Dear Dr. Bonior:

I can tell you that Jeane wasn't "threatening" to kill herself--it was a promise. As a member of her defense team, I was forwarded by her an e-mail between her and Jason Leopold (formerly of Talkout) where she stated very clearly, "The bastards aren't taking me alive." Incredibly, Mr. Leopold never bothered to read the missive.

Jeane wouldn't listen to anybody. If you disagreed with her, you were cut-off from communication, or even fired as some of her representation found. Of course, it's more complicated than that, but I believe that's the crux of it--it was her way or the highway.

I told others, knowing full-well that nothing was going to prevent Jeane from doing what she did. If it hadn't been on May 1, it would have likely been in prison, a commonality with convicted madams.

This is something we should all be examining: how we throw women away in what is a very sick patriarchal society and culture. "Treatment" wasn't going to make prison or the fact that she had another felony on her record go away. Jeane had been planning this for months. If she lost, she would kill herself. What we need is to put a moratorium on our prostitution laws, which are inhuman.

Deborah had said on national radio that she would NEVER commit suicide... the "they will never take me alive" comment could easily mean -- I will put up a fight ---- this lady did NOT kill herself --- she was a threat to big powers in the DC area --- who had her killed.

Except that she did commit suicide, and told myself and others on separate occasions that she would. She did put up a fight, and lost. You might consider that there was an element of the bluff, as well as the fact that she wasn't able to prove she serviced such luminaries as Brent R. Wilkes. Proof. I was very close to the story and was part of the defense. Try reading more carefully next time rather than jumping to absurd conclusions through a careless leap of logic (or is it bypassing logic?).

where is the complete list?ABC?I have been checking out quite a few websites if anybody thought information would disappear with her I believe they were mistaken this ought to be real interesting.

Thanks for writing, all. And Matt, very interesting points. I agree that the laws that convicted her need serious revisiting. And I agree that some people seem to be the type that would do what they want regardless of any intervention, but then one wonders about whether intervention might have made the circumstances, at the very least, less horrifying for her family. Not knowing her or her family, of course, I can only speculate. Thanks again for writing.

It's appreciated Andrea, and I didn't know Jeane as personally as many. But we had a very prolonged and detailed correspondence that I'll be parsing-out before long.

However, I should note that I became part of the saga from early-June until May 1st (one could argue it's never going to end), and Jeane wasn't going to listen to anyone. Her mother could tell us more, but I assume from the suicide notes that Jeane was a handful, and incredibly defiant. It appears her mother felt that Jeane was getting unfair treatment from the legal system, and it's hard to disagree.

You could say--and this is probably why we came together in this story--because I am also refractory to control by authority. I'm a law-abiding person, but take no truck with the arbitrary flexing of power from anyone. She felt the same way as far as I could tell. On May 1st, she underscored it as a fact.

No intervention was going to make prison go away, not ever, and she wasn't going to go back again. She told me this repeatedly from the beginning in June of last year until her death: "I'm not spending one day in prison." Now we know she meant it.

Suicide presents a philosophical dilemma to a culture that fears death so greatly that we have multi-billion dollar industries that promise some avoidance of mortality. Why would someone do it? Frequently, it's because they know how the world works, and better than the majority.

What many don't understand in this culture is that suicide can be not only an heroic act of defiance in the face of a horrible situation, but that it's often a preferable method of determining one's fate. This is especially true of people with a terminal illness.

We can judge the dead all we want, but there's nothing one can do about it when an individual is as determined as Jeane, or even an inmate of Guantanamo Bay. I should add here that some of the individuals we found in some of her subpoenaed phone records were war on terror detainees. There is no irony here, I believe.

Would we judge someone being tortured by our government (a safe assumption that this is happening somewhere as I write this, ) for committing suicide to escape?

The same could be said of Jeane. Our prison system is unfair and a human rights disaster, a mockery of democracy. They--the prosecutors under USA Jeffrey A. Taylor, an appointee of Alberto Gonzales--wore her down for an unbelievable 17 months, albeit that she contributed to the prolonging of the legal process herself. She didn't get due process, and she died. Go team.