The most disrespected person in America is the black woman.
The most unprotected person in America is the black woman.
The most neglected person in America is the black woman.
—El Hajj Malik El Shabazz
Content Warning: The following article contains graphic details of sexual assault.
What you are about to read is a true story.
This is a story about a law enforcement officer in Kansas City, Kan., who elected officials, private citizens, lawmakers and fellow police officers who have publicly accused of corruption, sexual assault and even murder. But this is not a story about a man. This is not a story about a police officer. This is not a story about Kansas City, a rapist, a serial killer, policing or America. This is a story about us. This story is about the fundamental question of who we are as human beings.
This story is not a secret. For years, I have recounted the details of this story in rooms with the most powerful lawmakers in America. I have personally told it to some of the biggest celebrities in the world and the most influential people in the entertainment industry. I have the telling of it down to a science. And at every turn—even the iteration you are reading at this very moment—the response is always the same:
“But what d0es ___ say about it.”
“But…”
For centuries, white America ignored the way law enforcement officers treated Black people. But then they saw cellphone footage of it, and suddenly, police brutality was un-ignorable. A Black woman created the “Me Too” movement, but no one paid attention until white women started saying it. The war on drugs wasn’t a huge problem. But when white people began using meth, heroin and opiates, we needed a new approach.
The “but” is the thing.
And in this case, the “but” is represented by the most disrespected, unprotected, neglected person in America. For more than 40 years—until his retirement in 2010—Roger Golubski was a police officer in the Quindaro Park neighborhood of Kansas City, Kan. Over the last four years, The Root has interviewed dozens of witnesses, reviewed dozens of court cases and pored over thousands of pages, uncovering one of the widest-ranging examples of state-sponsored terror against Black women this country has ever seen. In those four decades, Golubski has never been formally charged with a crime.
Still, this story is not about him.
The Devil Made Her Do It
This story is about Niko Quinn.
Niko Quinn sees things.
On April 15, 1994, 21-year-old Doniel Quinn and 34-year-old Donald Ewing were shot and killed as they sat in a car in the Quindaro Park neighborhood of Kansas City. The killer reportedly fled the scene in a getaway vehicle before authorities arrived. Ruby Mitchell, Stacy Quinn (Niko’s sister) and Niko caught glimpses of the murderers who killed Niko’s cousin Doniel.
Roger Golubski, the lead homicide investigator for the Kansas City Police Department, immediately zeroed in on a suspect. Within hours, he convinced Mitchell to identify 17-year-old Lamonte McIntyre in photo lineups, even though McIntyre was at home at the time of the double homicide.
As we reported in 2018, the district attorney who prosecuted the case, Terra Morehead, was allegedly involved in a secret romantic relationship with Kansas District Judge J. Dexter Burdette, who heard the case. By the time McIntyre went to trial in 1994, Golubski and Morehead had coerced Niko Quinn into testifying against McIntyre as the prosecution’s star witness.
During phone, text and in-person interviews with The Root, Niko described meetings with Golubski and Morehead as a series of traumatic events meant to force her into blaming McIntyre for a murder he didn’t commit.
“Golubski, two detectives and Terra Morehead showed up at my door,” Niko told The Root. “I wasn’t home. But they told my aunt and my cousin who was living with me at the time to tell me that I need to get in touch with her. And if I did not contact her ‘sooner than later,’ she was gonna take my kids from me, and I’ll never see my kids again...That was the first threat she made.
“So I go up there, and Terra Morehead pulls out all the pictures of the crime scene,” Niko says. “She showed me little Don’s and Donny’s pictures, she was like: ‘Don’t you want somebody to be charged with this?’ Mike, she showed me that picture of my cousin and his whole face was gone. I was there. I saw my cousin get his head blew off. I didn’t need to see that. She made me look at the pictures, and she was asking if I wanted somebody to be accountable for it. She told me, ‘Lamonte this...Lamonte that...We have evidence that he did it.”
Still, Niko wasn’t convinced, even when Golubski reportedly promised financial compensation and to help her find new housing—a detail that was never disclosed in Lamonte’s trial. Aside from Morehead and Golubski, Ruby had already told her that they recognized the shooter as a guy named “Lamonte.” Niko also had no idea that Golubski had specifically chosen photos of McIntyre that made him resemble the guy her sister and neighbor knew as Lamonte. Still, at every turn, according to affidavits and court filings, Niko told the prosecutor and detective that she didn’t think Lamonte McIntyre was the shooter.
Niko says Morehead and Golubski assured her that she had correctly fingered her cousin’s killer. Months later, at Lamonte’s pre-trial hearing, Niko says she sat up in a conference room at the courthouse with Golubski, preparing to testify. Nervous and unsure, she would later describe the first time she began to suspect that the homicide detective might not be on the up-and-up.
“We were all sitting in this waiting room when Golubski said that he wanted to see me dance on a table for him,” Niko recalled. “And he tells me how he could make my life a lot easier. I’m just laughing at him, you know? He keeps saying that he wants me to strip for him. When I told my sister what he said, she tells me, while he’s sitting right there: ‘Don’t mess with him. He’s the Devil.’”
Asked how old she was at the time, Niko paused before remembering her exact age.
“I was 20,” she says.
“When I saw him [McIntyre] at the preliminary hearing, I was like: ‘Nah, that ain’t him; his ears are too big,’” Niko explained.
During a recess, Niko says Morehead confronted her about her hesitancy to finger Lamonte. “This is what she told me. She said: ‘If your Black ass don’t do what I told you to do, I’m going to throw your Black ass in jail right now. You’ll never see your kids again. And I’ll make sure of it.’ That’s what she told me.” (Morehead did not respond to The Root for comment.)
At Lamonte’s trial, Niko again told Morehead that she was not sure Lamonte was the killer. After Morehead gave opening statements, Niko informed Morehead again that Lamonte was taller and had different facial features than the man who killed her cousin. After the recess, Morehead called her first witness to the stand. But instead of directly asking Niko who she saw, she asked Niko about who she identified to Golubski.
The following exchange is directly from Lamonte’s trial transcript.
Morehead: When—when you were in court a couple months ago at the preliminary hearing—do you remember testifying at that preliminary hearing?
Niko: Yes.
Morehead: Did you identify an individual at the preliminary hearing as being the shooter of April 15, 1994
Niko: Yes.
Morehead: And who did you identify in court two months ago, Miss Quinn.
Niko: That’s him right there.
Morehead: Judge, for the record, she’s identified the defendant, Lamonte McIntyre.
After Lamonte’s defense attorney cross-examined Niko, Morehead asked Niko a final question: “Miss Quinn, is there any doubt in your mind that Lamonte McIntyre sitting here is the man you saw shoot into that car on April 15?”
“I sat there and looked at her,” Niko told The Root. “I thought about my kids. I thought about Golubski and what my sister said about him. Lamonte was shaking his head like ‘I didn’t do it! I didn’t do it!’ And I sat there and looked at [Morehead]. She gave me this look like ‘You better say it.’
So Niko said it.
“After I did my testimony, I walked out, and I walked outside in the hallway,” Niko recalled during a phone interview. “My cousin asked me what was wrong. And I told them that Lamonte wasn’t the guy...
“Then I walked home and tried to kill myself.”
Immediately after the failed suicide attempt, days after Lamonte’s conviction, Niko recanted her testimony and vowed to make it right.
She told everyone within earshot that Lamonte wasn’t guilty. She wrote Oprah and Montel. She reached out to Lamonte’s mother, Rose Lee McIntyre, and apologized but Rose didn’t react how Niko expected. Niko eventually discovered why Rose didn’t seem surprised by the revelation. She realized why Golubski might have targeted Lamonte.
This story is about Rose Lee McIntyre.
In the late 1980s, Golubski briefly detained Rose and her boyfriend during a traffic stop, according to a federal civil rights lawsuit obtained by The Root. During the stop, the officer told Rose that he would arrest her and her boyfriend unless she promised sexual favors. Having never been arrested before, Rose agreed to meet Golubski at the precinct later. When she showed up at the Kansas City Police Department the next night, the officers in the police station seemed to know why she was there and ushered her to Roger Golubski’s office, where he sexually assaulted Rose.
“During the ensuing sexual assault, a KCKPD officer opened Golubski’s office door, saw what was happening, and left without saying anything,” reads the federal lawsuit against Golubski, Morehead, the Wyandotte County Unified Government and others filed by Lamonte and Rose McIntyre in October 2018. The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court of Kansas, alleges: “Although Golubski assaulted Rose in a station full of police officers, nobody intervened. After Golubski assaulted Rose, he harassed her for weeks, calling her two or three times a day. He told her that he wanted a long-term relationship and promised to pay her for sex.”
When confronted with the allegations, Golubski invoked his Fifth Amendment rights. The case remains pending and is slated for trial. A trial date has not been set.
Following that night, Rose alleges Golubski harassed her until she had to find a new place to live and change her phone number. Golubski eventually gave up stalking her, she alleges. But Rose’s worries were not behind her.
“By moving, Rose thought that she had permanently escaped Golubski and prevented him from ever harming her or her family again,” the lawsuit continues. “She was wrong. Several years later, Golubski orchestrated the wrongful conviction of her son Lamonte.”
As alleged in the civil rights lawsuit, “defendants’ fabrications and suppression of exculpatory evidence caused Lamonte’s conviction.” Rose further alleges that the jury never heard that the key witnesses were coerced. They never knew that Niko Quinn was living in an apartment provided by the lead investigator. They didn’t know that Morehead had a previous romantic relationship with the judge. They had no idea that the statements from Rose McIntyre were allegedly fabricated. Most of all, the jury never knew that Ruby Mitchell initially fingered an entirely different man named Lamont.
On January 6, 1995, Judge J. Dexter Burdette sentenced Lamonte to two consecutive life sentences for the murders of Doniel Quinn and Donald Ewing.
Morehead left the Wyandotte County District Attorney’s Office and joined the Justice Department as a U.S. attorney for the District of Kansas. Judge Burdette retired in September 2018 after serving more than 30 years on the bench for Kansas’s 29th Judicial Circuit.
In June 2016, a Kansas City drug kingpin named Cecil Brooks signed an affidavit stating that Neil “Monster” Edgar Jr., a drug dealer currently serving a 33-year-prison sentence for drugs and murder, “got paid to do the murder….the guy [Lamonte] who got convicted for these murders had nothing to do with it. None of us had ever heard of him.” In October 2017, Lamonte was released from prison after Wyandotte County District Attorney Mark Dupree labeled the case a “manifest injustice” and dropped all the charges against him. In all, Lamonte spent more than 23 years in prison for two murders he didn’t commit.
But this story is not about Lamonte McIntyre.
Golubski’s Girls
“You’re here for that thing about the Golubski Girls?” asked Fred, a stoutly built, gruff 47-year-old who was sipping on a super-sized soda. “Of course I know about it. Everybody knows about the Golubski Girls. Yeah, they’re right down there.”
I had not planned on speaking with Fred or his crew. I happened upon them during my visit to Kansas City, while walking to the last stop for a vigil organized by Justice for Wyandotte, a Black-woman-led group whose goal is to shed light on the injustices in the area.
According to investigators, media reports and court documents, “Golubski’s Girls” was the moniker designated to a loose network of informants, sex workers and people struggling with substance use disorder who were coerced—through threats, blackmail and intimidation—into sexual relationships with Detective Golubski.
Niko offered to take me on a tour of the Quindaro Park neighborhood, but, having covered this story for more than three years, I declined. I had planned on moving to Kansas City to dig deeper into the cesspool before the COVID-19 pandemic put the entire country in solitary confinement. Finally arriving in the area, I wanted to walk the streets that I have been preternaturally obsessed with from afar.
Quindaro Park is not just a neighborhood; it is an actual city park. Obscured from the street by a towering mound and tucked in a quiet community, one would never know the park or the neighborhood was part of the 31st-largest metropolitan area in America. It is almost rural in its Midwestern ordinariness, but not country. As I meandered from block to block on the “Kansas side” of the K.C., no one stopped me to ask questions. A little girl waved from the backseat as her young parents sat in a car chatting. I replied; they didn’t. Everyone seemed to mind their own business. Seeing the suburb on my own helped me understand the story even better.
It was a perfect place to dump dead bodies.
On April 15, Justice for Wyandotte held a vigil and procession to the sites where Quindaro Park and the surrounding area have coughed up the corpses of at least a dozen Black women, including:
- Rose Calvin: Calvin was found strangled on July 21, 1996, in a Kansas City vacant lot. Lead Detective Roger Golubski refused to allow the family to view the body.
- Pearl Barnes: Barnes’ body was found in a vacant house on Nov. 22, 1996. She was stabbed to death.
- Rhonda Tribue: The body of the 34-year-old mother of six was found on a rural road outside of Kansas City in 1998. She was last seen at the Firelight Lounge and the area of 7th Street and Quindaro Blvd.
- Monique Allen: Allen, 26, died after she was found stabbed in January 1998.
- Sandra Glover: Glover’s body was discovered in an alley near Quindaro Park in March 1997. She was shot several times.
- Eliza Michie: On Feb. 3, 2004, 30-year-old Michie was found shot to death in Kansas
- Vicki Hollinshed-Dew: In June 2000, the 34-year-old was found outside “a residence known to law enforcement as a drug house” with 50 stab wounds, cuts and incisions. Before her carotid artery was slit, neighbors heard someone yell “stop.”
- Iashia King and Stacey Wilson: King, 20, and Wilson, 24, were found unconscious, shot multiple times. Wilson had recently witnessed a double-homicide that Golubski investigated.
The names of most of the women have been forgotten and many only received small blurbs in local newspapers at the time of their deaths. But according to our sources, there may be at least six more. According to the Kansas City Star and 12 sources who spoke to The Root, each of these unsolved murders are connected in some way to the king of the Kansas City Police Department’s detective unit, Roger Golubski.
Golubski and his attorneys have declined to comment on the murders when contacted by The Root. He has made no public comments on the deaths, in part because no one has ever formally charged him with a crime. On Nov. 19, 2020, during a videotaped deposition for the McIntyres’ civil rights lawsuit obtained by The Root. Golubski invoked his Fifth Amendment rights 559 times. He told civil rights attorney Emma Freudenberger that he trained for four years to become a Catholic priest. He acknowledged that he carried a prayer book in his police vehicle but pleaded the fifth when asked if he had ever “forcibly raped a minor in his police vehicle.” He invoked his rights against self-incrimination when asked if he fabricated the positive identification of Lamonte McIntyre. He did it again when asked if “fabricating false witness statements to close cases was routine in the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department in the 1980s and 1990s.”
The questioning continued:
Freudenberger: In the crimes against persons unit you had to work closely with narcotics detectives, given the amount of drug trafficking on the streets of Kansas City, Kansas in the 1990's, correct?.
Golubski: On the advice of my attorney, I invoke my Fifth Amendment Constitutional Rights.
Freudenberger: And you had developed a vast network of people on the streets in Kansas City, Kansas who gave you information, correct?
Golubski: On the advice of my attorney, I invoke my Fifth Amendment Constitutional Rights.
Freudenberger: Many of them were women, correct?
Golubski: On the advice of my attorney, I invoke my Fifth Amendment Constitutional Rights.
Freudenberger: You understand we are accusing you of raping women and coercing women into giving false testimony, some of the grossest acts of corruption a police officer can commit, right? You understand that as you sit here today? This isn’t the first you are hearing of this?
Golubski: On the advice of my attorney, I invoke my Fifth Amendment Constitutional Rights.
It was the first and last time Golubski would make an on-the-record statement about the litany of accusations leveled against him.
However, in numerous interviews over the past two years, former coworkers, alleged victims and other Kansas City residents laid out a pattern of behavior that includes murder, sexual assault and involvement in drugs. And in affidavits obtained by The Root, witnesses not only point to Golubski but the entire Kansas City Police Department, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation and the FBI. In a 2016 affidavit for the McIntyre appeal, a former KCKPD officer said Golubski was “untouchable” and was promoted because of his connections.
In another 2015 affidavit for Lamonte’s appeal, a former FBI agent who investigated numerous Kansas City police officers, including Golubski, said Golubski “used the authority of his position to extort sexual favors from Black females. These women complied with his demands because they knew they would be arrested if they said no. Some of these women were prostitutes, and most were drug-addicted. The women knew that unless they provided what Golubski wanted that he could arrest them and have them held in the jail. The women were powerless, and Golubski exploited them.”
Court documents from the civil rights case and the Lamonte McIntyre appeal accuse Golubski and the KCKPD of “shaking down” drug dealers; “swagging”–or stealing illegal drugs “during the execution of a search warrant”; accepting bribes “from persons involved in criminal activity”; and “taking drugs for personal use or to provide to informants.”
“In addition to sex, Golubski used these women as informants to help him clear cases,” reads a judge’s order describing the complaints against Golubski. “Known by other KCKPD officers as ‘Golubski’s girls,’ the women would provide critical evidence which resulted in convictions in many of Golubski’s investigations – evidence which the officers knew was unreliable because it was the product of coercive relationships. Golubski also worked closely with drug kingpins in Kansas City, Kansas. In exchange for money or drugs, Golubski fixed investigations, including framing innocent people for crimes that the drug gangs had committed. Despite this being common knowledge, the KCKPD never reprimanded him. In fact, before he retired, the KCKPD promoted Golubski to captain.”
“The department never ignored what people said about Golubski,” one former KCKPD officer told The Root. “They encouraged it! They saw it as ‘This man had all the informants and knew everything that was going on in [the Quindaro Park neighborhood]. They didn’t care how he was doing it, but we all knew how he did it. It was like: ‘You need to know what so-and-so was up to; you just asked [Golubski] if he was f*cking someone close to so-and-so.”
“Detective Golubski would pull them over, take cash from the man and get sex from the woman,” recalled a different affiant in McIntyre’s appeal. “Golubski’s badge gave him leverage over people to get what he wanted.”
In 2015, Ruby Ellington, whose 25-year career with KCKPD was concurrent with Golubski’s time at the department, said in a sworn statement that Golubski was “obsessed with prostitutes, specifically Black female prostitutes who were typically drug-addicted as well as poor and powerless.”
But one specific witness doesn’t need affidavits or anonymous sources.
Niko Quinn saw it with her own eyes.
Niko’s Eyes
“The reason why I got involved with it was because I was the last one to see Rhonda [Tribue] alive and Monique [Allen] alive and Liza [Michie] alive,” Niko recounted in an interview with The Root. “Golubski was the last one I know of that Rhonda and Monique got in the car with. I’m not sure if it was him who Liza left with. But it was a detective car.”
In October 1998, Niko had just loaned Rhonda Tribue a pair of jeans after putting finger waves in Tribue’s hair. According to Niko, the two women were sitting on the porch when they spotted Golubski’s car easing past her home. Seconds after Tribue left to meet a “friend” who was coming to pick her up, Niko received a call from someone asking to speak to Rhonda.
“I ran to catch her, but she was gone,” Niko said. “But when Gobluski’s car came around that bend, she was in the car with him.”
The next day, Tribue’s body was found on a road outside of Edwardsville, Kan., beaten to death from blunt force trauma. Liza Michie left Niko’s house in an unmarked car that Niko had seen Golubski drive—but she can’t say that it was definitely Golubski who picked Michie up. The next day, Michie was found dead. Monique Allen’s last day was eerily similar.
“She walked out of my front door, down the street and he picked her up,” said Niko. “That’s when he drove that blue Crown Vic. And I know it was him because she had his card and called him from my house.”
Because she lived across the street from a popular neighborhood bar, Niko had personal relationships with several of the women who would later end up mysteriously murdered. While sitting in Niko’s living room, many of the women would warn her about the notorious detective. But Niko had a mutual relationship that provided insight into Golubski’s dealings.
Niko’s older sister was also one of Golubski’s Girls.
Before her brutal murder in January 2000, 31-year-old Stacy Quinn was intimately familiar with Golubski, according to Niko. Stacy’s killer was caught and convicted, but according to Niko and the McIntyres’ suit, Golubski nor his fellow officers ever revealed that Golubski was in a “longtime sexual relationship with eyewitness Stacy Quinn.” Niko says she listened to her sister and the other women, despite their struggles with substance use disorder, when they repeatedly warned her about the notorious officer.
“I understood them because of my sister being out there,” Niko explained. “It was just a sickness that they had, and [they] got caught up in the wrong thing. I would sit there and talk to these women. And they were saying that this man is literally the devil. He’s the grim reaper. Don’t trust him.
“And one of the young ladies that I talked to—when we were talking about him—if you could see this woman’s eyes, Mike, it was like, she had just seen death in the face. And she told me that he started stopping her at 16. He would show up at our house and bring her food. She would call him, and he would bring food to her. And some women liked him because he paid good.”
I asked Niko if she was ever concerned for her own safety. She replied she always assumed Golubski harassed her because he wanted sex. “What do you mean?” I asked. “You spoke to Golubski after Lamonte McIntyre went to prison?”
“Oh Mike,” she sighed. “That man stalked me for 10 years.”
The Million Dollar Question
Perhaps the most frequent reaction I encounter about the Golubski story is: “But why isn’t he in jail?”
That the most powerful white people simply chose not to care about rape, corruption and dead bodies popping up everywhere is a disconcerting thought for most people. For me, their naive astonishment is the most astonishing part. It is stunning how many people can’t believe a thing like this can happen, even knowing that things like this have always happened. According to one report, police sexually assault at least 100 women every year. The most likely reason Golubski was never arrested is also the most unsettling:
Because his victims were Black women.
To understand how the most powerful people in Kansas City overlooked Roger Golubski’s alleged crimes, one only needs to read one woman’s relationship with the notorious Kansas City detective.
This story is about Jane Doe.
The Root obtained a transcript of a deposition with Jane Doe, who describes, in excruciating detail, multiple sexual assaults after the KCKPD served a search warrant on her home. In a Nov. 2020 deposition from the civil rights case, the woman recounts how Golubski ogled her 14-year old daughter the night of the search warrant. How he forced Jane Doe to have sex. How he returned about “once a week or once every two weeks” to sexually assault her. How she said, she considered biting Golubski’s sexual parts when he forced her to perform oral sex. How he told her that he would shoot her in the head if she did. How she eventually had a heart attack. But the most revealing part of this sworn deposition is how the woman recalls the aura of fear and intimidation.
Freudenberger: Did you let him know that you didn’t want this?
Jane Doe: Yes.
Freudenberger: How did you communicate that?
Jane Doe: I asked him to stop doing it, why are you keeping doing this.
Freudenberger: What did he say?
Jane Doe: He always just said, I can be a good friend of yours, I’m going to help you with your sons. He always said, each time he say he going to talk to the D.A,, [Jerome] Gorman.
Freudenberger: Were you ever fearful of what would happen if you didn’t cooperate?
Jane Doe: Yes. I thought he would do something to me.
Freudenberger: Did you ever complain to anyone?
Jane Doe: No. Who was I going to complain to?
Freudenberger: Did you ever tell Detective Golubski that you were thinking about complaining?
Jane Doe: Yes.
Freudenberger: Do you remember what he said?
Jane Doe: He told me he can have somebody do something to me and that they would never find me.
When asked if she told anyone about the abuse, the woman says she told her then-boyfriend and another KCKPD police officer, who never took steps to help her file a complaint. Twenty years later, while seeking legal help for her still-incarcerated sons, an attorney asked if Golubski had ever come on to her.
“And I said yes,” Jane Doe recounted during the deposition. “I didn’t use the word ‘rape,’ but I said he just took — I said this motherf*cker came in my house and just took him some puss* and left.”
As with Rose Lee McIntyre and others, District Attorney Jerome Gorman never formally investigated the numerous allegations against Golubski. Luckily, the woman no longer had to worry about Gorman retaliating. In January 2018, the Topeka Capital-Journal reported that former District Attorney Jerome Gorman had been ousted from his position at the Kansas Department of Revenue. For months, Marc McCune, the Kansas Department of Revenue’s special agent in charge, told his superiors about Gorman’s sexual harassment and outright racism. “McCune shared with superiors in the revenue department both personal observations of Gorman and first-person accounts from other employees,” the Capital-Journal reported. “McCune also sent a memorandum outlining concerns about Gorman to the Department of Administration.”
For his efforts, McCune was fired.
But another curious part of the Jane Doe transcript may elucidate why Golubski was never charged with a crime. Her son’s cases were investigated by Golubski and another detective she only refers to as “Zeigler.”
In March 2019, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation revealed that Kansas City’s chief of police was the target of a criminal corruption probe. Three months later, the chief announced his retirement after 29 years with the KCKPD.
His name is Terry Ziegler.
Everybody Knows the Devil
“For years, there were credible allegations against KCK Police Detective Roger Golubski for extorting sex from black women in the community,” said former Mayor Mark Holland in a Facebook post. “Through his dubious testimony, Wyandotte County sent Lamonte McIntyre, a 17-year-old boy, to prison for 25 years for a crime he did not commit—paid for with taxpayer funds. The Gorman/Bryant DA’s office ignored the allegations, refusing to investigate for seven years. It was not until District Attorney Dupree was in office that the McIntyre case was investigated, and he was exonerated and freed.”
“[Golubski] was seen as this high-level person who could assist the police department,” said current Wyandotte County District Attorney Mark Dupree. “Quite frankly, I think history has shown that that was an absolute misunderstanding or clearly a perverted one.”
By the time Dupree was swept into office on a campaign of reform and change in 2017, Golubski had retired from the KCKPD with a full pension. After looking into McIntyre’s case, Dupree requested that the Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI) open an investigation into Golubski. According to the Kansas City Star, the KBI began reviewing 6,000 pages of records and found…Well, no one knows. No report was ever released. It just died and went away.
In 2010, after working for the department for 35 years, Golubski went to work in nearby Edwardsville, where Tribue’s body had been found years earlier. Just before Lamonte was set to be released from prison, Golubski retired from the force, never having been charged with a crime.
“Per the City of Edwardsville Police Department policy, police department employees are not authorized to comment regarding any law enforcement incidents which did not occur within our jurisdiction,” said the Edwardsville Police Department in a statement about the civil rights complaint filed against Golubski. “We recognize the serious nature of these allegations, should they be true. Thus, we want to reassure Edwardsville citizens of our unwavering dedication to protecting the rights of all people and believe all people deserve impartial and effective service from our members. Moreover, we are committed to obedience of the law and demonstrating respect for the human dignity of all people in everything we do.”
But Edwardsville and the Kansas City Police Department have known about some of Golubski’s alleged misdeeds for more than 40 years. In May 1978, witnesses testified that Golubski hit 41-year-old Kenneth Borg with a nightstick during a call about a civil disturbance. Borg died in police custody from what an inquest called a “blow to the abdomen from a blunt object.” Golubski was later cleared when officers testified that Golubski hit Borg in the chest, not the abdomen.
In 1998, capital murder charges were dropped against Gentry Bolton when defense attorneys revealed that Golubski forced an eyewitness to falsely pin a convenience store murder on Bolton. According to a court filing from McIntyre’s attorneys, “Golubski coerced Irene Bradley to name Bolton as the customer’s killer by holding her in custody and refusing to let her leave until she made the false identification. Months later, an eyewitness told Golubski that Bolton was not the shooter, but Golubski suppressed the exculpatory statement from the prosecution and Bolton’s defense attorney. It came out only after the trial court ordered production of complete copies of the police file based on obvious Brady violations.”
“I knew that Roger seemed to like African Americans,” said the second of Golubski’s three wives in a sworn affidavit. “When I asked him one day why he was attracted to Black women, he replied: ‘Because they’re uneducated.’ I was stunned and very angry. I dealt with my hurt feelings by running up some big credit card bills.”
She later testified that Golubski paid someone to break into her house. When she called the authorities, the KCKPD sent its lead detective, Golubski, to investigate. In a sworn statement, she recalled an eerily familiar pattern, explaining:
“He stalked me for 10 years.”
This Neverending Story
This story is about Khadijah Hardaway.
While leading protests in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, Hardaway began organizing a quest for justice in her own community. After discovering the rampant corruption in Wyandotte County, Hardaway and members of Justice for Wyandotte decided they wanted to go after the biggest fish of all.
“This man is worse than Derek Chauvin,” Hardaway told The Root, referring to Golubski. “And we don’t know how many Lamonte McIntyres are behind bars.”
Hardaway eventually quit her job to pursue this cause full-time. She helped forge a relationship with Broadway Church, a local congregation that wanted to do something substantial in the social justice arena. The Sister Circle and Justice for Wyandotte have reached out to victims of Golubski and other community members whose lives have been ruined by the criminal justice system in Wyandotte County.
In 2020, Hardaway and other activists convinced 27 Kansas legislators and 16 social justice organizations to sign a letter requesting a real KBI investigation. The bureau responded by turning the investigation over to the FBI, stating that it “found no evidence of any violation of Kansas law that is within the statute of limitations. However, during the course of our investigation, information related to possible federal violations was shared with federal authorities for their consideration and possible action.” The Federal Bureau of Investigation has confirmed its investigation.
On March 3, 2020, U.S. District Judge Kathryn Vratil denied the protection of qualified immunity to Golubski, the Wyandotte County Unified Government and Kansas City, paving the way for the Lamonte and Rose McIntyre’s civil rights suit.
But Justice for Wyandotte is not done.
They are currently working to free John Keith Calvin, who is in the 20th year of a life sentence for a murder he says he didn’t commit. Another man has confessed to the killing. “I feel bad,” said Melvin White. “I should be doing the time, not him. I’m the one who pulled the trigger. He didn’t know anything about it.” There are numerous connections to Lamonte McIntyre’s case; he and Calvin were incarcerated together, and McIntyre even cut Calvin’s hair in prison. Calvin’s sister, Rose, was found strangled on July 21, 1996.
She was one of Golubski’s Girls.
Justice for Wyandotte has demanded Calvin’s release, as well as for prosecutors to indict Golubski and review every case in which Golubski or Morehead was involved. Mark Dupree has opened a Conviction Integrity Unit in Wyandotte County but notes that he doesn’t have the manpower or the resources to review every case Golubski handled. Now called the “Community Integrity Unit,” recent charges of racism and discrimination left the commission with no members.
Everyone in Kansas City who could have stopped Golubski has been charged with misconduct. Jerome Gorman, the prosecutor, was ousted for sexual misconduct and racism. When the KBI finished their investigation of Terry Ziegler, Golubski’s former partner who became police chief, they forwarded the results to the Wyandotte County District Attorney’s Office, who has not filed charges...yet. In March, the U.S. Department of Justice removed Morehead from criminal cases after she was accused of multiple instances of prosecutorial misconduct. On May 10, U.S. District Judge Jay Crabtree accused Morehead of misconduct again, saying she hid evidence in a federal drug and counterfeiting case.
But this story is not about Zeigler, Morehead, Golubski or justice or Wyandotte County.
This story is about the most disrespected, unprotected, neglected person in America. But...
It is mostly about us.
*Additional reporting by Ethan Brown
**Correction: A previous version of this article implied Stacy Quinn testified in The State of Kansas vs. Lamonte McIntyre, which did not happen.
