Did Manoogian Mansion tapes vanish? Detective says probe into rumored party was botched
A version of this story appears on page 1A of the Sunday, Nov. 8, 2009, print edition of the Detroit Free Press.
On a spring day in 2003, State Police detectives headed out of Detroit police headquarters with a box of evidence that had them wondering whether they might unlock the truth of a rumored wild party at the Manoogian Mansion.
But they never found out.
As they pressed the down button on an elevator and tried to leave, Detroit police executives confronted them and refused to let the evidence — a cache of 911 dispatch tapes or cops’ computer files — out of the building, according to never-disclosed testimony obtained by the Free Press.
A day later, when State Police went back to a vault where both sides had agreed to store the 36 tapes in a sealed box, the investigators found the seal broken and 30 tapes missing, according to the testimony.
“We were appalled,” State Police Detective Sgt. Mark Krebs said in a six-hour deposition that provides other new details about the internal tensions that roiled the investigation of the alleged party and its purported connection to the slaying of Tamara Greene, a stripper who was said to have danced at the party.
Krebs testified that Attorney General Mike Cox rushed to wrap up the probe. “The investigation was shut down much too early,” the detective said under oath in a lawsuit filed by Greene’s family.
On Friday, Cox scoffed at any suggestion that he cut the investigation short. He said State Police interviewed scores of witnesses and looked at other evidence, but found nothing.
“To this day,” Cox said, “no one in the State Police, our office or the media has identified someone who was there or could provide any evidence in a courtroom that there was a party.”
Cop testifies probe into rumored party was thwarted
They were veteran state detectives — used to catching killers and cracking cases — but they said they were stymied, stalled and finally shut down as they tried to investigate claims of a wild party and an assault on a stripper at the Manoogian Mansion.
And when Michigan State Police investigators repeatedly ran into roadblocks and uncooperative Detroit cops, they said the Michigan Attorney General’s Office told them: “Let it go.”
In a sworn deposition last month, State Police Detective Sgt. Mark Krebs, for the first time, publicly laid out his frustrations about battling with the Detroit Police Department and Attorney General’s Office in a futile effort to get to the bottom of the Manoogian party mystery.
During six hours of questioning, Krebs, a 35-year veteran, described dealing with a maddening tangle of strippers, fearful witnesses, self-aggrandizing liars and political heavyweights who investigators interviewed beginning in 2003.
He also revealed new details about the investigation, including disappearing evidence, city stonewalling on record requests and a failure by the Attorney General’s Office to issue crucial subpoenas while repeatedly pressuring them to wrap up the investigation.
Krebs, summoned from the Bad Axe post, worked the case with State Police Lt. Curtis Schram of Rockford and Detective Sgt. John Figurski of the Adrian post. They are to be deposed later.
In the end, no solid evidence ever surfaced that the party, much less the beating of a stripper, ever happened. Likewise, no one has ever established that the rumored party was connected to the April 30, 2003, drive-by shooting of Tamara Greene, who supposedly danced at the party. Greene’s stage name was Strawberry.
Krebs’ deposition was taken in a federal lawsuit spearheaded by Birmingham attorney Norman Yatooma on behalf of Greene’s family. The suit alleges Detroit cops and city officials sabotaged the investigation of her murder, preventing the killers from being brought to justice. Former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, police officials and lawyers for the city deny the allegations.
Police Chief Warren Evans recently assigned the investigation of Greene’s murder to a local, state and federal violent crimes task force. Detroit police and the FBI declined to comment on the investigation.
Attorney General Mike Cox on Friday again defended his investigation.
“We just had a difference of opinion,” Cox said in response to Krebs’ testimony. “After 130 witnesses, we had nothing we could use for a criminal case, let alone for a tabloid news story.”
Sometimes, how you investigate is just as important as the result, said Peter Henning, a Wayne State University law professor and former Justice Department lawyer. He said the lingering conflicts and how the probe was conducted keeps the rumor mill roaring.
“The chance to resolve this appears to have been lost, and that’s what feeds conspiracy theories,” Henning said.
Six years ago, Cox jumped into the case after Kilpatrick, beset by rumors of hosting the party, asked for an investigation. Cox promised laser focus and a rock solid investigation.
But that’s not what happened, according to Krebs.
Instead, Krebs said, he and two other investigators fought Detroit police over tapes, were ordered out of a police office that maintains stripper licensing records, couldn’t get critical subpoenas for hospital records in their search for a woman allegedly beaten at the Manoogian and were shut out of Cox’s unsworn and unrecorded interview with Kilpatrick.
During the Oct. 20 deposition, Yatooma’s law partner Robert Zawideh asked Krebs: “Do you believe the Attorney General’s Office blocked your investigations for political purposes?”
Krebs never got to answer the question as other lawyers in the lawsuit buried him in objections.
The stripper records
Krebs said the investigators tried to find the women who had allegedly danced at the mansion. The cops had their stage names — Vanilla Fudge, Mercedes Lady and Caramel — but no real IDs.
So they went to the Detroit police office that maintains licenses on cabaret performers. But the investigators were tossed out.
“We were effectively told to leave before we could get any information on the strippers we were looking for,” Krebs said, adding that a female officer said she was acting on the orders of two command officers. “So we had to leave.”
Potential witnesses
Krebs also said investigators thought they had a break in the case when Detroit Police Officer James Lewis told them he went to a Detroit hospital to pick up a confidential informant who said Carlita Kilpatrick, the mayor’s wife, had assaulted her after she danced at the party. Lewis also claimed to have a journal detailing the episode. He was facing felony misconduct charges for filing a false report in an unrelated case.
Lewis never produced the dancer or the journal.
“He was afraid,” Krebs said. “He was afraid for his physical well-being.”
Krebs said the investigation was hampered by the refusal of potential witnesses, including Detroit cops, who feared for their lives and careers.
He said investigators got their hopes up again in 2007 when a Harper Woods man told them he was at the party. But he recanted a month later.
Cox’s interview with Kilpatrick
Krebs said the investigators were excited when they heard that Cox wanted to interview Kwame Kilpatrick. He said they got together to put together a list of questions for the mayor.
But “the meeting between Cox and Kilpatrick was done without State Police presence, was not under oath, and it was not tape-recorded like every other investigative participant was,” Krebs testified. “This was completely unheard of.”
Krebs never saw any report of the interview.
The word came down from the Attorney General’s Office through Krebs’ bosses “to just consider this a meeting between two politicians and let it go.”
Four days after Cox met with the mayor, he announced that his office was done investigating the party rumors, dismissing them as urban legend.
Cox said Friday that there was nothing stopping Krebs and his colleagues from interviewing the mayor or his wife, Carlita. The State Police interviewed an additional 55 witnesses after Cox’s office closed out their portion of the case.
Pressure to finish
But Krebs claims Tom Furtaw, the then-chief of Cox’s criminal justice bureau, repeatedly railed at them to wrap up their investigation.
“Tom Furtaw wanted this closed out within the first two weeks,” Krebs testified. “Tom appeared to be under a strain to get this closed out quickly because Mike Cox wanted it done. He was agitated in the morning after the second week that it wasn’t resolved, and he was definitely turning red in the face a lot of times. He was having daily contacts with Mike Cox over what was happening.”
Furtaw suffered a fatal heart attack while playing guitar with a rock band in August 2008. He was 43.
Investigators said the Attorney General’s Office thwarted attempts to get subpoenas for medical records that could lead to the identity of the woman allegedly beaten at the party.
Cox said Friday that they wanted records of “thousands of African-American women at Detroit Receiving” Hospital.
Krebs testified that their focus was narrower — a three-hour period when the victim might have been treated.
Krebs said the Attorney General’s Office saw no need to take that course.
“They just didn’t see it,” he said.
Questions about missing tapes
In describing the dispute with the cops at police headquarters, Krebs said he was unsure whether the tapes investigators had subpoenaed contained 911 dispatch calls or backup files from police executive computers.
Either way, he said, Detroit police would not let the tapes out of police headquarters.
In a compromise, the tapes were sealed in a box and locked in a walk-in vault. The next day, Krebs said, investigators discovered the box had been opened and 30 tapes were missing.
Although the investigators were shocked, Krebs said Furtaw counseled them “just to let it go.”
Detroit Police Cmdr. Russell Decrease, who Krebs said refused to hand over the tapes on orders from higher-ups, declined to comment on Krebs’ testimony.
Decrease heads the department’s crime analysis division.
On Friday, Cox’s office provided the Free Press with Lt. Schram’s deposition from a 2004 police whistle-blower case involving Deputy Police Chief Gary Brown. Schram testified that the police told them they had turned over too much information, which is why the tapes had been removed from the box.
Hunting for answers
Jeffrey Morganroth, who represents Christine Beatty, Kilpatrick’s former chief of staff, in the lawsuit, said it was clear that Krebs thought there were more avenues to follow after Cox ended his involvement.
“But they were unable to find any corroborating evidence,” Morganroth said.
“He had some complaints about not getting subpoenas or warrants,” he said. “But they could have gone to the Wayne County prosecutor, so that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.”
Indeed, Krebs testified that he never found anyone who attended the party.
Morganroth said it was curious that “most of the focus seems to be on the rumored party when the case is supposed to be about Greene’s death.”
Yatooma said Krebs’ deposition advances his theory that Greene danced at the party and was attacked by the mayor’s wife.
“That would provide some motive to covering up the murder investigation,” he said.
Cox has agreed to sit for a deposition in the Greene case, but a date hasn’t been set.
Ernest Flagg, a plaintiff in the federal lawsuit who is suing on behalf of the son he had with Greene, said Cox has invited criticism.
“The State Police weren’t allowed to interview the mayor, who was at the center of the investigation,” he said. “Somebody tell me why that is.”
Contact BEN SCHMITT: 313-223-4296 or bcschmitt@freepress.com
________________________________________
