Meet N.Y. Gov.'s 22-Year-Old Call Girl

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 Dupré.

Don D. Buchwald, a New York lawyer, confirmed to The Associated Press that he represents Ashley Alexandra Dupré, the same woman in the Times story. "That's as far as I can go," he said.

She briefly spoke to the Times about the Spitzer scandal. Law enforcement officials identified the governor as "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," Dupré told the Times. "This has been a very difficult time. It's complicated."

According to the Times, Dupré did appear in court Monday. She's expected to testify against four men accused of running the Emperor's Club VIP prostitution ring.

Last night outside her upscale apartment building in New York's trendy Flatiron district, a media crush waited for any glimpse of Dupré in person.

In New Jersey her brother Kyle Youmans said she was just trying to get through the scandal.

Speaking to CBS News correspondent Bianca Solorzano, Youmans said, "She's a great woman, independent woman. She's the best sister you can have."

Asked about her daughter, Dupré's mother said she was shell-shocked when she heard she had been working as an escort. "She is a very bright girl who can handle someone like the Governor. But she is also a 22-year-old and obviously got involved in something much larger than her."

Dupré'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, and gives a clue about how she might handle the future:

"I can sit here now, and knowingly tell you that life's hard sometimes. But, I made it. I can honestly tell you to never dwell on the past, but build from it and keep moving forward."

"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 Dupré photograph. The photos show her at various places, including in a bikini on a boat in a tropical locale. Traffic to her Myspace profile soared after the story broke; by Thursday morning her page had registered more than 2.5 million hits - with many visitors posting messages by turns supportive, insulting or (given the large audience) self-promoting.

Dupré 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.

The case started when banks noticed frequent cash transfers from several accounts and filed suspicious activity reports with the Internal Revenue Service, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. The accounts were traced back to Spitzer, leading public corruption investigators to open an inquiry. (Read more on the investigation.)

Dupré told the Times she had slept very little since the allegations against Spitzer were revealed.

She told the paper 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.

She declined to comment when asked by the Times when she first met Spitzer and how many times they had been together.