Kwame Kilpatrick Text Messages Released
DETROIT — Former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is out of jail. His ex-lover and top aide, Christine Beatty, still has weeks behind bars. But their text messages to one another _ the source of their political implosion and Detroit's global embarrassment _ continue to hit the public.
A new batch _ 682 pages in all _ was released Monday. Kilpatrick's attorneys on Tuesday filed a $100 million lawsuit against SkyTel, the company that released the messages to the news media. The lawsuit argues that releasing the messages violated the former mayor's rights. SkyTel counters it was compelled by court orders to release them.
The text messages detail more of Kilpatrick's explicit sexual escapades, and include intriguing messages involving family members and City Hall staffers.
Wayne County Circuit Judge Timothy Kenny last week said the messages might be "shedding light on government misconduct," but there didn't appear to be anything obvious in the short bursts of expression.
There's Kilpatrick's wife, Carlita, texting her straying husband in May 2003 that she "had a bad dream last night ... that you had a girlfriend."
There's also a text by Kilpatrick's sister, Ayanna, who takes a dim view of her hometown.
"How do you educate voters in a city full of idiots...?!" she told Beatty and her brother.
The messages, in the thousands, are just a fraction of the hundreds of thousands possessed by the Wayne County prosecutor's office for use in the criminal case against Beatty and Kilpatrick. They had been filed with the court as part of the prosecution's effort to prove the messages' authenticity.
Kilpatrick and Beatty were charged with perjury and other crimes last year after texts published by the Detroit Free Press contradicted their courtroom denials of an affair. The pair had testified in a civil lawsuit brought by police officers who said their careers were ruined by Kilpatrick because of suspicions about his inner circle.
Kilpatrick and Beatty each pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice. The ex-mayor left jail in February after 99 days and has been granted a probation transfer to Texas so he can take a high-tech sales job. His old paramour, a friend since high school, is due to be released April 15.
The messages had been under seal while prosecutors and Beatty's defense team wrangled over their admissibility as evidence. But after her guilty plea, the Free Press asked a judge to release them.
"Enough is enough," Beatty lawyer Mayer Morganroth said Monday in explaining why he didn't pursue an appeal.
The messages on city-issued pagers show Beatty as the loyal lover, relying on Kilpatrick for her physical and emotional needs as her marriage hits the rocks.
"I love how you can make me feel by just looking at me!" she wrote in December 2002.
Earlier that year, Beatty recalled the first time they had sex when she returned to Detroit after attending Howard University.
"At that time I was trying to make a teenage fantasy come true!" Kilpatrick replied.
In 2003, he wrote: "Nobody has ever, imean ever, excited me like you."
Well, maybe not. The messages show Kilpatrick exchanging sexual innuendo with other women. "I wish you could have two wives," one of them wrote.
The texts are mostly between Kilpatrick and Beatty, but communications with their spouses and other high-ranking city officials are part of the package, too:
In a September 2003 text to a staffer, Carlita Kilpatrick wrote that she didn't want to be dinner host to Detroit rapper Eminem. "I thought we were going to his house. When did it become mine."
And in January 2004, four years before Kilpatrick was charged with felonies that would end his reign at City Hall, a spokesman texted him and others that Kym Worthy, who would end up helping bring Kilpatrick down, was appointed Wayne County prosecutor.
"That's too bad!" replied city attorney Ruth Carter.
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ED WHITE and COREY WILLIAMS | March 10, 2009 05:10 PM EST |
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