Explosive filing in sex trafficking conspiracy case alleges prosecutor bought dope | Opinion
There are a couple of explosive new allegations — and right now, they are only that — in the most recent filings from defendants in the federal sex trafficking conspiracy case that would have also prosecuted former KCKPD detective Roger Golubski had he not killed himself on what was to have been the first day of his first federal trial in December.
First, defendant LeMark Roberson alleges that the FBI was told in a taped interview in 2020 that now former Wyandotte County and federal prosecutor Terra Morehead, who was disbarred last year, was on a number of occasions seen buying cocaine from someone who sold drugs for another of the defendants, Cecil Brooks.
These are serious charges, made by one person in 2020. If there is any truth to this claim, it raises the possibility that Morehead could have had some hand in covering up what was allegedly going on at the Delavan Apartments in 1996, 1997 and 1998, when prosecutors say the defendants, protected by Golubski, were holding girls there. But is there?
Morehead’s attorney, John Ambrosio, did not respond to email and phone messages asking for a response to the filing. The state never responds other than in court, and didn’t this time, either: “If it’s still pending, we’re not allowed to comment,” said Danielle Thomas, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
After reading the filing, former U.S. Attorney for the District of Kansas Steve McAllister said it all comes down to whether the witness mentioned in the filing was telling the truth.
“If it’s substantiated, good God. But I certainly never heard anything like this when I was still in the office. She certainly hid things, like her relationship with (Dexter) Burdette,” the judge in the case that Morehead prosecuted against Lamonte McIntyre, who served 23 years in prison after being wrongly convicted of a 1994 double murder. “But if she was buying that many times, others must have seen it.”
McAllister said the government is likely to be skeptical of a single claim. And they will definitely oppose the motion to dismiss, he said.
Witness: I saw Terra Morehead buy cocaine
The motion, joined by all three remaining defendants, Roberson, Brooks and Richard Robinson, says this: “A timely prosecution in 2002 or 2003 would have faced two significant problems. The Government knew about the problems at the time and avoided them by waiting. First, former federal prosecutor Terra Morehead purchased cocaine from Aaron Robinson, a nephew and associate of Cecil Brooks in Mr. Brooks’s drug dealing operation.”
“A witness in this case describes seeing Ms. Morehead purchase cocaine from Aaron Robinson,” who was murdered in 1996. “That witness was interviewed by FBI agents on September 30, 2020,” the motion says. “The interview was recorded and has been provided to the defendants. … The witness claims to have seen Aaron Robinson serve Terra Morehead cocaine ‘hella times.’ The witness claims to have seen Ms. Morehead ‘do the cocaine.’ The witness explains seeing Ms. Morehead buying cocaine at two different locations. Later the witness reiterates, ‘She was on dope. Terra Morehead was on dope.’ The witness contends that the authorities have tried ‘to sweep that under the rug.’ ”
Also according to the filing, one of the alleged sex trafficking victims first told authorities her story in 2001. But “(h)ad the Government filed an Indictment in 2002 or 2003, it would have faced a profound strategic disadvantage. One of its own prosecutors would have been a witness to the drug activities of Aaron Robinson, a close associate and relative of Cecil Brooks, and a person mentioned by multiple alleged victims in the discovery in this case. That would have been more than an embarrassment to the Government; it would have undercut the Government’s case.”
For the many who feel they were seriously wronged by Morehead, this is an enormously appealing narrative. I don’t know what to think based only on this filing.
The overall defense against the charges is that the three men were in the drug business but did not hold girls and women against their will, and were after all operating in plain sight.
“In fact, Cecil Brooks was well known to the authorities,” the filing says. “The authorities knew he was a drug dealer. One of the authorities even got cocaine from his operation. Had this case been filed in the early 2000s, the defendants could have called then federal prosecutor Terra Morehead as a witness” to what did and did not go on at the Delavan Apartments.
“Now, Ms. Morehead is no longer a federal prosecutor. In fact, she has been disbarred. Her credibility as a defense witness is obviously damaged, and she is no longer connected to the Government that has finally decided to bring its case.” Though it’s impossible to imagine even the wiliest prosecutor strategizing 20 years into the future, the motion goes on to say that whether current prosecutors handling the case knew anything about this “is not the issue.”
At the time all of this happened, it says, the “Government knew what Terra Morehead knew because Terra Morehead was the Government.”
‘Rampant misconduct” at WyCo DA office
The defense filing also says that the state has acknowledged that Brooks was an informant for the DEA. It says that federal prosecutor Stephen Hunting confirmed this, but Hunting did not respond to my emailed question about that. The file that showed Brooks to be an informant has “been lost, destroyed, or simply not retained,” the filing says, and “Mr. Brooks does not recall the name of the agent or agents that he worked with.”
If Brooks was an informant, McAllister said, “that makes it harder for the government to attack the credibility of someone they relied on.” But then, in prosecuting him they are already doing that.
Mike Warner is a former prosecutor who worked with Morehead both in the Wyandotte County District Attorney’s Office and as a federal prosecutor. When she was disbarred last year, he told me, “I saw rampant misconduct with Terra Morehead at the center of it.”
Of the recent allegations, he said, “Nothing would surprise me. (In) Wyandotte County, no matter what happens, (it) can be concealed. Golubski survived there forever.”
She and the DEA agents with whom she worked were “like cowboys,” Warner said, but were highly regarded as such. If the allegations in the filing are true, this would be especially “hypocritical since she considered herself the drug prosecution czar.”
When I asked how, if these allegations were true, it wouldn’t have been caught by those vetting her when she went to work as a federal prosecutor, Warner laughed.
“The folks that do the vetting are retired law enforcement, and I’m sure law enforcement said she was great; they loved her. It’s not like on TV where they do a serious background check.”
I’ll look forward to reading the response from prosecutors when they file it with the court. Right now, this trial is scheduled for November in Topeka, but obviously, anything can happen in this case.
This story was originally published April 15, 2025 at 5:06 AM.
