Detroit Mayor's Charges Broadened After Texts to Other Women Surface

DETROIT – Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is now charged with exchanging romantic text messages with additional women in the scandal that has him fighting allegations that he lied under oath about an intimate relationship with his former chief of staff.

An investigator's report says the Wayne County prosecutor's office has determined that Kilpatrick sent and received text messages with "intimate or romantic content" to several women who were not his wife or former Chief of Staff Christine Beatty.

The report says the office was able to locate and identify the women, but it does not list their names.

The allegations led the prosecutor's office to amend two current charges against the 38-year-old mayor. The amended complaint was signed by a district court magistrate and changes a misconduct-in-office charge and one of four perjury charges.

The misconduct-in-office charge alleges that Kilpatrick authorized the city to prevent the release of text messages containing intimate or romantic messages to women other than his wife or Beatty.

The amended perjury charge accuses Kilpatrick of lying under oath about romantic or sexual relationships with Beatty "and or other persons not his wife."

The charges against Beatty were not changed.

Kilpatrick's office did not return phone calls seeking comment on the amended charges. But a few hours before they were filed, Kilpatrick accused prosecutor Kym Worthy of a "personal vendetta."

"She has no case, and the city is tired of it," Kilpatrick said after an event promoting Labor Day activities in Detroit.

"It's a perversion of the entire system," the mayor said.

Worthy said in a statement that she would not respond to Kilpatrick's "personal attacks."

In January, excerpts of sexually explicit text messages were published by the Detroit Free Press that pointed to an extramarital relationship between Kilpatrick and Beatty. Those messages, left on Beatty's city-issued pager, contradicted testimony the two had given during a 2007 police whistle-blowers' trial.

Kilpatrick and Beatty were charged in March with perjury, misconduct and obstruction of justice. Both deny the charges and face a preliminary examination in September.