NEW UPDATE! Kathy Keolker's campaign manager (Raechelle Turner, not Margarita Prentice) told me she wanted Detective Dave Patterson's phone number, in some possible desperate effort to undo the damage Kathy Keolker did by telling hundreds of thousands of radio listeners that the police tried to give her a "political" lie detector test...only to be contradicted by the actual case detective who defended his case report RIGHT HERE, in the comment below.  Could it be that Rachael is starting to lose faith in her candidate, as she realizes that Kathy was lying to her about this all along?  (By the way, I know the comment from Detective Patterson is authentic.)  Blogging does not get much better than this folks!

UPDATE! Don't miss today's comment at the bottom of this entry by the Lead Police Detective from this case. Click HERE and scroll down to read it!




Radio listeners on Wednesday heard host Dave Ross questioning Mayor Keolker about her claim that she declined to take what she says Kent police called a "political" lie detector test, as opposed to her declining to take a normal police polygraph examination as it says in the Lipstick Investigation Police Report (See Lipstickgate below). Mayor Keolker said that while she originally agreed to take a lie detector test, it was only after the police told her it would just be for political reasons that she changed her mind and declined.

After this broadcast aired, I was contacted by police officers who said that they do not allow anyone but the Police Department and the Prosecutor to decide on how an investigation will be conducted, and they do not use police resources for "political" purposes. The mayor's statements about the lie detector are simply not true.

I thought this would make for some interesting discussion. Please feel free to comment.

You can still listen to the radio show by clicking this link. The Renton part of the show starts about 1/3 of the way into the hour...so simply slide the selector about 1/3 of the way across the bottom. It starts with Dave Ross reading the morning's PI story.

Dean Radford's careful, detailed description of "Lipstickgate" reminds me why he was promoted to Editor of the Renton Reporter. He covers a wealth of information in this piece, in a way that strikes me as readable and fair. He leaves it to the readers to make the ultimate call on what happened, while accurately and concisely providing the distilled details of 105 pages worth of police investigation. I feel that between Mr. Radford's story, and his editorial on the same topic, he conveys a vivid and correct view of the goofy, unnerving, and almost surreal events comprising "Lipstickgate".

While I have tried to honestly and accurately share about this episode on this blog, I find it hard to describe without inserting my own opinions about what I think happened and why. I'm only human, after all, and I was too close to the events and the following months of total weirdness to be completely impartial. So I really appreciate that Dean Radford stepped in, and described the story impartially for everyone in time for the upcoming election. People can make up their own minds about what happened, based on his report.

Sure, part of me would have liked to see the article reach a firm conclusion about what happened that night... but that would not have been appropriate for the newspaper. There was no final determination in the criminal investigation of this matter. So, as the lead Detective David Patterson once told me, this event now must be resolved in the political arena instead of the legal one. The Reporter provided an outline for Renton citizens to understand and evaluate this.

Interestingly, in Mr. Radford's editorial he reminds readers that he too was in the council chambers on the night everything went down, so he was in a good position to observe the events and the aftermath. In fact, Mr. Radford was even interviewed as a possible witness by the Kent police, which he mentions in his editorial.

This story is in the October 17th edition...here is the Link.

I was just reviewing my huge folder on the lipstick caper and it still irritates me that the newspapers did not report on the mayor's complicity in this case...especially after she tried to involve/implicate so many others in this mess. In one part of the mayor's testimony, she makes a statement that Jay Covington (her executive administrator) suggested she push the panic alarm to see what would happen. In her taped statement, she states that she believes Jay was gone at that time, looking for an officer, when she pushed the alarm. The inconsistencies in the written and recorded testimony; her desperate reaction to the polygraph while she was back in Maryland at FEMA training-- all still deserve further scrutiny by the public and the media.

Here is some of the interesting testimony. Pease read, and then ask yourself whether she interferred with the police investigation.

On May 18, 2006, Detective Dave Patterson with Kent PD made the following comments in a written statement, which is part of his investigation:

Following a taped interview with the mayor on April 26, 2006, Detective Patterson turned off the tape recorder, at which time the mayor asked where all of this is going. Det. Patterson advised her that they had to investigate every angle. 'I advised her that the charges could range from burglary, theft, trespass to false reporting. I explained that we had to look at all possible situations. I advised her that we would be asking people for the possibility of polygraph tests. At this point the mayor advised me that as the Chief Executive Officer of the City, she felt she had a responsibility to the citizens to not expend taxpayer money on something like this any further. She stated that she needed for this to go away as soon as possible. I advised her that we had an investigation to conduct and that I would be getting back with her.'

On May 2, 2006, I did speak briefly with Randy Corman. He called to advise me of a telephone call he had got from Jay Covington, who was back at a FEMA conference with the mayor this past week. He stated that Jay was basically saying the mayor wanted him and Julia to not take the polygraph and to call off the investigation. Randy mailed me a saved audio copy of the message. I had this message transcribed and a copy is included with this report.

On May 4, 2006, Detective Kelly and I met with Randy Corman and he did take a polygraph test and no deception was observed.

On May 5, 2006, Julia Medzegian met with Det. Kelly and I and she took a polygraph. No deception was observed.

On May 8, 2006, I called the mayor's office and left her a message that I would like to speak with her about the case. I was away from my desk and got a call back and voice mail advising to call her after 1030 hours. At about 10:50 hours, I called her back. I spoke with her and advised her that I was at a point where I was getting close to wrapping up the investigation. I advised her that several people had submitted to polygraph tests and I asked her if she would do the same. At this point, the mayor declined to take the polygraph test. She stated that she could not justify the resources being diverted to this case even though they were Kent resources. She stated that the investigation had gotten way out of control. She stated that she needed to find a way to gracefully bring this to a close.

You can get all the facts about the lipstick case here

One of my informed readers gave me a link to a page where the lipstick picture was posted! I did not know anyone except the police had a picture of it. It turns a Renton citizen obtained this picture though a freedom of information request.

The writing is a bit different than I imagined...it is kind of hard to make out the word. Written in kind of a fancy way I guess. It seems like there is an extra vertical line in the "c"...

The officer in the mirror makes this a pretty interesting picture.

The Mayor's lipstick caper made the King County Journal's 2006 top stories list. Reminder: Council held a public hearing in which mayor Keolker gaveled-out several members of the public, and I had argued with her publically to allow the citizens to speak. Then upon allegedly 'finding' the word bitch written on her mirror she hit the panic-button in her office to summon police. During the subsequent month-long investigation, she refused to take a lie detector test, even when pushed by the police detectives and the community. Since security doors were locked during the night in question, and council was accounted for (and I had not used her bathroom even when it was offered to me), it seemed no one had the opportunity to enter the secure council/mayor suite, then the mayor's private office, then her private bathroom, then write bitch in the mayor's own lipstick, while staff were in the area.

Right around the time that the Journal was making this a top story of 2006, the Renton Police Officers guild was being threatened by the mayor for not endorsing her re-election campaign. The Police Guild President responded that not a single one of Renton's police officers was willing to endorse the mayor, and that he would not cave in to her threats. For those of us who have been threatened by our mayor in the past, we find it interesting that she would threaten someone holding a gun and a badge. See the police officers letter for yourself below.

For those of you that have asked me, here is the final version of the outside legal opinion regarding public speaking at the April 17 hearing (the night of the lipstick incident.)

Click here to read the outside legal opinion

(While this opinion was given to council initially as a confidential memo, it has now been distributed widely within city hall making it an official public record.)

For those of you who like political debate and intrigue,and don't mind finding your way through lots of legal jargon, this is interesting and entertaining reading :-)

Mayor Keolker...what are you doing? Every time I promise to leave this issue alone unless provoked, you provoke me! This afternoon your provocation showed up in the unusual envelope below. (CLICK ALL DOCUMENTS TO ENLARGE) Two council members have already contacted me asking that I say something about this...




  


Just when council thought it was safe to go back in the bathroom, Lipstickgate returned in a flurry! The police say that the truth has a way of finding it's way out, and I guess that can take many forms. Perhaps sometimes it may even start to arrive in an unusual private sealed envelope, marked confidential, with a memo inside that says this information was sent to the newspapers two days ago....You have to marvel at the confusion, irony, and intrigue of it all!





  

Above is the "secret message" (but actually very public message) that was in my confidential envelope....





  




  


And above is the long anticipated Version III of the mayor's thought processes on that now infamous night of April 17...

( Read more... )

Hopefully the Mayor's "read my lipstick" episode will quit being a distraction now that it has been exhaustively covered by the local papers. I felt today's coverage was okay, except for one important detail. Several column inches were dedicated to internal email regarding whether the mayor declined to take a polygraph test. On the final page of Detective Paterson's report he writes "I advised her [Mayor Keolker] that several people had submitted to polygraph tests, and I asked her if she would do the same. At this point the mayor declined to take the polygraph test." (See Kent Police Narrative, randycorman.com.) The police asked her to take a polygraph test, she declined, and she never took one. If anyone says otherwise, send them to the police report posted on my website. With that, unless further provoked on the topic, I'm ready to leave this ridiculous junior-high prank behind and refocus on the business of the fine City of Renton.