Prosecutors say Benjamin Wagner assaulted girls and women in Detroit between 1999 and 2003 while serving as a police officer.
DETROIT, MI — A retired Detroit police sergeant has been charged in five kidnapping and sexual assault cases that prosecutors say happened on Detroit’s northwest side between 1999 and 2003, years before DNA evidence and a renewed investigation led to his arrest in North Carolina.
Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy announced the case March 19, saying Benjamin Wagner, 68, is accused of attacking five victims who were 15 to 23 years old at the time. The charges mark a major development in a long-running effort to revisit old sexual assault cases tied to Detroit’s backlog of untested rape kits. Wagner was arrested March 17 in Greenville, North Carolina, and authorities said he waived extradition to Michigan. Prosecutors said he is presumed innocent unless proved guilty in court.
According to prosecutors, the alleged attacks followed a pattern over nearly four years. In the first case, a 17-year-old girl was walking after work on Nov. 10, 1999, near Chalfonte Street and Mark Twain Street when Wagner allegedly approached her, pointed a gun at her and forced her from the area before sexually assaulting her. On Jan. 31, 2000, prosecutors say a 23-year-old woman left her home in the 18400 block of Wyoming Avenue to go to a store when Wagner allegedly pointed a gun at her head, moved her and assaulted her. On Sept. 28, 2000, a 15-year-old girl walking to a school bus stop in the 19800 block of Florence Street was allegedly grabbed, threatened with a gun and assaulted. “The deplorable fact in this case,” Worthy said at a news conference, “is that the person that we are charging today has led a double life as a law enforcement officer and a serial rapist.”
Prosecutors say two more attacks followed that same year and in 2003. On Nov. 19, 2000, a 20-year-old woman walking near the 8500 block of West McNichols Road was allegedly attacked from behind, threatened with a gun and forced to another location before she was assaulted. On April 15, 2003, a 16-year-old girl walking to a bus stop in the 19000 block of Ferguson Street was allegedly approached after Wagner came out of an alley, moved from the scene at gunpoint and assaulted. The charging record lists five kidnapping counts, eight first-degree criminal sexual conduct counts and one third-degree criminal sexual conduct count, for a total of 14 charges. Officials said no felony firearm charges were filed because Michigan’s six-year statute of limitations for that offense had expired. Prosecutors have not said in public filings whether the alleged assaults happened while Wagner was on duty, and local reports noted that point remains unclear.
The case also reaches back to one of the most painful chapters in Detroit’s criminal justice system. In 2009, Wayne County prosecutors said they discovered 11,341 sexual assault kits in a Detroit police storage facility that had never been submitted for DNA testing. Those kits dated from 1984 to 2009. Prosecutors said the kits in these five cases were among the evidence later reviewed by investigators. In 2010, the Michigan State Police linked an unknown male to assaults in Detroit that had happened from 1999 through 2003, but the suspect was not identified because the DNA profile was not in the national Combined DNA Index System database. The case moved forward years later after the FBI Detroit field office received what prosecutors described as an investigative lead in August 2023 tied to the five kits. Authorities said that continued work eventually confirmed Wagner as the suspect in March 2026.
Wagner joined the Detroit Police Department in 1989 and retired in 2017, according to the prosecutor’s office. During his career, officials said, he worked in the 10th and 2nd precincts and in units including Investigative Operations, Tactical Services, Criminal Investigations and the Commercial Auto Theft Unit. Prosecutors said he lived on Bentler Street during the years of the alleged assaults and that all five attacks happened within about 5.5 miles of his home. After retirement, they said, he moved to Greenville and was working at the local airport when he was arrested. The Greenville Police Department said Wagner was taken into custody at Pitt-Greenville Airport without incident. A local television station in North Carolina reported that he was employed by Piedmont Airlines, which said it was cooperating with authorities and suspended him immediately. Detroit Police Chief Todd Bettison called the allegations “egregious and disturbing” and said they amounted to “a deep betrayal” of public trust.
The court process is now set to move to Detroit. Prosecutors said Wagner waived extradition and is expected in 36th District Court for arraignment on March 26, 2026. More detailed facts and evidence are expected to be placed on the record later, at the preliminary examination. Assistant prosecutors Carley Kocks and Elisabeth Moore are handling the case for Wayne County. Investigators credited the Wayne County Sexual Assault Kit Task Force, Detroit police sex crimes investigators, the Michigan State Police, the FBI Detroit and Charlotte field offices, and Greenville police with helping build the case. Worthy described the arrest as the result of “a multi-year journey to justice,” while federal officials said advances in forensic work helped identify a suspect decades after the reported assaults. Authorities have also publicly asked anyone else who believes Wagner assaulted them to contact Detroit police, a sign that investigators are still testing whether more cases may exist.
For the women whose cases form the basis of the charges, the public account remains spare and focused on the record. Prosecutors have not released their names, and the filing gives only the ages they were at the time and the broad outlines of where each attack began. Even so, the pattern they described is stark: girls and young women walking to work, school, a bus stop or a friend’s home on ordinary days, then allegedly being confronted at gunpoint and taken away. That pattern, officials said, was one reason the investigation drew such intense attention once the DNA work began to connect the cases. The allegations have also deepened scrutiny of how long evidence sat untested in Detroit and how many years victims had to wait before charges were brought. As the case enters court, the central questions are likely to focus on the DNA evidence, the long gap between the assaults and the arrest, and prosecutors’ claim that a veteran officer hid violent crimes behind a public badge.
The case stood, as of Monday, March 24, with Wagner in custody after his North Carolina arrest and awaiting a scheduled March 26 arraignment in Detroit. The next major milestone is the first court appearance, where the charges will be formally addressed and the case will begin moving through Michigan’s criminal process.
Author note: Last updated March 24, 2026.