Fla. judge rules media can see 'D.C. Madam' photos

The public will be able to view crime scene photos taken at the Florida mobile home where the "D.C. Madam" killed herself in May, a judge ruled Friday, but the pictures can’t be published.

In what media lawyer Tom Reynolds described to the St. Petersburg Times as an "eminently fair," if not necessarily "legally correct," ruling, Judge Linda Allan opted to balance the newspaper’s request to view the pictures against the vehement pleas from Deborah Jeane Palfrey’s mother to keep them under wraps. 

According to The Times, Blanche Palfrey’s attorney had argued the pictures were not public under the state’s so-called Dale Earnhardt law, named after the late NASCAR driver, which bans the release of autopsy photos. Palfrey told the judge "I’m afraid it would kill me" if the photos of her daughter’s body were made public, The Times said. 

Deborah Palfrey hanged herself in a storage shed on her mother’s Tarpon Springs property on May 1, soon after she was found guilty of running a Washington-based prostitution ring.