SkyTel turns over messages to court
DETROIT — Pager text messages sent and received by city and police employees on the day of the killing of an exotic dancer rumored to have performed at a party at the Manoogian Mansion were delivered to the federal courthouse in Detroit on Friday, SkyTel Corp. said in a court filing.
U.S. magistrate judges will now pore through the text messages, and any deemed relevant to the killing of dancer Tamara Greene likely will become public as part of a federal lawsuit brought on behalf of Greene’s three children.
Under an order issued by U.S. District Judge Gerald E. Rosen, SkyTel had until today to provide the court with text messages, sent and received on city-issued SkyTel pagers.
Greene, said to have performed at a long-rumored but never substantiated party at the mayor’s official residence in the fall of 2002, was killed in a drive-by shooting on April 30, 2003, while sitting in a vehicle outside her home.
Greene’s family is suing the city of Detroit, former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, his former chief of staff Christine Beatty, and numerous top police officials, alleging they obstructed the investigation into Greene’s unsolved killing for political reasons.
Thomas Plunkett, an attorney representing SkyTel, said the pager company sent three computer disks containing the text messages to his Birmingham law offices. “They are being delivered to the court this afternoon,” Plunkett said Friday. A court filing late Friday said the disks had been delivered.
The mayor and the other defendants have denied the lawsuit allegations. Mayer Morganroth, a lawyer for Beatty, has predicted the text messages will not contain anything relevant to Greene’s killing or the federal lawsuit.
Also, Norman Yatooma, the attorney representing Greene’s family, sent a much more extensive text message request to the city on Thursday. Yatooma said Friday he is seeking a broad range of text messages sent and received by Kilpatrick, Beatty, top police officials, other city employees, former first lady Carlita Kilpatrick, and Bernard N. Kilpatrick, the former mayor’s father.
The time periods sought for those text messages are for several months surrounding the Greene killing, around the time Greene’s homicide file was transferred to cold cases, and around the time whistle-blower lawsuits were filed against the city and the mayor by former Detroit police officers.
Rosen has ordered the city to request from SkyTel the text messages sought by Yatooma. Again, magistrate judges would study them privately to determine relevance before any could be made public.
Plunkett said he did not know what volume of text messages was sent to the federal courthouse Friday, where they were filed under seal. It’s not known when the magistrate judges will complete their review of the messages.
Also Friday, at a scheduling hearing related to Beatty’s criminal case before Wayne Circuit Judge Timothy Kenny, Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor Robert Moran suggested Beatty should consider hiring a new lawyer because Mayer and Jeffrey Morganroth had previously represented both her and Kilpatrick in the Greene case. The former mayor, who pleaded guilty Sept. 4 to obstruction of justice charges, could be called as a witness in Beatty’s criminal case, Moran said.
Jeffrey Morganroth told Kenny that Beatty already has signed a waiver acknowledging the relationship. Still, the judge had Beatty stand to answer his questions about whether she is aware of the problem.
“I understand the issue,” Beatty said.
Mayer Morganroth has rejected suggestions his former representation of the mayor in the Greene case presents any conflict of interest in his representation of Beatty in both the Greene case and her criminal case.
On March 24, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy charged Kilpatrick and Beatty with conspiracy, obstruction of justice, perjury and official misconduct in a case related to a police whistle-blower trial in 2007. Worthy’s investigation began after pager text messages published in January pointed to a sexual relationship between Kilpatrick and Beatty and possible perjury about the nature of their relationship and circumstances surrounding the removal of Deputy Police Chief Gary Brown when they both testified in that civil case last year.
Other records released as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by The Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press show Kilpatrick and Beatty signed a secret deal to keep the text messages under wraps as part of the city’s $8.4 million settlement of police whistle-blower lawsuits.
Detroit News Staff Writer Doug Guthrie contributed to this report. You can reach Paul Egan at (313) 222-2069 or pegan@detnews.com.
