Judges review text messages

DETROIT — Federal magistrate judges on Wednesday began poring through hundreds of thousands of city of Detroit text messages to see if they shed light on the 2003 shooting death of a Detroit exotic dancer.

The family of dancer Tamara “Strawberry” Greene is suing the city, former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, his former chief of staff Christine Beatty, former Police Chief Ella Bully-Cummings, and other top city and police officials, alleging they obstructed the investigation of Greene’s killing for political reasons.

The defendants deny the charges leveled by survivors of a dancer alleged to have danced at a long-rumored party at the mayor’s official residence in the fall of 2002. Witnesses who have filed affidavits in the case say an injured stripper was taken to the hospital around the time of the rumored party complaining of an assault by the former mayor’s wife, Carlita Kilpatrick.

SkyTel, the city’s former pager company, on Tuesday turned over to U.S. District Judge Gerald E. Rosen compact discs containing text messages sent and received by 39 pager holders over a nearly two-year period. Only text messages deemed relevant by judges who will read them in private might one day become public.

“Some of what could be in there could be earth-shattering,” said Norman Yatooma, the Birmingham lawyer representing Greene’s family. “I can only imagine there’s going to be significant information in there if they spent a year fighting us on getting those text messages.”

But Mayer Morganroth, a Southfield attorney representing Beatty, said he doubts the text messages “are going to show anything that’s going to be helpful” to Yatooma’s case.

SkyTel earlier sent Rosen all city text messages sent and received on April 30, 20003, the day Greene was shot to death outside her home.

The civil lawsuit, filed in 2005, is expected to go to trial next year.

You can reach Paul Egan at (313) 222-2069 or pegan@detnews.com.