More breaking news from Detroit:
Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick cut a secret deal to prevent the public disclosure of embarrassing and damaging text messages following the resolution of whistle-blower cases involving three ex-cops late last year.
The messages between Kilpatrick and his chief of staff, Christine Beatty, which became public this week despite the deal, chronicle an affair that the two denied when testifying under oath in a trial in August.
The text messages, obtained by the Detroit Free Press, would have been bombshells if they had come up at the trial.
The pair also denied sacking the cops who were probing alleged misbehavior in the mayor’s office.
And now, Detroit News TV partner WXYZ (Channel 7) reports that Kilpatrick was soaking in a luxury resort spa tub with a woman other than his wife last weekend while in Asheville, N.C., for a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event.
The City Council moved to determine if it can force Kilpatrick to reimburse the city for the $8.4 million in taxpayer money used to pay the officers in the whistle-blower cases.
Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy has conducted several embezzlement and bribery investigations and has an open investigation into the death of Tamara Greene, the slain exotic dancer who was linked to a long rumored but never substantiated party at the Manoogian Mansion, official residence of the Mayor.
The new allegations that Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick lied in court when asked about his relationship with Chief of Staff Christine Beatty could be fuel for the family of slain exotic dancer Tamara Greene, who danced under the name “Strawberry.” The family has sued the mayor and city police officials in federal court.
Greene was slain in a drive-by shooting in Detroit on April 30, 2003.
(In the first picture, by Ricardo Thomas, Beatty and Kilpatrick meet with The Detroit News editorial board on May 15, 2007)
