The Girlfriends S4/E1: No Place Like Home

Hey, I'm Nikki, the host of the new series of The Girlfriends Untouchable. It's a story that takes place in my hometown, Kansas City, Kansas, and over the next eight episodes, you're going to meet a lot of incredible people, including some of the truly inspiring women I get to call my friends. But it's also a tough story, one that will dive into topics including sexual assault, violence, and murder.

God pray first touched the wheels and everything on the truck and pray for a save trip.

Nico works as an over the road truck driver, hauling fifty to eighty thousand pound freights across the country for hundreds or sometimes thousands of miles a week.

I love traveling. I have been to Canada, I've been all the way up to Maine, and Maine is so beautiful and even Oregon. I mean it's just beautiful, just so green, and you see in all kind of animals like elk and rams, and I'm like, wow, you know, because something you never seen before.

She never feels more free than when she's out on the open road.

I've always said, if I came back as another creature, I would want.

To be an eagle, because eagles are pretty good at weathering storms.

Just like I wather the storm that I've been through.

For Nico, the storm began not on the open road, but in the city where she grew up. Nico was raised on the northeast side of Kansas City, Kansas, in a neighborhood close to the banks of the Missouri River named Quindero.

It was a village over there. Both sides of the street was filled with either houses or black owned businesses. The Wilson's had a piece of shop right at the corner of eighteenth Street. We had one restaurant called CNS that was the best burghers. They used to sell the hand packed ice cream. Oh my goodness.

Quendero was rich in community, but by the nineties, decades of economic neglect had put a cap on the neighborhood's growth, and while Nico tried to stay out of trouble, she found herself pulled into what was going on around her. She had four young kids to support and what she needed to do to put food on the table.

I was in the streets. I was selling drugs, and I don't agree with my lifestyle, but you know, being young, selling drugs was a thing back then. I felt like, if I can make money off of it, that's what I'll do.

But she and her family were also trying to create a better future for themselves by getting an education.

It was like about five or six of us going to school to get our GEDs, my cousin done, my sister. We all used to get up, get ready, get in the car. Well used to ride together. We'd get up there to Donnelly College and be acting the food. We was just having fun and trying to get our lives intact.

By April nineteen ninety four, things are looking up. It's one of the first days of that year that feels like spring.

It was nice that day, the sun was out.

As she walks down the familiar tree lined street near her mother's house, Nico notices an unusual car parked on the side of the road.

I seen a blue kellac sitting there. I'm like, who the heck is that? And I said, all they must be waiting on somebody. And I seen this guy coming across the field, black hat, black shirt, black jeans, black tennis shoes, and I said, oh, maybe they're waiting on him. And then then I heard the first pal.

Nico heard the man fire three shots into the car.

My mama duck behind her truck. My sister came out and started jumping up and down, screaming, saying, oh my god, it's little Done. Oh my god, little Don. My legs turned to mush. I just fell and started screaming.

Nico's favorite cousin, Little Don, has just been shot. He's only twenty one years old.

My legs felt like I was in mud or something. I couldn't move. Everybody is a, you know, chaos.

The shooter turns around and disappears into a field. One of Nico's neighbors, Ruby gets a good look at him.

She said, oh my god, that's Lamont. I said, I don't know, no Lamont.

Nico's family members run out of their houses and onto the street. She follows them.

I went to the car and don was looking over trying to talk. This whole side of his face was gone.

The man in the passenger seat, another cousin named Donnie Ewing, has been shocked too.

We was asking what happened and who did it, and we're asking him to hold on, and he was just looking at us, trying to speak. And my mom had walked around and she put her hand on him and she started praying for him, and she said, he's gone. I've seen him take his last breath, but I was hoping he was still alive. It's like your best friend, that person that you can fight it in. I can save him. That day was the worst day of my life, The worst day of my life.

Nico's cousins were dead, murdered in broad daylight, but the quest to find out who had killed them and why would go way beyond this murder investigation. There was a dark scandal at the heart of Kansas City, Kansas, a story of violence and corruption spanning decades, and it would take my friend Nico, along with a band of incredible women, on a journey to speak up, reveal the truth, and fight for the city we love.

Oh God, why God.

I'm Nikki Richardson from the teams at Novel and iHeart Podcasts. This is the Girlfriend's Untouchable.

I Had You, You Got You?

Episode one, No Place Like Home You April fifteenth, nineteen ninety four turned Nico Quinn's life upside down. Her favorite cousin, Danielle, had been shot murdered right in front of her. It was a devastating loss. Just like that, her soulmate was gone.

We was two peas in a pot ever since we was kids. Donielle was like my brother from another mother. He was my best friend. He was a jack of all trade, master nun. He could dance, he could fix things, he can sing, he can dress. He was mac Daddy other year let him tell it. And he was a comforter. He was a giver. If he was still alive, you wouldn't even be able to interview him. He would have you in tears. Just try laughing, because he is. He was that much of a food.

But like so many other people in Quendero, he lost his way in his teenage years.

Danielle ended up getting gone drugs on crack cocaine, started dealing with the wrong people.

Hours after witnessing his murder, Nico began to wonder were those wrong people involved. Two weeks earlier, a group of men had shown up to punish Danyelle for a debt he owed allegedly stealing drugs from their stash house.

About six to seven people jumped on and beat them with poles, and he was beat up real bad, and he ended up coming down on my house, sitting on my mother's porch. So I started talking to him. I went and got some bandage and stuff and started attending to his wounds.

Nico says that Donyelle claimed the attack had been instigated by a drug dealer named Cecil Brooks and a local guy everyone calls Monster. Nico says that after the attack, she decided to help Donielle pay off his debts.

So I sent my sister and somebody else up there to ask the person, can I paid a debt for him? They said it was okay, it was cool.

A few days later, the men came back and tried to take Donyell away, but Nico's family intervened and told them to back off. The Next day, Danielle showed up at Nico's house. His mood had changed.

Don came in and he was singing. He was singing Christian songs. I have never seen him his fear just so happy. He came back and he told me, say, I just want took a shower. I'm about to go see my baby and cousin. I'm gonna check myself in. I'm about to get myself right. I can't go down this road again.

Danielle had a young son. He wanted to go to rehab, get himself clean, and start afresh.

He kissed me on my cheek or maybe my forehead, told me he loved me, and then he walked out the door.

A few minutes later, Danielle was dad.

I wasn't okay. I had all types of emotions. Everywhere I went that day. I kept seeing my cousin in the state that I had last seen him, and it's horrible. The police came over.

Nico opened her front door.

I came out and I was asking them, you know what did they want?

They had come to investigate the murders of Donielle Quinn and Donnie Ewing. The lead officer was a detective named Roger Gallupski.

He was a chunky white guy that thought he was Rigo Suavee. He had black hair slicked back, wore these glasses, a ring on his spinky finger. He had a couple of chains on his neck. He made sure you seen his badge yet, his badge on his belt, his gun on his side.

Detective Gaulupski wanted Nico to take a look through a list of suspects.

But I'm going through the pictures, I said, I know he didn't do it. Oh, I know he didn't do it. I said, I don't see the person in there that did it.

Nico hadn't seen the shooter's face clearly enough to say for sure, but she thought she knew how her main suspects were. Speaking to the police in a community as tight knit as Quandero was risky, but Nico didn't care. This was about family.

I said, we know who did it. Was the person that tried to pick him up the night before, who kept trying to get him, who jumped on him.

Cecil and Monster, the guys who allegedly jumped Donyelle, But they weren't included in the photos the police showed her. Nico didn't identify any of their other suspects, so the cops left.

They came back again the next morning early in the morning. They were like, we need you to look at these pictures again.

They showed her a picture of a boy named Lamont McIntyre. This name took Nico straight back to the moment her cousin was shot. After the gunshots, her neighbor had shouted out a name Lamont, but when she examined the photo, she shook her head.

I said no, his ears was too big and the person that did it is didn't stick out like hes did. I said, no, he didn't do it.

As one of the few witnesses to the shooting, Nico hoped the police would take her at her word, but Gallupski seemed insistent that Nico looked again, so he pushed the photo of Lamont McIntyre towards her.

So I took the picture again and I'm like, no, he didn't do it.

They reached a standstill, waiting each other out. Eventually, the officer left her house, but Nico's part in the investigation wasn't over. What she didn't know was that the man in blue leaving her front porch had already chosen his lead suspect. Because Roger Gilupski was no regular detective, he was a dangerous man with enough power to destroy lives, starting with that of a boy in handcuffs on the

My name is Lamont McIntyre. Growing up where I'm from was it was fun times. We didn't notice poverty because we had each other, like we were really type with my family.

Lamont didn't live that far away from the Queen cousins, but he was young and had his own group of friends.

We was hip hop heads.

I was in the hip hop I had the car main like the flat time would dye in it. I was really in up fashion and clean shoes and gold chains and my rings.

He liked to keep up with the latest styles. So one day he decided to experiment with his brother's hair.

So my mother's in work one day and I got some clippers from Kmart and I cut my brothers in hair and I messed it up bad. My mother was mad at me, But after that I learned how to get it right. And then from my brother's hair, I saw I cutting everybody in the neighborhood's hair. My cousin's in hair, and I became the barber. So I was cutting hair back then bout three dollars of haircut. I was a hustler,

Those side hustles were reserved for the afternoons and weekends because Lamont spent his days at school.

My mother was a strict parent and wanted me to be educated.

He was a good student. He showed up to class and left science. He would occasionally get in trouble for talking too much.

Though I was a popular kid, I guess, but only because I was funny. I had big ears and I was skinny, so they made fun of me, and that's how it became good and making fun of other people.

I was just a class clown.

He did his best to stay out of serious trouble, but he didn't always stick to the rules. On the fifteenth of April nineteen ninety four, Lamont decides to skip school. He decides to spend the day going back and forth between his uncle and auntie's houses, kicking back and hanging out with his family. It's a pretty regular spring morning in Kansas City until he gets the call.

My grandmother called me and said what did you do? And I said, what do you mean?

What did I do? She said, what did you do?

Where did you be?

And I said, I haven't been nowhere.

It's early.

It was like still, it wasn't eleven o'clock yet, So I say, ain't being nowhere, Grandmother?

What you mean?

So she said, well, the police just left my house. They've been all over my house looking for you, and it looked seriously like it was looking for you, like he killed somebody.

I called my mother.

I said, Mom, they looking for me at grandma house, So take me to the police agent so I can see what's going on. She called then and told him digging meet us at her job.

Lamon's mother, Rose, isn't going to let her son meet the police on his own, so she picks him up from his auntie's house. Sitting in the back seat, Lamont racks his mind trying to figure out why the police are looking for him. He's gotten in trouble in the past for selling drugs and being in the wrong place with family members caught up in the street life. But when he arrives at his mom's workplace, it's clear that the cops mean business.

It was three detective cars and like four or five patrol cars.

They asked me, do I know.

Anything about a gang related activity today? Something gang related today? And I said no. They told my mother, well, he's not underrest. We want to take him down there for questioning and then he'll be able to go in, but we just want to ask him a few more questions.

Lamarck complies and says goodbye to his mother.

So they put me in a police car took me to the police station. When I get to the police station and I got into the room where I was being interrogated, that's when everything kind of changed.

They clearly haven't called him in to talk about drugs or hustling.

They start screaming at me and asking do I know Donnie Ewing and Donielle Quinn And I said no. On on they said it was funny because one of them lived long enough to say you was a person responsible for killing him, And I started laughing because I didn't know his names. Like, man, I'm getting up, I'm telling him to go to my mom, and I'm like, I don't y'all got the wrong person.

My name is Lama Macat. I don't know who y'all looking for.

And that's when they got real serious and they started screaming at me, you know, calling me a nigga killer, saying I know you did it. I was scared because he's really going through with charged me with two council first of your murder.

Lamont had begun the day as a regular teenage boy skipping school, but now he's in handcuffs being escorted around the police station in a whirlwind of accusations. He doesn't understand. Two officers march him down the stairs to an underground area.

A mother was part at the police station.

By the time he sees his mother, Lamont is in tears.

She seen me come out of handcuffs and I said, Mama, they charged me two councer first of your murdered And she said, what do you mean. I said, they charged me two councer first of your murder. I don't know none about it. And that's when it dined on me.

Though they were serious.

I got you, did you ever play a game called ding Dong? Ditch when you were a kid, where you knock on someone's front door and then run away before they can answer. Nico Quinn and her sisters played it together as kids growing up in Quendero.

We call it nigga knocking. When somebody come and knock on your door, you go to the door. Ain't nobody there.

But this childhood game is about to take a dark turn. It's the night after the shooting. She's sitting at home with her children when she hears a sound.

It was a boom boom, bom, bom boom.

First it's at her front door, and then the.

Back door, the side, and then when I go look, there's nobody there. And that's what happened to me. For maybe the next week after Don was killed, somebody was knocking on my door. No, I need to be a house full of people down in my house. Nobody had been down there after Don had got guilt, not like that.

So she knows it's not her friends or family coming to visit her. Nico peers out of her window.

And I see this car sitting outside, a dark colored for a door, looked like a caprice or cutless.

She believes it's cecil and monster, the men she suspects of being involved in her cousin, Danielle's murder.

I was always thinking that they were watching me, they were after me. I was scared they would do something to my kids.

Fearing for her family, Nico packed up her things and moved out. She and her kids went to stay with different friends and relatives for a while, but it wasn't a long term solution. She needed stability. Me and my boyfriend was talking.

He said, well, won't you see if the police they can do something for you know, they can move you, relocate you.

So she called the man who had been assigned to her cousin's case, Detective Glupski. I was telling him, Hey, these people keep knocking on my door. You know, they taunt me. I don't feel safe in my home. Detective Gulupski agrees to see Nico, but he doesn't want to meet at the police station.

He asked me to meet him at Wanda High School.

Weird, but Nico needs to move, so she agrees.

I asked my boyfriend what he take me. He said, yeah, I take you.

It's not a long drive, but Nico spends the journey deep in thought.

I was nervous anxious at the same time, because I went to tell him what I knew, and I was scared a little bit, but I had my ex boyfriend with me.

When they parked up next to the high school, her boyfriend tendses up.

He told me to keep the door open or the windowdill because he didn't trust me.

Most people in Quendero know at least one person who's had a bad interrack with law enforcement. But Nico is on a mission, so she walks across the road and over to the police car.

It was a dark blue detective car.

Detective Glupski is in the driver's seat, his police badge is on show, and there's a loaded pistol on his belt. Nico sits in the passenger seat as Gallupski starts talking.

He was like, what you doing with him? You brought your bodyguard with you.

It's an odd comment, but Nico ignores it, telling him about the door knocking instead.

And I said, I know that this is Cecil Nil knocking on my door. I know this is them.

She explains her theory about the guys who beat Donielle up. Glupski watches her as she speaks, but there's a strange look in his eyes.

He sat there and he had this little smirklike look on his face.

Something isn't right. Suddenly the car feels smaller.

He kind of like, when you need to quit saying Cecil's name.

Nico looks over at him. She doesn't understand. Gallupski carries on.

He said, I just want to let you know we found his ex girlfriend body remains out behind Washington High School at a park.

Nico hadn't seen any evidence Hesi had killed his ex girlfriend, but when Nico spoke to Glupski, he said.

Well, I'm just telling you I wouldn't be saying his name, saying Cecil's name because he's a dangerous person.

That moment felt like a warning, almost a threat. But she's determined to get answers and insists she knows who killed Danielle.

I said, I don't care what you found. I know what happened. I know who killed him.

Nico leaves the car, feeling shaken and confused. Danielle has been murdered. There's scary men knocking on her door, and the officer who's supposed to be investigating her cousin's murder is acting strangely. She doesn't know what's going on, but she knows she needs to get out of Guendero.

A few weeks later, I get a call from Public Housing. Me and my kids sleeping in hotels because I did not want to go back to that house. So I go down fill out the application. Maybe a week or two later, they moved me down on four thirty seven Cleveland, right off of Fifth Street.

Nico was put into social housing in another area of Kansas City, Kansas.

They called them the Scattered Sites because it was really nothing down there.

It's not perfect, but it's a fresh start.

I had a little bit of normal, but I found out that I was down the street from who I was trying to get away from.

Cecil and Monster have direct links to the scatter Sites. Nico has been relocated to.

Matter of fact, right up around the corner from me. Had two or three houses over there, and they knew where our state.

Nico tries to tough it out, ignore the paranoia that comes from being surrounded, but it becomes impossible to ignore when one night Monster turns up outside her house. Monster hasn't gotten back to us with his side of the story, but this is how Nico remembers it.

He was asked me that I know who he was, and I said, yeah, we all grew up together and this and the other. Since I was playing it.

Off, Nico plays it cool, pretending their only connection is their childhood in Guendero. Eventually, Monster leaves with a bunch of other guys. Later on, Nico bumps into someone who witnessed the encounter.

That's when he told me what was supposed to happen that night.

Rumor was that if she'd mentioned monstrous connection to her cousin Danielle.

I would have been killed that night.

Nico knows that is one of the few witnesses to her cousin's murder. She might be called on to testify about what happened that day, but the lead investigator, Detective Glubski, is refusing to investigate the men she believes are responsible. He's relocated her to a dangerous place and charged another boy, La McIntyre, with the double homicide. Nico notices something else about Detective Glupski. He's hanging around the scatter sites a lot.

He passed my house every day all day, even at night. They would just sit there.

The police are supposed to be finding the truth, getting justice and protecting the community. But nothing Detective Gulupski is doing makes any sense. Nico wants answers justice for her cousin Danielle's murder, but she's about to be drawn into something much more sinister, be faced with an impossible decision that could change her children's lives, and discover what has really been happening to the women of Kansas City, Kansas, at the hands of the police officer who is supposed

The corruption is so deep it's ridiculous. If I didn't say Lamont killed my cousin, I would not see my keys again. They come up.

It just got worse as it went along.

They won't tell you nothing.

If it was your mom that got killed in the eighties, what would.

You have of doing this. Dude is the devil. He's a snake. He heard you.

The Girlfriend's Untouchable is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcasts. For more from Novel, visit novel dot Audio. The show is narrated by me Nicki Richardson. It was written and produced by Rufaro Mazarura. The editor is Joe Wheeler. Our assistant producer is Mohammed Ahmed. The researcher is Zaiyana Yusef. Production management from Shuri Houston and Joe Savage. The fact checker is Fendell Fulton. Sound design, mixing and scoring by