The Badge and the Backlog: How 11,000 Abandoned Rape Kits Exposed a Detroit Police Sergeant's Double Life

In March 2026, FBI agents arrested 68-year-old Benjamin Wagner, a retired Detroit Police sergeant, in North Carolina on charges of kidnapping and sexually assaulting six girls and women between 1999 and 2003. The breakthrough came from Detroit's notorious rape kit backlog—over 11,000 untested kits discovered abandoned in a police warehouse in 2009. This episode examines how the evidence that could have stopped Wagner sat untested for years in a department where he worked and rose through the ranks. This episode was generated with AI assistance.