Canada- The father of 23-year-old Natel King said he knew his daughter was travelling to the United States for modelling shoots, but had no idea the extent of what she had gotten into.

“I knew of what my daughter was doing, but not exactly,” Daniel King said from his Mississauga home last night.

Ms. King, who used the name Taylor Sumers had been posing in pornographic photos, as well as some movies, for up to four years in order to pay for her correspondence courses in psychology at Newfoundland’s Memorial University.

The body of the woman, who had been missing for almost a month, was found in a Pennsylvania ravine this week. Police say she had driven to a photo shoot at the end of February close to where she was found.

“We knew she was doing photography,” Mr. King said last night, not wanting to say exactly how much he knew about his daughter’s lucrative career in pornography.

Mr. King said he has only begun to discover the extent of what Ms. King had been doing at those U.S. photo shoots from reading police and news reports in the days since she went missing.

Though he continues to learn things he’d rather not know about his daughter’s life away from home, he said he does not believe her life as a pornography model had anything to do with her death.

She just “ended up around the wrong person,” he reasoned aloud, explaining he thinks the same could have happened to anyone.

“What I’m trying to emphasize,” he said, “is that she was no different than anybody else. She was a caring young woman.”

U.S. authorities have charged Anthony Frederick, 46, with first-degree murder. His assistant, Jennifer Mitkus, was charged with obstruction of justice and lying to police.

Ms. King had numerous injuries to her chest, neck and both hands, including a stab wound that went through her neck. She was gagged with a ball and leather strap. Detectives also retrieved an array of bondage devices, and her body was wrapped in bloodied drape backdrops, similar to those used in a photographer’s studio.

Ms. King’s father said he couldn’t help but see the irony in the fact she had been studying psychology “to analyze people like this.”

“She was a happy person,” he said. “She tried to help other people as well as herself.”

The man who moved his family from Long Harbour, Nfld., to Mississauga in the early 1980s in search of a more prosperous life, described his daughter last night as being strong, independent and very caring.

“She was outgoing, a family person. She really enjoyed being in the company of her sister and hanging around with her parents and friends,” he said.

Turning to the cruel reality of having to make funeral arrangements for his daughter, Mr. King went on to explain how difficult a month it has been for his large extended family.

He said his wife’s father has been very sick and died quite recently. Confirmation that his daughter had been found dead in Pennsylvania came on the same day Natel’s grandfather was being buried.

As soon as his daughter’s body is released by the U.S. authorities, Mr. King said he will fly out and join his wife to bury their daughter in the same graveyard.

“Same town,” he said. “Same spot.”

Autumn Rayne, who is also a pornography model, said that while many people warned Ms. King to be more diligent about protecting herself when going to shoots, the 23-year-old insisted upon choosing her own clients and going to most shoots alone.

Doing just that in late February, Ms. King drove her red 1992 Saturn coupe to meet a sex photographer in Conshohocken — a small town in suburban Philadelphia. No one heard from her again and on Tuesday afternoon, the blond woman’s body was discovered in Whitemarsh Township, not far from the site of the photo shoot in Conshohocken.