Akkam’s Razor

Foxnews now confirms that convicted DC Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey was found dead of a suspected suicide in Florida, as initially reported by their local affiliate. Palfrey was convicted on 4/15/2008 of money laundering, illegal use of the mail, and racketeering in the operation of her “high-quality fantasy service”, operated under the name of “Pamela Martin and Associates”. The investigation of her service resulted in the resignation of Randall Tobias from his position in the US Aid office, Harlan Ullman, the creator of the phrase “Shock-and-Awe”, and an admission of the use of her services by the “very sorry” Louisiana Congressman David Vitter, who is still in office. In the same time period, several additional White House resignations were tendered, apparently unrelated to the DC Madam. In the run-up to her trial, the US DOJ of Justice issued a gag order, stating that her phone records were in fact an asset, forbidding her from discussing (and profiting from) their contents. She intended to call her “johns” to the stand as part of her defense. The case has many interesting unexplored angles.

BC’s Brian Ross had initially said the following (reported at ThinkProgress, with video at Crooks and Liars):

“There are thousands of names, tens of thousands of phone numbers,” Ross said. “And there are people there at the Pentagon, lobbyists, others at the White House, prominent lawyers — a long, long list.” Ross added that the women who worked for the service, potentially as prostitutes, “include university professors, legal secretaries, scientists, military officers.”

ABCNEWS’ Brian Ross had acquired many pages of her cell phone records and had breathlessly pitched them as holding several major names, abruptly reversing course on the night that the 20/20 piece aired.

As usually is the case in Washington, much of it is dull. There are no members of Congress we can find in these phone numbers, no White House officials. Quite frankly, but for the few exceptions, most of the men on this list just aren’t newsworthy.

During that same time period, allegations were made that one of the highest persons in the Bush White House as well as an ABC news personality were allegedly affiliated with the list. Larry Flynt also got involved, at one point stating that he was following 20 Congressional leads, but no other names had come forward.

Other little nuggets of interest:

• Cryptome has the phone numbers in list format (note, also on Scribd as images. See this story on Newsvine regarding the crowdsourcing of the bills).
• Maggie Burns mentions what Ms. Palfrey was doing on 9/11, as deduced by the phone records.
• There is a very clever honeypot at dcphonelist.com which allows users to search for a phone number, highlighting suspect phone numbers. They display statistics for numbers of interest.
• This is not the first suicide related to the Madam.