December 8, 2025 • 35 mins
As Stacey Quinn’s life goes into a downward spiral, her sister Niko watches on, desperate to save Stacey before it’s too late. But the walls are closing in on her, and it will take a whole sisterhood of women to get to the bottom of what’s really going on in Kansas City.
US resources for Violence and Sexual Assault: https://rainn.org/
International resources for Violence and Sexual Assault: https://nomoredirectory.org/
US Suicide & Crisis Helpline: https://988lifeline.org/
International Suicide & Crisis Helplines: https://blog.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, it's Nicky. I just wanted to let you know
that this is a pretty tough episode. It's a story
of love, resilience, and the links the women of Kansas
City went to try and look out for each other,
but in the process we delve into stories about substance abuse, violence, murder,
and sexual assault. If you or someone you love has
(00:24):
been affected by any of the themes in the show,
we've left some links in the description that offer resources
and support take care of yourself. After seeing her older
sister Stacy get kidnapped and losing two friends to murder,
Nico was at a loss. Stacy was working on the
(00:46):
streets addicted to drugs, and Roger Glubski, the police officer
who lurked in the shadows of their lives, seemed unstoppable.
Then in the fall of nineteen ninety nine, Nico got
a call.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
She had got caught in somebody's house, a drug house,
and basically she took the rap for everything that they found.
Stacy was arrested and charged her what The judge told
her that she was pretty to be out here and
he wanted her to get her life together and get
cleaned up. He was gonna give her thirty seven months
(01:23):
in prison, and I was relieved.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Nico reasoned that Stacy would be safer behind bars than
surrounded by temptation in Quendero. At some point, she went
to visit her sister in prison.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
It took them by thirty forty five minutes for them
to let me go.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Up to see her.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
When the sisters came face to face, it was in
a cubicle that separated them with a pane of glass.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Stacy was late and I'm like, where was you at?
And she was sitting up on the little thing and
we on the phone. She laughed, She said, I was
in Galuski's office. You know, they walked in on us.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
She didn't need to say what had happened for Nico
to understand what the guards had seen. Stacy was supposed
to be safe from Gelupski behind bars, but it turns
out he was using his authority to take her back
and forth between his office and her cell. As the
weeks passed, Nico heard other things about Stacy's life behind bars,
(02:25):
that she was getting better treatment than other prisoners, and
that she was trying to negotiate an early release. Nico
suspected something was going on. So one day, not long
before Christmas, she decided to try and get to the
bottom of it and ran her other sister, Liz.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
So I called my sister and she said, girl Stacy snitching.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Nico knew that people could shorten their sentences by becoming
confidential informants. They wondered whether Stacy might be trying to
do the same thing.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
As soon as I hung up the front with my sister,
Stacey came walking through the door.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
It was only around four months into what Nico says
was supposed to be a thirty seven month prison sentence,
but there was Stacy walking back into their home as
if it was just a regular Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
I started asking her, how does she get there? What
is she doing there? She says, they let her out
on good behavior. I said, no, Daddy, adding up, because
I know what the judge said. I asked her how
she got there. She says she got a ride.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Stacy then starts to walk around the house haphazardly, picking
up clothes and belongings.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
I'm like, well, where are you going? She said, I'll
be all right. She was talking fast.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
I just came to get some clothes and I'm leaving,
so I'm like, how did you get out? I'm asking
her this. You got some money for me as well?
She said, I said no. When she walked out the door,
I went to my back balcony to see went down
the driveway and she got in a car.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Niko's friends comes in and tells her Gallupski's the one
driving the car.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
She said, she's just ran out there, got a car
with him.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
I was like, what she watches on as Gallupski drives
Stacy away.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Maybe a couple of days later, she had came to
my house and she was in a corner. She would
just shake it and I'm going off on her, what
is wrong with you? You having a withdrawal whatever?
Speaker 3 (04:32):
And she was shaking. She said, this.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Police officer, that smoking cigar told me that if he
catched me out there again, he gonna kill me. And this,
that and the other.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
And I'm like, who is he? He be riding up
and down the street. I'll tell me.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
I said, so why are you going up there? And
that's what she looked at me. She said, you never
smoke crack before. He says, you never got high before,
so you wouldn't understand.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
I said, I don't.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
But if somebody tell you they're gonna hurt you or
harm you, and all the stuff you didn't been through.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Why would you go back out there?
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Nico could do nothing but watch on as Stacy left
the house again, walking straight out into danger.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Oh God, my got it.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
I got.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
I'm Nikki Richardson and from the Team's at Novel and
iHeart Podcasts, this is the Girlfriend's untouchable.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
I I Got you.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
I'm you, by God, I got you.
Speaker 5 (05:37):
I got you, I.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Got you, I got you, I Got.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
You, Episode five, I Smell a Wrath.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
I Got You.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
I Got You. Nico had led with love for years.
She knew how much trauma her sister had experienced and
understood how hard it was to break free from addiction.
(06:12):
But by the year two thousand, she was exhausted by
Stacy's self destructive lifestyle. So they had the kind of intense,
honest fight you can only have with someone you love.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
She was arguing with me about this money that I had,
so I told her, I'm gonna give you this money
and forget you. You don't know me, You dead to me.
You see me on the streets, don't even talk to me.
I'm gonna keep going, and we both said that to
each other.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
They fell out of contact for a while until January.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Friday night, I had got off of work. I was
coming down Brown and she was standing on the corner
of twenty nineteen. She kind of put her hand up
and put it back down. So I heard the voice
said turn around, and I went up there, turned around
and came back.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
I said, what's up.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
It was Stacey, tired and strung out.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
She was like, hey, sis, and I get a couple
of dollars.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
I said for what.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
She said, I want to get something to eat and
I need some cigarettes. I said, I ain't buying no crack.
I'm not buying no drugs. I said, if you want
to eat, you can come back home and get something
to eat.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
If you need to take shower, whatever, you can come
to the house.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
And she's like, can I just get some money for
some cigarettes?
Speaker 3 (07:29):
I said, yeah, don't go buy no dope with this.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
And I got her ten or twenty dollars something like that,
and I said, it's food at the house. You can
come back home. If you need to come home, you
always welcome, you can come back home.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
I was angry.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
I apologized for the things I said. She told me
that she loved me, and I told her that I
loved her too. She told me she was gonna take
the money go buy her some cigarettes. She was gonna
come to the house. She came to the house that night.
(08:06):
We talked and she was just telling me how she
loved me, and told me if anything happened to her,
to make sure I take here her son.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
It was getting difficult for Nico to relate to her sister.
The drugs were making Stacy suspicious of everything. She would
often tell their other sister, Liz, that she was worried
about mysterious people trying to hurt them.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Her words to my sister is I'm trying to save y'all.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
I'm trying to protect y'all.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
They assumed it was paranoia, a side effect that the
drug Stacey was taking. On Saturday night, Nico went to
hang out at her then fiance Chris's house.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
We was gonna go to church, me his mother. So
we splent on going to church Sunday morning.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
But at around three am, the phone rang. It woke
the whole house up.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
His mama answered the phone.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
The house went quiet for a moment until she called
out for her son.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
His mother was screaming like Chris, somebody on the phone.
Somebody on the phone. I don't know what's going on.
So he got the phone.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
There was silence again, and.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
He answered it that. He said, Babe, you better come
and get this phone. I got the phone and I
just dropped.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
A lifetime flashed through her eyes. The girlhood days playing pretend,
the teenage nights spent dancing to their favorite songs. The
conversation they had less than two days ago that ended
with I love you and a hug.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
I don't care what she done, I don't care what
she took. I always loved her, I always will love her.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
But Nico would never be able to hug her sister again.
Nico listened as the police told her that early on
that at around one thirty am, neighbors had been woken
up by the sounds of a woman being chased through
the neighborhood by man carrying a gun. Nobody had intervened,
(10:13):
but the people who'd witnessed the shooting recalled how hard
Stacy had tried to save herself.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Every time she got shot, she got up, it was
begging and pleading for her life. It had no mercy
on her. My sister was shot twenty two times.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
People who lived near the crime scene said Stacy had
told the shooter that she wanted to go home, that
she'd repeatedly shouted, please don't kill me, don't kill me,
but the shooter had refused to back down. He'd chased
her down the block, relentless in his pursuit. Stacy's son, Joannelle,
(11:06):
had seen his mother the day before. They had a
quick conversation, and then he noticed she was shivering in
the early January cold.
Speaker 6 (11:15):
She asked for my coat, and I gave it my coat.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
A red Chiefs jacket. They'd exchanged I love you, and
then Janelle had headed out with his friends.
Speaker 6 (11:26):
We had a little thing for like teenagers, you know,
to keep us from being on block. So they had
something for us, you know, come there and play chill.
It was like a little RECU action center.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Janelle had fun at the party, but as he left
the building, he started to hear gunshots.
Speaker 6 (11:44):
It was just power and then power, you know what
I'm saying. You could tell like somebody was running or
something while they were shooting.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
It was crazy.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
Though.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
It wasn't until his Auntie broke the news that Janelle
made the connection between what he heard and what it
just happened to his mother.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
At this time, he's about fifteen, sixteen years old, and
he gets in the car with us and he just
kind of like rocking a little bit, and I never
forget Joanette was in a car with me. He said, ain'tie,
I knew that was my mama when I heard the guyshots.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
I heard my mama get killed. I heard it, and
he was just.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Stonefaced like he didn't I don't know if he was
just trying to be strong for me, but I just
broke down. I couldn't imagine being in his shoes. And
my grandmother just was rocking and she said, I can't
believe they did my baby like that. Why would anybody
(12:49):
do my baby like that? That was her first granddaughter.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
At just thirty one years old. Stacy Quinn was that
the family was devastated. Things only got worse when the
police arrived at their front door because the lead investigator
on her sister's murder case was Detective Roger Gallupski.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
And my uncle said, I smell Aurette.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
I had you.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
I got you, I had you.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Roger Gallupski had been tormenting Nico Quinn's sister Stacy, since
she was a fifteen year old girl. The injustice of
hearing Glupski proudly announced that he'd be leading the investigation
into Stacy's murder. Was almost too much for Nico to bear,
but her family sat and waited to hear what his
investigation had found. Marcus Washington, a local man in his
(14:11):
early twenties, had been arrested. He told the police that
he had been driving home late that night when Stacy
had flagged him down to ask for drugs and a arry.
She'd gotten in the car with him, and everything had
been fine until another car had crashed into them. The
incident had supposedly triggered Marcus's PTSD induced paranoia that someone
(14:32):
wanted to kill him, so he and Stacy had started arguing.
At his trial, Marcus admitted to shooting Stacy. He said
things had gotten heated to the point where they'd started
fighting over the gun he kept in his car. Then
Marcus had chased her through the neighborhood with his gun
until he killed her. He said it was self defense,
(14:56):
but in October two thousand, he was convicted of he
first degree murder and sentenced to fifty years in prison.
Nico didn't trust Glupski's investigation or the outcome. Given her
experience of being coerced into a false accusation, she finds
(15:17):
it hard to believe Marcus is responsible for her sister's murder.
I know Marcus didn't do it. There's no way he
could have shot her like that. He couldn't have. He couldn't.
There's no way he could have shot her like that.
Nico had seen the bullet wounds for herself when she
identified Stacy's body. She said the way that the bullet
(15:39):
holes hit her internal organs made her feel like it
had been done by someone who really knew what they
were doing, not someone from the neighborhood with what she
thought was a flimsy motive. But the case was over
and she knew she would never persuade the CASEYKPD to
reopen the investigation, so she focused her energy on looking
(16:02):
after her family, especially Stacy's only child, Dreanelle.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Because her last words to me was to take care
of her son, and she told me that I've been
trying to do that.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Still. Nico couldn't help, but wonder if there was another
reason why her sister was murdered. She kept thinking back
to the conversation Stacy had with her loved ones in
the weeks before her death.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
There's too many predators. There's too many devils out here, snakes,
is what she would tell me. My sister said that
they were going to kill her, she told everybody, because
she was supposed to come out here and do something
they wanted her to do, but she couldn't do it.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
As Kadija and I listened to Nico telling us this
part of the story, our minds wandered back to the
phone call between Nico and her sister Liz about the
rumors that Stacy was snitching in prison. It reminded us
of something Kadija hadn't covered in her conversations with women
during and after La McIntyre's exoneration, that Gallupski had an
(17:06):
unusual relationship with confidential informants. There are a number of
reasons why someone would agree to become a confidential informant
and work with the police to secretly gather the kind
of information needed to build and close a case. Some
are innocent bystanders who want a dangerous person in their
(17:28):
neighborhood to face justice. Others might be people who've committed
a crime cutting a deal to reduce their jail term.
Either way, there's a lot of stigma around working with
the police.
Speaker 5 (17:41):
Being a snitch into the black community means that you
have no loyalty to the community.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Rumors that you're helping the police are the kind of
whispers that could ruin your life as a cop. Glupski
was no stranger to confidential informants, but it was how
he got them that intrigued us. We know he arrested
women like Stacy who were caught soliciting on the northeast
(18:09):
side of Kansas City, Kansas.
Speaker 5 (18:11):
If you're brought into questioning, they took a Polaroi picture
of you.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
The photos were kind of like mugshots, but Glupski wasn't
just using the photos to record these women's arrests.
Speaker 5 (18:23):
He would take that polaroid and set it in front
of them and tell them, either you do what I
want you to do, or your picture goes out there
as you being a snitch.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
If their photos were somehow leaked, the community would think
there were confidential informants, So most of them agreed to
whatever Glupski wanted them to do, including giving him sexual
favors or information from the street and the ones who
pushed back, they found out just how far Gulupski was
(18:54):
prepared to go to get what he wanted.
Speaker 5 (18:58):
The stories of the cemetery, Oh my god, the cemetery
stories were hard to hear. I couldn't imagine someone putting
me in that much fear.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Cadiza heard that if he arrested them and they refused
to bend to his will, he would pick them up
in the dead of night, take them out of the
residential areas and slowly drive them north of eighteenth Street,
passed the railroad tracks, out of sight, and over to
the cemetery.
Speaker 5 (19:35):
The whole time he's driving them to the cemetery, he's
holding a gun to their head.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
He drove them through the field of headstones. He showed
them polaroids of other women who hadn't complied, women who
had mysteriously disappeared, and women who had been killed in violent,
in gruesome ways.
Speaker 5 (19:58):
Most of the time, they're sitting on the floorboard of
his truck where no one can see him, with the
gun just pointed down at him. Don't make them move,
don't move a muscle.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Gulupski's methods went beyond threats. He also used the car
drives through the cemetery to abuse his terrified passengers.
Speaker 5 (20:17):
Committing sexual acts on him as they go and doing
exactly what he wants them to do and commanding them
to do, even physically abusing them in those moments. And
then when they got to the cemetery, the beutilization, the
way he beat him, the way he would yeah doing it.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
It was just it sounded awful. There was even one
woman who recalled Glupski telling her to get out of
the car and find a spot to dig the grave
her body would end up being buried in if she
refused him. It was heart wrenching, it was heartriching.
Speaker 5 (20:57):
It was just yeah, kind of hard to put into
words because you can't imagine someone being treated that awful.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
It's not easy to hear about such brutal violence and intimidation,
but it's important to understand what Gelupski was really doing
and getting away with to truly understand this story. Kadija
had her own way of coping when you heard these accounts.
Speaker 5 (21:31):
I have one way where I just get in the
shower hot water and I'm on my knees and I
just scream and cry it out.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
It was horrible.
Speaker 5 (21:43):
I spent many days in the shower just crying because
the stories were awful.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
As spoke to more women in Guendero, the same story
came up over and over again. Once Glupski had successfully
frightened victims into submission, he coerced them into becoming the
informants he would use to help make arrest, solve investigations,
and lock his chosen suspects away. The ownership he had
(22:28):
over these women became so well known in the KCYKPD
that some of his colleagues began to call them Gallupski's girls.
If Stacy Quinn was one of Glupski's girls, is it
possible that her role as an informant played a part
in her brutal murder. We couldn't know for sure, and
(22:51):
when we initially heard Stacy's story, we decided to accept
the official outcome of her murder investigation, thinking she was
an outlier. But then we heard about the list.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
I Got you, I Got you, I Got You.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
In twenty sixteen, Kadiza was called in for a confidential
meeting with Lamont McIntyre's lawyers. This was before Lamont was
exonerated for the double homicide and freed from prison. They
wanted to discuss the evidence they gathered about Roger Glupski
and share some of the information they'd then covered.
Speaker 5 (23:37):
It was unnerving because she asked me several times during
the course of our meeting not to record her. I mean,
it was just like she was so edgy about it
and shake it about it, and I was just.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
Like, I'm not recording you. Why would I record you.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Kadija gets the sense that the lawyer was on edge
because she thought there was more to glue actions then
just coercion and abuse.
Speaker 5 (24:05):
She pushed the list across the table and the list was,
I guess an excel spread. She a list of women's names,
where it had the women and their date of birth,
then it had their address, and then it had what
(24:25):
happened to him. It was so unnerving to me because
the way the things are written up, like if they
were hit with a blunt force object, it was the
initials of blunt force object, or if they were shot,
it didn't necessarily say shot, is it caliber or something
like that. Phyxiation and suffocation, and I was just like what.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
The brutality of those reports.
Speaker 5 (24:48):
Listen, baby, it was nerve racking that Oh my god,
you know, at that point my mind was just like
already blown. Like the thirty three women on this list.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Thirty three murdered women who were said to have, at
some point in their lives been associated with Roger Glubski.
Thirty three women with friends, family, loved ones, and dreams
who'd been tormented by him for months or sometimes even
years before meeting violent, tragic deaths. There were names you've
(25:32):
heard already, Rhonda Tribute, Monique Allen, two of Nico's friends
who were seen with Glubski just before they were murdered,
and then of course her sister, Stacy Quinn. But we
found so many other women who'd been linked to Glubski,
either as informants, women he'd arrested, or women he allegedly
(25:56):
had sexual relations with, like Rose Calvin, Diane Edwards, Liza Michi,
Vicki Holland, shed Do, Aisha King, Stacy Wilson, Paulina Henderson.
The list goes on and on.
Speaker 5 (26:22):
If you hear Stacy's story, it sounds like it's an
anominae or something like it, just like she's just a
freak tale, right, But there are so many stories like Stacy's.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Stories of women who are being pressured into doing something
they didn't want to do, who were too scared to
speak out. But we know that Stacy did try to
share with her sisters what was going on in the
final months of her life. She told them that a
police officer was threatening her and warned them to stay
at home at night because there were snakes and predators around.
(27:00):
If dangerous people were relying on her to stay silent,
maybe speaking out was her final act of love.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
I think Stacy was at the point where it didn't matter.
Speaker 5 (27:10):
Yeah you know what I mean, They're either going to
kill me or not, and so I might as well
go out trying to do the right thing. And I
really feel like that's a horrible place to be in, Like,
you know, your life is going to come to an end,
so at this point it really don't matter. But how
many people can I protect in this process so that
nobody else is getting hurt but me? The ability to
(27:34):
think about everybody and have such a big heart, that
is the wildest thing.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
I don't think we fall too far from that tree, though,
because it was the fact that I recognized that Stacy
was willing to risk her own life for it. That
forced me and I'm assuming you too, He said, Okay,
is this worth risking my life for it? Because speaking
out has consequences. The more we dug into Glupski, the
(27:59):
more style Ksek began to feel. We tried to reach
out to the authorities, but the more questions we asked,
the more resistance we were met with. In fact, we
started to feel like they were actively trying to intimidate
us out of investigating. At one point, some police officers
even showed up at my grandmother's door trying to question
(28:22):
me for a speeding offense that I hadn't even been
on the right side of the city to commit, So
don't be mistaken. We started that journey scared as hell.
Speaker 5 (28:33):
Hearing those stories and understanding what the women went through
was like, do you really want to do this? Do
you really want to put yourself in this situation?
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Fear wasn't going to protect our community, so Kadija and
I got to work. At the time, we didn't have
an office or any official place to operate, so we
just met wherever we could coffee shops, libraries, and at
local businesses.
Speaker 5 (29:05):
When we did decide we would meet, it would be
locally owned, ye black owned and very community friendly.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Kadija have been getting calls and messages ever since Lamon's
exeneration case, so we set up a Facebook page and
email address for anyone else who wanted to get in
contact with us.
Speaker 5 (29:28):
We made data for each one of the women putting
their identity out there, who they were saying, say their name.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
In twenty twenty one, we spent the first thirty two
days of the summer sharing stories of injustice in Kansas City,
involving Roger Gulupski. Hello out there, my name is Nikki,
and you were about to listen to the very first
episode of my brand new podcast called Seventh Street. I
started a podcast where I interviewed their loved ones and
(29:57):
drew awareness to what had happened to them. He got
messages from mothers, sisters, aunts, and daughters, painting a picture
of the women they lost and the lives they lived
beyond the way the world saw them.
Speaker 5 (30:10):
Most of them were labor, prostitutes or drug addicts. Most
of these women didn't ask for what they got, didn't
ask to be a prostitute, didn't ask to be a
drug addict or an informant. They didn't ask for this.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Some of them had been victims of childhood abuse, others
had grown up in the midst of the crack epidemic,
and many of them were mothers who ended up having
to leave their children behind. But none of that should
have even mattered. You shouldn't have to have a perfect
record of behavior for your death to be treated as
a tragedy, and you don't have to be a mother, daughter,
(30:45):
or saint for the authorities to be serious when it
comes to investigating your murder.
Speaker 5 (30:50):
And then the way the world saw them was just
as horrible as what they had experienced.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
I wanted to change that narrative.
Speaker 5 (30:59):
I wanted to put real understand into these spaces of
these women.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
We spoke to survivors, helped them get the counseling they needed,
and put them in contact with lawyers who could give
them legal support. But the more stories we heard, the
more we came to understand how deeply Glupski had affected
so many of the women in our community. I grew
up in Quandero, in the same area as a lot
(31:29):
of the victims we've heard from. As a kid I
had no awareness of how dangerous the place I called
home actually was, but my mother did, so I told
Kadija our story. My mother knew Roger Glupski. He used
to pull her over and hit on her, and she
(31:51):
had her issues with him, and so what she did
was she befriended him because she thought that would probably
be a better thing to do, and what have him
patrol when she knew I was walking from high school
to home because that was in his beat, to patrol
to make sure that I got home safe, because she
was worried about the sex offenders that lived across the
(32:11):
street on me. Then I realized he was a sex
offender in the midst of it all. And so you know,
not only did we look like it, but we could
have easily been a target. It is just simply because
I was a good student that went to Sumner Academy.
But if I didn't come from that kind of background
(32:31):
or that easily easily could have been preyed upon. The
victims were just a few degrees of separation from me.
The fight was personal. So in spite of our fears,
we set out to work towards three main goals, try
and figure out why so many of the women who'd
crossed paths with Roger Glupski were really murdered, pushed for
(32:55):
their cases to be reopened and make sure Gallupski was
finally held a cauntable for the years of pain he'd inflicted.
Speaker 5 (33:04):
My mindset was to see that man with handcuffed shackled.
That was literally my.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Endgame, and we would do everything we could to try
to make that vision a reality. Coming up on The
Girlfriend's Untouchable, I think a lot of people knew what
Klupski was doing.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
There's a lot of crimes that he committed that we
could have prevented by taking him out.
Speaker 4 (33:32):
Listen, if it was your mom that got killed in
the eighties and you did not grow up with no parents,
what would you had have done?
Speaker 1 (33:39):
They said, we would have left it alone.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
Well, I'm not, y'all.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Could you pay your full name for the record.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
The Sir Roger I told Roger Golupski, You're gonna see
my face till the day that you die.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
The Girlfriend's Untouchable is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcasts.
For more from Novel, visit novel dot Audio. The show
is narrated by me Nicki Richardson. It was written and
produced by Rufaro Mazarua. The editor is Joe Wheeler. Our
assistant producer is Mohammed Ahmed. The researcher is Zayana Yusef.
(34:29):
Production management from Shuri Houston and Joe Savage. The fact
checker is Fendell Fulton. Sound design, mixing and scoring by
Nicholas Alexander with additional engineering by Daniel Kimpson. Music supervision
by Rufarro Masarua, Nicholas Alexander and Joe Wheeler. Original music
by Amanda Jones. The Girlfriend's theme was composed by Amanda
(34:53):
Jones and Louisa Gerstein. The series artwork was designed by
Christina Limcool. Story develop by Olivia Smart and Nel Gray Andrews.
Novel's director of development is Selena Metta. Willard Foxton is
Novel's creative director of Development. Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan
are executive producers for Novel. Katrina Norvel and Nikki Etour
(35:17):
are the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts, and the marketing
lead is Alison Cantor. Special thanks to will Pearson and
his Special thanks to Carley Frankel and the whole team
at w me E
Hey, it's Nicky. I just wanted to let you know
that this is a pretty tough episode. It's a story
of love, resilience, and the links the women of Kansas
City went to try and look out for each other,
but in the process we delve into stories about substance abuse, violence, murder,
and sexual assault. If you or someone you love has
(00:24):
been affected by any of the themes in the show,
we've left some links in the description that offer resources
and support take care of yourself. After seeing her older
sister Stacy get kidnapped and losing two friends to murder,
Nico was at a loss. Stacy was working on the
(00:46):
streets addicted to drugs, and Roger Glubski, the police officer
who lurked in the shadows of their lives, seemed unstoppable.
Then in the fall of nineteen ninety nine, Nico got
a call.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
She had got caught in somebody's house, a drug house,
and basically she took the rap for everything that they found.
Stacy was arrested and charged her what The judge told
her that she was pretty to be out here and
he wanted her to get her life together and get
cleaned up. He was gonna give her thirty seven months
(01:23):
in prison, and I was relieved.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Nico reasoned that Stacy would be safer behind bars than
surrounded by temptation in Quendero. At some point, she went
to visit her sister in prison.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
It took them by thirty forty five minutes for them
to let me go.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Up to see her.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
When the sisters came face to face, it was in
a cubicle that separated them with a pane of glass.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Stacy was late and I'm like, where was you at?
And she was sitting up on the little thing and
we on the phone. She laughed, She said, I was
in Galuski's office. You know, they walked in on us.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
She didn't need to say what had happened for Nico
to understand what the guards had seen. Stacy was supposed
to be safe from Gelupski behind bars, but it turns
out he was using his authority to take her back
and forth between his office and her cell. As the
weeks passed, Nico heard other things about Stacy's life behind bars,
(02:25):
that she was getting better treatment than other prisoners, and
that she was trying to negotiate an early release. Nico
suspected something was going on. So one day, not long
before Christmas, she decided to try and get to the
bottom of it and ran her other sister, Liz.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
So I called my sister and she said, girl Stacy snitching.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Nico knew that people could shorten their sentences by becoming
confidential informants. They wondered whether Stacy might be trying to
do the same thing.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
As soon as I hung up the front with my sister,
Stacey came walking through the door.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
It was only around four months into what Nico says
was supposed to be a thirty seven month prison sentence,
but there was Stacy walking back into their home as
if it was just a regular Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
I started asking her, how does she get there? What
is she doing there? She says, they let her out
on good behavior. I said, no, Daddy, adding up, because
I know what the judge said. I asked her how
she got there. She says she got a ride.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Stacy then starts to walk around the house haphazardly, picking
up clothes and belongings.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
I'm like, well, where are you going? She said, I'll
be all right. She was talking fast.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
I just came to get some clothes and I'm leaving,
so I'm like, how did you get out? I'm asking
her this. You got some money for me as well?
She said, I said no. When she walked out the door,
I went to my back balcony to see went down
the driveway and she got in a car.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Niko's friends comes in and tells her Gallupski's the one
driving the car.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
She said, she's just ran out there, got a car
with him.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
I was like, what she watches on as Gallupski drives
Stacy away.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Maybe a couple of days later, she had came to
my house and she was in a corner. She would
just shake it and I'm going off on her, what
is wrong with you? You having a withdrawal whatever?
Speaker 3 (04:32):
And she was shaking. She said, this.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Police officer, that smoking cigar told me that if he
catched me out there again, he gonna kill me. And this,
that and the other.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
And I'm like, who is he? He be riding up
and down the street. I'll tell me.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
I said, so why are you going up there? And
that's what she looked at me. She said, you never
smoke crack before. He says, you never got high before,
so you wouldn't understand.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
I said, I don't.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
But if somebody tell you they're gonna hurt you or
harm you, and all the stuff you didn't been through.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Why would you go back out there?
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Nico could do nothing but watch on as Stacy left
the house again, walking straight out into danger.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Oh God, my got it.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
I got.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
I'm Nikki Richardson and from the Team's at Novel and
iHeart Podcasts, this is the Girlfriend's untouchable.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
I I Got you.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
I'm you, by God, I got you.
Speaker 5 (05:37):
I got you, I.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Got you, I got you, I Got.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
You, Episode five, I Smell a Wrath.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
I Got You.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
I Got You. Nico had led with love for years.
She knew how much trauma her sister had experienced and
understood how hard it was to break free from addiction.
(06:12):
But by the year two thousand, she was exhausted by
Stacy's self destructive lifestyle. So they had the kind of intense,
honest fight you can only have with someone you love.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
She was arguing with me about this money that I had,
so I told her, I'm gonna give you this money
and forget you. You don't know me, You dead to me.
You see me on the streets, don't even talk to me.
I'm gonna keep going, and we both said that to
each other.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
They fell out of contact for a while until January.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Friday night, I had got off of work. I was
coming down Brown and she was standing on the corner
of twenty nineteen. She kind of put her hand up
and put it back down. So I heard the voice
said turn around, and I went up there, turned around
and came back.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
I said, what's up.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
It was Stacey, tired and strung out.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
She was like, hey, sis, and I get a couple
of dollars.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
I said for what.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
She said, I want to get something to eat and
I need some cigarettes. I said, I ain't buying no crack.
I'm not buying no drugs. I said, if you want
to eat, you can come back home and get something
to eat.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
If you need to take shower, whatever, you can come
to the house.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
And she's like, can I just get some money for
some cigarettes?
Speaker 3 (07:29):
I said, yeah, don't go buy no dope with this.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
And I got her ten or twenty dollars something like that,
and I said, it's food at the house. You can
come back home. If you need to come home, you
always welcome, you can come back home.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
I was angry.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
I apologized for the things I said. She told me
that she loved me, and I told her that I
loved her too. She told me she was gonna take
the money go buy her some cigarettes. She was gonna
come to the house. She came to the house that night.
(08:06):
We talked and she was just telling me how she
loved me, and told me if anything happened to her,
to make sure I take here her son.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
It was getting difficult for Nico to relate to her sister.
The drugs were making Stacy suspicious of everything. She would
often tell their other sister, Liz, that she was worried
about mysterious people trying to hurt them.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Her words to my sister is I'm trying to save y'all.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
I'm trying to protect y'all.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
They assumed it was paranoia, a side effect that the
drug Stacey was taking. On Saturday night, Nico went to
hang out at her then fiance Chris's house.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
We was gonna go to church, me his mother. So
we splent on going to church Sunday morning.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
But at around three am, the phone rang. It woke
the whole house up.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
His mama answered the phone.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
The house went quiet for a moment until she called
out for her son.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
His mother was screaming like Chris, somebody on the phone.
Somebody on the phone. I don't know what's going on.
So he got the phone.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
There was silence again, and.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
He answered it that. He said, Babe, you better come
and get this phone. I got the phone and I
just dropped.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
A lifetime flashed through her eyes. The girlhood days playing pretend,
the teenage nights spent dancing to their favorite songs. The
conversation they had less than two days ago that ended
with I love you and a hug.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
I don't care what she done, I don't care what
she took. I always loved her, I always will love her.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
But Nico would never be able to hug her sister again.
Nico listened as the police told her that early on
that at around one thirty am, neighbors had been woken
up by the sounds of a woman being chased through
the neighborhood by man carrying a gun. Nobody had intervened,
(10:13):
but the people who'd witnessed the shooting recalled how hard
Stacy had tried to save herself.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Every time she got shot, she got up, it was
begging and pleading for her life. It had no mercy
on her. My sister was shot twenty two times.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
People who lived near the crime scene said Stacy had
told the shooter that she wanted to go home, that
she'd repeatedly shouted, please don't kill me, don't kill me,
but the shooter had refused to back down. He'd chased
her down the block, relentless in his pursuit. Stacy's son, Joannelle,
(11:06):
had seen his mother the day before. They had a
quick conversation, and then he noticed she was shivering in
the early January cold.
Speaker 6 (11:15):
She asked for my coat, and I gave it my coat.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
A red Chiefs jacket. They'd exchanged I love you, and
then Janelle had headed out with his friends.
Speaker 6 (11:26):
We had a little thing for like teenagers, you know,
to keep us from being on block. So they had
something for us, you know, come there and play chill.
It was like a little RECU action center.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Janelle had fun at the party, but as he left
the building, he started to hear gunshots.
Speaker 6 (11:44):
It was just power and then power, you know what
I'm saying. You could tell like somebody was running or
something while they were shooting.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
It was crazy.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
Though.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
It wasn't until his Auntie broke the news that Janelle
made the connection between what he heard and what it
just happened to his mother.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
At this time, he's about fifteen, sixteen years old, and
he gets in the car with us and he just
kind of like rocking a little bit, and I never
forget Joanette was in a car with me. He said, ain'tie,
I knew that was my mama when I heard the guyshots.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
I heard my mama get killed. I heard it, and
he was just.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Stonefaced like he didn't I don't know if he was
just trying to be strong for me, but I just
broke down. I couldn't imagine being in his shoes. And
my grandmother just was rocking and she said, I can't
believe they did my baby like that. Why would anybody
(12:49):
do my baby like that? That was her first granddaughter.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
At just thirty one years old. Stacy Quinn was that
the family was devastated. Things only got worse when the
police arrived at their front door because the lead investigator
on her sister's murder case was Detective Roger Gallupski.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
And my uncle said, I smell Aurette.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
I had you.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
I got you, I had you.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Roger Gallupski had been tormenting Nico Quinn's sister Stacy, since
she was a fifteen year old girl. The injustice of
hearing Glupski proudly announced that he'd be leading the investigation
into Stacy's murder. Was almost too much for Nico to bear,
but her family sat and waited to hear what his
investigation had found. Marcus Washington, a local man in his
(14:11):
early twenties, had been arrested. He told the police that
he had been driving home late that night when Stacy
had flagged him down to ask for drugs and a arry.
She'd gotten in the car with him, and everything had
been fine until another car had crashed into them. The
incident had supposedly triggered Marcus's PTSD induced paranoia that someone
(14:32):
wanted to kill him, so he and Stacy had started arguing.
At his trial, Marcus admitted to shooting Stacy. He said
things had gotten heated to the point where they'd started
fighting over the gun he kept in his car. Then
Marcus had chased her through the neighborhood with his gun
until he killed her. He said it was self defense,
(14:56):
but in October two thousand, he was convicted of he
first degree murder and sentenced to fifty years in prison.
Nico didn't trust Glupski's investigation or the outcome. Given her
experience of being coerced into a false accusation, she finds
(15:17):
it hard to believe Marcus is responsible for her sister's murder.
I know Marcus didn't do it. There's no way he
could have shot her like that. He couldn't have. He couldn't.
There's no way he could have shot her like that.
Nico had seen the bullet wounds for herself when she
identified Stacy's body. She said the way that the bullet
(15:39):
holes hit her internal organs made her feel like it
had been done by someone who really knew what they
were doing, not someone from the neighborhood with what she
thought was a flimsy motive. But the case was over
and she knew she would never persuade the CASEYKPD to
reopen the investigation, so she focused her energy on looking
(16:02):
after her family, especially Stacy's only child, Dreanelle.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Because her last words to me was to take care
of her son, and she told me that I've been
trying to do that.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Still. Nico couldn't help, but wonder if there was another
reason why her sister was murdered. She kept thinking back
to the conversation Stacy had with her loved ones in
the weeks before her death.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
There's too many predators. There's too many devils out here, snakes,
is what she would tell me. My sister said that
they were going to kill her, she told everybody, because
she was supposed to come out here and do something
they wanted her to do, but she couldn't do it.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
As Kadija and I listened to Nico telling us this
part of the story, our minds wandered back to the
phone call between Nico and her sister Liz about the
rumors that Stacy was snitching in prison. It reminded us
of something Kadija hadn't covered in her conversations with women
during and after La McIntyre's exoneration, that Gallupski had an
(17:06):
unusual relationship with confidential informants. There are a number of
reasons why someone would agree to become a confidential informant
and work with the police to secretly gather the kind
of information needed to build and close a case. Some
are innocent bystanders who want a dangerous person in their
(17:28):
neighborhood to face justice. Others might be people who've committed
a crime cutting a deal to reduce their jail term.
Either way, there's a lot of stigma around working with
the police.
Speaker 5 (17:41):
Being a snitch into the black community means that you
have no loyalty to the community.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Rumors that you're helping the police are the kind of
whispers that could ruin your life as a cop. Glupski
was no stranger to confidential informants, but it was how
he got them that intrigued us. We know he arrested
women like Stacy who were caught soliciting on the northeast
(18:09):
side of Kansas City, Kansas.
Speaker 5 (18:11):
If you're brought into questioning, they took a Polaroi picture
of you.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
The photos were kind of like mugshots, but Glupski wasn't
just using the photos to record these women's arrests.
Speaker 5 (18:23):
He would take that polaroid and set it in front
of them and tell them, either you do what I
want you to do, or your picture goes out there
as you being a snitch.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
If their photos were somehow leaked, the community would think
there were confidential informants, So most of them agreed to
whatever Glupski wanted them to do, including giving him sexual
favors or information from the street and the ones who
pushed back, they found out just how far Gulupski was
(18:54):
prepared to go to get what he wanted.
Speaker 5 (18:58):
The stories of the cemetery, Oh my god, the cemetery
stories were hard to hear. I couldn't imagine someone putting
me in that much fear.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Cadiza heard that if he arrested them and they refused
to bend to his will, he would pick them up
in the dead of night, take them out of the
residential areas and slowly drive them north of eighteenth Street,
passed the railroad tracks, out of sight, and over to
the cemetery.
Speaker 5 (19:35):
The whole time he's driving them to the cemetery, he's
holding a gun to their head.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
He drove them through the field of headstones. He showed
them polaroids of other women who hadn't complied, women who
had mysteriously disappeared, and women who had been killed in violent,
in gruesome ways.
Speaker 5 (19:58):
Most of the time, they're sitting on the floorboard of
his truck where no one can see him, with the
gun just pointed down at him. Don't make them move,
don't move a muscle.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Gulupski's methods went beyond threats. He also used the car
drives through the cemetery to abuse his terrified passengers.
Speaker 5 (20:17):
Committing sexual acts on him as they go and doing
exactly what he wants them to do and commanding them
to do, even physically abusing them in those moments. And
then when they got to the cemetery, the beutilization, the
way he beat him, the way he would yeah doing it.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
It was just it sounded awful. There was even one
woman who recalled Glupski telling her to get out of
the car and find a spot to dig the grave
her body would end up being buried in if she
refused him. It was heart wrenching, it was heartriching.
Speaker 5 (20:57):
It was just yeah, kind of hard to put into
words because you can't imagine someone being treated that awful.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
It's not easy to hear about such brutal violence and intimidation,
but it's important to understand what Gelupski was really doing
and getting away with to truly understand this story. Kadija
had her own way of coping when you heard these accounts.
Speaker 5 (21:31):
I have one way where I just get in the
shower hot water and I'm on my knees and I
just scream and cry it out.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
It was horrible.
Speaker 5 (21:43):
I spent many days in the shower just crying because
the stories were awful.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
As spoke to more women in Guendero, the same story
came up over and over again. Once Glupski had successfully
frightened victims into submission, he coerced them into becoming the
informants he would use to help make arrest, solve investigations,
and lock his chosen suspects away. The ownership he had
(22:28):
over these women became so well known in the KCYKPD
that some of his colleagues began to call them Gallupski's girls.
If Stacy Quinn was one of Glupski's girls, is it
possible that her role as an informant played a part
in her brutal murder. We couldn't know for sure, and
(22:51):
when we initially heard Stacy's story, we decided to accept
the official outcome of her murder investigation, thinking she was
an outlier. But then we heard about the list.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
I Got you, I Got you, I Got You.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
In twenty sixteen, Kadiza was called in for a confidential
meeting with Lamont McIntyre's lawyers. This was before Lamont was
exonerated for the double homicide and freed from prison. They
wanted to discuss the evidence they gathered about Roger Glupski
and share some of the information they'd then covered.
Speaker 5 (23:37):
It was unnerving because she asked me several times during
the course of our meeting not to record her. I mean,
it was just like she was so edgy about it
and shake it about it, and I was just.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
Like, I'm not recording you. Why would I record you.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Kadija gets the sense that the lawyer was on edge
because she thought there was more to glue actions then
just coercion and abuse.
Speaker 5 (24:05):
She pushed the list across the table and the list was,
I guess an excel spread. She a list of women's names,
where it had the women and their date of birth,
then it had their address, and then it had what
(24:25):
happened to him. It was so unnerving to me because
the way the things are written up, like if they
were hit with a blunt force object, it was the
initials of blunt force object, or if they were shot,
it didn't necessarily say shot, is it caliber or something
like that. Phyxiation and suffocation, and I was just like what.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
The brutality of those reports.
Speaker 5 (24:48):
Listen, baby, it was nerve racking that Oh my god,
you know, at that point my mind was just like
already blown. Like the thirty three women on this list.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Thirty three murdered women who were said to have, at
some point in their lives been associated with Roger Glubski.
Thirty three women with friends, family, loved ones, and dreams
who'd been tormented by him for months or sometimes even
years before meeting violent, tragic deaths. There were names you've
(25:32):
heard already, Rhonda Tribute, Monique Allen, two of Nico's friends
who were seen with Glubski just before they were murdered,
and then of course her sister, Stacy Quinn. But we
found so many other women who'd been linked to Glubski,
either as informants, women he'd arrested, or women he allegedly
(25:56):
had sexual relations with, like Rose Calvin, Diane Edwards, Liza Michi,
Vicki Holland, shed Do, Aisha King, Stacy Wilson, Paulina Henderson.
The list goes on and on.
Speaker 5 (26:22):
If you hear Stacy's story, it sounds like it's an
anominae or something like it, just like she's just a
freak tale, right, But there are so many stories like Stacy's.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Stories of women who are being pressured into doing something
they didn't want to do, who were too scared to
speak out. But we know that Stacy did try to
share with her sisters what was going on in the
final months of her life. She told them that a
police officer was threatening her and warned them to stay
at home at night because there were snakes and predators around.
(27:00):
If dangerous people were relying on her to stay silent,
maybe speaking out was her final act of love.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
I think Stacy was at the point where it didn't matter.
Speaker 5 (27:10):
Yeah you know what I mean, They're either going to
kill me or not, and so I might as well
go out trying to do the right thing. And I
really feel like that's a horrible place to be in, Like,
you know, your life is going to come to an end,
so at this point it really don't matter. But how
many people can I protect in this process so that
nobody else is getting hurt but me? The ability to
(27:34):
think about everybody and have such a big heart, that
is the wildest thing.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
I don't think we fall too far from that tree, though,
because it was the fact that I recognized that Stacy
was willing to risk her own life for it. That
forced me and I'm assuming you too, He said, Okay,
is this worth risking my life for it? Because speaking
out has consequences. The more we dug into Glupski, the
(27:59):
more style Ksek began to feel. We tried to reach
out to the authorities, but the more questions we asked,
the more resistance we were met with. In fact, we
started to feel like they were actively trying to intimidate
us out of investigating. At one point, some police officers
even showed up at my grandmother's door trying to question
(28:22):
me for a speeding offense that I hadn't even been
on the right side of the city to commit, So
don't be mistaken. We started that journey scared as hell.
Speaker 5 (28:33):
Hearing those stories and understanding what the women went through
was like, do you really want to do this? Do
you really want to put yourself in this situation?
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Fear wasn't going to protect our community, so Kadija and
I got to work. At the time, we didn't have
an office or any official place to operate, so we
just met wherever we could coffee shops, libraries, and at
local businesses.
Speaker 5 (29:05):
When we did decide we would meet, it would be
locally owned, ye black owned and very community friendly.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Kadija have been getting calls and messages ever since Lamon's
exeneration case, so we set up a Facebook page and
email address for anyone else who wanted to get in
contact with us.
Speaker 5 (29:28):
We made data for each one of the women putting
their identity out there, who they were saying, say their name.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
In twenty twenty one, we spent the first thirty two
days of the summer sharing stories of injustice in Kansas City,
involving Roger Gulupski. Hello out there, my name is Nikki,
and you were about to listen to the very first
episode of my brand new podcast called Seventh Street. I
started a podcast where I interviewed their loved ones and
(29:57):
drew awareness to what had happened to them. He got
messages from mothers, sisters, aunts, and daughters, painting a picture
of the women they lost and the lives they lived
beyond the way the world saw them.
Speaker 5 (30:10):
Most of them were labor, prostitutes or drug addicts. Most
of these women didn't ask for what they got, didn't
ask to be a prostitute, didn't ask to be a
drug addict or an informant. They didn't ask for this.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Some of them had been victims of childhood abuse, others
had grown up in the midst of the crack epidemic,
and many of them were mothers who ended up having
to leave their children behind. But none of that should
have even mattered. You shouldn't have to have a perfect
record of behavior for your death to be treated as
a tragedy, and you don't have to be a mother, daughter,
(30:45):
or saint for the authorities to be serious when it
comes to investigating your murder.
Speaker 5 (30:50):
And then the way the world saw them was just
as horrible as what they had experienced.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
I wanted to change that narrative.
Speaker 5 (30:59):
I wanted to put real understand into these spaces of
these women.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
We spoke to survivors, helped them get the counseling they needed,
and put them in contact with lawyers who could give
them legal support. But the more stories we heard, the
more we came to understand how deeply Glupski had affected
so many of the women in our community. I grew
up in Quandero, in the same area as a lot
(31:29):
of the victims we've heard from. As a kid I
had no awareness of how dangerous the place I called
home actually was, but my mother did, so I told
Kadija our story. My mother knew Roger Glupski. He used
to pull her over and hit on her, and she
(31:51):
had her issues with him, and so what she did
was she befriended him because she thought that would probably
be a better thing to do, and what have him
patrol when she knew I was walking from high school
to home because that was in his beat, to patrol
to make sure that I got home safe, because she
was worried about the sex offenders that lived across the
(32:11):
street on me. Then I realized he was a sex
offender in the midst of it all. And so you know,
not only did we look like it, but we could
have easily been a target. It is just simply because
I was a good student that went to Sumner Academy.
But if I didn't come from that kind of background
(32:31):
or that easily easily could have been preyed upon. The
victims were just a few degrees of separation from me.
The fight was personal. So in spite of our fears,
we set out to work towards three main goals, try
and figure out why so many of the women who'd
crossed paths with Roger Glupski were really murdered, pushed for
(32:55):
their cases to be reopened and make sure Gallupski was
finally held a cauntable for the years of pain he'd inflicted.
Speaker 5 (33:04):
My mindset was to see that man with handcuffed shackled.
That was literally my.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Endgame, and we would do everything we could to try
to make that vision a reality. Coming up on The
Girlfriend's Untouchable, I think a lot of people knew what
Klupski was doing.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
There's a lot of crimes that he committed that we
could have prevented by taking him out.
Speaker 4 (33:32):
Listen, if it was your mom that got killed in
the eighties and you did not grow up with no parents,
what would you had have done?
Speaker 1 (33:39):
They said, we would have left it alone.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
Well, I'm not, y'all.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Could you pay your full name for the record.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
The Sir Roger I told Roger Golupski, You're gonna see
my face till the day that you die.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
The Girlfriend's Untouchable is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcasts.
For more from Novel, visit novel dot Audio. The show
is narrated by me Nicki Richardson. It was written and
produced by Rufaro Mazarua. The editor is Joe Wheeler. Our
assistant producer is Mohammed Ahmed. The researcher is Zayana Yusef.
(34:29):
Production management from Shuri Houston and Joe Savage. The fact
checker is Fendell Fulton. Sound design, mixing and scoring by
Nicholas Alexander with additional engineering by Daniel Kimpson. Music supervision
by Rufarro Masarua, Nicholas Alexander and Joe Wheeler. Original music
by Amanda Jones. The Girlfriend's theme was composed by Amanda
(34:53):
Jones and Louisa Gerstein. The series artwork was designed by
Christina Limcool. Story develop by Olivia Smart and Nel Gray Andrews.
Novel's director of development is Selena Metta. Willard Foxton is
Novel's creative director of Development. Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan
are executive producers for Novel. Katrina Norvel and Nikki Etour
(35:17):
are the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts, and the marketing
lead is Alison Cantor. Special thanks to will Pearson and
his Special thanks to Carley Frankel and the whole team
at w me E
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