An escort who dated former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer says he threatened to kill her, the New York Post reports.
Spitzer is alleged to have made the threat while lobbing expletives toward her in a phone call, a recording of which is now in the hands of the New York Police Department. The Russian escort, Svetlana Travis Zakharova, and her attorney, Joseph Murray, provided the recording to NYPD on Friday, the newspaper reports.
Zakharova reportedly told Spitzer that he ruined her life and that he never helped her, which allegedly prompted him to lash out.
“You f**king bitch! You piece of s**t. And then you f**king destroyed my life!” the man in the recording says.
“You know what’s going to happen to you? You’re going to be f**king dead.”
He went on: “You’re going to die a slow painful death and your family is going to look at you and laugh because you’re a f**king bitch.”
It was not immediately clear Saturday whether the voice was actually Spitzer’s.
The call, made in February 2016, came soon after Zakharova claimed Spitzer attacked her at a hotel, Murray says. Murray wants authorities to reopen the case, in which Zakharova asserts Spitzer choked her. Prosecutors have thus far declined to charge Spitzer.
“We won’t rest until he’s locked up,” Murray told the newspaper.
Spitzer’s relationship with Zakharova became public when police responded to a hotel room in 2016 and found blood and broken glass inside. Zakharova was later arrested for trying to extract $400,000 from Spitzer in a blackmail scheme.
She later pleaded guilty on an unrelated charge of attempted petty larceny and the charges related to Spitzer were dropped. When Zakharova agreed to the plea deal, Murray said she had been seeing Spitzer for a long time and would never extort him.
Spitzer resigned as governor in 2008 after he was identified in a prostitution scandal.
[Feature Photo: Eliot Spitzer/AP/Stephen Chernin]