The results have upended assumptions about sexual predators-showing, for example, that serial rapists are far more common than many experts had previously believed. Since then, Detroit and other jurisdictions across the country have shipped tens of thousands of kits to labs for testing. “I wanted to test them all immediately.” She began talking to reporters, and the decrepit warehouse in Detroit with the broken windows became a powerful symbol of police negligence. Spada called Kym Worthy, the county prosecutor, and told her what he’d found. But that August day became a defining moment for survivors of sexual assault. The untested rape kits would continue to accumulate for years after Spada’s visit. Eleven years, 11 violent rapes-all while Wilkes’s identity was preserved in sealed containers that no one had bothered to open. Not until he raped his 11th victim, in January 2012, did the sequence end, because that woman saw Eric Wilkes two days after the assault and called the police, who arrested him. The kit from his sixth victim arrived in June 2010. There’s one from a woman he raped in May 2007. Here’s the evidence box from a deaf woman Wilkes assaulted in June 2006. One can imagine a certain rhythm to the process, as police hoist kit after kit onto the metal shelves, not knowing that they hold in their hands the identity of a serial rapist. Three days after that, police shelved the untested kit from his third victim. It next appeared after another rape four months later. His DNA first arrived there more than 18 years ago, after he raped a woman waiting for a bus on December 26, 2000.

Yet Wilkes’s DNA was in boxes scattered throughout the warehouse, even as he walked free.

And in all likelihood, some microscopic part of her assailant-his DNA, his identity-sat in that kit as well.Įric Eugene Wilkes was known to Detroit police for robbery and carjacking. Eventually 11,341 untested rape kits were found, some dating back more than 30 years-each one a hermetically sealed testament to the most terrifying minutes of a woman’s life, each one holding evidence that had been swabbed or plucked from the most private parts of her body. “I tried to do a quick calculation,” he later told me. The containers were still sealed, indicating that the evidence had never been sent to a lab. Spada pulled out a box and peered inside. “I’m assuming they’ve been tested?” Spada said. What are those? he asked a Detroit police officer who was accompanying him. He noticed rows of steel shelving lined with white cardboard boxes, 10 inches tall and a foot wide, stacked six feet high. To hear more feature stories, see our full list or get the Audm iPhone app.Īs Spada wandered through the warehouse, he made another discovery, one that would help uncover a decades-long scandal, not just in Detroit but across the country.

Antisocial by Bradley Campbell