Sports Trash Talk

Ashley Rae Maika DiPietro

On February 13, 2008, Dupré travelled by Amtrak train from New York's Pennsylvania Station to Washington, D.C., for an assignation at the Mayflower Hotel with New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. The arrangements had been made by phone between Spitzer and a booker at Emperors Club VIP, and were monitored by federal investigators who had initiated a wiretap after his bank had filed a suspicious activity report regarding money transfers by Spitzer to a front company operated by the escort service.[24]

Caught on the FBI's wiretap was Dupré's response to the booker's mention of other escorts' difficulties with Spitzer. "I don't think he's difficult," said Dupré. "I mean it's just kind of like, whatever, I'm here for a purpose. I know what my purpose is. I am not a … moron, you know what I mean."[25]

On March 6, federal authorities arrested four individuals involved with Emperors Club VIP, charging them under federal prostitution and money laundering laws.[26] Initial news reports and court documents did not identify the agency's clients or call girls by name, referring to Spitzer as "Client 9" and to Dupré as "Kristen".[27]

On March 10, Spitzer's identity as "Client 9" was outed by The New York Times.[28] On March 12, the Times identified Dupré as "Kristen" in an article posted on their website.[5] DiPietro's mother, Carolyn Capalbo, told the newspaper that her daughter "was a young kid with typical teenage rebellion issues, but we are extremely close now.” Capalbo said she was "shell-shocked" when her daughter called to tell her she had been working as a paid companion and presently was speaking with legal authorities.

Dupré's only public comment on the affair remained the brief interview with The New York Times which broke the story of "Kristen's" identity on March 12, in an article accompanied by photographs taken from Dupré's MySpace page. No photographs of Dupré were known to have been taken in the days following the scandal's becaming public. "I just don't want to be thought of as a monster," Dupré told the newspaper. "This has been a very difficult time. It's complicated."[5] On the day the story broke, she posted a message to her MySpace page that initially said "Yeah, I did it"; it was later changed to read, "Thank you for your support, it means a lot to me."[7] Dupré's sole known move to capitalize on her notoriety remained her upload of a second song to the Amie Street online music store around 2 a.m. on March 13. One Dupré song received New York City radio play for one day on Z100 on March 14.[29]

While Dupré remained in seclusion in the days after her role in the scandal became public, she became the subject of increasingly intense media coverage. The Village Voice called her "the most famous hooker in America",[11] and the New York Post published an extensive photo shoot showing Dupré in provocative poses.[14] By March 18, Dupré's profile on MySpace had received over 9 million page views.[30][31] Dupré was reportedly offered US$1 million by Hustler magazine to pose nude, and received offers from Penthouse magazine and Vivid Entertainment.[32]

Dupré reportedly had not accepted as yet modeling, interview, sit-com cameo, or reality television opportunities as arose in the scandal's aftermath. According to Andy Greene, assistant editor at Rolling Stone magazine quoted in Advertising Age magazine, "If she was in the studio with a producer, her voice is not that much worse than Britney Spears'. ... It's not inconceivable that she could have a song as good as the stuff on the charts. ... It's a really tough road for her to have a music career because she's a prostitute. ... She had sex with Gov. Spitzer, and that's fascinating to a lot of people. But people ultimately want to read her book or see her interviewed by Oprah or Barbara Walters. They don't want to listen to her third or fourth song."[33]

On March 19, the soft porn website Girls Gone Wild featured teasers of Dupré, shot in Miami Beach, Florida in 2003 before she had turned 18,[34][4]while company founder Joe Francis—who faced charges for a shoot involving girls misrepresenting themselves as 18 from back in 2003[35]—prepared to release a full DVD of Dupré footage from company archives. "All nude images of Ms. Dupre were taken in public places and contain no sexual contact," said Francis. "In Florida, where Ms. Dupre was filmed, the law allows even women under the age of 18 to be filmed nude with their consent."[2]

Dupre's attorney, Don Buckwald, argued in an e-mail to Girls Gone Wild, "It was because she was underage that [Francis] sent her home on a Greyhound bus back to North Carolina. It would be outrageous at the very least to play the video of an underage female on the Internet."[36]