A white Kansas detective accused of preying on Black women is dead

Former police detective Roger Golubski testifies at the Wyandotte County courthouse in Kansas City.

By Heather Hollingsworth, Nick Ingram and John Hanna

Dec. 2, 2024 Updated 11:51 AM PT

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A white Kansas police detective accused of sexually assaulting Black women and girls — and terrorizing those who tried to fight back — is dead, prosecutors said as his trial was set to begin Monday.

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

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

Allegations at the heart of the case — that Golubski preyed on women for decades with seeming impunity — outraged the community and deepened the historical distrust of law enforcement. The prosecution followed earlier reports of similar abuse allegations across the country where hundreds of officers have lost their badges after allegations of sexual assaults.

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

“The community was looking forward to justice, to a full and public accounting and now that has been denied to them,” Pilate said.

Golubski was accused of sexually assaulting one woman starting when she was barely a teenager and another after her sons were arrested.

About 50 people rallied outside the federal courthouse Monday morning in freezing temperatures to show their support for women who’ve said they were victimized by Golubski. They held signs that said, “Justice now!”

Golubski had pleaded not guilty to the charges. After he failed to appear in court Monday, his lead attorney, Christopher Joseph, said his client “was despondent about the media coverage.” He did not elaborate.

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

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

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

Joseph had said lawsuits over the allegations were an “inspiration for fabrication” by Golubski’s accusers. But prosecutors said that, along with the two women whose accounts were the heart 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 the courthouse Monday to watch jury selection and said Golubski victimized her mother before her death in 1983.

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

Prior to his death, Golubski had been under house arrest and undergoing kidney dialysis treatments three times a week. That angered women who said he victimized them. Anita Randel-Stanley, a Kansas City, Mo., resident who said Golubski started harassing her decades ago when she was a teenager, called the house arrest “a slap on the hand.”

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

Stories about Golubski circulated in the neighborhoods he worked near Kansas City’s former cattle stockyards, areas of extreme poverty. Crime was abundant there, as were drug dealers and prostitutes, said Max Seifert, a former Kansas City, Kan., police officer who graduated from the police academy with Golubski in 1975.

A fellow officer: ‘A boys-will-be-boys type thing’

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

“It’s kind of like a boys-will-be-boys-type thing,” said Seifert, who was forced into early retirement for refusing to conceal a motorist’s beating by a federal agent in 2003.

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

The inquiry into Golubski stemmed from the case of Lamonte McIntyre, who started writing to Jim McCloskey, founder of a New Jersey nonprofit working to free innocent people, nearly two decades ago.

McIntyre was just 17 in 1994 when he was arrested and charged in connection with a double homicide within hours of the crimes. He had an alibi; no physical evidence linked him to the killings; and an eyewitness believed the killer was an underling of a local drug dealer. Golubski was also later charged along with the dealer in a separate federal case of running a violent sex-trafficking operation.

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

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

“She, like many people in the community, just viewed the police as all-powerful,” said Pilate.

In 2022, the local government agreed to pay $12.5 million to McIntyre and his mother to settle a lawsuit after a deposition in which Golubski invoked his 5th Amendment right to remain silent 555 times. The state also paid McIntyre $1.5 million.

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

Women say they were threatened and mocked

Prosecutors say Golubski drove one of the women at the center of their criminal case to a cemetery and told her to find a spot to dig her own grave. He sexually assaulted her repeatedly, starting when she was just in middle school, leading her to suffer a miscarriage, court filings say.

Once, prosecutors say, he forced her to crawl on the ground with a dog leash around her neck in a remote spot near the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers. With no one around, he is accused of chanting, “Down by the river, said a hank a pank; Where they won’t find her until she stank.”

Golubski introduced himself to Ophelia Williams, the other woman at the center of the case, by complimenting her legs and nightgown as 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 homicide. They ultimately admitted to the crime so police would free their 13-year-old brother, Williams said in a separate lawsuit.

Golubski began sexually assaulting Williams, alternating between threatening her and claiming he could help her sons, according to court records in the criminal case. The twins are now 40 and remain behind bars. The lawsuit she is part of questions their confessions.

The Times and the Associated Press generally do not report the names of alleged victims of sexual assault unless they come forward publicly, as Williams has.

Williams said in her lawsuit that she once mentioned making a complaint. She claims Golubski told her: “Report me to who, the police? I am the police.”

Hollingsworth, Ingram and Hanna write for the Associated Press. Hanna reported from Topeka, Kan.