For the last couple months a great little story has been bubbling on a back burner, threatening to burst into a classic D.C. potboiler: the feds busted a long-time prostitution service operating in the Washington, D.C. area, with the suggestion of ties to lawmakers.
Indeed, it was the madam herself who told a reporter from the Smoking Gun Web site that the Feds must be going after her as part of a larger investigation into “some Duke Cunningham-type bigwig client that got caught up in something[.]”
Our ears perked up. Has our long-lost Duke-connected hooker arrived? Alas, no hard evidence emerged. The madam, Deborah Palfrey, said she never kept records of clients and commanded her employees to destroy records within hours of a rendezvous. And Palfrey hasn’t offer up any names from memory.
But now, juicy tidbits from a new 19-page court filing make the story even more tantalizing, with excerpts from the madam’s in-house newsletter and more. (We’ve got the whole filing for your enjoyment, right here.)
We’re only lacking one thing: the name of a congressman who used the service.
Palfrey ran her D.C. escort company, Pamela Martin Associates, for over a decade, from 1993 until the Feds brought it down earlier this year. In its time, the firm handled several thousand assignations, according to financial details uncovered in court documents. And most of these weren’t with those nervous, first-time johns; according to the group’s own Web site (since taken down), nearly three-quarters of its paid couplings (intercourse and oral, say the Feds!) was with repeat customers.
Not only that, the hookers were just as happy to come to a client’s office as they were to go to a hotel or a private home, according to the court filing.
Now, do the math: an escort service operating for 13 years, handling several thousand “dates” is bound to have serviced a congressman at some point, right? At least one. Maybe even a well-known lobbyist or three. Can anybody help us out with this one? Anonymity is assured.
