Text messages to get look in killing
A federal judge on Friday ordered a review of thousands of text messages — including those of Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick — in a lawsuit stemming from the 2003 shooting death of Tamara Greene, the stripper said to have danced at a never-proven party at the Manoogian Mansion.
U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen told attorneys for the city and Greene’s family in an office meeting that he would allow the review and possible release of up to 18 months of messages from the paging devices of Kilpatrick; his bodyguards; his former chief of staff, Christine Beatty; Police Chief Ella Bully-Cummings, and more than two dozen others.
Rosen’s decision is a victory for the lawyer representing one of Greene’s sons in his lawsuit against Detroit officials, and a setback for a city and mayor already bedeviled by the infamous contents of other messages on Beatty’s city-issued paging device. The Free Press revealed the contents in January.
The new undertaking would appear to be massive. When the Free Press reviewed four months’ worth of text messages off Beatty’s paging device from 2002 and 2003, about 14,000 messages were involved. It took two reporters days to sift through them.
Rosen plans to appoint two federal magistrate judges, Steven Whalen and Michael Hluchaniuk, to vet the messages for those that may be relevant to the lawsuit claim that there was evidence of a police cover-up of Greene’s shooting.
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 denied any effort to derail a probe of Greene’s death.
Greene’s 14-year-old son, Jonathan Bond, has sued Kilpatrick, Bully-Cummings and other top officials. The suit claims they sabotaged the investigation into Greene’s April 30, 2003, death, preventing the family from filing a wrongful death suit against her killers.
Bully-Cummings told reporters last week there is no cover-up and criticized one former officer for suggesting that a Detroit cop must have killed the stripper.
Norman Yatooma, the Birmingham attorney representing Greene’s son, previously subpoenaed text messages sent on any city paging device between 1:30 and 5:30 a.m. on April 30, 2003. Greene was slain in a drive-by shooting about 3:40 a.m. while sitting in a car with her boyfriend, a convicted drug dealer, at Roselawn and West Outer Drive.
Yatooma also subpoenaed the text messages of Kilpatrick, Beatty and dozens of other city employees for various time periods totaling about 18 months between Sept. 1, 2002, and Oct. 31, 2007.
In days ahead, Yatooma and the city’s lawyers must narrow down the list of people and time periods to request from Mississippi-based SkyTel, the city’s communications provider.
Once SkyTel sends the messages, the two magistrates will go through them one by one, looking for evidence of official interference with the homicide investigation.
After the magistrates submit a report to Rosen, lawyers from both sides will argue over whether the text messages should be released to Yatooma.
Yatooma praised Rosen for his ruling Friday.
“It safeguards all concerns,” he said. “And it also safeguards irrelevant information that is proprietary to the city from being disclosed to the public.”
Southfield attorney Jeffrey Morganroth, whose firm represents the city, said he was satisfied with the review process.
However, he filed court documents Friday alleging that Yatooma failed to file probate court documents that ever established Jonathan Bond was a personal representative of Greene’s estate.
Morganroth noted that Taris Jackson, 41, the father of Greene’s 12-year-old daughter, Ashly Jackson, filed such papers along with Greene’s brother, a surgeon, in Oakland County Probate Court last month.
As a result, Morganroth argued, Jonathan Bond has no legal standing to file the federal court suit.
Yatooma disagreed, but said he has asked Greene’s other two children to join his lawsuit. She also had another daughter.
Rosen, who has twice dismissed the case on technical grounds, eventually must decide whether to allow the suit to go to trial.
Last week, Yatooma filed an affidavit by former homicide Lt. Alvin Bowman, who charged that Bully-Cummings and other police executives scuttled his probe of Greene’s killing. Bowman said he was later forced from the department. He eventually won a $200,000 verdict against the city.
In the affidavit, Bowman also said he believed a Detroit cop killed Greene. In questioning Bowman’s credibility, Bully-Cummings noted that his affidavit stated Greene was shot 18 times, when a medical examiner’s report shows she was shot three times.
On Monday, Joyce Rogers, a retired Detroit police clerk, came forward to say she saw a police report Greene had filed in 2002. In the report, Rogers said, Greene alleged that the mayor’s wife, Carlita Kilpatrick, assaulted her with a wooden object at the Manoogian party after seeing Greene improperly touch the mayor and that Greene was sent to a hospital for treatment.
Former Deputy Police Chief Gary Brown, who interviewed Rogers in 2003 for his successful whistle-blower suit against Kilpatrick, said he didn’t use Rogers in his suit because he questioned her credibility.
Contact BEN SCHMITT at 313-223-4296 or bcschmitt@freepress.com. Staff writer Jim Schaefer contributed to this report.
