Ex-police official believes Greene killed by Detroit cop, court record shows

DETROIT -- A former homicide lieutenant who investigated the death of exotic dancer Tamara Greene said in a sworn affidavit he suspects the woman was killed by a member of the Detroit Police Department.

Lt. Alvin Bowman also said in the affidavit he is aware of links between Greene and "high-ranking city employees" and an unnamed associate of Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.

Bowman gave the deposition in a federal lawsuit brought by Greene's family against the city of Detroit, Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and other city officials.

Greene's family alleges that top city officials interfered with the investigation of Greene's April 30, 2003, drive-by killing for political reasons. City officials deny the allegations.

Greene's name has been linked to a long rumored but never substantiated party at the mayor's Manoogian Mansion.

Bowman, who alleged in a separate lawsuit that he was transferred out of homicide for attempting to investigate Greene's killing, said in a Feb. 29 affidavit, "I suspected that the shooter was a law enforcement officer, and more specifically, a Detroit Police Department officer."

Bowman was awarded $200,000 in a jury trial against the city.

Deputy Chief James Tate, a spokesman for Detroit police, could not be reached for comment this morning. James Canning, a spokesman for the mayor, declined comment, citing ongoing litigation.

Mayer Morganroth, the Southfield attorney representing the city and the mayor in the Greene civil lawsuit, today described the Bowman allegations as "garbage."

"It's ridiculous," Morganroth said of the party allegations. "Find a person who was there. Find a person who knows anything firsthand."

Greene was shot about 18 times with a .40 caliber weapon -- the kind issued to Detroit police -- while sitting in a parked vehicle, Bowman said in the affidavit.

Bowman believed Greene was the target of a contract killing, partly because the shooter had ample opportunity to shoot the male passenger in the vehicle, but did not do so, he said.

"In the course of our investigation, I learned from the Michigan State Police that they possessed a telephone record linking Ms. Greene to high-ranking city employees not long before her murder," Bowman said in the affidavit.

"I also learned that Tamara Greene danced for and was employed by an associate of Mayor Kilpatrick."

Morganroth said Attorney General Mike Cox investigated the party allegations and ruled it an urban legend. A .40 caliber Glock is a gun frequently used by drug dealers, not just police officers, he said.

The mayor is embroiled in a controversy over $8.4 million in city settlements paid to three other former Detroit police officers who filed whistle-blower suits alleging they were retaliated against for reporting or investigating matters related to the party and/or alleged wrongdoing by the mayor and his police bodyguards.

The mayor signed a secret agreement as part of the settlements requiring that text messages exchanged in 2002 and 2003 between him and his former Chief of Staff Christine Beatty be kept under wraps. The text messages, disclosed by the media in January, point to an affair between Kilpatrick and Beatty, and possible perjury after both testified at a whistle-blower trial last year. Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy is investigating.

Bowman alleged both former Detroit Police Chief Jerry Oliver and current Chief Ella Bully-Cummings gave "an unexplainable amount of attention" to the Greene case, with Oliver on numerous occasions requesting the file be sent to his office for review.

"On each occasion, the file was returned … with reports missing from the file," Bowman alleges in the affidavit.

Under Bully-Cummings, the file was prematurely sent to the "cold case" file, despite the fact the killing was less than a year old and was being actively investigated, he said.

Another officer on the homicide squad, Sgt. Marion Stevenson, said her case notes on the Greene murder "were erased from her computer hard drive" and "her zip storage files disappeared from a locked cabinet inside the police department," Bowman said.

"The members of my squad and I were aware or otherwise believed that the file was given to cold case and that I was transferred because neither Mayor Kilpatrick not his Chief of Staff Christine Beatty wanted there to be an investigation of the Manoogian Mansion party," Bowman alleged.

The lawyer representing part of Greene's family, Norman Yatooma, also filed in court a Michigan State Police report of an interview with an emergency medical technician who said he witnessed a disturbance at Detroit Receiving Hospital in the fall of 2002 at which he was told "the mayor's wife had beat down some b----."

A prominent feature of the Manoogian Mansion party rumor has been the allegation that Kilpatrick's wife, Carlita, arrived at the party and assaulted an exotic dancer.

Douglas Bayer, described in a Michigan State Police report as an EMT with the Detroit Fire Department, said he arrived at the hospital on a call and "observed a large crowd in the reception area who were causing a commotion." He said the crowd of about 20-25 people included blacks and whites, males and females, some well-dressed, and "two individuals had Secret Service-type earpieces."

On the way out of the hospital, Bayer asked a group of EMT workers outside the hospital what the commotion was about and was told it related to an assault on a woman by the mayor's wife, the police report stated.

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