Ex-cop Golubski left 5 suicide notes for friends and family, none for his victims | Opinion
Former Kansas City, Kansas, police detective Roger Golubski left behind five suicide notes, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation announced late Tuesday. They said they had finished looking into how he died on Dec. 2, apparently at the very minute that he was due in court for the first day of his first federal trial, essentially for menacing the community he was supposed to be protecting for his entire 35 years on the force.
One of his victims, Michelle Houcks, said the lead FBI agent on the two federal cases against Golubski told her on Tuesday evening that the suicide letters had been addressed to his friends and family. Houcks was going to testify that Golubski offered her a ride home from a public park, then raped her.
“So, no note to the community at large apologizing for 40 years of terror?” asked Cheryl Pilate, the lawyer who represented Lamonte McIntyre, the man Golubski framed for a double murder when he was only 17. McIntyre served 23 years in prison before finally being exonerated in 2017.
This update from the KBI, which also said that his death had been ruled a suicide and that the Smith and Wesson M&P Shield handgun found near Golubski’s body on his back deck had been stolen from a Kansas City woman’s car in 2022, does move some of his victims who had been skeptical about whether he was really even dead toward believing that he is, though they still have so many unanswered questions.
The main one I have is whether those suicide notes were letters of apology, in which he confessed to his crimes. Or did he, to the end, stick with his story, which is that all of the Black women who said he’d raped and trafficked them were lying.
Some of those he hurt hope that he implicated others in the words he left behind. But if that were the case, the investigation wouldn’t be closed, which it is. Or else we’d never hear about it. But that it’s been closed without anyone taking any responsibility for any of the damage done in KCK does feel like another failure.
If the investigation did not include tracking the money Golubski made in the drug business, then you have to wonder why not, and whether anyone really wants to know. Golubski’s partnership with convicted drug kingpin Cecil Brooks in a sex trafficking conspiracy and drug operation was to have been the focus of his second trial.
If Golubski himself did take some responsibility for the harm done in those suicide notes, that would mean something to his victims. “That would make me feel great,” said Ophelia Williams, who was going to testify that Golubski met her on the day he came to her house to arrest her 14-year-old twins for murder and started raping her on a regular basis right after that, while also promising to help her boys.
“I knew he wasn’t going to come to court,” she said, “because that would’ve been too much like doing right.”
Whatever he said in those letters, she and the others want to know about it.
Shot himself with stolen gun
Golubski’s defense attorney, Chris Joseph, said even after his client’s death that he had always maintained his innocence. In court, Joseph blamed the media for his inability to produce Golubski for what was to have been the first day of jury selection. He told the judge that Golubski was “despondent” over coverage that was if anything more subdued right before trial than at any time in the preceding five years. Joseph did not return my call Tuesday asking about the suicide notes.
I still don’t understand how someone with a “despondent” client, who had talked to him “a lot” that morning, would not have sent someone to get him to court for such an important case. Or why the feds didn’t have Golubski under surveillance as a flight risk. Or, of course, how the court let him be wandering around on his own on home detention for more than two years in the first place. So of course he had access to guns, even though he wasn’t supposed to.
“Upon arriving at the scene,” the KBI news release said, “agents recovered a Smith and Wesson M&P Shield handgun on the back deck of the residence near the body, and five suicide letters from Golubski. KBI agents traced the handgun to a woman who lives in Kansas City, Missouri. She indicated the gun had been stolen from her vehicle in 2022. The investigation did not establish a relationship or connection between Golubski and the gun owner. Agents were not able to determine how Golubski gained possession of the firearm.”
And they never will. It was also in 2022 that Golubski was arrested and put on what I’ve started calling theoretical house arrest, since he clearly did as he pleased. Did he have the gun all this time?
Golubski left for court, then came back home
The KBI’s account of events makes it sound as though Golubski wasn’t sure he was going to end his life right up until he did so, which makes the fact that nobody had eyes on him that morning even more frustrating: “Through the investigation, KBI agents established that Golubski left his house for his federal trial around 8:30 a.m., but never arrived at the Courthouse. He made several phone calls to family and to his attorney, and returned home. His roommate reported that she heard the gunshot around 9 a.m. and then called 911.”
“The final autopsy report concluded Golubski’s cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head, and manner of his death was suicide. The toxicology report found no significant positive findings. The KBI has concluded this investigation. Foul play is not suspected in Golubski’s death. Nothing further will be released at this time.”
Saundra Newsom, whose son’s murder in broad daylight Golubski pinned on an innocent man, Lamonte McIntyre, while the guilty man was never prosecuted, said there might very well be some remorse in those letters: “This is the same guy who wanted to be a priest, and everything he did was filthy.” Yet she saw the former detective as “too arrogant” to really take responsibility, even in his final moments.
Recipients of letters could do some good
Before we knew anything more than that there were five letters, she said she didn’t think any of them would be addressed to his victims. “I think he’d say something to his children, and to the females who meant something to him. Apparently there were a couple.”
Whatever he said in those letters, his victims do deserve to know what it was. “Put them out there so the public can read them,” Saundra urged the authorities she’s never had any reason to trust.
If the notes were addressed to friends and family, it would presumably be up to them to do that.
If I were one of the five people the predatory former cop cared about in this world, I’m not sure I’d be eager to make that widely known. But if I got one of those letters, reaching out to those he hurt would be a good way to give back at least a little of what Roger Golubski spent his life taking away.
This story was originally published January 29, 2025 at 5:06 AM.
