Former Kansas City, Kansas, police detective Roger Golubski on Monday made a rare public appearance and denied any involvement in a 1997 homicide investigation in which he is accused of pressuring a witness to offer false testimony.
Golubski took the stand in the Wyandotte County Courthouse and refuted a central claim made by two men — Celester McKinney and Brian Betts — convicted of killing 17-year-old Gregory Miller.
Attorneys for the two men accuse Golubski of threatening their uncle, Carter Betts, if he did not testify that they murdered Miller. Carter Betts' testimony helped lead to Betts' and McKinney's convictions.
Carter Betts later recanted, saying that “my conscience cannot allow me to live with this.”
His claim mirrors other allegations made about Golubski during his 35 years with the KCKPD, including coercing fabricated testimony, often from vulnerable members of Wyandotte County's Black community, in order to clear his cases.
Golubski is currently on home arrest following last month’s federal indictment charging him with violating the civil rights of several women by raping and kidnapping them back in the 1990s.
Attorneys for the two men convicted of the 1997 murder, Celester McKinney and Brian Betts, hope to pattern their innocence case after that of Lamonte McIntyre, another Kansas City, Kansas, man who was exonerated in 2017 after being convicted of a double homicide he didn’t commit.
McIntyre was convicted solely on the false testimony of two eyewitnesses, who say they were forced into it by Golubski.
Carter Betts testified Monday that a Black detective, W.K. Smith, and a white detective with brown hair and a large mustache — who he didn’t know at the time — forced him to say his nephews did it and that if he didn’t, they’d charge him with murder.
Shown a photo of Golubski, Carter Betts said that he was the detective who said, “You’re going to do what you’re told.”
“If you don’t, I’m gonna make you suffer,” Carter Betts remembered Golubski saying.
But Deputy District Attorney Kayla Roehler countered, saying Carter Betts had previously testified eight times and had said the only detective who pressured him was W.K. Smith.
Attorneys are also trying to paint Golubski as interfering in the case because the victim, Miller, was the nephew of his ex-wife, Ethel Spencer. Golubski said he didn’t seek information in the 1997 murder case for the victim’s family because it was “none of my business” and that he wasn’t close to the Spencer family.
Ethel Spencer, who has since remarried and goes by Ethel Miller, also testified that Golubski did not offer any information to the family and that the couple had divorced by the time of the 1997 murder.
Also questioned Monday was Wyandotte County Judge Daniel Cahill, who was a prosecutor on the Betts-McKinney trials. Carter Betts said he told Cahill his testimony was false but Cahill “said ‘you have to go along’ or he would charge me,” Carter Betts said.
Cahill denied that, but admitted that he needed Carter Betts’ testimony to get Brian Betts and McKinney convicted.
“There was a very, very weak case without Carter’s testimony,” Cahill said.
The hearing resumes Tuesday at 9 a.m. when retired Judge Gunnar Sundby, who is overseeing the hearing this week in a senior judge role, will decide whether District Attorney Mark Dupree will have to testify.
