DeFalco (Courtesy Rebecca DeFalco)

Palm Beach businessman Thanos Papalexis emotionally tortured galpal Rebecca DeFalco for months.

He got physical, too. He bit her. He choked her. Pulled her hair.

Papalexis was, she said, a sadistic lover who kept S&M equipment in a special room.

“He tortured me emotionally and physically to the point that I swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills,” DeFalco told Page2Live in her first exclusive interview since she was thrust into the limelight.

“He got in my head. I loved him. He was so charming and interesting.”

Today, DeFalco applauded the sentence that a court in England handed down against Papalexis: Life behind bars.

The former Boca Raton-based porn actress/escort actually played a key role in having an English jury find him guilty of murdering a London loner who, in 2000, stood in the way of a business deal.

DeFalco, who dated Papalexis on and off for three years, testified for five days in July. She said Papalexis admitted to her during pillow talk in 2004 at the Four Seasons Palm Beach that he killed a man.

“I testified without any desire for revenge. I just told the truth, and the truth dictates what he deserves,” she said. “You can call me a whore, but don’t call me a liar.

“The way he told me he strangled someone, from what I saw in his eyes, I knew right away it was true.”

So, why did DeFalco allow him to roam freely among Palm Beach’s elite for four more years instead of reporting Papalexis to authorities? Papalexis, 37, was nabbed by U.S. Marshals in November 2008 and extradited to England after authorities there matched his DNA to cigarette butts found at the crime scene nine years earlier.

“Early in the relationship,” DeFalco said, “he was telling me he was a spy working for the CIA and MI-6. He actually had people calling me on his behalf to say he was on a mission in Iraq and that he was made prisoner. He once disappeared for months at a time, and pretended he suffered from amnesia after falling from a building during a chase.

“I bought it all. I figured that killing someone was a part of his job,” she said. “I figured he was a good guy killing the bad guys. Now I know it was the contrary.”

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Odom

– He speaks! Newlywed (once all the paperwork is signed) Lamar Odom, a former Miami Heat star, finally opened up this morning about his wedding to reality TV’s Khloe Kardashian (Kourtney and Khloe Take Miami) over the weekend. Of course, the first question he was asked on ESPN 710 radio in Los Angeles was about the lovebirds’ monthlong courtship. “I’ve been a rock star . . . since I was 16,” the 29-year-old L.A. Laker said, “and doing it (getting hooked up) so fast, there was a lot of family members who couldn’t even agree. So I can imagine what it would look like to the outside person not involved in my life every day. . . I fell in love and the reason why I knew I was in love was because I knew how I felt when I wasn’t with that person or if she was no longer in my life . . . I never had a problem meeting women. I moved to Miami (in 2003, then he was traded to L.A. in the deal that brought Shaquille O’Neal to Miami) and we all know what that scene is like down there. But I finally met the one that I knew if I lost her, it would hurt the most.” Isn’t that sweet?

Damon on his phony directing gig (Courtesy YouTube)

– It’s Miami Beach’s Matt Damon like you’ve never seen him. One of the few level-headed people in showbiz, Damon flew off at Entourage star Adrian Grenier the other day, in a phony PSA that hit YouTube with a vengeance. The video, available below, is to promote Entourage’s season finale on HBO Sunday. Damon, as in Ocean’s Eleven and The Bourne Identity, pretends to direct Grenier in the filming of a clean water message when Damon starts lobbing four-letter bombs, too many of them to bleep. Particularly funny: Grenier’s co-star, Jeremy Piven, seems to be more embarrassed than anyone. Be advised, the video on the jump is for mature audiences only. Click (Read more…)

Papalexis' London mugshot (Courtesy Press Association)

A Palm Beach businessman dubbed by the British press “the sadistic playboy” was sentenced to life in prison this morning in London’s Old Bailey courthouse.

As he sentenced Thanos Papalexis, 37, Judge Jeremy Roberts called the murderer “totally amoral.”

“You are a totally amoral person in the sense that you do not think twice in doing or saying anything which helps you achieve your own ends,” Roberts told Papalexis, according to The Guardian newspaper.

“This was an execution carried out for financial gain. You treated Charalambos (Christodoulides, the victim) as completely expendable.”

According to the British penal code, Papalexis will have to spend a mandatory 20 years behind bars before he becomes eligible for release.

An eyewitness told me Papalexis showed little emotion as he was sentenced, but blinked his eyes incessantly and shook sightly.

“The judge strictly followed the law,” said attorney Cemil Gersel, who represents Papalexis’ two co-defendants. They have yet to be tried but are accused of helping Papalexis in the killing. “A life sentence in England doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be in jail for the rest of your life. But he won’t be released before 20 years.”

For more, please look below or click (Read more…)

Dolphins Coach Tony Sparano with wife Jeanette (Michele Sandberg/Special to Page2Live)

Dolphins coach Tony Sparano might be feeling the pressure of a winless season so far, but he hasn’t lost sight of what’s really important. Holding wife Jeanette’s hand, Sparano Tuesday announced that Sunday’s game against the Buffalo Bills at Land Shark would be used to promote breast cancer awareness.

The players will be wearing pink cleats, wristbands, gloves, sideline caps, helmet decals and captains’ patches. Coaches are planning to wear pink caps and pink ribbon pins, and there will be pink goal-post padding in the end zone. The move, however, stops short of Major League Baseball, where some teams occasionally play in pink.

Earlier this year, the Fins’ tight ends coach, George DeLeone, lost his wife Roberta to breast cancer.

– Yikes. Model Samantha Burke, the Red Neck Riviera-based Jude Law baby mama, is bursting at the seams a week after she gave birth to a girl she says is the 36-year-old actor’s love child. Burke, 24, revealed her voluptuous new bod Monday as she drove around her hometown of Pensacola in search of baby things. Unfortunately, pictures of the little girl, Sophia, are still under wraps. Burke says she got pregnant during a short, intense affair with Law as he shot Sherlock Holmes in New York City. The British actor starred in The Talented Mr. Ripley and Cold Mountain. Should you feel generous, check Burke’s baby registry at Babies R Us here.

Samantha Burke in Pensacola on Monday (Courtesy dlisted.com)

– Holy pony, Wellington polo player Nacho Figueras is getting even bigger as the local season looms. Figueras appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show on Monday, telling Oprah Winfrey: “You can actually die playing [polo], so it’s a very dangerous thing. You have to be conscious, but you’ve also got to be a little bit crazy.” Well, audiences everywhere, it seems, are crazy about the 32-year-old Figueras. He was also featured on CBS’ Sunday Morning on Sept. 20, and the Ralph Lauren pitchman was voted second-most handsome man in the world by the readers of Vanity Fair in June. He placed ahead of Brad Pitt, but second to Twilight’s Robert Pattinson. Oprah airs at 4 p.m. daily on WPTV-Channel 5.

Nacho Figueras in Wellington (Bill Ingram/The Palm Beach Post)