A fresh TikTok posted by a slain Detroit stripper’s daughter is resurrecting allegations surrounding one of the city’s most infamous unsolved murders yet.
Ashly Jackson, the daughter of Tamara Greene, posted a video on the social platform that’s garnered nearly four million views in which she details her estimation of why and how her mother was murdered.
Tamara Greene’s name became widely known in the Motor City after she was killed in a drive-by shooting months after a rumored 2002 party at former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s Manoogian Mansion. Jackson claimed that Greene, who also went by Strawberry, was having an affair with Kilpatrick at the time.
It’s widely speculated that Kilpatrick’s wife assaulted 27-year-old Greene at the party after she spotted Greene giving Kilpatrick a lap dance. Greene was reportedly beaten so badly that she had to be picked up by emergency first responders.
Then, in April 2003, Greene was shot to death while sitting in a car with her boyfriend. The gunfire that struck Greene allegedly came from a .40 caliber pistol, which was a standard-issue gun for Detroit police officers.
“Things got messy, and the mayor of Detroit’s wife actually assaulted my mother,” Jackson said. “Instead of paying my mother hush money, the mayor decided to pay off cops in the city to murder my mother.”
Greene’s death was the talk of the town for more than a decade and was the center of a protracted legal battle that her family initiated to prove that Kilpatrick purposely obstructed the murder investigation.
However, the cover-up was hard to prove since Kilpatrick vehemently denied that a party took place at his mansion and it was never proved that one did. No one has been charged with Greene’s death.
In 2019, the popular podcast “Crimetown” covered Greene’s death, drawing national attention. The episode featured interviews from people who knew Greene, a retired EMS lieutenant, and attorney Norman Yatooma, who represented Greene’s family when they sued the city.
Yatooma said that the case was dismissed in 2011 after a judge ruled there wasn’t enough evidence to prove a cover-up. Homicide detective Sgt. Marian Anderson, who investigated Greene’s death, said that several case notes and documents vanished from Greene’s file, which the lawsuit mentioned would have filled in gaps in the investigation along with some deleted emails and other missing evidence. Yatooma also said that six officers who were investigating the case were either “demoted, terminated, or otherwise threatened.”
The retired EMS lieutenant who spoke to “Crimetown” interviewers recalled responding to a call at a gas station from a woman named Tammy Greene who told him she was attacked by the former mayor’s wife at a party at his mansion.
Several unproven theories on Greene’s death have circulated, including that Greene’s then-boyfriend was the intended target of the shooting and that Detroit cops were involved.
Jackson, who recently turned 27, said she met people who knew her mother and saw her around Kilpatrick but didn’t want “any parts” of her mother’s case.
“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 TikTok.
This isn’t the first time Jackson has spoken out about her mother’s death. She spoke with local news outlets over the years urging for accountability and justice.
“I feel like if he didn’t do it, he knows who did,” Jackson said of Kilpatrick to WXYZ-TV Detroit in 2017.
Kilpatrick was supposed to serve a 28-year sentence for various corruption crimes, but was pardoned by former President Donald Trump after spending only seven years in prison — a point that Jackson mentions in her TikTok.
“So now the man who is responsible for my mother’s murder is living his happily ever after life,” Jackson says.
