Text From Mayor to Chief of Staff: 'I Love You'

April 30, 2008— -- More steamy text messages sent between Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his former chief of staff reveal intimate details about their relationship, and further indicate the mayor played a part in the dismissal of a police officer whose lawsuit brought their affair to light.

In the newly released messages, sent between 2002 and 2003, Kilpatrick and Christine Beatty discussed their sexual encounters, their romantic feelings and the possibility of marriage, often using the n-word to refer to one another. Kilpatrick and Beatty, both 37, were married with children at the time of the affair.

In a September 2002 message, Beatty wrote, "I have wanted to hold you so badly all day, but I was trying to stay focused on work. So, I promise, not to keep you longer than 15 minutes."

On April 8, 2003, she wrote, "You told me that you would be my boyfriend every day until I was your wife." In another message later that month she calls Kilpatrick an "amazing man" and writes that "everything about you makes me love you."

On May 1, 2003, Beatty wrote that she no longer wanted to keep their relationship a secret, and Kilpatrick responded by writing, "In this important and somewhat confusing time in your life, please know with all our hearts and souls that I love you."

The texts were part of a court document released Tuesday following a lawsuit by the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News.

On March 24, Kilpatrick and Beatty were charged with perjury and obstruction of justice in a 12-count indictment. The charges stemmed from their alleged attempt to hide their love affair by dismissing a police officer investigating misconduct in the mayor's protection unit, and then lying about the affair and the officer's firing while under oath.

The text messages also show that Kilpatrick referred to City Council member Sheila Cockrel as a "bitch" when he found she had sought to involve the U.S. Justice Department in the firing of the police officers. "Why is Sheila always looking for a scandal with us? That b---- ain't right!" Kilpatrick texted.

The coverup became public during the trial of two police officers who brought a whistleblower lawsuit against the city. The newly-released texts offer further evidence that Beatty and Kilpatrick had Deputy Commissioner Gary Brown fired, despite testifying during his trial that they did not.

On May 15, 2003, Beatty wrote, "I'm sorry that we are going through this mess because of a decision we made to fire Gary Brown."

On Tuesday evening, Kilpatrick responded to the new messages by saying they were not "the smoking gun" in the case.

"It's unfortunate that now we're printing something as true that came off somebody's computer," he said.

The document came from the computer of the the lawyer who represented the police officers in the lawsuit, Michael Stefani.

"Our investigation has clearly shown that public dollars were used. … The justice system was severely mocked and the public trust trampled on," Wayne County prosecutor Kym Worthy said during a March 24 news conference when she announced the charges.

"This case was about as far from being a private matter as one can get. Honesty and integrity in the justice system are everything," she said.

A felony conviction would mean automatic expulsion of office for Kilpatrick, who has resisted calls for his resignation and has vowed to fight the charges.

"I look forward to complete exoneration," he said in a news conference following the indictment.

Last fall, the brash young mayor took the stand in the whistleblower case and denied firing one of the officers to cover up the affair he was having with Beatty. But text messages between the mayor and Beatty obtained by the whistleblowers' attorney contradict court testimony by Kilpatrick and Beatty. On Feb. 27, the Michigan Supreme Court unsealed documents related to a secret settlement between Kilpatrick and the two police officers.

Kilpatrick came to office in 2001 as the new hope for a struggling city. The son of a U.S. congresswoman and county commissioner, he strode to office as the city's youngest mayor ever, promising fresh energy and ideas. But it wasn't long before allegations swirled around him involving abuses by his police bodyguards, an elite protection squad said to have run amok.

Harold Nelthrope, a 17-year police veteran and one of the bodyguards in that unit, started talking to internal affairs.

"I started to notice things seemed to be not right with people that were in charge of the unit," he said.