December 15, 2025 • 36 mins
When Trena Cooper was a child, she had a dream that her mom had been killed by a police officer. 20 years later, she sets out on a mission to get to the bottom of her mothers murder investigation as whispers surrounding that Detective build to a chorus of protests.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, it's Nikky. We're about to hear some deeply heartwarming
moments of sisterhood, hope, and what can happen when people
come together to fight for the city they love. But
as with the rest of this series, there'll be stories
about violence, murder, and sexual assault. So if you or
(00:21):
someone you love has 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.
Trina Cooper's childhood wasn't perfect, but the woman who raised
her did her best to fill her life with love.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
I was a spoiled little girl, got everything I wanted
with her. I didn't realize that she wasn't my mother
until I was five six years old. Around that time,
Trina's godmother was her biological uncle's wife and the only
mother figure she had ever known. But Trina was a
curious kid who wanted to know more about her birth.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Mom, uncles, and aunties.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Like as I'm growing up, they like, you look just
like your mama, you act just like your mama. And
then I started having questions like who is this lady?
And all they can really tell me is she's you
like you A split image of her.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Nobody told her stories about her mom, but Trina had
an active imagination.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
I used to always dream about this lady getting torture
in an alley, like getting kidnapped in an alley.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
It was a recurring dream. So at ten years old
she opened up to someone about it.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
I had came to my brother one day and I
was like, I keep having this dream about this lady
being attacked in an alley and he was like, that
was probably mama, And I'm like mama, and he was like, yeah,
our mama got killed when you was a baby.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
He just left it at.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
That, and you know, a little girl, I just went
on about my life, didn't really ask too many questions.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
As she got older and Hickey milestones without her mother,
Trina's curiosity grew.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
So sixteen seventeen, when I started having kids, I started
having questions around that time, like what happened to her
and where was she at? She reached out to her uncle, Oscar.
Him and my mom was like best friends. They were
really close.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
If anybody could tell her more about her mother, it
was Oscar, and after some convincing, he finally agreed to
share the full story. As he knew it In nineteen
eighty three. Dorothy Cooper, or as her loved ones liked
to call her, died, was a twenty year old living
in Kansas City.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
She was a kring given person. She took care of
a lot of people in the family.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Including her young son and baby girl, Trina. Dorothy had
her issues, but she was a present mother, so when
she didn't come home one night in April, the Cooper
family began to worry. Her father went down to the
police station to file a missing person's report for his daughter,
(03:30):
but the police didn't take it seriously and didn't allow
him to file the report. Hours turned to days, until
it had been three weeks since Dorothy's disappearance. Our focus
one day, the Coopers were sitting at home watching TV.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
The news clipping had came across the TV one morning
and they said that they had found a young black
woman on six point thirty five in Turkey Creek, and
my uncle and them said, instantly, you know, you had
that gut feeling like that's her.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Their gut feeling was correct.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
In April nineteen eighty three, Dorothy's body was found in
the driveway of an abandoned nursing home. Trina's family went
to a funeral home to identify her. It was a
traumatic experience. Someone had brought her up on an elevator.
Her face was disfigured from her injuries.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
To where they couldn't really identify her just from the face.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Trina's uncle, Oscar, stared down. The body was unrecognizable. How
could he possibly identify it as his sister? He paused
for a moment as his memories took him back to
the childhood they spent together in Kansas City. One moment
stood out, an innocent summertime memory from when they were
(04:54):
young kids. They were riding a bike and my uncle
did something to my mom and she kicked them off
the bike. They were just playing around, bickering like siblings.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
He had ended up having a bruise on his arm,
and he ended up doing her like that, and she
had the same bruise on her arm. So they grew
up with the same bruise on their arm because they
both was ornery and couldn't get over, like this person
did this to me, and things like that. It had
been a funny story when they were kids, but faced
with the dead body, it took on a darker purpose.
(05:33):
My uncle said that he remembered the scar that they
had had alike. In a rage, he went over and
he pulled her arm from up under to see if
it was heard by the bruise that they had alike.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
The childhood scar was there. This was his younger sister.
Oscar was devastated, but he also noticed something.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Else, and that's when he discovered that her left wrist
was cut off. And my uncle's now was telling me
like it seemed as though like they just did it,
like her bones and stuff was fresh, like they had
just cut her wrist off.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
This detail stuck in Trina's mind. Why would someone cut
her mother's wrist off if not to hide something?
Speaker 4 (06:18):
Oh God, who got.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
I?
Speaker 5 (06:25):
God?
Speaker 1 (06:29):
I'm Nikki Richardson And from the teams that novel and
iHeart Podcast, this is the Girlfriend's Untouchable.
Speaker 5 (06:54):
Episode six, What would you have done?
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Trina Cooper didn't have the opportunity to get to know
her mother, Dorothy, but according to her friends and family,
they would have gotten along pretty well. She was a caring,
given person. She was just that sister. Couldn't nobody tell nothing?
Speaker 2 (07:21):
And me speaking about it is talking, I'm talking about
me like this is me now, like I'm very outspoken,
no one can really tell me too much.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Trina's also very determined, So despite her family's reluctance to
tell her more about her mother and her murder, Trina
kept on digging.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Probably like twenty three.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
I had reconnected with my godmoa, the woman who had
raised her, And then she's like, have anyone told you
about your mom?
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Like this is things that you need to know? And
I was like no, So Trina went to her godmother's
house to find out more.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
She just pulled out her little box of pictures and
she showed me old pictures of her and my mom
and me as a baby, and we said and we talked,
and she told me that my mom was a street walker.
And she said that, you know, back then when everything
happened far as her death, they always thought that like
a police officer was involved because of how it's so
(08:21):
covered up. It's like no one else can cover it
up as much as it's covered up, but a police officer.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Trina went back to her family and prodded them for answers.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
I started having questions like what happened? Like did y'all
ask questions? The short answer was no, they hadn't. In fact,
the more Trina heard about the investigation, the more disappointed
she felt. They gave my uncle my mom's jean jacket
from the crom scene, and my uncle actually took it,
(08:55):
and I'm like, why did you take the jacket? It
was supposed to be in evidence. And my uncle was
just like, well, you know, we didn't know anything. We
just wanted something that belonged to her because we had
already lost her. So it was just like he just
felt as though that was something to keep him connected
to her, and they were just like, no, no, that
was supposed to stay in evidence.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Trina thought that learning more about her mother Dorothy's death
would help her move on, but hearing how lackluss the
investigation had been left her feeling even further from the truth.
I was getting irritated and I was just like, I
just don't understand. I left it alone again.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
I'm like, I don't want to hear no more because then,
you know, me being a teenager, it's like it's hurting
to hear this about your mom and you know already
having the hurt in you that you grew.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Up without this lady.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
So it was just a lot at that time, so
I just stopped asking questions because it was too much
to really take in.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
But Trina wasn't the only person in her family with
a connection to Dorothy Cooper.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
My kids started asking questions like who's her grandma and
what happened to her? And I was like, you know,
I really don't have the answers, and I'm a person
to wear. Okay, now my kids is asking about it.
I have to get answers. I have to be able
to come to my kids and tell my kids something
about my mom.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
So two thousand and seven, I took it to.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Where I'm like, I'm gonna go to the Wandatt Police
Station and I'm gonna try to reopen up my mom's
case to try to figure out what happened. So I
pulled my uncle with me, like you're going with me.
We're about to reopen up mama's case and we're about
to get some answers.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
She headed over to the CASEKPD station. I went over there.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
I spoke to the clerk at the front desk and
I said, you know, my mom got killed over here
in nineteen eighty three, and I want to reopen her
case because it's still an unsolved case and she looked
it up. She was like, the only detective you can
talk to about this case, it's Roger Glupski and me.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
I'm not knowing anything about it. Roger Glupski.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
She didn't know anything about the detective whose office she
was being led up to, but she had her uncle
by her side with no reason to be worried.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Once we went up in the office with Roger Gilupski,
Roger Glupski then goes to ask me, why do I
want to open back up this case.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
I said, that's my mom. I want to know what
happened to her.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
You know, we never got an answer, so it's like,
I just want to know what happened to my mom.
He said, okay, we're going to look into it. In
my mind, he's going to do some investigations. He's going
to call me back and he's going to tell me
what he come up with. Time passed as tRNA waited
(11:48):
to hear the results of his investigation. Roger Glupski then
goes to call me back for a second meeting, but.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
He didn't have any news for her.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
He then goes to tell me, like, no one's talkalk
in he asked me, what did I want to do.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Trina thought it through until a potential clue came back
to her the horrifying detail her uncle Oscar had told
her about seeing her mother's wrist cut off. So she
went back to Gulupski with another question, who's.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
The medical examiner that actually examined her body? He told
me it was a medical examiner by the name of Handcock,
and so I was like, can I get his information
because I have questions for him.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
She got his details and gave him a call.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
I asked him to send me the autopsy report, and
I asked him what procedures did he take far as
doing a full autopsy on my mom? I asked him,
I said, what was the reason of you cutting off
my mom's wrists?
Speaker 3 (12:48):
And he said to identify her and I'm like, huh.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
He was like, so when they brought her body in,
her hand was so swollen to where he had to
cut her wrists off to release some pressure in her
hand to get her fingerprint.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Trina didn't think the story added up. According to the
autopsy report, the medical examiner had included a note saying
that there had been adhesions on Dorothy's wrists, the kind
that made Trina wonder if her mother's hands had been
tied together before her death, but her wrist had been
cut off, meaning that that specific evidence, if it had existed,
(13:26):
couldn't be used in her murder investigation.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
I said, she had another hand, Why didn't you use
her other hand to get her fingerprints? Like it's other
ways to identify her other than cutting her wrist off.
Once I started, you know, talking like that, he was
really dismissive. He really didn't want it too much talk
to me anymore. So then I called another meat and
with Roger Glubski, and I asked Galubski, like, what procedures
(13:53):
did y'all take? How long do you guys keep evidence?
And he said, oh, we keep evidence until the case
is solved. And I said, okay, so my mom's case
is still unsolved, so where's her evidence?
Speaker 3 (14:08):
At Gallupski's reply was, you know, I went.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
And looked into evidence closet and her evidence is not
in there. Trina knew there was more to the story,
but nobody was telling her anything, so she thought back
to her childhood nightmares. I told him, I said, you know,
as a little girl, I've always had a dream that
(14:35):
a police officer killed my mom. And when I tell you,
he got so mad that I said that. He got
so red and he asks, like, what makes you say that?
I just sat back and I said, who else can
get back in you guys's evidence closet? Nobody but a
police officer. At that Gallupski shut down and asked her
(14:59):
to leave.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
After that time, I never seen them no more.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
I got really discouraged, like, Okay, I'm asking the right questions,
but no one is really gonna be honest. I know
I'm on the right track, but I'm not gonna get
anywhere because it's just me.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
But Trina wasn't the only one who had suspicions about Gallupski.
There were families across Kansas City slowly beginning to ask
themselves the same questions, parents, children, and sisters, re examining
the stories the women in their life had told them
and realizing that Gallupski had cast a dark shadow around
(15:42):
the circumstances of their deaths. They were ordinary people doing
what they could to try and piece things together, but
a powerful agency was working behind the scenes, one that
had spent years circling Gallupski and was about to center
in the FBI.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
I had you and had you.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
In the nineteen eighties, Alan Jenerch was an FBI agent
working in the Public Corruption Unit, investigating departments across the.
Speaker 6 (16:31):
Country, basically trying to find public officials, police officers, or
others who walk corrupt, and somewhere around nineteen eighty eight
or eighty nine started investigating the Kansas City Police Department.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Alan had heard about possible misconduct in the force and
wanted to get to the bottom of it. He began
by talking not to officers, but to those they had arrested.
Speaker 6 (16:58):
I would go over and interview them in the jail
and tell them we're not interested in them, We're not
interested in their family, we're not interested in their friends.
We're just interested if you have any information about corrupt cops.
So a lot of these people interviewing in the jail
were very cooperative and they were eager to tell what
(17:19):
they knew. I think at the high point where it's
fifteen cops who were titled subjects of the investigation, that's
a lot and one of those people was Kallupski. Talking
to people, you developed information that Kaulupski had a thing
(17:39):
for black women, he would extort them into having sex
with him. I think a lot of people knew what
Kalyupski was doing.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
But if a lot of people knew about it, how
did Kulupski get away with it for so long. The
police is an organization that is supposed to protect them,
But Allan's years spent digging into police departments like the
CASEYKPD made it clear to him that that wasn't always
the case, and a lot of that was down to
(18:12):
the Blue Code of Silence, an unspoken rule in which
police officers decided not to report their corrupt and criminal colleagues.
Speaker 6 (18:22):
I remember once this cop was on duty in the
police car and he had some woman and he raped
her in the police car. She went to the police
department and complained that this cop had raped her. Well,
the police didn't want to do anything about it. I
(18:42):
remember one of the internal affairs cops said to me,
you know, the purpose of the internal affairs unit is
to protect the upper ranks, to protect the people running
the police department. I think CASEYK had over two hundred cops,
and the whole time I was in Kansas City, I'm
not aware of one case brought by the Kansas City,
(19:06):
Kansas Police internal affairs unit against any cop.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
It went further than just protecting their officers.
Speaker 6 (19:17):
They wanted all internal affairs reports destroyed after three years.
You can't go back three years before to see what
complaints were made against him because it's all destroyed.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Alan doesn't know why those documents were destroyed, but he
has his own theories.
Speaker 6 (19:36):
There's only one reason why you do that, to protect
corrupt cops.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
It's not a theory we can be certain of, but
it's one Alan believes based on his experience of investigating
the police in his role at the FBI. He and
the other FBI agents on the case, code named Operation
Street Smart, had the support of Julie Robinson, a black
assistant US attorney who was determined to get to the
(20:03):
bottom of the alleged corruption in the KCKPD.
Speaker 6 (20:07):
She gave me a grand jury subpoena every month where
we subpoenaed all the Kansas City, Kansas internal affairs complaints
that were made against the cops.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Subpoenas that helped them compile a folder of evidence about
Roger Glupski.
Speaker 6 (20:23):
I didn't care who liked me and who didn't like me,
and Julie Robinson the prosecutor, she could give her rat's
ass whether they liked her, and I had the same attitude.
You can't be friends with people and investigate him.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
At the same time, Julie and Allan dug Deeper conducted
interviews with prisoners who told him stories about Galupski, built
up a picture of how he operated, and investigated how
the KCKPD had enabled him to carry on for so long.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Alan could feel himself beginning to close in on Glupski.
But then in nineteen ninety four, Julie Robinson left the
US Attorney's job. She moved on to become the US
bankruptcy judge for the District of Kansas.
Speaker 6 (21:12):
Once she left to become a judge, that was the
end of it.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Alan felt that Julie's replacement wasn't quite as willing to
help him and his team.
Speaker 6 (21:20):
Were closed down the investigation because we didn't have anybody
in the US Attorney's office who wanted to do it. It
was worth it.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Dam Alan often wonders what would have happened if Julie
had never left, or if the rest of the US
Attorney's office had been as passionate as she'd been about
fighting police corruption.
Speaker 6 (21:43):
You know, we would have got him in the early nineties,
maybe ninety three, ninety four, ninety five, we would have
gotten him. And there's a lot of crimes that he
committed after that that he never would have committed. And
you know a lot of people whose lives he ruined,
or his lives he tried to ruin. You know that
we could have prevented by taking him out, removing him
(22:04):
from his position.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
It's hard to reckon with the realization that something could
have been done back then, but wasn't. All the complaints
in reports that led to nothing as Glupski rose up
the ranks of the KCKPD and used the power of
his position and police badge to abuse women and destroy lives.
(22:30):
Roger Glupski spent thirty five years working for the KCKPD
before retiring in twenty ten after decades of abuse that
it seems like at least some of his colleagues and
superiors knew about. He settled into a comfortable retirement on
a full police pension, but something was coming to disturb
(22:51):
his peace.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
Could you state your.
Speaker 7 (22:56):
Full name for the writer thesar Roger Kolupski, Do you
swear to.
Speaker 4 (23:01):
Tell the truth of whole truth and nothing but the
truth to help you God.
Speaker 8 (23:05):
I do.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
I got you, I got you, I got you.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
It's November twenty twenty and Roger Glupski is sitting in
an office on the twenty second floor of a law
firm in Kansas City. His hair and beard are bright white,
and he's wearing a lightly colored shirt and ki. He's older,
now sixty eight. He doesn't look as powerful as he
used to without his police badge and uniform. Instead, he
(23:43):
sat before a microphone with a camera pointed at him.
After his exoneration, La Motte McIntyre decided to sue the
Unified Government of Wandot County, ksey k for his wrongful conviction,
a lawsuit that has finally led Glupski to be subpoenaed
and questioned about the harms he inflicted on the women
(24:04):
and men of Kansas City, Kansas. Glupski looks despondent as
the prosecutor, Emma Freudenberger questions him.
Speaker 8 (24:13):
You understand that we're accusing you of terrorizing black women
in Kansas City, Kansas for decades, raping women and goercing
women into giving false testimony.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Things start off pretty normally, but when Glupski fails to
give adequate answers to questions, the prosecutor gets firmer, Sir.
Speaker 7 (24:38):
You understand that if I ask you a question and
you remember the answer, but you tell me you don't,
that's a lot.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
You understand that if I don't remember, I don't remember.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
If you reverse my memory, then I admit my hearer
and say you're correct, sir.
Speaker 6 (25:00):
My question is simple of you.
Speaker 7 (25:02):
As.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
When she asks him direct questions about abusing black women
and forcing them to become confidential informants, Gulupski has a
simple response to her questions.
Speaker 6 (25:15):
With all due respect on the advice on my afternity,
I WoT get the moment constitutional rights.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
It's not the first or last time he invokes his
right to avoid self incrimination. It's his response to almost
every question she asks him. In fact, that day, Gulupski
pleads the fifth five hundred and fifty five times five
hundred and fifty five.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
Yeah, I WoT my get the moment constitutional rights.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Lamont eventually settles his lawsuit out of court. Glupski isn't
put on trial. He's free to go, but Lamont's victory
puts a spotlight on Gallupski and inspires even more victims
to speak out. The stories are spreading across Kansas City,
starting its whispers but soon swelling into a churuse too
(26:10):
loud to ignore. It was enough to encourage people who'd
lost hope to tack back in, including Trina Cooper. She'd
been avoiding the KCKPD for twelve years after reaching a
dead end while investigating her mother, Dorothy's unsolved murder. She'd
tried to put the investigation behind her, but that was
(26:31):
all about to change.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
I had took my youngest son on a trip, so
we were out of town, and my daughter she just
kept calling me, Mama, you really need to look into this.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Detective Trina's daughter told her that there was a scandal
unfolding in Kansas City, rumors of violence and sexual misconduct
that were being linked to a series of murders. Her
daughter explained it all over the phone.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
I'm reading all these articles and its other ladies, and
I just really think that you probably need to go
and open up Grandma's case again.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Trina drove as her daughter told her story after story
about the unsolved murder cases of black women in Kansas
City who'd been involved with a certain detective, Roger Glupski.
There were often young mothers from low income areas of
Kansas City who spent part of their lives as sex workers.
The similarities between them and Trina's mother, Dorothy were startling.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
And I was like, I'll talk about it when I
come back. And then it was like she'll call me again, Like, Mama,
it's getting serious. This police officer he was doing ex
Y and Z to these ladies, and it was ladies
that came up missing. Like it's like stories out here, Mama,
you really need to look into it. So on our
(28:00):
way back she called and I'm like, okay, see if
we can find somebody and I'll look into it. When
Trina got back home, she read through the articles. There
was one in particular that caught her eye. It was
two ladies that had done an article, Cadiza Heartaway and
(28:22):
Nico Quinn, And I told my daughter, I said, okay,
reach out to Nico and I'll reach out to Cadiza
on Facebook and see what we could come up with.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Far as that, Trina searched the name Cadiza Hardaway and
found our organization Justice for Windett. She'd expected to just
see a few social media posts an article or two,
but Kadija and I had been working hard for months
doing everything we could to bring the community together and
demand that the authorities investigate Klupski's long history of abuse.
(29:00):
One of the ways we did that was by organizing
in person visuals and rallies to give survivors, victims, and
their families a platform to share their stories. It was
something we encouraged a lot of the women we met
to show up for.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
I reached out to Cadizia.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
I had told her a little bit about my mom,
and we talked a little bit and she was like, Yo,
you need to come over to the rally.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Dozens of people showed up, friends, families, and neighbors of
women who had been violently murdered. Some of them were
carrying photos or wearing shirts with their loved ones faces.
Others held signs with their names. All of them had
been devastated by the murders, but being surrounded by other
people who were just as desperate as she was for
(29:48):
answers filled Trina with hope.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
I went over to the rally and oh my god.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
When I went over there, I'm like, this is unbelievable,
because Sous, for all of these years, I've always thought
it was just me. Trina stood at the rally and
listened to the other people whose loved ones had been
abused and still didn't have answers from the KCKPD. The
(30:15):
sense of solidarity she found at that rally inspired her
to start looking for answers again, especially now that she
realized Gulupski might be the missing piece and the puzzle,
so she went back to her investigation.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Until her mother's death.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
No one can really give me answers but Kansas City,
Kansas Police Department.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Trina and her uncle Oscar get into her car, drive
to the kckpd's offices, and head over to the reception
at the front desk. Trina is shown into her room
with two detectives.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
I sit down with them and I'm like, listen, I
just want to know what happened.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
To my mom.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
She asked them why they didn't keep her mom's jacket
in evidence, why her grandfather hadn't been able to follow
missing persons report, and what they'd found over the course
of their investigation. But they didn't have any answers.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
So I'm already irritated with the whole situation because I
feel as though they have the answers, but they're keeping
the answers away from me.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
She knows she isn't going to get anywhere with the
police officers, so she changes tact.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
I said, give me my mom's foul.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Let me do the investigation that y'all did not do
on my mom's case. And he said, if I give
this foul to you, you cannot sue us.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
Why would you say something like that?
Speaker 2 (31:49):
I had questions going through my head, like and but Dentley,
it's something in this foul that's telling what happened to
my mom, and it's gonna come straight back to y'all,
because why would you even say something like that. They
always think that we're young, we're black, we don't know anything.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
No, I'm seeing what's going on.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
And so I sit down with them and I'm like, 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 3 (32:24):
They said, we would have left it alone.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Well, I'm not, y'all. I want to figure it out.
And I said, if you are a damn lie, you
would have done exactly what I'm doing right now. If
you heard that some officers had something to do with
your mom and they said back and oh god, when
I tell you they got so rude with me. I'm
talking about so rude to where they threw the picture
(32:46):
in front of me of my mama land on the
crime scene. He then goes to say, well, what are
you trying to say, Roger Gluski killed your mom?
Speaker 3 (32:55):
I said, I didn't say that. You said that.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
We reached out to the KCKPD to ask them about
Trina's interaction with the two detectives. They said that quote,
statements made regarding interaction with our detectives and miss Cooper
not accurate. We have specifically asked them what was inaccurate,
but we have not heard back from them at the
(33:28):
time of recording. Trina stands by her recollection of events
the casey KPD also said, quote, we have the utmost
empathy from miss Cooper and understand her desire to find
who killed her mother, as well as frustrations that have
built up over the years. Our cold case detectives continue
(33:49):
to actively investigate the case and hope that their efforts,
combined with new technology, will allow them to finally solve
this case.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
Unquote.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
It's important to say here that neither of the detectives
Trina spoke to were accused of being involved in Glupski's crimes.
Neither of them was charged with any wrongdoing, and there's
no evidence they were in any way aware of what
Glupski had done prior to stories about him breaking out
into mainstream news. But Trina keeps asking questions and pushing
(34:24):
them based on the fact that she didn't trust the authorities.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
So now you're trying to defend him because you're thinking
that I'm coming in here saying that Roger Glupski killed
my mom, and he got so mad, and I was
just like, Okay, I'm here in the right pins and
the right people, and you guys are getting mad at
me because I'm coming with the right questions and you
guys don't have the right answers.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Trina leaves the police station without getting the answer she
once But the stories keep piling up. Journalists are beginning
to pay attention. The whispers are getting louder, and then
get Kansas City, Kansas Tonight, the FBI today arrested former
KCK police detective Roger Glubski that's coming up on The
(35:17):
Girlfriends Untouchable. 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
(35:39):
written and produced by Rufaro Masarua. The editor is Joe Wheeler.
Our assistant producer is Mohammed Ahmed. The researcher is Zayana Yusef.
Production management from Shuri Houston and Joe Savage. The fact
checker is Vindall Fulton. Sound design, mixing and scoring by
Nicholas Alexander, with thetional engineering by Daniel Kimson. Music supervision
(36:03):
by Rufaro Masarua, Nicholas Alexander, and Joe Wheeler. Original music
by Amanda Jones. The Girlfriend's theme was composed by Amanda
Jones and Louisa Gerstein. The series artwork was designed by
Christina Limcool. Story development by Olivia Smart and Nel Gray Andrews.
Novel's Director of development is Selena Metta. Willard Foxton is
(36:26):
Novel's creative director of Development. Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan
are executive producers for novel. Katrina Norvel and Nikki Etour
are the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts, and the marketing
lead is Alison Cantor. Special thanks to Will Pearson and
his special thanks to Carle Frankel and the whole team
(36:47):
at w me E.
Hey, it's Nikky. We're about to hear some deeply heartwarming
moments of sisterhood, hope, and what can happen when people
come together to fight for the city they love. But
as with the rest of this series, there'll be stories
about violence, murder, and sexual assault. So if you or
(00:21):
someone you love has 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.
Trina Cooper's childhood wasn't perfect, but the woman who raised
her did her best to fill her life with love.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
I was a spoiled little girl, got everything I wanted
with her. I didn't realize that she wasn't my mother
until I was five six years old. Around that time,
Trina's godmother was her biological uncle's wife and the only
mother figure she had ever known. But Trina was a
curious kid who wanted to know more about her birth.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Mom, uncles, and aunties.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Like as I'm growing up, they like, you look just
like your mama, you act just like your mama. And
then I started having questions like who is this lady?
And all they can really tell me is she's you
like you A split image of her.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Nobody told her stories about her mom, but Trina had
an active imagination.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
I used to always dream about this lady getting torture
in an alley, like getting kidnapped in an alley.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
It was a recurring dream. So at ten years old
she opened up to someone about it.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
I had came to my brother one day and I
was like, I keep having this dream about this lady
being attacked in an alley and he was like, that
was probably mama, And I'm like mama, and he was like, yeah,
our mama got killed when you was a baby.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
He just left it at.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
That, and you know, a little girl, I just went
on about my life, didn't really ask too many questions.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
As she got older and Hickey milestones without her mother,
Trina's curiosity grew.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
So sixteen seventeen, when I started having kids, I started
having questions around that time, like what happened to her
and where was she at? She reached out to her uncle, Oscar.
Him and my mom was like best friends. They were
really close.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
If anybody could tell her more about her mother, it
was Oscar, and after some convincing, he finally agreed to
share the full story. As he knew it In nineteen
eighty three. Dorothy Cooper, or as her loved ones liked
to call her, died, was a twenty year old living
in Kansas City.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
She was a kring given person. She took care of
a lot of people in the family.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Including her young son and baby girl, Trina. Dorothy had
her issues, but she was a present mother, so when
she didn't come home one night in April, the Cooper
family began to worry. Her father went down to the
police station to file a missing person's report for his daughter,
(03:30):
but the police didn't take it seriously and didn't allow
him to file the report. Hours turned to days, until
it had been three weeks since Dorothy's disappearance. Our focus
one day, the Coopers were sitting at home watching TV.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
The news clipping had came across the TV one morning
and they said that they had found a young black
woman on six point thirty five in Turkey Creek, and
my uncle and them said, instantly, you know, you had
that gut feeling like that's her.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Their gut feeling was correct.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
In April nineteen eighty three, Dorothy's body was found in
the driveway of an abandoned nursing home. Trina's family went
to a funeral home to identify her. It was a
traumatic experience. Someone had brought her up on an elevator.
Her face was disfigured from her injuries.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
To where they couldn't really identify her just from the face.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Trina's uncle, Oscar, stared down. The body was unrecognizable. How
could he possibly identify it as his sister? He paused
for a moment as his memories took him back to
the childhood they spent together in Kansas City. One moment
stood out, an innocent summertime memory from when they were
(04:54):
young kids. They were riding a bike and my uncle
did something to my mom and she kicked them off
the bike. They were just playing around, bickering like siblings.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
He had ended up having a bruise on his arm,
and he ended up doing her like that, and she
had the same bruise on her arm. So they grew
up with the same bruise on their arm because they
both was ornery and couldn't get over, like this person
did this to me, and things like that. It had
been a funny story when they were kids, but faced
with the dead body, it took on a darker purpose.
(05:33):
My uncle said that he remembered the scar that they
had had alike. In a rage, he went over and
he pulled her arm from up under to see if
it was heard by the bruise that they had alike.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
The childhood scar was there. This was his younger sister.
Oscar was devastated, but he also noticed something.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Else, and that's when he discovered that her left wrist
was cut off. And my uncle's now was telling me
like it seemed as though like they just did it,
like her bones and stuff was fresh, like they had
just cut her wrist off.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
This detail stuck in Trina's mind. Why would someone cut
her mother's wrist off if not to hide something?
Speaker 4 (06:18):
Oh God, who got.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
I?
Speaker 5 (06:25):
God?
Speaker 1 (06:29):
I'm Nikki Richardson And from the teams that novel and
iHeart Podcast, this is the Girlfriend's Untouchable.
Speaker 5 (06:54):
Episode six, What would you have done?
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Trina Cooper didn't have the opportunity to get to know
her mother, Dorothy, but according to her friends and family,
they would have gotten along pretty well. She was a caring,
given person. She was just that sister. Couldn't nobody tell nothing?
Speaker 2 (07:21):
And me speaking about it is talking, I'm talking about
me like this is me now, like I'm very outspoken,
no one can really tell me too much.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Trina's also very determined, So despite her family's reluctance to
tell her more about her mother and her murder, Trina
kept on digging.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Probably like twenty three.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
I had reconnected with my godmoa, the woman who had
raised her, And then she's like, have anyone told you
about your mom?
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Like this is things that you need to know? And
I was like no, So Trina went to her godmother's
house to find out more.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
She just pulled out her little box of pictures and
she showed me old pictures of her and my mom
and me as a baby, and we said and we talked,
and she told me that my mom was a street walker.
And she said that, you know, back then when everything
happened far as her death, they always thought that like
a police officer was involved because of how it's so
(08:21):
covered up. It's like no one else can cover it
up as much as it's covered up, but a police officer.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Trina went back to her family and prodded them for answers.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
I started having questions like what happened? Like did y'all
ask questions? The short answer was no, they hadn't. In fact,
the more Trina heard about the investigation, the more disappointed
she felt. They gave my uncle my mom's jean jacket
from the crom scene, and my uncle actually took it,
(08:55):
and I'm like, why did you take the jacket? It
was supposed to be in evidence. And my uncle was
just like, well, you know, we didn't know anything. We
just wanted something that belonged to her because we had
already lost her. So it was just like he just
felt as though that was something to keep him connected
to her, and they were just like, no, no, that
was supposed to stay in evidence.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Trina thought that learning more about her mother Dorothy's death
would help her move on, but hearing how lackluss the
investigation had been left her feeling even further from the truth.
I was getting irritated and I was just like, I
just don't understand. I left it alone again.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
I'm like, I don't want to hear no more because then,
you know, me being a teenager, it's like it's hurting
to hear this about your mom and you know already
having the hurt in you that you grew.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Up without this lady.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
So it was just a lot at that time, so
I just stopped asking questions because it was too much
to really take in.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
But Trina wasn't the only person in her family with
a connection to Dorothy Cooper.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
My kids started asking questions like who's her grandma and
what happened to her? And I was like, you know,
I really don't have the answers, and I'm a person
to wear. Okay, now my kids is asking about it.
I have to get answers. I have to be able
to come to my kids and tell my kids something
about my mom.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
So two thousand and seven, I took it to.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Where I'm like, I'm gonna go to the Wandatt Police
Station and I'm gonna try to reopen up my mom's
case to try to figure out what happened. So I
pulled my uncle with me, like you're going with me.
We're about to reopen up mama's case and we're about
to get some answers.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
She headed over to the CASEKPD station. I went over there.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
I spoke to the clerk at the front desk and
I said, you know, my mom got killed over here
in nineteen eighty three, and I want to reopen her
case because it's still an unsolved case and she looked
it up. She was like, the only detective you can
talk to about this case, it's Roger Glupski and me.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
I'm not knowing anything about it. Roger Glupski.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
She didn't know anything about the detective whose office she
was being led up to, but she had her uncle
by her side with no reason to be worried.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Once we went up in the office with Roger Gilupski,
Roger Glupski then goes to ask me, why do I
want to open back up this case.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
I said, that's my mom. I want to know what
happened to her.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
You know, we never got an answer, so it's like,
I just want to know what happened to my mom.
He said, okay, we're going to look into it. In
my mind, he's going to do some investigations. He's going
to call me back and he's going to tell me
what he come up with. Time passed as tRNA waited
(11:48):
to hear the results of his investigation. Roger Glupski then
goes to call me back for a second meeting, but.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
He didn't have any news for her.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
He then goes to tell me, like, no one's talkalk
in he asked me, what did I want to do.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Trina thought it through until a potential clue came back
to her the horrifying detail her uncle Oscar had told
her about seeing her mother's wrist cut off. So she
went back to Gulupski with another question, who's.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
The medical examiner that actually examined her body? He told
me it was a medical examiner by the name of Handcock,
and so I was like, can I get his information
because I have questions for him.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
She got his details and gave him a call.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
I asked him to send me the autopsy report, and
I asked him what procedures did he take far as
doing a full autopsy on my mom? I asked him,
I said, what was the reason of you cutting off
my mom's wrists?
Speaker 3 (12:48):
And he said to identify her and I'm like, huh.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
He was like, so when they brought her body in,
her hand was so swollen to where he had to
cut her wrists off to release some pressure in her
hand to get her fingerprint.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Trina didn't think the story added up. According to the
autopsy report, the medical examiner had included a note saying
that there had been adhesions on Dorothy's wrists, the kind
that made Trina wonder if her mother's hands had been
tied together before her death, but her wrist had been
cut off, meaning that that specific evidence, if it had existed,
(13:26):
couldn't be used in her murder investigation.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
I said, she had another hand, Why didn't you use
her other hand to get her fingerprints? Like it's other
ways to identify her other than cutting her wrist off.
Once I started, you know, talking like that, he was
really dismissive. He really didn't want it too much talk
to me anymore. So then I called another meat and
with Roger Glubski, and I asked Galubski, like, what procedures
(13:53):
did y'all take? How long do you guys keep evidence?
And he said, oh, we keep evidence until the case
is solved. And I said, okay, so my mom's case
is still unsolved, so where's her evidence?
Speaker 3 (14:08):
At Gallupski's reply was, you know, I went.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
And looked into evidence closet and her evidence is not
in there. Trina knew there was more to the story,
but nobody was telling her anything, so she thought back
to her childhood nightmares. I told him, I said, you know,
as a little girl, I've always had a dream that
(14:35):
a police officer killed my mom. And when I tell you,
he got so mad that I said that. He got
so red and he asks, like, what makes you say that?
I just sat back and I said, who else can
get back in you guys's evidence closet? Nobody but a
police officer. At that Gallupski shut down and asked her
(14:59):
to leave.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
After that time, I never seen them no more.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
I got really discouraged, like, Okay, I'm asking the right questions,
but no one is really gonna be honest. I know
I'm on the right track, but I'm not gonna get
anywhere because it's just me.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
But Trina wasn't the only one who had suspicions about Gallupski.
There were families across Kansas City slowly beginning to ask
themselves the same questions, parents, children, and sisters, re examining
the stories the women in their life had told them
and realizing that Gallupski had cast a dark shadow around
(15:42):
the circumstances of their deaths. They were ordinary people doing
what they could to try and piece things together, but
a powerful agency was working behind the scenes, one that
had spent years circling Gallupski and was about to center
in the FBI.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
I had you and had you.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
In the nineteen eighties, Alan Jenerch was an FBI agent
working in the Public Corruption Unit, investigating departments across the.
Speaker 6 (16:31):
Country, basically trying to find public officials, police officers, or
others who walk corrupt, and somewhere around nineteen eighty eight
or eighty nine started investigating the Kansas City Police Department.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Alan had heard about possible misconduct in the force and
wanted to get to the bottom of it. He began
by talking not to officers, but to those they had arrested.
Speaker 6 (16:58):
I would go over and interview them in the jail
and tell them we're not interested in them, We're not
interested in their family, we're not interested in their friends.
We're just interested if you have any information about corrupt cops.
So a lot of these people interviewing in the jail
were very cooperative and they were eager to tell what
(17:19):
they knew. I think at the high point where it's
fifteen cops who were titled subjects of the investigation, that's
a lot and one of those people was Kallupski. Talking
to people, you developed information that Kaulupski had a thing
(17:39):
for black women, he would extort them into having sex
with him. I think a lot of people knew what
Kalyupski was doing.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
But if a lot of people knew about it, how
did Kulupski get away with it for so long. The
police is an organization that is supposed to protect them,
But Allan's years spent digging into police departments like the
CASEYKPD made it clear to him that that wasn't always
the case, and a lot of that was down to
(18:12):
the Blue Code of Silence, an unspoken rule in which
police officers decided not to report their corrupt and criminal colleagues.
Speaker 6 (18:22):
I remember once this cop was on duty in the
police car and he had some woman and he raped
her in the police car. She went to the police
department and complained that this cop had raped her. Well,
the police didn't want to do anything about it. I
(18:42):
remember one of the internal affairs cops said to me,
you know, the purpose of the internal affairs unit is
to protect the upper ranks, to protect the people running
the police department. I think CASEYK had over two hundred cops,
and the whole time I was in Kansas City, I'm
not aware of one case brought by the Kansas City,
(19:06):
Kansas Police internal affairs unit against any cop.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
It went further than just protecting their officers.
Speaker 6 (19:17):
They wanted all internal affairs reports destroyed after three years.
You can't go back three years before to see what
complaints were made against him because it's all destroyed.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Alan doesn't know why those documents were destroyed, but he
has his own theories.
Speaker 6 (19:36):
There's only one reason why you do that, to protect
corrupt cops.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
It's not a theory we can be certain of, but
it's one Alan believes based on his experience of investigating
the police in his role at the FBI. He and
the other FBI agents on the case, code named Operation
Street Smart, had the support of Julie Robinson, a black
assistant US attorney who was determined to get to the
(20:03):
bottom of the alleged corruption in the KCKPD.
Speaker 6 (20:07):
She gave me a grand jury subpoena every month where
we subpoenaed all the Kansas City, Kansas internal affairs complaints
that were made against the cops.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Subpoenas that helped them compile a folder of evidence about
Roger Glupski.
Speaker 6 (20:23):
I didn't care who liked me and who didn't like me,
and Julie Robinson the prosecutor, she could give her rat's
ass whether they liked her, and I had the same attitude.
You can't be friends with people and investigate him.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
At the same time, Julie and Allan dug Deeper conducted
interviews with prisoners who told him stories about Galupski, built
up a picture of how he operated, and investigated how
the KCKPD had enabled him to carry on for so long.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Alan could feel himself beginning to close in on Glupski.
But then in nineteen ninety four, Julie Robinson left the
US Attorney's job. She moved on to become the US
bankruptcy judge for the District of Kansas.
Speaker 6 (21:12):
Once she left to become a judge, that was the
end of it.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Alan felt that Julie's replacement wasn't quite as willing to
help him and his team.
Speaker 6 (21:20):
Were closed down the investigation because we didn't have anybody
in the US Attorney's office who wanted to do it. It
was worth it.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Dam Alan often wonders what would have happened if Julie
had never left, or if the rest of the US
Attorney's office had been as passionate as she'd been about
fighting police corruption.
Speaker 6 (21:43):
You know, we would have got him in the early nineties,
maybe ninety three, ninety four, ninety five, we would have
gotten him. And there's a lot of crimes that he
committed after that that he never would have committed. And
you know a lot of people whose lives he ruined,
or his lives he tried to ruin. You know that
we could have prevented by taking him out, removing him
(22:04):
from his position.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
It's hard to reckon with the realization that something could
have been done back then, but wasn't. All the complaints
in reports that led to nothing as Glupski rose up
the ranks of the KCKPD and used the power of
his position and police badge to abuse women and destroy lives.
(22:30):
Roger Glupski spent thirty five years working for the KCKPD
before retiring in twenty ten after decades of abuse that
it seems like at least some of his colleagues and
superiors knew about. He settled into a comfortable retirement on
a full police pension, but something was coming to disturb
(22:51):
his peace.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
Could you state your.
Speaker 7 (22:56):
Full name for the writer thesar Roger Kolupski, Do you
swear to.
Speaker 4 (23:01):
Tell the truth of whole truth and nothing but the
truth to help you God.
Speaker 8 (23:05):
I do.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
I got you, I got you, I got you.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
It's November twenty twenty and Roger Glupski is sitting in
an office on the twenty second floor of a law
firm in Kansas City. His hair and beard are bright white,
and he's wearing a lightly colored shirt and ki. He's older,
now sixty eight. He doesn't look as powerful as he
used to without his police badge and uniform. Instead, he
(23:43):
sat before a microphone with a camera pointed at him.
After his exoneration, La Motte McIntyre decided to sue the
Unified Government of Wandot County, ksey k for his wrongful conviction,
a lawsuit that has finally led Glupski to be subpoenaed
and questioned about the harms he inflicted on the women
(24:04):
and men of Kansas City, Kansas. Glupski looks despondent as
the prosecutor, Emma Freudenberger questions him.
Speaker 8 (24:13):
You understand that we're accusing you of terrorizing black women
in Kansas City, Kansas for decades, raping women and goercing
women into giving false testimony.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Things start off pretty normally, but when Glupski fails to
give adequate answers to questions, the prosecutor gets firmer, Sir.
Speaker 7 (24:38):
You understand that if I ask you a question and
you remember the answer, but you tell me you don't,
that's a lot.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
You understand that if I don't remember, I don't remember.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
If you reverse my memory, then I admit my hearer
and say you're correct, sir.
Speaker 6 (25:00):
My question is simple of you.
Speaker 7 (25:02):
As.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
When she asks him direct questions about abusing black women
and forcing them to become confidential informants, Gulupski has a
simple response to her questions.
Speaker 6 (25:15):
With all due respect on the advice on my afternity,
I WoT get the moment constitutional rights.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
It's not the first or last time he invokes his
right to avoid self incrimination. It's his response to almost
every question she asks him. In fact, that day, Gulupski
pleads the fifth five hundred and fifty five times five
hundred and fifty five.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
Yeah, I WoT my get the moment constitutional rights.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Lamont eventually settles his lawsuit out of court. Glupski isn't
put on trial. He's free to go, but Lamont's victory
puts a spotlight on Gallupski and inspires even more victims
to speak out. The stories are spreading across Kansas City,
starting its whispers but soon swelling into a churuse too
(26:10):
loud to ignore. It was enough to encourage people who'd
lost hope to tack back in, including Trina Cooper. She'd
been avoiding the KCKPD for twelve years after reaching a
dead end while investigating her mother, Dorothy's unsolved murder. She'd
tried to put the investigation behind her, but that was
(26:31):
all about to change.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
I had took my youngest son on a trip, so
we were out of town, and my daughter she just
kept calling me, Mama, you really need to look into this.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Detective Trina's daughter told her that there was a scandal
unfolding in Kansas City, rumors of violence and sexual misconduct
that were being linked to a series of murders. Her
daughter explained it all over the phone.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
I'm reading all these articles and its other ladies, and
I just really think that you probably need to go
and open up Grandma's case again.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Trina drove as her daughter told her story after story
about the unsolved murder cases of black women in Kansas
City who'd been involved with a certain detective, Roger Glupski.
There were often young mothers from low income areas of
Kansas City who spent part of their lives as sex workers.
The similarities between them and Trina's mother, Dorothy were startling.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
And I was like, I'll talk about it when I
come back. And then it was like she'll call me again, Like, Mama,
it's getting serious. This police officer he was doing ex
Y and Z to these ladies, and it was ladies
that came up missing. Like it's like stories out here, Mama,
you really need to look into it. So on our
(28:00):
way back she called and I'm like, okay, see if
we can find somebody and I'll look into it. When
Trina got back home, she read through the articles. There
was one in particular that caught her eye. It was
two ladies that had done an article, Cadiza Heartaway and
(28:22):
Nico Quinn, And I told my daughter, I said, okay,
reach out to Nico and I'll reach out to Cadiza
on Facebook and see what we could come up with.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Far as that, Trina searched the name Cadiza Hardaway and
found our organization Justice for Windett. She'd expected to just
see a few social media posts an article or two,
but Kadija and I had been working hard for months
doing everything we could to bring the community together and
demand that the authorities investigate Klupski's long history of abuse.
(29:00):
One of the ways we did that was by organizing
in person visuals and rallies to give survivors, victims, and
their families a platform to share their stories. It was
something we encouraged a lot of the women we met
to show up for.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
I reached out to Cadizia.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
I had told her a little bit about my mom,
and we talked a little bit and she was like, Yo,
you need to come over to the rally.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Dozens of people showed up, friends, families, and neighbors of
women who had been violently murdered. Some of them were
carrying photos or wearing shirts with their loved ones faces.
Others held signs with their names. All of them had
been devastated by the murders, but being surrounded by other
people who were just as desperate as she was for
(29:48):
answers filled Trina with hope.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
I went over to the rally and oh my god.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
When I went over there, I'm like, this is unbelievable,
because Sous, for all of these years, I've always thought
it was just me. Trina stood at the rally and
listened to the other people whose loved ones had been
abused and still didn't have answers from the KCKPD. The
(30:15):
sense of solidarity she found at that rally inspired her
to start looking for answers again, especially now that she
realized Gulupski might be the missing piece and the puzzle,
so she went back to her investigation.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Until her mother's death.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
No one can really give me answers but Kansas City,
Kansas Police Department.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Trina and her uncle Oscar get into her car, drive
to the kckpd's offices, and head over to the reception
at the front desk. Trina is shown into her room
with two detectives.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
I sit down with them and I'm like, listen, I
just want to know what happened.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
To my mom.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
She asked them why they didn't keep her mom's jacket
in evidence, why her grandfather hadn't been able to follow
missing persons report, and what they'd found over the course
of their investigation. But they didn't have any answers.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
So I'm already irritated with the whole situation because I
feel as though they have the answers, but they're keeping
the answers away from me.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
She knows she isn't going to get anywhere with the
police officers, so she changes tact.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
I said, give me my mom's foul.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Let me do the investigation that y'all did not do
on my mom's case. And he said, if I give
this foul to you, you cannot sue us.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
Why would you say something like that?
Speaker 2 (31:49):
I had questions going through my head, like and but Dentley,
it's something in this foul that's telling what happened to
my mom, and it's gonna come straight back to y'all,
because why would you even say something like that. They
always think that we're young, we're black, we don't know anything.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
No, I'm seeing what's going on.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
And so I sit down with them and I'm like, 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 3 (32:24):
They said, we would have left it alone.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Well, I'm not, y'all. I want to figure it out.
And I said, if you are a damn lie, you
would have done exactly what I'm doing right now. If
you heard that some officers had something to do with
your mom and they said back and oh god, when
I tell you they got so rude with me. I'm
talking about so rude to where they threw the picture
(32:46):
in front of me of my mama land on the
crime scene. He then goes to say, well, what are
you trying to say, Roger Gluski killed your mom?
Speaker 3 (32:55):
I said, I didn't say that. You said that.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
We reached out to the KCKPD to ask them about
Trina's interaction with the two detectives. They said that quote,
statements made regarding interaction with our detectives and miss Cooper
not accurate. We have specifically asked them what was inaccurate,
but we have not heard back from them at the
(33:28):
time of recording. Trina stands by her recollection of events
the casey KPD also said, quote, we have the utmost
empathy from miss Cooper and understand her desire to find
who killed her mother, as well as frustrations that have
built up over the years. Our cold case detectives continue
(33:49):
to actively investigate the case and hope that their efforts,
combined with new technology, will allow them to finally solve
this case.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
Unquote.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
It's important to say here that neither of the detectives
Trina spoke to were accused of being involved in Glupski's crimes.
Neither of them was charged with any wrongdoing, and there's
no evidence they were in any way aware of what
Glupski had done prior to stories about him breaking out
into mainstream news. But Trina keeps asking questions and pushing
(34:24):
them based on the fact that she didn't trust the authorities.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
So now you're trying to defend him because you're thinking
that I'm coming in here saying that Roger Glupski killed
my mom, and he got so mad, and I was
just like, Okay, I'm here in the right pins and
the right people, and you guys are getting mad at
me because I'm coming with the right questions and you
guys don't have the right answers.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Trina leaves the police station without getting the answer she
once But the stories keep piling up. Journalists are beginning
to pay attention. The whispers are getting louder, and then
get Kansas City, Kansas Tonight, the FBI today arrested former
KCK police detective Roger Glubski that's coming up on The
(35:17):
Girlfriends Untouchable. 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
(35:39):
written and produced by Rufaro Masarua. The editor is Joe Wheeler.
Our assistant producer is Mohammed Ahmed. The researcher is Zayana Yusef.
Production management from Shuri Houston and Joe Savage. The fact
checker is Vindall Fulton. Sound design, mixing and scoring by
Nicholas Alexander, with thetional engineering by Daniel Kimson. Music supervision
(36:03):
by Rufaro Masarua, Nicholas Alexander, and Joe Wheeler. Original music
by Amanda Jones. The Girlfriend's theme was composed by Amanda
Jones and Louisa Gerstein. The series artwork was designed by
Christina Limcool. Story development by Olivia Smart and Nel Gray Andrews.
Novel's Director of development is Selena Metta. Willard Foxton is
(36:26):
Novel's creative director of Development. Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan
are executive producers for novel. Katrina Norvel and Nikki Etour
are the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts, and the marketing
lead is Alison Cantor. Special thanks to Will Pearson and
his special thanks to Carle Frankel and the whole team
(36:47):
at w me E.
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