NPR: High School Friend Calls 'D.C. Madam' Shy, Serious

High School Friend Calls 'D.C. Madam' Shy, Serious

Filed under: News

Debbie Hudspith Blozik recalls her friend Deborah Jeane Palfrey.

"D.C. Madam" Deborah Jeane Palfrey, outside the courthouse after her trial hearings in September, was once a majorette and a member of the Future Nurses Club.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

When the news broke Thursday that "D.C. Madam" Deborah Jeane Palfrey had been found dead in mother's Florida home, an apparent suicide, Debbie Hudspith Blozik was home in Alabama sorting through papers. Blozik looked up to see that her high school friend was gone.

Blozik and Palfrey grew up together. They attended Charleroi Area High School in Pennsylvania's Mon Valley. "I wouldn't say that we were at the top of the class," she remembers, "but our grades were important to us."

Blozik describes her friend as caring and loyal. Palfrey was convicted last month on federal racketeering charges stemming from what prosecutors described as a high-end prostitution ring. Palfrey told her friend she didn't know the women who worked for her were trading sex for money. Blozik expected her to appeal. "She felt like she didn't do anything wrong," Blozik says. "She truly believed that. I felt that she would be one that would want to prove that, and I felt that this was where this was headed."

Laura Conaway

5:27 PM ET | 05- 2-2008 | permalink

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