Crime pays for Martha
2005-03-04 07:38
Washington - US lifestyle guru Martha Stewart could leave jail as soon as Friday after a five-month sentence that reinvigorated her career instead of dooming it.
Although her sentence officially ends on Sunday, US media reported that she could be freed by Friday.
Instead of burying her career, the notoriety of her conviction for lying about a dodgy stock sale has led to a contract to host a spin-off of tycoon Donald Trump's hugely successful NBC television reality show The Apprentice.
Stewart will also star in a show focusing on the same subjects that she built into a multi-million dollar lifestyle empire - cooking, entertaining, decorating and home renovating.
Shares of the Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO) empire, which she founded, were up 4.34% on Thursday, trading at $33.43 at 18:03 GMT.
Margaret Roach, editor in chief of Martha Stewart Living, prepared readers in the magazine's March edition for Stewart's release from a West Virginia minimum security prison.
"This year, we usher in spring with an extra measure of gratitude, because the month of March not only marks the vernal equinox on the twentieth and the real start of our Northeast growing season, but also Marthas homecoming," Roach wrote.
Roach said Stewart, who will serve five months under house arrest, will plant a garden in an old estate she has been renovating in Bedford, New York.
"I can tell you she is, indeed, ready to get planting, having ordered her seeds and made extensive to-do lists, just as she would have done in any winter," the editor wrote.
'Always surprising'
Roach also recounted some of Stewart's prison activities.
"The tales were always surprising," she said.
Stewart foraged for wild greens such as dandelion on prison property "to augment the limited fresh vegetable offerings in the diet there", helped decorate the chapel for a memorial service and made microwave meals "with whatever very basic ingredients the commissary had for sale".
She also launched a yoga class that she taught for 10 inmates, spent time crocheting and used old moulds to create a nativity scene for her mother.
"See what one can do with nothing?" Stewart wrote in a letter she sent to Roach.
Stewart was convicted in March last year of lying to federal agents investigating her sale of nearly 4 000 shares in biotechnology company ImClone Systems.