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Fanne Foxe, Who Plunged Into the Tidal Basin and Emerged Famous, Dies at 84

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A stripper known as “the Argentine Firecracker,” she was at the center of a political sex scandal that rocked Washington in the 1970s.
Fanne Foxe, the stripper known as “the Argentine Firecracker,” who leapt from the limousine of Representative Wilbur D. Mills and plunged into Washington’s Tidal Basin after a night of drinking, exposing one of the biggest political sex scandals of the 1970s, died on Feb.10. She was 84. Her death was announced in a paid notice in The Tampa Bay Times. It did not say where she died or give a cause. Until the Tidal Basin episode, Mr. Mills had been one of the most powerful members of Congress, an 18-term Arkansas Democrat who chaired the Ways and Means Committee and wrote major tax legislation. He had flirted with a bid for the presidency and a Supreme Court seat and, at 65, seemed a model of stability, a married father and grandfather in the twilight of a distinguished career. But for more than a year he had been drinking heavily and was involved in a secret affair with Ms. Foxe,38, a mother of three whose real name was Annabel Battistella (later Annabel Montgomery). She was a $500-a-week performer at the Silver Slipper, a club in Washington. Until her recent divorce, she and her husband had lived in an Arlington, Va., apartment building where Mr. Mills and his wife resided. The first whiff of trouble broke about 2 a.m. on Oct.7,1974, when two United States Park Service police officers spotted Mr. Mills’s car speeding with lights off near the Jefferson Memorial and pulled it over. Apparently panicking, Ms. Foxe bolted from the car and, yelling in English and Spanish, tried to escape by jumping into the Tidal Basin, a Potomac estuary with an average depth of 10 feet. The officers pulled her out, handcuffed her when she tried to jump in again and returned her to the car, where they found Mr. Mills and several other occupants intoxicated. Mr. Mills was bleeding from his nose and facial scratches, and Ms. Foxe had two black eyes. An officer drove her to a hospital and the others to their homes. The incident might have gone unnoticed, but a television cameraman came upon the scene and recorded it. The police filed no charges, and Mr. Mills issued a statement that cast events in an innocent light. But within days the outlines of a political sex scandal began to emerge.

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