Lawyer for slain stripper’s family wants access to text messages

A lawyer for the family of slain stripper Tamara Greene today filed a motion asking that he be given access to 13 text messages that might shed light on her 2003 killing.

Freep.com first reported last week that federal magistrate judges reviewing messages singled out the text messages from hundreds that were exchanged April 30, 2003 – the day Greene was fatally shot – on pagers the city leased from Mississippi-based SkyTel Inc.

It’s unclear what the messages say, who exchanged them or why the magistrate judges singled them out.

Today, Birmingham attorney Norman Yatooma wrote that the magistrates identified the messages in a sealed Oct. 14 order. Yatooma filed a subsequent request to review the messages and said that he has not received a response.

Last week, Yatooma asked lawyers in the case to agree to a protective order that would enable him to confidentially review the text messages.

“Defendants refused to stipulate to entry of that order,” he wrote today.

Now, he is asking U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen to order that Yatooma be allowed to view the messages while keeping them confidential to the public.

Greene’s unsolved slaying has drawn wide attention because of a never-proven party at the mayoral mansion. According to the rumor — which has been investigated by Detroit Police and State Police — Greene, who went by the stage name Strawberry, danced at the Manoogian for Kilpatrick and others in fall 2002. The rumor has it that the mayor’s wife, Carlita Kilpatrick, walked in on the party and assaulted Greene. Greene was killed in a drive-by shooting the following spring on Detroit’s west side.

Kilpatrick, police officials and lawyers for the mayor and city all have denied there was ever a stripper party at the mayoral mansion and also have denied any effort to derail a probe of Greene’s death.

In the suit, Yatooma requested two batches of text messages: The first covers the day Greene was killed while sitting in a car with her boyfriend at Roselawn and West Outer Drive. The second covers any text messages sent or received from about three dozen city officials between Aug. 1, 2002, and May 7, 2004. It is unclear whether the magistrates are still reviewing those texts.

Rosen selected two magistrates last spring to go through the text messages and determine which might be relevant to the lawsuit, something parties on both sides agreed to. Magistrates are officials assigned to assist federal judges in carrying out judicial functions, such as some preliminary hearings and arraignments.