Texts in homicide due by Sept. 20
Court to look for bearing on dancer
BY BEN SCHMITT
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
September 6, 2008
A telecommunications company has until Sept. 20 to turn over text messages that City of Detroit officials sent or received during a four-hour period on the morning stripper Tamara Greene was shot and killed.
U.S. District Magistrate Judge Steven Whalen on Friday set the deadline by which Mississippi-based SkyTel must submit messages from all city officials and employees that were sent or received between 1:30 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. April 30, 2003, the morning Greene was fatally shot.
Judge Gerald Rosen will distribute the voluminous trove of messages to Whalen and Magistrate Judge Michael Hluchaniuk for them to review to determine whether they are relevant to a lawsuit brought against city officials by Greene's family. Family members accuse the city of dragging its feet in investigating Greene's death.
Birmingham lawyer Norman Yatooma, who represents Greene's family, wants the messages so he can see whether city officials derailed the investigation into Greene's slaying, which remains unsolved. The suit claims Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and others thwarted any probe into the killing. As part of his suit, Yatooma also is trying to gather evidence of a rumored but never-proven party at the mayoral Manoogian Mansion in 2002, in which Greene, who went by the name Strawberry, was supposedly assaulted.
"Obviously, these text messages have been argued about for the better part of the year," Yatooma said. "We worked very hard to get them and are pleased with the court's ruling. If there's nothing there, the other side has worked awfully hard in preventing us from seeing them."
He became interested in obtaining text messages after the Free Press reported in January on texts between Kilpatrick and then-chief of staff Christine Beatty in 2002-03.
The messages revealed the mayor and Beatty lied under oath about their sexual relationship and gave misleading testimony about the firing of a top police official at a whistle-blower trial last year.
