Former Kansas City detective charged with kidnapping, sexually assaulting two women

By Scott Glover and Daniel A. Medina, CNN

Federal authorities in Kansas on Thursday arrested a retired homicide detective from the Kansas City police department on charges that he kidnapped and sexually assaulted two women decades ago.

The charges against Roger Golubski stem from a years-long grand jury probe first disclosed by CNN in October.

The former detective was also the subject of an explosive civil lawsuit filed by a wrongfully convicted man, Lamonte McIntyre, and his mother who alleged that Golubski framed him for a double homicide in 1994 and committed an array of other crimes during his three decades as a cop. The suit said Golubski “exploited and terrorized” Black residents of the city’s north end.

The case, which was set for trial in the fall, settled over the summer for $12.5 million. Neither Golubski nor any other officers involved admitted wrongdoing. An attorney who represented Golubski in the case declined comment.

The six-count indictment unsealed Thursday alleges that Golubski assaulted the two women while acting “under color of law,” meaning he used his position as a police officer to commit the crimes, which prosecutors said occurred in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Golubski retired from the department in 2010.

The women are referred to by their initials only and the five-page indictment offers few details about the circumstances surrounding the alleged sexual assaults and kidnappings.

Golubski, 69, was taken into custody early Thursday at his suburban Kansas City home, according to Police Chief Karl Oakman.

“They went to his house and knocked on the door and arrested him,” Oakman said in a brief phone interview.

Oakman noted the department has “cooperated fully” with the FBI but declined further comment.

News of Golubski’s arrest erupted on local social media on Thursday, with social justice activists and politicians welcoming the indictment. Khadijah Hardaway, a community organizer who has long called for Golubski to be arrested, celebrated in a Facebook post, “to God be all the Glory!” Kansas State Senator Cindy Holscher, a Democrat, wrote “it’s been a long time coming to see Roger Golubski arrested.”

Team Roc, the social justice and philanthropic arm of rapper Jay-Z’s entertainment company Roc Nation, flashed a banner across their social media profiles. The group took out a full-page ad in the Washington Post last year calling the alleged police corruption in Kansas City “one of the worst examples of abuse of power in U.S. history” and urged the Department of Justice to investigate Golubski and the Kansas City Kansas Police Department.

As CNN previously reported, multiple former police officers were called before the grand jury last year. Terry Zeigler, a former chief who once worked as Golubski’s partner in homicide, said he told the panel Golubski was oddly secretive about his personal life, but that he’d never witnessed him do anything wrong.

Golubski was expected to make an initial appearance at the federal courthouse in Topeka later today, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

The-CNN-Wire
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