Hey, it's Nicky and you're listening to the final episode of The girlfriends Untouchable.

Before we bring this story to a close, I wanted to give you a heads up that while this episode will include some touching moments of hope, sisterhood, and people coming together to fight for the city we love, we'll also discuss violence, murder, suicide, and sexual assault.

Some of the victims are minors.

There will also be some strong language.

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.

All sorts of people roll into a service station at night, shift workers coming to fill up their tanks before long drive, teenagers trying to buy drinks on their way to a party, and parents looking for late night supplies.

McCalls, a service station in Cuendero, saw many people from across the community pass through its stores in the nineties, including Tina Peterson, who started working there after leaving her job at the women's shelter.

She described her time there in an Affidavid.

Her words here are read by an actor.

Initially, McColls was a good place to work and I enjoyed speaking with the people who came to the station.

It was all going well intil the station was sold to a new owner, a guy named Cecil Brooks.

According to a legal statement Tina gave years later, Cecil, a known drug dealer, was organizing what she thought were shady meetings and questionable transactions, and from her perspective, he didn't hide it.

Whatever arrangement Cecil had, I observed that he never seemed to worry about getting caught or arrested.

Despite this open and an illegal activity at McCall's, the station was never shut down or rated by the police.

One of the most frequent visitors to McCall's was Roger Gelubski.

I would see Gallupski almost every day, typically in the evening.

He would often park his car right on the lot and Sae Seul will go out to speak privately with him.

Gellupski's job as a police officer was to fight crime, including the illegal cell of drugs, but according to Tina's declaration, he saw exactly what was going on at McCall's and didn't do anything to try to stop it, and he wasn't just turning a blind eye.

Gillupskey seemed to know everything that was going on at McColl's and had free run of the station.

Hanging out with a criminal and seemingly protecting him was one thing, but Tina witnessed something else during her evenings at McCall's, something that made her wonder if there was more to the service station operation than she first thought.

She was working a shift at the station one day when Tina witnessed an unusual transaction.

I saw Cecil go to the cash register, pulled out some cash and give it to Glubski.

It seemed as if Glubski wasn't just protecting the notorious dealer, but that he may have been a co conspirator and something much bigger, an underground operation that involved more than just drugs.

What was really going on between the abuse of cop and this powerful dealer?

We were going to have to find out?

Oh God, who.

I'm Nicki Richardson and from the teams at Novel and iHeart Podcasts, this is the Girlfriend's Untouchable.

Big Guy.

Episode eight.

It could have been us.

We still have so many unanswered questions.

People we want to talk to, like Tina Peterson.

We tried to get in touch, but we haven't been able to reach her yet, so we don't have the full story from her point of view.

From what we found out, though, Tina tried to report Roger Glupski's abuse to the k c KPD when she was working at the women's shelter, she says the police never got back to her.

Tina then worked at the service station owned by Cecil Brooks.

She quickly realized that it operated like a drug house and was frequented by Roger Glupski, so she left because she no longer felt safe.

But it seemed like no matter how far Tina went, Seesaw and Gelupski were always there.

In the nineties, Tina's aunt lived in a housing project on the northwest side of Kansas City, a place called the Delevant Apartments.

From the outside, the complex seems pretty ordinary now.

It's a block of cream colored, three floor buildings.

Each has their own patch of grass in front of the yard, and there are a few trees lining the road.

But back in the nineties it was kind of rough.

When I was there, I observed that the complex was overrun with illegal activity, including drugs.

At the time, the Delevant Apartments were owned by Cecil Brooks, one of the kingpins oft the drug trade in the Northeast.

Tina noticed a variety of men walking in and out of those apartments, but there was a frequent visitor who caught her eye.

You've guessed it, Roger Glubski.

It seemed like he was either involved with or protecting the men in the area involved with organized crime.

Tina had seen and heard enough to know he messed around with dangerous men, and she wasn't surprised to see the apartment complex had become a hub of illegal activity either.

But what did surprise her were the people she recalls hanging out there.

I also noticed underaged girls there, which was very troubling.

I also saw Gelupski there with Cecil and noticed that they seemed to socialize with the underaged girls.

This is an allegation yet to be proven in court.

Then Tina's affidavit, she says that she was unsettled by what she saw, but it would take years for us to put the pieces together.

It makes sense of how those girls fit into the bigger picture of our story.

We'd already heard of Cecil Brooks.

He's the drug dealer Nico Quinn told us attacked her cousin Donielle in the days before he was murdered.

Cecil was the guy Gelupski told Nico to stop mentioning.

He's also the man Nico says knocked on her door to intimidate her, and Cecil himself signed an affidavid in twenty nineteen saying that he knew the identity of Donielle's ro killer, a guy named Monster, whom Nico said had beat her cousin up alongside Cecil.

We thought cecil Brooks role in this story stopped there, but then a new federal case came up the USA versus four men, including Cecil Brooks and Roger Gallupski.

Lelupski has been indicted by a federal grand juria charges of sex trafficking.

When we first heard about the indictment back in November twenty twenty two, we didn't think too much of it.

He'd already been arrested for sexual assault, and at the time, it seemed like a new case came up against Gallupski every couple of months.

But as we tried to figure out what justice looked like in the months after Gallupski's death, Kadijia and I decided to read more about this trafficking case.

We wanted to understand just how connected Gallupski and Secil really were.

The federal indictment claimed that Brooks and the other two defendants was quote protection and participation from then detective Gallupski, held young women and girls at an apartment complex owned by Brooks and forced the young women, through beatings and threats of force, to provide sexual services unquote.

The defendants have said they were not trafficking women, but were running a drug operation that they say the authorities knew all about.

The allegations yet to be proven in court, but the indictment alone was painful for me and Cathesia to read.

Cecil Brooks and his associates had allegedly been running a sex trafficking operation in Kansas City, with protection from and participation by Roger Gulubski, a police detective.

Assaulting women was a disgusting abuse of power, but actively aiding an alleged sex trafficking operation.

The more we read, the worse it seems to get.

Wait what, Wait a minute, read that again.

Let me read that again.

Here's the allegation that caught us off guard.

It says, quote the girls held there arranged in the age from thirteen years old to seventeen years old.

The defendants selected young girls who were runaways, who were recently released from Beloit Juvenile Correctional Facility, and or who came from broken homes and moved these girls into Delevan to use them in criminal activities, including sex trafficking.

Unquote.

The case alleges that girls were being funneled straight from the juvenile detention system or difficult family backgrounds into sex trafficking.

Oh my god, we need to process this.

Oh my god, it makes me so angry.

They didn't have to scour the street.

It seeks to the whole juvenile system and how they operate.

How do fuck They cover shit up.

They cover up everything.

They won't tell you nothing when you have a loved one, they won't help you.

As you can hear, processing those allegations was pretty overwhelming.

They discusflect, they cuts you out, They do everything they can, and then they shift your kid own.

I can't believe that.

That is wow.

And it just speaks to how tough this fight is all the time, all the time, because the corruption is so deep, so entrenched, it's ridiculous.

The indictment paints a picture in which Gulupski was able to use his police credentials to allegedly access and abuse some of the most vulnerable children in Kansas City.

Oh my god, that hurts.

I don't know how to process that.

We reached out to Cecil Brooks, the other two defendants, and their lawyers to ask about those allegations, but have not heard back from them at the time of this recording.

As we tried to digest it all, we began to rifle through our own memories.

Kadezu recalled a conversation she had with someone soon after Gallupski's death.

The person that called me said that she quit that juvenile detention center because of what was going on behind the scenes, and she tried to speak out about it.

There are a ton of people who allowed this to happen.

Anytime that you have crimes like this that go on for years and decades, it is not done by just one person, and so it was an organized effort and they clearly had found a system that worked well for them.

Is crazy to me that you will have a number of people that actually work in the juvenile detention center and watch this thing happen and follow through with it.

We've heard so many stories of Roger Glupski targeting vulnerable black women from poorer areas of our city, the kind of women whose society is less likely to believe.

But the allegations in those documents suggest that both Galupski and Cesel Brooks knew that young black girls were easier targets and because of the way that society treats us like adults when we're still children.

It's called adultification bias, where black and brown kids are treated like they're older, less vulnerable, and more mature than they are.

You see it all the time.

Sixteen year old Black boys hanging out on the street like Lamt McIntyre are quick to being labeled intimidating or thuggish.

Fifteen year old Black girls walking home from school like Stacy Quinn are quick to be labeled fast and approached by older men because they're seen as more mature.

It's a cycle that leads them to be perceived and punished like adults.

We couldn't help, but wonder if an organized operation like this would have been able to take place in plain sight if it wasn't happening to black girls.

Kadijah and I didn't have perfect childhoods, and even if we had, we're aware that so many children are only ever just a few traumatic life events away from being caught up in the criminal justice system or having to flee a violent home.

In short, those girls could have been us.

When I was looking at the case, I felt naive.

It opened my eyes.

I think that's what really pushed me was the ideal that I was so close to danger and God protected me through all of the ideal of what danger really could have been like for me.

And so I was one grateful that I was protected, but I was angry that so many people weren't, and that as easily as I can see myself in danger, that's how easy it was for them to allegedly do what they did to so many women.

And it's just like I was just so close, you know, and it's not just and that it was happening right around me.

Just wouldn't have never crossed my mind in that manner, that magnitude, that much explosiveness.

It angered me.

Once I realized that I could have been one of them, it just, yeah, it blows my mind.

Leaving through the indictment made me feel sick.

A part of me just wanted to put the documents down and walk away because the darkness was overwhelming.

But Kadija and I were already into deep and we were about to put together the final pieces of the puzzle.

We started this series with the story of a shooting Niko Quinn's cousins, how she was intimidated into bearing false witness, and how LaMonte McIntyre was sent to prison for a shooting he didn't do.

We've learned a lot since then, but there's something we've been wondering ever since.

Why was Roger Glupski so determined to frame an innocent boy for that particular murder.

Reading the indictment felt like coming close to an answer.

Since the beginning, Nico has been saying that she thinks Cecil the Monster were involved in her cousin's shooting.

The men she alleges beat her cousins up and knocked her on her door to frighten her the men.

Gelupski told her not to mention during her cousin's murder investigation.

Neither Cecil or Monster have ever been formally accused of the shooting or charged with the crime.

We reached out to them and their lawyers to ask about those allegations, but have not her back from them at the time of this recording.

But if the story laid out in the indictment is true and Gallupski did work with Cecil Brooks throughout the nineties, this story takes on a whole new light.

Why focus attention away from Cecil if not to avoid exposing his connection to Gallupski to keep prying eyes away from what was happening at the Delavan apartments.

It speaks to motive and it gives credibility to many other stories.

He saw an opportunity to hit two birds with one stone.

He needs Cecil on the street so he can continue to conduct business and have the protections that he needed, and so it just makes sense for him to continually wrongfully convict other people so he can continue that business relationship.

Gallupski is dead, But because there are several other defendants in the sex trafficking case, they have all pled not guilty, and the case is going to trial.

In fact, by the time you hear this, it might have already happened.

We reached out to the people involved, but neither the lawyers or the people in the FBI who investigated it are able to talk about an ongoing case, and to our knowledge, all of the victims have made the decision to remain anonymous.

So the two of us talked about what we hoped the trial might bring to light.

My hope is that the prosecution closely looks at testimony and the implications of other officers, because we know that Roger Lucy did not act along.

I would like to see karma hit each and every one of these individuals that saw it, knew what was going on, and actively participated in harming people in Wyandot County.

For information to just come out.

I think now that Glupski is no longer here, Cecil Brooks may be more compelled to just lay it all out.

I don't think he has anything to lose at this point in his life of just being honest and being truthful.

So I'm really hoping that that's what happens.

You never want to hear these stories, but you know that they have to come to light.

Our community deserves that light, it deserves the truth.

It's very easy for that to happen again within Wandte County.

The way our systems are set up are still set up that way.

Our housing authority has a relationship with our police department, which has a relationship with our juvenile correctional facility, And so if someone wanted to get into the system and organize that same type of sex trafficking pipeline, they very well could do that.

And so I really just want to to understand exactly what happened so we can then start doing the work to break that system down wherever it may still be standing.

We need the information so we can make sure that it doesn't happen again.

Glupski's victims and their families are hoping the trial can bring about justice, give them some sense of closure by proving he did what they say he did.

But we're all still reckoning with what comes next now that Gallupski is dead.

Lamont McIntyre got a settlement, but he'll never get back the twenty three years of his life that he lost in prison after he was wrongfully convicted of murdering Niko's cousin.

I can't change what happened with Gallupski now, no matter how much anger, how much energy I give to it.

That's a final that's happened, right, So now I gotta move on Courtly, I can't dwell on it no more.

I gotta just keep moving.

We also asked Trina Cooper, who reinvestigated her mother's murder, about how she was feeling in the wake of Gallupski's death.

Justice would have looked like Klupski going to jail for me.

That would have been the biggest justice ever for me.

But of course that didn't happen, So now I really don't know what justice will look like for me going forward.

But she does want the community and authorities to focus their attention back to the institution that allowed Gallupski to operate the way he did.

My hope is they shut WANDOT down, shut the police department down.

If it don't shut down, they clean it up.

Clean up all the corruption that's happening right up under y'all knows that y'all know about.

That's my biggest hope.

In twenty twenty two, the current Chief of Police, Carl Oakman, spoke out in a press conference.

Here's what he said.

Roger Galuski has been charged with deplorable crimes.

Although the crimes date back twenty to twenty five years ago.

He did wear the uniform and calls pain to members of this community and shame to the badge based on these charges, Luski's tenure in law enforcement was a moral, ethical and legal failure.

Roger Glupski does not represent the culture, vision, our mission of the current Kansas City, Kansas Police Department.

I would like to make it clear corruption in any farm will not be tolerated on kck PD.

It's good to hear that the KCKPD acknowledge the pain Roger Gulupski caused and are taking the matter of corruption seriously.

But it's clear the story is not over.

Remember why a tribute Nico Quinn's friend who was last seen getting into a car with Gazupski before being murdered.

The investigation into our murder has been reopened.

The FBI are actively following new leads and seeking out information for her case.

But Ronda is just one of the many murdered women linked to Gulubski.

There are so many other grieving family members unsure if they'll ever get answers or any form of justice.

So how do you even end a story like this?

Kadejia and I are still trying to figure that out.

It's a conversation we had with our producer Rafio.

We sometimes like to tell stories, podcasts, documentaries that end with a happy ending, like justice happens as a resolution, the bad guy gets caught.

But this story doesn't tie together as neatly, and the outcome hasn't been as satisfying for you all, for the victims and survivors.

So if you were telling the story, how would you end up.

In a way that's happy, in any way, in a way that feels true.

I often do fantasize a little bit, imagine what would happen when this podcast comes out.

And so when I imagine, I imagine that we evoke something in the hearts of people in Windotte County, and not just Windot County, but across the world that evokes that Windotte County deserves this type of change and it deserves the help of the people to do that.

And so I would hope that this would be the next chapter in what we do to make a difference, and that we produce great things for the community that centers around healing, some form that is community wide would break out from telling this story.

Even though we don't have the outcome we were looking for, I just don't have hope.

But one thing we've learned through this process is that you don't always get justice through the legal system.

Sometimes the most important thing that can come out of a story like this is culture change, a community coming together to demand that something like this can never happen again.

Abuse thrives in silence, so we have to keep speaking out.

I think it would be a lie to sit up there and say that this story is over it because it's it's not.

I believe the chapter of Glupski maybe is over, but the story isn't.

The work isn't.

So for us here in Wandette County, I believe it's to be continued.

I got you, I got you.

It's been over forty years since Roger Glupski first assaulted Nico's older sister, Stacy.

Nico knows Gallupski will never face trial, but she's determined to make sure that nobody forgets what he did.

She refuses to let the memory of women who lost their lives fade away.

I want these women to be remembered in a positive way, not of what they were prostitutes or crackheads.

And they're not a homicide victim.

These women had names.

Let's say they name and continue to say it, because they had a hard life in life, Let's honor them in death.

Nico's still trying to figure out what justice looks like for her.

I'm praying that everybody that was murdered, they're homicide be solved, whether the person that did is deceased or whatever.

And I'm wanting these families to get closure.

That's all I'm asking for is closure, a sense of peace.

She's been trying her best to live the kind of life her older sister would be proud of by looking out for her family, especially her nephew, Stacy's son Janelle.

That is my baby.

I love him to pieces.

He'd have made three babies, Finna be four.

So I think I did my part, and I'm still trying to protect them.

They're close, but Nico often thinks about the families of murdered women in her community who don't have someone looking out for them.

When she was younger, she used to open her home up to women who needed her help.

Now she wants to extend that safe place out to their families and loved ones by starting a support group she calls the Spiritual Sister Circle.

To help the victims their children to learn how to cope or live with the traumatizing things that happen in their life, and to try to move in a positive direction, help and get them work ready and ready to change their lives.

Niko's been a professional truck driver for over twenty years now.

She loves her life on the open road, but it's not the life she originally planned out.

I was going to get my nursing license.

She wanted to fulfill the dream her older sister Stacy wasn't able to.

But she needed to make some extra money to support her kids while she did it.

So I started looking into the trucking and then I went in to get my trucking license.

My kid is always Mammy, were never home.

You always worked two jobs, and I said, I had to provide for y'all.

But there was more to it than just money.

My thought process was what's the best thing to do to get away from this man?

Then to hide over the road.

I wanted a truck in because I just wanted to get away from everybody, and mainly to get away from him.

Nico spent long days on the road trying to outrun her memories of Roger Glupski and the shadow he cast over her hometown.

I was able to clear my mind.

I was able to forget about what I was going through.

It stayed in the back of my mind, but I knew I was safe on the highway.

I didn't too much have to look over my shoulder or worry about somebody following me or things of that nature.

It's been almost a year since Gallupski died, but Nico hasn't moved back to Kansas City, Kansas.

She lives on the Missouri side now because while she's come a long way, the grief of knowing what Gelupski did to her sister and so many of the other women she loved hasn't left her.

She's not sure if it ever will.

Now a lot of people ask me, well, how do you feel?

So, I don't know if you're familiar with solanch the song She Got Cranes in the Sky.

It's a song about heartbreak and all the things you can do to try to numb, avoid and navigate pain.

It's just there until somebody remove it.

So how do we get rid of the pain?

You dance, you sing, you change your hair, you change your style of dress.

In the song, Solon sings about how you can try to drink the pain away, run it away, write it away, or even drive around seventy states in hopes that moving around might make you feel better.

But in reality, the pain doesn't ever truly leave.

You just learn to live with it.

I try so many things to get rid of the pain, and the pain is still here.

But a lot of people say, how do I feel about her being gone?

First of all, I know where she is.

Second of all, she's not cold, she ain't hungry, she ain't hurt no more.

Twenty twenty five marks the twenty fifth anniversary of Stacy's death.

Nico recently got a new headstone to mark Stacy's grave, and she and Joanelle went to plan a celebration to honor Stacy's life.

I want to throw her big party.

I just want to get the family together, and because a lot of them haven't seen the headstone, so I want them all to go out and look at it and take pictures and put some flowers down, have a few family and friends there, do a big dinner, a prayer, another balloon release, and let her go.

The spirit is already telling me that's going to be a nice day.

Nico's not sure how to navigate the lasting pain of her grief, or how to reckon with the justice she and her sister won't get.

But once the memorial has taken place, she wants to finally move on.

I was talking to my nephew and he said, Anie, I'm tired.

I'm tired of keeping on reliving this.

So because of his wishes, and I think everybody wishes, I'm gonna let my sister go ahead and be peaceful, give her that piece that she needs, because I think every time we talk about it, we're not doing number digging these people up.

It hasn't been easy for her, but Nico wanted this story to be told.

She wanted you to know what happened to her, her cousins, her friends, and her sister in her own words, so they would never be forgotten.

But the time for grueling legal investigations, depositions, and podcast interviews is over.

After thirty years of rewinding the tape back to nineteen ninety four, Nico has made the decision to close the chapter.

After all this is said and done, and we get done with what we're doing, I'm gonna give my sister a sense of peace.

She didn't hunt it Gluski enough.

She didn't time to him enough.

It's time for her to sleep and have some type of peace because she needs it.

Because if she had a rough life in life, I'm gonna let her rest in death, close that casket.

I'm gonna let her wrist because it's time.

The series may be over, but there's more to come.

Next time.

In the first of our bonus episodes, I'll be taking a deep dive into the area where this story takes place, Quindero, and looking at its unique and remarkable history and the fight for freedom.

There were a bunch of families seeking freedom in Kansas, and there was talks of an underground railroad through that area, and they were able to just walk across that river to safety.

And then they had to be hitting when Daryl, it means bundle of sticks.

One stick by itself is easy to break, But you put a bundle of sticks together, and that's harder to break.

If we stick together, it's harder to separate us.

The Girlfriend's Untouchable is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcasts.

For more from Novel, visit novel dot Audio.

The show is narrated by me Nicki Richardson.

It was written and produced by Rufao Mazarua.

The editor is Joe Wheeler.

Our assistant producer is Mohammed Ahmed.

The researcher is Zaiyana Yusef.

Production management from Shari Houston and Joe Savage.

The fact checker is Fendell Fulton.

Sound design, mixing and scoring by Daniel Kimpson with additional engineering by Nicholas Alexander.

Music supervision by Rufaro Mazurura, 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.

The voice of Tina Peterson was read by Ebanie Janelle.

Story development by Olivia Smart and Nel Gray Andrews.

Novel's director of development is Selena Metta.

Willard Foxton is Novel's creative director of Development.

Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan are executive producers for Novel.

Katrina Norvel and Nikki Etour are the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts, and the marketing lead is Alison Cantor.

Special thanks to Will Pearson and his special thanks to Carley Frankel and the whole team at w M E