Cop suspected DPD role in killing of exotic dancer Tamara Greene
Former lieutenant told court he was looking into dancer’s links with officials when city demoted him.
DETROIT — A former homicide lieutenant who investigated the death of exotic dancer Tamara Greene said in a sworn affidavit he suspects the woman was killed by a member of the Detroit Police Department.
Alvin Bowman also said in the affidavit he is aware of links between Greene and “high-ranking city employees” and an unnamed associate of Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.
Mayer Morganroth, the Southfield attorney representing the city and the mayor in the Greene civil lawsuit, described Bowman’s allegations on Monday as “garbage.”
Bowman gave the deposition in a federal lawsuit brought by Greene’s family against the city of Detroit, Kilpatrick and other city officials.
Greene’s family alleges top city officials interfered with the investigation of Greene’s April 30, 2003, drive-by killing for political reasons. City officials deny the allegations.
Greene’s name has been linked to a long-rumored but never substantiated party at the mayor’s Manoogian Mansion.
Bowman, who alleged in a separate lawsuit that he was demoted for attempting to investigate Greene’s killing, said in a Feb. 29 affidavit, “I suspected that the shooter was a law enforcement officer, and more specifically, a Detroit Police Department officer.”
Bowman was awarded $200,000 in a jury trial against the city.
Detroit Police say the case remains open. James Canning, a spokesman for the mayor, declined comment, citing ongoing litigation.
But Morganroth said stories of a party with strippers at the mayor’s mansion late in 2002 are ridiculous. Attorney General Mike Cox, who investigated the rumored party, accurately described it as an urban legend, Morganroth said.
“Find a person who was there. Find a person who knows anything firsthand.”
Greene was shot about 18 times with a .40 caliber weapon — the kind issued to Detroit police — while sitting in a parked vehicle, Bowman said in the affidavit. Morganroth said .40 caliber Glocks are also commonly used by drug dealers.
Bowman believed Greene was the target of a contract killing, partly because the attacker had ample opportunity to shoot her male passenger, but did not, he said.
“In the course of our investigation, I learned from the Michigan State Police that they possessed a telephone record linking Ms. Greene to high-ranking city employees not long before her murder,” Bowman said in the affidavit.
“I also learned that Tamara Greene danced for and was employed by an associate of Mayor Kilpatrick.”
Norman Yatooma, the lawyer representing Greene’s son Jonathon Bond, said Bowman does not wish to identify that associate, though he may have to as the lawsuit proceeds. Bowman could not be reached.
The mayor is embroiled in controversy over $8.4 million in city settlements paid to three other former Detroit police officers who filed whistle-blower suits alleging they were retaliated against for reporting or investigating alleged wrongdoing by the mayor and his police bodyguards.
The mayor signed a secret agreement as part of the settlements requiring that text messages he exchanged in 2002 and 2003 with former Chief of Staff Christine Beatty be kept under wraps. The text messages, disclosed in January, point to an affair between Kilpatrick and Beatty, and possible perjury after both testified at a whistle-blower trial last year. Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy is investigating.
Bowman alleged both former Detroit Police Chief Jerry Oliver and current Chief Ella Bully-Cummings gave “an unexplainable amount of attention” to the Greene case, with Oliver on numerous occasions requesting the file be sent to his office for review.
“On each occasion, the file was returned with reports missing from the file,” Bowman alleges in the affidavit. Oliver could not be reached Monday.
Under Bully-Cummings, the file was prematurely sent to the “cold case” file, when the killing was less than a year old and being actively investigated, he said.
Another officer on the homicide squad, Sgt. Marion Stevenson, said her case notes on the Greene murder “were erased from her computer hard drive” and “her zip storage files disappeared from a locked cabinet inside the police department,” Bowman said.
“The members of my squad and I were aware or otherwise believed that the file was given to cold case and that I was transferred because neither Mayor Kilpatrick nor Beatty wanted there to be an investigation of the Manoogian Mansion party,” Bowman alleged.
Yatooma also filed in court a Michigan State Police report of an interview with an emergency medical technician who said he witnessed a disturbance at Detroit Receiving Hospital in the fall of 2002 at which he was told “the mayor’s wife had beat down some b—-.”
A key feature of the Manoogian Mansion party rumor has been the allegation that Kilpatrick’s wife, Carlita, arrived at the party and assaulted an exotic dancer.
Douglas Bayer, described in a Michigan State Police report as an EMT with the Detroit Fire Department, said he arrived at the hospital on a call and “observed a large crowd in the reception area who were causing a commotion.”
He said the crowd of about 20-25 people included two people with “Secret Service-type earpieces” he assumed were members of the mayor’s executive protection unit.
On the way out of the hospital, Bayer asked a group of EMT workers what the commotion was about and was told it related to an assault on a woman by the mayor’s wife, the police report stated. Bayer did not return a call to his home Monday.
You can reach Paul Egan at (313) 222-2069 or pegan@detnews.com.
