A white Kansas detective accused of exploiting black women for decades is facing trial

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) – A white Kansas police detective accused of sexually assaulting Black women and girls and threatening those who tried to fight back is set to go on trial, part of a string of decades-long arrests over alleged abuse. .

Prosecutors said female residents living in poor neighborhoods in Kansas City, Kansas, feared that if they encountered Roger Golubski, he would demand sex and threaten to harm or imprison their relatives. He faces six counts of assaulting women’s rights, and jury selection in his trial will begin Monday in federal court in Topeka.

The case has outraged the public and deepened a historic distrust of law enforcement, which is often seen as a burden in Black neighborhoods.

Golubski, now 71 years old, is accused of sexually abusing one woman first as a child and another after his sons were arrested. If the judge convicts him, he could die in prison.

The trial is the latest in a series of lawsuits and criminal allegations that have led the district attorney’s office to launch a $1.7 million effort to reinvestigate cases Golubski worked on during his 35 years on the force. One murder case investigated by Golubski has led to an acquittal, and an organization run by rapper Jay-Z is suing for police records.

Golubski has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyer has said that being sued for these allegations is “an incitement to perjury” by his accusers. But prosecutors say that, along with the two women whose accounts are at the heart of the criminal case, seven others will testify that Golubski abused or molested them.

“Every time I turn around, I look,” said Jermeka Hobbs, who filed a separate lawsuit against Golubski and is not a witness in the case. to want to have sex for fear that he will ask for drugs “I think someone is chasing me.

A veteran detective who roams the slums

Golubski was respected by other administrators for his ability to clear cases, and he rose to the rank of captain in Kansas City, Kansas, before retiring in 2010 and serving on the suburban police force for six more years. His former colleague had worked as a police chief.

Golubski now does not look like the influential official he once was. He is under house arrest and undergoes kidney dialysis treatment three times a week. That will limit his trial to Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

His attorney, Chris Joseph, said in a statement that some of the allegations against Golubski are 20 to 30 years old, adding, “In public records, the prosecutor has acknowledged that the verdict will completely change the credibility of the accusers.”

But Jim McCloskey, founder of Centurion, a New Jersey nonprofit that works to free innocent people, described Golubski in a court filing as “the dirtiest cop I’ve ever met.”

News about Golubski remained a rumor in the Kansas City suburbs in part because of the extreme poverty of the homesteads. One area where Golubski works is part of the second poorest zip code in Kansas.

Crime was rampant there, as were drug dealers and drug dealers, said Max Seifert, a former Kansas City, Kansas, police officer who graduated from police academy with Golubski in 1975.

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Sifert said police misconduct is tolerated in the department. He then explained how informants and Golubski’s ex-wife complained that Golubski was soliciting prostitutes. Golubski was also caught having sex with a woman in his office, he said.

“It’s like boys will be boys,” said Seifert, who was forced into early retirement after refusing to cover up the beating of a driver by a state agency in 2003.

McCloskey said in an interview that Golubski has women “at his mercy.”

The investigation into Golubski stems from the case of Lamonte McIntyre, who began writing for McCloskey’s nonprofit nearly two decades ago.

McIntyre was just 17 in 1994 when he was arrested and charged with two counts of murder, within hours of the crimes. He had an alibi; there is no physical evidence linking him to this murder; and an eyewitness believes that the killer was under the control of a local drug dealer. Golubski and the dealer have since been charged separately with sex trafficking.

An eyewitness only testified that McIntyre was the killer after Golubski and the disbarred attorney threatened to take her children, she said in the lawsuit.

McIntyre’s mother said in a 2014 affidavit that she wonders if her repeated refusal to give Golubski sexual favors prompted her to seek revenge on her son.

“He, like a lot of people in the community, just looked at the police as omnipotent,” said Cheryl Pilate, a lawyer who helped free McIntyre in 2017.

In 2022, the local government agreed to pay McIntyre and his mother $12.5 million to settle the case after a plea in which Golubski invoked his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent 555 times. The state also paid McIntyre $1.5 million.

“That was the thread that gave people courage,” said Lindsay Runnels, who serves on the board of the Midwest Innocence Project.

The women said they were threatened and teased

Prosecutors say Golubski drove one of the women at the center of their criminal case to a cemetery and told her to find a place to dig her own grave. He sexually assaulted her repeatedly, starting when she was in elementary school, which led to her miscarriage, court documents said.

At one point, prosecutors said, he forced her to crawl on the ground with a dog leash around her neck in a remote area near the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers. As there is no one, he is accused of singing, “Down by the river, said a hank a pank; Where they won’t find him until he stinks.”

Golubski introduced himself to Ophelia Williams, another woman at the center of the case, by admiring her legs and a nightgown while police searched her home, prosecutors said.

Williams was terrified at the time because her 14-year-old twins had just been arrested in a double murder. They eventually pleaded guilty so that the police could release their 13-year-old brother, Williams said in another case.

Golubski began sexually assaulting her, alternating between threatening her that she would not be able to help her sons, according to court records in the criminal case. The twins are now in their 40s and remain in prison. The case is part of the questions of their consent.

The Associated Press rarely names alleged sexual assault victims, but Williams has told her story publicly.

Williams said in his case he had talked about filing a complaint. He says Golubski said to him: “Who should I report to, the police? I am the police.”

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Hanna reported from Topeka, Kansas.