A white former police detective accused of raping and terrorizing women in the predominantly Black neighborhood he was sworn to protect in Kansas City, Kansas, died in an apparent suicide Monday morning just as jury selection was set to begin in his criminal trial in nearby Topeka.
Roger Golubski, 71, was found dead on the back porch of his home in Edwardsville, Kansas, shortly after a neighbor called 911 to report hearing a gunshot around 9 a.m., the Kansas Bureau of Investigations said in a statement. Golubski died from a fatal gunshot wound, the bureau said, and there were no indications of foul play. An autopsy and “thorough investigation” were set to be conducted, the agency said.
At the time he died, Golubski was supposed to be in the courtroom for the start of his long-awaited trial. He was facing six felony counts related to the alleged civil rights violations suffered by two women while Golubski was a police officer in Kansas City, Kansas, during his many years on the force.
Prosecutors said that between 1998 and 2001, Golubski forced one victim identified by the initials S.K. to perform oral sex on him inside his vehicle. They said Golubski also digitally and genitally penetrated the victim without her consent during sexual assaults and rapes that took place in and next to his vehicle on multiple occasions. Golubski allegedly started targeting the victim when she was a young teen in middle school.
Golubski allegedly terrorized his second victim, identified by the initials O.W., by raping her in her home between 1999 and 2002. Prosecutors said Golubski also forced O.W. to perform oral sex on him. If convicted as charged, he was facing a maximum sentence of life in prison.
The second victim, Ophelia Williams, ultimately stepped forward with her full identity and said Golubski first raped her in 1999, shortly after her twin teen sons were arrested in connection with a homicide Golubski was investigating, the Wichita Eagle reported.
“He didn’t want to face the facts, so he decided to kill himself,” Williams said Monday when reached by the Eagle. The death meant she would not be testifying against Golubski as planned. In her straightforward reaction, she said, “I guess that’s what happens to people who do all the wrong stuff they do.”
Golubski’s death led the U.S. District Court judge overseeing his case to dismiss the charges at the request of prosecutors.
“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. 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,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke and U.S. Attorney Kate E. Brubacher for the District of Kansas said in a joint statement Monday.
Prosecutors said seven other women had agreed to testify that Golubski abused or harassed them as well, the Associated Press reports. “There is no justice for the victims,” Anita Randle-Stanley, who went to court to watch jury selection, told the AP on Monday after hearing about Golubski’s death. Randle-Stanley claimed Golubski harassed her as well, when she was a teenager decades earlier, but she always refused him.
The pending trial was part of a larger investigation of the Kansas City Kansas Police Department involving multiple civil lawsuits and parallel allegations that Golubski accepted money from and provided protection to several men who allegedly ran a violent sex trafficking operation in Kansas City in the late 1990s.
Jay-Z’s social justice organization Team Roc has been pushing for further investigation and reform of the Kansas City Kansas Police Department after Golubski’s case fueled questions about corruption or lack of oversight. Team Roc filed a court complaint last month accusing city and county officials of stonewalling their efforts to access public records about alleged police misconduct. The department did not respond to Rolling Stone‘s request for comment on the lawsuit.