Texts may shed light on Tamara Greene slaying

Federal magistrates have identified 13 text messages from city-issued pagers that might shed light on the 2003 killing of stripper Tamara Greene, who was said to have danced at a long-rumored party at the Manoogian Mansion, the Free Press has learned.

It’s unclear what the text messages say, who exchanged them or why the magistrate judges singled them out from the hundreds that were exchanged April 30, 2003 — the day Greene was fatally shot — on pagers the city leased from Mississippi-based SkyTel Inc.

Birmingham attorney Norman Yatooma, who represents Greene’s teenage son and other family members, sought Wednesday to obtain access to the messages as part of his lawsuit against the city, former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, his top aide Christine Beatty, police executives and others, lawyers in the case said.

The suit claims that city officials sabotaged the investigation into Greene’s death, preventing the family from filing a wrongful death suit against her killers.

James Thomas, one of Kilpatrick’s lawyers, said Yatooma asked lawyers in the case Wednesday to agree to a protective order that would enable him to confidentially review the text messages.

Thomas called such a move premature because, he said, defense attorneys haven’t seen the 13 messages, either.

Yatooma, who has been fighting for the text messages, declined Wednesday to comment on the latest development in the legal tribulations involving the disgraced Kilpatrick administration.

Greene’s unsolved slaying has drawn wide attention because of a never-proven party at the mayoral mansion. According to the rumor — which has been investigated by Detroit and State Police — Greene, who went by the stage name Strawberry, danced at the Manoogian for Kilpatrick and others in fall 2002. The rumor has it that the mayor’s wife, Carlita Kilpatrick, walked in on the party and assaulted Greene. Greene was killed in a drive-by shooting the following spring on Detroit’s west side.

Kilpatrick, police officials and lawyers for the mayor and city all have denied there was ever a stripper party at the mayoral mansion and also have denied any effort to derail a probe of Greene’s death.

In the suit, Yatooma requested two batches of text messages: The first covers the day Greene was killed while sitting in a car with her boyfriend at Roselawn and West Outer Drive. The second covers any text messages sent or received from about three dozen city officials between Aug. 1, 2002, and May 7, 2004. It is unclear whether the magistrates are still reviewing those texts.

U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen selected two magistrates last spring to go through the text messages and determine which might be relevant to the lawsuit, something parties on both sides agreed to. Magistrates are officials assigned to assist federal judges in carrying out judicial functions, such as some preliminary hearings and arraignments.

Thomas and Mayer Morganroth, a lawyer for Beatty, said Wednesday that they are skeptical about the relevancy of the messages.

Thomas and Morganroth defended Kilpatrick and Beatty in the text messaging scandal that landed the pair in jail. They also are representing them in the Greene case.

Thomas said he and other lawyers in Kilpatrick’s and Beatty’s criminal cases reviewed more than 600,000 text messages sent by city employees. “On my review, I didn’t see any smoking guns” relating to Greene’s death, he said.

Thomas said he believes the messages furnished to him from the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office in the criminal case comprised all of the messages sent on city-issued pagers.

Morganroth said of the 13 texts: “I haven’t seen them, but even so, it’d be highly doubtful that they are in any way meaningful — very doubtful.”