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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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.”

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Papalexis in his Palm Beach office last year

Update: Papalexis’ two Albanian henchmen, accused to have helped with the murder, will have to go through a re-trial. Also, the British press now reports that Papalexis’ sentencing has been scheduled for Sept. 30. Check out this story in London’s Telegraph.

Palm Beach bizman Thanos Papalexis was found guilty of the 2000 murder of a man who delayed his efforts to sell a warehouse in London.

Papalexis’ face turned ashen and the ever-present smirk on his face disappeared when a jury of 11 Londoners rendered their unanimous guilty verdict about 10:45 a.m. (3:45 p.m. London time) at Old Bailey. They deliberated for four days at the end of  a three-month trial.

The sentence is expected next week. But, said London attorney Cemil Gersel, Papalexis may be in his 60s by the time he is sprung from prison — if he’s lucky.

“He is eligible for a mandatory sentence of life in prison,” Gersel said. He represents two Papalexis henchmen in the same murder. Their verdict is not known yet.

“On the low end, it could be between 20 and 25 years.”

Papalexis, 37, is known here as the slick-tongued son of a Greek shipping tycoon who tried to start three fractional ownership clubs in Miami and Palm Beach. His promise was that would-be members who paid a $200,000 initiation fee would have access to a fleet of Rolls-Royces, a mansion in Palm Beach, a private island in the Bahamas and private jets.

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The scales of justice atop Old Bailey

A jury at the Old Bailey courthouse in London today is deliberating the fate of Palm Beach bizman Thanos Papalexis.

The son of a Greek shipping tycoon, whose unsuccessful attempts to start luxury fractional-ownership clubs on The Island ended in lawsuits, Papalexis and two alleged henchmen are facing a murder charge.

A court observer in London said the jury could be at it all week, although a verdict is expected Thursday or Friday. The jurors first gathered Friday but took Monday off because of a holiday in Great Britain.

The 37-year-old Papalexis said he is not guilty and had no reason to kill 55-year-old fellow Greek national Charalambos Christodoulides in March 2000.

The Crown’s prosecutors, however, say the fact Christodoulides – nicknamed Bambi by his friends – lived in a near-abandoned warehouse made him an impediment to Papalexis’ plan to sell the property for redevelopment.

The victim was tortured and strangled before his body was stuffed in a mechanic’s pit.

Since the murder, Papalexis had moved to South Florida and started several businesses that couldn’t get off the ground.

He was arrested in West Palm Beach in November and extradited to England.

A star witness at the trial, which started in May, included a South Florida porn actress, Rebecca DeFalco In her profanity-laced testimony, she claimed Papalexis told her during pillow-talk at the Four Seasons Palm Beach that he killed a man. Papalexis said in court that he was just showing off.

He faces life in prison.

(Full disclosure: I was a witness in this trial and testified via closed-circuit television that Papalexis threatened to harm me and my family after I wrote this March 2007 story about his financial history.)

Palm Beach bizman Thanos Papalexis told jurors gathered in London’s Old Bailey for his murder trial that he was fibbing when, during pillow talk with his porn star galpal at the Four Seasons Palm Beach, he admitted to killing a man.

Papalexis, 37, who was extradited to England in November, said he was just trying to create a fantasy world in which he was a James Bond-style spy.

The Palm Beach/Miami porn star and escort, Rebecca DeFalco, testified earlier this month Papalexis told her he once killed someone who “stood in his way.”

Charalambos (Courtesy BBC)

This much is not fantasy. Papalexis and two “henchmen” stand accused of killing a 55-year-old man who lived in a warehouse that Papalexis wanted to redevelop into luxury lofts. The victim, Charalambos Christodoulides, wouldn’t leave. The suspects all denied their involvement in the 2000 homicide.

Wednesday, according to the BBC, Papalexis said in court: “I wanted her (DeFalco) to feel loved and to feel that I was a super-spy and that we would have great sex and great fun together. I have regaled her with stories which would make a screenwriter envious - but I have never mentioned anything to do with this murder. I told her about missions, explosions, car chases, gun battles in the desert, stories that you would see in a movie.

“But nothing to do with the murder of a 55-year-old gentleman in a warehouse in London.”

He also said he had a colleague tell DeFalco he had been injured in an explosion and lost his memory.

Papalexis, whose other mistress was found dead in her Riviera Beach apartment two weeks ago, said wife, Karina, had agreed to let him have sex with other women because she had fertility issues.