Why has Golubski’s murder case against his victim’s teen sons never been reviewed? | Opinion
On Tuesday morning, Donell Williams will appear by Zoom at the Kansas parole board hearing that will decide whether he can walk free for the first time in the 25 years since he and his twin brother Ronell were charged with two counts of first-degree murder at age 14. As he told me in an interview, he’s “anxious,” of course, and hoping more than anything that he can soon make his way to “my mama’s house.”
You might have heard of both his case and his mama since the federal charges against former Kansas City, Kansas police detective Roger Golubski involve allegations that he met Donell and Ronell’s mother, Ophelia Williams, the morning he arrived to arrest them.
After hours of police interrogation with no parent or lawyer present, the boys said in videotaped statements that yes, Ronell had shot and killed an older couple, Wilbur and Wilma Williams — no relation to the twins — in their kitchen. They said, too, that Donell, who was outside the couple’s house, knew full well that was going to happen.
It was while Golubski was telling Ophelia Williams how good she looked to him that morning, August 8, 1999, that other officers supposedly found shell casings — the only physical evidence in the murder case against her sons — in her backyard. But did they? Days later, as laid out in the federal case against Golubski, he showed up at her home again and told her that he was in charge of her twins’ case and could help them. Then, according to prosecutors, he raped her, for the first time but not the last.
Golubski’s name is all over police reports in the murder case against Ronell and Donell Williams: “Upon arrival,” on the evening of Aug. 4, 1999, at the home at 2000 N. 44th where Wilbur and Wilma Williams had been found dead, another detective wrote, “I was met by Acting Lt. Golubski, who apprised me of the situation.” A tip from someone who wouldn’t give his name is what reports say led police to their young suspects.
But police reports also say it was Golubski who assigned investigators to the case, Golubski who advised Donell Williams of his rights and Golubski who was present when his partner Terry Zeigler and another detective interviewed Donell.
“Detective Golubski was acting in the capacity of Acting Lt,” one report says. “Detective Golubski requested that we videotape the interviews” with Ronell and Donell “while a secretary typed it live.”
Golubski’s lawyers have always said he is innocent of all wrongdoing, and Zeigler, who later became chief of police, has said he never heard any allegations of criminal conduct by his former partner. Zeigler, who is also being sued by five of the women who say Golubski sexually assaulted them, did not respond to a message asking him about this case.
Donell Williams: Detective coerced testimony
According to Donell himself, it was also Golubski who told him that if he changed his story and admitted that he had known that his brother intended to kill the 79-year-old man and 73-year-old woman, well then Donell and his 12-year-old brother Tez, who was not at the crime scene, not on the arrest warrant and should never have been picked up in the first place, could go home. Case closed.
What really happened, Donell says, is that after he and Ronell followed Wilbur Williams into his house to see what they could steal, Donell got scared and told his brother, “This is stupid; let’s get out of here.” Then Ronell tossed him the keys to the couple’s white 1992 Dodge Spirit, and told him to go get their car.
But Golubski, according to Donell, wanted him to say instead that his brother had told him to go steal the car while he killed the couple.
So Donell says he did change his story, in a statement the court later said he could not retract. And of course, he did not get to go home, then or ever, because according to his statement he had prior knowledge of the murders.
The car was found burned, so there was no evidence there, and police never found the gun used in the crime, which was without any doubt pitiless. Both victims were shot multiple times, and both were shot in the face. Whoever is responsible stole a well-loved couple who had just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary from their two sons and two daughters.
But I don’t think we really know what happened.
Donell took the “Hard 25” — 25 years before even the possibility of parole — in the plea deal recommended by his court-appointed attorney, Vernon Lewis, who died two years ago.
And Ronell was given a “Hard 50” by now retired Judge Dexter Burdette.
That Golubski and Burdette were also involved in the wrongful conviction of Lamonte McIntyre, who spent 23 years in prison for a double murder he did not commit, should have gotten this whole case a second look by Wyandotte County DA Mark Dupree’s Conviction Integrity Unit. But no, it hasn’t.
McIntyre was exonerated after evidence was presented in court that showed Golubski and the prosecutor in his case, Terra Morehead, had coerced a witness. And Burdette should never have even heard the case, given that he’d at some point been romantically involved with Morehead, who was finally asked to hand in her law license for “rampant misconduct” just three months ago.
Ophelia Williams blames herself for erupting in anger at Burdette during Ronell’s trial in 2000. “Burdette gave him all that time because I was going crazy in the courtroom, and they didn’t like what I was saying. It was my first time in a court, and these are my children I love so very much. ”
‘Two 14-year-olds got railroaded’
I do not for a minute believe that Ronell Williams got a Hard 50 because his mom went off on the judge at his trial. A female bailiff, she says, kept her from being removed from court.
But I don’t know what Dupree’s Conviction Integrity Unit is for if not to review a case like this, and to review this actual case.
At least twice, Ophelia Williams says, she’s approached Dupree at public events and asked him that question herself. Once, she says he told her, “I can’t help you, Miss Ophelia.”
“He said they haven’t looked at the case,” she told me. “I guess they have a lot of them.”
Dupree didn’t answer my email asking the same question.
Nor did the district attorney ever respond to the Dec. 28, 2022, letter from William Skepnek, Ophelia Williams’ attorney in the civil case against Golubski and others, asking him to review the case.
In the letter, Skepnek said his client’s 14-year-old boys were “interrogated alone, without the presence, aid, or counsel of their mother, or the presence of a lawyer. Among the promises made to Ronell and Donell was that if they confessed, their younger brother Tez would get to go home. The convictions of Ronell and Donell are based entirely upon the confessions Golubski’s team coerced that day. The only physical evidence relied upon by police were shell casings Golubski’s team said they ‘found’ in the backyard of Ophelia’s home.”
In the letter, Skepnek also named the person he’s come to believe actually killed the couple. That man is serving time for a different murder and is connected to Cecil Brooks, Golubski’s co-defendant in the sex trafficking case. I don’t know if that person really was responsible for what was in any case a horrible crime. But again, I do know that this case needs to be reinvestigated from scratch.
“Do we know that anything Golubski touched is true?” Skepnek said in an interview. “We do know two 14-year-olds got railroaded, and what are the chances that would happen to one of my kids? Or yours? That they’d even interrogate a 14-year-old without his parent present; are you trying to get to the truth, or are you trying to get a confession?”
Roger Golubski ‘got one over on me’
Brian Betts, who along with his cousin was paroled from a Kansas prison last year after serving 25 years for the murder of Golubski’s nephew, which the evidence says they didn’t commit, either, remembers the day Donell Williams arrived in Lansing Correctional Facility.
“He was so young we named him Tweet, because there was no bass in his voice. Every time I saw him I got tears in my eyes. Someone gave him a teddy bear he carried everywhere, and I was there the day security took the bear from him. He gravitated to the older guys who wanted to see him do good — the level-headed ones, and we gave him encouragement. Everyone had a high regard for him.”
At almost 40, Donell Williams still looks like a baby. The first time I talked to him, several months ago, he said, “The truth of what happened is most people think there were other people there” when the couple was killed. And were there? “My brother and I took full responsibility, but it wasn’t premeditated. I did go into her purse, but I only took $25, and put some money back because I didn’t want to take it all. … Golubski just manufactured the whole statement.”
Last week, Donell told me exactly the same thing. Golubski, he said, told him “Don’t say you told Ronell, ‘Let’s go, this is stupid.’ He said to say he told me he was going to kill those people. He said they’d let me go then. He got one over on me.”
When I asked him what his life in prison is like, he said he follows “my Chiefs,” reads inspirational books — right now, “Emotional Intelligence for the Modern Leader” — and cuts other inmates’ hair.
That’s what he hopes to do when he’s released, and also wants to become an advocate for prison reforms like more programs for people like his brother, who have even longer sentences. Unlike Donell, Ronell has never been allowed to get his GED.
Donell also talked about his close friendship with Lamonte McIntyre, who never lost hope that he’d be exonerated. “He’d always say, ‘This is my year.’” And finally, it was.
Donell’s mom naturally hopes this is her son’s year, and she is anxious about Tuesday’s parole hearing, too. To say that Ophelia Williams has a lot going on is like saying it’s been on the warm side across the world this summer: She is not only the most out-front victim in the case against Golubski, but is raising five grandchildren and has been hospitalized twice this year.
She is looking forward to testifying at Golubski’s trial in December, and hopes it’s obvious that the case against her sons “is why I couldn’t tell anybody he raped me back then.”
When I asked her what she does to take care of herself, she so seldom has time to even think about doing that that she couldn’t think of a thing.
This story was originally published July 22, 2024 at 5:01 AM.
