Metro

DA putting the screws to ‘brothel boss’ Anna Gristina

THE BODYGUARD: If anyone had any thoughts of bothering Upper East Side madam Anna Gristina, forget it – not with a big bad bodyguard, identified only as Sly, hanging around her. (
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They pressed her over and over, pushed a list of 10 Big Apple power players at her — and demanded she spill the beans on the roster of real-estate moguls and investment bankers.

“Some I knew, some I didn’t,” accused Upper East Side brothel boss Anna Gristina told The Post yesterday about an hours-long grilling she received from Manhattan prosecutors.

But they kept pressing, bringing in more and more investigators to intimidate her.

VIDEO: INSIDE GRISTINA’S MANHATTAN ‘LOVE LAIR’

“In effect, it was, ‘Tell us what we want, and we’ll let you go,’ ” Gristina said.

But her defiance, she believes, is what led them to charge her with a single count of prostitution.

And that’s when she realized she must be part of a much larger investigation.

“It’s not about me; it’s bigger than me,” Gristina said during an exclusive interview at Rikers Island, where she remains jailed.

“They’re trying to sweat me out. They are clearly trying to break me.”

The self-described “hockey mom” and real-estate developer claims to have no idea why prosecutors are so intent on digging up dirt on those men — half of whom she said she knew as either friends or business associates.

“I’d bite my tongue off before I’d tell them anything,” Gristina vowed.

The mother of four — who is being held in lieu of $2 million bond — spoke publicly for the first time since her Feb. 22 arrest, when prosecutors charged that for the past 15 years she has pimped prostitutes to clients whose net worth was a minimum of $1 million — earning millions for herself.

Asked if prosectors’ claims that she trafficked underage girls were true, she said, “Absolutely not.”

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said that in a five-year probe, it caught Gristina on wiretaps boasting of her close ties to cops, federal agents and other authorities who helped keep the heat off her even as other high-end prostitution rings were taken down, including the 2008 arrests that led to the resignation of then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer.

“They say I’ve made millions for years, and I have — for other people,” said the Scottish-born blonde, who along with her third husband, Kelvin Gorr, is a real-estate developer upstate.

She said she has repeatedly helped out friends with real-estate and other ventures that have earned big bucks for them — even as her family had a hard time making ends meet in their home in upstate Monroe.

“I’ve been struggling to keep my daughter in college to pay the tuition. Our utilities are always on the verge of being shut off,” Gristina said. “I can show you the bills.

“We live very much a simple life,” she said, adding that any spare money she does have goes toward her family and animal-rescue efforts.

But she did admit to boasting in phone calls about her friendships with police officers, FBI agents and politicians.

“I know people,” Gristina noted. “It’s like a politician. You say things to make yourself sound better.”

Gristina also admitted she moved in some rarefied circles.

The morning that she was arrested, Gristina had met with Morgan Stanley financial adviser David Walker in his Midtown office. She was arrested alone as she left his building.

At her arraignment the next day, prosecutors told her they believed she and Walker were talking about how she wanted to take her “prostitutes” to the Internet.

Walker, 47, yesterday was placed on a leave of absence at Morgan Stanley.

But Gristina told The Post that her meeting with Walker was to discuss a “totally legitimate” on-line matchmaking service that would connect very wealthy men with women for long-term relationships.

She also said her accused co-madam, Jaynie Mae Baker, 30, who is being sought on charges of running the alleged brothel with her, was actually a matchmaker involved in that legit venture.

After she left that meeting,, Gristina was confronted a couple of blocks away by DA investigators who hauled her downtown for questioning.

There, for several hours, a series of increasingly higher-ranking investigators and prosecutors cycled in and out of a small interrogation room, where they showed Gristina the list of 10 names — and demanded she tell them something about each of the men.

“The ones I knew were people I’ve known for a long time who are in politics, investing and real estate,” Gristina recalled, noting that she knew “about five or so” of the men.

“I kept asking for a lawyer. And they’d leave, send someone else in to try to get me to talk,” she said. “And we’d do it all over again.

“I got the impression they were trying to make a case, but they didn’t really know what it was . . . They were obviously trying to get at something,” she said.

“You know what it was? It was fishing,” Gristina said.

“I still have no idea what they wanted . . . They are trying to squeeze me for information that I don’t even know what it is, or have.”

Finally, she said, she was arrested on the single charge of promoting prostitution — a relatively minor offense.

“If I’m such a big, high-profile madam, making all this money, and they had to investigate me for five years, why did they arrest me on a single promoting-prostitution charge — and only after I refused to talk to them?” Gristina asked yesterday.

Baker, Gristina said, was “on vacation with her sister for two weeks” and not on the lam and just learned that prosecutors have charged her with promoting prostitution.

“They go every year,” Gristina said, “and she just found that she’s a supposed fugitive.”

Gristina said Baker is totally innocent.

“I feel bad for Jaynie, because she’s not involved in anything, and she did nothing wrong,” Gristina said.

“She is a professional matchmaker. That’s what she does. That’s what she’s doing for me.”

After her arrest, Gristina was taken to Rikers Island and was initially placed on suicide watch.

“I met with the doctor. He asked me if I was depressed or suicidal, and I sort of laughed at him. I told him no,” Gristina said. “He asked if I thought anyone was out to get me.”

“I told him, ‘Well, the DA just had me arrested — let’s take it from there.’ ”

Gristina was later placed in solitary confinement — in a large room about 150 feet long — where she is constantly monitored, even when she sleeps, by rotating shifts of three guards at a time.

“Picture an old military barracks, with plastic mattresses and rusty springs . . . I’m in there by myself. It’s a whole room,” she said.

The big room is sweltering, with temperatures approaching 100 degrees, she said.

“We are all sweating,” she said. “It smells like cat urine. It’s just deplorable. It’s not a normal Rikers cell.”

One saving grace, she said, is the Rikers Island staff, who are all “being extremely nice to me, very professional.”

Gristina teared up just once yesterday, when she talked about her four children, especially her youngest, a 9-year-old boy who initially thought she was dead when she didn’t come home Feb.22.

“He knows now that’s not true, but it’s just really hard,” Gristina said.

“I just don’t want my kids to see me in here.”