Several affidavits filed this week directly contradict statements by Attorney General Mike Cox regarding an alleged party at the home of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.

In 2002, it was widely reported that a party at Manoogian Mansion featuring  27 year-old exotic dancer Tamara “Strawberry” Greene abruptly ended when the mayor’s wife returned home and began assaulting Greene. Greene was later shot to death.

Manoogian Mansion

After a brief investigation in 2003, Cox dismissed accounts of the party as “urban legend.” Yet in a sworn affidavit, former 911 dispatcher Sandy Cardenas, says she sent police to the Detroit mansion to investigate a number of disturbance calls one fall night in 2002.  Cardenas states that within hours of these calls, 911 tapes were removed by a Detroit police officer from internal affairs. “You don’t take tapes out… unless they don’t want people to know something,” Cardenas told The Detroit News. In her affidavit, Cardenas further testified that a sergeant in the police force told her that the mayor’s wife Carlita showed up at the party and an assault took place.

Former police Sgt. Odell Godbold testified that in the course of his investigation of Greene’s murder, he heard from several sources (including an active duty Detroit police officer and part-time stripper) that a party did occur on the night in question and that she, Greene and another stripper were in attendance. Godbold said his superior officers were aware of his findings and that he was ordered to turn over the Greene homicide file in July 2005.  A few weeks later Godbold’s unit was disbanded overnight.  He arrived at work to find the room cleared out and all computers confiscated.  Godbold was reassigned and forced into early retirement a short time later.

(Copies of both Cardenas’ and Godbold’s full testimony is available here.)

In 2003, Attorney General Mike Cox announced his own investigation into whether the party ever occurred.  Cox meet privately with Mayor Kilpatrick without so much as a court reporter, never interviewed Carlita Kilpatrick, and shortly after his investigation began, and was unable to interview Greene because she had recently been murdered. After only five weeks Cox ended his investigation saying the party was an “urban legend.”

Investigator Mark Krebs, a detective with the Michigan State Police, testified that Cox ended the investigation prematurely.  Krebs said Cox “stymied” them by shutting the investigation down without fully interviewing key participants.

Why did Attorney General Mike Cox shut down his investigation into the party so quickly? Did the AG just colossally botch this case or are there reasons involved here that have yet to come to light?