Scott Beveridge
Alleged D.C. madam has valley roots
Deborah J. Palfrey as a senior at Charleroi Area High School in 1974.
By Scott BeveridgeStaff writer
CHARLEROI, Pennsylvania – Deborah J. Palfrey had big plans to revitalize her hometown of Charleroi that took shape after she launched a social networking Web site for graduates of her high school.
Palfrey’s Internet site, founded in 2002, attracted numerous fans, including a Washington County judge, who used it to reconnect with their old classmates. She drew even more interest after being profiled last year in a Mon Valley newspaper about her lofty goals to return Charleroi to its pristine roots.
Now, people in her hometown have been distancing themselves from Palfrey, shocked by news of her March 1 indictment on accusations she ran a prostitution ring catering to the Washington, D.C., area.
“I was excited about this Web site thing she set up because it looked like a good vehicle for the community where I grew up and my parents still live, Charleroi,” said Washington County Judge Mark Mascara, who attended Charleroi Area High School in the 1970s with Palfrey. “Once I read the indictment, my connection to the Web site ended.”
Most of the people who had registered to Palfrey’s site, www.charleroipahsalumni.org, severed their ties to it after she became known as the “D.C. madam” in news articles and blogs that have flooded the Internet.
Palfrey, 50, of Vallejo, Calif., is facing federal racketeering charges that she made nearly $2 million from prostitution-related activities over 13 years. She reportedly hired young college-educated women, who charged men in the D.C. area between $275 and $300 for sex. The prostitutes turned over half of the income to Palfrey in money orders, the indictment indicates.
Palfrey has considered selling 46 pounds of her telephone records to raise money for her legal defense, according to another Web site she created to tell her side of the case.
She claims she is innocent, that she operated a “legal escort service” and paid the women incomes that were reported to the IRS. The government, meanwhile, reportedly seized $500,000 and nearly $1 million in real estate during the investigation.
In a Thursday e-mail to the Observer-Reporter, Palfrey indicated that her attorney had advised her against speaking directly with reporters. She wrote that updates on her case, which include “troubling constitutional and civil rights issues,” can be found on her Web site, www.DeborahJeanePalfrey.com. Her attorney, Montgomery Blair Sibley of Rockville, Md., did not return a message seeking comment.
Palfrey never graduated with her classmates at Charleroi in 1974, having moved in the middle of her senior year to Florida. Her parents, Frank “Moon” and Blanche Johnson Palfrey, raised their family at 828 Shady Ave. Her younger sister, Roberta L. Palfrey of Port Charlotte, Fla., refused to comment when contacted Thursday by telephone.
Deborah Palfrey was remembered beside her senior photograph in a high school yearbook as liking sewing and dancing and being with friendly, outgoing people. She planned then to attend airline school.
“She was quiet,” Mascara said.
Under her profile on the Charleroi alumni site, Palfrey said she was self-employed and in the design/import business and affiliated with the National Innocence Project. She also predicted that she would most likely “be slugging it out in the California prisons/courts in my 60s and 70s. A good way though to take my final curtain call,” she wrote in the profile that was updated in 2005.
Palfrey was upset over the declining condition of Charleroi and its crime problem when she returned home in 2004 to attend a high school reunion, she stated in an article published in August 2006 in The Valley Independent.
She then proposed forming a committee of successful Charleroi graduates to serve as a think tank for economic revitalization, something she pitched in a letter to the borough’s mayor, Frank Paterra.
“I didn’t respond to her,” Paterra said. “She was in California. I didn’t know who she was.
“She had a flowering concept of a ‘Leave it to Beaver’ neighborhood for Charleroi. As you know, we’re anything but a ‘Leave it to Beaver’ neighborhood,” Paterra added.
Apparently, few, if anyone in Charleroi, knew at the time that Palfrey had been convicted in 1991 in California for running a prostitution service. She served 18 months in jail, and was on probation when she allegedly reopened the business in Washington, D.C., according to an article published last week in The Washington Post.
Palfrey was the topic of many conversations Thursday in Charleroi, a community of fewer than 5,000 residents, as more and more reporters had begun to ask questions about her life there.
The San Francisco Chronicle dispatched a reporter to the borough Wednesday, who interviewed Paterra and Charleroi attorney Melvin Bassi, whose law firm’s telephone number appears on a short list of Palfrey’s telephone bills, which she also posted on the Internet.
“I don’t know who she talked to,” Bassi said, when questioned Thursday about the 1996 telephone bill. “Nobody here admits to talking to her.”
Alleged D.C. madam has valley roots
Deborah J. Palfrey as a senior at Charleroi Area High School in 1974.
By Scott BeveridgeStaff writer
CHARLEROI, Pennsylvania – Deborah J. Palfrey had big plans to revitalize her hometown of Charleroi that took shape after she launched a social networking Web site for graduates of her high school.
Palfrey’s Internet site, founded in 2002, attracted numerous fans, including a Washington County judge, who used it to reconnect with their old classmates. She drew even more interest after being profiled last year in a Mon Valley newspaper about her lofty goals to return Charleroi to its pristine roots.
Now, people in her hometown have been distancing themselves from Palfrey, shocked by news of her March 1 indictment on accusations she ran a prostitution ring catering to the Washington, D.C., area.
“I was excited about this Web site thing she set up because it looked like a good vehicle for the community where I grew up and my parents still live, Charleroi,” said Washington County Judge Mark Mascara, who attended Charleroi Area High School in the 1970s with Palfrey. “Once I read the indictment, my connection to the Web site ended.”
Most of the people who had registered to Palfrey’s site, www.charleroipahsalumni.org, severed their ties to it after she became known as the “D.C. madam” in news articles and blogs that have flooded the Internet.
Palfrey, 50, of Vallejo, Calif., is facing federal racketeering charges that she made nearly $2 million from prostitution-related activities over 13 years. She reportedly hired young college-educated women, who charged men in the D.C. area between $275 and $300 for sex. The prostitutes turned over half of the income to Palfrey in money orders, the indictment indicates.
Palfrey has considered selling 46 pounds of her telephone records to raise money for her legal defense, according to another Web site she created to tell her side of the case.
She claims she is innocent, that she operated a “legal escort service” and paid the women incomes that were reported to the IRS. The government, meanwhile, reportedly seized $500,000 and nearly $1 million in real estate during the investigation.
In a Thursday e-mail to the Observer-Reporter, Palfrey indicated that her attorney had advised her against speaking directly with reporters. She wrote that updates on her case, which include “troubling constitutional and civil rights issues,” can be found on her Web site, www.DeborahJeanePalfrey.com. Her attorney, Montgomery Blair Sibley of Rockville, Md., did not return a message seeking comment.
Palfrey never graduated with her classmates at Charleroi in 1974, having moved in the middle of her senior year to Florida. Her parents, Frank “Moon” and Blanche Johnson Palfrey, raised their family at 828 Shady Ave. Her younger sister, Roberta L. Palfrey of Port Charlotte, Fla., refused to comment when contacted Thursday by telephone.
Deborah Palfrey was remembered beside her senior photograph in a high school yearbook as liking sewing and dancing and being with friendly, outgoing people. She planned then to attend airline school.
“She was quiet,” Mascara said.
Under her profile on the Charleroi alumni site, Palfrey said she was self-employed and in the design/import business and affiliated with the National Innocence Project. She also predicted that she would most likely “be slugging it out in the California prisons/courts in my 60s and 70s. A good way though to take my final curtain call,” she wrote in the profile that was updated in 2005.
Palfrey was upset over the declining condition of Charleroi and its crime problem when she returned home in 2004 to attend a high school reunion, she stated in an article published in August 2006 in The Valley Independent.
She then proposed forming a committee of successful Charleroi graduates to serve as a think tank for economic revitalization, something she pitched in a letter to the borough’s mayor, Frank Paterra.
“I didn’t respond to her,” Paterra said. “She was in California. I didn’t know who she was.
“She had a flowering concept of a ‘Leave it to Beaver’ neighborhood for Charleroi. As you know, we’re anything but a ‘Leave it to Beaver’ neighborhood,” Paterra added.
Apparently, few, if anyone in Charleroi, knew at the time that Palfrey had been convicted in 1991 in California for running a prostitution service. She served 18 months in jail, and was on probation when she allegedly reopened the business in Washington, D.C., according to an article published last week in The Washington Post.
Palfrey was the topic of many conversations Thursday in Charleroi, a community of fewer than 5,000 residents, as more and more reporters had begun to ask questions about her life there.
The San Francisco Chronicle dispatched a reporter to the borough Wednesday, who interviewed Paterra and Charleroi attorney Melvin Bassi, whose law firm’s telephone number appears on a short list of Palfrey’s telephone bills, which she also posted on the Internet.
“I don’t know who she talked to,” Bassi said, when questioned Thursday about the 1996 telephone bill. “Nobody here admits to talking to her.”