Cox defends handling of probe into Manoogian
Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox said he has grown weary of defending himself against accusations that he thwarted an investigation into the rumored Manoogian Mansion Party and Tamara Greene’s unsolved killing.
But he found himself doing just that this week amid new developments in a federal lawsuit alleging a cover-up of Greene’s death.
“People keep confusing the investigation into the allegations surrounding Gary Brown and the Manoogian Mansion party with the murder of Tamara Greene,” Cox said. “We have never been involved with the Tamara Greene case and it’s frustrating that people confuse the two things.”
Cox’s name has resurfaced because Birmingham attorney Norman Yatooma is deposing three state police investigators who claimed in 2004 that the attorney general impeded their investigation into rumors of a wild party at the Manoogian Mansion that ended in the assault of a stripper.
Yatooma is representing Greene’s family in a lawsuit against former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and city officials, claiming they conspired to derail an investigation into Greene’s 2003 drive-by killing. Detroit Police Chief Warren Evans recently turned the investigation into Greene’s murder over to the multi-jurisdictional Violent Crimes Task Force.
Cox said he closed the investigation into the party rumors and allegations of wrongdoing by Kilpatrick’s bodyguards after 130 witnesses had been interviewed and 90 subpoenas had been served. He said the state police interviewed 55 additional witnesses before their investigation ended.
The most popular version of the never-proven party rumor was that the mayor’s wife, Carlita Kilpatrick, happened upon the party and assaulted a stripper with a baseball bat.
“If there had been an assault at the Manoogian Mansion, that was a misdemeanor,” Cox said. “The biggest allegations centered around whether Kwame Kilpatrick covered up overtime fraud and drunken-driving incidents by his Executive Protection Team. Those were the things that were felony allegations.”
Cox characterized his decision to halt the investigation while the state police continued as: “Just a professional difference of opinion between us and them. They didn’t find anything to contradict our conclusion.”
Yatooma scoffed at Cox’s explanation.
“A wooden object, like a baseball bat, is a deadly weapon,” Yatooma
said. “Assault with a deadly weapon is a felony. Is he effectively saying this is akin to jaywalking? Slapping someone is a misdemeanor. Assault with a deadly weapon is a felony every time.”
Investigator Mark Krebs, a detective with the Michigan State Police, sat for a deposition Tuesday with Yatooma’s office and city attorneys. Two other investigators, Curt Schram and John Figurski, will give depositions in the lawsuit at a later date. Schram had previously complained that Cox’s office quit authorizing subpoenas.
“Without subpoenas (court orders) it has made this investigation very difficult,” Schram wrote in a 2003 memo. “The City of Detroit, including the Police Department, will not provide any information without subpoenas. Police officers for the City of Detroit will not testify without subpoenas, hospitals will not provide information without court orders, telephone companies will not provide information without court orders.””
Cox said state police could have gone to the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office for additional subpoenas.
“I never told them: ‘Hey, you can’t interview the mayor or Carlita Kilpatrick,’ ” he said. “We shut our operation down. They had other options. But our focus was on the mayor committing felonies, not Carlita committing a misdemeanor.”
Cox, a Republican now running for governor, said he felt no political pressure at the time.
“On the contrary, charging the mayor of the city of Detroit as a Republican wouldn’t have hurt me in the least politically,” he said. “Republicans get very few votes out of the city of Detroit. He couldn’t turn on or turn off any votes for me.”
