This story contains discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, call the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
For more than 25 years, prosecutors say, white homicide Detective Roger Golubski terrorized Black women in Kansas City, Kansas. His accusers said he would kidnap them, he would sexually abuse them, and he would compel them to provide false testimony in court to help bolster his murder cases.
On Monday, the same day that jury selection was beginning in his trial on federal civil rights charges, Golubski was found dead of an apparent suicide.
“I feel, well, relieved,” said Jermeka Hobbs, one of at least 10 women who accused Golubski of assault. “I feel a lot of relief, but I’m not happy about it at all.”
That sense of dissatisfaction was not uncommon among Golubski’s accusers, many of whom said that his death was yet another example of justice denied to Black women who come forward to report sexual misconduct against law enforcement officials. The women said they had to overcome the fear of being ignored, revictimized, or retaliated against for going public with their stories — concerns that they said were exacerbated because the accused was a respected white officer.
The start of Golubski’s criminal trial had been a day his accusers had waited for since his arrest. Now that Golubski’s criminal case is over, they and their supporters feel robbed, again.
In recent years, there has been an increase in reported allegations of sexual assault against law enforcement across the country. Those allegations have been considered in both criminal and civil courts. Some states, including Montana and New York, have enacted laws to increase the penalties for law enforcement officers who sexually assault those in police custody. The federal Closing the Law Enforcement Consent Loophole Act, which prohibits law enforcement officers from engaging in any sexual contact with a person in custody even if the conduct is consensual, passed in 2022.
Hobbs filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in September. When asked why she was unhappy with the turn of events, she added: “Because … it’s not just him.”
In Kansas City, officers like Golubski operated with impunity, according to Hobbs’ lawsuit. He was viewed as a “mobster — so powerful that he was beyond the reach of the law, and any complaint against him was almost certain to result in dire or deadly consequences for the person who dared to speak up,” Hobbs said in the suit. And Golubski and other officers had many residents in the Black community believing that they were “and are ‘untouchable,’ beyond the reach of any internal complaint or legal action,” according to the filing.
As far back as 1998, authorities said, Golubski allegedly abused the power of his badge to kidnap and rape two Black women. In a separate indictment, the former detective is also accused of being the ringleader of other corrupt Kansas City officers, who contributed to crimes within the community.
One of the earliest signs that Golubski’s misconduct was unfolding was when Lamonte McIntyre’s conviction was overturned in 2017. In 1994, McIntyre was 17 when he was set up by Golubski and charged with a double homicide as revenge after his mother moved more than once to avoid Golubski’s stalking and sexual harassment, according to McIntyre’s federal lawsuit. McIntyre served 23 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
“When I got the word that he unalived himself, it took something from me,” McIntyre, co-founder of Miracle of Innocence, told Capital B over the phone Tuesday. “I just wanted to see him go through the same process I went through.”
McIntyre’s exoneration and release from prison in 2017 sparked the Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department to launch their own Conviction Integrity Unit, which began a review of 155 of Golubski’s cases. But Golubski had retired from that department in 2010 and later worked for another department just 20 minutes away in Edwardsville. Some of his accusers were concerned that Golubski — and other officers named in the suit — continued to work in law enforcement before any of their misconduct came to light.
“I wanted him to just experience based on what he did to the victims — my mother and all these other people of society including me — based on what he did, I wanted to see him face his accusers,” McIntyre said.
“I wanted to see him go to court,” he added. “Go through the process. Be found guilty, go to prison, get a prison inmate number, go to the chow hall and try to eat that slop. Sit in that cell for 24 hours a day, and watch your family grow old without you. I wanted him to experience that, just like I did.”
But, McIntyre said, his mother, Rosie, can breathe now.
Golubski “was far from the only one”
“Although Golubski was viewed as the most flagrant and notorious lawbreaker — particularly with respect to raping women and inflicting terror on the community — he was far from the only one” who tormented Black and brown mothers, sisters, aunts, and grandmothers of Kansas City for decades, Hobbs said in her lawsuit.
Following McIntyre’s exoneration, The Kansas City Star published a series of Pulitzer Prize-winning articles in 2021 and 2022 that exposed the corruption of six Kansas City, Kansas, police officers, including Golubski. Before his retirement, the department’s homicide clearance rate was at record lows, the paper reported at the time.
However, Hobbs said her anxiety increased during that time. She felt as if she had to keep silent about her own sexual assault because it seemed as if Golubski had gotten away with intimidating, and raping, possibly dozens of Black women while still collecting his pension.
Her day of reckoning came on Sept. 15, 2022, when the first federal indictment was filed against Golubski. A second indictment was filed against him on Nov. 11, 2022. Both cases garnered national attention from organizations such as the Midwest Innocence Project and Team Roc, Jay-Z’s social justice advocacy group. Team Roc filed an open records request in 2023 and sued the department for failing to fulfill its public information obligations.
Hobbs said she attended most of Golubski’s pre-trial court appearances to support the nine other Black women, like herself, who were raped and coerced by Golubski for years. Five of those same women filed their own civil lawsuit in 2023. Testimony from seven of the women was intended to show Golubski’s pattern of misconduct, though the statute of limitations may have barred their cases from being included in the indictment, a local public radio station reported. Golubski pleaded not guilty to the six federal civil rights violations, which carried a potential life sentence.
“I still look over my shoulders … like somebody is going to do something to me. … I don’t know who I can trust.”
Jermeka Hobbs
Hobbs, who is now 45, was not expected to testify in the criminal trial. But in a 75-page federal lawsuit, she details how the former detective tormented her when she was just 23 years old and pregnant.
After she called 911 to report that her then-boyfriend assaulted her, Golubski invaded her life.
From 2005 to 2010, Hobbs said Golubski would take her on drives and show her areas where missing Black women were found dead. He would show her photographs and funeral programs of dead Black women. And when Hobbs would move to a new address, he would find her, according to the lawsuit. There were even times when her children would tell her that a man, dressed in Golubski’s signature all-black outfit with gloves, entered their home possibly through a window and watched her sleep, Hobbs alleged in court papers.
The abuse stopped after Hobbs mentioned to Golubski that her cousin worked for the police department. Out of fear, she did not tell her cousin about Golubski, the suit said.
Despite Golubski’s death, Hobbs, who is now a mom of five, and her legal team intend to move forward with their federal civil rights lawsuit against the remaining defendants: the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas, as well as 10 named police chiefs and detectives.
Hobbs said in the filing that she is seeking an unspecified amount of monetary damages for allegations including forced sex trafficking and civil rights conspiracy violations. The lawsuit also accuses Golubski and other named police officers of engaging in a pattern of criminal activity, including murder.
But McIntyre, who received a $12.5 million settlement for his wrongful conviction case, said money won’t bring any peace because “it can run out.” The true justice, he said, was to see Golubski go to prison.
“He was going to be found guilty, that’s why he killed himself,” said McIntyre. “He couldn’t stand trial and be found not guilty. He took the easy way out.”
“He robbed those women of their justice.”
Now, McIntyre and Hobbs said they are waiting for more indictments to be announced.
“He was the only one who got caught,” added McIntyre. “The next step is to keep digging because he was just a pawn in this whole game.”
Hobbs agrees. “I still look over my shoulders … like somebody is going to do something to me,” she said. Hobbs won’t even call the fire department for help. “I don’t know who I can trust,” she said.
Hobbs’ attorney, Madison McBratney, said her goal is to get her client the therapy and resources she desperately needs after nearly 20 years of torment.
“I think [it] would be very helpful with her moving on,” said McBratney during an interview with Capital B on Wednesday with Hobbs.
Sleep hasn’t come easy for Hobbs. It’s to the point where she said she finds herself volunteering to work double overnight shifts because she’s too paranoid to fall asleep.
“In the daytime, it’s fine,” she said. “But in the nighttime, I’m up, checking my windows, checking my doors, making sure.”
Her voice trailed off. Despite Golubski’s death, she’s still haunted by the prospect of someone climbing through her window, yet again.
The post Former Detective Dies Amid Sex Abuse Allegations; Survivors Demand Justice appeared first on Capital B News.