Roger Golubski (Shawnee County Detention Center).
The disgraced Kansas police detective accused of raping Black women and girls for decades died by suicide the day he was slated to face a jury of his peers in a federal trial, authorities say.
The Edwardsville Police Department received a 911 call shortly after 9 a.m. Monday from a resident in the 700 block of S. 9th Street about a gunshot. Officers arrived on scene and found a man later identified as 71-year-old Roger Golubski dead on the back porch. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation is conducting a death investigation but there are no signs of foul play. An autopsy will determine the official cause of death.
Golubski, a former detective with the Kansas City Police Department, was set to go on trial in federal court for alleged civil rights violations for acting under color of law to commit aggravated sexual assaults for decades. Indicted in September 2022, Golubski was accused of raping two women multiple times over several years in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He allegedly used his position as a police officer to force himself upon them.
On Monday, a judge issued a warrant for Golubski’s arrest when he failed to show up to court before news of his death.
“This matter involved extremely serious charges, and it is always difficult when a case is unable to be fully and fairly heard in a public trial and weighed and determined by a jury,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Civil Rights Division and U.S. Attorney Kate E. Brubacher for the District of Kansas said in a statement. “The proceedings in this case may be over, but its lasting impact on all the individuals and families involved remains. We wish them peace and the opportunity for healing as they come to terms with this development and ask that they all be treated with respect and their privacy respected.”
Sexual assault allegations against Golubski go back to the 1980s. He was also facing a lawsuit from five Black women who accuse him of sexual assault. One of the women, Michelle Houcks, accused him of raping her in 1992. She was reportedly slated to testify at this week’s trial.
“I was in shock because I really wanted him to face his day in court. I wanted him to face what he made us face for so many years,” Houcks told Kansas City ABC affiliate KMBC. “It’s not fair at all. They should have locked him up so he could face his accusers. I feel there was a lot of stuff probably going to come out at that court.”
Another woman told KMBC Golubski put a gun to her head in 1972.
“It’s the coward’s way out. Because you don’t want to face these people,” Madella Henderson said. “Because if you have a heart and everything, it’s got to do something to you. Throughout all this time, knowing how you have made other people suffer.”
According to KMBC, Golubski’s attorney that his client was “despondent about media coverage of the trial.” His suicide is not an admission of guilt, the attorney reportedly said.
Golubski was indicted a second time in 2022. As Law&Crime previously reported, Golubski and three other men — Cecil Brooks, LeMark Roberson and Richard Robinson — were indicted in November of that year on allegations that they conspired to force women into sexual slavery.
Brooks, Roberson and Robinson allegedly “used physical beatings, sexual assaults and threats to compel young women to provide sexual services to men,” according to the DOJ. Golubski, a detective at the time, is alleged to have accepted money from Brooks and provided protection from law enforcement for the criminal activity, including sex trafficking. He also allegedly “forcibly raped the young woman identified as Person 2,” the DOJ says.
Brooks, Roberson, and Robinson allegedly set up “units” at what is referred to as the “working house” where the victims would be held.
“One of those units was a ‘relaxed’ area, where young girls used alcohol and drugs with the defendants, and another was ‘working house,’ where some girls were compelled to perform sexual services for adult men who visited Delevan,” the indictment says.
According to the indictment, Brooks, Roberson, and Robinson “provided drugs to the girls in the ‘working house,’ who were addicts.” They also allegedly “beat and threatened to beat girls who did not agree to provide sexual services in exchange for shelter, drugs, or clothes.”
Golubski, according to the indictment, visited the “working house” and repeatedly targeted Black girls in particular.
“At Delevan, Defendant Roger Golubski primarily chose young Black girls, ranging in age from 13 to 17 years old, to submit to sex and to provide sexual services to him,” the indictment says.
Roberson is alleged to have intimidated one of the victims by “telling her that the defendants had murdered a woman by burning her alive and watching her dance around like a chicken with no head,” according to the indictment.
Brooks allegedly “paid off law enforcement so that officers would provide warnings when police were about to ‘hit’ the house.”
The indictment references a fourth person who allegedly conspired with the defendants, but that person is deceased and their identity was not revealed.
If convicted, each man would face a maximum life sentence in prison.
Several Black women also filed a lawsuit against Golubski last year. The 138-page lawsuit also names fellow detectives, former police chiefs and the unified government of Kansas City, Kansas, and Wyandotte County.
Plaintiffs allege that the lawsuit goes further than just actions by individuals.
“The monumental issue concerns the responsibility public officials must bear for enabling and fostering a well-known, decades-long terrorization of the Black community. These public officials, including Chiefs of Police, though warned, informed, and aware of these unconstitutional and criminal acts, permitted a terror that lasted decades, destroying lives and families,” the lawsuit states.
The allegations included in the lawsuit are jarring. Two women were victims of “particularly vicious rapes.” Another was stalked and propositioned by detectives supposedly investigating her son’s murder. Yet another was “sadistically tortured, senselessly forced to view her father’s unidentifiably charred corpse, and then falsely arrested while repeatedly and groundlessly accused of incest and complicity in her father’s murder” before being subjected to a 19-hour interrogation, the lawsuit states.
When one victim said she’d file a complaint against him, Golubski allegedly said “Report me to who, the police? I am the police.” Golubski and the other defendants also ran what’s described in the lawsuit as a “protection racket,” which worked closely with murderers and drug kingpins to protect their interests, the lawsuit stated.
“In exchange for money, sex, or drugs, Detective Defendants fixed investigations, including making cases and witnesses disappear while framing innocent people for crimes committed by drug gangs. The drug kingpins also provided Defendants with successful drug busts to keep up appearances that KCK was aggressively pursuing illegal drugs. In reality, these were pre-arranged raids and netted minimal money, drugs, or guns,” the lawsuit said.
Government officials knew about the conduct of Golubski and others, yet did nothing about it, the plaintiffs allege.
Marisa Sarnoff contributed to this report.
