Cop: Dancer slaying cover up
A member of the multi-jurisdictional Violent Crimes Task Force repeated earlier testimony today that the Tamara Greene homicide file had been tampered with, according to an attorney trying the case.
Detroit Police Officer Alejandro Parra, a task force member, was deposed today by Birmingham attorney Norman Yatooma’s associate.
Parra testified in a previous deposition that he once saw two sergeants with the file in a task force conference room.
“She had the Strawberry file spread out on her desk,” Parra said of a sergeant. “I said ‘Sarge, What are you doing?’ And then she kind of looked at me. She goes, ‘I’m just doing some secret squirrel stuff for the commander.’”
Yatooma said that Parra gave the same testimony to his office today.
“It’s more of the horrifying same,” Yatooma said. “It’s memorialized as evidence. What our witnesses are saying, they are saying under oath.”
Parra gave the testimony to attorney Mike Stefani on Sept. 3 in a separate lawsuit brought by Officer Ira Todd, who was kicked out of the task force after he claims he established a link between alleged hit man Vincent Smothers and a reputed Kentucky drug dealer who boasted to cops that he had close ties to former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.
The Tamara Greene case came up during Parra’s deposition with Stefani. Greene, nicknamed Strawberry, was a stripper who was shot and killed April 30, 2003, in a west side Detroit drive-by killing. Her murder remains unsolved.
The never-proven rumor is that Greene danced at a 2002 party at the Manoogian Mansion and was assaulted by Kilpatrick’s wife, Carlita.
Today, Parra sat with Robert Zawideh, a managing attorney in Yatooma’s office, and city lawyers for several hours in a deposition. Yatooma is representing various members of Greene’s family in a federal lawsuit that alleges that Kilpatrick and other city officials conspired to thwart any investigation into Greene’s slaying.
Parra testified in September that there were discussions about any possible connections between the Smothers case and Greene killing. Nothing had been proven, but Parra mentioned in the September deposition that the Greene file disappeared.
“That file is gone, still missing,” Parra testified.
Yatooma, however, has been allowed under court order to review the file. He is prohibited from commenting on what he has seen.
Detroit Police spokesman John Roach declined to comment on Parra’s depositions in September and today. Last month, Police Chief Warren Evans turned the investigation into Greene’s death over to the Violent Crimes Task Force.
