"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.
Last week, 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 yesterday on "Good Morning America," Ross said Tobias told him
Tobias's 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, 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, Ala. "But I'm thinking now how many things I really didn't
know about her."
Home was Charleroi, Pa., 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, Fla., attended a year at what is now Thomas Jefferson
School of Law in San Diego 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, Calif., home was valued at
about $480,000 last year, and her Vallejo, Calif., 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." But 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."
Staff writers Carol D. Leonnig and Sonya Geis and staff researcher Meg Smith
contributed to this report.
