Cold case manages to keep the heat on Detroit’s mayor
DETROIT — In a city that routinely sees more than 400 murders a year, the 2003 slaying of Tamara “Strawberry” Greene was an easily overlooked crime.
Few people initially took notice when the 27-year-old stripper was found slumped over the steering wheel of her green Buick Skylark. But soon the city was buzzing with rumors that she had danced at a party at the mayor’s mansion — a story that never has been proved.
The investigation into the rumored party and her death helped launch Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick’s avalanche of current woes, but nearly five years later, Greene’s death has been overshadowed by recent revelations of an affair between the mayor and his chief of staff, Christine Beatty.
The scandal, complete with text-messaged endearments, has been fueled by reports that Kilpatrick and Beatty lied about the affair while testifying last year.
Now Greene’s death in April 2003 is emerging as a key story line in the city’s civic soap opera.
Pressured to drop case
Lawyers for Tamara Greene’s 14-year-old son are pushing forward with a $150 million federal civil lawsuit against the mayor and the city, for allegedly quashing the investigation of her slaying.
They recently filed a statement from a former Detroit police officer alleging that his homicide unit was pressured to drop the case, even though it appeared to him that Greene’s death was a hit — one possibly carried out by another police officer. They also have subpoenaed a slew of text-messages among city employees, including those sent between 1:30 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. on the day Greene was killed.
The city is petitioning for the case to be dismissed. A federal judge ordered SkyTel and the city to save certain messages from 42 city pagers, including Kilpatrick’s, as well as all messages sent on the day Greene died.
Rumored mansion party
The sordid tale of Greene’s slaying revolves around the rumored party at Manoogian Mansion, the official residence of the mayor. Court documents lay out the following sequence of events:
An officer with the Executive Protection Unit reported that a party for the mayor and his friends had taken place and “the party featured nude female dancers,” according to a 2003 internal affairs memo commissioned by Police Deputy Chief Gary Brown. The unit handles security for the mayor.
When the mayor’s wife, Carlita Kilpatrick, unexpectedly arrived at the mansion, she saw her husband and the strippers, according to the officer who reported about the party, Harold Nelthrope.
Nelthrope, who was not at the alleged event but learned about it the following day, “further stated that a fight ensued between Ms. Kilpatrick and a dancer and that the dancer received injuries requiring medical attention.” Nelthrope does not say who told him about the alleged events.
The dancer — believed to be Greene — was taken to a hospital, “and the Executive Protection Unit confiscated all activity log sheets (from the police precinct that responded),” Nelthrope said.
The mayor, who declined to comment for this story, has denied that the party and the alleged assault took place. (Carlita Kilpatrick also declined to comment.)
So, too, have Detroit police officials — at least publicly. A state investigation resulted in Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox dismissing such claims as urban legend.
“They have no eyewitnesses, no caterers, not one person that said they were there that has been named,” said attorney Mayer Morganroth, who is defending the city and the mayor in the lawsuit filed on behalf of Greene’s son, Jonathan Bond.
Bond’s attorney Norman Yatooma said, “The mayor is a proven liar and perjurer. Neither the party nor Tammy’s murder are urban legend. It’s another legendary cover-up.”
More allegations
Brown, a 25-year veteran, also was looking into allegations that officers on the mayor’s security team falsified overtime payroll, drank on the job and hid accidents in city cars. He was fired unexpectedly after the 2003 memo — in part, Brown claimed, for investigating the rumored party and because the mayor and Beatty feared their relationship would be exposed.
The investigation into Greene’s death, meanwhile, quietly was being sabotaged, court documents allege.
In a 10-page affidavit filed earlier this month in connection with the son’s lawsuit, former Detroit Police Lt. Alvin Bowman — a 31-year police veteran who headed the homicide unit looking into the Greene murder — said that top police officials derailed his investigation in order to avoid any inquiry into the party.
Bowman said files and case notes on the Greene case were deleted from homicide investigators’ computers and reports were removed from the file. At one point, the file was placed in a combination-lock safe that Bowman and others couldn’t get into.
“The focus of our investigation was to solve Ms. Greene’s murder, not to investigate the Manoogian Mansion party,” Bowman stated in his affidavit. “However, because of the persistent and pervasive rumors concerning her appearance at that party and rumored assault by the Mayor’s wife, Carlita Kilpatrick, my investigation required my (s)quad to follow up and investigate those rumors.”
Last week, Detroit Police Chief Ella Bully-Cummings told reporters that Bowman’s accusations were “reprehensible,” and, “There is no cover-up in this police department into the death of Miss Greene.”
Overshadowed by scandal
Kilpatrick once faced a bright political future. Called the nation’s “hip-hop mayor,” the charismatic attorney was the youngest mayor in Detroit’s history, and many people — particularly his mother, U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick — predicted he could become the first black president.
But his reputation was overshadowed by scandal, including a series of police whistle-blower lawsuits.
Last year, after a jury sided against the city in one of the suits, Kilpatrick persuaded the City Council to approve an $8.4 million settlement to three police whistle-blowers. Part of the deal the City Council did not know about but reportedly was approved by the city attorney: Proof of the text messages showing the mayor and Beatty, his chief of staff, lied under oath about their romantic relationship was to be concealed.
The affair first was reported in the Detroit Free Press in January after investigative reporters obtained almost 14,000 text messages sent from, and received by, Beatty’s city-owned pager in 2002 and 2003.
Wayne County prosecutor, Kym Worthy, opened an investigation of possible perjury and other charges against the mayor. The investigation, expected to be completed this week, as well as the mayor’s troubles have galvanized this blue-collar community.
At a City Council meeting recently, angry Detroiters crammed inside the public chambers, clutching handwritten speeches — and voiced commonly held views about the mayor.
“He has disgraced my race and he is no longer able to carry on as mayor of this city,” said Hattie Massey, 73, a retired city school teacher.
Jonathan Bond was 10 years old when his mother was killed. Bond’s father, Ernest Flagg, filed the lawsuit on behalf of his son. His family has told him to let the case go. Flagg recently moved his family out of Detroit after their home was broken into and trashed.
