Who killed Tamara Greene?
It’s one of Detroit’s most popular murder mysteries.
Nearly 21 years after Greene was killed in a drive-by shooting, her daughter, Ashly Jackson, revived the unsolved mystery in a viral TikTok video posted Thursday.
In the video, which has gained more than 3.4 million views, Jackson claims that Detroit police killed her mother, a stripper known as “Strawberry,” after she had an affair with then-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.
“Things got messy, and the mayor of Detroit’s wife actually assaulted my mother,” Jackson says. “Instead of paying my mother hush money, the mayor decided to pay off cops in the city to murder my mother.”
It’s widely speculated that Greene, who was 27 at the time, was dancing at a fabled 2002 party at the Manoogian Mansion while Kilpatrick was mayor. In 2010, a stripper who says she was at the party claimed that Kilpatrick’s wife, Carlita Kilpatrick, saw Greene giving the mayor a lap dance and began punching her.
Kilpratrick has repeatedly denied that the party took place and has insisted he knew nothing about Greene’s death.
The murder gained national attention in February 2019, when the popular podcast Crimetown covered the mysterious circumstances surrounding Greene’s death.
Jackson doesn’t provide a lot of evidence to back up her claim, but she says she worked in the “industry” herself and “met people who knew my mother, seen her around the mayor.”
Greene’s family filed a lawsuit against Kilpatrick and the city, but it was dismissed in federal court in 2011 for a lack of evidence.
Detroit Police Sgt. Marian Stevenson, the homicide detective on Greene’s case, claimed that numerous documents disappeared from the case files. The family’s attorney, Norman Yatooma, also said “six officers who were investigating him or Tammy Greene were all demoted, terminated or otherwise threatened.”
“After so many years of trying to fight for justice, I have been a standing lone wolf, and I’ve grown very tired,” Greene said in the video.
In January 2021, Kilpatrick was released from prison after serving more than seven years of a 28-year sentence for corruption crimes. Then-President Donald Trump commuted Kilpatrick’s sentence.
“So now the man who is responsible for my mother’s murder is living his happily ever after life,” Jackson says.
@sarenadesigns Replying to @Taylor my mother went by the name Strawberry i miss her so much 💔 #detroit #kwamekilpatrick #tamaragreene ♬ original sound - Ashly
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