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Tamara Greene wanted to be a nurse and she was well on her way to becoming one. But she had a few courses left to complete before she could trade in the pumps and the glitter for scrubs and comfortable sneakers. In the meantime, Tamara Greene was an exotic dancer.
She had bills to pay and three mouths to feed. So, Strawberry, as she was known in the club, would dance for all of the bored and lonely men who gathered regularly at a tapas bar in the west side of Detroit called All Stars. Tamara would get home late, check on her kids, and cook something to eat. She would wake up early for school, go to work afterwards, and then do it all over again the next day. A monotonous and grueling schedule.
Just another obstacle that those born into poverty must overcome to escape it. And Tamara Greene was on the verge of escaping it. But that dream ended in the early morning hours of April 30th, 2003. After her shift at All Stars, Tamara Greene picked up her boyfriend, Eric "Big E" Mitchell, in her Buick Skylark to drop him off at one of his rental properties on the corner of Rose Lawn and West Outer Drive. Tamara was behind the wheel, her foot was on the brake and the car was still in drive.
Eric was in the passenger seat, reclined as far back as possible. Around 3:40 AM, a white Chevy Trailblazer turned the corner and slowed almost to a stop alongside the driver's side of Tamara's car. The driver of the SUV reached a pistol out of his open window and emptied the clip. Tamara was shot three times. Once behind her left ear, once through her jaw, and another through her left arm and into her chest. Tamara Green died instantly.
After the shooting, Tamara's right foot slipped off the brake and the car began to roll down the block. Eric, who had been shot five times, bailed out of the moving car before it came to a stop in the middle of the next block. He looked up to see the white SUV making a U-turn at the end of the street. Eric thought for sure that they were coming back to finish the job, but they sped by without even giving him a second glance. Initially, the investigation of Tamara Green's murder focused on the lifestyle of her boyfriend. Big E was a known drug dealer and convicted felon.
Investigators presumed that Tamara Green was collateral damage in a drug deal gone wrong. They even named a suspect publicly, despite Eric's assertions that the suspect was not one of the two men he saw in the Chevy Trailblazer that morning. That suspect, who was already in prison on different charges, would later pass a polygraph and be cleared of any wrongdoing. With no other suspects and no motive, the case had gone cold and so many questions remained unanswered.
This is Tamera's son, Jonathan Bond, who was 10 years old when his mother was murdered. Jonathan's father, Ernest Flagg, described Tamera Green as panicked in the months leading up to her death.
He said Tamara told him that there were people following her at all times and that she was receiving strange phone calls at all hours of the day. Tamara Green would never say who these people were that were terrorizing her.
But a fellow exotic dancer named Tamika Ruffin came forward with a tale that would potentially serve as the missing piece of the puzzle. A tale that would shock the entire city of Detroit. Tamika Ruffin claimed that a few days after Labor Day in 2002, she and 49 other exotic dancers, including Tamera Greene, were paid $1,000 each to perform at a party at the Manoogian Mansion, which is where the mayor of the city of Detroit resides while in office.
Tamika said there were about 150 men in attendance. Politicians, businessmen, and at least 10 off-duty police officers surrounded with women, booze, marijuana, and cocaine. Tamika said she saw Tamara Green giving a lap dance to newly elected Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. The party came to a screeching halt when Mayor Kilpatrick's wife Carlita had entered the home unexpectedly. Carlita took exception to Green grinding on her husband and began punching her.
According to Tamika Ruffin, Tamara fell to the floor and crashed through a wooden coffee table on the way down. After that, Carlita Kilpatrick allegedly struck Tamara Green once in the head with a piece of the broken table that she had picked up off the floor. Tamika said that Tamara was transported to the hospital by ambulance, and that when her friend was released, she became paranoid that someone was tracking her movements, and that she was too scared to stay at her own home. Six months later, Tamara Green was murdered.
But the credibility of Tamika Ruffin's story was soon put into question. Tamika had also described seeing demons and claimed to be in need of an exorcism. She claimed that the Channel 2 news truck was parked on the street outside of the party all night long. She claimed that Channel 2 News publicly refuted. And Tamika Ruffin didn't even come close to the correct answer when she was asked on which day the party had taken place. We had a deposition and in that deposition we had a chance to talk to her.
This is clearly a troubled woman, a woman who has had a history of closed head injury and psychological problems. And the story that she tells is so fantastic, it stretches credibility. It was a fantastic story, but rumors about a wild party at the mayor's mansion had been circulating for months. And new rumors continued to surface, and so did new witnesses.
An ex-convict named Wilson K Jr. stated in sworn testimony that his biker gang had been hired to work security at the party. K said he saw the lap dance in question. He said he saw the assault of the dancer by Detroit's First Lady. But Wilson K Jr.'s statement was also dismissed because of his history of unfounded allegations. He had been hospitalized in the past for PTSD and psychotic behavior.
He was paranoid and suspicious and became so confused during his testimony that at one point he forgot why he was even there. And there was also Southfield Police Chief Joe Thomas who said on record that he had been invited to the party at the Manoogian Mansion. Thomas declined the invite because he could tell by the body language of the person inviting him that it was not the type of party in which he should partake. So who was it that invited Police Chief Joe Thomas to the party?
Police Chief Joe Thomas said he didn't remember. I don't keep track of things that I do not do. Many people ask me things in my walk of life. I traveled all over the country and all over the state. And if I were to try to catalog all those people, I think it would be just a massive, massive operation.
There was also an anonymous ambulance driver that told a news station in Detroit about seeing a fleet of dark-colored SUVs parked outside of the emergency room on the night in question and a group of "pimped out" individuals wearing earpieces causing a commotion inside. The driver asked a co-worker what was going on and was told that those individuals and vehicles were part of Mayor Kilpatrick's security detail. When the driver asked what they were doing at the hospital, his co-worker responded with "Carleta beat some bitch down."
Eventually, the ER supervisor ordered all EMS employees to vacate the area immediately, something that the driver had never seen happen before or since that night. Later that month, Officer Harold Nelthorpe, a member of Kilpatrick's security team who had not attended the party, caught wind of the rumors and passed them along to the Detroit Police Department's Internal Affairs Department. The party was just the latest in a long line of abuses committed by Kilpatrick's extensive Executive Protection Unit.
When Officer Nelthorpe's report landed on the desk of Deputy Police Chief Gary Brown, who was the head of the Internal Affairs Unit, an investigation was launched to determine if the party had actually happened. And if it did happen, could it be related to the murder of Tamara Greene? Less than six months later, both Officer Nelthorpe and Deputy Chief Gary Brown were fired by Mayor Kilpatrick for conducting unauthorized investigations.
Another officer, Lt. Alvin Bowman, was transferred out of the homicide unit after discovering the .40 caliber bullets used in the murder of Tamara Greene belonged to the same type of gun that was issued to Detroit law enforcement.
Years later, it would be revealed that in addition to the terminations and reassignments of those officers, police reports from the rumored date of the party had vanished. 911 calls from that evening had been deleted. Hard drives had been wiped clean. Entire computers had gone missing. And Tamara Green's homicide file had been pilfered.
This is Norman Yatuma, a lawyer who has spent over a decade chasing justice for the family of Tamara Greene. Whatever evidence they couldn't scare away or fire away or intimidate away, they threw away. They threw it away. The party happened, the murder happened, the cover-up happened. We're just proving it now. A young politician promises bold ideas, fresh energy, and new hope to a struggling city, but delivers nothing but scandal and shame on this episode of Swindled.
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We're not going to solve 21st century problems with yesterday's solutions. It's time for a change. I won't put up with fire equipment that doesn't work, or policing that doesn't protect our neighborhoods. I fought to expand safe school programs and brought dollars home to help create jobs in Detroit. If you think the politics of the past is what Detroit needs, I'm not your man. But if it's real change you want, I'll never give up the fight for Detroit's future.
In 2001, Kwame Malik Kilpatrick was elected mayor of Detroit, Michigan. At 31 years old, he became the youngest mayor in the history of the city. Kwame offered the citizens of Detroit revitalization and renewal. He offered a new set of eyes for new problems, and the citizens of Detroit had reason to believe him. Before he was the youngest mayor of Detroit, Kwame Kilpatrick had served two terms in the Michigan State House of Representatives, where he was elected as the minority floor leader for the Democratic Party.
He was later elected as the House Minority Leader of the Michigan House, becoming the first African American to ever hold that position. At the same time, Kwame was finishing his law degree at Michigan State University. Before that, he had graduated with honors from Florida A&M, where he had also served as captain of the football team. Kwame Kilpatrick was a born leader, a trait that was almost certainly genetic.
Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, Kwame's mother, had served 17 years as a representative in the Michigan House before vacating her seat in 1996. Carolyn had won an election to represent her district at the national level as a congresswoman in Washington, D.C. Kwame actually won the Michigan State House seat that his mother vacated. And politics, nepotism, or name recognition, whatever you want to call it, certainly never hurts. Kwame's father, Bernard Kilpatrick, was a public servant as well.
He served as the Wayne County Commissioner in the 80s before leaving to take over as the head of the county's Health and Human Services Department. Kwame inherited his father's height, charm, and silver tongue, more traits proven to help a political career. Kwame Kilpatrick was born to be mayor. In fact, at one point, Kwame made the comment that he was anointed by God to run the city of Detroit. But despite all of his success and his predetermined political fate, Kwame Kilpatrick never forgot where he came from.
Several of Kwame's lifelong friends were given roles in his administration. Derek Miller, a high school classmate, was one of the mayor's key advisors and was appointed chief administrative officer. Kwame's former college roommate Jeff Beasley was appointed a city treasurer. And a woman named Christine Beatty, who Kwame had known since he was a teenager, served as his chief of staff. They've been there from day one and they'll be there at the end because what God has put together, nothing can break apart.
We'll see about that. The Kilpatrick administration was faced with extraordinary challenges from day one. The phenomenon of white flight had left the city of Detroit with a $300 million deficit and a shrinking tax base, and it left Mayor Kilpatrick with some tough decisions to make. Over 7,000 city government jobs were cut, the city's 24-hour bus service was eliminated, and before he was overruled by city council, Mayor Kilpatrick even attempted to close the city's aquarium and zoo.
A tough pill to swallow for Detroiters as they watched America's hip-hop mayor. The title given to Kwame by rap mogul Russell Simmons, parade around town in expensive cars and expensive clothes, and a diamond-studded earring that flickered each time a camera flashed. It was a tough pill to swallow to watch Kwame Kilpatrick club crawl with his 21-person security team. While a large percentage of the city's workforce were cleaning out their offices, Kwame Kilpatrick's political honeymoon was short-lived.
if it wasn't his larger-than-life bravado and lifestyle that had ended it. The rumors about the party at the Mnookian mansion nine months into his administration definitely did. I don't whore around on my wife, and I don't have wicked nude parties at my house. I want people to understand that I would never disrespect my God, my wife, or my children.
Although Mayor Kilpatrick was adamant that there had been no party, his questionable firings of Deputy Police Chief Gary Brown and Officer Harold Nelthorpe did nothing to help his case.
In May 2003, at a press conference, Gary Brown alleged that he was terminated in order to obstruct the investigations into Mayor Kilpatrick's family, security team, and parties. Let me just say that, you know, I never intended for this to become some type of mudslinging contest. I only went public, as I indicated at the first press conference, because I needed to clear my name. And I, like all the other citizens of the city of Detroit, you know, I'm hoping and praying that the allegations aren't true.
I hope they're not true. But when you're doing an investigation and you're suddenly fired for doing it, there's something going on. And whatever evidence that Gary Brown had seen before he was dismissed led him to believe that the Mnookian Mansion party had happened. You know, I believe that there's certainly enough leads there to do some further investigating. And it will prove eventually that there was a party at the Mnookian Mansion.
Is it related to Tamara Greene? Yes, I believe it is. Yet, in June 2003, after a five-week investigation, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox announced that there was no evidence that the party at the Manookian had ever occurred. The party has all the earmarks of an urban legend, and it should be treated as such.
Deputy Chief Gary Brown and Officer Harold Nelthorpe sued the city of Detroit, alleging that they were fired as an act of retaliation by the mayor. The whistleblower trial, as it became known, ultimately would not prove that the rumored party had ever happened, but it would reveal some dark secrets about the Kilpatrick administration. Sometime in 2004, Mayor Kilpatrick's chief of staff and high school pal, Christine Beatty, was pulled over for speeding by two of Detroit's finest.
The officers could tell she was irate before they even approached her vehicle. Christine rolled down her window and the first words out of her mouth were quote, "Do you know who the fuck I am?" They did not, but police chief Ella Bully Cummings did, which is who Christine Beatty called while the officer stood dumbfounded and unintimidated next to her car door.
Christine told Chief Bully Cummings to call off her officers and so she did. And when the media found out about it and ran the story, Mayor Kilpatrick said the traffic stop looked like a setup and Chief Bully Cummings said the officers had harassed Ms. Beattie. Of course, neither of those things were true. So the two police officers sued Beattie, Kilpatrick, and Bully Cummings for slander. The case was settled out of court for $25,000.
And even though those two Detroit police officers might not have known who the fuck Christine Beatty was, soon enough, everybody in the city would know her name. Meanwhile, the city of Detroit remained in financial dire straits. Mayor Kilpatrick submitted budgets that made little sense, and he issued new debt to pay down the city's growing deficit. In 2005, to fund the retirement system, Kilpatrick issued obligation certificates that contained variable interest rates.
If the market increased, the rates would go down and the city would pay less interest over time. If the markets crashed in let's say three years because of, oh I don't know, a subprime mortgage crisis maybe, the rates would increase and so would the amount of money the city would have to pay back. Of course, very few people on the outside, including Kwame Kilpatrick, saw the 2008 crash coming and Detroit would eventually end up paying 1.14 billion dollars more in interest than it had originally planned.
Also, in 2005, Time magazine named Kwame Kilpatrick one of the three worst big city mayors in the United States, and deservedly so. Remember four years ago when our parks were neglected and playground equipment was rusting away? My grandfather lived just one block away from this park when nothing was here. And today I stand in this park filled with laughing children and parents with pride in our community. This job is personal because I was raised in this city.
As the end of his first term was coming to a close, Mayor Kilpatrick's political future was in doubt. His reelection campaign wasn't going so well. Kilpatrick finished second in the Democratic primary, a feat almost unheard of for an incumbent nominee.
Kwame's flashy lifestyle, extensive entourage, and rumored scandals had the local media watching his every move. In early May 2005, the Detroit Free Press published a report that revealed that, during the first three years of his administration, the mayor had spent more than $200,000 on hotel bills, restaurant tabs, spas, massages, wine, and travel. It also revealed that the city had leased a Lincoln Navigator for the mayor's wife.
The cost of the lease was $24,995, which was conveniently $5 below the amount that required approval from city council. In response, Mayor Kilpatrick gave a televised speech in which he scolded the media for reporting on his wife and kids.
But thanks to an impressive debate performance, "None of this was happening when Mr. Hendricks was in office and he can't speak to it because he doesn't know about it." Thanks to a little help from his congresswoman mother, "He didn't just get up in here by just coming! Y'all sent him up in here!"
And thanks to a controversial newspaper advertisement in which he compared his treatment by the local white journalists to that of a racial lynching, Kwame Kilpatrick was re-elected to a second term. Hello Detroit! Hello Detroit!
So I'm just here to tell Fox 2 and Channel 4 and Channel 7 to just wait on the streets because today everybody is created equal. It doesn't matter how much money you have. It doesn't matter what neighborhood you came from. It doesn't matter what your last name is. Everybody got a right to vote today. And when that vote comes in, I know what you're going to see.
Kwame Kilpatrick had won again, but sooner or later his luck was bound to run out. The civil lawsuit filed by former Detroit police officers Gary Brown and Harold Nelthorpe finally went to court in August 2007. Although the purpose of the trial was for a jury to determine if Kilpatrick had violated the whistleblower law by firing Brown and Nelthorpe, an action that Kilpatrick denied,
When his chief of staff, Christine Beatty, was on the stand testifying, the line of questioning went in a different direction entirely. During the time period in 2001 and 2003,
Were you and Mayor Kilpatrick either romantically or intimately involved with each other? No. And did you ever use the text message system to communicate messages of a personal nature to the mayor? No. Did you ever receive messages from the mayor of a personal nature? No. And by personal I mean messages which were not strictly pertaining to city government matters. No.
Did you use the message device to arrange social meetings between you and the mayor? No. The next day, Kwame Kilpatrick was asked the same questions under oath, but instead of simple yes or no answers, in typical fashion, Kwame Kilpatrick had more to say. I think it was pretty demoralizing to her. You have to know her, but it's demoralizing to me as well. My mother is a congresswoman. There have always been strong women around me. My aunt is a state legislator.
On September 11th, 2007, after a three-week trial, a jury found that Mary Kilpatrick had violated the whistleblower law and awarded the two former police officers $6.5 million.
This is former Deputy Police Chief Gary Brown. Minutes after the verdict was read, Mayor Kilpatrick stood on the steps of City Hall and vowed to appeal.
He blamed what he called the wrong verdict on the white suburban jury, saying, quote, There's race in this, and we run from it in this region. And I think it's impossible for us to move forward as a region without confronting it head on. But I don't want what has happened in the past 24 months to be erased by what has happened in the last two days. A month later, when he learned that the attorney for the fired officers had obtained transcripts of his text messages with Christine Beatty,
Mayor Kilpatrick quickly dropped the appeal and agreed to settle for $8.4 million, almost $2 million more than the jury had awarded. The agreement included a clause to keep the text messages buried. Nice try. Support for Swindled comes from Rocket Money.
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City Council and multiple news outlets in Detroit filed a Freedom of Information Act request to release all of the documents related to the settlement. In January 2008, the Detroit Free Press published excerpts from the 14,000+ text messages that were sent between Kilpatrick and Beatty throughout 2002 and 2003. Not only did the messages reveal that the Kilpatrick administration had conspired to fire Gary Brown,
The messages revealed that Kwame and Christine Beatty were in fact intimate, and that they had lied about it under oath. One of the messages from Kwame to Christine read, quote, In another text, Kwame instructed Christine to get rid of the evidence, quote,
To which Christine responded, "I like to sometimes re-read my messages from you. They make me smile and I can feel you when I do." One exchange, after a sexual encounter in a hotel room with the mayor's security team nearby, had the couple worrying that their secret was out. Kwame texted Christine, "They were right outside the door. They had to have heard everything." Christine replied, "So we are officially busted?"
To which Kwame responded, Well, what the citizens of Detroit and county prosecutors could now see is that the mayor and his chief of staff had committed perjury. Wayne County Prosecutor Kim Worthy announced the opening of an investigation into the matter. As they waited for the results of the investigation to become public, the rest of Detroit was left wondering if the mayor was willing to dole out taxpayer dollars to cover up an affair. What else was he willing to do?
And Christine Beatty wasn't the only woman with whom Kwame Kilpatrick was sleeping with outside of his marriage. A text to a woman named Ebony read, "Can't get you out of my system." He told Alexis that he needed some quote "love and affection." And Kwame promised Kabena, "I'm rushing to see you baby." Good evening Detroit. I want to start tonight by saying to the citizens of this great city, I'm sorry. To all of you who have believed in what we've been doing here since 2002,
Kwame Kilpatrick, once a rising star in the Democratic Party, had now become just another disgraced politician, apologizing on TV. As American as apple pie, and as the calls for his resignation grew louder and louder, Kwame Kilpatrick refused to go down without a fight.
On March 11, 2008, completely embroiled in multiple scandals at this point, Mayor Kilpatrick delivered the annual State of the City Address to the citizens of Detroit. A reflection of what careful analysis of statistics and focused action by our police department can achieve. Secondly, we achieved a 53% increase in the arrests for auto theft and nearly tripled the number of stolen cars recovered in this city. We're hitting chop shops and we're shutting them down.
His speech began with positive news and numbers. He relayed successful projects and achievements. But towards the end of the 70-minute speech, Mayor Kilpatrick veered off script and addressed all of the controversy in which he was involved. And finally tonight, and this may be the most talked about part of this speech after laying out all of that, but I feel that I cannot leave this auditorium
with my wife and my son sitting there without addressing this issue. In the past 30 days, I've been called a nigger more than any time in my entire life. In the past three days, I've received more death threats than I have in my entire administration. I've heard these words before.
but I've never heard people say them about my wife and children. I have to say this because it's very personal to me. I don't believe that a Nielsen rating is worth the life of my children or your children. This unethical, illegal, lynch mob mentality has to stop.
And it's seriously time. We've never been here before, and I don't care if they cut the TV off. We've never been in a situation like this before, where you can say anything, do anything, have no facts, no research, no nothing, and you can launch a hate-driven, bigoted assault on a family. I humbly ask members of council, I humbly ask the business community,
I humbly ask the religious community. I humbly ask the brothers and sisters of the city of Detroit. I humbly ask that we say no more together. I humbly ask that we say no more together. Love this city with every part of my being. And I will continue to stay focused on building the next Detroit. God bless you. Detroit, I love you.
Two weeks later. Today we have filed a 12-count criminal information that contains charges against Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and Christine Beatty. Mayor Kilpatrick and Christine Beatty were hit with a 12-count indictment for conspiring to obstruct justice. The trial was scheduled for six months later, which gave Kwame time to de-stress. Three days after he was indicted,
Kwame Kilpatrick attended a Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Prayer Breakfast in Asheville, North Carolina. A copy of his hotel bill revealed that he and someone using the name Carmen Slosky had shared a couple spa package that included a bubble bath, chocolate-covered strawberries, and champagne. Kwame's wife Carlita was at home in Detroit with the kids. In August 2008, Kilpatrick took another trip, this time to Canada, to negotiate a loan deal with the mayor of Windsor, Ontario.
The terms of his bond required Kwame to notify the court any time he left the city, which he had failed to do in this case. A judge ordered him to be held at Wayne County Jail for one day, marking the first time in history that the sitting mayor of Detroit had been sent to jail. Kilpatrick was forced to wear an electronic tracking device until his day in court.
In September 2008, Kwame Kilpatrick pled guilty to the two counts of the obstruction of justice and he pled no contest to one count of assault for shoving a sheriff that had served him the subpoena at his home. Mr. Kilpatrick, you understand that by pleading guilty that you're going to give up certain constitutional rights and one is the right to be tried by a jury. You understand that, sir? Yes. You're also giving up the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. You understand that? I think I gave that up a long time ago, Your Honor. Yes.
Kilpatrick's plea agreement required him to spend 120 days in jail and five years on probation. He was also forced to resign from office, give up his law license, and pay $1 million in restitution to the city of Detroit. F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that there are no second acts in American lives. The great writer that he was, F. Scott Fitzgerald, was not a Detroiter. Because we fall, but this city always gets up.
And I want to tell you, Detroit, that you done set me up for a comeback. After spending 99 days in jail, Kwame Kilpatrick was released on February 3rd, 2009. He went directly to the airport and reunited with his family in Southlake, Texas, where they had recently relocated. Kwame was handed a job at a subsidiary of CompuWare, a software company who's headquartered in Detroit. And he did his best to become just another guy.
Nobody in Dallas knew who he was or what he had done, which made it easier to focus on being a better husband and a better father. It was good to be normal again, but sometimes normal people have trouble paying their bills, and so did Kwame Kilpatrick. Well, kinda. Although he lived in a $3,000 a month McMansion with a Cadillac Escalade parked in the garage. In November 2009, Kilpatrick returned to Detroit to plead poverty and asked that his restitution payment be lowered.
He told Judge David Groener that he wasn't sure how his house and vehicle were being paid for and that he didn't even know if his wife had a job. Judge Groener didn't buy it and it was eventually revealed that a group of Detroit businessmen had given Kwame hundreds of thousands of dollars to resign from office. In January 2010, Judge Groener ordered Kilpatrick to pay $300,000 to Detroit within 90 days or risk violating his probation. Kwame Kilpatrick missed the first payment.
Frankly, your continued attempt to cast yourself as the victim, your lack of forthrightness, your lack of contriteness, and your lack of humility only serve to affirm that you have not learned your lesson. Clearly, rehabilitation has failed. You have not adjusted well under probation.
Your testimony in this courtroom amounted to perjury when you stated, "I don't know if my wife works. I don't know the amount of rent. I don't know who pays the bills." Most substantial, most compelling is that you lied to this court. Continue to lie after pleading guilty to lying in court. Obviously, there has been no rehabilitation. You have not changed. So continuing on probation is not an option. You must understand your crime and consequences now.
Therefore, you will serve a maximum of five years in the Michigan Department of Corrections. On May 25, 2010, Kwame Kilpatrick was sentenced to one and a half to five years in prison for violating his probation. He was released on parole on April 2, 2011. But his troubles were far from over.
Breaking news out of Detroit. Several new indictments handed out just a short time ago. Time has come from a corruption probe that has been circling former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick for years. This news conference getting underway right now. Let's take a listen in. Good afternoon. My name is Barbara McQuaid. I'm the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. We've invited you here today to announce that a federal grand jury has returned a superseding indictment charging Kwame Kilpatrick, his father Bernard Kilpatrick...
and others with racketeering, conspiracy, and related charges of bribery, extortion, and fraud, as well as tax violations. Also charged in the indictment were Bobby Ferguson, who was a city contractor, Victor Mercado, who was at one time the director of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, and Derek Miller, who was the prior chief administrative officer for the city of Detroit.
The indictment charges all of them with working together to abuse Kwame Kilpatrick's public offices, both his position as state representative as well as his position of mayor of Detroit, to unjustly enrich themselves through a pattern of extortion, bribery, and fraud. On December 14, 2010, while still in prison, Kwame Kilpatrick received a call from his lawyer with details of a 38-charge federal indictment
The former mayor was being accused of running a criminal enterprise involving a bid-rigging scheme in which city contracts were awarded to his longtime friend, Bobby Ferguson. The mayor had convinced Detroit Water Department chief Victor Mercado to use Ferguson as a subcontractor for the city's water and sewer contracts, which were worth millions of dollars. 127 million dollars to be exact. That's how much Bobby Ferguson collected while his friend Kwame was mayor.
And for his troubles, Kwame received almost $1 million in kickbacks. Although Victor Mercado did not receive any extra income from the corrupt practice, he was receiving a salary of $234,000 a year. A salary that he wanted to keep, so he played along. When federal agents went to arrest Bobby Ferguson at his riverfront condo, he refused to answer the door, so they broke it down.
They found Bobby locked in a bedroom wearing only his underwear. He told the agents that he did not live in the home despite having his initials painted on a wall in the living room and portraits of his family all throughout the house. Agents found a mayor's office ID card with Ferguson's name and photo on it in a bedside drawer and they found a safe that contained a quarter of a million dollars in cash and two guns behind a washer and dryer. Kwame's father Bernard Kilpatrick was also indicted. He was accused of accepting more than $600,000 in cash and bribes.
Thanks for asking, Bernard. This is how. On the day that his son took office as mayor of Detroit, Bernard Kilpatrick resigned from his position as the head of the county's Health and Human Services Department, and he launched his own consulting firm called Maestro Associates. With his new connections, Bernard's consulting firm could help hopeful businesses land city contracts,
businesses like Cinegro Technologies, led by a man named James Rosendahl, who was trying to land a billion-dollar sludge-hauling deal with the city. Rosendahl flew Bernard to a high-profile boxing match in Las Vegas. He wrote over $40,000 worth of checks to the mayor's father. One time, Rosendahl handed over $300 cash hidden in a gum wrapper when Bernard asked him to help with purchasing Christmas presents for his grandchildren.
Sometimes, Bernard Kilpatrick could be a little demanding. Somewhere along the way, the FBI became aware of James Rosendahl's relationship with the elder Kilpatrick.
He was arrested and charged with bribery, but the feds were willing to make a deal. They promised Rosendahl that if he cooperated and helped him land Bernard, his prison stay would be minimum.
This is hidden camera footage of Bernard Kilpatrick scolding James Rosendahl about handing him a $2,500 payment in public. So I'll call my man, then I'll call you. When are you going back down there? I am going to be down there for two weeks, the 1st of April. The 1st of April. So in three weeks I'll be there. I'll try to set something up for the 1st of April. That's what I'm going to be doing. Try to get my ass in there. And the way I got there, I was pissed about the other day. I'm talking to you, talking to that, then you take that $2,500 and head.
Police surveillance also captured Rosendahl loading Cristal champagne into the hatch of Bernard's SUV. Right.
and the Kilpatrick enterprise of crime did not end there. Prosecutors alleged that Kwame had been using his non-profit organization, the Kilpatrick Civic Fund, as his own personal slush fund. He spent $9,000 on a vacation to a California resort. He paid for yoga lessons and cars. He paid his children's tuition and summer camp fees. And he spent $1,400 on spy equipment to sweep his office for bugs.
After the whistleblower trial, after Christine Beatty resigned, financial control of the Kilpatrick Civic Fund was given to Beatty's half-sister, April Edgar. My whole thing was just taken over after Miss Beatty left. And I basically just took over as the secretary of signing checks. I really don't even understand what the Civic Fund is for, to be honest with you. That's comforting, but not surprising. At least 29 of Kwame's closest friends and family members had been given jobs in his administration.
most of them wholly unqualified. Could you imagine if someone like the President of the United States handed out positions to family members that had no experience in public service? Yeah, uh, me neither. But Kwame Kilpatrick had been pulling favors like these since his days as a Michigan State House Representative. In the late 90s, he influenced the distribution of two state grants so that they directly benefited his family and friends.
One of the groups that received a $500,000 grant was owned by Bobby Ferguson, who in turn subcontracted a nonprofit named Unite, which consisted of a single employee named Carlita Kilpatrick, a single employee that received $100,000 for almost zero actual work. Victor Mercado, the former water boss, pleaded guilty to conspiracy in November 2012. He was sentenced to two years probation and eight months in a halfway house.
Bobby Ferguson went to trial and was convicted of 9 of 11 counts, including the racketeering charge. He was sentenced to 21 years in federal prison. Bernard Kilpatrick was convicted of filing a false tax return. He served 15 months in prison before being released in 2015.
and Kwame Kilpatrick, after spending $1 million taxpayer dollars fighting the case with a public defender, was found guilty of 24 of 30 counts, including federal racketeering, extortion, mail fraud, and tax evasion. He was sentenced to 28 years in prison and required to pay the city of Detroit more than $1.6 million in restitution. His earliest possible release date is August 1, 2037. He will be 67 years old.
After he was sentenced, Kwame said, "Seven out of ten black boys don't have a father, don't have a relationship, and there's three more that won't now." Behind bars, Kwame Kilpatrick continues to fight for his freedom. He's attempted to get the courts to vacate his sentence because of a conflict of interest with his defense attorney. Through friends and family, he occasionally makes long-winded posts on Facebook asking Donald Trump for a pardon or announcing his divorce from Carlita.
but his chance at an early release is a long shot at best. Even in 2018, details of crimes that he committed as the mayor of Detroit continue to surface, but his family continues to believe in him.
His three sons launched the Free Kwame Project to raise money for their father's defense and to shed light on what they claimed to be an overly harsh sentence for the actual crimes that were committed.
That's Kwame's son Jonas, aka JoJo the Doughboy, rapping on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court in a video for a song about his father's sentence called "Too Much Time." Speaking of "Too Much Time," eight years had passed since the murder of Tamera Greene, and investigators were no closer to solving the case. Her family filed a $150 million lawsuit against the city of Detroit for deliberately botching the investigation.
But in November 2011, the case was thrown out by U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen. The judge said that there was no evidence that the ex-mayor or the police had tampered with the investigation. In October 2018, an anonymous donor contributed a $100,000 reward for any information that leads to an arrest in the homicide investigation of Tamara Green. So the mystery remains. Sing us out, Kwame. Hallelujah
♪ Singing my heart to what we had ♪ ♪ The good times that made us laugh ♪ ♪ How we were back ♪ ♪ To see forever ♪ ♪ It was not a song ♪ ♪ It was so hard to say goodbye ♪
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