AG Won’t Interview Carlita Kilpatrick
(WXYZ) Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox will not interview Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s wife about allegedly assaulting a stripper at the infamous, yet unproven, Manoogian Mansion party—despite a new statement filed with the court from a witness claiming to have knowledge about the assault.
In a signed affidavit, Lt. Michael Kearns, an EMS supervisor for the Detroit Fire Department, said that he responded to a run at a Shell gas station at Jefferson and Conner for a female who had been assaulted. Kearns says the woman told him her name was Tammy Greene and that she and a “friend were dancing at a party at the Manoogian Mansion and that the Mayor’s wife, Carlita Kilpatrick, threw a fit, hit her and the other dancer, then kicked them out of the house.”
Rusty Hills, spokesperson for the Attorney General’s Office, told Action News that they would interview Kearns and another new witness, retired EMS Lt. Walter Godzwon, whose affidavit was also filed in court Monday. Godzwon said he saw the mayor and his executive protection unit at Detroit Receiving Hospital in the fall of 2002. But Hills said they would not interview Carlita Kilpatrick.
Attorney Norman Yatooma, who filed the new witness statements, represents family members of Greene, who was shot to death. The family sued the City of Detroit, Kilpatrick and others, claiming there was an effort to derail an investigation into Green’s murder.
The Attorney General’s office, which investigated the alleged assault and party in 2003 and declared it an “urban legend,” never interviewed the mayor’s wife.
In a phone interview, Hills told Action News they would not interview Carlita since they had already interviewed 175 people and there was no evidence of an assault or a party.
When Action News pressed Hills on why they questioned 175 people, but not the one person accused of a crime, he said, “I’m not going to get bogged down in this” and ended the call.
Hills then called Action News back and said they would not interview someone about a crime they couldn’t prove happened.
“Why would we subject someone to an interview for a crime that never was reported for a party that never took place?”
But Wayne State University Law School professor Peter Henning says the Attorney General’s Office does not need any evidence to interview the mayor’s wife.
“You can investigate just to make sure nothing is going on,” says Henning. “Police do that with some regularity.”
Henning also says the attorney general may not want to appear that he is “piling on,” since Cox recently charged the mayor for assault and obstruction of justice in connection with the mayor’s ongoing criminal case in which he is accused of perjury and other crimes.
“I really think the AG’s Office wants to put it behind them,” says Henning. “But I’m not sure they can. Having not interviewed Carlita has taken on a life of its own. It has become a festering wound.”
