor injustice, on any level and in any forum. I
frankly persist despite life's barriers. It is no more complicated
than this."
She sees herself as an entrepreneur being railroaded by an
all-powerful government, in a "David and Goliath scenario."
Prosecutors have made much of her history: In 1992, she pleaded
guilty to attempted felony pimping. She started her Washington
business while on probation in California.

The little that is known about Palfrey comes from court records in
California and Washington, D.C., interviews with acquaintances and a
series of e-mails. Through her writing - facile, self-assured, with
triple exclamation points for emphasis - she shows contradictions and
gumption, a woman who says she lives by "the Golden Rule" and who
describes herself as sophisticated, a perfectionist and "a cat
person" who will not go away without a fight.

Old friends can't decipher the contrasting images.
"I thought I was a pretty good friend in high school," said Debbie
Blozik, who lives in Birmingham, Alabama. "But I'm thinking now how
many things I really didn't know about her."

Home was Charleroi, Pennsylvania, population 5,000, which sits on a
hillside overlooking the Monongahela River, south of Pittsburgh, its
older homes clustered on steep streets.

The elder of two girls, Palfrey was born in 1956 to Frank Palfrey,
who worked for a grocery company and died in 2002, and Blanche, a
homemaker now living in Florida. The family resided for a while in
Orlando but returned to Charleroi when Palfrey was 10, to a modest
house with striped awnings on Shady Avenue.

Neighbors viewed "Debbie" as a bright, attractive girl. In high
school, she was a majorette. She performed a modern dance solo in the
senior talent show but, before graduation, she left abruptly,
finishing in Florida. She said that she couldn't take the bullying
anymore.

Palfrey graduated with a bachelor's degree in criminal justice from
Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, attended a year at what is
now Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, California, and
completed a nine-month paralegal course.

She got into the escort business in San Diego, she said, because she
was "appalled and disgusted" by how "seedy, lazy and incompetent"
other escort agencies were, she wrote in court papers. An avowed
teetotaler, she said she did not like the drug-related atmosphere in
the other agencies.

"I decided to branch out, so to speak, from my solo state and began
working with one or two (maybe three at the most) other women," she
said in her California legal pleadings.

She told Thomas Czech, a career Marine who said he dated Palfrey for
about two months, that she was an interior designer. Things ended
badly, and Czech took out a restraining order against her in San
Diego County in 1989.

Palfrey's professional life also took a turn for the worse. Her
business crashed when she was arrested in 1990; an employee's angry
mother apparently tipped off police. Palfrey employed about a dozen
women and would have made $100,000 that year, she said.

She said her employees were "independent agents" and allowed that she
should have "done something to police/eliminate such conduct from
occurring."
Palfrey was a no-show at her scheduled trial in August 1991. She was
captured that October in Montana. She explained to the court that the
stress from the criminal proceedings had caused her to flee. Her
mother, she said, was so upset that she developed a life-threatening
aneurysm and required surgery. She said her parents "just can't
comprehend how my offense could be viewed so harshly." Once free, she
said, she planned to go into business exporting "authentic American
Western and Indian art to the United Kingdom."

Instead, after 18 months in state prison, Palfrey started Pamela
Martin. The firm recruited escorts through the University of Maryland
student newspaper and Washington City Paper. It advertised in the
Yellow Pages and on Web sites, touting itself as "undoubtedly the
best adult agency around."

Her career path apparently was lucrative, but not spectacularly so.
Prosecutors say she made about $2 million running Pamela Martin over
13 years - on average, less than $160,000 a year. Her Escondido,
California, home was valued at about $480,000 last year, and her
Vallejo, California, house at about $495,000, according to court
papers related to their seizure by the federal government.

Recently, Charleroi has exerted a pull on Palfrey as she returned,
quietly. In late 2002, she launched a Charleroi Area High School
alumni association Web site. On it, she expressed her interest in the
Innocence Project for wrongly convicted prison inmates: "Never could
stomach injustice, social or otherwise," she wrote, adding a
photograph of herself as a young girl with shiny bangs by a Christmas
tree.
In 2004, the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Postal Service
launched a joint investigation of Pamela Martin & Associates.
Palfrey, who conducted most of her business by e-mail and phone,
allegedly instructed her "subcontractors" to convert her share of
fees into money orders and mail them to her post office box in
California.

Palfrey's legal strategy is to aver she had no idea that the women
working for her ever engaged in prostitution. In papers filed in U.S
District Court, Palfrey alleged that a former escort identified as
Paula Neble and 15 "Jane Does" breached their contracts by engaging
in illegal sex. Neble's attorney, Kathy Voelker, said she has "no
comment at all."
Palfrey has had a lot of setbacks lately. She says she is "indigent."
Yet she is not likely to go quietly.
"I should just 'cave' and defend myself," she wrote in a recent
e-mail. "Otherwise, this ridiculous caricature people seem to have of
someone in my position ... sadly will be at my expense."

Intellpuke: You can read this article by Washington Post staff writer
Sue anne Pressley Montes, reporting from Washington, D.C., in context
here: 

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/28/AR2007042801192.html?hpid=topnews
Washington Post staff writers Carol D. Leonnig and Sonya Geis and
staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.



More names expected from list of 'D.C. Madam'
Updated Mon. Apr. 30 2007 11:11 PM ET
CTV.ca News Staff

After naming some of the high-profile clients to her Washington-based
escort service, the so-called 'D.C. Madam' apologized Monday but said
more names could soon be revealed. 

Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who ran Pamela Martin and Associates escort
service, was indicted in March by a federal grand jury on charges of
running the alleged call-girl ring from her home in Vallejo, Calif. 
She has denied that the escort service engaged in prostitution, and
has described her business as a "legal, high-end erotic fantasy
service." 

CTV's Joy Malbon told Newsnet from Washington that there are
undoubtedly some powerful people sweating over what might be revealed
next. 

Many of the people on the list are not only married but in
high-profile positions, she said. 

The story broke on Friday when Randall Tobias, head of the Bush
administration's foreign aid programs, abruptly resigned after
Palfrey named him in a client list given to ABC News. 

Tobias confirmed to ABC that he had called the escort service to have
women come to his condo and give him massages. 

However, he said there had been "no sex" during the women's visits to
his condo. 

Tobias is the second person to be publicly named as a Palfrey
customer. Palfrey listed Harlan Ullman -- former Bush security
adviser and military strategist who co-authored the combat strategy
known as "shock and awe" -- as a "regular" client in court papers. 
Ullman told CTV that it was an outrageous allegation, and that it was
delusional for Palfrey to think he would appear to testify in her
defense.

On ABC's Good Morning America, investigative reporter Brian Ross, who
broke the story, said there are more high-profile names on the client
list. 

ABC is planning a story on Palfrey on its prime-time news program
20/20, set for Friday. 

"It's a long list, we've been going through the phone records for the
last four years provided for us by Jean Palfrey," Ross said Monday. 

"There are some very prominent people, lobbyists, lawyers, members of
the military, other people in the Bush administration." 

Palfrey insisted that the women who worked for her have at least two
years of college education. 
"Among the people who worked for her, which we've confirmed: several
university professors, scientific researchers with PhDs, a member of
the military who was an officer, and a legal secretary for a very
prominent lawyer in Washington," said Ross. 
In a statement issued after a court hearing Monday, Palfrey said she
never intended to release the names of clients but that she "needed
to utilize the records for my defense." 

"Friday's admission by Mr. Tobias, that he engaged in legal activity
while a customer of my firm supports my position all along I operated
a sexual -- albeit legal -- business for thirteen years, from 1993 to
2006," read the statement. 

"I am dismayed however, by Mr. Tobias's refusal to come forward until
now with this extremely valuable exculpatory evidence. Had he done so
earlier along with the many, many others who have used my company's
services throughout the years, I most likely would not be in my
current predicament." 

She said the government, "as a matter of fairness," should not only
target her. 

"As for those however, who disobeyed my directives, their signed
contracts and participated in illegal behavior, be they client or
subcontractor, I would expect the Government -- as a matter of
fairness and to avoid any hint of 'selective prosecution' -- to
charge each and every individual with the crimes of money laundering,
racketeering and/or conspiracy, as well." 

"After all, racketeering and conspiracy offenses in particular
require two or more parties. Ironically, to date, I appear to be a
single party of one." 
Ross was the first to report on the Mark Foley scandal that led to
his resignation from Congress.