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Picture courtesy
of Half
the Deck
America's
lifestyle diva is making her at home in her
new home - prison.
Martha Stewart the former CEO of multimedia
empire Martha Stewart Omnimedia - a position
she had to quit - is now humble prisoner 55170-064.
She is incarcerated in "Camp Cupcake"
- the nickname for the austere federal women's
prison in West Virginia.
Her new home in Alderson jail is a humiliating
comedown for a woman who built a massive business
empire on her vision of homemaking.
After a strip search, she had to swop her usually
fashionable clothing for the prison uniform
- khaki shirt and trousers, and black boots.
More humiliation was in store when she had to
share a bunk bed in a small cubicle, in place
of her mansions in New York and the Hamptons.
The queen of interior design is serving a five
month sentence for lying over a stockbroker
trade. She will earn 10 cent an hour for working
in jail. She is banned from running her own
business while a prisoner.
Stewart drove to the prison at speed just as
dawn was breaking, denying press photographers
pictures of her arrival to prison.
She opted to serve her time for conspiracy,
obstruction of justice and lying to prosecutors
over a $45,000 sale of shares, rather than wait
for the outcome of an appeal. She did this to
dampen down speculation about the future of
her business.
But she has steadfastly proclaimed her innocence
throughout. In an ABC 20/20 interview after
the sentence was imposed she told Barbara Walters:
"I didn't cheat the little people...We're
all little people. I didn't cheat anybody out
of anything."
She also invoked Nelson Mandela, Africa's persecuted
anti-apartheid hero, saying: "Many, many
good people have gone to prison...look at Nelson
Mandela."
- October 10, 2004
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