She left a broken home on the Jersey Shore
at 17 and came to New York City to work the nightclubs as a rhythm and
blues singer. Now, at 22, she is the unwitting, and as yet unseen, star
of the seamy drama that is the downfall of Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York.
Enjoy Hot Sex Tonight Do NOT Be Alone
Kristen, described in a
federal affidavit as having a Feb. 13 rendezvous with Mr. Spitzer or Client #9 at
the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, has spent the last few days in her
ninth-floor rental in an upscale apartment building in the Flatiron
district. On Monday, she made a brief appearance in federal court as a
witness in the case against four people charged with operating the
prostitution ring, Emperors Club V.I.P. In a series of telephone interviews on Tuesday night, she said she had
slept very little over the past week due to the stress from the case.
I just dont want to be thought of as a monster, the woman said as she
told the tiniest tidbits of her story. Born Ashley Youmans but now
known as Ashley Alexandra Dupre, she spoke softly and with good humor
as she added with significant understatement: This has been a very
difficult time. It is complicated.
She has not been charged. The
lawyer appointed to represent her, Don D. Buchwald, told a magistrate
judge in court on Monday that she had been subpoenaed to testify in a
grand jury investigation. Asked to swear that she had accurately filled
out and signed a court financial affidavit, she responded affirmatively.
A
person with knowledge of the Emperors Club operation confirmed that
the woman interviewed by The New York Times was the woman identified as
Kristen in the affidavit. Mr. Buchwald confirmed various details of Ms.
Dupres background but would not discuss the contents of the affidavit.
Ms. Dupre said on the telephone Tuesday night that she was
worried about how she would pay her rent since the man she was living
with walked out on me after she discovered he had fathered two
children. She said she was considering working at a friends restaurant
or, once her apartment lease expires, moving back in with her family in
New Jersey to relax.
She did not say when she had started
working for Emperors Club, or how often she had liaisons arranged
through the ring. Asked when she met Governor Spitzer and how many
times they had seen each other, Ms. Dupre said she had no comment.
On her MySpace page,
Ms. Dupre writes of her odyssey to New York from New Jersey through
North Carolina, Miami, D.C., Virginia and Austin, Texas; public
records show that she lived in Belmar, N.J., in 2001, and in North
Carolina in 2003. She owns a company, created in 2005, called Pasche
New York, which her lawyer said was an entertainment business designed
to further her singing career.
Music is her first love, and on the MySpace page, Ms. Dupre mentions Patsy Cline, Frank Sinatra, Christina Aguilera and Lauryn Hill among a long list of influences, including her brother, Kyle. (She also lists Madonna, Mary J. Blige and Amy Winehouse as her top MySpace friends.) In the interview, she said she saw the Rolling Stones perform at Radio City Music Hall on their last tour after a friend gave her two of tickets. They were amazing, she said.
On
MySpace, it says: I am all about my music and my music is all about
me. It flows from what Ive been through, what Ive seen and how I
feel.
She left a broken family at age 17, having been abused,
according to the MySpace page, and has used drugs, been broke and
homeless.
Learned what it was like to have everything and
lose it, again and again, she wrote. Learned what it was like to wake
up one day and have the people you care about most gone.
But I
made it, she continues. Im still here and I love who I am. If I
never went through the hard times, I would not be able to appreciate
the good ones. Cliche, yes, but I know its true.
Carolyn
Capalbo, 46, Ms. Dupres mother, said that she attended Wall High
School in Belmar until her sophomore year, when she moved to North
Carolina. She was a young kid with typical teenage rebellion issues,
but we are extremely close now, Ms. Capalbo said in a telephone
interview Wednesday.
In 2006, Ms. Dupre changed her legal name,
according to records in Monmouth County Superior Court, from Ashley R.
Youmans to Ashley Rae Maika DiPietro, taking her step-fathers surname,
since she regarded him as as the only father I have known. But in the
interview, she referred to herself as Ashley Alexandra Dupre, which is
how she is known on MySpace.
On the Web page is a recording of
what she describes as her latest track, What We Want, an amateurish,
hip-hop inflected rhythm and blues tune that asks, Can you handle me,
boy? and uses some dated slang, calling someone her boo.
I know what you want, you got what I want, she sings in the chorus. I know what you need. Can you handle me?
Her MySpace biography says that she started singing professionally after a musician she was living with heard her singing Aretha Franklins
Respect in the shower and burst into the bathroom with his lead
guitarist. She says that she toured and recorded with them, then moved
to Manhattan in 2004 and spent the first two years getting to know the
music scene, networking in clubs and connecting with the industry.
Now its all about my music, its all about expressing me.
In
the affidavit, the woman known by the Emperors Club as Kristen is
described as an American, petite, very pretty brunette, 5 feet 5
inches, and 105 pounds. She apparently was booked at about
$1,000-an-hour, placing her in the middle of the seven-diamond scale by
which Emperors prostitutes commanded up to $4,300 an hour.
Ms.
Capalbo said that she was shell-shocked when her daughter called
mid-last week and told her she had been working as an escort and was
now in trouble with the law. She said she was not sure Ms. Dupre
realized who Mr. Spitzer was when he was her client.
She is a
very bright girl who can handle someone like the governor, Ms. Capalbo
said in a telephone interview Wednesday. But she also is a 22-year-old
not a 32-year-old or a 42-year-old and she obviously got involved in
something much larger than her. |
