She won’t roll over. And she won’t squeal, either.
Accused Hockey Mom Madam Anna Gristina will definitely go to trial in October in a sensational multimillion-dollar Manhattan escort-ring case — and take the stand if she has to, her lawyer insisted yesterday.
This, despite the fact that all four other defendants in the five-year DA investigation have flipped against her in hopes of avoiding jail — as first reported in The Post— not to mention an unknown number of unindicted cooperators turning, too, including at least one additional alleged hooker who recorded some 100 hours of evidence in the salacious case.
“It ain’t happening,” defense lawyer Norm Pattis said last night of any last-minute plea deal for the pig-rescuing upstate-farm mom.
“[Gristina] is not cutting a deal. She is not cooperating. She is not interested in talking about the state’s suspicions. We are going to trial.”
Gristina — who insists she merely ran a discrete, Upper East Side-based matchmaking service catering to married millionaire clientele — came to Manhattan Supreme Court for a hearing yesterday in high-heeled snakeskin sandals, black slacks and a filmy, off-white blouse.
Her husband, Kelvin Gorr, her teenage son, Stefano, 23-year-old daughter Suzie and 9-year-old son Nick were at her side as Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan denied her request to toss the charges against her for what she’d claimed was “egregious prosecutorial conduct.”
But there was good news for Gristina.
Merchan signaled that her trial, tentatively set for Oct. 15, will be limited to a single promoting-prostitution charge tried over one week.
“This is a very narrow issue,” the judge warned prosecutors, who yesterday said that they may want to introduce wiretaps and witness testimony showing that Gristina was running a much larger sex-for- money business than currently alleged.
“This is going to be a very short case,” the judge said. “I’m not going to allow this to just get out of hand.”
The judge’s warnings were in response to an assertion by lead prosecutor Charles Linehan saying that he may seek to introduce testimony and wiretap evidence “about other incidents not covered in the indictment.”
Prosecutors have claimed that Gristina’s ring made millions over the course of 15 years and escaped justice with the help of wealthy clientele and law-enforcement pals.
These pals were “poised to help her out, to let her know if there is trouble on the front that she needs to be concerned about, particularly back during the Eliot Spitzer investigation,” Linehan said in February, in reference to the former love gov’s 2008 hooker scandal.
No high-placed pals have been identified or arrested. And Gristina has never been indicted for laundering those alleged millions, despite the more than five years of cooperation by her accused money launderer, Jonas Gayer.
The sole charge against Gristina is that she and accused fellow madam Jaynie Mae Baker brokered a two-hooker sex show for an undercover cop posing as a randy client, or, as Pattis called it, “a $2,000 peep show for a cop on the taxpayer’s dime.”
“[Gristina’s] doing the right thing” by not flipping, convicted madam Kristen Davis told The Post yesterday.
Davis admitted to money laundering and forked over some $2 million in illegal-brothel proceeds in 2008 — all while herself declining to name names or otherwise cooperate.
“[Gristina] might be the first person to actually go to trial and win one of these cases,” said Davis, whose service was linked to such A-list horndogs as Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Spitzer.