LIVE PRO WRESTLING IN THE BACKYARD! FEAT. XICW, H20, FU WRESTLING + MORE
LIVE MUSIC@11:30PM DOORS@5PM / $25 ADMISSION SPONSORED BY CROWN ROYAL/ MILLER LITE/RED BULL ALWAYS 21+
Thurs 7/25
WDET 101.9 COMEDY SHOWCASE SERIES “WHAT’S SO FUNNY ABOUT DETROIT?” SEASON 4
HOSTED BY RYAN PATRICK HOOPER OF IN THE GROOVE FEAT. 6 DETROIT STAND-UP COMICS! INFO&TICKETS@ WDET.ORG/EVENTS DOORS@6:30PM/SHOW@7:30PM SPONSORED BY LONG DRINK
Fri 7/26
DE3RA(NASHVILLE)/LUCID FURS/ GASHOUNDS (ROCK’N’ROLL/FREAK ROCK) DOORS@9PM/$5COVER HAPPY BIRTHDAY, RICK “POPS”!
Sun 7/28 DAY SHENANIGANS ON THE PATIO W/ DJ AIMZ & FRIENDS 2PM-8PM/NO COVER
Mon 7/29 FREE POOL ALL DAY!
Coming Up: 8/02 DJ Skeez
8/03 Crooked Spires/ Three Spoke Wheel/Lily Bones
8/08 Proud House of Shmucks/Media Panic/Detroit 442
We got lots of responses to last week’s cover story about 50+ great burgers.
I know you couldn’t try them all — but I missed seeing two of Detroit’s best burgers on your list – SINDBAD’s Restaurant/Marina on the Detroit River, and DISTRICT 12 in Dearborn and Dearborn Heights — but happy that NEMO’s made the cut!
—Fred McEvoy, email
Clearly, reports were only taken from the east side and Dearborn. Hardly a single burger from anything in the west or northwest suburbs. No Mr. Joe’s, no Copper Mug, no Mason’s, no Diamond Jim Brady’s?
—Michael Weisserman, Facebook
I’ve been to a lot of the places on this list and enjoyed many delicious burgers. If I’m going out for a burger however, I’m more likely to stay local and go to Michno’s or Sandy’s in Redford, Mason’s in Livonia, or the Blue Moose in Farmington.
—Bill Cline, Facebook
Marrow is hands down the best burger in the Midwest. Do yourself a favor and go try one.
—Bill Moorman, Facebook
UNBURGER — cruelty free, delicious, and it is not a innocent animal who was made to suffer and then horrifically slaughtered for a 5 minute meal.
Lisa Czarniak, Facebook
Got an opinion? Sound off: letters@ metrotimes.com
NEWS & VIEWS
Charges dropped against BVIS
BVIS has been freed.
The graffiti artist allegedly behind all of those Beavis and ButtHead drawings you’ve probably seen scrawled in and around Detroit lately had faced six felony counts of malicious destruction of property and up to four years in prison.
But on Thursday Judge Ronald Giles of Detroit’s 36th District Court dropped the charges against the alleged culprit, citing insufficient evidence, the Detroit Free Press reports.
Last month, Wayne County prosecutors arrested Hazel Park man
Bryan Herrin, alleging that he was behind the graffiti. In a statement to the Free Press, Herrin’s attorney David Rudoi maintained that his client was innocent.
“We respect the mayor and the people of the city of Detroit considering this issue a high priority, however, Mr. Herrin was innocent of the crimes alleged against him,” Rudoi said.
In April, Metro Times interviewed a person who said he was behind the graffiti. We reached out via the person’s Instagram account @fatdeepdish420, and he agreed to a candid phone inter-
view under the condition that we not reveal his identity and use his graffiti artist moniker, BVIS.
At the time, BVIS told us that he loved the thrill of painting graffiti and was not afraid of getting caught, despite Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan’s crackdown on vandalism.
“I love just getting away with shit,” BVIS told us. “But part of me is like, I know people like it. It feels good to make people smile. But it is mostly the adrenaline rush.”
Detroit police said the volume of the graffiti prompted the response.
“It was multiple situations where [we] had to have people from the city go out and clean this area up,” Detroit Police Capt. Marcus Thirlkill told Fox 2. “There’s a cost associated with having to go out and clean up each time this character is painted on structures.”
A “Free BVIS” movement emerged in protest of the charges, which supporters said were too severe. Messages reading “Free BVIS” could be seen emblazoned around Detroit in recent weeks.
BVIS did not respond to numerous requests for comment.
—Lee DeVito
Ingrid Andress says she was drunk during National Anthem
The woman who sang a widely panned version of the “StarSpangled Banner” during Major League Baseball’s 2024 Home Run Derby last week says she was drunk during the performance and will check into rehab.
“I’m not gonna bullshit y’all, I was drunk last night,” Andress wrote in a post on Instagram last Tuesday. “I’m checking myself into a facility today to
get the help I need. That was not me last night.”
She added, “I apologize to MLB, all the fans, and this country I love so much for that rendition. I’ll let y’all know how rehab is, I hear it’s super fun.”
Originally from Southfield and now based in Nashville, Andress’s 2021 debut album Lady Like earned three
Grammy nominations, including for Best New Artist, Best Country Album, and Best Country Song for “More Hearts Than Mine.”
More recently, she also earned a nomination for Best Country Duo/ Group Performance for her collaboration with Sam Hunt, “Wishful Drinking.”
Her off-kilter National Anthem
performance last Monday at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas, drew widespread mockery, with viewers calling it worse than the infamously bad rendition by the Black Eyed Peas’s Fergie at the 2018 NBA All-Star Game.
We’re glad to hear that Andress is seeking rehab and hope she is able to get the help she needs.
—Lee DeVito
A “Free BVIS” poster spotted in Midtown.
STEVE NEAVLING
Shinola Hotel partner responds to ‘baseless’ lawsuit
The Shinola Hotel’s operating partner has responded to a racial discrimination lawsuit filed earlier this month on behalf of a Black Detroit man who claims his resume was ignored until he resubmitted it with the white-sounding name “John Jebrowski.”
In a statement, Sage Hospitality called the lawsuit “baseless” and touted its diverse workforce.
“Unfortunately, it is clear that the plaintiff’s attorney is spreading these false allegations through the media in an attempt to intimidate the company and cause reputational and financial harm,” Sage Hospitality Group president Daniel del Olmo said.
“Here are the facts: since Sage Hospitality took over operations of the Shinola Hotel in November 2023, more than 78% of the new hires self-identify as people of color and 66% of those new hires self-identify as Black or African American,” he continued. “71% of the employees who have been promoted since Sage Hospitality took over operations identify as people of color and 57% of those promoted identify as Black or African American.”
He added, “Today, almost 75% of our team members are people of color. 60% of those team members are Black. Our diverse workforce is represented on every level of our organization ranging from entry level employees to directors who serve on our executive leadership team.”
Sage Hospitality notes that a number of the positions that plaintiff Dwight Jackson, 27, applied for were given to other Black applicants.
“Our preliminary review of the facts reveal significant inconsistencies with the plaintiff’s allegations in this lawsuit,” the statement continues. “Of the four roles for which the plaintiff applied, three of them were filled by Black applicants. Both of the positions the plaintiff applied for using the false name ‘John Jebrowski’ were filled by Black people. It is important to note that all of these positions were filled prior to this lawsuit.”
The statement continues, “While we can not disclose further details as it relates to this specific matter,
we want to assure you, our team members and our community, that discrimination of any kind will never be tolerated. Sage Hospitality has a demonstrated commitment to diversity and inclusion and is recognized as a national leader in hospitality. We believe that everyone benefits from a diverse and inclusive environment and will continue to foster an inclusive workplace.”
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Jackson by Marko Law, PLLC.
According to the lawsuit, Jackson has “extensive” hospitality experience and applied to work at the luxury hotel multiple times between January and April of this year without getting any response.
After he applied as “John Jebrowski,” he claimed he got a response within a week.
The lawsuit alleges that the incident is a violation of the Michigan Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act.
In a statement, Marko Law defended its lawsuit. “The evidence in this case is clear,” the statement reads.
“Sage Hospitality hides behind being a ‘diverse’ company on its face. However, evidence suggests the complete opposite when a deeper dive is done. There have been numerous witnesses that have come forward, stating that multiple black employees were terminated from their roles or were not hired because they were not ‘luxury enough.’ Furthermore, when Sage Hospitality hires black employees, they are constantly overlooked for promotions even though they are more qualified. Sage Hospitality simply does enough to look good on paper while hiding the truth from reality. This is a common defense tactic that Marko Law sees in racial discrimination claims, and this case is no different.”
—Lee DeVito
The Shinola Hotel.
SHUTTERSTOCK
NOVA24 festival connects Detroit with the world
Every year, over 150 photo and film festivals take place in major cities around the world.
In Detroit, however, many lens-based artists are told they need to leave the city to find success, especially since there is no large-scale photo and film festival in the Motor City.
Mara Magyarosi-Laytner and Raymar, both local artists, curators, and educators, decided to change that. The pair created NOVA24 in 2023 to connect Detroit’s photo and film community through exhibitions, film screenings, artist talks, and workshops, hoping that artists, curators, publishers, and more will connect, collaborate, and create a launch point for future relationships.
The inaugural festival is happening now, running through August 1, with over 40 events in about 18 local spaces. Among the many events, NOVA24 includes a weekly film series at the Carr Center celebrating photographers of color, a group exhibition at The Congregation titled Femme Voyant celebrating Black femme creators, and Takisha Jefferson’s exhibition Testify at Michigan State University’s Detroit center. Community engagement-based events include a photo and film educator meetup, filmmaker karaoke, film premieres, fashion walks, and many more.
The co-founders met when Magyarosi-Laytner was Raymar’s photography
teacher during high school and haven’t lost touch since.
“She built the photography program from scratch, essentially, in that entire building, and that was how we met,” Raymar says. “Through my college career, we kept in contact, and when I got out, she gave me a tip off about this job that opened up next door to her because she’s a photography teacher at a new school and a film teacher position was opening. So, I did an interview for that, got that job, and now we teach alongside each other.”
Last year, Raymar and MagyarosiLaytner realized that Detroit didn’t have a large-scale film festival like other major cities. So, they asked themselves, “Could we do this?”
“We then decided that we felt like we could do this, off of audacity and a dime, essentially,” Raymar says.
Magyars-Laytner adds: “And connections, like the community between us.”
Previously, in 2022, Magyars-Laytner earned her Master’s in Fine Arts in Photography and exhibited her work internationally. When she showcased her collection at the Toronto Film Festival, which has been established for nearly two decades, she realized she had never been informed about the event in her earlier programs, even though it was in a city just a few hours away. During the event, she witnessed the strong support Toronto has for its photographers and the lack of such
support locally.
“They have exhibitions in front of City Hall, major photographers are coming from all over the world, and they have a photo laureate,” she says. “It was insane for me, going to this space and having the show there, and feeling this support from this other city that the photo community hadn’t experienced in the same way in Detroit. So, when I came home from that, I was energized to see what was going on with other photo festivals.”
Fast forward to now, film festivals like those in Denver, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati, alongside Detroit Month of Design, act as blueprints for NOVA24.
“We realized that there needed to be some kind of central communication point for our photo and film crew, and that the festival had to be long enough to hold ground,” Magyars-Laytner says. “This is how people communicate, this is how all the curators and book publishers and the movers and shakers of the industry find out who they’re going to use for the next five years.”
The mission of NOVA24 is to not only showcase the work of Detroit photographers and filmmakers, but also to feature international artists, positioning Detroit as a “destination for creatives.”
“It’s really just a desire to create more of an umbrella of opportunity for us here, not so that we aren’t going to still travel… but we should be able to do
that as an option, not as a necessity,” Raymar says. “I think the general vibe is to expand NOVA24 into being this fully international platform for everybody to see how we in Detroit do this, but also just kind of mixing in and introducing us to those other spaces.”
Currently, some NOVA24 events are hosted in spaces that don’t conventionally showcase photographers, while others are in photo spaces that don’t get much attention, such as Photo House in Southwest Detroit. The festival’s closing ceremony will be held in a brand-new gallery opening in the Guardian Building called Promenade.
“Ultimately, as we move forward in the festival, we really want to make sure that we’re just continuing to highlight and push forward the important, innovative work that people are making,” Magyars-Laytner says. “We want people to be proud to be included and be a part of this.”
Other goals include having more outdoor exhibitions, increasing funding, doubling down on dedication, and involving more people from the photo and film industry, so artists can be connected with the other important pieces of the art world.
“We have the CONTACT Photo [Festival], we have the Sundance Film Festival, you know, those names ring a bell,” Raymar says. “We want to eventually get to a place where we have our own platform based here for everybody else to see.”
—Layla McMurtrie
The inaugural NOVA24 festival runs through August 1.
DALAYNI BOSTON
NEWS & VIEWS
Lapointe
By stepping down, Biden does the right thing
By Joe Lapointe
By accepting the figurative gold watch of retirement and dropping his reelection bid Sunday, President Joe Biden gave his Democratic Party a powerful chance in November’s election to not only sweep government leadership at the federal level but also to win big in local races around the 50 states.
Such a wave could be led by his obvious replacement, Vice President Kamala Harris, who might become both the first female chief executive and the second person of color to win the White House. Against former Republican President Donald Trump, the former prosecutor Harris would oppose a convicted felon and a bellicose bully who is a proud, racist, sexist, white man with issues of impulse control and ego.
And who might vote for the 59-yearold Harris instead of the large, loud, orange-faced, yellow-haired, 78-year-old demagogue?
• Women still chagrined by the war on reproductive freedom led by Trump and his hand-picked religious fundamentalists who have tilted the Supreme Court to radical extremes;
• African-Americans whose faith in Biden and the Democratic Party has wobbled or faded;
• Young people shaken and awakened by foreign wars, high rents, tuition bills, and the racial reckoning of this decade;
• Persons of Hispanic or Arabic descent who may be alarmed when they learn of Trump’s racist plan for mass deportations that will destroy families;
• Advocates of gun-safety laws that might have prevented the attack on Trump two Saturdays ago by a registered Republican with a legally purchased assault rifle. Biden’s announcement Sunday eclipsed both that assassination attempt and the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last week.
The Trump nomination festival became a scripted reality-show spectacle that seemed to leave Trump with four finalists for his running mate pick: the pro wrestler Hulk Hogan, the right-wing
noisemaker Kid Rock, the propagandist Tucker Carlson, and Almighty God.
He needed someone strong to replace Mike Pence, Trump’s former vice president who dumped Trump after Trump sent a lynch mob to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to murder Pence for not obeying Trump’s demand that Pence violate the Constitution in a coup.
Trump now knows how Pence felt when Secret Service agents whisked him away that deadly day. Trump himself was hustled off-stage earlier this month after sustaining a bloody wound to his right ear from a would-be assassin in Pennsylvania.
“In a way, I felt very safe,” Trump told the convention, “because I had God on my side.”
Many other Republican speakers (and right-wing media) assured the convention and TV viewers that, yes, indeed, the Supreme Being miraculously saved Trump for a special purpose. Not that Trump didn’t see the bigger picture.
“Last week,” he said Saturday night in Grand Rapids, “I took a bullet for democracy.”
In that God is non-partisan, however, Trump’s running mate instead will be J.D. Vance, an opportunistic chameleon who shape-shifts through name-changes, points of view, and his very identity. He’s many things to many people.
So youthful at just age 39, Vance just figured out what he wants to be when he grows up: President.
He brings quite a resume. Vance is an ex-Marine who went to Yale Law School; he’s a convert to Catholicism; he’s a Silicon Valley entrepreneur; he’s the intellectual author of Hillbilly Elegy who once was so-very-critical of the “reprehensible” Trump.
He called Trump an “idiot” and even compared Trump to Hitler and heroin. In the past, due to family turmoil in his youth, Vance has gone by names like “James Hamer” and “James Donald Bowman” and “James David Vance.”
Now, he hopes to try “Vice President” on for size. Vance is quick to pivot because he is shrewd, calculating, and clever. Once Vance sniffed Trump’s demagogic appeal, he dropped his en-
lightened conservative pretensions the way a snake sheds its skin.
Many of us have known guys like Vance: Young and ambitious people who pretend to line up on one side but change their minds when the wind shifts direction. They flourished in the Reagan era. Vance perceived a short line among young, electable “conservatives” willing to pledge blind fealty to Trump.
As a result, he could play an inside straight into the White House should Trump win again. But now, the Ohio senator may have to first endure a veep debate with a Harris running mate not yet named. It would be good to see Vance challenged on his anti-women ideas like forcing rape victims to bear babies.
Trump and Vance appeared together Saturday evening in Grand Rapids, their first rally after the convention, a scene that emphasized the pivotal importance of Michigan among at least a half-dozen swing states.
Trump won Michigan over Hillary Clinton in 2016; Biden beat Trump here in 2020. On Saturday, Trump spoke for nearly two hours, rambling and veering from topic to topic, weaving like a reckless driver from lane to lane. He warned that the American auto industry is doomed and that World War III looms.
He kept calling Biden “stupid;” he claimed to know nothing about Project 2025 of the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing plot to cripple government designed by Trump’s allies and friends. In two of his increasingly bizarre digressions, Trump again mentioned Hannibal Lecter and Al Capone.
He continuously mispronounced the first name of Harris as “Kah-MAHla” instead of “KAH-mah-la;” he kept repeating his xenophobic rants that “illegal immigrants” bring crime, insanity, and Democratic votes to the United States.
“Immigrants are invading our nation,” Trump said in Grand Rapids, “to steal
our jobs and murder our daughters.” But Trump avoided topics such as abortion, gun “rights,” and the Supreme Court, issues he used to campaign on in his 2016 victory and 2020 defeat.
Biden’s historic step-down Sunday was not like those of President Richard Nixon in 1974 and President Lyndon Johnson in 1968. Nixon’s crimes drove him to resign in disgrace; Johnson’s decision in 1968 was to finish his term but not run again as he conducted an unpopular war in Vietnam.
In Biden’s case, Democrats will applaud him, admire him, and venerate him at their coming convention, which is also a great stage for Harris. She could speak of how Trump packed the Supreme Court with reactionary judges who repealed Roe v. Wade and abolished a woman’s right to choose.
Harris could promise to appoint progressive judges, institute term limits for justices, expand the high court to at least 13 seats, and press for a return to abortion rights in all states.
As for guns, Harris would point out that Trump wouldn’t dare say anything against “Second Amendment rights” even after he was nearly killed by a high-powered assault weapon of war now common among civilians and protected by Republican gun groomers during an era of gun massacres.
And with his plan to deport millions of people of color, Trump is vulnerable among Arab and Hispanic voting blocs not only in Michigan but also across the country. As Trump has taught us, nothing whips up the base like fear and anger. If Trump and Harris debate, can he restrain his sexism and racism?
But, first things first. The drama now moves into a new act. Who should be Harris’s running mate? How should Democrats script their convention? As Trump and his chanting cult might put it, it’s time to “Fight! Fight! Fight!” to dump “Trump! Trump! Trump!”
Now, Trump can learn to pronounce “Kamala.” SHUTTERSTOCK
THE CLOSER
A Detroit detective terrorized young men into making false confessions. Some are still behind bars
By Steve Neavling
The day Mark Craighead
lost his freedom for a murder he couldn’t have committed, he just wanted to come home and get some rest. He was tired and hungry.
But when he arrived at his home in Detroit on that warm, sunny evening in June 2000, two detectives were waiting on his porch and demanded he come downtown for questioning about his friend’s murder three years earlier.
Chole Pruett, 26, was found fatally shot inside his apartment in Detroit. His 1996 Chevy Tahoe was set ablaze behind an elementary school in Redford Township.
Craighead had to work at 5 a.m. the following day at a Chrysler plant. But the detectives, despite not having an arrest warrant, insisted he had no choice.
Craighead, who had no criminal record and coached youth football, had already been interviewed twice by Detroit police, and each time they were satisfied with his answers. But this time was different.
Waiting at police headquarters downtown was Detective Barbara Simon, an aggressive interrogator who spent years waging psychological warfare on young Black men accused of murder. In the 1990s and early 2000s, she engaged in investigative misconduct, illegally
held suspects without a warrant, denied them access to an attorney or phone call, threatened them, and made false promises of leniency, judges and prosecutors would later determine. Suspects who refused to talk without an attorney were confined to jail cells infested with cockroaches, rats, and other vermin.
Her tactics led to false confessions and fabricated witness statements.
As Craighead rode in the rear of a squad car wearing shorts and a tank top, he had no idea what he was up against. He wasn’t allowed to call an attorney or make a phone call, according to affidavits and a subsequent lawsuit.
When they arrived at police headquarters at 1300 Beaubien, Craighead says he was confined for hours to a four-foot by four-foot locked room with a desk and steel grates on the window.
He was left alone with a growing migraine headache and nothing to eat or drink. When he pounded on the door and demanded to be let out, Simon told him to “sit down and shut up,” Craighead says.
Without a lawyer present, Craighead had no plans to answer questions.
But Simon, who was known as “the closer” for obtaining confessions, had another plan that worked with countless other suspects: Frighten him and wear him down.
When Craighead sat face to face with Simon, he repeatedly refused to answer questions. Simon claimed she had evi-
dence linking him to the murder. Police took him to different rooms and left him alone for hours.
After 1 a.m., more than seven hours after he was taken into custody without a warrant, a lawyer, or a phone call, Simon told Craighead he would be released and still make it to work for his 5 a.m. shift if he agreed to take a polygraph. If he didn’t, he would remain in custody, Simon told him, according to court records.
Knowing the fallibility of polygraphs, Craighead took a risk and agreed. He just wanted to go home. Simon escorted him to another building, where he was strapped into a polygraph machine.
“She gave me no choice,” Craighead said, according to the affidavit. “I would lose my job.”
After about an hour of questions, Simon told Craighead he failed the polygraph, a conclusion that was later contradicted by another test. Falsely claiming the polygraph was admissible in court, Simon leaned in and said, “Your wife is going to find a new husband and your kids are going to call somebody else daddy if you don’t tell me what you did because you’re going to jail for the rest of your life without parole,” Craighead recalled in a deposition.
After he refused to confess to a murder that evidence would later show he didn’t commit, Simon placed Craighead in handcuffs and fingerprinted him. When asked if he could go home as promised,
Craighead says Simon laughed at him.
After 4 a.m., Craighead was placed in a cold jail cell with no blanket or pillow. The only place to sit was a wooden bench with screws poking out. Mice and cockroaches scurried about, he says.
At least he had a chance to use a restroom for the first time since he arrived more than eight hours earlier.
“I was kind of scared and terrified,” Craighead recalled in a deposition.
At 11 a.m., a detective escorted Craighead back to the tiny interrogation room where he had sat for hours alone the night before. The officer rebuffed Craighead’s request for an attorney, phone call, and medicine for his migraine, he says.
Simon walked in and also denied his requests, according to Craighhead.
“We got you,” Craighead recalled Simon telling him. “We know that you shot Chole, and we can prove it.”
As Craighead would later find out, the police had no evidence linking him to the murder.
To Craighead’s surprise, Simon presented him with a detailed narrative about what went down on the night of Pruett’s murder in July 1997: He and Craighead got into a fight. Pruett pulled out a gun, and the pair struggled for control of it. The gun went off. Pruett died.
The alleged confession, which Simon handwrote, was contradicted by forensic evidence, which showed Pruett was shot four times in the back execution-style
Part one of a series about wrongful convictions in Detroit.
from a distance of at least two feet.
In her interview with Craighead, Simon insisted the shooting was an “accident” and said, “You don’t seem like the kind of person that would kill or rob your best friend, so you must have had a reason,” according to court records.
Simon handed him the “confession.” If he signed it, she promised the first-degree murder charges would be reduced, and he could go home, Craighhead recalled.
Broken down, scared, and disoriented, Craighead signed the paper — a decision that would cost him seven years in prison.
“I signed it to avoid going to prison for the rest of my life,” Craighead said during a deposition.
He had two children, ages 2 and 4.
Although Craighead and his attorney argued the confession was fabricated and coerced and that his rights were violated, a judge allowed prosecutors to use the written statement as the primary evidence against him, and he was convicted of manslaughter in 2002.
As the jury read the verdict, Craighead broke down in tears.
“I was crying,” he recalls. “I got hoodwinked. I hadn’t seen the light of day since they arrested me on my porch. It was traumatic.”
He wouldn’t be a free man until 2009, and it would take another 12 years until he was exonerated.
Locked up and lied to
Craighead is among four Black men who have been exonerated of murder convictions after their attorneys showed that Simon, who is also Black, used deceptive and coercive interrogation techniques. A fifth Black man, who falsely confessed after being unlawfully imprisoned, was freed before his murder trial because DNA evidence showed he wasn’t the killer.
All five sued Simon and the city, and three of them have been settled so far at a cost to taxpayers of more than $16 million.
The two other lawsuits, including one by Craighead, are still wending their way through federal court and likely will cost the city millions more. Because the city is self-insured, Detroit must cover the costs of settlements and attorneys, diverting crucial resources away from essential public services.
Simon worked in the Homicide Division for about 20 years before she retired in 2010. Shortly after, thenAttorney General Mike Cox hired Simon as an investigator. She retired in August 2021.
A six-month Metro Times investigation, which included a review of thousands of pages of court documents and dozens of interviews with exonerees, inmates, defense attorneys, interrogation experts, private investigators, and law enforcement officials, paints a troubling
picture of Simon and the prosecutors, police leaders, and judges who could have stopped her. Simon used aggressive, illegal, and sometimes violent interrogation techniques on suspects and witnesses, according to affidavits, court transcripts, and multiple lawsuits.
Here’s what we found, according to those documents:
• Suspects were routinely locked in small rooms for hours if they refused to talk and were denied access to attorneys and a phone call. In each of the cases, Simon had no arrest warrants to legally confine the suspects and witnesses.
• Simon falsely promised suspects, some of whom were teenagers, that they could go home if they signed confessions that she wrote.
• Simon illegally presented herself as a prosecutor who had authorization to file charges and falsely promised leniency if suspects signed statements admitting guilt.
• In one case, Simon called a suspect a racial slur and told him any jury in America would convict him of killing a white woman.
• While testifying at trial and during depositions, Simon often claimed she couldn’t recall basic information about the interrogations.
• She threatened to frame witnesses for murder or other crimes if they didn’t incriminate suspects who turned out to be innocent. Those witnesses later recanted.
Although the exonerations have shown that Simon resorted to psychological torment to elicit false confessions and fabricated witness statements, countless other suspects who were interrogated by the detective are still behind bars. During her career, Simon said she interrogated “hundreds” of suspects.
Metro Times tracked down eight other inmates who emphatically claim they were falsely convicted because of Simon’s interrogation tactics. Many of them were teenagers when they were convicted.
Attorneys and private investigators who have worked on the Simon cases believe many more innocent people are behind bars because of the detective’s interrogation tactics.
“There certainly are still innocent people in prison because of Simon,” David Moran, co-founder and a lead counsel at the Michigan Innocence Clinic, tells Metro Times. “There are likely a bunch.”
No accountability or justice
Despite what defense attorneys say was a clear and alarming pattern of Simon resorting to abusive, illegal, and deceptive tactics to get guilty verdicts, the exonerees and those still in prison have faced stiff resistance from judges
Mark Craighead and Lamarr Mondon were exonerated after it was found that Detective Barbara Simon used deceptive and coercive interrogation techniques on them. STEVE NEAVLING
and the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office. Time and time again, judges turned down appeals, and prosecutors fought to keep the men in prison, despite later admitting some of the defendants were innocent.
“The prosecutors will file an appeal, and they drag it through the appellate court for two to four years,” Steve Crane, a private investigator who helped get three innocent prisoners released, tells Metro Times. “They don’t want to accept a loss at any cost. It’s disgusting, and it’s frustrating.”
Those still in prison say they’re withering away behind bars because judges and prosecutors won’t consider their cases.
Their stories are strikingly similar to those who were exonerated. For up to eight hours, they were forced to undergo aggressive interrogations or were placed in a locked room without a warrant, food, or phone calls. They were falsely — and illegally — promised freedom if they confessed. And they were told there was undeniable evidence that would lead to their convictions, a claim they would later find out was untrue.
In each of the cases, Simon was one of the lead investigators. And she wasn’t just any detective. When Detroit police had trouble getting witnesses or suspects to talk, they often depended on Simon, who had an unusual — and many would say suspicious — record of obtaining confessions, albeit ones that had been repeatedly recanted or contradicted.
Defense attorneys have repeatedly said Simon had a history of ignoring or withholding evidence that suggested a suspect was innocent. She also falsely testified during murder trials. In one case, Simon testified that the defendant fatally stabbed the victim, which lined up with what turned out to be a coerced, false confession. The autopsy revealed the victim was beaten to death.
The stories behind the convictions are symptomatic of a dark, troubling, and often lawless time for Detroit’s homicide division. During a multiple-year investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice that began in December 2000, federal investigators found that homicide detectives trampled on the constitutional rights of suspects and witnesses for decades to get confessions. According to the DOJ, the department had a history of subjecting suspects and witnesses to false arrests, illegal detentions, and abusive interrogations. Despite what was at stake, the detectives weren’t properly trained, and bad cops were rarely disciplined, the DOJ concluded.
In 2003, to avoid a massive civil rights lawsuit claiming suspects and witnesses endured false arrests, unlawful detentions, fabricated confessions, excessive force, and unconstitutional conditions of confinement, the Detroit Police
“At that point I broke down in tears, begged investigator Simon for my life and continued to protest my innocence,” Johnson said. “Investigator Simon then stormed out of the room.”
‘A stupid [n-word]’
On Mother’s Day in 1999, Lisa Kindred was getting inside her family van with her three children when a lone gunman rushed up and shot her in the chest on Bewick Street on the city’s east side. To save her children, the 35-year-old Roseville woman drove away and pulled into a gas station to ask for help. She fell out of the car and was later pronounced dead at a hospital. Her children huddled in the back seat, screaming and crying.
The children, ages 1o days to 8 years old, were uninjured.
Within hours, police rounded up two alleged witnesses, both of whom were heavily intoxicated on drugs and alcohol, according to a lawsuit that was later filed. One was a 16-year-old who was illiterate and dropped out of high school. The other had mental health issues and heard voices.
Both interrogations “turned to physical abuse,” and Simon and another cop choked one of the alleged witnesses, according to court records. One of the interrogations lasted six hours, and Simon allegedly threatened to frame two suspects or they’d be implicated in the murder, according to court records. She wrote up the statements and told them to sign the papers.
Afraid they’d be charged, the pair signed the statements, leading to the arrests of Justly Johnson, 24, and Kendrick Scott, 20, on the day of the shooting.
Department agreed to DOJ oversight in 2003. Because of the harsh interrogation tactics, DPD agreed in 2006 to videotape interrogations of all suspects in crimes that carry a maximum penalty of life in prison.
After 13 years of federal government scrutiny, the DOJ finally ended its oversight, but only after DPD agreed to sweeping changes in a consent decree to overhaul its arrest, interrogation, and detention policies. Detectives could no longer round up witnesses and force them to answer questions at police precincts and headquarters.
By then, the damage done during that time is impossible to measure. But what’s clear is that lives were destroyed, and many more innocent people are likely behind bars for crimes they didn’t commit, attorneys and private investigators say.
At no point since then have prosecutors or police tried to reexamine the cases during this troubling time.
“The Detroit Homicide Division was a trainwreck. It was completely out of control in the 1990s and early 2000s,” Moran says. “You have a police department that for a decade or more was rogue. There’s no other way to describe it. It’s undeniable.”
In 1997, three years before the DOJ’s investigation, the head of DPD’s Homicide Division, Joan Ghougoian, was accused of illegally obtaining murder confessions by falsely promising suspects they could go home. Monica Childs, a homicide detective at the time, blew the whistle on Ghougoian and was reassigned to another department. Childs alleged in a lawsuit against the department that Ghougoian attacked, cursed, bullied, and ignored her when she tried to prevent illegally obtained murder confessions from being used.
At the time, Simon was working in the Homicide Division.
Although she is by no means the only Detroit homicide detective to be accused of eliciting false confessions and witness statements during that time, the volume of allegations and the resulting exonerations make Simon stand out in a department plagued by accusations of misconduct.
Despite the attention the whistleblower lawsuit and DOJ investigation brought to the police department, Simon continued to illegally obtain confessions, according to lawsuits, affidavits, and depositions.
During an interrogation, Simon called Johnson a racial slur and told him any jury in America would convict him of killing a white woman, according to Johnson. Simon added that she was under pressure from then-Mayor Dennis Archer to close the case and didn’t care if he was innocent, according to one of Johnson’s affidavits.
He said Simon didn’t investigate his alibis and she responded that “it didn’t matter because the mayor was her boss and her boss was on them and they were going to charge me with the murder whether I was innocent or not.”
Johnson, who had a baby on the way, said he “begged” Simon “not to do this to me.”
“Ms. Simon then asked me how far I had gone in school,” Johnson recalled. “I told her I had gone through 1oth grade. She then called me a ‘stupid [n-word]’ and repeated that I needed to confess to this crime that I did not do.”
Simon repeated the slur and that a jury was going to convict a Black man of killing a white woman, even if he didn’t commit the crime.
“At that point I broke down in tears, begged investigator Simon for my life and continued to protest my innocence,” Johnson said. “Investigator Simon then stormed out of the room.”
Kendrick Scott.
MICHIGAN DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS
In January 2000, Johnson was convicted of murder, assault with intent to commit robbery, and felony use of a firearm. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Scott was convicted of the same charges in May 2000 and was also sentenced to life without parole.
Johnson and Scott never gave up on getting out of prison and proving their innocence.
In 2009, Scott Lewis, an investigative reporter in Detroit, began reviewing the case. Two years later, he sent a letter to the victim’s son, Charmous Skinner Jr., who at the time of the shooting was 8 years old. He was in the front seat when his mother was shot and said he’d never forget the shooter’s face. He described the gunman as being in his mid-30s with a heavy beard and very large nose, neither of which matched the description of Johnson or Scott. He also said the shooter was alone.
Lewis contacted the Michigan Innocence Clinic, which had recently taken on the case. Law students and a supervising attorney from the clinic interviewed Skinner and showed him photographs of Johnson and Scott. Neither of them was the gunman, he said. Skinner said he was “a hundred percent” positive.
Even though Skinner had seen the killer, police never interviewed him.
Despite the new evidence, the clinic couldn’t get a judge to look at the case.
Wayne County Circuit Judge Prentis Edwards denied a motion for relief from judgment in 2011, without even holding a hearing. In 2013, Wayne County Circuit Judge James Callahan also denied the motion without a hearing, and the Michigan Court of Appeals declined to grant the defense permission to appeal.
Finally, in 2014, the Michigan Supreme Court ordered the cases to be remanded to circuit court for a joint hearing to determine whether Scott and Johnson were entitled to a new trial.
During the hearing, one of the alleged witnesses said he had falsely implicated Johnson and Scott and that police “whooped” him during the interrogation. A cousin of the other alleged witness, who died in 2008, said her cousin admitted to her that he lied to investigators because he was afraid of being charged.
Defense attorneys also provided reports that showed the victim’s husband, Will Kindred, had been involved in “a series of violent domestic incidents” with his wife. At one point, he even threatened to kill her whole family, according to the records. On at least two occasions, police confiscated .22-caliber weapons from the husband after two of the alleged domestic violence incidents.
The weapon used in the murder was a .22-caliber gun.
Nevertheless, the judge denied a
motion for a new trial in August 2015, concluding that Kindred was likely murdered as part of a planned contract killing that involved Scott and Johnson.
After the Michigan Court of Appeals upheld the ruling, the Michigan Supreme Court finally ordered new trials for Johnson and Scott in July 2018.
On Nov. 28, 2018, the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office dismissed the charges, and Scott and Johnson were free men for the first time in 18 years.
Johnson and Scott filed separate lawsuits in U.S. District Court against Simon and another Detroit cop, Catherine Adams, claiming they coerced two witnesses into falsely implicating them in the murder and engaged in “deliberate and knowing fabrication of evidence.”
In November 2022, the city of Detroit settled the lawsuits, agreeing to pay Johnson and Scott $8 million each.
Johnson’s attorney, Wolfgang Mueller, says lawsuits and media exposure are the most effective ways to prevent police departments and prosecutors from putting innocent people in prison.
“Publicity and lawsuits help improve the system,” Mueller tells Metro Times “You have to hit people in the pocketbook. It’s when they get hit in the pocketbook that they make changes. When this stuff comes out of the dark, then change can be made. We as a society won’t tolerate it if we know about it. It’s just that for so long people didn’t know about it.”
Coercive tactics
In February 2000, Nathan Peterson found himself face to face with Simon, accused of fatally shooting a man. Moments earlier, he says, he was riding in the rear of a police car with a cameraman.
Like the others, Peterson, who was 23 at the time, says he was isolated in a room for hours before Simon began threatening him.
“During the interrogation, she was using this cameraman as a tool to try to threaten to expose me to the media as a murderer,” he tells Metro Times. “She says if I didn’t agree to what she said, she was going to embarrass me and portray me as a murderer. … I was thinking of my family. I didn’t want my mom to get embarrassed.”
Simon claimed she had plenty of evidence against him to get a jury to convict him, threatened to take away his son, and promised to set him free if he confessed, he says.
“She presented herself as a prosecutor,” Peterson says. “She said she was willing to help me if I helped myself. She said if I agree to sign a statement, I could go home and face lesser charges. She had already convinced me that she had already arrested me and charged me
with murder.”
During an interrogation, police are barred from making promises about charges since those decisions fall under the prosecutor’s authority.
“I was ready to get out of there, and I was willing to do anything,” he recalls.
Peterson says Simon wrote the statement and told him to sign it. According to the statement, Peterson wrestled the victim with a gun and shot him in the back twice.
Peterson was charged with murder and immediately incarcerated.
His first trial ended in a hung jury in July 2001.
Peterson says police and prosecutors changed the narrative of the shooting during the second trial, and he was convicted.
“My thing with Simon, she knew I didn’t do what she said I did,” Peterson says.
At a hearing before the trial, Simon initially denied there was a cameraman but changed her story when Peterson’s attorney said they had a witness. They tried to get a copy of the video footage but never got it.
Under oath, Simon insisted she didn’t use any form of persuasion to get Peterson to sign the confession. Simon also insisted she couldn’t recall any details of the interrogation, a claim she repeatedly made under oath in other cases.
Peterson says he doesn’t believe Simon thought he was guilty.
“Their only concern was just closing the case,” he says. “That’s all she was concerned about. They weren’t concerned whether I was innocent or not. They virtually kidnapped me off the street and did what they wanted with me.”
Peterson remains in prison and has been unable to convince courts or prosecutors to review his case.
The Reid technique
James L. Trainum, a former longtime homicide detective in Washington, D.C., and an expert and consultant on interrogations and confessions, says Simon’s tactics were psychologically coercive and could easily lead to false confessions.
He says Simon uses a controversial method of interrogation known to create false confessions. Called the “Reid technique,” the method is aimed at increasing suspects’ anxiety by creating a high-pressure environment, such as confining them to a room for hours and saying they are going to spend the rest of their lives in prison. The interrogator then presents evidence — real or invented — to suggest that police already have proof of the suspects’ guilt. The technique was developed by former Chicago cop and polygraph expert John E. Reid in the 1950s.
To elicit a confession, the interrogator provides explanations that frame the suspect’s actions as justifiable or excusable, even though the interrogator knows the statement will lead to charges. A prime example is getting suspects to say they killed someone by accident.
The idea is to make the suspect believe that confessing is the easiest way out.
The problem is, experts say, the technique is inherently manipulative and can foster confirmation bias in investigators and overwhelm suspects to such a degree that they believe lying is better than telling the truth.
Years of research and numerous exonerations have demonstrated that the Reid technique can easily result in false confessions.
“The suspects are presented with a situation where they feel like they are going to get screwed,” Trainum tells Metro Times. “They are being guaranteed that they are going to be convicted by an authority figure. Then they start talking about leniency and say the judge will like it much better if they confess. They’ll say, ‘If you take responsibility, they are going to go much lighter on you.’ It’s a forced choice.”
Trainum adds, “What the interrogation process is doing is limiting your options. They are able to lie to you about the evidence. All of that puts you in a vice.”
The method has been banned in several European countries. In Canada, Provincial Court Judge Mike Dinkel ruled in 2012 that “stripped of its bare essentials, the Reid technique is a guiltpresumptive, confrontational, psychologically manipulative procedure whose purpose is to extract a confession.”
One of the largest police consulting firms in the U.S., Wicklander-Zulawski & Associates, announced in 2017 that it stopped training detectives in the Reid technique, which it had taught since 1984. The technique was being misused and prompting false confessions, the firm said.
“Confrontation is not an effective way of getting truthful information,” Wicklander-Zulawski & Associates President and CEO Shane Sturman said at the time. “Rather than primarily seeking a confession, it’s an important goal for investigators to find the truth ethically through a respectful, non-confrontational approach.”
In 2021, Illinois and Oregon barred police from lying to minors. The U.S. House is considering a bill that would render statements made during interrogations inadmissible if a court determines the officer deliberately used deceptive tactics, such as fabricating evidence or making unauthorized promises of leniency.
To reduce false confessions, Trainum says the U.S. needs to abolish the Reid
technique.
Of the more than 3,550 exonerations nationwide, about 13% involved false confessions, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. The most famous case is known as the Central Park Five. It involved five Black and Latino teenagers wrongfully convicted of raping a jogger in New York City’s Central Park in 1989, only to be exonerated in 2002 after another individual confessed and DNA evidence confirmed his guilt
More than half of those exonerated are Black. In fact, innocent Black people are seven times more likely to be wrongfully convicted of murder than innocent white people, a reflection of the persistent biases in the criminal justice system, according to a 2022 report from the registry
To juries, confessions are highly incriminating and they alone can lead to convictions, Trainum and other experts say.
“A false confession trumps all other evidence, and it still does in a lot of cases because people say, ‘I wouldn’t have confessed, so I don’t see why they would have,’” Trainum says. “Even today when it comes to exonerations, you can have DNA evidence and people will still fight it and say they confessed.”
Trainum believes false confessions are more common than statistics suggest because they “are the hardest cases to get exonerated.”
Another problem, he says, is that police departments in the U.S. don’t tend to invest enough in training detectives to interrogate suspects, leaving the accused in unqualified hands.
In a deposition in Craighead’s lawsuit in January 2023, Simon said she went to “several classes” to learn how to take witness statements and remembered “maybe once going to an outside seminar” on interrogations. She admitted she never received training by the Michigan State Police or the FBI, two agencies that typically provide courses on interrogations.
She also said she couldn’t remember ever talking with prosecutors about the constitutional rights of suspects.
Nevertheless, she estimated she conducted “hundreds” of interrogations during her roughly 20 years in the Homicide Division.
Lawsuits filed against Simon also pointed out that she failed to ensure the confessions were factual. Had she bothered to verify the statements from the exonerees and others, some of the confessions would have been thrown out and could have prevented innocent people from going to prison, according to the lawsuits.
The confessions also omitted basic information that would verify whether
the suspect was truthful about committing a crime. While questioning Craighead, for example, Simon didn’t bother to ask basic questions, like what kind of gun he used, when he arrived at the murder scene, and which part of the victim’s body he shot.
Since it turned out that Craighead wasn’t the shooter, he wouldn’t have been able to answer the questions truthfully.
When asked by Craighead’s attorney Mueller whether she “thought it’d be important” to ask him about the type of gun he used, Simon called the question “stupid.”
Undeterred, Mueller asked, “Does it sound reasonable to you, that a detective investigating a homicide, and there’s a gun, would want to know what kind of gun?”
“Yes. Yes,” Simon responded.
Michigan has safeguards in place that are intended to protect defendants who were coerced into giving false confessions. In what is called a “Walker hearing,” judges are responsible for determining the voluntariness and admissibility of a defendant’s confession before the trial. It is a crucial safeguard meant to ensure that any confession used in court was made without coercion, undue influence, or violation of the defendant’s rights.
However, judges have been reluctant to throw out confessions, even when there is compelling evidence that the confessions were not voluntary. That’s because judges are quick to side with prosecutors and police, even when detectives like Simon have demonstrated a pattern of eliciting false confessions and violating defendants’ constitutional rights, legal experts and defense attorneys say.
‘It’s akin to slavery’
In 1996, a year before Craighead’s friend was murdered, Lamarr Monson was accused of fatally stabbing a runaway 12-year-old girl at a drug house on Detroit’s west side. Like Craighead, Monson had no criminal record, was interrogated for hours by Simon, and was denied access to a phone and a lawyer, according to court records.
Monson, who was 24 at the time, was convicted of murder and sentenced to 30 to 50 years in prison based on a false confession that was later contradicted by evidence that should have been presented at his trial.
Monson had a 6-year-old daughter at the time. She would be an adult by the time he was exonerated.
“When you are innocent of a crime and put in prison, it’s the same emotional feeling of being kidnapped and taken from your family,” Monson tells Metro Times. “It’s akin to slavery.”
After more than 20 years behind bars, Monson was finally exonerated in August 2017, in large part because Wayne County prosecutors believed the “confession” was coerced. Simon was also accused of providing prosecutors with false information about crucial physical evidence and withholding inculpatory evidence.
At the trial, Simon testified that the girl, Christina Brown, died from multiple stab wounds, a claim that fit the narrative in the false confession but contradicted the autopsy that found the victim died of blunt force trauma to the skull and brain. Simon later said her false testimony was an “honest mistake.”
“For her to sit there and create false narratives to convict someone of a crime, you have to be a wicked person,” Monson says. “She was destroying lives. She was sabotaging justice and has willingly done
this regularly.”
Monson still vividly recalls the afternoon of Jan. 20, 1996, the day he walked into an abandoned apartment where he had sold drugs and found Brown sprawled out on the bathroom floor, lying in a pool of blood and gasping for breath. Her head was swollen.
“She raised her hands and tried to say my name,” Monson recalls. “I told her I was going to get help. I was banging on doors, trying to call 911. I went to my sister’s house [two blocks away] and told the operator there was a girl in need of medical attention.”
Monson says he sprinted back to the bathroom, covered Brown in a blanket, and propped her up so she wouldn’t choke on her blood. He also began chest compressions.
Brown was later pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.
Two other people at the apartment did nothing to help, Monson says.
Police ordered Monson and the two others to get into a squad car, where they were taken to police headquarters.
Simon denied Monson his right to use a phone or contact an attorney and questioned him for more than four hours, according to court records. Simon told him he could call his parents if he signed a statement that claimed he had sex with Brown, an allegation he vehemently denies and says Simon fabricated to “dirty me up” and “make me look like a monster.”
Monson was forced to spend the night in jail and barely slept. The next morning, without having anything to eat, he was promised he could call his parents and go home if he signed a confession, according to his lawsuit.
Like in Craighead’s case, Monson was told he would spend the rest of his life in prison unless he signed a statement that claimed the killing was accidental and that he got into a physical confrontation with the victim. According to the alleged confession, Monson accidentally stabbed Brown in the neck with a knife she had been holding.
Never mind that Brown actually died of blunt force trauma, presumably from being beaten with the top of a toilet tank.
Police either failed to get fingerprints from the knife and the toilet lid or they never disclosed the findings. If they had, they would have discovered that the fingerprints didn’t belong to Monson and in fact belonged to Robert “Raymond” Lewis, who was also at the house and questioned by police.
In 2012, Lewis’s ex-girlfriend told police that Lewis bought drugs from Brown on the morning she was killed and that he returned “covered in blood.” He said he “had to kill that bitch” because she had scratched him, according to his ex-girlfriend.
Nathan Peterson.
MICHIGAN DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS
Police didn’t focus on Lewis at the time because he had incriminated Monson. It would take another five years after that statement for Monson to be exonerated, in no small part because the prosecutor’s office continued to insist he was guilty.
While he was in jail, Monson’s family spent $10,000 on an attorney who brought him no closer to getting him free. Without any money left, Monson taught himself how to file his own motions and appeals. He wanted to get fingerprints from the weapons used in the murder, but each court rebuffed him.
Nearly 15 years after he was sentenced to prison, Monson had all but given up. He felt demoralized and helpless.
“God blessed this circumstance,” Monson says. “I took my hands off this and said, ‘I did all I can.’”
Finally, in about 2011, the Michigan Innocence Clinic agreed to take Monson’s case and began the arduous task of fighting to get the weapons fingerprinted. At each step, the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office defended the handling of the case and argued Monson was guilty.
Then in September 2016, a state court ordered police to analyze the top of the toilet tank, a basic step that should have been taken 19 years earlier. The results were eye-opening: Two of the finger-
prints belonged to Lewis, and none of them matched Monson’s. The knife later went missing, making it impossible to analyze during the appeals process.
It was also discovered that police failed to analyze fingerprint and blood samples from the victim’s clothing, the knife, and male clothing on the floor.
With the new evidence and an affidavit from Lewis’s girlfriend, a court finally granted Monson’s motion for a new trial on Jan. 30, 2017.
Rather than trying to convince a jury that Monson was guilty in the face of the new evidence, the prosecutor’s office dismissed the case on Aug. 25, 2017, and Monson was exonerated and finally became a free man.
In a statement at the time, the prosecutor’s office indicated that Monson’s confession may have been coerced.
“Due to the destruction of evidence, issues surrounding the way the police obtained Monson’s confession and the passage of time, we are unable to re-try this case,” Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said. “For similar reasons we are not able to charge anyone else in connection with the murder of Christina.”
Worthy also admonished the police department for failing to keep evidence that could exonerate an innocent person.
“The failure of the DPD to retain critical evidence potentially threatens the very foundation of the criminal justice system and the faith placed in it by the people we protect,” Worthy said, adding that she and others met with then-DPD Chief James Craig to raise the issue of the destruction of evidence in capital cases. The meeting resulted in Craig agreeing to a joint workgroup to develop an evidence retention policy.
Despite evidence that Lewis may be the real killer, he was never charged. Two investigators for the prosecutor’s office traveled to Pittsburgh to interview him, and he admitted he lived in the same apartment as the victim and bought drugs from her. But, according to the prosecutor’s office, he was “in poor physical health and denied any involvement in the death of Christina Brown.”
In February 2018, Monson filed a lawsuit against the city and Simon, along with several other officers. The case is still in court and headed for a trial in October.
“Now the chickens are coming home to roost,” Monson says.
All these years later, Monson is still in disbelief.
“I still can’t believe this happened,” Monson says. “They will willingly frame an innocent person and will not accept
any responsibility for doing so. It’s a slap in the face.”
Monson says it stings even more that a Black woman played a major role in his wrongful imprisonment.
“For a Black woman to not understand your plight as a Black man, and for her to be in a position to make things fair for you, she picked the side that abuses you and takes advantage of you, instead of seeking out the truth,” Monson says. “It’s incomprehensible that a Black woman would go to that extent to lock a young Black man in prison.”
In a written statement, DPD declined to comment on Simon’s tactics but said it “expects every member to follow the rules and regulations of the Department.”
Since the 1990s and early 2000s, DPD said it “has implemented measures including video recording of interrogations, audits and inspections to ensure members are acting in accordance with policy and that there is supervisory review.”
A spokesman added, “We have high standards for every member of our Department, especially those who have sworn to protect, serve and respect the constitutional rights of all.”
This story continues next week in part two.
WHAT’S GOING ON
Select events happening in metro Detroit this week. Be sure to check venue website before events for latest information. Add your event to our online calendar: metrotimes. com/AddEvent.
MUSIC
Wednesday, July 24
Live/Concert
Cassandra Wilson: A Tribute to Ed Love with Ralphe Armstrong 7:30 p.m.; The Aretha Franklin Amphitheatre, 2600 E. Atwater St., Detroit; $15-$60.
Tralyn & Friends 7-10 p.m.; Aretha’s Jazz Cafe, 350 Madison St., Detroit; $25.
Jackie’s Dead 8-11 p.m.; Bowlero Lanes & Lounge, 4209 Coolidge Hwy., Royal Oak; no cover.
Living Dead Girl 7 p.m.; Small’s, 10339 Conant St., Hamtramck; $12.
The Lemon Twigs, Henry Walters 7 p.m.; Magic Bag, 22920 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $25.
Matt Lorusso Trio & Special Guests 8-11 p.m.; Northern Lights Lounge, 660 W. Baltimore St., Detroit; no cover.
Nicotine Dolls, Darcy Moran 7 p.m.; The Shelter, 431 E. Congress St., Detroit; $25.
Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox 7 p.m.; The Fillmore, 2115 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $27.50-$97.50.
Thursday, July 25
Live/Concert
Amyl and the Sniffers, Lambrini Girls 7 p.m.; Magic Stick, 4120 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $30.
Babyface 8 p.m.; Caesars Palace Windsor - Augustus Ballroom, 377 E. Riverside Dr., Windsor; $33-$93.
Candlelight: A Tribute to Taylor Swift 8:30-9:45 p.m.; Frutig Farms, 7650 Scio Church Rd., Ann Arbor; $36.
Heavy Temple, Valley of the Sun, Cullossus, Solar Monolith 7 p.m.; Sanctuary Detroit, 2932 Caniff St., Hamtramck; $18-$57.
Magic Bag Presents: Gary Hoey 7 p.m.; Magic Bag, 22920 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $42.
The Band Camino, Knox 7 p.m.; Royal Oak Music Theatre, 318 W. Fourth St., Royal Oak; $39.50-$75. Sheefy McFly Coney Dog Pop-
Up noon; Spot Lite, 2905 Beaufait St., Detroit; no cover. Karaoke
DARE-U-OKE 9 p.m.-midnight; Northern Lights Lounge, 660 W. Baltimore St., Detroit; no cover.
Dance Yourself Clean - An Indie Electronic Dance Party (18+) 9 p.m.; The Fillmore, 2115 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $1-$28.
For The Fallen Dreams, Hollow Front, Mafia Birdhouse, Shallow Truths, At Water 6 p.m.; Sanctuary Detroit, 2932 Caniff St., Hamtramck; $20. Greggie and The Jets - A Tribute to Elton John 8 p.m.; Emerald Theatre, 31 N. Walnut St., Mount Clemens; $24-$240.
Il Divo 8 p.m.; The Music Hall, 350 Madison Ave., Detroit; $79-$119.
Infinity Song 7 p.m.; The Shelter, 431 E. Congress St., Detroit; $25.
Jodeci, Silk & Changing Faces 8 p.m.; The Aretha Franklin Amphitheatre, 2600 E. Atwater St., Detroit; $50-$200.
Save Ferris, The Boy Detective 7 p.m.; Magic Bag, 22920 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $27.
Sunlight Ascending, Adventurer, Silktail, Former Critics 7 pm; The Loving Touch, 22634 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $10.
Taking Back Sunday, Citizen 6 p.m.; Royal Oak Music Theatre, 318 W. Fourth St., Royal Oak; $39.50-$79.50.
Totally Tubular Festival: Thomas Dolby, Thompson Twins’ Tom Bailey, Modern English, Men Without Hats, Wang Chung, Bow Wow Wow, Tommy Tutone, and Eddie Munoz of The Plimsouls 5:30 p.m.; Meadow Brook Amphitheatre, 3554 Walton Blvd., Rochester Hills; $29.50-$89.50.
Vultures of Culture, The Dirty News, DJ Danton 8 p.m.; Bowlero Lanes & Lounge, 4209 Coolidge Hwy., Royal Oak; no cover.
DJ/Dance
NAYT, Discotek, ARCS, COD3R, Frylik 9 p.m.; Garden Bowl, 4120 Woodward, Detroit; no cover before 10:30 p.m., $15 after.
Saturday, July 27
Live/Concert
311, AWOLNATION, Neon Trees 7 p.m.; Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre at Freedom Hill, 14900 Metropolitan Pkwy.,
Sterling Heights; $29.50-$89.50.
The Black Moods, Striking South 7:30 p.m.-midnight; The Token Lounge, 28949 Joy Rd., Westland; $15.
Bowling for Soup 6:30 p.m.; Saint Andrew’s Hall, 431 E. Congress St., Detroit; $37.50.
Dead To Fall, Symphony In Peril, Above This Fire, Cuss, and more 6 p.m.; Pike Room, 1 S. Saginaw, Pontiac; $20.
Amyl and the Sniffers perform at the Majestic Theatre on Thursday.
sor - Augustus Ballroom, 377 E. Riverside Dr., Windsor; $44-$99.
The Black Moods, Striking South 7:30 p.m.; The Token Lounge, 28949 Joy Rd., Westland; $15.
Sunday, July 28
Live/Concert
B.Slade sponsored by Hotter Than Detroit- LGBT Detroit 7:30 p.m.; Sound Board, 2901 Grand River Ave., Detroit; $38-$51.
Caspian, And So I Watch You From Afar, Sunlight Ascending 7 p.m.; The Shelter, 431 E. Congress St., Detroit; $27.
Direct from Sweden: The Music of ABBA with the DSO 7:30 p.m.; Meadow Brook Amphitheatre, 3554 Walton Blvd., Rochester Hills; $30-$75.
The Golden Year: a Musical Experience by Kameron Sheffield 7:30-10:30 p.m.; The Congregation Detroit, 9321 Rosa Parks Blvd., Detroit; $20 advance, $25 at the door.
Locrian, A Death Cinematic, Mission To The Sun 7 p.m.; Sanctuary Detroit, 2932 Caniff St., Hamtramck; $15.
Stick Men: Tony Levin, Pat Mastelotto & Markus Reuter 8 p.m.; The Token Lounge, 28949 Joy Rd., Westland; $20-$120.
Tate McRae, Presley Regier 8 p.m.; Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre at Freedom Hill, 14900 Metropolitan Pkwy., Sterling Heights; $29.50-$99.50.
Monday, July 29
Live/Concert
Sky Covington’s Take 5 - All Male Jazz Revue ft. Leon Thomas, Donny Hathaway, Miles Davis, Billy Esktine & Bill Whithers 7-10 p.m.; Aretha’s Jazz Cafe, 350 Madison St., Detroit; $35.
Rosie’s Kitty Catfé Comedy Night Fundraiser - Dinner and a Show with Melanie Hearns, Keith Lenart, Beau Lerner (proceeds go to Rosie’s Kitty Catfé); $50; 3:30 p.m., Sunday.
Masonic Temple Immortal Comedy: In the Acacia Room; $5 advance, $10 door; Thursday, 8:30-9:45 p.m.
Woodbridge Pub Comedy Show & Open Mic at Woodbridge;. 9:30p.m. sign-up, 10 p.m. show; no cover; Tuesday, 9:30 p.m.
Continuing This Week Stand-up
Blind Pig Blind Pig Comedy FREE Mondays, 8 p.m.
The Independent Comedy Club at Planet Ant Tonight vs Everybody: Open Mic Comedy; $5 suggested donation; Thursdays, 9-10:30 p.m.
Mark Ridley’s Comedy Castle Open Mike Night; $5; Wednesday, 7:30-9 p.m.
Detroit Shipping Company 313 Comedy Show Your host to Live Comedy in The D. This show features rotating lineups of some of the best comedians in the country and globally. Shows are every Sunday at 7PM EST. Free Sundays, 7-8:30 p.m.
FILM Screening
Small’s Movie Premiere of This is New Tone featuring J. Navarro & the Traitors and more; $20; Thursday, 7-10 p.m.
“The Colour of Ink” Film Screening + “Water & Light” Artist Talk Thursday, 6-8:30 p.m.; Playground Detroit, 2845 Gratiot Ave., Detroit; $10.
ARTS Fashion Show
Gallery 46 Art and Design Roller Skate Fashion Show Get ready to witness a fusion of creativity and style at the Art & Design Roller Skate Fashion Show! Join us at Gallery 46 for an unforgettable event where art, design, and fashion collide in a spectacular display on wheels. Experience the thrill of watching models glide down the runway in unique roller skate-inspired outfits, showcasing the latest trends in the industry. Don’t miss out on this one-of-a-kind event that promises to be a feast for the eyes and a celebration of artistic expression! $0-$75; Saturday, 5-10 p.m.
Sigh Bleu Strut Against Human Trafficking; An artistic fundraiser dedicated to spreading awareness and educating about Human Trafficking. Sunday, 6-11 p.m.
Continuing This Week
Cranbrook Art Museum Constellations & Affinities: Selections from the Cranbrook Collection “Constellations and Affinities: Selections from the Cranbrook Collection” is now open at Cranbrook Art Museum! Sampling from the Cranbrook Collection, this ongoing exhibition gathers a broad and eclectic sampling of objects made by artists, architects, and designers associated with Cranbrook Academy of Art. Arranged like a contemporary curiosity cabinet, the works on view span numerous media and represent a broad range of practices taught at the Academy. Works have been arranged in various constellations to compare and contrast certain affinities in materials, processes, and approaches among the artists while acknowledging the singular artistic vision of each maker. Museum Admission, Free on Thursdays Wednesdays-Sundays, 11 am-5 pm.
Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) Thursdays at the Museum: Highlights of the Permanent Collection Free Tuesdays-
Habatat Galleries 52nd Annual International Glass Show (GLASS52) On May 4 through August 30 , Habatat Galleries Complex, in Royal Oak, the oldest and largest art gallery dedicated to contemporary glass, presents Glass52, The International Glass Exhibition that is the largest exhibition of contemporary art glass in the world. This breathtaking exhibition, featuring 400 examples of stunning studio glass art, is the highlight of the year for Habatat .The public is invited to see the exhibition for free Tuesday through Saturday, 10 am. to 5 p.m. Through Aug. 30.
PARC Art Gallery The Light Show
PARC Art Gallery announces a new art exhibit, The Light Show. It includes 27 artists and over 55 one-of-a-kind pieces of art. The gallery is open daily 10am to 8pm, except for holidays. This show will be on display until Aug. 1. Featured artists: Molly Bell, David Bowling, Cheryl Chidester, Tina Creguer, Ellen Doyle, Jaclyn Gordyan, James Guy, Tim Haber, Terri Haranczak, Kseniya Hauptmann, Vanessa Howson, Susan Hunt, Michaele Kadell, Alexander Kautz, Mike Kroll, Dawn Krull, Mary Lane, Jen Muse, Brian Peck, Thomas Rosenbaum, Bill Schahfer, Valerie Shelton Miller, Victor Spieles, Leonid Tikh, Nancy Wanchik, Joan Witte, and Lori Zoumbaris. FREE Through Aug. 1, 10 am-8 pm.
Stamelos Gallery Center, UMDearborn Piece by Piece: Recent Work from Regional Fiber Artists The Stamelos Gallery Center is proud to share Piece by Piece: Recent Work from Regional Fiber Artists with the campus and greater community. Fiber lends itself to an exploration of the potency of being human. The familiarity of a frayed edge, a softness to comfort us, or a thickness to protect us; fabric reminds us of how we need to be held. It takes us back to the ways we care for each other, the ways our ancestors have blended need and beauty by weaving, knotting, spinning, dyeing, and making for centuries. This medium is not only artistic in practicum, but holds a necessity in its utility in our lives. How can we learn from textiles to weave our communities more strongly? In a place like Southeast Michigan, where so many holes have been torn, threads left frayed, reaching for a hand without the tools to stitch us back together - fiber art is helping piece together a vibrant community, reminding ourselves that we all hold vibrancy in our individuality. Piece by Piece explores what contemporary fiber making in the area looks like today, and where it will take us in the future. Free to the public Mondays-Fridays, Sundays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
MUSIC
A saint and a sinner
How rapper Courtney Bell found balance in music and life
By Kahn Santori Davison
It’s July in Detroit and it’s hot, like hot, hot. Hot enough to make the radiator in your Hellcat overheat and make your Vernors explode in the backseat. But you wouldn’t know it from looking at hip-hop artist Courtney Bell. He’s sitting on his porch in between phone calls about studio time and stage time. He’s dressed lax — a white tank top, black joggers, and there’s not a bead of perspiration anywhere on him on this 90-degree day.
For Bell, 29, the summer of 2024 has been a reemergence from a four-year hiatus. He dropped his mixtape Microdose in May with Detroit all-star Royce da 5’9”, performed at Detroit’s Backwoods and Bonfires festival, and was even in Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” video (and in attendance at the rapper’s huge Juneteenth show).
Lamar is a family friend to Bell, who has been going back and forth to Cali well before he was doing music. He says being a witness to Lamar’s ascent to stardom has been inspiring. “From the artist’s perspective, it’s like, ‘OK God,
you got me in the realm with one of the greatest rappers of all time.’ And I can work and be in the same kind of space if I keep working,” Bell says.
Bell grew up on the same Joy Road as Tee Grizzley (they’re actually first cousins), graduated from Cody High School, and describes himself as an intelligent kid who dabbled in street shit.
“I was smart as hell. Everybody knew me,” he says. “My nickname was Dexter [after Dexter’s Laboratory] because of how good I was with numbers. I also had a flip side to me. I grew up in gang culture. I was book smart but I was outside. I experienced that duality being in high school.”
Bell was also good with rhyming, wrote poetry, and displayed a natural knack for penning words over music. Rapping came naturally as he acquired a love for hip-hop and was inspired by 2Pac, Jay-Z, Nas, and several local greats.
“My favorite artist of all time is Street Lord Juan, hands down,” Bell says adamantly. “And then I’m going to give it to Blade [Icewood] and Big Herc, for
his ability to tell stories and articulate himself on a street level.”
As time went by Bell was self-aware enough to know that he had a lot of raw talent he wasn’t nurturing. He saw hip-hop was something he did when he wasn’t hustling. It was shared vocation with street life, but he didn’t embrace it as his calling. Eventually his peers started to nudge him to pour more of himself into his music.
“My big homies pulled me to the side like, ‘Yo you’re still active out there and you can really rap,’” he says.
For the first time Bell turned more of his attention to music than the streets, and the result was his first album, 2018’s 10 Commandments (which was actually completed in 2016). The album consisted of 10 melodious songs in which Bell lyrically explored upliftment through spiritually, while acknowledging the pressures of being addicted to the streets.
“I’ve been drowning in this holy water/ watching all these black kings get slaughtered. Cause Lord knows, for my
beliefs I turn into a martyr to save my people from this new world order,” he raps in “Commandment II: Duality.”
“I wanted my first body [of] work to be my first fruit to God … That’s what got me noticed,” he says, adding that it was inspired by the Hebrew Israelite movement.”
10 Commandments did more than get him noticed — it was an M-80 thrown right in the sphere of a Detroit hip-hop scene that was thriving off of trap narratives. Bell released the album independently and revealed there was no big marketing push or budget and the entire ascension was organic. “The stars just aligned,” he says.
As the streams and attention grew, record labels RCA, Def Jam, and Kevin “Coach K” Lee of Quality Control reached out about signing him to a record deal. Bell was hesitant. He was 21 and anti-corporate. “I didn’t want to sign,” he says. “I was super conscious and in an aware state of being at that time. I had just converted over to being vegan, like I ain’t fuck with the industy
Courtney Bell, 29, emerged from a four-year hiatus thanks to help from Royce da 5’9” and Kendrick Lamar.
KAHN SANTORI DAVISON
… My team talked to me. Like, ‘Let’s see, let’s just fuck with RCA.’”
Bell went along with it and signed a two-album deal with RCA. Less than a year later his second project, Poverty Stricken, was released.
“They say that he dope, but he be preachin’/ How the world don’t accept him?/ He teach without overreachin’/ He can kick it in the hood with the killers and still reach ’em/ And converse with the minds of the conscious, that nigga got it, uh,” he raps in “GB4.”
Poverty Stricken was a deviation from the Hebew Israelite themes of 10 Commandments as Bell was even more open about his dealings with street life and his desire to be a better man. The lyrical transparency between both albums earned him a “conscious rapper” title, but Bell has never wanted to be labeled.
“I didn’t want to be attached to being a conscious rapper because at the end of the day I am that,” he says. “You not walking around saying Nas is a conscious rapper, even though he is. He raps about everything, he raps about everybody.”
RCA wanted to release Poverty Stricken as more of a mixtape to use the project as leadoff batter to get Bell on base which would set up the next album to be a homerun. Bell didn’t agree with the strategy. He had already scrapped half of the first version of the album due to sample clearances and felt Poverty Stricken deserved the big-label push. Bell mentally checked out and decided to move on from RCA. He holds no grudges with the label and admits he blames his actions on immaturity.
“I’m fresh off street shit so I’m walking in being a nigga in the building,” he says. “It’s a difference between Courtney the artist and being Courtney the businessman … that was a learning curve for me.”
Bell gravitated back to the streets, a place where he knew how to make money. He also struggled with the loss of his grandmother, his brother, his sister, and his best friend.
“Dealing with all of these deaths in a year or two span, all these people that were very close to me. I gave myself the proper time to grieve. The music is always going to be here,” he says. Bell sought to connect to himself on a deeper level. He joined the psychedelic community and went on an ayahuasca retreat, an experience that he says was “beautiful” and “life-changing.” He emerged focused and healed. Around the same time, he befriended Detroit emcee Royce da 5’9” and began transitioning himself back into music.
“I didn’t find the point where I could trust God completely until me and Royce got in the studio together
in 2022,” he confesses. “We started to lock in and kick it, kick it. I had to take accountability like, “You’re the reason you’re not where you can be musically.’”
Bell released mixtapes Microdose in May followed up by Microdose Darkide on Friday July, 19 under Yahbody LLC and MNRK Records LP. Both projects show the duality that Bell has had to balance most of his life. Microdose shows the more boom-bap and insightful sides of Bell while Microdose Darkside is grittier and more trapdriven (but still has some spiritual undertones). The mixtapes are his first in four years.
On “Hebrews 13:6” off of Microdose Darkside with Skilla Baby, he raps, “I be praying a lot, no need to worry known to keep the peace/ I know Christian niggas that will murk you in a Jesus piece.”
But on “Word II Conway” off of Microdose he raps, “Talk to the dealer and the deacon, they the same and they don’t see it/ Every Sunday, preachin’ first and the fifteenth, my niggas eatin’.”
“I always do my best to be authentically myself,” he says. “Right now I’ve already experimented with the consciousness side. I’ve seen what that fanbase looks like and what it could potentially look like if I stay consistent. And on the street side, I know what niggas want to hear. It’s about finding that balance and not losing morality with myself trying to please people and get fans.”
Bell is a creative’s creative. He incorporates various techniques when he’s behind the mic. He doesn’t prefer anyone in the studio when he’s recording and he’s willing to write, punch his bars, or do whatever it takes to make a dope song.
“I still do voice notes,” he says. “If I hear a beat, I’ll come up with a cadence. Outside of that I haven’t been writing. I like that approach [of punching in lyrics] way more because I haven’t been thinking as much. I’m just writing how I feel. It’s different tools you pull out your toolbox.”
Moving forward, Bell is ready to embrace the next wave of his career. He plans to implement the steadiness it takes to be great. Much like Boldy James, Bell has the admiration and respect from both his hip-hop peers in the boom-bap community as well as the trap side. A full-length album is planned for early next year and he wants to be a mainstay on stage.
“I feel like I am going to be something that a lot of people are going to look toward to and want to embody,” he says, adding, “You don’t have somebody in our generation that embodies the spirit of Pac with the ability to weave between both, that’s what I’m seeking to do.”
Joe Muer Seafood renovates as RenCen demo considered
Joe Muer Seafood is looking better than ever.
The waterfront restaurant recently emerged from a monthlong renovation, which includes updated décor and a new bar and piano lounge where you can catch live music from the Spinners’ Keith Ferguson. The entire vibe is like something straight out of Mad Men
The renovation comes as the future of the Renaissance Center building appears to be in limbo. The Detroit Free Press recently reported that officials are considering demolishing the Detroit skyline’s most iconic structure.
According to the paper’s sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, preliminary discussions between General Motors, Dan Gilbert’s Bedrock real estate company, and architectural and construction firms point to at least partly demolishing the RenCen site, which is viewed as outdated and inefficient.
The Renaissance Center opened in 1977 and became GM’s headquarters in 1996. In April, GM announced it would relocate to Gilbert’s new Hudson’s site tower under a 15-year lease.
If the Renaissance Center is demolished, Gilbert’s Hudson’s site tower will be the tallest building in Detroit.
Joe Muer opened in 1929 as a small oyster bar. It opened its location at 400 Renaissance Center #1404, Detroit, in 2011.
—Lee DeVito
Bites
The Bear’s Matty Matheson joins Standby
Detroit cocktail bar Standby has joined forces with someone familiar to fans of the hit FX series The Bear. Matty Matheson — a chef, restaurateur, and New York Times best-selling author who stars in The Bear and serves as one of the show’s executive producers — has joined Standby as a partner, the business announced.
Standby’s kitchen will launch a new menu this month developed by Mathe-
son, his first venture in the U.S. with his Our House Hospitality Company. Some of the items include Coconut Shrimp & Jerk Mayo, Mortadella Sliders, Alabama BBQ Grilled Wings, Steak Frites au Poivre, and Taquitos.
“Our vision for Standby has always been to evolve and grow with the times,” said Joe Robinson, Standby owner and operating partner. “We want Standby to be a place that outlives us, and that
Eastern Market Supino reopens for full service
Detroit favorite Supino Pizzeria recently took to Instagram to announce that its Eastern Market location has officially reopened for full service, featuring the same great pizza with a fresh new look.
“We’re serving the same tasty pies as before but you may notice we’ve had a bit of a facelift,” the post says. “We’re so happy to debut it to the people of Detroit.”
Supino closed in April 2023 due to damage from a nearby apartment fire, reopening in April this year just before the NFL Draft for carryout-only service. The team took the opportunity to revamp the dine-in space, and with the help of Midwest Common/ Colin Tury design and Detroit-based furniture-focused creative studio Donut Shop, the renovations are now complete.
Now, the Supino Pizzeria that Detroiters know and love is finally back with sit-down service.
Before Supino expanded into it, the space briefly hosted the sister restaurant La Rondinella.
Supino Pizzeria opened the flagship Eastern Market location in 2008, with much success. The spot opened a second location in New Center just a few years ago in 2021.
The New Center location operates from Monday through Saturday, while the Eastern Market location’s hours have been expanded to Tuesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. The social media post states that further expansion of hours may happen soon.
Supino is located at 2457 Russell St., Detroit.
—Layla McMurtrie
requires embracing change, innovation, and bold moves. We’re absolutely thrilled to be partnering with Matty and his incredible team, not only for their culinary talents but also because they’re genuinely wonderful people.”
In The Bear, Matheson plays Neil Fak, a handyman for the Chicago Italian beef restaurant that serves as the main setting of the show.
A Canadian, Matheson cut his teeth as executive chef of the former Parts & Labour restaurant in Toronto. He later launched Matty’s Patty’s Burger Club takeout restaurant and Prime Seafood Palace, also in Toronto, and has regularly appeared on Vice’s Munchies.
“I grew up in a border town, and I loved it,” said Matheson. “I would go
over to Buffalo to eat at old diners and hot dog stands or watch punk shows. I believe that Detroit and Buffalo share many similarities: both are quintessentially American, working-class cities renowned for their storied food culture. I have a lot of respect and admiration for cities like that, and I’m excited to add to the fold of what makes Detroit such an iconic city.”
Matheson has also worked with Standby partner Anthony Curis to help bring the public skatepark to the recent Little Village development in Detroit, which was designed by pro skater Tony Hawk and artist McArthur Binion.
Standby opened in 2015 and is located at 225 Gratiot Ave., Detroit.
—Lee DeVito
Matty Matheson.
COURTESY PHOTO
CULTURE
Savage Love
Same Page
: Q My partner and I have been together nearly 30 years. He was never as into sex/ romance/intimacy as much as I was, and things got worse after he had a malignant brain tumor removed six years ago. After chemo and a stem-cell transplant, he is now cancer free. However, he lost all interest in sexual and romantic activity after his tumor was discovered. Three years ago, I risked bringing this up, as I still have needs and desires, and he said told me he’s happy with how things are. I am not. I told him I want to be able to satisfy my needs elsewhere on occasion, very discreetly, and he does not want me to do that. We tried to be intimate a few weeks ago with “moderate” success. There were no orgasms, and after 30 minutes we stopped. This past weekend, we were supposed to try again, but he told me he just couldn’t. He has zero sexual desire. He has not seen a medical doctor for any tests, although his oncologist told him a few years ago that there is nothing medically wrong with him anymore. My patience is running out. If he doesn’t want sex, that’s fine. But he shouldn’t deny me the right to get my needs met. Am I wrong? BTW, I’m 63 years old and retired, and he’s 57 years old and works full time from home. We have a beautiful home and get along well with the exception of sex. Something has to change. I am not looking to end the relationship. I’ve tried to get him on board, so that I don’t feel like I’m betraying and cheating on him, to no avail. I welcome any advice.
—Wants And Needs The Sex
A: Anyone who’s been reading my column for more than three months knows what I’m going to say in response to this question — DWYNTDTSMASN — so I’m gonna say something else.
We know from our own personal experiences and from the experiences of others that two people can be in love without being on the same page at the same time. One person might be ready to have that big “define the relationship” conversation before the other is ready. One person might be ready to say, “I love you,” before the other is ready to hear it or say it back. One person may want monogamy, and the other person may not want a sexually exclusive relationship. One person might be ready to get engaged or marriage or pregnant before the other is ready for marriage and/or kids.
We talk about these discordant moments with our friends and families — moments when we aren’t on the exact same page with our romantic partners — and watch these conflicts get resolved in romcoms and sitcoms. So we often know before we find ourselves in a relationship where we’re not on the same page with our partner about something important that it’s possible for two people to get on the same page — about marriage or monogamy or kids — because we’ve seen it done or we’ve already done it ourselves once or twice.
No couple gets on the same page about everything, of course, but no relationship goes the distance — no relationship lasts decades — if a couple can’t get on the same page about the big things. Defining the relationship, getting engaged, getting married, whether to have kids: Since most the big things we have to get on the same page about come early in a relationship, it’s easy to coast along thinking these kinds of conversations are behind us. And then we’re blindsided when our partner is done with sex — for whatever reason — and we aren’t.
Alright, WANTS, my heart goes out to you and your partner. Having a brain tumor removed and going through chemo and getting a stem-cell transplant had to be incredibly stressful. The collapse of your partner’s libido could be tied to the health challenges he faced or it could be a coincidence, as some people lose interest in sex as they age. If your partner truly doesn’t miss sex, WANTS, he might not be motivated to see a doctor to address his libido issues. And if he just isn’t interested in having sex with you anymore — which is a thing that sometimes happens after years or decades together (forgive me for being blunt) — he might not wanna see a doctor because an unaddressed medical condition and/or hormonal imbalance gives him an out that lets him think he’s somehow sparing your feelings.
There are a few ways to resolve this issue:
1. You press the issue, and your partner refuses to give you permission to discreetly seek sex elsewhere, he demands that you honor the monogamous commitment you made back when he was fucking you, and you never have sex again for the rest of your life.
2. You press the issue, and your partner gives you permission — tacitly or explicitly — to discreetly seek sex elsewhere, your relationship becomes tolyamorous (tacit permission) or DADT (explicit), and you never have to talk about sex again with your partner.
3. You press the issue, and your partner refuses to give you permission to seek sex elsewhere and you give yourself permission to … do what you need to do to stay
married and stay sane … and you pray you never get caught.
So you’re gonna have to get in there and press the issue, WANTS, as it’s your only hope for getting on same page with your partner about this fine issue. And if you can’t manage to get on the same page, WANTS, you get to choose between options one and three. Good luck.
P.S. I’m going to re-up my call here for people who are getting very serious about someone — moving in, getting married, having kids — to initiate a conversation about what you will do, as a couple, if after decades together one of you is done with sex and the other one isn’t.
: Q After over a decade of monogamy, my boyfriend and I are started opening things up with threesomes. Our current ground rules are simple: We share a profile on one hookup app, and we only play together. It’s been fun so far, but some differences in style/approach are emerging. I may exchange woofs with someone, but I don’t write to someone until I have a chance to check with my partner about whether he would be he’s interested in them, too. He engages men directly and without checking with me first. I am careful to use “we” statements and make it about both of us when I write to someone; a couple of times now, he’s gotten into direct flirtations in our feed about him and the other guy. He tells me not to worry, it’s just the initial flirtation, and he always plans to bring me in “at some point.” But I can’t help feeling like a third wheel then. Another issue — and maybe this is just a personal preference — but if someone can’t communicate about their safer sex practices and HIV status in a profile that’s a red flag for me. (I believe U=U, so not about a particular status, just about awareness and communication.) But partner charges in, writes to people with vague profiles based on physical attraction alone, and says we can figure it out later. He insinuates that I’m foreclosing things prematurely when I can’t see the information I want to see right away. Things are starting to accumulate and turn into resentments. How do we keep this fun? —Communications Have Amplified Tensions
A: You have a shared account on that hookup app, CHAT, which means you see every message your partner swaps with other men. If your profile makes it clear you’re a package deal (“we only play together”) — along with listing your HIV statuses and safer sex practices — then every guy your boyfriend messages is aware of your existence. If your profile doesn’t make your package deal explicit, you need to update your profile.
Now, asking your boyfriend to run a guy by you before swapping dick pics — if only to make sure this other guy is someone you also wanna fuck — is entirely reasonable. Your boyfriend shouldn’t be writing
checks with his dick that your ass may not wanna cash. So long as he’s brings you in when the chats shift from flirtations to logistics, your boyfriend can tell himself he’s not violating the letter of your agreement. But if you’re reading chats where guys bail after your boyfriend attempts to “bring you in,” CHATS, or messages that make boyfriend sound like he might be available solo, he’s definitely violating the spirit of your agreement. Your newly opened relationship isn’t going to be a happy one — or a lasting one — if your boyfriend’s online activities leave you feeling hurt and insecure. If he cares about your feelings, he needs to course correct.
That said, CHATS, it’s not uncommon for two people in a newly open relationship to experience this kind of conflict. One partner in the newly open relationship carefully sticks to the facts — just on the apps to establish interest, discuss safety concerns, and set a time to meet up for a shared erotic experience — the other enjoys the erotic affirmation and attention so much that it’s an erotic experience all by itself. Now that you two know you have different styles when it comes to making contacts online, you need to work out a compromise — you need to get on the same page — that makes it possible for your boyfriend to show he’s being considerate of your feelings (he runs a guy by you first, he drops a few “we” bombs in this chats right away), CHATS, and that makes it possible for your boyfriend to enjoy the charge he gets out of flirting with other guys (he doesn’t get in trouble for enjoying hot chats, you don’t pour over every contact for signs of betrayal).
On the HIV statuses and safer sex practices front, CHATS, I’m going to side with your boyfriend: It’s not a red flag when a guy doesn’t include his HIV status or safer sex practices on his profile. If you ask about a guy about his HIV status and safer sex practices and he reacts badly and/or refuses to answer either question directly, that’s a red flag.
P.S. A quick message for CHAT’s boyfriend: If you invest a lot of time, energy, and dick pics in a guy who isn’t interested in playing with you and your boyfriend, you may find yourself tempted to meet up with that guy solo. Creating temptation doesn’t mean succumbing to temptation — some people can enjoy temptation without succumbing — but you wanna be careful out there. If temptation is something you’ve have a hard time resisting in the past, you might wanna avoid flirting and stick to logistics.
Got problems? Yes, you do! Email your question for the column to mailbox@savage. love!
Or record your question for the Savage Lovecast at savage.love/askdan! Podcasts, columns and more at savage.love
CULTURE Free Will Astrology
By Rob Brezsny
ARIES: March 21 – April 19
Aries singer-songwriter Lady Gaga has written many songs, both for herself and other artists. She has famously declared that some of her most successful songs took her just 10 minutes to compose. They include “Just Dance,” “Poker Face,” and “Born This Way.” According to my interpretation of the astrological omens, you could be rising to Lady Gaga levels of creativity in your own sphere during the coming weeks. And I won’t be surprised if your imaginative innovations flow with expeditious clarity, like Gaga at her most efficient.
TAURUS: April 20 – May 20
During the winter, some animals hibernate. They enter a state of dormancy, slowing their metabolism, breathing, and heart rate. Other animals enter a similar state during the summer, conserving energy when the weather is hot and dry. It’s called estiva-
tion. According to my analysis of the astrological omens, many of you Tauruses would benefit from a modified version of estivation in the next couple of weeks. You’re in prime time to recharge your energy through deep relaxation and rest.
GEMINI: May 21 – June 20
channeling your fertility in positive ways. Don’t feed an urge to recklessly gamble, for instance. Don’t pursue connections with influences that are no damn good for you. Instead, decide right now what areas of your life you want to be the beneficiaries of your growth spurt. Choose the beauty and power you will encourage to ripen.
VIRGO: August 23 – Sept. 22
ately go out and actually express those longings to the hilt. For now, I’d like you to simply have the experience of entertaining their full intensity. This will be a healing experience.
SAGITTARIUS: Nov. 22 – Dec. 21
For months, we heard and saw crows pecking on the roof of our rental house. Why? Were they grubbing for food? It was mildly annoying, but seemingly no big deal. Then one night, their small, regular acts of mayhem climaxed in an unexpected event. Rain began to fall around 8 p.m. It was constant, though not heavy. At 9, the ceilings in five rooms began to leak. By 10:30, our house was flooded. We managed to rescue most of our precious items, but the house was damaged. We had to find a new place to live. I don’t expect anything nearly this drastic to befall you, dear Virgo. But I do encourage you to check to see if any small problem is gradually growing bigger. Now is a favorable time to intervene and forestall an unfavorable development.
LIBRA: Sept. 23 – Oct. 22
The English word “amphibian” is derived from the Greek term amphibios, which means “living a double life.” The original meaning of the English word was “combining two qualities; having two modes of life,” though eventually it came to be used primarily to describe animals that function well on both land and in water. You Geminis are of course the most amphibious of all the astrological tribes. You can feel at home in a variety of situations. This may sometimes stir up confusion, but I see it as one of your greatest potential strengths. In the coming weeks, I hope you enjoy it to the maximum. It should serve you well. Wield it to take advantage of the sweet perks of versatility.
CANCER: June 21 – July 22
We are alive during Interesting times my friends. A topsy-turvy uncertain future, lousy with chaos, lies before us. The stability of a friendly bar and a cool drink, are the elixir you require. HAPPY HOUR 3-6PM
I dreamed that a young elephant appeared on the back deck of my house and stuck its trunk through the open sliding glass door. I got up from my chair and gently pushed the animal away, then closed the door. But after I woke up, I was sorry I had done that in my dream. What was I afraid of? The elephant posed no danger — and may have been a good omen. In some cultures, elephants in dreams and visions are symbols of good luck, vitality, long life, and the removal of obstacles. So here’s what I did. I dropped into a deep meditative state and reimagined the dream. This time, I welcomed the creature into my home. I gave her the name Beatrice. We wrestled playfully and had fun playing with a red rubber ball. Amazingly, later that day, a certain obstacle in my actual waking life magically disappeared. The moral of the story, my fellow Cancerian: Welcome the elephant.
LEO: July 23 – August 22
Some bamboo species grow very quickly — as much as 36 inches per day. I suspect your capacity to burgeon and blossom will display a similar vigor in the coming weeks. You may be surprised at how dramatic your development is. I’m hoping, of course, that you will be acutely focused on
Two Scottish veterinarians researched the health of rhesus monkeys that are compelled by human handlers to dance on the streets of Islamabad, Pakistan. When I first learned about this, my response was, “Wow! Don’t those doctors have anything better to do? That is the most obscure research I have ever heard of.” But later, I decided I admired the doctors because they were motivated primarily by compassion. They found the monkeys were under severe stress, and they publicized the fact as a public service. Their work will ultimately lead to better treatment of the monkeys. In accordance with astrological omens, Libra, I advise you to seek out comparable ways to express altruism in the coming weeks. By engaging in noble and idealistic acts, you will attract good fortune into your sphere both for yourself and others.
SCORPIO: Oct. 23 – Nov. 21:
Do you place any limits on how deep and expansive you allow your yearnings to be? Are you ever worried that maybe you desire too much and are at risk of asking for too much? If you answered yes to those questions, Scorpio, I will give you a temporary license to rebel against your wariness. In accordance with astrological rhythms, I authorize you to experiment with feeling the biggest, strongest, wildest longings you have ever felt. Please note that I am not advising you to immedi-
You will never guess the identity of the strongest animal on the planet. It’s not the gorilla, tiger, or elephant. It’s the dung beetle, which can lug loads that weigh 1,141 times as much as it does. The equivalent for you would be to pull six double-decker buses crammed with people. I’m happy to inform you that although you won’t be able to accomplish that feat in the coming weeks, your emotional and spiritual strength will be formidable. You may be surprised at how robust and mighty you are. What do you plan to do with all that power?
CAPRICORN: Dec. 22 – Jan. 19
By age 35, you have already shed over 50 pounds of skin. The flesh that covers you is in a constant state of renewal. In the coming weeks, I expect your rate of regeneration to be even higher than usual — not only in regard to your skin, but everything else in your life, as well. Here’s a proviso: Renewal and regeneration are always preceded by withering or dwindling. To enjoy the thrill of revitalization, you must allow the loss of what was once vital but is no longer.
AQUARIUS: Jan. 20 – Feb. 18
Among people who go hiking a lot, “death march” is a term that refers to a long trudge through boring scenery in bad weather. Let’s use this as a metaphor for your life. I believe you have recently finished your own metaphorical version of a “death march.” Any minute now, you will begin a far more enjoyable series of experiences. Get ready for an entertaining meander through interesting terrains in fine weather. Be alert for unpredictable encounters with inspiration and education.
PISCES: Feb.19 – March 20
Alex Larenty gives massages to lions at the Lion Park near Johannesburg, South Africa. They especially love foot rubs. Even Jamu, king of the local beasts, rolls onto his back so Larenty can get a good angle while caressing and kneading his paws. I bring this to your attention, Pisces, because it’s a good metaphor for the unique power you will have in the coming days: a knack for dealing successfully with wild influences and elemental powers through the magic of kindness, affection, and service.
Homework: What goal would you and your best ally love to pursue together?
EMPLOYMENT
Healthcare: Pediatrician sought by The Wellness Plan Medical Center to provide srvcs at various loc.’d in Wayne & Oakland Counties, MI. Salary $200,000. Req. MD/ ECFMG, Eligible for MI Medical License, Residency in Pediatrics. Travel req’d btwn inpatient & outpatient settings. CVs to Gina Clay; rgclay@wellplan.com.
SERVICES
VOLUNTEERS
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED CAT VOLUNTEERS
Cat Volunteers needed in Manchester. 9 AM - 1 PM 1 X weekly. Lynn 734-748-6251
MASSAGE RELAXING NURU MASSAGE for the quarantine must not be sick. Must be clean and wear mask. Outcalls only incalls are at your cost Hey I’m here to help. This is Candy melt in your mouth so try my massages they’re sweet as can be!!! (734) 596-1376
ADULT
ADULT ENTERTAINMENT HIRING SEXY WOMEN!!!
Hiring sexy women (& men). Highly Paid Magazine, Web, and Movie/TV work. no experience needed, all sizes accepted. 313-289-2008.
ESCORT
STRAP ON QUEEN
Naturally dominant you should have a love & fetish for chocolate pie. Fetish fantasies a guarantee submissive visitor. Therapeutic massage 313-293-0235
