Hey, it's Nikki, the host of The Girlfriend's Untouchable.

This episode will tell the story of how an incredible group of people in my city fought to get justice for the people they love.

But in the process we'll hear stories that involve violence, murder, suicide, and sexual assault.

While it's rooted in hope, it may be a tough listen at times 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.

There are some numbers I'm always going to remember my childhood best friend's birthday, my mom's old phone number, and the address of the house I lived in as a little kid.

For Lamont McIntyre, those memorable numbers are a five digit.

Code six, so five five eight.

The inmate number he was given at seventeen years old.

I was processed as a maximum security in made because I had two murders, so I became six or five five eight now no more than Lamon mgnatarre.

He was sent to Hutchinson Correctional Facility, a state prison.

They called it Gladair School.

It's the most tension field bottom place you ever going your life.

The first ten years in prison were rough.

Lamon had been convicted of a double homicide.

He insisted he had nothing to do with the experience plunged him into a deep.

Depression, and they had me on suicide watch.

As a young person, I don't know how to deal with that.

So my nickname became Mugs because I never smiled.

I started losing my hair, I started losing my health.

While he would occasionally get visits from people he loved, Lamont realized that the life he'd left on the outside was moving on without him.

He went through deep phases of despair until he made a friend behind barr And there was.

A guy named Shorty.

And there Shorty was dying and there was no cure for him.

He was dying.

He knew it.

Shorty had severe liver damage, but he stared death in the eye with an inspiring level of clarity.

Shorty had the most peaceful demeanor.

He was so peaceful.

He told me about spirituality.

When I learned about being more peaceful, more calm, more in the moment, I started to educate myself.

I started to meditate, I started to exercise.

My mindset changed when my mindset changed.

Everything changed.

At the ten years of being there, I started the focus.

On getting out, and the perfect opportunity came along when one of his prison buddies gave him a gift.

It's not the Jet magazines, and these jet magazines were sitting here on Ministries.

An organization that helps exonerate innocent people who've been falsely convicted.

Lamont exchanged letters with Centurion Ministries for years as he tried to get them to take on his case.

In two thousand and nine, he finally got a visit from their founder, Jim mcclowskey.

He was November and it was cold, and he walked into the visitor room.

Lamont felt a flicker of hope as he realized that the older white man in the room, Jim, was there to see him.

He gave me a hug and he looked at me.

He said, I got some good news for you.

I said, what's the good news?

He said, We're taking your case.

Lamont was relieved to finally have a legal team willing to fight for him, but then they started digging into the case.

My lawd come to see me and say you were set up.

I said, what do you mean.

Set up by Who and Why.

Why.

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

By episode three the two day trial, Lamart McIntyre had found a team of lawyers to look into his case.

Starting out, we just wanted to find out how did I end up in this situation.

They needed to examine every aspect of the nineteen ninety four investigation into the murders of Donnielle Quinn and Donnie Ewing.

Lamont's legal team's theory that he had been set up was based on two things.

First, the witness testimonies which had put Lamont at the scene of the murders.

Doing my lawyer's investigation, they come to find out that the district attorney and Tara Moore.

Had cheated She threatened the witnesses.

We reached out to Tara moorehead and her lawyer to ask her about Nico's claims of witness intimidation.

She did not wish to provide a comment.

Nico Quinn had recanted her testimony back in the nineties when Lamont first tried to appeal his case.

That had come to nothing, but when the Mont's legal team reached out to her again.

In twenty fourteen, she signed another affidavit confessing her false testimony, and there was more.

Lamont's lawyers had gone in wanting to build a case for his innocence, but they kept finding stories about the detective at the heart of the investigation.

The Raja Glupski thing popped up in my lawyer's face.

Lamont's mother, Rose, had been sexually assaulted by Gallupski back in the eighties, but back then she'd been too scared of what he could do to her to report him or speak out, so she kept her story a secret out of fear that Gallupski might enact revenge.

But now that her son had a solid legal team around him and culture was shifting to better support victims, Rose decided it was finally time to speak out.

She hoped it would help her son's case, but finding out that his mother had been holding on to her painful secret for so long hit Lamont hard.

I felt angry.

I wanted to hurt that man his due violated my mother.

Glupski had sexually as Rose intimidated Nico and rushed through a flawed investigation that had put Lamont behind bars.

But as Lamont's lawyers dig deeper, they learned that the Queen's and McIntyre's weren't his only victims.

They were on the edge of a shocking discovery, and.

That changed the direction and altered the direction of my whole life.

By twenty sixteen, Lamont's legal team had built up a case to try and prove his innocence, but they needed someone to help them further investigate Gelupski's history of misconduct, so they asked around until they found the perfect woman for the job.

I am Kadizra Hardaway.

I grew up in Kansas City, Missouri.

Kadija is a black woman in her early fifties who loves God, art and helping people feel confident by doing their hair.

The other central pillar of her life is social justice.

Growing up, I was probably the most outspoken child in my family, and I still am.

I was taught to be an activist, probably at the age of five, like I've been holding a bullhorn for that long.

I'm fifty now.

Kadija had spent years working with Alvin Sykes, a civil rights advocate who helped bring about the Emmet Till unsolved civil Rights Crime Act of two thousand and seven.

The act allowed historic unsolved crimes committed against African Americans before nineteen seventy to be reopened by law enforcement, especially crimes related to the civil rights movement.

We went around a country asking people to come forward so that their loved ones, if they were civil rights or human rights activists, their one's murders could be investigated.

So I always find a way, I guess the spiritifires a way to have me work in cold cases.

It was this background in unsolved crimes which led Lamont McIntyre's lawyers to reach out to Kadeza for help.

When I heard the story, it was heart wrenching, right, but I didn't know who he was.

I'd never seen a story in the media or anything.

The more Kadiza discovered about what Lamont had been through at the hands of Detective Glupski, the more determined she became to get to the bottom of what had really been going on.

And it was like we needed to get justice.

In the spring of twenty seventeen, Lamont's legal team holds a press conference to raise awareness of his case.

The venue is first Baptist church in Kansas City, Kansas a large red brick church which sits on Fifth Street, just blocks away from the courthouse.

All of media of Kansas City was in the room.

Every channel, every newspaper was in the room.

The pews are filled with cameras and journalists holding microphones.

There's a speaker's podium below the poolpit.

The Kansasity, Kanson, the Kansas City Star, Channel four, five, nine, and forty one were all in the room.

As the press conference begins, speakers are symbol beside the podium.

There was Reverend Rowland, who is the minister at First Baptist Church, along with Lamont McIntyre's mother and lawyers.

They all speak about their role in the case, and then they passed the mic to Khadija, who stands tall and looks straight ahead at the audience of reporters, steady beneath the glare of a dozen lenses.

She asked that anybody who has stories about Roger Glupski or their experiences with the police department get in contact with her.

She records her piece and goes home.

When clips of the press conference are aired on TV that day, the response is astonishing.

Once it hit the media, my phone immediately started ringing like I probably got when the first ten minutes of the news for broadcasts coming on, I probably got five calls of people saying, Hey, I know that guy, I know what he did to this person.

I know what he did to that person.

And the stories kept coming.

I began to get calls from people who lived in Wyandot County who had loved ones who were affected one way or another by Roger Galuski and or the police department.

In that moment, Kadizu realized that this story was much bigger than she'd imagined.

What had begun as a plea to help exonerate one man was about to become a movement to expose decade's worth of abuse, and Khadiza was about to have a conversation with a woman whose story would change everything.

I got you, I got you, I got you.

One of the first survivors Kadeza Hardaway spoke to while trying to gather information to exonerate Lamont was Ophelia Williams in twenty seventeen.

Ophelia is a black woman in her mid fifties with locks and weary eyes.

Kadiza recalls the meeting for the first time.

At first Baptist church in Kansas City, Kansas.

They were introduced by the director of a local social justice organization.

When I first met her, she was really timid.

I wouldn't necessarily say there was like this spear in her, but you could sense the deep pain in her from what she had experienced.

After talking for a little while and getting comfortable, Ophilia told Kadija her story, which began nearly twenty years earlier.

It's a summer day in the August of nineteen ninety nine, and Ophilia William's two sons, Ronelle and Donnelle, have just been arrested in Kansas City, Kansas, on suspicion of a double homicide.

Their children only fourteen, but they were sent to the police station and questioned without their mother or a lawyer present.

Ophilia is devastated, sitting at home in a state of despair.

Aphelia didn't speak publicly at the time, but she did talk to the press years later about what happened to her.

To Looseby arrested my twin sons at the age of fourteen.

While they locked up in jail, he decided to come over my house.

Ophelia tells the story of how Gelupski sat beside her on her couch and told her that he knew people who could help her sons with their case, but he spent the entire conversation leering at her, looking at her body in a way that made her uncomfortable.

After a moment, he placed his hand on her leg.

Ophilia slapped it away, but he persisted.

Golosey rape me.

He came back and back.

I said, I'm gonna tell and he said who you gonna tell?

I said, I'm look all the police.

He said, I am the police.

If she couldn't turn to the authorities to report sexual assault because the man who had done it was a police officer, who could she turn to.

Kadizu realized the story was early similar to that of Rose McIntyre, Lamont's mother, who Gulupski had assaulted before targeting her child.

The reason why it took me so long to come out, like I said, my twins was only fourteen and Geloospi knew a lot of people in jail.

Gulupski used his authority in the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department to enter Aphilia's home and use the threat of something happening to her sons against her, despite Kallupski's empty promises to help them.

Ronelle and Donnelle were convicted of the double homicide in two thousand.

Donnell took a plea deal and was given two concurrent life sentences.

Ronelle maintained his innocence.

His sentence will have him in prison until twenty fifty.

Kadiza was struck by how much Aphilia had been holding on to alone.

You definitely got the sense of pain and almost like a sense of urgency.

You know, most victims, they seem to have a sense of urgency.

You can just feel like this intensity for something to happen.

And the stories kept coming.

Some people told Khadija that they thought Gallupski was targeting their families.

Others suspected that he'd framed their relatives for crimes they hadn't committed.

But the majority of calls came from women who found themselves embroiled in a pattern of abuse.

Kadiza's phone kept ringing.

There were more and more stories about Detective Glupski.

How he stalked them, sitting on their porch, sitting in front of their house, shining lights in their house in the middle of the night, calling people and just hanging up on them, following them on the road.

Not just one person following them, but multiple people following them, the same kind of vehicles, same kind of cars mentioned in these stories.

They had spent years siloed in silence, But as Kadiza compiled the story she was hearing, she began to map out the connections between Gallupski and families across the city, women who'd been too scared to speak out until now.

The mcintires had spent years saying that Roger Glupski was at the heart of the miscarriage of justice that had decimated their family, but their investigation had opened the floodgates to dozens of stories from women and families just like them, people in the community whose lives had been destroyed by Gallupski.

It was enough to start building a case for Lamont's innocence.

I wouldn't necessarily say I thought I was prepared for the kind of fight that we took on.

I just knew that it was important that we capitalized after that time, and so I encouraged that community to fight back.

Nico Quinn was on board.

Lamont's lawyers were locked in and there was evidence going back years.

Now, all they needed to do was convince a court of law.

In twenty seventeen, the city Kansas got a new district attorney, their first ever black DA, Mark Dupree.

He had grown up in Casey, k and had known about Lamon's case for years.

Lamont McIntyre when he went into custody, he was just about three years I believe older than me.

People talked about it, and people on the street knew about it, and my church was not far from the location where all of this transpired.

Dupre had direct connection to the community, and his role is the city's first black DA felt like a sign that things were changing.

So Lamont's legal team did what they could to make reinvestigating Lamon's case his top priority.

I was bombarded by the criminal defense attorneys who had been working with Lamont, sending me tons of information that the community was not aware of concerning his case and said, listen, if you get in there, you have to look into this.

Dupre went to the prison to go and visit Lamont and talk to him about his case.

I said, Danny came in.

He said, what do you want to say to me?

I said, fout evidence.

I'm not gonna say anything.

I'm not gonna beg you for my life.

I'm not gonna do anything I said.

All I want you to do is fault evidence.

It was at that point that I really began to take a real strong legal look at this case, not the you know, the system just you know, gets over on people type of viewpoint, but more so of okay, what's happening and what's going on.

When Da Dupre looked into how the investigation had been conducted, he was surprised to see just how quickly things had unfolded.

Back in nineteen ninety four, Lamont had been arrested just hours after the shooting without any clear motive.

Ultimately, it becomes the fastest investigation concerning a homicide ever to know, man, I think it took six hours, maybe eight to ultimately have Lamont McIntyre locked up and ready to be charged for a crime of double homicide.

To pre examine the holes in the police investigation in Nico's claim that former DA Tara Moorehead had allegedly used witness intimidation to build her case.

The facts ends up coming out that the story was not as it was told.

In fact, the evidence ends up showing that this young lady tried to withdraw her testimony.

The evidence was damning building in Lamont's favor, but the DA needed more.

I went to multiple prisons to speak to individuals who were witnesses, individuals who were king pans back in the day, Individuals who refused to talk back then, but was absolutely involved.

In October twenty seventeen, people from across Kansas City returned to the Windye County District Court.

Die Dupree walked in equipped with his findings.

The Mont's legal team laid out all the flaws they found in the original investigation and the evidence they gathered to try to prove his innocence.

Another key piece of evidence was the testimony of Cecil Brooks, he and a guy called Monster, where the drug dealers Nico Quinn thought were responsible for her cousin Danielle's murder.

Lamont's lawyers had found Cecil and questioned him about what had really gone down in nineteen ninety four.

Here's part of what he had to say in a NAFFA David read by an actor.

There was some conversation about Donnie still in dope.

By Donnie, he means Danielle Quinn Nko's cousin.

Some dope came up missing and he did not return with what he stole.

As a result, two junkies, Donnie and the other Quinn got killed.

And here's the kicker.

Cecil alleges, the guy who got convicted for these murders had nothing to do with it.

None of us had ever heard of him.

Monster did the murders, Monster got paid to do the murder, the wrong guy got arrested.

Cecil's allegations about Monster were never proven in a court of law, and Monster was never charged.

After sitting in court for two days and listening to evidence and testimonies about how his case had been handled, Lamont went back to his holding cell.

All he could do was wait.

Normally I would sit there for forty five minutes, and today break I sat there for that long, and then something told me something was going on, but I don't know what.

So when I got back to the courtroom, it was real quiet, and my lawyer was sitting across from me.

She was looking down and I asked her, what's going on.

She says, I don't know what's going on.

So I'm sitting there, Mark dupre get up.

He walks to the podium and he starts speaking.

He says, I want to introduce Exhibit A through z is evidence.

Dupree talked about the evidence Lamont's team had brought forward and the information he found through his own investigation.

The trial was supposed to last around a week.

By day two, on top of all of my investigation, it was very clear that the information they was providing aligned with the information that I had saw.

Dupree had come to a conclusion about Lamont's conviction.

He did not received a fair trial, He was not given adequate assistance and defense, along with the many other issues that occurred.

But that was the real basis of the manifest injustice and this case.

If you take away all of the fake stuff, if you take away all of the potential corruption, and you get down to the nitty gritty, which is what I ultimately did.

The bottom line was that there was not enough facts or evidence to prove that Lamont did this.

He didn't do his crime.

The DA presents his final summary.

And all of a sudden I heard him say, and I would like to drop all charges.

They moved so fast, and having so fast, I felt the room shake.

Everybody in the room just go crazy.

I felt the eruption of the roar of the room.

Lamont is finally free.

He changes into regular clothes for the first time in twenty three years and walks out into the sun.

My mother.

I saw her and I hugged her.

In that moment, Lamont felt numb, but that feeling would eventually turn to relief.

The last time he hugged his mother Rose, he'd been a regular sixteen year old boy trying to get through high school.

At forty one, he's a grown man who spent more than half of his life behind bars.

Now he's finally free to dream about the life that lays ahead of him, But first he has to come to terms with everything his teenage self left behind.

I walked out to a bunch of strangers that I had no connection with and my siblings.

They look different, my friends I was really close to.

But there was one stranger in the crowd who he does recognize.

I saw the witnesses when I marked up to me, and she looked sick.

Nico Quinn, I was nervous, and what played in my head is this seventeen year old boy that I seen when he was seventeen.

I hadn't seen him since then, so I had wrote a letter to Lamont, and it was just telling him that the twenty three years that he was incarcerated, so was I.

Mentally.

I had butterflies because I didn't know what his response to me would be.

When they find each other outside court, all those worries fade away.

I was able to hug him and tell him I was sorry, and.

I hugged her, and I whispered too, I forgive you.

I have been given her a long time ago, and I felt so there was a young person that was taking advantage of two I done.

Had no harm it will towards her, But I seen her.

I hugged her, and I whispered to, I forgive you.

Being hateful and spiteful and angry that other people will only hurt you.

I don't hold that energy inside of me because I'm the only one being affected by it.

So I learned how to forgive people to free myself.

Lamont is exonerated and Niko is freed of her guilt.

But this story is not over.

From the outside, it looked like the case of a seemingly corrupt assistant district attorney and a crooked cop coming together to frame an innocent man.

But in looking for stories to help exonerate Lamont, Kadija had stumbled across something even darker, the decades worth of abuse Detective Roger Glupski had inflicted on women across Kansas City.

And she was now determined to get justice.

And so I was motivated to bring these women's story to life on a national platform.

Because the time had come to stand up and speak out about Roger Gallupski.

You may think you have the power today, but as God is my witness, the power is with the people, and we're going to turn the tables on you.

You're coming out of here.

Coming up on the Girlfriends Untouchable.

He looks like the person who would cut up the cat and put it in his street.

He does look hard, but he looks like somebody who would.

Get away with it.

Roger just being Roger.

You know, that's kind of like a boye We'll be boy.

It's just speaks to how tough this Fike is all the time.

And I'm like, Father, God, why is this soul?

Why am I the last one to talk to these women?

And then they're gone.

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 Niki Richardson.

It was written and produced by Rufaro Mazarura.

The editor is Joe Wheeler.

Our assistant producer is Mohammed Ahmed.

The researcher is Zaiyana Yusef.

Production management from Shuri Houston and Joe Savage.

The fact checker is Fendel Fulton.

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

Music supervision by Rufara Masurura, 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 Limpole.

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 Podcast and the marketing lead is Alison Cantor.

Special thanks to Will Pearson, and a special thanks to Carley Frankel and the whole team at w ME.