Paroled prisoner attends hearing to support alleged victims of ex-KCK cop Roger Golubski

For Brian Betts, seeing former Kansas City, Kansas, police detective Roger Golubski in court Wednesday as a defendant was comforting. He didn’t think the day would come.

Betts, 46, was released on parole two weeks ago after spending 25 years behind bars for a murder in Kansas City, Kansas, that he and his cousin maintain they did not commit. They believe Golubski played a role in their murder convictions, though a judge determined last year that they had not proved that.

Now, Betts was on the other end of the courtroom, watching as Golubski, 70, sat before a judge at the federal courthouse in Topeka for a hearing in his two pending criminal cases.

“This is real,” Betts said.

Golubski faces federal charges for allegedly conspiring to sex traffic girls between 1996 and 1998 with three other men, including a since convicted drug kingpin, Cecil Brooks, at a KCK apartment complex. As an experienced homicide detective, Golubski protected those criminals from police investigation as they trafficked and raped vulnerable girls, prosecutors said.

The men allegedly used beatings and sexual assaults to force underage girls to provide sexual services at the Delavan Apartments, which Brooks operated at Delavan Avenue and 26th Street. The young Black girls, who ranged in age from 13 to 17, were held “in a condition of involuntary sexual servitude,” prosecutors contend.

In a separate case, Golubski faces civil rights charges for allegedly sexually assaulting and kidnapping a woman and a teenage girl from 1998 to 2002. He was a veteran officer by then, having worked at the Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department from 1975 to 2010.

At the hearing Wednesday, the lawyers involved in the case agreed they needed more time to obtain and review at least 200,000 pages of potential evidence.

Judge Toby Crouse, who is overseeing the case, scheduled the next hearing for Sept. 20. No trial date has been set.

Golubski, who wore a suit to the hearing, remains on house arrest in Edwardsville in Wyandotte County. He has pleaded not guilty and his lawyer has called the accusations against him “uncorroborated.”

Brooks, 60, appeared in court in a blue jail uniform, handcuffed at his hands and feet. He is the only one of the defendants in prison, where he is serving time for trafficking drugs in Topeka.

Brooks is set to be released from the Federal Bureau of Prisons this month. His attorney, Jonathan Truesdale, raised the issue of if Brooks will be detained ahead of the sex trafficking trial. The judge said he would take up that question when it comes before him.

The two other defendants are LeMark Roberson — who is accused of raping and threatening to kill one of the victims — and Richard “Bone” Robinson, who, among other things, at times allegedly collected money from Roberson and “another member of the conspiracy” who has since died, according to prosecutors. The deceased member has not been identified publicly.

Robinson and Roberson were released ahead of trial without the condition of home detention.

Still seeking exoneration

Sent to prison at age 21, a middle-aged Betts attended the hearing to support Golubski’s alleged victims.

He considers himself among them: He and his cousin, Celester McKinney, were convicted of fatally shooting Golubski’s nephew by marriage, 17-year-old Gregory Miller, in 1997.

At a hearing last year, the prosecution’s star witness, Carter Betts — the uncle of McKinney and Brian Betts — testified yet again that he had been coerced to falsely testify against his nephews. He identified one of the detectives who pressured him as W.K. Smith, who is Black and did not remember the case years later, and the other as a white cop who had a mustache.

Lawyers for Betts and McKinney argued that detective was Golubski, who was accused of framing a since-exonerated man, Lamonte McIntyre, of a different murder that unfolded three years earlier, in 1994.

After looking at a picture of Golubski, Carter Betts identified him as the white detective, claiming that Golubski told him if he did not go along with what the police wanted him to say, he would make him and his family “suffer.”

Taking the stand at that 2022 hearing, Golubski said he did not investigate his nephew’s murder and denied ever coercing witnesses.

Judge Gunnar Sundby, who oversaw that case, said while there is a “cloud of doubt” lingering over Golubski, the prisoners did not prove their case. He declined to reverse their convictions — a ruling that Betts and McKinney are now appealing.

The men then went before the Kansas Parole Board, which granted them release. When Betts went before the board in January, his first appearance, he said, he maintained his innocence and spoke of Golubski’s alleged corruption.

Betts feared the parole board might not free him, given that, historically, parole boards have looked for incarcerated people to express remorse for the crimes for which they were convicted. The victim’s family has also said they believe the cousins are guilty.

The men are still seeking exoneration. A Topeka attorney is fighting to clear Betts’ name, while McKinney is represented by the Kansas City-based Midwest Innocence Project, which has said the cousins were convicted because of Golubski’s “misconduct.”

Since coming home, Betts for the first time celebrated his son’s birthday in person. He was 8 months old when Betts went to prison; he just turned 26. Now with four grandchildren, Betts also plans to celebrate his first Father’s Day outside prison walls this weekend.

“Being able to spend time with family has helped heal the pain,” he said.