Call girl identified in newspaper report
NEW YORK – New details emerged Wednesday about the call girl at the center of the prostitution scandal engulfing New York’s governor, with a newspaper report identifying her as a 22-year-old aspiring musician from Manhattan.
The New York Times reported that the real name of the woman – identified as “Kristen” in court papers alleging that Gov. Eliot Spitzer paid more than $4,000 for prostitutes’ services – is Ashley Alexandra Dupre.
Don D. Buchwald, a New York lawyer, confirmed to the Associated Press that he represents Ashley Alexandra Dupre, the same woman in the Times story. “That’s as far as I can go,” he said.
A man who answered the phone at her mother’s home in New Jersey and identified himself as Dupre’s brother told the Associated Press he had no idea why Dupre would agree to be interviewed in the scandal.
“I’ve talked to my sister every five minutes since this happened, and I’m not going to comment on it,” he said. “She’s just trying to get through this.”
Dupre’s MySpace page provides a window into her life as she went from a broken home in New Jersey to a music career in the city.
“I have been alone. I have abused drugs. I have been broke and homeless. But, I survived, on my own. I am here, in NY because of my music,” she wrote.
In an Aug. 30 blog posting on MySpace, she writes: “The past few months have been a roller coaster with so called friends, lovers, and family … but its something you have to deal with and confront in order to move on …”
“What destroys me strengthens me” is the slogan next to a Dupre photograph.
The photos show her at various places, including in a bikini on a boat in a tropical locale. The number of hits to the page soared by the tens of thousands after the story broke.
Dupre describes her favorite musical artists as Etta James, Aretha Franklin, Celine Dion, Christina Aguilera and Frank Sinatra, among many others.
Her Web site boasts a recording of a song, “What We Want.” “I know what you want, you got what I want. I know what you need. Can you handle me?” she sings.
She briefly spoke to the New York Times about the Spitzer scandal. Law enforcement officials identified the governor as a “Client 9” who had a Feb. 13 tryst with “Kristen” and paid her $4,300, according to court papers.
“I just don’t want to be thought of as a monster,” Dupre told the Times. “This has been a very difficult time. It’s complicated.”
She told the newspaper she had slept very little since the allegations against Spitzer were revealed.
Dupre told the Times she worried about paying her rent in a ninth-floor Manhattan apartment after her boyfriend recently left her. She said she was considering moving back in with her family in New Jersey.
Records show that Dupre lives in Manhattan on West 25th Street, where a gaggle of reporters and TV trucks quickly gathered Wednesday night. It is a luxury rental skyscraper called The Chelsea Landmark where rents start at $3,500 a month for a small studio, neighbors said. The 35-story building opened less than a year ago.
She declined to comment when asked by the Times when she first met Spitzer and how many times they had been together.
Dupre apparently appeared in federal court Monday as a witness in the case against four people accused of operating the Emperors Club VIP prostitution ring.