A trans-identified male previously convicted of sexually abusing a girl under the age of 13 has landed back in a Minnesota women’s prison after being convicted on new felony charges. Daniel Patrick Benz, 39, had recently been released from the state’s only facility for female inmates, where he had been allegedly exposing himself to women, when he was arrested again on June 1 after being in found in possession of firearms he had been forbidden from owning due to multiple prior convictions.
Benz has a lengthy criminal history spanning two decades. Yet despite his many convictions for robbery, assault, and the sexual abuse of a 6-year-old girl, Benz was released last year from women’s prison MCF Shakopee. He had been transferred into the facility in 2023 while serving a sentence in a men’s prison for the theft of a motor vehicle in 2018, a charge which carries a maximum ten-year sentence.
On February 27, 2023, Benz filed a civil rights complaint which ultimately resulted in his transfer into Minnesota’s only women’s prison. The complaint was lodged ahead of his legal name change to Danielle Marie Whitebird in June of that year, after his petition was approved by the state of Minnesota. In addition to the name change, Benz also was supplied with a “replacement birth record” which declared his sex as female, despite not having undergone any surgeries, according to his own legal complaints.
After his most release from Shakopee in September 2024, Benz was again arrested in June this year for threatening law enforcement upon their discovery that he was in possession of illegal firearms. As reported by Alpha News, an officer noticed his pickup truck exit from an area of storage units after midnight. The truck was missing its front license plate, causing the officer to become suspicious.
Law enforcement confronted Benz and discovered a power tool in his pocket, as well as bolt cutters and a pry bar inside the truck. Officers soon observed that three storage units had been broken into, and a search of the pickup truck uncovered a loaded handgun, a modified 12-gauge shotgun, and 20 rounds of ammunition. Officers ran a background check, noted Benz’s extensive criminal history, and saw that he had been prohibited from possessing firearms and ammunition due to four prior violent felony convictions, including burglary with a dangerous weapon and criminal sexual predation.
Upon his arrest, Benz managed to slip out of his handcuffs and unbuckled his seatbelt. He then began threatening to kill the officers, shouting, “One of us is not coming out of this alive.” He lashed out violently, banging his head on the divider and kicking, and continued to scream and threatened to kill the officers’ families when he got out of jail. He was eventually subdued and charged with three counts of illegally possessing firearms or ammunition, threats of violence, possession of a short-barreled shotgun, possession of burglary tools, obstructing the legal process, and a gross misdemeanor count of carrying weapons without a permit.
The incident was reported in local media as having been committed by a woman.
In 2007, Benz was convicted of criminal sexual misconduct with a victim under the age of 13. According to court records obtained by Reduxx, St. Louis county police officers responded to a tip from the Eveleth Police Department in July regarding the sexual abuse of a minor.
Eveleth police had received a text message informing law enforcement that Benz had “played a game of touch the peanuts” with a 6 year-old girl. The informant, whose name has been redacted, said the girl had been acting oddly for two weeks. The child divulged to the individual that “Dan” had sexually molested her on multiple occasions.
Benz had been staying in the same residence as the victim after having been evicted from his apartment. During an interview with a social worker, the girl stated that Benz had been touching her genitals.
“One night when her mommies went to pick up her daddy, she was with Dan at her house,” reads the 2007 complaint. “They were sitting together watching a movie… [The girl] stated that Dan reached with his hand and went inside of the left leg of her pajama pants. He then put his hand inside her panties and touched her on top of her vagina.” The victim also described other similar instances of abuse.
Benz was handed the maximum 25-year sentence. However, his long history of criminal behavior indicates that he was released after serving just five years, in approximately 2012, when he was convicted of a misdemeanor for giving a police officer a false name – a charge that appears multiple times throughout his criminal record.
Benz was convicted of the theft of a motor vehicle in 2018, a charge which carries a maximum ten-year sentence. Police records filed after his arrest in 2017 state that Benz had “active warrants” out of Crow Wing County for “failure to register as a predatory offender” as well as a domestic assault report.
While incarcerated in a men’s facility, Benz began claiming to experience “gender dysphoria”. When filing a request for a change of name and legal sex in February 2023, Benz claimed to be a “transgender woman [whose] legal documents do not match my gender and gender identity.”
“It is painful, difficult, and uncomfortable for the party addressing me, when they inquire about the ‘male’ legal name, and my ‘male’ sex identifier are on my legal documents,” Benz wrote.
He continued: “I humbly request this court changes my ‘current legal name’ Daniel Patrick Benz to Danielle Marie Whitebird, and my current sex identification from ‘male’ to ‘female’, in order to match my gender and gender identity. This will alleviate my unnecessary suffering.”
Concurrently, Benz had also filed a human rights complaint requesting a transfer to the women’s prison MCF Shakopee on the basis of the Eighth Amendment’s clause against “cruel and unusual punishment.”
“Ms. Benz-Whitebird’s case satisfies both elements of the deliberate indifference test,” Benz wrote in his complaint, referring to himself in the third person. “She has presented extensive evidence that, despite hormone therapy, she continues to experience gender dysphoria so significant that she continues to have thoughts of self-castration and is at serious risk of acting on that impulse again.”
The Minnesota Department of Corrections (DOC) violated Benz’s human rights, he claimed, by failing to transfer him to MCF Shakopee in a “timely manner,” and “failing to house Plaintiff in a female facility according to her gender identity which would ensure safety and reduce the risk of sexual victimization.”
During his brief period at Shakopee, Benz was said to have been exposing his penis to female inmates.
Benz’s placement in the women’s prison was confirmed both through court records and by an inmate who spoke to Reduxx via women’s prison advocate Rebeca Warmbo – herself once an inmate at the facility.
Warmbo provided documented exchanges from a woman who was a former victim of sex trafficking. In order to protect her identity, Reduxx used a pseudonym when reporting on the incident in 2024.
“[There was a] man who introduced me to drugs and then prostitution, which eventually led to the charges I am here for now,” said Cate, adding that while he was in MCF-Shakopee, Benz “showed me his penis… I was terrified.”
Cate went on to explain that though she had reported the incident to prison officials, “nothing was done” and “everyone turned their cheek.”
Cate stated that she believed action was not immediately taken on the basis that her report was seen as “homophobic” or bigoted.
“We just want to be protected here and not abused or taken advantage of. Most of us come from a background of abuse and we shouldn’t allow it here. We should be safe and protected, but they are allowing abusers in,” she added at the time.
Conviction records state that Benz was sentenced to spend a period of approximately 93 months in the women’s prison, though his anticipated release date is set for 2029, or less than half of that time.
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