The so-called "D.C. Madam" vowed she would never go to federal prison for running a high-end Washington prostitution ring. Not even for a day.

Deborah Jeane Palfrey made good on that promise Thursday when she went to a shed outside her mother's mobile home and hanged herself from a rafter with nylon rope.

The 52-year-old Palfrey was convicted two weeks ago of running a prostitution service that catered to members of Washington's political elite, including Sen. David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican. She was free while she awaited sentencing on July 24.

Her 76-year-old mother, Blanche Palfrey, found the body in the tiny shed outside the pink and white mobile home in the community of mostly retirees in this Gulf Coast town 20 miles northwest of Tampa

DC Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey predicted she would be "suicided" on several occasions both recently and as far back as 17 years ago - comments that now appear ominous in light of the announcement that the former head of a Washington escort service allegedly killed herself today.

"If taken into custody, my physical safety and most probably my very life would be jeopardized," she wrote in August 1991 following an attempt to bring her to trial, "Rape, beating, maiming, disfigurement and more than likely murder disguised in the form of just another jailhouse accident or suicide would await me," said Palfrey in a handwritten letter to the judge accusing the San Diego police vice squad of having a vendetta against her.

During several recent appearances on The Alex Jones Show, Palfrey also said that she was at risk of being killed and that authorities would make it look like suicide. She made it clear that she was not suicidal and if she was found dead it would be murder.

Palfrey had threatened to release the names of well-known clients of her upscale call girl ring in the nation’s capitol, and had indicated that Dick Cheney may be one of them.

In two states where US attorneys are already under fire for serious allegations of political prosecutions, seven people associated with three federal cases have experienced 10 suspicious incidents including break-ins and arson.

These crimes raise serious questions about possible use of deliberate intimidation tactics not only because of who the victims are and the already wide criticism of the prosecutions to begin with, but also because of the suspicious nature of each incident individually as well as the pattern collectively. Typically burglars do not break-into an office or private residence only to rummage through documents, for example, as is the case with most of the burglaries in these two federal cases.

In Alabama, for instance, the home of former Democratic Governor Don Siegelman was burglarized twice during the period of his first indictment. Nothing of value was taken, however, and according to the Siegelman family, the only items of interest to the burglars were the files in Siegelman's home office.

Siegelman's attorney experienced the same type of break-in at her office.