Original subtitles

Woman: Jeane Palfrey has come to be known

as the D.C. Madam.

And for those listening, you owned and operated

a legal escort service providing sexual fantasies.

Palfrey: I had a very influential clientele

for a substantial period of time, 13 years.

Woman: And the question begs, who and/or what does

the United States government believe Ms. Palfrey knows

to have gone after her and her alone as they have?

Palfrey: They think I know something that's of some value to them.

I'm starting to I realize that my life will never be the same.

This is, needless to say, a life-altering experience

which will take me in directions

I never thought I would go in this lifetime.

♪♪

♪♪

Hi, everyone. Welcome to "How It Really Happened."

I'm Hill Harper.

When Deborah Jeane Palfrey

was looking to start up a high-class escort service,

she chose Washington, D.C.

It had everything she was looking for,

high-powered men with money to burn

and certain needs to be met.

It wasn't long before Palfrey, known as the D.C. Madam,

had a thriving business and influential clientele,

but when Federal Agents went after her, Palfrey fought back,

threatening to reveal the names of her powerful clients,

and then, in a shocking twist, she was found dead.

Did she kill herself, or was she murdered?

Was the D.C. Madam a woman who knew too much?

What really happened?

Woman: Are you a madam?

Palfrey: I'm a business owner.

-You're a business owner. Absolutely.

But everybody calls you the D.C. Madam.

I'd prefer Washington Madam or just Jeane.

The Washington Madam.

I was in business for 13 years.

We went through two Clinton administrations

and 1 1/2 Bush administrations.

The point is that the clientele

was very influential and very powerful.

This is Washington, D.C.

You know, call me a snob,

but I think I had the best agency in town.

It catered to the high and the mighty, so to speak.

♪♪

Police in Florida say a woman who apparently committed suicide

near Tampa today is Deborah Jeane Palfrey,

the so-called D.C. Madam.

She was awaiting sentencing after being convicted last month

of running a high-end prostitution ring.

Zarella: Servicing some of Washington's political elite.

But did she really commit suicide

to avoid spending time behind bars,

or was her death something much more sinister?

Was it suicide or cold-blooded murder staged as suicide?

Young: The victim of an apparent suicide

by hanging has been identified as Debra Jeane Palfrey

by her 76-year-old mother, Blanche Palfrey.

Palfrey discovered her daughter had apparently hung herself

using a nylon rope from a metal beam

on the ceiling of the shed.

Reporter: What did her mother do after she found her?

Did she try to...?

She immediately called 911.

She's 76 years old.

Getting her daughter down would've been

almost impossible for her.

And I --

I just started screaming, "Help me. Help me."

When I heard that she had killed herself

and that they said it was suicide,

I did not believe it.

I didn't believe it then, and I don't believe it now.

The Debbie that I knew in high school

would not have done that to her elderly mother.

When Jeane Palfrey died, a lot of people were suspicious,

and, in fact, many thought maybe she'd been killed.

Grace: Was Palfrey threatening to come forward and name names

of D.C. power brokers in order to get a lighter deal

for herself in court?

Was foul play involved in the death

of the highly publicized D.C. Madam?

Zarella: Pretty simple theory that some are throwing around:

Deborah Palfrey may have had the names

of D.C.'s elite politicians,

maybe still has the power to take them down.

Kathleen Koch is following this shocking story for us.

Kathleen, what are you learning?

Well, Wolf, those who know her are calling this a tragic end

for a woman who all along maintained

she'd done nothing wrong.

I got to know Jeane Palfrey incredibly well

in the last year of her life,

and she was a very complicated, layered person.

She was very empathetic.

She had quite a sense of humor.

And throughout all our conversations,

her main concern was that she had been unfairly singled out,

and she did not understand why.

There were some 40 other escort services

operating in the District of Columbia

advertising in the yellow pages,

and not one of them was prosecuted contemporaneously

or in the 9 years since.

The Big $64,000 Question: who knows what it is?

Was it -- did I have a black book?

Did they think I was really part

of some sort of money-laundering scheme?

I just don't know.

I ran a very legitimate business from day one.

It was very transparent.

I filed taxes.

I'm here talking to you on CNN.

I have nothing to hide.

I've never had anything to hide.

Augenstein: Jeane Palfrey was always very emphatic

that the women who were working for her

were not allowed to break any laws.

In other words, Palfrey said they weren't allowed

to have illegal sex with their clients.

Sibley: She originally had a little contract her employees signed,

and one of the terms that they had to initial was,

"individuals caught performing illegal activities

of any nature will be terminated."

In addition, no promises or claims directly or indirectly

was ever made to a client

that he should expect the associate

to perform illegal acts for hire.

The only two things that are considered

basically illegal are prostitution,

intercourse of any kind and oral sex.

Otherwise, everything is absolutely legal

for all intents and purposes.

Ward: Jeane was very, very clear

that she was not selling prostitution.

She was selling what she called a fantasy-escort service.

Palfrey: There are three types of services

out there in the adult escort world.

One is social service, which is $50 to $100

an hour to accompany someone to a function or a banquet.

The second is fantasy, which is this in-between place

where I resided, which was truly,

absolutely 100 percent sexual, but it was not illegal sex.

The third is prostitution.

King: You were providing the women, right?

You weren't one yourself, or am I wrong?

No, that's correct.

I ran the business long-distance from San Francisco,

the Bay area.

And were most of the clients in Washington?

They were all in Washington and some in Baltimore,

the Washington, D.C./Baltimore corridor and surrounding areas.

Augenstein: Jeane Palfrey's escort service

was called Pamela Martin and Associates.

Palfrey: I promoted it in the yellow pages

because, you know, when I started back in 1993,

we didn't have the Internet.

We barely had cellphones back then,

but mostly the yellow pages and, of course, word of mouth.

I employed independent contractors ages

23 to 25 years of age

and up to age 55 with 2 to 4 years of college education.

Many had graduate-school educations.

Jeane Palfrey often described the women

that she hired as the Ann Taylor look.

Ward: Pantsuits, sensible colors, sensible shoes,

little drop earrings.

She did the this because it was very important

that they not stand out in a hotel lobby.

Both the independent contractors and the clientele were upscale

and came from the more refined walks of life

here in the nation's capital.

Sibley: Jeane was actually running her operation from her house.

She ran it from the laundry room

where she would answer the phone and --

and book the clients and the customers.

Ward: And then she would sit by the phone in her basement

beside the washer and the dryer and wait to do business.

That was how she did it.

Augenstein: If a customer was looking for some companionship,

he would dial a local number.

She had three different numbers, a Maryland,

a Virginia and a D.C. number.

They would all be forwarded automatically

to her cellphone in California.

Ward: She would answer.

She called herself Julia, and she would ask them

very matter-of-factly what they were looking for.

My God, I was on those phones every night for 13 years.

Augenstein: Jeane Palfrey would talk with the man on the phone,

and she would find out what he was interested in.

Then she would call an escort.

Sibley: Jeane would call the woman and say,

"you have an appointment at 7 o'clock, room 201

or this address, someone's home or apartment."

Ward: The girls charged $300 for 90 minutes,

but they had to send half of their "salary"

via mail order weekly to Jeane in California.

Palfrey: I did the best I could to keep everything running smoothly.

I was the rock.

I was the one who was there night after night.

That was really what my J-O-B or my job description was.

Sibley: For 13 years, she had operated in the District of Columbia,

and not a single escort had ever been hassled

or arrested or any way troubled by any of the 20

or 30 different police agencies in town.

But little did Jeane know her life was about to change.

They were watching me and surveilling me

for a very long period of time.

By the fall of 2006, Jeane Palfrey had essentially

shut down Pamela Martin and Associates.

Jeane had decided to retire from the escort business

she'd been running for 13 years.

Jeane was tired with the business.

It had finally taken her toll on her.

Do you have a husband or partner?

No. No, I'm single.

So do you have children or a...?

No, I have a mother and sister.

Sibley: Jeane had always wanted to move to Europe.

She had been exploring moving to Berlin of all places

where the housing was elegant and very inexpensive.

In fact, in October of 2006,

she was in Berlin exploring housing options.

Ward: She wanted to buy an apartment there.

She had found one she liked,

and she really wanted to begin a new life

there far away from America.

I was off, you know, pursuing what I thought

would be the rest of my life.

Sibley: She was in Germany getting ready to fly back

when she got notice from one of her brokerage firms saying,

"Your account has been frozen."

Palfrey: I opened my Charles Schwab account

to do a little day trading, and I couldn't gain access.

Mm-Hmm.

And I explained to the customer-service rep

my dilemma, and he put me on hold for about 5 or 10 minutes

and came back 10 minutes later and informed me that,

"Ma'am, your property has been seized

by the United States Department of Treasury.

I advise you to get an attorney."

I'm 6,000 miles away on another continent,

nine time zones difference.

I'm absolutely, I think, having a nervous breakdown.

By this point, the government had seized $1 million

worth of Palfrey's assets.

They used a legal tool called Civil Asset Forfeiture.

Civil Forfeiture is, whenever you have a criminal enterprise,

the government can go after the money

that you've gotten as a result of that enterprise,

seize it, convict you and then take it.

And it started out historically that it was part

of the RICO statute,

right, Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization Act.

Augenstein: Jeane Palfrey had no idea

that the government had been watching her

and investigating her and tracking her

for more than 2 years by then.

I had no idea what was happening.

After I talked to the Charles Schwab agent,

I found out that the FED simultaneously

while I was making the call to Schwab

were back in California at 8 A.M. In the morning

raiding my house.

Sibley: Jeane's house was on the market,

and as a result, two undercover agents from the IRS

and the postal service contacted her realtor and said,

"We'd like to the see the house.

We're interested in buying it."

On the 3rd of October, Tuesday,

they are calling my real estate agent

trying to obtain entry to my property.

The realtor wasn't able to accommodate them,

and shortly thereafter, the government went in

and got a search warrant for the house.

The most significant thing they seized in the search

was the applications of 400 or 500 escorts

who worked for Jeane during that 13-year period,

and what it gave the government

was the identities of those escorts.

They were hoping to find the black book.

That was why they were raiding Jeane's house.

They thought, "Great.

We're going to go into her house.

She's going to have a list of everybody

that ever was a customer," and they didn't find it.

Palfrey: Right then and there confiscated every single asset

that I owned, bank accounts, retirement accounts,

property, everything, left me virtually penniless.

On October 4th, 2006,

a full 2 months after the business

had been voluntarily closed by me,

I came to learn I had been the target of a 2-1/2-year

investigation by the Internal Revenue Service.

This whole case started with a civil case

against Jeane Palfrey.

The woman who thousands of men may have feared

for what she knew they did that they didn't want others to know.

Augenstein: And prosecutors were using their leverage

that they had to say, "Look.

You better agree to this,

or we'll look for stronger charges."

Palfrey: I was told, unless I pled,

they were going to charge with me RICO.

RICO is not applicable here.

Nonetheless, this was their threat.

"You either plea, or we'll now

even do more horrible things to you."

Sibley: What gave the government the authority to proceed

in this matter was that Jeane was using the U.S. Mails

to transfer money the government believe

they could prove came from criminal behavior,

so for example, if Jeane had only operated in Maryland

and never had an escort leave the state

and never sent money out of the state,

the federal government would not have had the ability

to charge her with anything.

Augenstein: Jeane Palfrey was very hardheaded.

In her mind, she was walking the line between what was legal

and what was not legal,

and she would be damned if she was going

to give one penny of her money to the government.

I told them at that point, "Let's go. Let's go.

You're not getting one penny of my life savings

and not 1 minute of my liberty."

Sibley: Once Jeane said, "No, I'm not settling

the Civil-Forfeiture case,"

the government proceeded to indict her

on a range of criminal charges.

They brought charges against her

for racketeering influenced corrupt organization,

for money laundering, for wire fraud

because the money was being sent over the interstate wires.

This is money that came directly out of the pockets

of some of Washington's big power players.

Some of the customers that used the service

were members of the government,

were high-ranking and powerful people.

This was the first time that Federal prosecutors

in D.C. had ever prosecuted anyone

in a prostitution-related case

using the RICO or the racketeering laws,

so this was a very serious crime that she faced.

Nobody in this country

who has run a "benign escort service"

has ever been charged with racketeering.

I mean, racketeering is Tony Soprano territory.

Little more space. It's just the phone is there.

Throughout all this, Jeane Palfrey stuck to her line,

which was, "I've done nothing wrong.

My business is legal.

It is not a prostitution service.

It is a fantasy-sex service."

It seemed as if they were charging me

with running an escort service,

which I wholeheartedly admit that I did run.

Mm-hmm.

The sticking point is whether or not

it was an illegal sexual service or a legal sexual service.

I'm prepared to take them on.

I hate to sound like I'm Clint Eastwood or Rambo here

because I'm hardly either one.

I'm just an average, ordinary person,

but I'm not going to let these people get away with it.

Deborah Jeane Palfrey was a fighter from day one.

I believe there is something very, very rotten

at the core of my circumstance.

I believe what motivated that fight was that she knew

she had a secret weapon.

Augenstein: The phone numbers of all the customers

that had ever used the service.

Grace: Senators, think tank, military strategists,

corporate CEOs, military --

Of course, little did they know Jeane Palfrey

was going try to track them down.

♪♪

In 2006, Federal agents raided Jeane Palfrey's home,

and, I mean, they took basically anything

they could find of value

except for some boxes that were left in the basement.

♪♪

In those boxes was the telephone number

of every single customer who had called her during the 13 years

she had operated the escort service.

Reporter: Remember she ran a high-priced

prostitution ring that catered

to D.C.'s elite lawmakers, politicians.

So Jeane Palfrey had all of these numbers

of high-powered people in D.C.

Now though she had to connect names with those numbers.

Jeane thought that if she could

put some of her clients on the stand,

they would be very sympathetic to her

and that they would endorse what she was saying,

which was that this was not a prostitution racket.

This really was all about massages and fantasy.

To go through those phone numbers was a real undertaking.

We had no resources.

They actually gave the phone records to ABC News

because apparently ABC had the manpower they didn't,

so they could do a reverse search

to figure out who belonged to the numbers.

The decision ultimately was made to hand over the records

to a responsible media outlet,

in this case, ABC News in New York.

I do expect their reporting to help identify

potential witnesses for my defense.

While ABC were plowing through Jeane's phone records,

two high-level names in government actually got leaked.

Two of the newsworthy names were Randall Tobias

with the State Department and Harlan Ullman,

who is a well-known defense strategist.

Sanchez: Ullman said the allegations didn't merit a response.

Ward: Randall Tobias admitted he had used

Pamela Martin, Jeane's D.C. service,

but he said he'd only ever had massages or a massage.

He completely denied ever having illegal sex

but promptly resigned from his position.

Friday's admission by Mr. Tobias that he engaged

in legal activity while a customer of my firm

supports my position all along

that I operated a sexual albeit legal business

for 13 years from 1993 to 2006.

As you may imagine,

while everyone is waiting for ABC

to come out with their findings from Jeane's phone records,

Washington goes into turmoil, panic.

Who's going to be outed?

ABC's "20/20" is going to air

a special television event tomorrow night

in which seven names on the infamous D.C. Madam's list

is going to be revealed.

So we were very enthusiastic before the broadcast

that we were going to we have the people identified,

which would give us the position to perhaps negotiate

a resolution that Jeane could accept.

Then the show airs in May 2007.

There were no members of Congress

that we could find in these phone records,

no White House officials.

Quite frankly, but for the few exceptions,

most of the men on this list just aren't newsworthy.

All they listed was the type or professions

of the individuals using the service.

They didn't list any specific names.

The "20/20" show actually became such a big deal

for not saying anything that it became a TV punch line.

Hey, John, boy, close call this weekend.

I don't -- I don't know what you're talking about there.

Don't play coy with me, Stewart.

The D.C. Madam list comes out.

ABC News decides not to name any names.

Pha-shew.

We really dodged a bullet there, hey, buddy?

High five!

Stephen, there's -- I wasn't on that list.

Were you on that list?

No, course not.

But obviously Jeane Palfrey and Blair Sibley

didn't find anything to laugh about.

They were really dismayed.

Jeane and I were livid and realized

that we could not count on ABC News.

So then they decide they're going to reach out

to an investigative journalist,

and they get in touch with someone named Dan Moldea.

Sibley: An investigator and someone I knew and respected

that would also help us find out who these people were.

Moldea: My memoir is called

"Confessions of a Guerrilla Writer:

Adventures in the Jungles of Crime,

Politics, and Journalism."

But I sat down at my desk and at my computer,

and I ran searches, reverse searches on each phone number

that I had in the records.

It was a very grueling process,

and I went through hundreds of numbers.

I had to stop someplace because it was

such a time-consuming process, and so I decided arbitrarily

just to stop February 27th, 2001.

On that the day, in the phone records,

I saw a telephone number I had not seen before.

I took the number. I ran it through the database.

It came up David Vitter,

a Republican Senator from Louisiana.

This gentleman was a Christian right,

moral majority, sanctity of marriage act.

Sibley: This guy was a classic hypocrite.

So Dan alerted us fairly shortly thereafter

that he had found Senator David Vitter's name

repeatedly in the phone records.

We were gratified, enthusiastic that

we had very high-level people using the escort service.

Happening now, a senator and his wife

come from the shadows of the D.C. Madam scandal.

When David Vitter did his press conference

where he essentially confessed, I was not surprised.

I just, you know, I just assumed

he was going to try to get ahead of the story somehow.

I want to again offer my deep, sincere apologies to all those

I have let down and disappointed with these actions from my past.

I am completely responsible, and I'm so very, very sorry.

David Vitter, after he did his mea culpa,

was able to keep working on Capitol Hill.

He was reelected and -- and kept on with his job.

So of course what you had here

was the men able to get on with their lives.

I mean, one might have had to resign his job,

but they're still invited for dinner.

Meantime, Jeane Palfrey is fighting for her life

because she is about to go to trial,

and if that trial doesn't go her way,

there's a good chance she's going to prison.

I'm facing perhaps the remainder of my life

in a federal penitentiary.

This is not a misdemeanor crime

by any stretch of the imagination.

Welcome back to "How It Really Happened."

Deborah Jeane Palfrey was working against the odds

to find clients who'd testify on her behalf

and say they were not paying for sex with these women.

Federal prosecutors, meanwhile,

were tracking down her former escorts

to take the stand and say their clients did,

and Jeane Palfrey's future was hanging in the balance.

♪♪

In the spring of 2008,

Jeane Palfrey's trial got underway.

The whole Jeane Palfrey story was one of a woman

who supposedly had rich

and powerful customers in Washington.

People are coming forward.

People have reached out to the defense

with helpful information.

So understandably it came as a big surprise

when Jeane Palfrey's attorney

didn't call a single former client,

not one, to testify that they hadn't had sex

with Palfrey's escorts.

Sibley: The reason I believe Preston Burton

didn't pursue that defense

is that he honestly believed he had a very good shot

at creating reasonable doubt as to whether Jeane knew

that sex was going on between her escorts

and the customers that were contacting her.

Defense strategy was, Jeane was willfully blind

to what was going on between the customers and her escorts.

Ward: The prosecutors' biggest weapon

was that they had all these women

who had worked for Jeane Palfrey

who were prepared to testify against her.

Augenstein: These escorts came into court, most of them unwillingly

but with immunity from the prosecution

and told what happened when they worked as escorts

for Jeane Palfrey.

The escorts testified that Jeane Palfrey called them.

They had sex.

They got paid.

They sent a portion of that money back to Jeane Palfrey

via money order, and that was basically the story

that was repeated by the escorts that came in.

One was asked how often she ended up

having sex with a client.

She said 90 percent of the time.

But what Jeane had up her sleeve

were the contracts that all of her employees had to sign.

Palfrey: Each subcontractor signed a legally binding contract

at the onset of employment stating she would not,

among other things, engage in illegal behavior

while employed at Pamela Martin and Associates.

On cross-examination, Palfrey's defense attorney

questioned some of the escorts about breaking those contracts.

I thought the defense did a pretty good job

of raising the possibility

that she just sent these escorts to these meetings,

and they did what they wanted with the customers.

I thought that the defense raised the possibility

that she would get off.

But in the end, it became clear to the court that,

yes, Palfrey's escorts did have illegal sex with her clients,

and she knew about it.

One of them even went so far as to saying, "I asked Jeane,

'Who provides the condoms?

Will the client have the condoms?'

And she said, 'No, you need to bring them.'"

These are fairly damning things for Jeane.

When the trial wrapped up, it didn't take long for the jury

to decide Jeane Palfrey's fate.

Jeane Palfrey was found guilty

of all the criminal charges against her.

She ran a high-Priced escort service in Washington,

and now the so-called D.C. Madam is paying for it.

Deborah Jeane Palfrey was convicted on all counts today

connected to that escort service

which catered to the rich and powerful.

Guilty of racketeering, mail fraud and money laundering.

Nobody else in Washington, D.C., has been targeted,

none of the other agencies,

none of the other independents.

It was only me.

The verdict was understandably devastating for Palfrey,

but there was still a chance for an appeal.

Sibley: I had been brought back in to work on the appeal,

and we had some very strong appellate issues.

I was very confident that that conviction would be overturned,

so I was actually working with her

and talking to her on a daily basis about

what we were doing and trying to give her good upbeat news

and the whole nine yards.

Even though Jeane Palfrey faced about 55 years,

the conventional wisdom

was that she would only serve about 6 years.

♪♪

At approximately 11:01 A.M., Tarpon Springs Fire Rescue

have pronounced Debra Jeane Palfrey deceased.

Are there any questions?

So there actually were a lot of questions.

Police did say that Palfrey committed suicide,

but that didn't stop people from suspecting foul play.

There was widespread speculation that she harbored some secrets

about some very powerful people here in Washington.

♪♪

♪♪

Man: The body of Deborah Jeane Palfrey

was found by her mother

in a small storage shed outside her mobile home.

Woman: She was found hanged yesterday at her mother's home,

and investigators say they have no doubt it was a suicide.

Deep: When I heard the news and really fully digested

the news that Jeane had committed suicide,

it was nothing but shock, sympathy, profound sadness.

Man: She was found hanging from a nylon cord

in her mother's backyard shed.

Blozik: I was listening to the news on my TV.

I just, like, stopped.

I just couldn't believe it.

Woman: Police say several notes were found

that described her intention to take her life.

She left long handwritten notes to her mother and to her sister.

I thought the most heartbreaking excerpt from the letter

was the one that read,

"I cannot live the next 6 to 8 years behind bars

for what both you and I have come to regard as this,

"modern-day lynching,"

only to come out of prison in my late 50s a broken,

penniless and very much alone woman."

That was heartbreaking.

The reported suicide of Debra Jeane Palfrey,

the D.C. Madam, has a lot of people

asking a lot of questions.

Deep: Jeane was really a feisty, tough,

empowered woman who didn't at all seem to me

like the kind of person who would take her own life.

The Debbie that I knew in high school

and the Debbie that I e-mailed back and forth with,

I -- I did not believe that she would do that.

It -- it -- it floored me.

It made no sense whatsoever.

I talked to her 2 or 3 days before,

and we thought we were on track to take a good appeal,

get her bailed out during appeal

and continue to fight this thing going forward,

so that's why it never made sense.

I'm conflicted as to whether Jeane's death was a suicide

or a very highly organized murder.

Moldea: After Jeane's suicide, there was widespread speculation

that she harbored some secrets

about some very powerful people here in Washington.

Sanchez: The D.C. Madam, a woman who powerful men feared

for what she knew about them.

Was it really suicide?

The Internet is going bonkers with this one.

Man: Her friends said that that's not her signature

on the suicide note.

There were a lot of conspiracy theories out there.

She would've been able to make all this money.

She would've been famous.

There would've been book deals, movies.

Why would she possibly do this?

Grace: Bob, in North Carolina, hi, Bob. What's your question?

Bob: Yeah, my question is, I mean, could these two notes

have been written under duress?

I mean, if someone told me they're going to murder

my mother and my sister if I don't sit down

and write a heartfelt suicide letter, wouldn't I write it?

Bob, that theory is floating around.

I want to go to Dr. Patricia Saunders,

clinical psychologist.

Hill: Adding to the conspiracy theories

was a man named Joe Strizack,

so he managed the building where Palfrey owned a condo,

and he says she told him she felt she was in danger,

and then this guy actually goes on

the Alex Jones radio show to talk about it.

At this point, people started to speculate

about some of the similarities between Palfrey's death

and the suicide of another D.C. area madam,

who had also died by hanging.

Sibley: Brandi Britton was an escort who worked for Jeane

for a period of time, branched out

and started her own escort service in the Baltimore area.

Woman: Police arrested 42-year-old Brandi Britton

after she allegedly offered an undercover police officer sex

for $400.

Brandi Britton committed suicide right before her trial

was about to start.

Grace: Now we learn not one but two women

are claimed to have committed suicide by hanging,

both sitting on a bombshell of evidence

against countless D.C. insiders?

Now that's some coincidence.

Hill: Turns out Palfrey herself had questioned Britton's suicide

on the Alex Jones radio show.

Jeane Palfrey herself started speaking out ahead of the trial.

She was on that same radio show and really made it clear

that she had no intention of giving up.

Jeane herself said many times privately to me

as well that she was not going to commit suicide,

but she was going to be the exception.

She was going to fight.

She was going to expose the government.

That was her line.

So here you have two women who not only worked together,

but they both knew secrets about some very powerful people

in Washington, and they both died by hanging.

And the coincidence is just one of those

of several very troubling things about this --

The death of Deborah Jeane Palfrey.

Augenstein: Think some people were willing to believe

that Jeane Palfrey must have had something

on somebody high and -- and --

and rich and powerful in the government,

someone who would be willing to kill her.

♪♪

When Jeane Palfrey was found hanging in this shed,

there was plenty of speculation

that she'd been killed for what she knew

except that people who knew her the best said

she had a really specific reason for taking her own life.

Augenstein: Jeane had already spent some time in prison,

and she was really afraid of -- of going back there.

In the early '90s, she'd done time for pandering,

which is essentially pimping, in -- in California.

Jeane was originally arrested

for running an escort service in California.

She was working as a cocktail waitress.

It escalated into her being a prostitute

and then managing other prostitutes.

Augenstein: She hated the experience of being in jail,

and she was really determined to never go back to jail.

Sibley: She told me she had been raped repeatedly,

so that was a very brutal experience for her.

Ward: She talked about that experience in some detail to me,

and she said it was horrifying.

She came out physically and mentally damaged.

Hill: Jeane Palfrey's own mother, Blanche,

had told a local TV station that,

in the days leading up to her death,

her daughter was inconsolable.

Blanche: That girl, that whole week,

every time I turned around, she was laying

over my shoulder, crying like a baby.

She just -- she just sobbed.

She said, "I can't live this way."

She says, "Mom, it's live free or die."

She told me on no fewer than three occasions that,

in lieu of going back to prison

where she had spent 18 months back in the early '90s,

she would commit suicide.

Jackson: There was no evidence at all that Jeane Palfrey was murdered.

It was a pretty clear case that she committed suicide.

The forensics proved it.

The suicide note proved it, that Jeane Palfrey hung herself.

The police agreed and said they found nothing to indicate

this was anything other than a suicide.

This was a useless death.

It really was.

She didn't deserve all this.

Allow me to leave you with this thought if I may.

Surely most people have established by now

that mine is a very bizarre and rather unusual case.

I believe there is something very, very rotten

at the core of my circumstance,

and I must rely upon your acumen and talent in the press

and the media to uncover the truth.

I thank you for your professionalism

in this regard and good day.

♪♪

We may never know why Jeane Palfrey's escort service

was singled out for Federal prosecution.

The district attorney's office in Washington, D.C.,

declined to comment on her case.

Palfrey's trial and her conviction

certainly raise questions about what the point of it

all was because a quick Google search will show you

that escort services are thriving all across America,

hiding in plain sight.

Thanks for joining us.

Have a good night.

♪♪