Dispatcher: Cops sent to Manoogian fracas
Detroit — A former police dispatcher says she sent officers to a Manoogian Mansion disturbance in the fall of 2002, but the 911 tapes were later removed.
The allegations were revealed in a deposition filed over the weekend in a lawsuit against former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and the city by the family of slain exotic dancer Tamara “Strawberry” Greene. The details from the deposition are the latest development in the mystery of a long rumored but never proven Manoogian stripper party.
An investigation by Attorney General Mike Cox in 2003 determined the party was an urban legend. But the dispatcher, Sandy Cardenas, is the latest in a series of witnesses, including EMS workers, to come forward and testify about police dispatches, a disturbance outside a hospital or meeting an injured stripper around that time.
Still, no one has put an exact date on the rumored party and no one has come forward to say they actually attended.
Greene, a dancer who was linked to the party, was shot to death in Detroit on April 30, 2003. Her family also is suing top city and police officials, alleging the investigation into Greene’s still-unsolved killing was obstructed for political reasons. The defendants deny the allegations.
Cardenas, who identifies herself as a former Detroit police officer, in a March 31 deposition in the case said officers couldn’t get entry to the mayor’s mansion because the doors were locked. So they picked up Kilpatrick’s wife, Carlita, and brought her to the mansion, Cardenas testified.
“Detroit police officers, one of whom was a sergeant, told me that once Carlita got inside the mansion, the disturbance heated up immediately and an assault took place,” Cardenas said in the affidavit.
The next night, Cardenas said she learned from other dispatchers that a Detroit police officer from internal affairs came to the dispatch center and removed all of the 911 tapes of the run.
James C. Thomas, a lawyer for the former mayor, could not be reached late Monday to comment on the Cardenas affidavit.
Many of the depositions taken in the case are sealed by orders of Chief U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen, who says he wants to protect the integrity of an ongoing police investigation. Some depositions, such as that of the former mayor and his wife, have not yet been taken.
Yatooma filed the depositions in support of a motion calling for greater openness in the case. Yatooma said the more publicity the case receives, the more likely that witnesses such as Cardenas will come forward.
Cardenas said she believes the Manoogian incident was in October.
She said she recalls talking to Detroit Police Sgt. Shawn Garalino, who she said was the supervising officer in charge of the Manoogian scene. Garalino could not be reached for comment.
Police picked up Carlita Kilpatrick from the Kilpatricks’ private home on Leslie Street and brought her to the mansion, which at the time was still being prepared for the Kilpatricks to move in, the affidavit said.
Reached at home Monday night, Cardenas said she cooperated with attorneys to shed more light on the case.
“I wanted people to know the truth. … There was definitely a cover-up,” she said, adding her suspicions were raised by the removed tapes. “You don’t take tapes out … unless they don’t want people to know something.”
Cardenas, who retired in 2006, said she thinks other city police officers with information about that night at the Manoogian “don’t want to come forward because they don’t want to lose their jobs. … They’re not going to say anything.”
In another affidavit filed over the weekend, former Detroit Police Sgt. Odell Godbold Sr., who was in charge of the “cold case” unit where the Greene file was moved for a time, said he learned that Detroit Police Officer Paytra Williams, who had moonlighted as an exotic dancer, had performed at the Manoogian party.
Marvin Barnett, a Detroit attorney for Williams, has said she will not comment until after she is deposed in the Greene case.
“When I met with Officer Williams outside police headquarters, she informed me that she was ‘scared and didn’t know what to do,’ ” Godbold said in affidavit.
Godbold, who has sued the Detroit Police Department in Wayne Circuit Court alleging he was demoted over the Greene case, said that in the fall of 2002 Williams “was granted a three-week leave of absence with pay, due to her injuries from being assaulted at the Manoogian Mansion party.”
Godbold said that in May 2005, police supervisors told him not to let anyone see the Greene file and he later got in trouble for giving the file to the major crimes unit, which had requested it.
Former Detroit Police Detective Mike Carlisle has told The Detroit News he was called out on overtime in the fall 2002 to the Manoogian but supervisors canceled the call before he arrived.
Rosen is considering a motion from the Detroit Free Press to unseal records in the case and received a letter from The Detroit News asking for greater openness in the case.
But Mayer Morganroth, an attorney for defendant Christine Beatty, Kilpatrick’s former chief of staff, said sealing certain records in the case and imposing a partial gag order will help assure an impartial jury can be selected when the case goes to trial.
