Prosecutors say former Kansas detective accused of sexually assaulting black women has died

TOPEKA, Kansas — A white Kansas police detective accused of sexually assaulting black women and girls and terrorizing those who tried to retaliate has died, prosecutors said as his trial was scheduled to begin Monday.

Prosecutors say female residents of poor neighborhoods in Kansas City, Kansas feared that if they crossed paths with Roger Golubski, he would demand sexual favors and threaten to harm their relatives or put them in jail.

Golubski, 71, was facing six felony counts of violating women’s civil rights. But he did not appear in court Monday morning for the start of jury selection. Prosecutors later confirmed in court that Golubski had died. They did not say how or when he died.

The allegations at the center of the case – that Golubski preyed on women with impunity for decades – have outraged the community and deepened historic distrust of law enforcement.

The prosecution followed previous reports of similar misconduct allegations across the country, where hundreds of officers have lost their badges after sexual assault allegations.

Cheryl Pilate, a lawyer representing the women who said they were abused or threatened, called for a thorough investigation of Golubski’s death by officers with no ties to local police.

“The community was hoping for justice, for a full and public accounting, and now they have been denied that,” Pilate said.

About 50 people held a small rally in sub-freezing temperatures outside the federal courthouse in Topeka to show their support for the women who have accused Golubski of abuse, which broke up before the announcement of his death. In their hands “Judge Now!” There were placards with slogans written on them.

Golubski had pleaded not guilty to the charges. After failing to appear in court on Monday, his lead lawyer Christopher Joseph said his client was “disappointed with the media coverage.” He did not elaborate.

U.S. District Judge Toby Crouse dismissed the case against Golubski at the request of prosecutors. Joseph called the death “really unexpected”.

“I don’t know the details,” he told reporters as he left the courtroom.

Golubski was accused of sexually assaulting a woman when she was a teenager and was accused of sexually assaulting another woman following her sons’ arrest.

Decades of allegations from poor neighborhoods

The case against Golubski was part of a series of lawsuits and criminal charges that led to a $1.7 million effort to reinvestigate cases the county prosecutor’s office had worked on during his 35 years on the force. began. A double murder case investigated by Golubski has already resulted in an acquittal, and an organization run by rapper Jay-Z is suing to obtain police records.

Joseph had said that the trials on the charges were “concocted motivations” by his accusers.

But prosecutors said that, along with the two women whose accounts are the center of the criminal case, seven others were going to testify that Golubski abused or harassed them.

“We have to keep fighting,” said Starr Cooper, who was in court Monday to watch jury selection and said Golubski tortured her mother before her death in 1983.

Fellow officers once respected Golubski for his ability to settle cases, and he rose to the rank of captain in Kansas City, Kansas, and then worked on the suburban police force for six more years before retiring in 2010. His former partner served as police chief.

Before his death, Golubski was under house arrest and receiving kidney dialysis treatments three times a week. This enraged the women and they said that he had harassed them. Kansas City, Missouri resident Anita Rendell-Stanley said Golubski began harassing her decades earlier when she was a teenager, calling the house arrest “a slap on the hand.”

“There is no justice for the victims,” he said.

Stories about Golubski remained only whispers in the neighborhoods near Kansas City’s former cattle ranches, partly due to the extreme poverty of the area where few homes are boarded up. One neighborhood where Golubski worked is part of the second poorest zip code in Kansas.

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

A fellow officer: ‘Boys will be boys’

Seifert said police misconduct is tolerated in the department. He described 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 kind of like boys would be boys,” said Seifert, who was forced into early retirement in 2003 for refusing to cover up the beating of a motorist by a federal agent.

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

In 1994, McIntyre was just 17 years old when he was arrested in connection with a double murder, within hours of the crime. He had an excuse; No physical evidence linked him to the murders; And an eyewitness believed that the killer was a subordinate of a local drug dealer. Golubski and the dealer have been charged in a separate federal case with running a violent sex trafficking operation.

The eyewitness only testified that McIntyre was the killer after Golubski and a now-fired attorney threatened to take away her children, she alleged in a lawsuit.

McIntyre’s mother said in a 2014 affidavit that she wondered whether Golubski’s refusal to provide regular sexual favors prompted him to retaliate against her son.

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

Women say they were threatened and made fun of

Prosecutors said Golubski took one of the women at the center of his criminal case to a cemetery and told her to find a place to dig her own grave. Court filings say he repeatedly sexually assaulted her when she was in middle school, leading to a miscarriage.

Prosecutors say that once, he put a dog leash around her neck and forced her to crawl on the ground at a remote location near the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers. With no one around, he is accused of chanting, “By the river bank, a hank a pank said; They won’t be able to find it unless it starts stinking.”

Prosecutors said that when police searched his home, Golubski introduced himself by admiring the legs and nightgown of Ophelia Williams, the other woman at the center of the case.

Williams was very scared at the time because her 14-year-old twins had recently been arrested for a double murder. Williams said in a separate trial that he eventually confessed to the crime so that police would free his 13-year-old brother.

According to court records in the criminal case, Golubski began sexually harassing her while alternately threatening her and claiming he could help her with her sons. The twins are now 40 and behind bars. The trial he is a part of calls into question his confession.

The Associated Press does not typically name alleged victims of sexual assault, but Williams has told her story publicly.

Williams said in his lawsuit that he mentioned complaining once. She claims Golubski told her: “Report me, to the police? I am the police.”