The woman known as the “D.C. Madam” apologized to her mother and sister in suicide notes, saying she couldn’t bear going to prison and saw killing herself as the only “exit strategy.”

Debra Jean Palfrey also wrote that she couldn’t bare the thought of spending the next 6-8 years in prison for what she called a “modern day lynching.”

Deborah Jeane Palfrey, convicted last month of running an elite Washington prostitution ring, wrote to her mother that she could not “live the next 6-8 years behind bars for what you and I have come to regard as this ‘modern day lynching,’ only to come out of prison in my late ’50s a broken, penniless and very much alone woman.”

Just as I wrote last week, it’s outrageous that with one of the highest murder rates in the country, Washington D.C. decided to use their resources to go after Palfrey for running an escort service.