It’s thanks to former KCK Det. Roger Golubski’s victims that he’s finally wearing cuffs

This is the day that some of those who’ve accused former Kansas City, Kansas, police detective Roger Golubski of kidnapping, rape, stalking and threats never thought would come.

One woman cried in my car when she told me that the authorities were never going to believe a bunch of terrorized Black women with no connections or money accusing a cop with so many powerful friends. I just didn’t understand, she said, that in KCK, no amount of evidence would ever be enough.

Another woman was convinced that the FBI investigation was just for show and was going nowhere by design, because law enforcement always protects its own.

A third woman, who said Golubski had raped her and then threatened to kill her and her brother if she ever told a soul, waited until after her brother was dead to say anything. When she finally did talk to me and then to the FBI, it was despite deep fears that he might still make good on those threats. That she and others told their stories anyway is astonishingly brave.

“After my brother passed, I sat down and had a long talk with God and just told him to give me some answers and help me, and I came to my decision” to report. Even then, “I didn’t know if I was ready to be revealed. And I’m still scared, because he’s still out there. I don’t know who he’s still connected to. He has friends in higher places or he wouldn’t still be walking around.” As I wrote at the time, none of those accusing the former captain had enjoyed the luxury of trusting others in quite a while.

A fourth woman, who from the first trusted the FBI to do the right thing, was still so terrified at what Golubski could do to her that the first time she called me, she was hyperventilating.

Roger Golubski is wearing cuffs today for three reasons: One, because of the brave women — and men, too, some of them cops — who pushed their fears of retribution aside and came forward anyway.

Two, because defense attorney Cheryl Pilate never gave up on justice for wrongfully convicted Lamonte McIntyre. Without his case, no one outside Roger Golubski’s world would ever have heard his name.

And three, because FBI agents did their job despite all of the worst-case naysaying, some of it from me.

It’s thanks to the victims themselves, who helped agents build the case against Golubski, brick by brick, that he is finally in custody.

“They did to him what he did to so many,” — rolling up on him in the early morning — said Ophelia Williams, whose rape allegations against the former detective are described in three of the six counts against him laid out in the indictment.

He’s charged with violating her civil rights, and of raping her.

The indictment also says he violated the civil rights, and the body, of a second person, identified as S.K.: “On or about May or June 1998, in the District of Kansas, the defendant, ROGER GOLUBSKI, while acting under color of law, did willfully deprive S.K., whose identity is known to the Grand Jury, of the right, secured and protected by the Constitution and laws of the United States, not to be deprived of liberty without due process of law, which includes the right not to be deprived of bodily integrity. Specifically, while in GOLUBSKI’S vehicle, GOLUBSKI sexually assaulted S.K. by digitally penetrating S.K. and making S.K. perform oral sex on him, all without S.K.’s consent. GOLUBSKI’s conduct included aggravated sexual abuse and an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, and included kidnapping and an attempt to commit kidnapping.”

One relative of a Golubski victim who never did doubt that justice was coming, and told me many times that God was on the case, too, shouted, “God is good!” and “As you sow, so shall you reap!” when I told her the news this morning.

When the innocent spend decades behind bars, as McIntyre did, after Golubski arrested him for a double murder that he did not commit, it’s hard to keep faith in our flawed system.

When justice is so long delayed, it’s hard to believe that it won’t be denied.

But today, it’s a little less hard. What MLK said about the long arc of the moral universe bending towards justice seems a little less theoretical.

I wish I could join the victims and advocates who are going to a bar where KCK cops hang out this afternoon, to offer a toast to their bravery and to at least a glimpse of justice.

And I hope that Niko Quinn, who believes that Golubski was connected to her sister Stacey Quinn’s murder, is right when she says, “This is just the beginning. I hope everybody will be held accountable for whatever part they played.”

Niko says she’ll wait and celebrate on the day he and others are convicted, and I hear that, too.

This story was originally published September 15, 2022 at 1:32 PM.