Disgraced former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was released from Jackson Prison this morning.  He has 24 hours to get to Texas and report in person to his probation officer.  This isn't the end of Kilpatrick's legal troubles, however, as he's still facing Federal corruption charges.  He might end up back in the clink for a third time before this saga is all over.

People think that his only fault was marital infidelity and a misuse of city property for sexting his mistress, then lying about it under oath.  It's the scandalous and flashy part of the story.  The truth of the matter is that he and his cronies were helping to obstruct the proper investigation of a murder.

Tamara Greene was an exotic dancer who was hired to perform in 2002 at one of Kilpatrick's parties in the mayor's official residence, the Manoogian Mansion.  She was assaulted at that party by Carlita Kilpatrick, the mayor's wife.  The assault was swept under the rug and no charges were ever pressed.  A few months later, in 2003, Greene was shot to death while sitting in her car.  The weapon used to killer her was a .40 caliber Glock, which happens to also be the Detroit Police Department's service revolver.  The official story was that she was shot three times, but sources in the Homicide division have said that she was actually shot 18 times, possibly more.  Members of the EMS team who reported to the scene have gone on record saying that Kilpatrick and his bodyguard, along with a few other members of his posse, were at Detroit Receiving Hospital when Ms. Greene was brought into the emergency room.  When Deputy Police Chief Gary Brown attempted to investigate Kilpatrick's connection to Greene, he was summarily dismissed from his employment.

This is not the first time that a member of Detroit's ruling elite have been linked to a death in the D, and not the first time that a person sitting in a car was shot to death with a DPD service revolver.  Some are civilians, like Tamara Greene.  Others, like Sgt. Dennis Williams, whose murder in October 1978 has never been solved, were members of the police force, themselves.  Did they see too much?  Did the people in power have too much to lose if these people lived another day?  On the surface, there would seem to be no connection between Ms. Greene's death and the murder of Sgt. Williams, but look deeper, and the similarities are startling.

The mayor's office and the Detroit city council, as well as many other powerful and wealthy players in the less-visible power elite, have their hands dirty with dozens of deaths just like this.  Corruption is a disease, and it reaches deep.

They think nobody knows what they've been getting up to in the dark.  But we do.  And we have our eyes on them.