Kilpatrick and chief of staff Christine Beatty denied during testimony in August that they had a sexual relationship. But the records, a series of text messages, show them engaged in romantic banter as well as planning and recounting sexual liaisons.
The messages are also at odds with the pair's trial testimony that they did not fire Deputy Police Chief Gary Brown in 2003, an ouster that led him to sue. The text messages show Beatty recalling the "decision that we made to fire Gary Brown."
The newspaper examined nearly 14,000 text messages on Beatty's city-issued pager. The exchanges, which the Free Press obtained after the trial, cover two months each in 2002 and 2003.
The Kilpatrick-Beatty relationship and Brown's dismissal were central to the whistle-blower suit filed by Brown and Harold Nelthrope, a former police officer and mayoral bodyguard. The two cops accused Kilpatrick of retaliating against them because of their roles in an internal affairs investigation of the mayor's security team -- a probe that potentially could have exposed the affair.
The Free Press sought interviews with Kilpatrick and Beatty, but they declined.
Late Wednesday, the mayor released a statement that said the text messages were “profoundly embarrassing” and “reflect a very difficult period” in his life.
“My wife and I worked our way through these intensely personal issues years ago,” he wrote.
The mayor’s statement did not address his or Beatty’s trial testimony.
The text messages cover a range of issues, from the daily minutiae of city business to political gossip to the latest doings on “American Idol.” Kilpatrick and Beatty, both 37, exchanged personal messages almost daily, including romantic notes.
"I'm madly in love with you," Kilpatrick wrote on Oct. 3, 2002.
"I hope you feel that way for a long time," Beatty answered. "In case you haven't noticed, I am madly in love with you, too!"
Other texts contain sexual content, like this exchange on April 8, 2003:
Beatty: "And, did you miss me, sexually?"
Kilpatrick: "Hell yeah! You couldn't tell. I want some more."
SkyTel, the Mississippi-based company that provided text devices to the city, confirmed the existence of messages to the Free Press.
The city has tried since 2004 to keep the text messages under wraps. It fought in court to keep them from being provided to the legal team for the former cops and went to court this month in an effort to kill a subpoena issued in a Free Press suit to learn more about the settlement.
If Kilpatrick and Beatty are found to have committed perjury, they could face up to 15 years in prison under state law.
Peter Henning, a professor of criminal law at Wayne State University, said proving perjury is difficult. "It's rare that you get a question that is so clear that it is obviously perjury," he said.
He added that prosecutors may initiate an investigation on their own.
Maria Miller, a spokeswoman for Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy, declined comment Wednesday.
Wayne County Circuit Judge Michael Callahan, who oversaw the whistle-blower trial, was shown excerpts of text messages Wednesday. It was the first time he had seen them.
He said he is unlikely to take action, given that the case has been settled, but would cooperate if a prosecutor decides to investigate.
“If it happened during the case, they would feel the fury of my wrath, but it’s over,” Callahan said. “Now, I wish I had seen the messages.”
Kilpatrick, a lawyer, could also face discipline if the state Attorney Discipline Board finds he lied in court.
Lying under oath is one of the worst sins a lawyer can commit -- akin to stealing a client's money, legal experts said.
“It’s literally the equivalent of the death penalty for a law license,” said Michael Schwartz, former administrator of the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission, which investigates lawyers.
The head of the grievance commission, Robert Agacinski, declined to say Wednesday if he would investigate.
Beatty, a Wayne State law student, may face hurdles to obtaining a law license if she lied to or deceived a court.
Mike Stefani, the lawyer for the former cops, said he was not surprised the mayor's testimony was contradicted by the text messages.
"I know he perjured himself," Stefani said. "And I was maintaining that throughout the trial."
Taxpayers hit
The costly settlement of the whistle-blower suit was a financial blow to a city that is struggling to provide services to residents and is selling assets to raise money.
Kilpatrick balked at early efforts to settle the 2003 suit and continued to fight even after his attorneys learned in 2004 that the damaging messages might eventually surface in the case.
In June of that year, a mediation panel urged the city to pay Brown and Nelthrope $2.25 million to drop the suits. The city and Kilpatrick rejected the recommendation. So did the cops, although Stefani, their lawyer, said the city never made a settlement offer over the next three years.
At the trial last summer, the mayor and Beatty denied a romantic relationship. Both were married at the time of the text messages; Beatty later divorced.
Stefani asked Beatty the following question when she was on the stand Aug. 28:
"During the time period 2001 to 2003, were you and Mayor Kilpatrick either romantically or intimately involved with each other?"
Rolling her eyes, Beatty answered: "No."
Kilpatrick testified for more than three hours the next day.
Stefani asked him: "Mayor Kilpatrick, during 2002 and 2003 were you romantically involved with Christine Beatty?"
Kilpatrick's response: "No."
The messages show otherwise: They arranged trysts in area hotels and on business trips and exchanged messages that were unmistakably sexual.
The Free Press is not publishing some of those exchanges because of their explicit nature.
"I've been dreaming all day about having you all to myself for 3 days," the mayor wrote on Oct. 16, 2002. "Relaxing, laughing, talking, sleeping and making love."
During the trial, Kilpatrick bristled when testifying about speculation that he and Beatty were lovers.
"I think it was pretty demoralizing to her -- you have to know her -- but it's demoralizing to me as well," he said. "My mother is a congresswoman. There have always been strong women around me. My aunt is a state legislator. I think it's absurd to assert that every woman that works with a man is a whore. I think it's disrespectful not just to Christine Beatty but to women who do a professional job that they do every single day. And it's also disrespectful to their families as well."
Times of conflict
The dates covered by the text messages are significant because they surround two controversial periods of the mayor's first term in office.
The first batch -- September through October 2002 -- book-end the purported date of a never-proven wild party at the Manoogian Mansion, the city's mayoral residence. Nelthrope mentioned rumors of strippers and an assault at the alleged party to internal affairs investigators. The second batch -- April-May 2003 -- cover the weeks before and after Brown's ouster as head of internal affairs. Brown had wanted to investigate Nelthrope's allegations.
The text messages suggest Kilpatrick and Beatty intended to fire Brown, even though they and their lawyers said in court they only meant to remove him from his post overseeing internal affairs.
"He was not fired," Kilpatrick testified. "My understanding is he could go back to lieutenant ... but I think Mr. Brown chose to retire."
The text messages, however, use "fire" to describe Brown's departure. On May 15, 2003, Beatty wrote to Kilpatrick: "I'm sorry that we are going through this mess because of a decision that we made to fire Gary Brown. I will make sure that the next decision is much more thought out. Not regretting what was done at all. But thinking about how we can do things smarter."
Kilpatrick replied: "It had to happen though. I'm all the way with that!"
Personal history
Beatty and Kilpatrick have been friends since attending Detroit Cass Technical High School together in the mid-1980s. Beatty has run all of his election campaigns, including his winning bid for state representative in 1996. He has praised her as an indefatigable and tough negotiator who helped the city wrest concessions from labor unions.
But she has also been a source of controversy. One notable example came in 2004, after Detroit police pulled her over for allegedly speeding.
The cops say she pointedly asked them: "Do you know who the (expletive) I am?" before calling Detroit Police Chief Ella Bully-Cummings. Beatty later acknowledged calling the chief from her cell phone, but denied pulling rank on the officers. She was never ticketed.
Kilpatrick also has been a longtime friend of Lou Beatty, who was married to Christine Beatty until their 2006 divorce.
At the trial in the whistle-blower suit, Kilpatrick testified: "Lou Beatty grew up three houses down from me. We played on the same Little League team. He played football with me, yes, at Cass Tech ... At 6 o'clock he'll be coaching my sons."
In Washington
In 2002, among their intimate text conversations, Kilpatrick and Christine Beatty planned a clandestine meeting in the mayor's Washington hotel room during the Congressional Black Caucus annual legislative conference.
Beatty asked the mayor, on Sept. 12, 2002, if she could "come and lay down in your room until you get back?"
The next morning Kilpatrick, referring to his bodyguards, wrote: "They were right outside the door. They had to have heard everything."
Beatty replied: "So we are officially busted!"
"Damn that," Kilpatrick responded. "Never busted. Busted is what you see!"
The text traffic appears to lend credence to allegations made by Walt Harris, a former mayoral bodyguard who filed his own whistle-blower suit. Harris said he was punished for supporting Nelthrope's reports of wrongdoing by Kilpatrick and his bodyguards.
His lawsuit claimed, among other things, that Beatty met alone with the mayor in Kilpatrick's hotel room during the Washington trip in 2002.
Kilpatrick later told reporters Harris was making up stories to get money from the city.
On May 14, 2003, Kilpatrick and Beatty traded text messages about another late-night tryst in a Washington hotel. The next day, Kilpatrick stood on the steps of the Manoogian Mansion and spoke of his devotion to family and God amid a frenzy of news reports that Brown was fired for looking into rumors of the Manoogian party.
The verdict
In September, a Wayne County jury concluded Brown and Nelthrope were victims of retaliation and found in their favor, awarding Brown $3.9 million and Nelthrope $2.6 million.
Kilpatrick's public response was: "I'm absolutely blown away at this decision, and I know Detroiters are, too."
The next morning, on Sept. 12, Kilpatrick told a WJLB-FM (97.9) radio audience why he had refused to settle the case.
"I thought that the people of the city of Detroit needed to have an opportunity to hear the truth, they needed to see me sit in the chair," he said. "They saw that." He vowed an appeal.
Then, in October, Kilpatrick abruptly settled the case, as well as the suit brought by Harris, for a combined $8.4 million. Legal costs have pushed the total to more than $9 million.
"Since the verdict," Kilpatrick told residents in a statement, "I've listened to pastors, business leaders and so many Detroiters who genuinely love and care about me and this city. I've humbly concluded that a settlement ... is the correct decision for my family and the entire Detroit community."
Kilpatrick's decision to settle pleased Detroit City Council members, who swiftly approved the deal.
Harris received $400,000. Records show Kilpatrick could have settled that case two years ago for $100,000 -- but he rejected the mediators' recommendation.
Because they were sued in their roles as city officials, Kilpatrick and Beatty did not personally have to pay the costs from the $9-million legal fight.
as chief of staff on the morning of January 28, saying the text-message scandal engulfing the Kwame Kilpatrick's administration has left her unable to do her job effectively.
to read the full text of Beatty's resignation letter.
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Ethan Hawke
