The Mary Sheffield Scandal Lights Detroit City Hall on Fire

It’s fascinating to watch Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield bury herself while trying to dig herself out of quicksand. And take it from me, the authorities are circling.

Sheffield told on herself last week. She said she took the cash. She admitted as much in a grammar-mangled statement before running away from TV cameras. The scandal only grew larger.

“During the course of our relationship, I personally loaned him tens of thousands of dollars,” she wrote. “Any funds he provided me was (sic) repayment for money he owed me.”

All that on a city council salary.

Her former lover, Marvin Walker, would bring the cash in the middle of the night. We know that because Walker made videos of himself fanning wads of cash before depositing them in her mailbox. Sheffield admitted as much.

The money was druggie looking, wrinkled and weathered. The bills were not bundled with paper bank bands, but rubber bands.

Walker told me they were kickbacks from local businessmen, and that he acted as the middleman. Emails exist memorializing the relationships.

Walker told me this, and then Walker told the languishing local papers that they were not kickbacks, and that he hadn’t seen Mary Sheffield in years.

Maybe we should release some audio tape, Marvin? It’ll give you a hot minute to pack your bags and get gone.

Sheffield and her crisis handlers declined to provide bank statements documenting the unusually large deposits and withdrawals.

There’s no going back on the story now. Sheffield is stuck with the Fani Willis defense.

Then there are the claims Walker shopped around that he was being paid by Sheffield for doing nothing and kicking back the money to her.

Sheffield’s statement addressed that accusation, too. “I want to be crystal clear,” she wrote. “NO city funds were ever provided to Mr. Walker, nor has he ever received any city contract. In 2019, he received a total of $1,800 from a non-profit for services he provided for community events like all others.”

That nonprofit is a 501(c)(3)—the kind of political charity account that Kwame Kilpatrick used as a personal slush fund to pay for spa treatments, yoga lessons, and a Cadillac DeVille. Because of that, he spent seven years in federal prison and still owes the government nearly a million dollars in restitution.

For her part, Sheffield’s charity “Detroit Donates” was awarded tax-exempt status in 2019. One of the directors for “Detroit Donates” in 2019 was Paris Blessman, a longtime political aide for Sheffield. Blessman listed Sheffield's City Hall office suite as her address on Detroit Donates’ tax filings that year.

Today, Blessman is listed as the charity’s president, and the office has relocated to a community center operated by Rev. Horace Sheffield, the mayor’s father. “Detroit Donates” raised about $10,000 in 2019, and its revenues exploded to more than $180,000 by 2024. It still managed to run a deficit of $20,000 that year.

Walker estimated that he got at least $7,000 in checks from Sheffield’s charity, but did not work for it. She’d give him the check, he’d cash it and give her the money. Sometimes he wouldn’t cash the check, he said. He’d just give her the money.

“It ended up in her pocket,” Walker said.

Walker showed me a string of text messages outlining the scam.

One text comes from Mary Sheffield’s cell phone and carries the time stamp April 9, 2023:

“I have a 2k check as well I’ll give you that and you give me 2k back”

Then a few minutes later: “Do you have the 2k cash? I can meet you and give check before I leave”

Again, Sheffield and her handlers have refused to provide copies of the checks or open the charity’s books.

Then there are the cops. In her statement, Sheffield claimed she had nothing to do with Police Chief Todd Bettison’s freelance antics trying to tamp down the growing scandal. Tactical police were used to detain a man. Surveillance was used to track him. Rape charges were cooked up against Walker but later dropped. Phone calls were made by Bettison asking people to remove risqué photos of Sheffield and Walker posted online. Those videos and photographs were leaked by Walker himself.

“I have never used the power of my office to instigate any action or inaction involving Mr. Walker, including through the Detroit Police Department,” Sheffield wrote.

If that is true, then how does Bettison still have a job? That kind of policing is precisely what ignited the riots in 1967.

In his zeal to protect the boss and teach Walker a lesson, Bettison sent a platoon of cops to shutter one of Walker’s rental properties using building code violations as the excuse.

The residents at the property were kicked out without warning and were not allowed to gather their belongings.

A 67-year-old Army veteran came home that evening to find his door and windows boarded up. Locked inside were his walker and medications.

With no place to go, our veteran was forced to sleep in his car.

It took two days to get his door opened by city officials. But the place is so hot, one Sheffield aide actually suggested we break in and get his belongings ourselves.