Panel: He plied teen call
girl with cocaine,
left her to die

By William Kenny
Times Staff Writer

Seventeen-year-old Ashley Burg was stranded, sick from large quantities of cocaine and in desperate need of help. But the only person in a position to help her instead chose only to help himself, a Montgomery County grand jury has concluded.
As a result, the young call girl died in the Limerick Township home of David Downey late on July 31 or early the following morning, according to a grand jury presentment, many hours before her almost-naked body was dumped in weeds alongside a Far Northeast street.
Downey, 52, was arrested on Dec. 23 at his new home in Edgewater, Md., and extradited to Pennsylvania on Dec. 27. He is being held in Montgomery County prison on a third-degree murder charge in lieu of $250,000 bail.
In the presentment, which was issued on Dec. 21 following a five-month investigation, the grand jury found that the man who allegedly hired Burg through a Port Richmond-based stripper and supplied her with cocaine was more concerned with his own welfare than the obvious needs of the girl.
"Burg was paralyzed in his home and had no ability in the last hours of her life to get help for herself," the court document stated. "(She) needed Downey to help her, but, instead, Downey simply left her to die on his couch. … David Downey was far more concerned about the potential of his getting into trouble with law enforcement than he was for the life of seventeen-year-old Ashley Burg."
The presentment also recommended charges against Downey of drug possession, possession with intent to deliver, reckless endangerment, lying to authorities, tampering with evidence, obstructing justice, abuse of corpse, criminal use of a communication facility and conspiracy. Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor adopted all of the charges.
Downey’s attorney has said that his client did not give any drugs to Burg, echoing the defendant’s own testimony to the grand jury.
But the court document presents a much different picture of the opulent computer consultant who allegedly spent big bucks at area strip clubs, bought cocaine by the "eight-ball" — one-eighth of an ounce — and called female escorts to his home dozens of times in the last several years.
Citing the testimony of at least four exotic dancers, several of whom worked at Tattle Tales South, at Allegheny Avenue and Richmond Street, the grand jury concluded that Downey would instruct the women to strip, dance for him and often perform oral sex. He would routinely snort cocaine during these encounters and often insisted that the women use the drug, too.
"According to (four strippers), every time Downey hired them as an escort to visit him at his residence, Downey would have cocaine on hand and would encourage the escort to partake in the cocaine with him," the presentment states.
In addition, he allegedly identified himself as a former Navy SEAL and CIA agent routinely.
Late on July 30, Downey allegedly called his primary escort contact, a Tattle Tales dancer named Kim Victorine, to set up another visitor for him. Shortly after midnight, Victorine and her boyfriend, Derrick Schrandt, showed up at Downey’s home with Burg, a former city resident who had been living with relatives in Willingboro, N.J., and an "eight-ball" of cocaine.
Downey allegedly gave a credit card to Schrandt to pay for the drugs and agreed to pay the girl $600, of which Victorine was to get $200 for setting up the rendezvous.
In his testimony, Downey claimed that Burg went into the bathroom alone several times shortly after her arrival and emerged with white powder on her lip below her nostrils. The defendant claims he told the girl to stop using drugs in his house.
Eventually, Burg got sick and laid down on a couch. She remained there, generally unresponsive, throughout July 31, Downey testified.
After several calls back and forth between Downey and acquaintances of the girl, another stripper and escort formerly hired by Downey, Christine Shute, and her boyfriend, Mike Tees, showed up at Downey’s home at about 8:30 a.m. on Aug. 1 to pick up Burg.
Shute and Tees claim that the girl was already dead and that Downey agreed to pay them $2,000 to take the body to a nearby hospital, as well as $600 for a previous debt owed to Shute. Downey claims that Burg was still breathing and that he wrote them a $2,600 check to cover the girl’s medical bills.
Shute and Tees never made it to the hospital. Instead, they returned to Philadelphia and left the girl roadside in a secluded area near Red Lion Road and Crestmont Avenue, where a woman walking her dog found the body shortly after 10 a.m. She was clad only in black underpants.
A medical examiner’s report concluded that Burg died of cocaine poisoning some eight to 10 hours before her discovery. That would have put her at Downey’s home at the time, by all accounts.
The grand jury document also noted that Downey spent at least four hours and caused a disturbance at another strip club, Delilah’s Den, on Aug. 4 and 5, four days after Burg’s death.
"The grand jury finds this to be evidence of Downey’s appalling lack of remorse for the death of Ashley Burg," the document states.
Castor, the district attorney, has petitioned a Montgomery County court to revoke bail, citing the defendant’s out-of-state residence, his lack of family and friends in the area, his apparent access to large sums of money and the seriousness of the charges against him.
The court has not ruled on the petition by Castor. ••
Reporter William Kenny can be reached at 215-354-3031 or bkenny@phillynews.com