What haunts Ashley Dupre isn’t the image of Eliot Spitzer in his black socks – it’s the look on his wife’s face as he announced he was resigning as governor.
“I try not to revisit that place too often, but when I think about his speech, I think of her face, her eyes, the hurt,” the former high-priced hooker told People magazine in an interview that hits newsstands Friday.
If she could say anything to Silda Wall Spitzer, it would be, “I’m sorry for your pain.”
As for what happened with the governor inside Washington’s Mayflower Hotel on Feb. 13, that was “strictly business.”
Speaking in detail for the first time since the $4,300 tryst that sank Spitzer’s once-promising political career, Dupre said she hadn’t realized who “Client No. 9” was when she hooked up with him.
Inside Room 817, Spitzer was dressed in casual clothes. There was no security detail in sight and nothing that made her realize she was having a tryst with New York’s governor and zealous former state attorney general.
In fact, it wasn’t until her mother, Carolyn, told her to flip on the TV to Spitzer announcing his resignation that she realized the man who had paid her for sex was the governor of New York, she tells the magazine.
“I mean, ask a lot of 22 year olds,” she said. “I was wrapped up in my family, my music. I knew the name, but the face . . . I’m not really a TV person,” she told People.
Besides, she said, “I was there for a purpose – not to wonder who [he] could be.”
Despite Spitzer having a reputation as a difficult client, Dupre – who was using the alias “Kristen” – told People that Client 9, who was going by “George Fox,” was “polite.”
“Some guys, they want to have conversations and really get to know each other. With him, it clearly was not like that. It was more of a transaction. Strictly business,” she said.
Dupre said she practiced safe sex with all her clients, including her most notorious one, but on the advice of her lawyer, she wouldn’t divulge any more details of the evening or say whether she and Spitzer had hooked up previously.
She did say that she doesn’t feel guilty about his downfall, noting that if she hadn’t been sent to the hotel that night, somebody else would have been.
Dupre was working for the Emperors Club VIP escort ring at the time, which, unbeknownst to her, was being investigated by the feds.
In early March, she was contacted by the FBI, which told her it was investigating one of her clients.
Dupre said she panicked and called her mother for support. Her mom hadn’t known how her little girl was paying the bills.
“My mother wasn’t angry. She was supportive,” she said, but the news was “extremely painful for her.”
A few days later, Dupre was in her Manhattan apartment when Carolyn told her to turn on the TV. There was Spitzer, acknowledging he’d made a mistake involving a “private matter” after news broke about his involvement with the Emperors Club.
The “private matter” was his paying for sex from “Kristen.”
Dupre felt her world crashing down around her. “It was surreal,” she said. “I felt like I was suffocating.”
Within days, Dupre was revealed to be “Kristen.” She stayed holed up in her apartment, scared to face the media hordes from around the world that had camped outside her building.
She was eventually able to sneak out by hiding under a blanket in a car. She was then taken to a “safe house” her lawyer had arranged for her. “I felt like a Bond girl,” she told the magazine.
Racy pictures and original recordings on Dupre’s MySpace page helped turn her into an even bigger media sensation while she was hiding out.
She said her father, who took off when she was 3, called her after she hit the headlines to say, “Damn, girl. When you do it, you do it big!”
When the frenzy died down, she moved back in with her mother and stepfather, Michael DiPietro, 57, an oral surgeon, at their New Jersey house – the same home she’d run away from when she was 17. She said she’d been following in the footsteps of her older brother, who’d run away in 1997. “That devastated me,” she said of her only brother running off when she was 12.
After leaving home, she headed first to North Carolina, where her father was living, and began boozing and doing drugs. She then took the party down to Florida.
Dupre said the hard living was nonstop – drinking a bottle of Grey Goose vodka at a time and partaking in a “lot” of marijuana, ecstasy and cocaine.
It was during that period that she did her now-notorious “Girls Gone Wild” video. And it was about the same time she says she was raped. “It caused me to disconnect – with sex, with real relationships,” she said.
She came back up north and was working as a cocktail waitress when she was approached by a man who asked her if she’d be interested in modeling, she told the magazine.
The man worked for an escort agency – and she was intrigued. “This wasn’t any different than going on a date with someone you barely knew and hooking up with them,” she said.
“I knew what my purpose was, they knew what their purpose was – there weren’t any games.”
The busty brunette started hooking in 2004 and did quite well for herself, living a high-flying international lifestyle. She said most of her clients were “intelligent, handsome and successful.”
She also knew it was a dangerous profession and started thinking of quitting the life even before the scandal broke.
“It started to be scary,” she said. “What if I got AIDS? Got killed?”
She said she was able to hang up her stilettos and move on in April 2007 after hooking up with a rich – and married – sugar daddy she had fallen for.
“I loved him,” she said. “I changed. Suddenly, my life had meaning. I spent New Year’s with my mother and stepfather, toasting that this was going to be my year, the best year.”
Then the married man who’d been supporting her dumped her right after New Year’s. Soon, she was back at the Emperor’s Club and headed for her encounter with the governor.
Spitzer went back to work for his father’s real-estate business after stepping down as governor in March, and last week, the US Attorney’s Office announced he wouldn’t face any criminal charges as a result of its prostitution probe.
After the announcement, Spitzer released a statement in which he finally ‘fessed up to his penchant for prostitutes.
“I acknowledge and accept responsibility for the conduct it disclosed,” he said of the federal investigation. “I resigned my position as governor because I recognized that conduct was unworthy of an elected official.”
Spitzer – whose resignation came after 14 turbulent months in office – was spared the humiliation of trial and possible jail time after a “thorough investigation” by the IRS and FBI found no evidence he misused public or ca
sh, the feds said.
Manhattan US Attorney Michael Garcia said there was “insufficient evidence” to charge Spitzer for withdrawing the money he used to pay the Emperors Club for his illicit high jinks.
He had also faced potential charges on allegations he’d violated the Mann Act, which forbids bringing people across state lines for sex.
Dupre had traveled by train to Washington from New York specifically for the tryst.
The feds don’t typically go after johns and weren’t going to change their practice for Spitzer.
Dupre was granted immunity from criminal charges in return for her cooperation with investigators.
Four others pleaded guilty to running the international prostitution operation.
Dupre said she doesn’t hold a grudge against Spitzer – “I think he’s been punished enough” – but the months since the scandal broke have been tough on her.
The media spotlight has been “very hard,” she said, adding, she has undergone “intense” psychotherapy since March. “But I’m a survivor,” she said.
The leggy looker said she hasn’t been able to work at anything since the scandal. “I couldn’t get a job – [the media] would bombard me!” she said, but added she was done turning tricks. “Never again,” she said.
Dupre said she spends her time working out and reading, and is speaking out now in a bid to “get on with my life.”
She also did an interview with Diane Sawyer that will air on “20/20” Friday night. ABC said the interview will reveal how an “upper-middle-class girl next door got into the profession, and the psychological journey she continues to experience.”
A photo released by the network shows Dupre trying to change her image – she’s dressed in a demure violet dress buttoned up to her neck with long, sheer sleeves.
The tattooed temptress is more revealing in People, posing for one picture where she’s lowering her shoulder strap, and another where she’s showing off her ample cleavage.
Dupre said she just wants to move on.
“I’m 23 years old. I want to do music, to do fashion, to write books – there’s so many things,” she said.
“Everyone knows me as ‘that girl,’ but I’m not just ‘that girl.’
“I have a lot of depth, a lot of layers. I am a normal girl.”