Black Panties
At 10:00 a.m. on Monday, August 1, 2005, the heat and humidity were already starting to get oppressive in the Northeast section of Philadelphia. An elderly woman out walking her dog urged her pet to hurry up and do its business so she could get back to her air-conditioned home. She had brought the dog to the edge of an empty lot overgrown with grass and weeds on the 4400 block of Old Red Lion Road. The dog sniffed the ground, but something seemed to be distracting the animal. The woman became annoyed as the dog strained against the leash, seemingly desperate to get to something. The dog was agitated, pulling her along. The woman looked ahead, and that’s when she saw what the dog had already sensed. A body.
As the woman moved closer, she nearly gagged on the stench that suddenly filled the motionless air. The dog strained to get closer, but she held on tight to the leash. Sprawled in the weeds was a young blonde wearing nothing but black panties. A thin line of crusted blood ran from her nose to her chin. The girl wasn’t moving, and the woman feared the worst.
At 10:14 a.m., the woman called 911 and told the dispatcher what she had found. Paramedics raced to the scene, but the woman’s instincts were correct. The girl was dead.
The paramedics delivered the body to the morgue, where technicians discovered a pattern of star impressions on one of her legs. They removed her jewelry, which included a 2007 class ring from Burlington County Institute of Technology, a vocational school across the Delaware River in New Jersey, 16 miles away. The inscription inside the ring revealed the girl’s name, Ashley Burg.
But who was she? How did she die? And how did she end up nearly naked in an empty lot?
Investigators would soon find out that 17-year-old Ashley Burg was a troubled teenager. Her mother, Michelle Reeves, was a recovering drug addict, and her father, Curtis Burg, worked long, irregular hours that prevented him from being the kind of parent he wanted to be. That’s why he had arranged for Ashley to move out of his estranged wife’s apartment in Philadelphia to his sister’s suburban home in Willingboro, New Jersey when Ashley was in seventh grade.
It wasn’t an easy transition for Ashley. “She was a little confused when she had first come to us,” Janice Guarino, one of her former teachers at St. Peter’s School in Riverside, New Jersey, told the Philadelphia Daily News. “She wasn’t real happy she had to leave her friends.”
But Ashley was determined to turn her life around. She eventually enrolled at the Burlington County Institute of Technology and was excelling in her computer classes. Her goal was to graduate and get a job that earned enough money so that she’d be qualified to adopt her three younger half-siblings, who were living in a foster home.
However, Ashley was unwilling to give up her Philadelphia friends completely, so she had made a deal with her father: she would live in the suburbs with her aunt and uncle and stick to her studies if she could spend the weekends in Philadelphia with her best friend, 16-year-old DeeDee Conn.
On Saturday night, July 30, 2005, Curtis Burg dropped off his daughter at DeeDee Conn’s mother’s apartment in the Fishtown section of Philadelphia as he usually did. DeeDee’s older brother, David Tanczak, had dated Ashley Burg for three years, but they had broken up the previous spring. Tanczak, who was eight years older than Ashley, had served time in prison for assaulting a police officer, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Though Ashley had been trying hard to better herself, on the weekends she would often return to one of her old bad habitsgetting high on the prescriptiontranquilizer Xanax. “I know Ashley liked to do her Xanax,” DeeDee’s mother, Debbie Conn, told the Inquirer. “She was a weekend warrior.” DeeDee remembers that Ashley had taken “five or six” Xanax tablets that Saturday night.
Ashley and DeeDee had left the Conn apartment that night to go to David Tanczak’s rented room in the Kensington section of Philadelphia. According to Tanczak, Burg was at his apartment until around 2:00 a.m. when she left, saying she was going to meet her older sister.
Police investigators would later dispute that claim.
At around 10:30 p.m. on that same Saturday night, David F. Downey, 52, called Derrick Schrandt, 25. Downey wanted Schrandt to get him a girl and some cocaine.
Downey, a technology consultant for KSR Associates, worked with government agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, as well as with private companies, offering advice on strategy and planning. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, he has a reputation for being “blunt” in his business dealings. Some people considered him a bully.
He wears a Navy SEAL tattoo and has bragged about his exploits with that elite combat unit. At times he has also claimed to have worked as a CIA operative. His resume lists graduate degrees from Temple University, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania, but offices at Temple have no record of Downey ever having done graduate work there. A divorced father, Downey lived in a half-million-dollar ranch-style home on Henry Drive in upscale Limerick Township, Pennsylvania, 34 miles northwest of Philadelphia.
According to the police, one of Downey’s favorite nighttime haunts was a strip club in the Port Richmond section of Philadelphia called Tattle Tales South. The club is owned and run by several former Philadelphia police officers who were accused and acquitted of shaking down local drug dealers. The name, Tattle Tales, is a wry reference to the government witnesses who testified against them. The management of Tattle Tales South forbids their exotic dancers from engaging in prostitution on the premises or soliciting johns while working there. The dancers cannot even speak on their cellphones while they’re on a shift. Even so, David Downey had managed by phone to hire Kim Victorine, 23, Derrick Schrandt’s girlfriend and one of the regular dancers at Tattle Tales South, on 15 prior occasions. On this night, however, Downey didn’t want to be with Victorine. He wanted someone different.
Schrandt told Downey he’d reach out to another escort, a girl Downey had hired before, Christine “Madison” Shute, 22. Kim Victorine went to Shute’s home to see if she’d take the job, but Shute was asleep. She was exhausted, having been up late the night before partying at a wedding reception. Schrandt, 25, had access to coke that he could sell to Downey, but they needed a girl to complete Downey’s party package.
Victorine then paid a visit on David Tanczak and through him met Ashley Burg who was apparently high on Xanax at the time. Together Victorine and Tanczak were able to convince Ashley that she could take the job. By all accounts Ashley had never worked as an escort before. At 11:40 p.m., Victorine called Downey and told him that she had what he wanted and was on her way to his house.
At around 1:30 a.m., Kim Victorine, her boyfriend Derrick Schrandt, and Ashley Burg arrived at Downey’s home. Downey agreed to pay $600 for Ashley’s services. He also bought 2 “eight-balls” of cocaine from Schrandt, about seven grams worth. Victorine and Schrandt then departed, leaving Ashley alone with Downey.
Exactly what happened at David Downey’s home that night remains a mystery. Downey would later tell the police that Ashley had overindulged in cocaine and that as a result she was shaking so badly, she needed help to light her cigarettes. He also said that he had advised her not to take any more coke.
As for sex, Downey’s attorney, Thomas C. Egan III, maintained that his client hired escorts “purely for companionship.” However, Christine Shute told authorities that during the times that she had been with Downey, they would typically get high on cocaine, and she would dance for him and give him oral sex.
At 5:00 a.m. on Sunday morning, roughly three hours after Ashley had been left with Downey, Derrick Schrandt returned to Downey’s home to sell him more cocaine. Schrandt looked in on Ashley and felt that she “didn’t look good,” as he later testified at a grand jury hearing.
At 7:00 a.m., Downey tried to wake her. She moaned and asked if she could “just stay.” Downey covered her with a purple sheet and let her sleep, he later told police. He also said that he checked on her throughout the day.
At 10:00 a.m., that morning, Kim Victorine received a phone call from Downey, who complained that Ashley had fallen asleep an hour after she had arrived. He said that Ashley was now “breathing but not alert.” According to Victorine’s statement to the police, Downey asked her “to get this girl out of my house.”
Victorine reported the problem to her boyfriend, Derrick Schrandt, but they weren’t sure how to handle the situation. Schrandt didn’t want to get the police involved because he was already facing charges in another matter and was free on a $100,000 bail bond. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, he threatened to kill anyone who called the authorities. Instead, he and Victorine consulted with Ashley’s old boyfriend, David Tanczak, and asked him what they should do. Tanczak spoke to Downey directly to get an update on Ashley’s condition, but it hadn’t charged. Downey reported that she had passed out on the sofa and wasn’t responsive. Downey had apparently left her on his sofa all day Sunday.
At 1:00 a.m. on Monday, August 1, Downey again tried to wake Ashley. At this point she had been at his house for almost 24 hours. Once again he called Kim Victorine and asked for help.
Two hours later Downey received a phone call from Christine Shute, the escort he had originally requested. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Shute demanded $10,000 to take care of the problem, but Downey refused to pay her that amount.
At 5:00 a.m., Shute and her boyfriend Michael Tees, 32, drove to Downey’s suburban home and struck a deal with him. The couple agreed to take Ashley with them for $2,600. Downey later told the police that $2,000 of that sum was intended for Ashley’s medical expenses; the balance was payment of a prior debt he owned to Shute. Downey claims that he instructed the couple to take Ashley to a nearby hospital. He also claims that Ashley was still alive when she left his home with Shute and Tees.
But Christine Shute told the police something different. Shute said that Ashley was already dead when she and Tees arrived at Downey’s home.
At 5:30 a.m., Kim Victorine called 911 to get help for Ashley. She gave the dispatcher the correct street address for David Downey’s home, but the wrong town. An ambulance raced to Henry Drive in Lower Providence instead of Henry Drive in Limerick.
But by this time Ashley Burg dead or alive may have already been in the car with Christine Shute and Michael Tees. Shute later said that Ashley “stunk so badly,” they had to cover her with a blanket to suppress the odor.
Shute and Tees drove around the area, searching for the hospital that had Downey had recommended, but when they couldn’t find it, they gave up and headed back toward Philadelphia. It had been roughly five hours from the time they had arrived at Downey’s house to pick up Ashley. The smell inside the car was nearly overpowering, heightening their fear that they would be caught with a dead body. Driving along Roosevelt Boulevard, a main thoroughfare in the Northeast section of the city, they spotted the elderly woman walking her dog on a side street, and they saw an opportunity. If they left Ashley’s body in the woman’s path, they figured she would discover it and call 911. They turned onto Old Red Lion Road and passed the woman and her dog. Pulling the car over to the side of the road, they quickly carried Ashley’s body to the edge of the lot and left her in the weeds. Minutes later the elderly woman found the body, just as Shute and Tees had hoped.
Paramedics arrived shortly afterward, but it was too late. At 10:35 a.m., they pronounced Ashley Burg dead at the scene.
Homicide detectives were immediately called in to investigate. Within days they were able to trace Ashley’s movements on the last weekend of her life, and David Downey became their prime suspect. A search of his house yielded sofa cushions with an embossed star-pattern similar to the star impressions found on Ashley’s leg.
Because Downey lived in Montgomery County, where the crime appeared to have occurred, investigators there pursued their own investigation. They discovered that Downey had a long history of keeping company with escorts. He had hired one girl 50 times within a two-year period and another girl nearly 30 times. They also learned that four days after Ashley Burg’s body was found, Downey had visited a Philadelphia gentlemen’s club called Delilah’s Den, where he bragged that he was a Navy SEAL and caused a disturbance.
Attorney Bruce L. Castor, Jr.
Nearly five months after Ashley’s death, the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office had assembled enough evidence to go to a Grand Jury. One of the pieces of evidence they presented was the autopsy report, which stated that Ashley had died of cocaine poisoning.
Ashley had ingested cocaine “in excess of what an overdose is,” Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce L. Castor, Jr. said. Her autopsy showed that she had taken “massive amounts of cocaine …. many more times than what it takes to kill a person,” he added.
The fact that Downey had gone to a strip club four days after Ashley’s death did not sit well with the Grand Jury. His indictment stated that “the Grand Jury finds this [his visit to Delilah’s Den] to be evidence of Downey’s appalling lack of remorse for the death of Ashley Burg.”
The Grand Jury indicted Downey and charged him with third-degree murder for allegedly supplying Ashley with enough cocaine to cause her death. He was also charged with “unsworn falsification to authorities, delivery of cocaine, abuse of a corpse, tampering with or fabricating physical evidence, patronizing prostitutes, and recklessly endangering another person.”
Downey was arrested on December 23, 2005, in Edgewater, Maryland, where he owns a home and had intended to relocate. He did not fight extradition and was transported to Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, where he was held without bail. Downey issued a statement through his attorney, saying that he felt “awful” about what had happened but maintained that he was not responsible for the death of Ashley Burg.
On December 28, 2005, as Downey was being led into the courtroom for a bail hearing, a reporter called to him and asked if he felt any remorse.
“For everyone involved,” he shouted back.
But at the hearing, District Attorney Bruce L. Castor, Jr. painted a picture of a less compassionate Downey. “I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever seen a criminal defendant who was more personally disliked,” Castor said. “This guy has people who actually know him coming forward just to tell us things that he has done to them that indicate bad character.”
Castor later told the Philadelphia Inquirer, “What we have is lots of people telling us he’s a bully.”
Witnesses came forward with a variety of stories regarding Downey’s threatening nature. He allegedly shoved a boy onto a bench because “the boy wasn’t wearing a coat” in cold weather.
A school administrator claimed that Downey had threatened to “rip the lungs” out of a third grader as well as the child’s parents because the child “wasn’t playing well” with one of Downey’s children.
A waiter from a restaurant in a Skippack, Pennsylvania, said that Downey had once threatened to kill him because Downey felt that the service was inadequate.
Attorney’s Office State seal
A Montgomery County judge set bail at $250,000 at this hearing. Downey’s attorney petitioned for a bail reduction, but that request was denied, even after a seemingly contrite Downey admitted that he had never been a Navy SEAL or a CIA operative.
Two weeks later, Downey was released after posting bond with a bail-bond agency.
But within a week of his release, Downey was caught once again with an escort, this time at the Crown Plaza Hotel in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. According to court papers, he allegedly paid a woman $200 for oral sex. “Downey … allegedly asked her if she had anything to ‘party’ with, apparently a reference to drugs,” the Philadelphia Daily News reported. In light of this incident, Montgomery County prosecutors sought to have his bail revoked.
On January 18, 2006, Judge Richard Hodgson revoked Downey’s bail and sent him back to jail. If Downey is eventually found guilty, he could be sentenced to 20 to 40 years in prison, with a minimum sentence of no less than five years.
On February 3, Montgomery County prosecutors filed separate charges against Kim Victorine, Derrick Schrandt, Christine Shute, and Michael Tees in connection with Ashley Burg’s death.
Kim Victorine was charged with prostitution. In a search of Downey’s home, police had discovered five cancelled checks made out to Victorine totaling $3,700. As reported in the Inquirer, a police spokesman said that “on 15 occasions, Downey paid Victorine to dance, talk or perform oral sex on him.”
Derrick Schrandt was charged with delivering the drugs that caused Ashley’s death, which is the “equivalent of third-degree murder,” as well as various other drug offenses and intimidation of a witness.
Christine Shute and Michael Tees were charged with conspiracy and abuse of a corpse.
David Tanczak, Ashley’s former boyfriend, who along with Kim Victorine had convinced Ashley to go to Downey’s home, was not charged with a crime.
Ashley’s unseemly death still baffles her friends and family. They wonder how someone who was making progress in turning her life around could have gotten caught up in such a terrible situation. An unnamed family member told the Inquirer that Tanczak must have forced Ashley into working as an escort that night because he needed some “quick cash.”
Philadelphia homicide detective, Philip Riehl, told the Inquirer that this was probably Ashley’s first experience with prostitution. “I know this was the first time she was doing anything with those people … I’m confident that it was her first time working with them and that she wasn’t a regular escort. It was one very bad decision that led her to what happened.”
But Ashley’s best friend, DeeDee Conn, can’t help but blame David Downey for her friend’s death. “He shouldn’t have left her there,” Conn told the paper. “He should have called for help.”
Ashley’s distraught mother added, “If he knew she was sick and upset, why didn’t he call the ambulance? There were so many times he could have freaking saved her.”
David Downey is currently incarcerated, awaiting trial.
David Downey’s trial began on June 5, 2006, but difficulties with jury selection delayed actual testimony. A pool of 50 prospective jurors had to be dismissed because many of them had voiced “strong opinions about Downey’s guilt,” according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. Downey’s jury was eventually picked from a second jury pool.
In pre-trial hearings Downey’s attorney, Thomas C. Egan III, moved to present evidence that Ashley Burg had been a drug user and that the drugs found in her system when she died could have been consumed up to seven days before her death. Montgomery County Court Judge Richard Hodgson rejected Egan’s motion for having no relevance “other than for the purpose of smearing the victim.”
Several prostitutes took the stand and testified that Downey had hired them for sex on numerous occasions. Kim Victorine testified that she and her boyfriend Derrick Schrandt had taken Ashley Burg to Downey’s home and that Downey later called to complain about Ashley. According to Victorine, Downey had said that Ashley was “acting weird and she doesn’t want to party.” Victorine and Schrandt drove back to Downey’s house, and Schrandt went inside to check on her. When he came back out, he told Victorine that Ashley “doesn’t look good.”
Christine Shute testified that when she entered Downey’s house later that night, it “smelled of death” and that Downey had covered Ashley’s body with a sheet and draped a towel over her face. Later, when she and Michael Tees informed Downey that they had dumped Ashley’s body instead of taking her to the hospital as he had requested, his primary concern was, “Does anybody know about this?”
Tees then took the stand and told the jury that Downey had instructed him to take Ashley’s body to the closest hospital and “leave her in a wheelchair and drive away.” According to Tees, Downey gave him a roll of duct tape and told him to cover his license-plate number before he left. Later, when Tees and Shute returned to Downey’s home for their promised payment, Downey showed no concern for Ashley. “It didn’t matter to him one way or the other,” Tees testified. “He was just glad to have her out of the house.”
In five days of testimony, jurors heard accounts of Downey’s penchant for drugs and prostitutes as well as his heartless indifference toward the fate of Ashley Burg. After summations by defense attorney Egan and Assistant District Attorney Samantha Cauffman, the jury was sent out to deliberate. It took them only five hours to come back with a guilty verdict for drug delivery that resulted in death.
Downey’s face registered no emotion as the verdict was read, but as the gravity of his situation sunk in, he “increasingly looked glum and numb,” according to the Inquirer.
Afterward, Downey’s attorney said that while Ashley suffered an “unfortunate, tragic death,” he maintained that she was not “some kind of 17-year-old novice” as she was portrayed by the prosecution and that Downey was not a callous killer.
But ADA Cauffman reiterated the state’s case, saying that Downey was indeed a “malicious murderer” who gave Ashley cocaine, then “watched her die and threw her out.”
On September 27, 2006, Downey returned to Judge Hodgson’s courtroom to face sentencing. He expressed his “deepest sympathies” to Ashley’s family and said that he would “give his right arm to trade places with Ashley.” However, he did not take responsibility for Ashley’s death and continued to call it an “accident.”
Judge Hodgson took note of Downey’s refusal to accept responsibility. Commenting on Downey’s “narcissistic lifestyle,” the judge said, “You, Mr. Downy, are a man who knows no boundaries.” Hodgson went on to say that Downey had tossed out Ashley’s body as if it were “an empty bag of cocaine … nothing more than an inconvenience that needed to be disposed.”
The judge then sentenced him to 8 ½ to 17 years in prison.
During the hearing, Ashley’s aunt, Pam Schrieber, was allowed to make a statement before the court. She faced her niece’s killer and told him point blank, “I hope your daughters never come into contact with someone like you.”
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