Lawyer for family of Tamara Greene on case against Kwame Kilpatrick, missing 911 tapes:’This is the stuff conspiracies are made of’
Exotic dancer Tamara Greene was gunned down in Detroit in 2003. Her murder remains a mystery.
Greene allegedly danced at a private party hosted by then-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick at the Manoogian Mansion in 2002. It’s never been proven the party even took place.
Neither fact is surprising, according to Norman Yatooma, a lawyer representing Greene’s son in a civil suit against Kilpatrick and other city officials accused of covering up the party.
“Of course they haven’t been proven,” Yatooma told Steve Courtney this morning on WJR AM-760. “Subpoena power was pulled, search warrants were pulled, cops were threatened, witnesses were threatened, 911 tapes have gone missing, documents have gone missing. How could it conceivably have been proven?” State Police Sgt. Mark Krebs testified last month in a sworn deposition that senior city police officials barred him from taking a box of 36 tapes from Detroit police headquarters shortly after Greene was shot on April 30, 2003. When he and fellow officers went to retrieve the tapes the next day, he said, only six remained.
“This is the kind of stuff conspiracies are made of,” Yatooma said.
Krebs also testified that Attorney General Mike Cox impeded his investigation into the party, which state police were investigating on suspicion Kilpatrick was paying security guards overtime to work.
Cox last month called the accusation “crap” and reiterated that, “To this day, no one in the State Police, our office or the media has identified someone who was there or could provide any evidence in a courtroom that there was a party.”
But in outlining his case against Kilpatrick, Yatooma raised questions about Cox and a closed door meeting he had with Kwame Kilpatrick — without state police presence — days before ending his investigation.
“The meeting somehow persuaded Mike Cox to drop this investigation and call it all urban legend, because that’s exactly what he did four days following.”
Cox last month questioned the reasoning of anyone accusing him of “cooking up some deal” with Kilpatrick. “I’m the guy whose case brought him down and sent him to Texas,” he said, referring to the perjury charges which ultimately took down the mayor.
While much of the talk has been about the rumored party, Yatooma pointed out it’s only relevant because it may help establish a motive for Greene’s murder.
“There’s a cover-up,” he said. “We may never know who pulled the trigger, but we’re doing all we can to show her murder was covered up by Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and those under him.”
A special task force picked up the murder investigation last month, and the civil suit is expected to head to trial in May.
Update: “Mike Cox: Kwame Kilpatrick had nothing on me; I will not quit campaign for Michigan governor.”
