Dead Celebrity Alert

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) — Jim Hager, one of the Hager Twins who satirized country life with cornball one-liners on TV’s “Hee Haw,” died in Nashville, the show’s producer said Friday. He was 66.

Hager was at a coffee shop when he collapsed Thursday, Sam Lovullo said. He said he had been told that by Jon Hager, the surviving twin. Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where he had been taken, gave no details on the cause of death.

The twins, who were also guitarists and drummers, rose to national fame as original cast members of the TV show in 1969. With its mixture of music and country-flavored humor, the show was a huge hit. … Read full obituary

Deborah Jeane Palfrey, convicted last month of running a high-end prostitution service in Washington, hanged herself today in a shed outside her mother’s mobile home in Florida, officials said.

Authorities were called to the Sun Valley Estates Mobile Home Park in Tarpon Springs, Fla., by 76-year-old Blanche Palfrey, who found her daughter’s body hanging by a nylon rope shortly before 11 a.m., Tarpon Springs police Capt. Jeffrey P. Young said at a news conference. He said Deborah Palfrey left at least two suicide notes, but he declined to discuss their contents. …

Palfrey, 52, was free while awaiting sentencing June 25 on federal racketeering charges. A federal jury convicted her April 15 of running a Washington area call-girl ring in the guise of “a high-end erotic fantasy service,” rejecting her argument that she was unaware for 13 years that female escorts she employed were performing sex acts with clients for money. …Read full story

See also:

D.C. Madam Update: Vitter, Tobias, Ullman spared long-anticipated (and well-deserved) humiliation
Conservative Babylon, April 15, 2008