Speaker 1: Hey, it's nicky. This is an episode about sisterhood, both
Speaker 1: the ones were born with and those we choose for ourselves.
Speaker 1: It's full of love, but there's also a lot of
Speaker 1: pain and stories that explore substance abuse, violence, murder, and
Speaker 1: sexual assault. One of those victims is a minor. There
Speaker 1: will also be some strong language, so if you or
Speaker 1: someone you love has been affected by any of the
Speaker 1: themes in the show, we've left some links in the
Speaker 1: description that offer resources and support take care of yourself.
Speaker 1: When I was a kid, I used to hang out
Speaker 1: near Quindera Park, a few minutes from my family's home.
Speaker 1: From the outside, it's nothing remarkable, bright green grass, a
Speaker 1: kid's playground, benches to watch.
Speaker 2: The world go by.
Speaker 1: As I grew up, I began to learn more about
Speaker 1: how this place was once a part of the Underground Railroad,
Speaker 1: a stop along the route enslaved black people took on
Speaker 1: the road to freedom. It's a part of our city's
Speaker 1: history that's all too easy to forget. When the Black
Speaker 1: Lives Matter movement swept across the world in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: that history took on a whole new meaning. I'm no
Speaker 1: stranger to the racism and the prejudice black people face
Speaker 1: at the hands of police, but seeing the violent deaths
Speaker 1: of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor made this century's old
Speaker 1: fight feel more urgent than ever. It also gave me
Speaker 1: a greater awareness of cases involving police corruption happening right
Speaker 1: on my doorstep, like that of Lamont McIntyre. He was
Speaker 1: released after twenty three years in prison, but the detective
Speaker 1: who had framed him was still walking free. Roger Glupski
Speaker 1: had retired from police work in twenty sixteen on what
Speaker 1: seemed like his own terms, and none of the women
Speaker 1: he'd abused had seen justice. So in twenty twenty, I
Speaker 1: organized a petition calling for greater police accountability in Kansas City, Kansas.
Speaker 1: As a result, I was invited to my first rally
Speaker 1: calling for an end to police violence and prejudice. One
Speaker 1: of the speakers instantly caught my eye. I was trained
Speaker 1: to look around, know my surroundings. That woman was Kadiza Hardaway,
Speaker 1: so I'm.
Speaker 3: Looking forward in deep when I saw her, and literally
Speaker 3: she is a full length of a block away and
Speaker 3: I noticed her walking up to me.
Speaker 1: It was just almost like this weird eye contact.
Speaker 3: I really saw this ray of light.
Speaker 2: It was Nikki.
Speaker 1: She was walking up. We had never met each other before.
Speaker 1: We just gravitated to each other. I had just immediately
Speaker 1: hugged her, and she hugged me. We introduced ourselves, but
Speaker 1: it felt like we already knew each other. It was
Speaker 1: just this automatic sense of familiarity. I can't even describe it.
Speaker 1: I've never had a feeling like that in my life.
Speaker 1: It was like meeting a sister. I didn't even realize
Speaker 1: I needed. We locked arms that day and we've been
Speaker 1: by each other side ever since. Kadija and I spent
Speaker 1: hours talking about Detective Kulupski, the reports that he'd abused
Speaker 1: his authority, and the stories we'd heard from the women
Speaker 1: he assaulted. We needed to do something, so the next
Speaker 1: day we set up Justice for Wyandotte, an organization named
Speaker 1: after the county casey k belongs to. Our aim was
Speaker 1: to give voice to those who had suffered as a
Speaker 1: result of Gulupski's actions, like Nico Quinn, who had been
Speaker 1: coerced into giving false testimony against Lamont McIntyre and the
Speaker 1: lead up to Lamont's exoneration, Nico had become the target
Speaker 1: of intense public scrutiny. It was like her own city
Speaker 1: had turned against her.
Speaker 4: I would get calls from friends and family members telling
Speaker 4: me to stop talking to the media because they was
Speaker 4: making me look bad.
Speaker 1: Part of her wanted to move on, leave it all
Speaker 1: in the past, but rumors about Gallupski were coming to
Speaker 1: light and Nico wanted to join the fight, which is
Speaker 1: how she got put in touch with Khodija.
Speaker 4: I was in my worst when I met Khadija. I
Speaker 4: was kind of like Larry to talk to her. But
Speaker 4: then we finally talked to each other. Oh, we was
Speaker 4: on that phone for a long time and it was
Speaker 4: like we have always knew each other.
Speaker 3: We talked on the phone for probably about five or
Speaker 3: six hours the very first time we talked.
Speaker 1: The three of us got to know each other pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: We were united by our experiences as black women fighting
Speaker 1: for justice and our shared goal of creating a better
Speaker 1: future for Kansas City. Kansas a city we love, but
Speaker 1: it was going to take a lot of work. I
Speaker 1: just knew that.
Speaker 3: Like after George Floyd and watching the communities around the
Speaker 3: world come together because they saw the injustice, it was
Speaker 3: a time like no other.
Speaker 1: We shared stories during dinners, made plans over coffee and
Speaker 1: spent hours getting to know each other until our friendship
Speaker 1: began to feel like something deeper, a sisterhood. Police had
Speaker 1: failed to stop Glupski from putting the community at risk.
Speaker 1: The authorities hadn't held him accountable for the abuse he
Speaker 1: inflicted on the women we heard from, and it was
Speaker 1: starting to feel like nobody was coming to fight for
Speaker 1: the women of Kansas City. So we decided to fight
Speaker 1: for ourselves.
Speaker 4: Oh God, Oh God, God.
Speaker 1: I'm Nikki Richardson and from the teams at Novel and
Speaker 1: iHeart Podcast, this is the Girlfriend's Untouchable Big Episode four,
Speaker 1: three Sisters. When Kadija and I decided to join the fight,
Speaker 1: the woman we gravitated to was Nico Quinn. We thought
Speaker 1: we knew her story, her cousin's shooting, the witness intimidation,
Speaker 1: and the threat of her kids being taken away, But
Speaker 1: it turned out there was even more to Nico's connection
Speaker 1: to Glupski than we had realized, so we asked her
Speaker 1: to tell her story. From the very start.
Speaker 4: I grew up in Wanda County, Kansas City, Kansas. I
Speaker 4: was born to Josephine Quinn, who had three daughters.
Speaker 1: Nico, her older sister Liz, and their oldest sister Stacy.
Speaker 4: Stacey was beautiful. She was so beautiful. I used to
Speaker 4: love her eyes. And all the people that I know
Speaker 4: that knew her talks about how beautiful her spirit was,
Speaker 4: how very respectful she was, because that's how we was raised.
Speaker 1: The Queen sisters were like best friends.
Speaker 4: We used to have fun, used to act like we
Speaker 4: was singers, acting like we like the brags and sisters
Speaker 4: or stuff like that watching movies, you know, mocking the
Speaker 4: stuff that's in the movies.
Speaker 1: But they were regular sisters who would pick her and
Speaker 1: wind each other up too.
Speaker 4: Stacey used to be so honor I remember when we
Speaker 4: was little. Mamma used to be like, we said, Mama,
Speaker 4: can we ask some cookies or whatever? She say, clean
Speaker 4: up and y'all can get them hub. She was like, Stacey,
Speaker 4: get them kids a few of them cookies. She goes
Speaker 4: eh when she lick every cooky and didn't give it
Speaker 4: to us. She was honory, but she used to protect us.
Speaker 1: Nico needed a protective presence in her life because her
Speaker 1: family was fractured. The father hadn't stuck around, and Josephine
Speaker 1: had a lifelong battle with mental health issues.
Speaker 4: My mother was in and out of the psychiatric hospital,
Speaker 4: mental facilities all my life. She got paranoid schizophrenic. She'd
Speaker 4: be okay for a couple of months or maybe a
Speaker 4: few years, and then she'd go back into the mental hospitals.
Speaker 4: But then we end up moving to a home with
Speaker 4: my grandmother, grandfather, auntie, uncles, cousins, so probably about fifty
Speaker 4: of us in a six bedroom house. Nico.
Speaker 1: Was surrounded by family, but it didn't always feel like
Speaker 1: a loving home.
Speaker 4: I lived in nothing but chaos all my life as
Speaker 4: a kid. I see my uncle's fighting. The police was
Speaker 4: in and out of my grandmother's house, I almost say
Speaker 4: every other weekend. My grandfather was an active alcoholic. We
Speaker 4: was taught to be tough, have tough skin.
Speaker 1: Their grandparents tried their best, but they failed to fully
Speaker 1: protect the queens sisters. One of their relatives, a man
Speaker 1: who was supposed to take the girls to school, took
Speaker 1: advantage of them.
Speaker 4: My mom would have my uncle take us to school,
Speaker 4: and he would take us back to the house and
Speaker 4: would rape us before we would go to school. When
Speaker 4: it started, Stacy was eight, Liz was six, and I
Speaker 4: was four.
Speaker 1: They were just kids, but Stacy stepped in to try
Speaker 1: and shield her younger sisters from the worst of it.
Speaker 4: She would put herself in horms away so he wouldn't
Speaker 4: get us. She was a big sister. She was a protector,
Speaker 4: especially me because I was the baby.
Speaker 1: The Quinn's sisters went through a lot together, but they
Speaker 1: still had dreams. Stacey wanted to dedicate her life to
Speaker 1: taking care of people.
Speaker 4: She was going to school to be a nurse.
Speaker 1: In the mid nineteen eighties, Stacy, who was around sixteen
Speaker 1: years old, was doing a clinical placement at a local
Speaker 1: health center. She finished late some nights and usually got
Speaker 1: a ride home from one of her other relatives, but
Speaker 1: if they couldn't pick her up, she would make her
Speaker 1: own way back.
Speaker 4: She was walking home one night because my grandfather had
Speaker 4: got drunk and my uncle didn't pick whatever was they
Speaker 4: she didn't get picked up from her clinicals.
Speaker 1: When Stacy walked through the door, she looked shaken. Her
Speaker 1: sisters immediately asked her what had happened. After a moment,
Speaker 1: she burst into tears. Stacy told them about the police
Speaker 1: officer she'd seen on her way home, a white man
Speaker 1: with brown hair, pushy eyebrows in a thick mustache. It
Speaker 1: was dark out, so he offered her a ride home.
Speaker 1: Being a kid who had no reason to distrust the police,
Speaker 1: Stacy had accepted the offer. When she got into his
Speaker 1: police car, his friendly demeanor faded. The officer forced himself
Speaker 1: on her.
Speaker 4: She got raped and came in and told us and
Speaker 4: was holding her crime.
Speaker 1: Stacy was their older sister, their protector. It was painful
Speaker 1: to see her so broken.
Speaker 4: And we would telling her to tell and she was
Speaker 4: like she couldn't because of the threats.
Speaker 1: That he made. Nico didn't know what the police officer
Speaker 1: had threatened to do to her sister if she reported him,
Speaker 1: but she was beginning to discover how much power and
Speaker 1: influence the police wielded over her community. Nico came of
Speaker 1: age in the eighties, and as she grew up, she
Speaker 1: began to notice the ways her neighborhood was changing. There
Speaker 1: were patrol cars all around them, regular house raids across Guendero,
Speaker 1: and rumors of friends and relatives was getting locked up
Speaker 1: by the police in record time. Because in the eighties,
Speaker 1: Kansas City, Kansas was hurtling into a devastating crisis. Nico
Speaker 1: can still remember the moment it hit her neighborhood.
Speaker 4: They had this big old community meeting up on Fifth
Speaker 4: Street at the Jack reard In Center. Our grandparents and
Speaker 4: parents used to go to these things, I mean where
Speaker 4: their packed houses standing room only.
Speaker 1: Her grandmother came home from the community meeting with a
Speaker 1: handful of pamphlets.
Speaker 4: And I'll never forget the one that said, Hi, my
Speaker 4: name is crack Cocaine. It said, I'll make a preacher
Speaker 4: forget how to preach, a teacher forget how to teach,
Speaker 4: a beauty queen forget her looks, a schoolgirl forget her books.
Speaker 1: The beauty queen forgetting her looks, and the schoolgirl forgetting
Speaker 1: her books. Nico realized that is what was happening in
Speaker 1: real time to her sister.
Speaker 4: Stacey started experimenting with drugs. I know, she used to
Speaker 4: smoke and then she went to crack and that was
Speaker 4: her way of escaping.
Speaker 1: Because Gulupski hadn't just assaulted her once and moved on.
Speaker 1: He tormented her all the way through her adolescence into adulthood,
Speaker 1: Stacy's life began to spiral.
Speaker 4: I noticed that a lot of people that have talked
Speaker 4: to that start using drugs from childhood trauma, are things
Speaker 4: in their life that they don't understand and know how
Speaker 4: to deal with. A lot of women end up on
Speaker 4: the streets on drug prostitution.
Speaker 1: And that's what happened to Stacy. She got addicted to
Speaker 1: drugs and became a sex worker to earn the money
Speaker 1: she needed to pay for them. It was dangerous work
Speaker 1: that led her to spend long nights walking up and
Speaker 1: down shady streets interacting with ceed men, one of whom
Speaker 1: was a constant presence Detective Roger Glupski.
Speaker 4: I got you, I got you, I got you.
Speaker 1: It's the nineties in Guendero, a neighborhood on the northeast
Speaker 1: side of Kansas City. By day, it's a normal, slightly
Speaker 1: chaotic neighborhood filled with families and ordinary people living their lives.
Speaker 1: But at night it can become a pretty eerie place.
Speaker 1: Men selling drugs, women selling sex, sketchy individuals who linger
Speaker 1: around street corners buying both. It's an area officer Max
Speaker 1: Zeifert knows well, and he recently heard that one of
Speaker 1: his fellow officers, Detective Glupski, had been seen hanging around
Speaker 1: in the area while off duty.
Speaker 5: Rumors were going around. You know that he was spending
Speaker 5: a lot of time up in the northeast part of town,
Speaker 5: which is a high crime area.
Speaker 1: People were seeing him hanging out there off duty, not
Speaker 1: in his official role as a cop.
Speaker 5: I received a phone call from the informant of mine.
Speaker 5: He's very animated in Basically, what he was saying was
Speaker 5: that Gallupski was at their patronize and prostitutes.
Speaker 1: It turned out that the northeast side of the city
Speaker 1: wasn't just the area Galupski had been assigned to the CD.
Speaker 1: Streets in the dark back roads had become his hunting ground.
Speaker 1: Kadija and I wanted to find out how Gallupski had
Speaker 1: gotten started, what had shaped and enabled him to become
Speaker 1: the kind of police officer who abused his authority and
Speaker 1: harmed the people he had been trained to protect. We
Speaker 1: wanted to see if we could find any clues, so
Speaker 1: we went all the way back to the k c
Speaker 1: KPD's graduating class of nineteen seventy five, and.
Speaker 3: They definitely was on a budget because these uniforms look
Speaker 3: out of.
Speaker 2: The public servants they are.
Speaker 1: But Kadishi and I found a photo of some of
Speaker 1: the officers that joined the police force that year much more.
Speaker 1: They looked younger than we thought they would. Some of
Speaker 1: them even had baby faces. But we could tell they
Speaker 1: were police officers from the light blue uniforms.
Speaker 3: They look like Jill House uniform.
Speaker 1: They dodge, they really do.
Speaker 2: I mean just very.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very baggy blue shirts they've got. But ill fitting
Speaker 1: uniforms weren't our main concern. It was the people wearing them,
Speaker 1: in particular. A man on the second row from the top,
Speaker 1: so Glupski is I mean, he looks creepy. I mean
Speaker 1: he does look creepy, but he also looks like just
Speaker 1: kind of the guy you just walk past the grocery store,
Speaker 1: you know, just average build, a little bit on the
Speaker 1: pudgy side, wide pie face with you know, big old seventies.
Speaker 3: Eight, I tell you, in this picture he has the largest,
Speaker 3: stickiest mustache. He looked like a gangster cop. To me,
Speaker 3: he's not very happy I'm a people reader because his
Speaker 3: lips is supporting the upside down frown.
Speaker 1: He just seems very unassuming. I mean, yeah, he might seem.
Speaker 3: He looks like the person who would cut up the
Speaker 3: cat and put it in his freeze.
Speaker 1: He does look hard, but he looks like somebody who
Speaker 1: would get away with it for so long because you would, just.
Speaker 4: You would.
Speaker 1: That's all to say that. Back then, Roger Gulupski looked
Speaker 1: like a young, pretty unassuming new recruit. Another one of
Speaker 1: the officers in that photo is Max Seifert, a retired
Speaker 1: detective who graduated alongside Gallupski and worked with him during
Speaker 1: his time in the Crimes against Persons unit.
Speaker 5: The Crimes Against Person's Union handled assaults, aggravated battery, rapes,
Speaker 5: child abuse. He wasn't a person that would share things
Speaker 5: or talk about things, you know. He was always kind
Speaker 5: of a quiet person. Now he was very close and
Speaker 5: kept things close to him.
Speaker 1: Glupski quickly rose up the ranks because he gained a
Speaker 1: reputation for clearing up crimes in record time. He was
Speaker 1: given a private office, the kind of space where he
Speaker 1: could hold sensitive meetings and make confidential calls. But according
Speaker 1: to one of Max's colleagues, Gulupski took advantage of the
Speaker 1: privacy his office gave him to abuse his position.
Speaker 5: A detective that was serving in his unit one day
Speaker 5: went to his office and what happened was the detective
Speaker 5: sees the doors shut and he just opens it and
Speaker 5: walks in. He didn't knock or anything. He walks in
Speaker 5: and he catches Glupski involved in a sexual compromising situation
Speaker 5: with a black female in his office.
Speaker 1: According to Max, the detective immediately shut the door and
Speaker 1: walked away, taking in what he had just seen. A
Speaker 1: high level policeman having sex in the workplace. Max says
Speaker 1: someone reported it to their supervisor.
Speaker 5: Nothing was known about it.
Speaker 1: Even when it was allegedly reported to a division commander.
Speaker 5: Instead of saying, hey, you know this is outrageous. You know,
Speaker 5: we're not going to tolerate this. You can't do this
Speaker 5: bring a discredit to the department, he said, don't you
Speaker 5: people have locks on your doors? Sexual miss condec was
Speaker 5: something the you know that just wasn't considered to be
Speaker 5: a bad thing. You know, Roger just being Roger. That's
Speaker 5: kind of like a boy's will be boys.
Speaker 1: We reached out to the division commander Max is referring to,
Speaker 1: and his response was, this is an old rumor spread
Speaker 1: around the police department that was followed up on years ago.
Speaker 1: Had it occurred, an investigation would have resulted. Max says
Speaker 1: some officers in the police department knew about Glupski's misconduct.
Speaker 1: Others even witnessed his behavior in the office and on
Speaker 1: the streets, but he wasn't stopped. Gulupski kept his position
Speaker 1: of power and continued to target women like Nico Quinn's
Speaker 1: older sister Stacy. He would give her drugs to encourage
Speaker 1: her dependence and then force her into having sex with him.
Speaker 4: He would arrest her for prostitution and put her in
Speaker 4: jail drugs or whatever, and she would like she didn't
Speaker 4: understand because he was the one bringing to her.
Speaker 1: It was a vicious cycle that was not only destroying
Speaker 1: her life, but affecting the people who loved and dependent
Speaker 1: on her too, because Stacy was a mother. In her
Speaker 1: teenage years, Stacey had given birth to her only son,
Speaker 1: a boy named Joranelle, and in spite of everything, she
Speaker 1: spent the eighties and nineties trying to be a good
Speaker 1: mom My.
Speaker 6: Mama was really outgoing. You know, when music come on,
Speaker 6: she had to be saying it. Dance out that, well,
Speaker 6: you used to dance. She used to connect with me
Speaker 6: on that, like different songs that I used to listen to.
Speaker 1: There's one song they both loved, the early nineties classic
Speaker 1: jump by Chris Cross. Remember it, Jump Jump, Chris Cross
Speaker 1: will make you.
Speaker 6: She turned the music all the way up, and she
Speaker 6: turned a little light on and she clashed music and
Speaker 6: we just started dancing. Just she'll robing. She was on
Speaker 6: my level and the hype me up, you know, and
Speaker 6: made me feel better.
Speaker 1: Stacy would take Joannelle to the park and show him
Speaker 1: her backbends. She spent hours teaching him how to play
Speaker 1: chess and making sure he felt loved. But as Joanelle
Speaker 1: got older, he began to notice his mother's issues.
Speaker 6: I knew exactly what was going on, but I didn't
Speaker 6: know like was that normal or not?
Speaker 4: You feel me?
Speaker 6: When I got older, I realized it gets bad like that.
Speaker 1: Stacy's addiction, trauma, and mental health issues made it hard
Speaker 1: for her to be a present and stable parent, so
Speaker 1: his family arranged for Janelle to move out and be
Speaker 1: taken care of by their relatives.
Speaker 6: I always thought about her just like she thought about me,
Speaker 6: because it don't matter what you know. My mama is
Speaker 6: a mama. It wasn't a day she hadn't seen me.
Speaker 6: Let me know she's doing good, Get me kisses.
Speaker 1: While Stacey could no longer look after her family, the way.
Speaker 4: She used to.
Speaker 1: She still had a protective streak, which brings us back
Speaker 1: to where the story started the spring of nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: when tragedy hit Guendero and Stacy and Nico's cousins Danielle
Speaker 1: and Donnie were murdered. When Stacey saw her younger sister, Nico,
Speaker 1: being drawn into detective Glupski's orbit during the murder investigation,
Speaker 1: her protective older sister instincts kicked in. Nico remembers the
Speaker 1: moment when she and Gallupski ended up in the room
Speaker 1: together around the time of Lamon's trial.
Speaker 4: We've sitt in this little room and man Galuski was
Speaker 4: in his room. That's when he started hitting on me.
Speaker 4: Or I heard you dance, or I heard you used
Speaker 4: to be a dancer. Once you get on the table
Speaker 4: and let me watch you dance, I'll pay you. I'll this.
Speaker 4: At this time, my sister walked in and she looks
Speaker 4: at him, and she looks at me. He had the
Speaker 4: little grid on his face. So she pushed me, pulled
Speaker 4: me back and put her hand in his face and said,
Speaker 4: this one right here, you're gonna leave alone. You ain't
Speaker 4: gonna touch this one. You ain't gonna get this one.
Speaker 1: Stacey turned away from Gallupski and looked at Nico, her
Speaker 1: face serious, and she.
Speaker 4: Said, don't ever mess with this dude. This dude is
Speaker 4: the devil. He's a snake, he's dangerous, He'll hurt you.
Speaker 1: Glupski had ruined Stacy Quinn's life, corr s Nico into
Speaker 1: a false testimony, and sent an innocent man to prison
Speaker 1: for murder. But as we were about to discover, Gulupski
Speaker 1: had even more power over their city than the Quinn
Speaker 1: family could have possibly imagined. We knew he assaulted women
Speaker 1: and abused his power. But there was another mystery at
Speaker 1: the heart of the story, and the Quinn sisters were
Speaker 1: about to find themselves right in the.
Speaker 2: Middle of it. We got here.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting in a room with Khadisha. So this looks
Speaker 1: like an affidavit. We're looking through a bunch of files
Speaker 1: and papers AffA David, State of Kansas, County of Jefferson.
Speaker 1: Oh this is for Stacy. Stay Stacy Quan.
Speaker 3: Well, the first thing I can tell you, just the
Speaker 3: form itself looks historic, right, yeah, I mean you can
Speaker 3: tell it goes back decades.
Speaker 1: In fact, the Affidavid was signed in nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: two years after LaMonte McIntyre was convicted for her cousin
Speaker 1: Danielle's murder. It turned out that, like Nico, Stacey was
Speaker 1: desperate to do what she could to free Lamont from
Speaker 1: his wrongful conviction. Because Stacy had been at the scene
Speaker 1: of the shooting too, she had actually seen the shooter's face,
Speaker 1: but for some reason, Nico was the only sister called
Speaker 1: in as a witness. Stacy describes what happened in the Affidavid.
Speaker 3: The man had braids in his hair and had on
Speaker 3: black pants with a white T shirt with black riding
Speaker 3: on it. The man walked up to the passenger side
Speaker 3: of the light blue car, pointing the shotgun at the
Speaker 3: passenger and fired twice.
Speaker 1: Stacy saw the shooter, but she was never called in
Speaker 1: to make a witness statement.
Speaker 3: And I think it was because she already had the
Speaker 3: relationship with Roger Gluspi.
Speaker 1: Kadija and I couldn't help. But wonder if Gulupski had
Speaker 1: kept Stacy away from the murder investigation on purpose. Was
Speaker 1: he worried about bringing a woman he'd abuse to the
Speaker 1: police station. Was he trying to avoid the risk that
Speaker 1: she might expose him. A year went by and Nico
Speaker 1: moved on, But then she got an unexpected phone call
Speaker 1: from Minneapolis.
Speaker 4: Somebody had kidnapped her and took her to Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Speaker 4: They told us they had found her beaten. She was
Speaker 4: naked in Excreuse of Minnesota in the wintertime. So me,
Speaker 4: my sister, my mom, and my cousin drove up to
Speaker 4: go get Stacy.
Speaker 1: The police reassured them that Stacy was alive, but when
Speaker 1: they arrived in Minneapolis, they were distraught to see just
Speaker 1: how violently she'd been attacked.
Speaker 4: She said that two guys in a truck kidnapped her,
Speaker 4: beat her up, raped her, sodomized her, and took out
Speaker 4: her clothes and stuff, and left her in the middle
Speaker 4: of the street of Minneapolis, Minnesota. She was so beat
Speaker 4: up in Bruce and my thought was, aren't you tired
Speaker 4: of going through this?
Speaker 1: Nico doesn't know why her sister was kidnapped, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't the first time Stacy's life on the streets had
Speaker 1: led her to become a victim of brutal violence. It
Speaker 1: was painful to witness her sister's downward spiral love. Nico
Speaker 1: realized would not be enough to break Stacy out of addiction.
Speaker 1: Nico could use her experiences, though, to support other women
Speaker 1: in her community struggling with their mental health addictions and
Speaker 1: the dangers of working on the streets. By nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: Nico was twenty six and had gotten a job at
Speaker 1: the local post office. She had her own place, and
Speaker 1: while it wasn't grand, she believed in helping as many
Speaker 1: people as she could with the resources she had. So
Speaker 1: if you'd walked into Nico's house back then, you would
Speaker 1: have seen a revolving door of friends, relatives, and neighbors
Speaker 1: who found refuge within those welcoming walls.
Speaker 4: I talked to a lot of the women on the
Speaker 4: streets that I kind of made my house like a
Speaker 4: safe house, and that made me feel good because I
Speaker 4: was able to do something for these people that nobody
Speaker 4: else would do because they looked down at them. I
Speaker 4: knew about twenty of them that would come and sit
Speaker 4: and talk to me, or come and if it's hot,
Speaker 4: maybe they just want to come and cool all for
Speaker 4: our glass of ice water. The Bible said, if you
Speaker 4: can't do anything else, give your brother or sister a drink.
Speaker 4: Give them shelter, give them food if they're hungry, and
Speaker 4: that's what I try to do.
Speaker 1: Nico's home was a sanctuary, a place to sleep for
Speaker 1: a few nights while they got ready to pick themselves up.
Speaker 4: I will make sure they eat, make sure they was
Speaker 4: warm or cool. When it was summertime. I'll let them
Speaker 4: wash their clothes, take showers, and just relax from whatever
Speaker 4: it is they've been through. And just sitting there talking
Speaker 4: to a lot of the women, they are human, just
Speaker 4: like we are.
Speaker 1: They just got dealt a bad hand. One of those
Speaker 1: women was Ronda Tribute.
Speaker 4: Ronda had moved up on twenty second in fen Dura.
Speaker 1: On an early autumn night, Ronda came over for a chat.
Speaker 4: She was just talking to me about her kids and
Speaker 4: her husband and the stuff her husband said and told her.
Speaker 4: And I asked her how did she end up getting
Speaker 4: out on the streets, and she was saying she was
Speaker 4: being abused and she confided in me on some things.
Speaker 1: Nico suggested something to take Ronda's mind off things.
Speaker 4: I said, do you want to go across the street
Speaker 4: and have some drinks? And she was like, yeah, but
Speaker 4: I want to take a bath, change my clothes.
Speaker 1: So they did what friends did, listened to music and
Speaker 1: got ready together, going back and forth about who they
Speaker 1: might see that night and what they would wear.
Speaker 4: She was saying, I got this shirt in my bag.
Speaker 4: It was a black shirt with like some orange and
Speaker 4: different colored flowers on it, and I gave her some
Speaker 4: rust orange Kaylee jeans to put on.
Speaker 1: Then it was time to do their hair and makeup.
Speaker 1: It was the nineties, so they went for an old
Speaker 1: school look.
Speaker 4: I gave her like a frieze, some fingerways, then you
Speaker 4: pull it up like scrunches. She had a short haircut
Speaker 4: with a little brown or auburn color in our hair,
Speaker 4: like a blonde in her hair. And I'll never forget that.
Speaker 1: They crossed the road for a couple of drinks. Then
Speaker 1: they went back to Nicos.
Speaker 4: We came back and sat on the porch and she
Speaker 4: was like she's waiting on a rod.
Speaker 1: A car drove up the road. Inside was a white
Speaker 1: man with bushy eyebrows and a thick mustache, Detective Roger Gallupski.
Speaker 4: Galuski went up the street, went down the street.
Speaker 1: After a moment, Ronda got up, leaving Nico in the porch.
Speaker 4: She said, well, I gotta go. I watched her walk
Speaker 4: out my door, walk up the street, make the right,
Speaker 4: then a left. She walked around the band from my house.
Speaker 1: Ronda took a turn and left Nico's line of sight.
Speaker 1: A few moments later, of Glupski's car drove back down
Speaker 1: the road. Nico leaned forward to take a closer look.
Speaker 1: Ronda was in the passenger seat.
Speaker 4: She was sitting back in a chair like she had
Speaker 4: the chair reclining back, but I could see the hair
Speaker 4: and I think a day or two later day end
Speaker 4: of finding her in the middle of K thirty two.
Speaker 1: Deceased, Nico was heartbroken. Her friend had been killed. She'd
Speaker 1: been the last one to see her, and she knew
Speaker 1: who Ronda had left with Gallupski. She was terrified and
Speaker 1: desperate for answers. The autopsy report found that Ronda had
Speaker 1: died from multiple blows to her head, but while the
Speaker 1: police launched an investigation, they never pinned down the suspect.
Speaker 1: After that, Nico held her love once tight and continued
Speaker 1: to do what she could to support the women in
Speaker 1: her community. One of those women was Monique Allen, a
Speaker 1: twenty six year old who was down on her luck.
Speaker 4: Monique ended up coming to my house. She ended up
Speaker 4: staying with me.
Speaker 1: Nico had young children, and so Monique would help her
Speaker 1: with them.
Speaker 4: She would do my daughter's hair or my boys hair
Speaker 4: because my son had long hair, and get them dressed,
Speaker 4: had them pretty cute going to school.
Speaker 1: They were good friends. They would talk about their children
Speaker 1: and their lives growing up on the northeast side of
Speaker 1: Kansas City. But like Rond and Stacy, Monique had gotten
Speaker 1: caught up with the life on the streets. Nico can
Speaker 1: still remember one of the times they hung out at
Speaker 1: her house in the winter of nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 4: She braided my hair. Frinch braided my hair, and she
Speaker 4: said she was going to see her mom. I believe
Speaker 4: she took a ship. She told me she was gonna
Speaker 4: call somebody, so who you call.
Speaker 1: A Monique had a card with a phone number.
Speaker 4: She set it on the table and I looked at it,
Speaker 4: and she said, girl, I'm about to go give me
Speaker 4: some money. I need to get some money. I watched
Speaker 4: her walk out my door, walk up the street and
Speaker 4: over to a blue police vehicle. She got into the
Speaker 4: car and then it drove away. And then the next
Speaker 4: morning they find her dead in the middle of the street.
Speaker 4: Off of Eighteenth and the side street.
Speaker 1: Like Rhonda, Monique had been murdered, she.
Speaker 4: Had been bludget, they had beat her. I think.
Speaker 1: The phone number Monique had dialed it belonged to Detective
Speaker 1: Roger Glupski.
Speaker 4: It was so crazy to me because I probably was
Speaker 4: the last one to see them alive or even talked
Speaker 4: to them that day. And I'm like, father, God, why
Speaker 4: is this so? Why am I the last one to
Speaker 4: talk to these women? And then they're gone.
Speaker 1: Monique and Ronda's murders were investigated by the KCKPD, but
Speaker 1: no one was arrested or convicted. Nico didn't know what
Speaker 1: to do. The women in her community were in crisis,
Speaker 1: Her friends were being killed, and the man who lurked
Speaker 1: in the shadows of their lives seemed untouchable. Quindero felt
Speaker 1: more dangerous than ever, and things were about to get
Speaker 1: worse because for Nico, her greatest, most terrifying heartbreak lay
Speaker 1: just around the corner, coming up on the girlfriends untouchable.
Speaker 4: There's too many predators, there's too many devils out here.
Speaker 3: The whole time he's holding a gun to their head.
Speaker 4: I'm trying to save y'all. I'm trying to protect y'all.
Speaker 3: Hey about to issue a warrant go look for his
Speaker 3: mother pleasure?
Speaker 1: Is this worth risking my life for it? The Girlfriend's
Speaker 1: Untouchable is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcasts. For more
Speaker 1: from Novel, visit novel Dot Audio. The show is narrated
Speaker 1: by me Nicki Richardson. It was written and produced by
Speaker 1: Rufaro Masarura. The editor is Joe Wheeler. Our assistant producer
Speaker 1: is Mohammed Ahmed. The researcher is Zaiyana Yusef. Production management
Speaker 1: from Shari Houston and Joe Savage. The fact checker is
Speaker 1: Fendel Fulton. Sound design, mixing and scoring by Daniel Kimpson
Speaker 1: with additional engineer by Nicholas Alexander. Music supervision by Rufaro Mazurura,
Speaker 1: Nicholas Alexander and Joe Wheeler. Original music by Amanda Jones.
Speaker 1: The Girlfriend's Theme was composed by Amanda Jones and Louisa Gerstein.
Speaker 1: The series artwork was designed by Christina Limcool. Story development
Speaker 1: by Olivia Smart and Nel Gray Andrews. Novel's director of
Speaker 1: development is Selena Metta. Willard Foxton is Novel's creative director
Speaker 1: of Development. Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan are executive producers
Speaker 1: for Novel. Katrina Norvell and Nikki Etour are the executive
Speaker 1: producers for iHeart Podcasts. The marketing lead is Alison Cantor.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Will Pearson and his special thanks to
Speaker 1: Carley Frankel and the whole team at wm E