NEW YORK (AP) – The former boyfriend suspected of killing a topless dancer told police he tried to stop her from working as a stripper and called her father in Ohio to tell him how she was earning her living.

Paul Cortez, 24, who is jailed without bail on a second-degree murder charge in the mutilation death of Catherine Woods, 21, said in a written statement he gave police that he told her at least twice that taking her clothes off in bars was a bad idea. The statement was released by the Manhattan district attorney’s office on Monday.

Cortez said his first warning came after she told him she “used to strip and do porn” and had decided after a trip to Ohio to visit her family in January 2005 “that she needed to go back to stripping to support her lifestyle.”

Cortez, a yoga instructor and member of a rock band, cautioned her a second time after she called him from a club and asked him to pick her up. He said he went to the club, Privilege.

“I finally got her out (of the club) – she was drugged up,” Cortez’ statement says. “She said she lost sight of her drink and was talking with one guy and then blacked out. When she woke up, she was crying in the bathroom with another stripper.”

Cortez says they went to a hotel because Woods did not want to go to her apartment and see the man with whom she was living, David Haughn, 23, a former boyfriend from Ohio, and tell him that she was a stripper and what had happened.

Cortez says he tried to persuade Woods the next morning to go to a hospital. He says she refused and he threatened to tell her parents about her life if she did not go. She went to the hospital, but Cortez called her father anyway, his statement says.

“I told him about her stripping of course and about her potential rape when she was black out,” Cortez wrote. “I also told him about my relationship with her, how I loved her and that we were a couple.”

Cortez said the father, Jon R. Woods, “flew down the next day to see her and I believe she told him that I made up the whole thing.”

Catherine Woods was found dead on Nov. 27, 2005, in the East 86th Street apartment she shared with Haughn. Her throat had been slashed.

Prosecutors said a bloody fingerprint found in Woods’ apartment led to Cortez’ arrest.

Jon Woods did not immediately return a telephone message asking whether he had spoken to his daughter about her lifestyle.

Cortez, who has pleaded not guilty, is due back in court Jan. 18. He says the last time he saw Woods was the night of Nov. 26 at a neighborhood gym. He says he learned she was dead on Nov. 28.

Woods, a classically trained dancer from Columbus, came to New York three years ago hoping to make it big on Broadway. Instead, unknown to her family and friends, she wound up working as a topless dancer – on Broadway – with the stage name Ava.

Her father, who is director of the Ohio State University marching band, came to New York to claim her body.