On April 24, 2021, Dee Anne Warner went to an appointment with her eyelash technician. While at the salon, she received two tense phone calls. One was from another woman, and the other was from her husband, Dale.
The technician later recalled that Dee became noticeably upset after the conversation. Dee finished up and met with her daughter, Rikkell Bock, who also said she looked like a ‘shell of herself.’
Dee explicitly told Rikkell she was planning to confront Dale that night and ask for a divorce. She was also planning to force the sale of their shared trucking business. Rikkell had heard her mother talk about divorce before, so this wasn’t new to her.
Oxygen reported Dee texting her husband that evening, saying, “I’m ready to move out and be done with this. You treat me as if I’m not worthy of anything. I’m not going to live like this.”
Dale, who had been managing their farm operations during the day, returned to the house later that Saturday evening. Their nine-year-old daughter, Angelina, had already been picked up by a family friend for a weekend getaway, so the couple had the house to themselves.
The fight began the moment Dale went through the door and confronted her about the text messages. According to CBS News, Dee openly berated him for talking behind her back to their employees, saying, “You don’t care about me, nobody cares about me.”
Dale later claimed that he managed to calm her down and gave her a massage on the living room floor, so relaxing that she fell asleep there. He added that he gently lifted Dee afterward and placed her on the couch so she could sleep comfortably.
Because he had to get up early for farm work, he went to bed and allegedly woke up at 6 am on Sunday. He claimed Dee was still snoring on the couch, so he simply went out to spray the fields.
Now at some point during the night, Dee’s iPhone and Apple Watch were powered off at the same time. Her daughter, Rikkell, walked over to the Munger Road home at 10.30 am for their traditional family breakfast and found the house empty.
Her mother’s vehicles were still in the driveway, and Dee was completely unreachable.
It would be three years before investigators found her remains during a targeted search warrant executed on Dale’s property on Paragon Road. This was four miles away from her Munger Road home.
A Marriage Under Strain
Dee had deep roots in Lewanee County as her family had lived there for five generations. She had grown up in the same farming community, where she later built a business inspired by an aunt and a grandmother, both strong-minded businesswomen.
Dee had four children from her first marriage before she met Dale in 2006, through her work in agricultural sales. They had one daughter together named Angelina.
Bock described her mother’s relationship with Dale as extremely toxic, saying that Dale had apparently placed a tracking device on Dee’s Hummer to monitor her movements. She also claimed Dee had endured continuous domestic violence during the marriage.
Brian Bush, who was married to one of Dale’s daughters, later testified that he was tasked with setting up the tracker to check on Dee’s location roughly 50 times every week at Dale’s request.
Bush said Dale eventually told him to stop after someone found the device and he told him to keep the whole arrangement between them. Dee’s son Zack Bock also said the two of them were very close and spoke daily.
He described frequent arguments between Dale and his mother. Most of them centered around money and the businesses. On the day that she vanished, he said Dee told him she was done with the marriage.
Zack last heard from Dee that Saturday evening. The next time he didn’t hear back was the one time in their relationship she had ever gone quiet.
State Police Take Over Investigations
As time passed that Sunday, Rikkell noticed both of Dee’s vehicles were still parked on the property. Alarm bells started ringing when she realized Angelina was also away with a family friend. She knew her mother would never leave the property or go far without her youngest daughter.
The family started calling Dee’s cell phone repeatedly, and therein was the next red flag. She always took calls or called right back, so when every call went to voicemail, they panicked.
Dee’s adult son, Zack, arrived and joined the search. As they went through the home searching for clues, they noticed a few suspicious details. Her makeup bag, hair dryer, phone, and passport were all gone from the bedroom.
However, her $50,000 was left inside Dale’s desk. He then claimed that, given the missing essentials, Dee most likely packed a bag and abandoned the family.
When questioned by the children, Dale seemed unbothered, telling the frantic family that Dee had a history of blowing off steam elsewhere when she got upset. He suggested they wait a day or so, and she’d be back.
Refusing to accept Dale’s explanation, Dee’s children knew something was off. They reported their mother as missing to the Lewanee County sheriff’s office that same Sunday.
Deputies arrived the next day and handled the initial processing of the scene. They didn’t find any overturned furniture, blood, or signs of a struggle.
Over the next days and weeks, law enforcement, family, and community search teams scoured thousands of acres of fields, woods, and ponds. Despite their efforts, there was no physical trace of Dee.
In the weeks and months following the disappearance, a stark divide opened between Dale and Dee’s immediate family. He pushed narratives that depicted Dee as a thief or an unstable runaway.
During this time, he maneuvered to gain more control over their joint trucking and farming assets. Dale repeatedly claimed to police, employees, and family that Dee had apparently left because she had been secretly embezzling money from the companies.
He even claimed to have found a three-page letter in which she declared her deep affection for him. He tried to pass it off to the family to prove that Dee had left on good terms, but Dee’s brother found out the letter had been written several years earlier.
Some journalists were also closely following the developing case, like Mel Andrews, who posted on her Facebook page, “Dale says Dee took ‘so much money’ out of the trucking business, so now he thinks that’s why she talked about selling everything. Says she was scamming money out of the accounts.”
According to a Medium piece, Dee’s brother, Gregg Hardy, said, “Dale Warner has not spent any time, any money, any effort, and has provided absolutely no evidence to corroborate his story that she just disappeared or planned to escape.”
After several months, the investigation had stalled, and the local sheriff requested the assistance of the state police. In August 2022, Michigan State Police took absolute control, upgrading the case to a full-scale homicide operation.
Data forensics shifted the case. Analysts mapped over 500 pages of telematics data from vehicles and equipment on the farm. Investigators also uncovered Dale’s stalking with the trackers and suspicious remote vehicle commands sent precisely when Dee went missing.
Lead-up to Dale’s Arrest
Investigations through 2022 and 2023 proved that Dale had accessed Dee’s Cadillac Escalade via the OnStar app and altered the passwords to the home’s security network. The system logs also showed Dale obsessively pinging Dee’s car location while simultaneously claiming he was unconcerned and unaware that she was missing.
He repeatedly told detectives that Dee left voluntarily and suggested to the lead investigator that she stole millions of dollars and escaped to Jamaica with a drug cartel. A forensic audit of the couple’s accounts showed Dee Warner had not touched a single account, credit card, or even her passport since April 24.
Investigators also secured testimonies from farmhands and family that proved that Dale was engaging in a campaign against his wife. Witness testimonies also showed that the couple’s multi-million-dollar farming and trucking business was in financial distress.
Because Dee had already stated her intent to divorce Dale and liquidate their joint assets, prosecutors determined that Dale had the financial incentive to silence her to gain control of the company.
This led to his arrest on November 21, 2023, and charged with murder, though they had not found Dee’s body. In March 2024, a probate judge officially declared Dee Warner as legally dead, which allowed the criminal prosecution to advance.
The ultimate break in the case came from a search warrant executed on Dale’s property. Investigators discovered that shortly after Dee went missing, Dale had searched online ‘how to dispose of a thousand-gallon propane tank’.
Armed with this search history and location mapping data, the state police implemented a fresh targeted raid on Dale’s Paragon Road property on August 16, 2024. They used an X-ray scanner to look inside a welded-shut ammonia tank in a barn building.
It revealed the shape of human remains wrapped in a tarp. The body was extracted, and dental records confirmed it belonged to Dee Warner five days later.
A scheduled autopsy later confirmed the family’s fears. Dee had been strangled and suffered blunt force trauma. However, the medical examiner’s office withheld the official cause of death pending further investigation, but the Michigan State police called it a homicide.
Gregg Hardy, addressing ‘Justice for Dee’ supporters who stood with the family for over three years, said the centerpiece of what they had done since Dee went missing is based on finding the truth. WXYZ News reported, “That’s what we’ve really accomplished here. We have the last leg to get done, the justice part.”
According to NBC News, Gregg also appreciated how people supported the ‘Justice for Dee’ initiative on social media, saying, “I know lots of people in this community, but there have been people I don’t even know that have come forward in support of Dee and the campaign, ‘Justice for Dee.’ There have been several people, including my nieces and nephews, who have worked very hard at this public awareness campaign, which has been tremendous and is still growing.”
The Trial
Jury selection for Dale Warner opened in January 2026 in the Lenawee County Circuit Court in Adrian, and testimony began in February. Jurors heard from Dee’s children, her employees and friends.
Zack Bock described checking the property surveillance cameras the day Dee disappeared. Bodycam footage from the initial investigation in 2021 showed Dale telling police officers he was not alarmed by her absence because she allegedly needed space sometimes after arguments.
Testimony from detectives recounted that Dale told them he’d wondered aloud whether Dee was seeing someone else. According to WTOL News, he said, “I should’ve f****** stayed home.”
Employees had pleasant things to say about Dee in the days before she vanished. Todd Neyrinck told WTOL News she was “always dressed up and ready to take on the world every day.”
A friend named Voelkie testified she had never once seen Dee take off her wedding ring. She said she had grown worried that Sunday when Dee didn’t text back because she knew Dee had planned to raise the subject of divorce the day before.
The defense, led by attorney Mary Chartier, called Dale’s ex-wife, Julie Bock, who testified about a cough he had come down with during their own marriage decades earlier. This was to refute medical experts’ claims that his breathing irritation was caused by inhaling toxic anhydrous ammonia fumes while sealing the container with Dee’s remains.
The defense also introduced testimony from a former nanny alleging an affair in Dee’s own life to complicate the prosecution’s narrative of motive.
The prosecution, however, maintained their case rested on the basis that the marriage was collapsing over money and a business that Dee intended to sell.
On March 10, 2026, after deliberating for nine hours across two days, a jury of seven men and five women found Dale Warner guilty of second-degree murder and tampering with evidence.
Dee’s relatives cried in the gallery and held each other as the verdict was read. Outside the courthouse, Gregg reflected on the five years after his sister’s disappearance. According to ClickOnDetroit, he said, “It’s been a long time getting here. So it’s very difficult for it to sink in, but I’m exuberant for my sister.”
He was disappointed, though the jurors hadn’t convicted him of first-degree murder, describing Dale in negative terms. “He is an atrocious piece of human trash, in my opinion. A debris. However, you like to say it. No one should ever consider doing that to a human being, let alone the mother of your child or your wife.”
Lewanee County Circuit Judge Michael Olsaver handed down a term of 60 years for second-degree murder. He was also given an additional 10-year sentence for tampering with evidence, which will be served consecutively. He will not be eligible for parole for 33 years.
According to Detroit News, Olsaver told the courtroom, “Unfortunately, this is one of those tragedies where the chapter doesn’t always end. Some will never recover from the injuries and psychological harm they experienced as a result of these crimes.”
In July 2026, the Michigan Department of Corrections officially transferred Dale to the Alger correctional facility in Munising.
The defense team has already begun the criminal appeals process, arguing that the judge erred in denying the motion to move the trial out of Lenawee County despite the publicity.
Dee’s Family After the Trial
In May 2025, while the trial was pending, Dee’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit seeking access to her estate, arguing that 4,000 acres of Lenawee County land belonged to Dee and her children, not her husband.
Attorney Todd Flood told WXYZ News, “Hopefully this day can move us closer so they can get closure, so they can find some justice for their mother. This has been a long slog for quite some time.”
Following the verdict, the $100 million wrongful death lawsuit resumed and is moving toward a final victory for Dee’s children. Flood announced that the estate filed a motion for summary disposition.
This asks the judge to rule in favor of Dee’s family on liability without the need for a lengthy civil trial. He told the Toledo Blade, “There’s no issue for a jury to decide… It’s not going to take much to satisfy the summary disposition because he was convicted of murder.”
Somewhere along Lewanee County’s roads, a billboard the family put up years earlier during the search depicting “Help Dale Find Dee” was still up during the verdict. It has since been taken down, but it was a bit of dark irony and sarcasm meant to put psychological pressure on Dale.
The family remains focused on providing stability for Angelina, who was left without both parents following the trial.
Dee Warner’s case indicates the danger and potential of foul play even in marital relationships. In cases where the body was not found, like Sherri Malarik, it becomes very difficult to pin down a suspect.
For more stories on unsolved disappearances, explore our articles on Darla Harper and Ryan Shtuka.
