Cecil Brooks, a Kansas City, Kansas, drug dealer with a history of violence who has been accused of running a sex trafficking operation with former KCK Police Detective Roger Golubski, could be released from prison next week.
Brooks, 60, could be paroled on his 2009 federal conviction of conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine. He was sentenced to 18 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to selling crack from a Topeka apartment complex.
Brooks is set to be released on June 28, his attorney said during a federal court hearing in Topeka last week on the charges related to the Golubski case. U.S. District Judge Toby Crouse didn’t take action on the issue.
Kate Brubacher, U.S. attorney for Kansas, said her office will “strenuously argue against” Brooks’ release.
“We will continue to request detention for Mr. Brooks,” she said.
Many people in Kansas City, Kansas, still fear Brooks and worry that if he’s released from prison, he might retaliate against the victims listed in the Golubski cases, as well as those who have been vocal about the Lamonte McIntyre case.
Brooks was allegedly behind the 1994 double homicide that sent McIntyre to prison. McIntyre was just 17 years old when he says Golubski and a county prosecutor forced two eyewitnesses to lie to protect Brooks and his drug operation. McIntyre was exonerated in 2017.
McIntyre's lawyers say the 1994 murders were actually committed by a then-15-year-old named Neil Edgar, Jr., nicknamed "Monster," allegedly under orders from Brooks. McIntyre's case triggered the federal investigation into Golubski's history.
In addition to charges that he helped protect Brooks’ sex trafficking business, Golubski faces federal charges of kidnapping and sexual assault against at least nine women.
Nikki Richardson, a co-founder of Justice for Wyandotte, which is helping some of Golubski’s victims, said her group is concerned what Brooks’ release would mean for everyone impacted by his and Golubski’s alleged crimes.
“We are hoping that the court system — the judge, the U.S. attorney — take the allegations against Golubski and subsequently Cecil Brooks seriously and reconsider his release until we’re able to allow the evidence to be tested in court,” Richardson said.
Brooks was charged last November with running a sex trafficking operation of underage girls out of the Delavan Apartments in KCK. Brooks and two other men allegedly paid Golubski to protect the business for several years during the 1990s. Brooks was charged with “conspiracy against rights” and two counts of involuntary servitude.
The recent federal indictment paints a graphic picture of Brooks’ operation, in which he had a two-story “office unit” where he stored guns, drugs and cash and had regular meetings with Golubski.
The office was also used to lock up girls, ranging in age from 13 to 17, who were forced to provide sex under threat of beatings. At least one teen girl was locked in the office for a year, the indictment says.
The Delavan Apartments also included a "relaxed" area where the young women were allowed to use drugs and alcohol with the men, then the "working house," where girls were required to perform sexual services for adult men who visited the building. The girls were made to do this with "physical beatings, sexual assaults and threats of force," the indictment states.
Brooks and the others chose particularly vulnerable girls: runaways, girls from broken homes and often girls newly released from a juvenile correctional facility, the indictment says.
"The girls locked in the office unit, whom some of the defendants sometimes considered to 'belong' to one of the defendants at a time, would be forced to provide sexual services to that defendant primarily and sometimes to others," the indictment states.
Brooks’ violent tendencies were also outlined in the 2009 drug case. One of his distributors told police that after Brooks suspected him of losing $1,000 worth of cocaine, Brooks hit him on the head with a beer bottle, knocked him to the ground and placed a hot clothes iron on his back, which severely burned him.