The Girlfriends S4/E6: What Would You Have Done?

Transcript

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Speaker 9 Hey, it's Nikki. 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.

Speaker 9 But as with the rest of this series, there will be stories about violence, murder, and sexual assault.

Speaker 9 So, if you or 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.

Speaker 9 Trina Cooper's childhood wasn't perfect, but the woman who raised her did her best to fill her life with love.

Speaker 2 I was a spoiled little girl. Got everything I wanted with her.

Speaker 2 I didn't realize that she wasn't my mother until I was five, six years old around that time.

Speaker 9 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 mom.

Speaker 2 Uncles and aunties, 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?

Speaker 2 And all they can really tell me is, she's you. Like, you're a split image of her.

Speaker 9 Nobody told her stories about her mom, but Trina had an active imagination.

Speaker 2 I used to always dream about this lady getting

Speaker 2 tortured in an alley,

Speaker 2 like getting kidnapped in the alley.

Speaker 9 It was a recurring dream. So at 10 years old, she opened up to someone about it.

Speaker 2 I had came to my brother one day and I was like, I keep having this dream about this lady being attacked in the alley.

Speaker 2 And he was like, that was probably mama.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, mama?

Speaker 2 And he was like, yeah, our mama got killed when you was a baby.

Speaker 2 He just left it at that. And, you know, a little girl, I just went on about my life.
Didn't really ask too many questions.

Speaker 9 As she got older and hit key milestones without her mother, Trina's curiosity grew.

Speaker 2 So 16, 17, when I started having kids, I started having questions around that time like, what happened to her and where was she at?

Speaker 9 She reached out to her uncle Oscar.

Speaker 2 Him and my mom was like best friends. They were really close.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 In 1983, Dorothy Cooper, or as her loved ones like to call her, Dot, was a 20-year-old living in Kansas City.

Speaker 2 She was a caring, giving person.

Speaker 9 She took care of a lot of people in the family, including her young son and baby girl, Trina.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 Her father went down to the police station to file a missing persons report for his daughter, but the police didn't take it seriously and didn't allow him to file the report.

Speaker 9 Hours turned to days until it had been three weeks since Dorothy's disappearance.

Speaker 9 Our focus today turns one day. The Coopers were sitting at home watching TV.

Speaker 2 The news clipping had come across the TV one morning and they said that they had found a young black woman on 635 in Turkey Creek.

Speaker 2 And my uncle's name said instantly, you know, you had that gut feeling like, that's her.

Speaker 9 Their gut feeling was correct.

Speaker 9 In April 1983, Dorothy's body was found in the driveway of an abandoned nursing home.

Speaker 9 Trina's family went to a funeral home to identify her. It was a traumatic experience.

Speaker 2 Someone had brought her up on an elevator. Her face was disfigured from her injuries, to where they couldn't really identify her just from the face.

Speaker 9 Trina's uncle Oscar stared down. The body was unrecognizable.
How could he possibly identify it as his sister?

Speaker 9 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 young kids.

Speaker 2 They were riding a bike, and my uncle did something to my mama, and she kicked him off the bike.

Speaker 9 They were just playing around, bickering like siblings.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 So they grew up with the same bruise on their arm because they both was honory and couldn't get over like this person did this to me and things like that.

Speaker 9 It had been a funny story when they were kids, but faced with the dead body, it took on a darker purpose.

Speaker 2 My uncle said that he remembered the scar that they had had alike.

Speaker 2 In a rage, he went over and he pulled her arm from up under to see if it was her by the bruise that they had alike.

Speaker 9 The childhood scar was there. This was his younger sister.
Oscar was devastated, but he also noticed something else.

Speaker 2 And that's when he discovered that her left wrist was cut off.

Speaker 2 And my uncle's nail 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 9 This detail stuck in Trina's mind.

Speaker 9 Why would someone cut her mother's wrist off, if not to hide something?

Speaker 9 I got you,

Speaker 9 I

Speaker 9 got you.

Speaker 9 I got you.

Speaker 9 I'm Nikki Richardson, and from the teams at Novel and iHeart Podcast, this is the Girlfriends, Untouchable. I got you.

Speaker 9 I got you, I got you, I got you.

Speaker 9 I got you. I got you.

Speaker 9 I got you.

Speaker 9 I got you. I got you.
I got you.

Speaker 9 Episode six, what would you have done?

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 2 She was a caring, giving person. She was just that sister.
Couldn't nobody tell nothing. And me speaking about it is talking, I'm talking about me.

Speaker 2 like this is me now like i'm very outspoken no one can really tell me too much 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 probably like 23 i had reconnected with my godmom the woman who had raised her And then she's like, have anyone told you about your mom?

Speaker 2 Like, this is things that you need to know. And I was like, no.

Speaker 9 So Trina went to her godmother's house to find out more.

Speaker 2 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 sat and we talked.
And she told me that my mom was a streetwalker.

Speaker 2 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 covered up.

Speaker 2 It's like no no one else can cover it up as much as it's covered up, but a police officer.

Speaker 9 Trina went back to her family and prodded them for answers.

Speaker 2 And I started having questions like, what happened? Like, did y'all ask questions?

Speaker 9 The short answer was no, they hadn't. In fact, the more Trina heard about the investigation, the more disappointed she felt.

Speaker 2 They gave my uncle my mom's jean jacket from the crime scene and my uncle actually took it 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 it was just like no no that was supposed to stay in evidence Trina thought that learning more about her mother, Dorothy's death, would help her move on.

Speaker 9 But hearing how lackluster the investigation had been left her feeling even further from the truth.

Speaker 2 I was getting irritated and I was just like, I just don't understand. I left it alone again.
I'm like, I don't want to hear no more.

Speaker 2 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 up without this lady.

Speaker 2 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 9 But Trina wasn't the only person in her family with a connection to Dorothy Cooper.

Speaker 2 My kids started asking questions, like, who is our grandma and what happened to her? And I was like, you know, I really don't have the answers.

Speaker 2 And I'm a person to where, 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 2 So 2007, I took it to where I'm like, I'm going to go to the Wandock police station and I'm going to try to reopen up my mom's case to try to figure out what happened.

Speaker 2 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 9 She headed over to the KCKPD station.

Speaker 2 I went over there. I spoke to the clerk at the front desk and I said, you know, my mom got killed over here in 1983 and I want to reopen her case.
because it's still an unsolved case.

Speaker 2 And she looked it up. She was like, the only detective you can talk to about this case is Roger Goluwski.

Speaker 2 And me, I'm not knowing anything about a Roger Galewski.

Speaker 9 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 Once we went up in the office with Roger Galewski, Roger Galewski then goes to ask me,

Speaker 2 why do I want to open back up this case?

Speaker 2 I said, that's my mom. I want to know what happened to her.
You know, we never got an answer. So it's like, I just want to know what happened to my mom.

Speaker 2 He said, okay, we're going to look into it.

Speaker 2 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 came up with.

Speaker 9 Time passed as Trina waited to hear the results of his investigation.

Speaker 2 Roger Golovsky then goes to call me back for a second meeting, But he didn't have any news for her. He then goes to tell me, like, no one's talking.
He asked me, what did I want to do?

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 So she went back to Goloopski with another question.

Speaker 2 Who's the medical examiner that actually examined her body? He told me it was a medical examiner by the name of Hancock. And so I was like, can I get his information? Because I have questions for him.

Speaker 9 She got his details and gave him a call.

Speaker 2 I asked him to send me the autopsy report and I asked him what procedures did he take for as doing a full autopsy on my mom. I asked him, I said, what was the reason of you cutting off my mom's wrist?

Speaker 2 And he said, to identify her.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, huh? He was like, so when they brought her body in, her hand was so swollen to where he had to cut her wrist off to release some pressure in her hand to get her fingerprint.

Speaker 9 Trina didn't think the story added up.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 But her wrist had been cut off, meaning that that specific evidence, if it had existed, couldn't be used in her murder investigation.

Speaker 2 I said,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Once I started, you know, talking like that, he was really dismissive. He really didn't want to too much talk to me anymore.
So then I called another meeting with Roger Galewski

Speaker 2 and I asked Galovsky,

Speaker 2 What procedures did y'all take?

Speaker 2 How long do you guys keep evidence?

Speaker 2 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 at?

Speaker 2 Galoopski's reply was, you know, I went and looked in the evidence closet and her evidence is not in there.

Speaker 9 Trina knew there was more to the story, but nobody was telling her anything.

Speaker 9 So she thought back to her childhood nightmares.

Speaker 2 I told him, I said, you know, as a little girl, I've always had a dream that a police officer killed my mom.

Speaker 2 And when I tell you, he got so mad that I said that, he got so red and he asked like, what makes you say that?

Speaker 2 I just sat back and I said, who else can get back in you guys' evidence closet?

Speaker 2 Nobody but a police officer.

Speaker 9 At that, Galoopski shut down and asked her to leave.

Speaker 2 After that time, I never seen him no more.

Speaker 5 I got really discouraged.

Speaker 2 Like, okay, I'm asking the right questions, but no one is really going to be honest. I know I'm on the right track, but I'm not going to get anywhere because it's just me.

Speaker 9 But Trina wasn't the only one who had suspicions about Galoopski.

Speaker 9 There were families across Kansas City slowly beginning to ask themselves the same questions. Parents, children, and sisters.

Speaker 9 Re-examining the stories the women in their life had told them and realizing that Galoopski had cast a dark shadow around the circumstances of their deaths.

Speaker 9 They were ordinary people doing what they could to try and piece things together. But a powerful agency was working behind the scenes.

Speaker 9 One that had spent years circling Goloopski and was about to center in

Speaker 9 the FBI.

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Speaker 9 In the 1980s, Alan Ginnerich was an FBI agent working in the public corruption unit, investigating departments across the country.

Speaker 38 Basically trying to find public officials, police officers, or others who are corrupt. And somewhere around 1988 or 89,

Speaker 38 started investigating the Kansas City Police Department.

Speaker 9 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 38 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.

Speaker 38 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 they knew.

Speaker 38 I think at the high point, we had 15 cops who were titled subjects of the investigation. That's a lot.
And one of those people was Golupski.

Speaker 38 Talking to people, he developed information that Golupski had a thing for black women. He would extort them into having sex with him.

Speaker 38 I think a lot of people knew what Golupski was doing.

Speaker 9 But if a lot of people knew about it, how did Golupski get away with it for so long?

Speaker 9 The police is an organization that is supposed to protect us. But Allen's years spent digging into police departments like the KCKPD made it clear to him that that wasn't always the case.

Speaker 9 And a lot of that was down to the Blue Code of Silence, an unspoken rule. in which police officers decided not to report their corrupt and criminal colleagues.

Speaker 38 I remember once this cop, he was on duty in the police car, and he had some woman and he raped her in the police car.

Speaker 38 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.

Speaker 38 I 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.

Speaker 38 I think KCK had over 200 cops. And the whole time I was in Kansas City, I'm not aware of one case brought by the Kansas City, Kansas Police Internal Affairs Unit against any cop.

Speaker 9 It went further than just protecting their officers.

Speaker 38 They wanted all internal affairs reports destroyed after three years.

Speaker 38 You can't go back three years before to see what complaints were made against him because it's all destroyed.

Speaker 9 Alan doesn't know why those documents were destroyed, but he has his own theories.

Speaker 38 There's only one reason why you do that.

Speaker 2 To protect corrupt cops.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 He and the other FBI agents on the case, codenamed Operation Street Smart, had the support of Julie Robinson, a black assistant U.S.

Speaker 9 attorney who was determined to get to the bottom of the alleged corruption in the KCKPD.

Speaker 38 She gave me a grand jury subpoena every month, but we subpoenaed all the Kansas City, Kansas internal affairs complaints that were made against the cops.

Speaker 9 Subpoenas that helped them compile a folder of evidence about Roger Golubski.

Speaker 38 I didn't care who liked me and who didn't like me. And Julie Robinson, the prosecutor, she could give a rat's ass whether they liked her, and I had the same attitude.

Speaker 38 You can't be friends with people and investigate them at the same time.

Speaker 9 Julie and Alan dug deeper, conducted interviews with prisoners who told him stories about Golupski.

Speaker 9 built up a picture of how he operated and investigated how the KCKPD had enabled him to carry on for so long.

Speaker 9 Allen could feel himself beginning to close in on Gloopsky.

Speaker 2 But then,

Speaker 9 in 1994, Julie Robinson left the U.S. Attorney's job.
She moved on to become the U.S. bankruptcy judge for the District of Kansas.

Speaker 38 Once she left to become a judge, that was the end of it.

Speaker 9 Alan felt that Julie's replacement wasn't quite as willing to help him and his team.

Speaker 38 We closed down the investigation because we didn't have anybody in the U.S. Attorney's Office who wanted to do it.
It was worth a damn.

Speaker 9 Alan often wonders what would have happened if Julie had never left or if the rest of the U.S. Attorney's Office had been as passionate as she'd been about fighting police corruption.

Speaker 38 You know, we would have gotten him in the early 90s.

Speaker 38 Maybe 93, 94, 95, we would have gotten him. And there's a lot of crimes that he committed after that that he never would have committed.

Speaker 38 And, you know, a lot of people whose lives he ruined or whose lives he tried to ruin, you know, that we could have prevented by taking him out, removing him from his position.

Speaker 9 It's hard to reckon with the realization that something could have been done back then, but was it?

Speaker 9 All the complaints and reports that led to nothing as Golubski rose up the ranks of the KCKPD and used the power of his position and police badge to abuse women and destroy lives.

Speaker 9 Roger Galewski spent 35 years working for the KCKPD before retiring in 2010.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 But something was coming to disturb his peace.

Speaker 39 Could you state your full name for the record, please, sir?

Speaker 16 Roger Kaloopski.

Speaker 1 Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to help you God?

Speaker 2 I do.

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Speaker 9 It's November 2020 and Roger Golubski is sitting in an office on the 22nd floor of a law firm in Kansas City.

Speaker 9 His hair and beard are bright white and he's wearing a lightly colored shirt and tie. He's older now, 68.
He doesn't look as powerful as he used to without his police badge and uniform.

Speaker 9 Instead, he sat before a microphone with a camera pointed at him.

Speaker 9 After his exoneration, Lamont McIntyre decided to sue the unified government of Wyandack County, KCK, for his wrongful conviction.

Speaker 9 A lawsuit that has finally led Galoopski to be subpoenaed and questioned about the harms he inflicted on the women and men of Kansas City, Kansas.

Speaker 9 Galewski looks despondent as the prosecutor, Emma Emma Freudenberger, questions him.

Speaker 39 You understand that we're accusing you of terrorizing black women in Kansas City, Kansas for decades, raping women and coercing women into giving false testimony.

Speaker 9 Things start off pretty normally. But when Galupski fails to give adequate answers to questions, the prosecutor gets firmer.

Speaker 39 Sir, you understand that if I ask you a question

Speaker 39 and

Speaker 39 you

Speaker 39 remember the answer, but you tell me you don't, that's a lie. You understand that?

Speaker 41 If I don't remember, I don't remember. If you refresh my memory, then

Speaker 41 I omit my error and say you're correct.

Speaker 39 Sir, my question is simple.

Speaker 9 When she asks him direct questions about abusing black women and forcing them to become confidential informants, Galoopski has a simple response to her questions.

Speaker 41 With all due respect, on the advice of my attorney, I invoke my Fifth Amendment constitutional rights.

Speaker 9 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, Galoopski pleads the fifth 555 times.

Speaker 2 555.

Speaker 9 But Lamont's victory puts a spotlight on Galoopski and inspires even more victims to speak out.

Speaker 9 The stories are spreading across Kansas City, starting as whispers, but soon swelling into a chorus too loud to ignore. It was enough to encourage people who'd lost hope to tack back in,

Speaker 9 including Trina Cooper. She'd been avoiding the KCKPD for 12 years after reaching a dead end while investigating her mother Dorothy's unsolved murder.

Speaker 9 She'd tried to put the investigation behind her, but that was all about to change.

Speaker 2 I had took my youngest son on a trip, so we were were out of town and my daughter, she just kept calling me, Mama, you really need to look into this, detective?

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 Her daughter explained it all over the phone.

Speaker 2 I'm reading all these articles and it's other ladies and

Speaker 2 I just really think that you probably need to go and open up grandma's case again.

Speaker 9 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 Golubski.

Speaker 9 There were often young mothers from low-income areas of Kansas City who spent part of their lives as sex workers.

Speaker 9 The similarities between them and Trina's mother, Dorothy, were startling.

Speaker 2 And I was like, I'll talk about it when I come back.

Speaker 2 And then it was like, she'll call me again, like, mama, it's getting serious.

Speaker 2 This police officer, he was doing X, 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.

Speaker 2 So on our way back, she called and I'm like, okay.

Speaker 2 See if we can find somebody and I'll look into it.

Speaker 9 When Trina got back home, she read through the articles. There was one in particular that caught her eye.

Speaker 2 It was two ladies that done the article, Khadijah Hardaway and Nico Quinn.

Speaker 2 And I told my daughter, I said, okay.

Speaker 2 Reach out to Nico and I'll reach out to Khadija on Facebook and see what we can come up with as far as that.

Speaker 9 Trina searched the name Khadija Hardaway and found our organization, Justice for Windott.

Speaker 9 She'd expected to just see a few social media posts, an article or two.

Speaker 9 But Khadija and I had been working hard for months, doing everything we could to bring the community together and demand that the authorities investigate Golubski's long history of abuse.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 It was something we encouraged a lot of the women we met to show up for.

Speaker 2 I reached out to Khadija. 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 9 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.

Speaker 9 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 answers filled Trina with hope.

Speaker 2 I went over to the rally and oh my god, when I went over there, I'm like, this is unbelievable. Like, because for all of these years, I've always thought it was just me.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 The sense of solidarity she found at that rally inspired her to start looking for answers again, especially now that she realized Goloopsky might be the missing piece in the puzzle.

Speaker 9 So she went back to her investigation into her mother's death.

Speaker 2 No one can really give me answers but Kansas City, Kansas Police Department.

Speaker 9 Trina and her uncle Oscar get into her car, drive to the KCKPD's offices, and head over to the reception.

Speaker 9 At the front desk, Trina is shown into a room with two detectives.

Speaker 2 I sit down with them and I'm like, listen, I just want to know what happened to my mom.

Speaker 9 She asked them why they didn't keep her mom's jacket in evidence, why her grandfather hadn't been able to file a missing persons report, and what they'd found over the course of their investigation, but they didn't have any answers.

Speaker 2 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 9 She knows she isn't going to get anywhere with the police officers. So she changes tack.

Speaker 2 I said,

Speaker 2 give me my mom's foul. Let me do the investigation that y'all did not do on my mom's case.
And he said, if I give give this file to you you cannot sue us

Speaker 2 why would you say something like that

Speaker 2 i had questions going through my head like

Speaker 2 evidently it's something in this file 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

Speaker 2 They always think that we're young, we're black, we don't know anything. No, I'm seeing what's going on.

Speaker 2 And so I sit down with them and I'm like, listen, if it was your mom that got killed in the 80s and you did not grow up with no parents, what would you have done?

Speaker 2 They said, we would have left it alone. Well, I'm not y'all.
I want to figure it out. And I said, you are a damn lie.

Speaker 2 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 sat back.

Speaker 2 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 in front of me of my mama laying on the crime scene.

Speaker 2 He then goes to say, Well, what are you trying to say? Roger Golovsky killed your mom. I said, I didn't say that.
You said that.

Speaker 9 We reached out to the KCKPD to ask them about Trina's Trina's interaction with the two detectives. They said that, quote, statements made regarding interaction with our detectives and Ms.

Speaker 9 Cooper, not accurate. We have specifically asked them what was inaccurate, but we have not heard back from them at the time of recording.

Speaker 9 Trina stands by her recollection of events.

Speaker 9 The KCKPD also said, quote, we have the utmost empathy for Ms. Cooper and understand her desire to find who killed her mother, as well as frustrations that have built up over the years.

Speaker 9 Our cold case detectives continue to actively investigate the case and hope that their efforts, combined with new technology, will allow them to finally solve this case, unquote.

Speaker 9 It's important to say here that neither of the detectives Trina spoke to were accused of being involved in Gloopsky's crimes.

Speaker 9 Neither of them was charged with any wrongdoing, and there's no evidence they were in any way aware of what Gloopski had done prior to stories about him breaking out into mainstream news.

Speaker 9 Betrina keeps asking questions and pushing them based on the fact that she didn't trust the authorities.

Speaker 2 So now you're trying to defend him because you're thinking that I'm coming in here saying that Roger Golupski killed my mom. And he got so mad.

Speaker 2 And I was just like, okay, I'm hitting the right pins and the right people.

Speaker 2 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 9 Trina leaves the police station without getting the answer she wants. But the stories keep piling up.
Journalists are beginning to pay attention. The whispers are getting louder.

Speaker 2 And then.

Speaker 25 In Kansas City, Kansas tonight, the FBI today arrested former KCK Police Detective Roger Golubski.

Speaker 9 That's coming up on The Girlfriends Untouchable.

Speaker 9 The Girlfriend's Untouchable is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcast.

Speaker 2 For more from Novel, visit novel.audio.

Speaker 9 The show is narrated by me, Nikki Richardson. It was written and produced by Rufaro Mazarua.
The editor is Joe Wheeler. Our assistant producer is Mohamed Ahmed.
The researcher is Zayana Youssef.

Speaker 9 Production Management from Cherie Houston and Joe Savage. The fact-checker is Findall Fulton.
Sound design, mixing, and scoring by Nicholas Alexander with additional engineering by Daniel Kimpson.

Speaker 9 Music supervision by Rufaro Mazzarua. Nicholas Alexander and Joe Wheeler.
Original music by Amanda Jones. The girlfriend's theme was composed by Amanda Jones and Louisa Gerstein.

Speaker 9 The series artwork was designed by Christina Limcool. Story Development by Olivia Smart and Nell Gray Andrews.
Novel's Director of Development is Selena Mehta.

Speaker 9 Willard Foxton is Novel's Creative Director of Development. Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan are executive producers for Novel.

Speaker 9 Katrina Norvell and Nikki Etor are the executive producers for iHeart Podcast and the marketing lead is Allison Cantor.

Speaker 9 Special thanks to Will Pearson and a special thanks to Carly Frankel and the whole team at WME.

Speaker 19 This is Tanya Radd from Scrubbing In with Becca Tilly and Tanya Radd. Airtasker is the platform that helps people get anything done.

Speaker 19 Furniture assembly, cleaning, repairs, errands, organizing, even those, can someone please handle this? Jobs. And during the holidays, it's a lifesaver.