Cox: ‘We haven’t tried to hide anything’
Attorney General Mike Cox addressed a range of issues with the Free Press last week, including detailed responses that contradict parts of testimony given last month by Michigan State Police Detective Sgt. Mark Krebs.
Krebs’ testimony came in a deposition Oct. 20 in connection with a 4-year-old federal lawsuit brought by the family of slain stripper Tamara Greene. The suit accuses Detroit officials and police of scuttling the investigation of Greene’s death in an April 30, 2003, drive-by shooting.
The Free Press published a story Nov. 8 on Krebs’ deposition.
In coming weeks, Cox, State Police Detective Lt. Curtis Schram and State Police Detective Sgt. John Figurski also are scheduled to give depositions.
Michigan State Police officials, including Krebs, declined to comment on what Cox told the Free Press in a 2 1/2 -hour interview that included these key issues:
The alleged dispute over Detroit police tapes:
Cox said there was no face-off at Detroit Police Headquarters, as Krebs testified in his Oct. 20 deposition.
In the deposition, Krebs said 30 of 36 tapes that contained either 911 dispatch records or backups of police computer files — he wasn’t sure which — disappeared overnight after a standoff June 10, 2003, between State Police and Detroit police brass.
The tapes were subpoenaed after former Deputy Police Chief Gary Brown complained that someone had tampered with his computer in the internal affairs section he commanded.
But a State Police report indicates that tapes were collected for the entire Police Department, not just internal affairs, exceeding the scope of the subpoena, Cox said. Cox also noted there were 19 tapes, not 36 as Krebs testified.
“Initially they were going to give more backups than what were subpoenaed,” Cox said of Detroit police. “We can’t take in more than the judge authorized.”
Krebs testified that there was a confrontation with Detroit police when he tried to leave police headquarters with the tapes. In a compromise, the tapes were sealed in a box and put in a vault. Krebs testified that, the next day, someone had opened the box, leaving only six tapes.
Cox pointed to Krebs’ testimony that he never looked at the six tapes or the other 13 that city officials agreed to set aside for possible examination.
“However important these tapes were, Krebs never even looked at them or reviewed them,” Cox said.
Krebs, for his part, testified that he wasn’t computer savvy and had no ongoing responsibility beyond picking up the tapes. He said he was given other tasks.
“The day before I was the tape man; the next day I’m something else,” he testified.
Cox said Krebs may have had a faulty memory given the passage of time and because he didn’t review his investigation file before the deposition.
“I think what happened was that over 6 1/2 years, Mr. Krebs probably remembers it differently than how it happened,” Cox said.
On allegations of a rush to judgment in probe:
Cox disputed Krebs’ contention that Cox’s staff rushed State Police investigators and that Cox ended his probe too soon.
Cox said he made it clear from the outset that he wanted to conduct a fast — but thorough — investigation, just as the Free Press and other newspapers had demanded.
“I promised a swift, exhaustive and efficient investigation. And that’s what we did,” Cox said.
“We weren’t going to be a Kenneth Starr 6-year investigation,” Cox added, referring to the special prosecutor’s lengthy investigation of President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s.
Cox noted several times that after all this time, no one has ever come forward
with any credible evidence of a wild party at the Manoogian Mansion, the beating of a stripper by the mayor’s wife or a link to Greene’s murder. Likewise, no other criminal allegations involving the mayor’s bodyguards have ever been proved.
On the quality of Cox’s investigative team:
Cox had his own investigators working on the case and said they were every bit as experienced as the State Police detectives, who complained that the attorney general hindered their efforts.
He said the State Police had three investigators and he had five, all with 20-plus years of experience. Two were retired police officers, and one was retired from the State Police.
Cox said his investigators were supervised by two assistant attorneys general, Suzan Sanford, who was hired by former Attorney General Frank Kelley, and the late Tom Furtaw, who previously worked as a Wayne County homicide prosecutor.
“That’s a point of personal pride for the people in our office, certainly for Tom Furtaw, who did 25 murder trials, let alone looked at hundreds of homicide cases and assigned people to prosecute,” Cox said.
Cox said Furtaw gave him daily briefings about the progress of the investigation and that the only time he got personally involved was when he and Furtaw interviewed Kwame Kilpatrick without the State Police present a month into the investigation.
Did Cox whitewash the investigation?
“No. No, no, no and no,” he said.
On shutting down probe:
Cox denied that his decision to end his investigation in June 2003 after five weeks caused the State Police to shut down its own probe. He said the State Police investigation continued for another six months — until Jan. 16, 2004 — and that State Police detectives interviewed another 55 witnesses.
In a deposition last month, Krebs testified that Furtaw rushed them to wrap things up.
“The investigation was shut down much too early,” Krebs said.
Detective Lt. Curtis Schram, who supervised the State Police investigation, also said in a 2003 memo that Furtaw was under “tremendous strain” to wrap up the investigation quickly.
Cox said those accusations don’t stand up.
“In fact, the governor put me into this, and the governor runs the State Police,” Cox said. “There’s no way I could shut down the investigation.”
Moreover, Cox said Furtaw continued to help State Police after he ended his part of the probe in June 2003.
He said, “The arrangement was that if you find something else, come back to us, and if we can help you out, we will help you out. And that’s been the case all along.”
He said there were limits, though: “Tom Furtaw tried to work with them, but we were not going to use our resources.”
Furtaw died of a heart attack in 2008.
Cox emphasized that even Krebs acknowledged in the deposition that it was State Police executives who ended the State Police probe, not Cox.
On trust and cooperation with State Police investigators:
The partnership between the State Police and the Attorney General’s Office was strained by two newspaper stories, Cox said, and Furtaw worried that secret information was being leaked to reporters.
The first story, in May 2003, covered political skirmishing over Cox’s role in the investigation. The other, in June, contained details of sworn testimony about the case — an indication that someone was leaking investigative materials that, by law, were to be kept secret, Cox said
“Tom Furtaw didn’t appreciate that article,” Cox said. “Now he was running this investigation and he was in charge.
“When the story got leaked, he was pretty upset about that because it was supposed to be confidential. It was supposed to be sealed forever unless we charged somebody.
“Tom knew it didn’t come from our side. So that caused some friction, at least in Tom’s mind. I don’t know if we ever shared that with any state troopers.”
Furtaw’s comfort level was important because he was the attorney general’s point person on the scene, a theme Cox touched on more than once: “Tom didn’t feel very comfortable, and you have to remember that I trusted him completely.”
On the inability of State Police to get key search warrants:
Cox said some of the State Police requests were overly broad fishing expeditions that no judge would ever approve.
Cox said State Police, for example, wanted emergency room records for a three-hour window — midnight to 3 a.m. — for the entire month of October 2002, during which a stripper might have sought treatment after being assaulted at the mansion. Cox said the request was too broad because it covered any black woman in the hospital during that period, ignored federal medical privacy laws and was unconstitutional.
“So if your mother had a hip replacement or some other surgery at Detroit Receiving Hospital, she would have been included in this dragnet,” Cox said.
On the Tamara Greene records:
Cox said the stripper known as Strawberry initially wasn’t on investigators’ radar screen even though she has since become synonymous with the rumor of the wild party and many people assume she was beaten there. But records show that another dancer — not Greene — was initially identified as the alleged assault victim.
He said State Police investigators in 2003 ran the names of three women on a Detroit Receiving Hospital computer to see whether they were treated in September or October 2002, but Greene’s name wasn’t among those checked.
Cox also produced records indicating that Norman Yatooma, the lawyer for the Greene family, checked Detroit Receiving Hospital records in 2008 and learned that Greene had never been treated there. Yet, Cox said, Yatooma continues to contend that Greene was taken there.
Yatooma countered last week that he believes Greene wasn’t treated under her own name.
“All of our information is that she was treated under a different name,” Yatooma said. “Mike Cox knows that this is the information that has come from both my investigators and his.
“Suggesting there are no medical records under the name Tamara Greene is disingenuous.”
Yatooma also said that Krebs’ warrant request for hospital records was not out of line.
“Is that really such a large number of people?” he said.
Detroit attorney Ben Gonek, who practices criminal and civil law in the city, said a request for a search warrant of hospital records, even for a three-hour window over 30 days, is too broad.
“The state is going to get a ton of medical records of folks that have a right of privacy,” Gonek said.
“Over a 30-day period, such a wide window of time, you have to question the source.”
