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