Police: Woman who ran D.C. escort service kills self in Fla.

The body of Deborah Jeane Palfrey was found in a shed near her mother's manufactured home about 20 miles northwest of Tampa. Police said that she left a suicide note, but they did not disclose its contents. The mother found Palfrey, who had apparently hanged herself with nylon rope from the shed's ceiling.

Police planned to release more details at a news conference. Officers were outside the mother's white and pink home in the community of mostly retirees.

A man who answered a phone listed for Palfrey's mother declined to comment. But defense attorney Preston Burton, who represented Palfrey in her criminal trial that ended last month, said: "This is a tragic news and my heart goes out to her mother."

Capt. Jeffrey Young of the Tarpon Springs Police department said Palfrey's 76-year-old mother immediately called 911.

"Obviously the mother's very distraught at finding her child in this state," Young said, adding that Blanche Palfrey had no indication her daughter intended to end her life.

Authorities said Blanche last spoke to her daughter earlier that morning, telling Deborah she planned to take a quick nap.

Erwin Matthews, 73, who lives five houses down from Palfrey's mother, said he and his girlfriend heard Blanche Palfrey screaming around 10:30 a.m.

"She said: 'My daughter's hanging there by herself,'" Matthews recalled. "That's when everybody went running over there. This is a real bad tragedy."

Palfrey was convicted April 15 by a federal jury of running a prostitution service that catered to members of Washington's political elite, including Vitter, a Louisiana Republican. She had denied her escort service engaged in prostitution, saying that if any of the women engaged in sex acts for money, they did so without her knowledge.

She was convicted of money laundering, using the mail for illegal purposes and racketeering.

But the trial concluded without revealing many new details about the service or its clients. Vitter was among possible witnesses, but did not take the stand.

Channing Phillips, the spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in the District of Columbia, said that under sentencing guidelines, Palfrey faced 57 to 71 months in prison. She was free pending her sentencing July 24.

"I am sure as heck am not going to be going to federal prison for one day, let alone, you know, four to eight years here, because I'm shy about bringing in the deputy secretary of whatever," Palfrey told ABC last year when she released phone records that revealed some of her clients. "Not for a second. I'll bring every last one of them in if necessary."

Prosecutors said Palfrey operated the prostitution service for 13 years.

Vitter, a first-term senator who is married and has four children, has acknowledged being involved with Palfrey's escort service and has apologized for what he called a "very serious sin." But he avoided commenting further.

Besides Vitter, the trial also concluded without the testimony of military strategist Harlan Ullman or Randall Tobias, a former senior State Department official. Both men had been named among possible witnesses.

One of the escort service employees was former University of Maryland, Baltimore County, professor Brandy Britton, who was arrested on prostitution charges in 2006. She committed suicide in January before she was scheduled to go to trial.

Last year, Palfrey said she, too, was humiliated by her prostitution charges, but said: "I guess I'm made of something that Brandy Britton wasn't made of."

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Associated Press Writers Matt Apuzzo in Washington and Matthew Barakat in McLean, Va., contributed to this report.

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