Audit will probe Greene case
State Police forensics unit to look into Detroit’s gun lab to see if investigations were mishandled.
DETROIT — State Police forensics investigators auditing the city’s firearms laboratory will look into whether evidence in the 2003 fatal shooting of stripper Tamara Greene was handled properly, the man in charge of the audit said.
The city’s gun lab was shut down last month after an independent investigator determined that Detroit lab technicians mishandled evidence in a shooting case. Detroit Police Chief Ella Bully-Cummings ordered the lab closed and requested an audit by the state police to determine the scope of the problem.
As part of that audit, which is scheduled to start today and is expected to last four months, state investigators will randomly inspect cases handled by the city’s nine firearms examiners. But Capt. Mike Thomas, director of the State Police Forensic Science Division, said investigators also will hand-pick certain cases — including the Greene shooting — as part of the audit.
“We’re trying to identify all the cases where there’s been a question about whether the evidence was handled properly,” Thomas said. “Those are the cases we’ll also take a look at, in addition to the random cases.”
Greene, who danced under the stage name “Strawberry,” was killed in a drive-by shooting on April 30, 2002. Her name has been linked to a long-rumored, but never substantiated, party at the mayor’s Manoogian Mansion.
Former Detroit homicide Lt. Alvin Bowman in February said in a sworn affidavit that he suspects Greene was killed by a member of the Detroit Police Department.
Bowman made the allegation during a deposition in a federal lawsuit brought by Greene’s family against the city of Detroit, Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and other city officials. Greene’s family alleges in the suit that top city officials interfered with the investigation of Greene’s murder. City officials have denied the allegation.
Bowman also said in the affidavit there were links between Greene and “high-ranking city employees,” including an unnamed associate of Kilpatrick. The former homicide detective alleged in a separate lawsuit that he was demoted for attempting to investigate Greene’s killing.
“I suspected that the shooter was a law enforcement officer, and more specifically, a Detroit Police Department officer,” he said in his Feb. 29 affidavit. He was awarded $200,000 in a jury trial against the city.
As part of the lawsuit brought by Greene’s family, U.S. District Judge Gerald E. Rosen in March appointed two federal magistrates to look at text messages sent to and from city officials around the time of her murder. However, SkyTel Corp., the city’s former pager service provider, has not turned over the text messages because the company first needs personal identification numbers (PINs), to identify which messages the court is requesting. The city has not provided those PINs.
Detroit Police say the Greene shooting case remains open.
“We’ve never closed the case,” said Detroit Police spokesman James Tate.
“We’ve said that all along, and we hope anyone who has information about the case comes forward.”
Norman Yatooma, the attorney representing Greene’s children, said he was pleased by the new State Police probe.
“I’m glad to see someone giving time and attention to the case instead of covering it up,” he said.
Greene was shot numerous times with a .40 caliber weapon — the kind issued to Detroit police. Bowman said he believed Greene was the target of a contract killing, because he said the shooter had plenty of time to also shoot her boyfriend, who was a passenger in the vehicle.
“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.”
As part of the State Police audit of Detroit’s gun lab, Thomas said he also wants to look at four other cases where Detroit police allegedly mishandled gun evidence. Those cases involve clients of Marvin Barnett, the Detroit attorney who was responsible for the chain of events leading up to the shutdown of Detroit’s lab and the subsequent audit.
Barnett hired independent forensics investigator David Balash to examine evidence in a case in which he said Detroit police mishandled gun evidence. In that case, two of Detroit’s firearms examiners said that 42 spent shell casings came from one gun. But Balash found 24 bullets came from one weapon, 17 from another, and one was impossible to determine. An independent examiner retained by the prosecutor confirmed Balash’s findings.
In another development, SkyTel filed a motion Tuesday seeking to quash Yatooma’s subpoenas.
The motion by SkyTel, a division of Bell Industries Inc., is significant because up until Tuesday SkyTel had indicated it was prepared to comply with subpoenas seeking text messages in connection with the case.
SkyTel attorney Thomas Plunkett noted that Mayer Morganroth, an attorney representing former mayoral chief of staff Christine Beatty in the case, has said SkyTel could be sued if it releases text messages in connection with a civil case.
SkyTel wants to comply with court orders but also wants to avoid civil claims based on such compliance, Plunkett said.
He asked U.S. District Judge Gerald E. Rosen to quash Yatooma’s subpoenas or order the city to request and obtain any subpoenaed information from SkyTel.
