Philadelphia- Ashley Burg lived in two worlds: the one she was born into, surrounded by sex, drugs and crime, and the one to which she tried to escape.

She left the darker side of Fishtown for the South Jersey suburbs, donning a Catholic school uniform, spending time with her father, and later excelling in high school computer classes.

But each weekend she returned to Philadelphia, where, as a young teenager, she dated a man with a criminal record. There, she was introduced to the exotic dancers who hired her out as an escort and are now connected to her death.

“There was not one trait about Ashley that led anyone to believe she would be a hooker,” said Adam Deaner, a close family friend. “That girl was on her way to a very good life, and she put up a long, hard fight.”

Interviews with Burg’s ex-boyfriend, two of her aunts, and friends and other relatives reveal a 17-year-old who dreamed of a stable new life but succumbed to familiar demons.

Her body was found Aug. 1 in a grassy lot in Northeast Philadelphia. She was wearing black underpants – and, family said, a Burlington County Institute of Technology class ring engraved with her name and 2007, the year she was supposed to graduate.

Authorities say Burg spent her last hours in the upscale Limerick house of a 52-year-old businessman who had hired her as an escort through a dancer at a Port Richmond strip club.

What happened in those last hours is unclear. Friends and family couldn’t believe that the shy, polite girl who liked to bowl and did not even like to take her socks off would prostitute herself.

“I got sick to my stomach when I heard that on the news. She just wasn’t that way,” said her aunt Bonnie Burg.

She had just finished her sophomore year at the vocational school. Her dream was to graduate, land a job in computers, and make enough money to adopt her three half-siblings, who were living in a foster home, family members said.

Burg had wanted to quit school earlier this year, but her father, Curtis Burg, a crane operator who lives in Gloucester City, persuaded her to stick it out. He took her on a trip to Jamaica in May as a reward for good grades.

Relatives said that Burg’s father would have liked her to live with him, but that he worked long hours and feared that he would be unable to keep an eye on her.

Curtis Burg and Ashley’s mother, Michelle Reeves, from whom Curtis Burg was estranged, agreed to send Ashley to live with relatives in Willingboro just before seventh grade. There, they hoped, she would stay away from bad influences, her family said.

“Michelle and Curtis decided to get her out of there before she got on the drugs,” said Bonnie Burg, who lives with Curtis Burg, her brother, in Gloucester City.

Ashley Burg agreed to live in Burlington County but insisted on returning regularly to the city. There, she saw her childhood friends and her boyfriend, David Tanczak, who was eight years her senior.

Each weekend, her father dropped her off at a girlfriend’s home, as he did the weekend of her death, relatives said.

Tanczak said that Ashley Burg and his younger sister, Dee Dee Conn, 16, were close friends and that Burg spent most of her weekends at his mother’s Fishtown home.

Tanczak, who dated Burg for three years and broke up with her in the spring, said he last saw her early July 31, the day she was dropped off at the house of David F. Downey, a businessman. Tanczak said he and his new girlfriend picked up Burg and Conn at his mother’s house, and they all went to a room in Kensington that Tanczak was renting. Burg left the group about 2 a.m., Tanczak said, explaining that she was going to meet her older sister. Sometime shortly thereafter, Burg arrived at Downey’s home.

When he learned that Burg had died, Tanczak said, he “really didn’t believe it. I broke out in tears and went a little bit crazy. I started punching things in my mom’s house.”

Burg’s mother’s family has alleged that Tanczak, who said he spent time in prison for assaulting a police officer, was dealing drugs and coerced his ex into being an escort because he needed quick cash.

Tanczak denied those allegations.

“After me, they don’t know what happened and I think that’s why the blame is coming down on me… . I don’t sell drugs, and I would not put Ashley up to this,” he said from the Northeast Philadelphia home he shares with his aunt and uncle. “I probably cared more for her than her mother did.”

Tanczak and another relative said authorities had removed Burg’s three half-siblings from her mother’s home because the mother had been using drugs. Family said Michelle Reeves has since successfully completed drug rehabilitation and has remained clean. Reeves, through her sister, Sherry, declined comment.

Tanczak acknowledged that he had introduced Burg to exotic dancers at Tattles Tales South, the Port Richmond strip club where his older sister had also danced.

But Tanczak said he did not know that two of the dancers – Kim Victorine and Christine “Madison” Shute – were involved in an escort service.

Police said that Downey contacted Victorine for an escort and that she and her boyfriend dropped Burg off at Downey’s home in the early-morning hours of July 31. About 24 hours later, Downey called the escort service, saying Burg was ill. Shute and her boyfriend arrived at Downey’s house, took Burg’s body and left her along a city road, according to police records.

Downey has said through his lawyer that he thought Ashley was 22 and that he did not have sex with her.

Preliminary tests have revealed that there was cocaine in Burg’s system, though an official cause of death has not been determined, and police are awaiting further toxicology tests. No charges have been filed.

Burg’s family asks why Downey did not call 911 when he realized she was ill.

“I just have it in my heart and in my gut that he is guilty of something,” said Burg’s aunt, Sherry, 40, who asked that her last name not be used. “I’m not saying he’s guilty of murder. But he’s guilty of something.”

Downey’s lawyer, Thomas C. Egan 3d of Blue Bell, said his client did not believe Burg’s condition warranted medical treatment “until the very end.”

“In hindsight, certainly medical treatment should have been sought early, but Mr. Downey did not have the luxury of being a clairvoyant to know that her ingestion of the drugs had been so significant that she was in a state that resulted in her death,” Egan said. “He did not provide the drugs or participate with her in taking the drugs.”

Some who knew Burg said they did not know whether she used drugs, but at least two, including Tanczak, said she was abusing the anti-anxiety medication Xanax. Tanczak said Burg also smoked “wet,” or PCP-laced marijuana.

“I have never heard of her doing cocaine,” Burg’s aunt Sherry said. “If she was doing cocaine, maybe she did it because she was scared.”

Like those close to her, police say they believe that Burg had not previously worked for the escort service that hired her out the night she died.

“I know this was the first time she was doing anything with those people,” said Lt. Philip Riehl, a homicide detective. “I’m confident it was her first time working with them, and she wasn’t a regular escort.”