Wyandotte County District Attorney Mark Dupree confirmed Tuesday that he was at the scene of Roger Golubski’s death, and he said the former Kansas City, Kansas, Police detective definitely died by his own hand.
Reacting to many of Golubski’s victims who refuse to believe he is dead — or that someone else possibly killed him — Dupree said “in my expert opinion” there is no doubt that Golubski died by suicide.
The Kansas Bureau of Investigation’s probe into Golubski’s death mentions that Dupree asked to see Golubski’s body on Dec. 2, 2024, the day Golubski was set to start a federal trial on charges that he violated several women’s civil rights through rape and kidnapping. Golubski killed himself at about 9 a.m. that day, according to the KBI.
“I was there, I saw it, and the evidence was clear,” Dupree said. “There is no doubt, and should be no doubt in anyone's mind, that Roger Golubski is deceased.”
Already furious that he wouldn’t stand trial, several of the women set to testify against Golubski have said they doubted he was dead or that perhaps someone else was sent to kill him to keep him quiet. Dupree dismissed that idea and denied that it reflected the larger distrust the community has in Wyandotte County law enforcement.
“I think many would say that Elvis is still alive, and others would say Tupac Shakur is still alive,” Dupree said. “I don't think that that has anything to do concerning the trust of the police department.”
During a wide-ranging interview on KCUR’s Up To Date, Dupree also defended his long-troubled conviction integrity unit, confirmed that he has hired a new director of the unit and said he believes there may be more cases of innocent people in prison.
Dupree, a senior pastor at Grace Tabernacle Family Life Outreach Center, said his idea of justice goes beyond the law.
“I have a biblical understanding of justice, and that means to me that we treat people fairly and equitably and we do what is right,” Dupree said. “And for decades before this administration, no one did anything about it, and many people knew about it, and everyone decided to simply cover up, cover up, cover up. Well, I wasn't a part of that crew, and I wasn't friends with that crew, and in fact, I kind of ticked that crew off.”
Dupree said he began work on the unit after he stunned the county by announcing a “manifest injustice” had been committed against Lamonte McIntyre, a Kansas City, Kansas, man who was wrongfully convicted of a double homicide and spent 23 years in prison. Since then, despite some missteps, Dupree said the unit has been successful in getting one innocent man out of prison and is working on more cases that may be similar to McIntyre’s.
“There's going to be some balls that are dropped, but for us, it is about picking up the ball running as far as you can,” Dupree said. “And this office, this district attorney's administration, has taken this ball further in the last nine years that I've been in office than the last 90 years before me.”
In December 2023, Dupree spent $134,400 hiring Patricia Cummings, a nationally known expert in exonerations circles, as a consultant to establish the unit, according to a one-year contract obtained through a Kansas Open Records Act request.
Five months ago, Adam Stolte, an Overland Park attorney, was hired as the new director of the conviction integrity unit, Dupree said, and there is another attorney and an investigator in the unit.
Dupree first won funding from the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City in 2018. But Dupree had to fire two employees in 2021 when it was discovered that they had been using racist and homophobic remarks.
By November 2022, the UG approved giving Dupree $1.7 million to digitize all records, saying he wanted to look at Golubski’s cases. At that time, he said there were at least 19 cases that Golubski was connected with that he would be looking at. Now, Dupree said, he has gone back 60 years and there are more than 19 cases that he’s interested in.
