Testimony begins in Warner murder trial

ADRIAN — Dee Warner’s death was the culmination of months if not years of marital conflict, jurors were told as testimony began in her husband Dale Warner’s murder trial Feb. 12 in Lenawee County Circuit Court.

Dee Warner, who was 52 at the time, went missing in April 2021. Dale Warner, now 58, was charged with open murder and evidence tampering in November 2023. Her remains were found in August 2024, sealed into a tank that had been used for anhydrous ammonia, a crop fertilizer. The Warners owned a large farming business as well as farm chemical and trucking businesses, which they operated from their home and farm on Munger Road in Franklin Township.

Dale has maintained his innocence and has pleaded not guilty. He rejected an offer from the prosecution to plead guilty to second-degree murder and evidence tampering, which would avoid a mandatory life sentence in prison if he is convicted of first-degree murder.

Troubles in Dale and Dee’s relationship, one of “extreme secrecy and distrust between the two of them,” came to a head on the weekend of April 23-25, 2021, Lenawee County Assistant Prosecutor Dave McCreedy told the jury. That Saturday night, Dee and Dale were alone at home with Dee planning to tell him their marriage was over and she wanted to sell the businesses. Their 9-year-old daughter had gone to spend the night with a family friend whose partner is Dale’s brother. Dee was upset about an incident at work on Friday with a couple of employees — she fired one of them, a truck driver — and an angry text message she received Saturday morning from the driver’s girlfriend that said Dale had told them that she was taking the anti-anxiety medication Xanax.

Dale told police he tried to calm Dee down that night, McCreedy said, and she fell asleep on the living room floor. He moved her to the couch before going to bed himself. The next morning, when Dale left to go spray some fields, he told police Dee was still asleep on the couch.

By 9:30 a.m., when one of Dee’s adult daughters arrived for their weekly Sunday breakfast together, Dee was gone. No one could find her or reach her by phone calls or text messages.

More than three years later, police found Dee’s remains inside the anhydrous tank, which was on property the Warners owned on Paragon Road, about two miles south of their home.

“She was strangled. She had blunt force trauma to the face and head enough to have killed her. She had duct tape over her face and neck. She was in her pajamas, wrapped in a tarp, welded in a tank,” McCreedy told the jury.

That discovery, McCreedy said, led to another look at security video from the farm. The video showed Dale collecting welding equipment, including a mask and gloves, on April 25. A welding expert told them what to look for, such as a cutting tool and something to hold the tank’s cap in place, and on the video they saw Dale with an angle grinder, a hook and heavy chains. The type of welding that was used would give off enough light and heat to cause a sunburn to bare arms, the expert told police, and on police body camera video from April 26 it appeared Dale’s wrists and hands were pale while his forearms were reddish as if sunburned while wearing gloves.

When the police returned to the farm to conduct a search on the night April 27, Dale wasn’t there, McCreedy said. A detective called and told him that cadaver dogs were on their way and would be there in 20 minutes. Dale then called his son Jaron Warner, who went to get Dale and returned to the farm with him in 18 minutes.

McCreedy showed the jury video from the farm’s security system and from a drone operated by the search team that he said showed Dale using a front-end loader to move the anhydrous tank from a burn pile area to one of the barns.

A review of Warner’s internet searches showed that in May 2021 he looked up how to dispose of a 1,000-gallon propane tank, which would be a similar size and shape to the anhydrous tank, McCreedy said.

The prosecution’s case doesn’t hold up, Marisa Vinsky, one of Warner’s attorneys, told the jury.

“Throughout this trial, you’ll see that the government’s evidence and case is built on speculation, assumption and innuendo,” she said.

The timeline the government will present won’t stand up to scrutiny, she said.

“The critical time here is the night of April 24, 2021, going into April 25, 2021. That is when this murder supposedly happened. This timeframe is when the government claims that Mr. Warner killed Ms. Warner, moved her body, took a tank, cut it open, put Ms. Warner’s body inside of the tank, welded the tank shut, painted the tank, put more stickers on the tank, and then moved it.”

This allegedly was being done while Dale attended to his other responsibilities with the farm and while other employees were on the property, including a driver who arrived at about 3:30 a.m. April 25 to load a truck, Vinsky said. He put no restrictions on where people could go on the property.

“It’s easy to point fingers after the fact. It’s easy to take words and behaviors and take them out of context and twist them and intensify them into the stories that you will hear in trial,” she told the jurors. “But at the end of the day, you all aren’t here to judge whether Mr. Warner was a good husband or not. You’re here to determine whether the government has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Warner committed the crimes that he’s charged with.”

First witnesses

Dee Warner’s adult daughters Amber Million and Rikkel Bock, the family friend who took the Warners’ young daughter to spend the night of April 24, 2021, and the esthetician who styled Dee’s eyelashes testified Thursday. On Friday, one of Dee’s adult sons, Zack Bock, and the first law enforcement officer who met with Dale took the witness stand.

Amber, Rikkel and Zack recounted the last times they saw or communicated with their mother. They spoke about trying to find or contact her on the morning of April 25, their interactions with Dale that day, and their decision to call police to report her missing.

One of Dale’s attorneys, Mary Chartier, asked Zack about whether the Warners kept the doors to the house locked. He said there was usually at least one door unlocked.

Lenawee County Prosecutor Jackie Wyse asked about a safe that Zack and Dee shared and whether he and Dale talked on April 25 about money being taken from it. He said they did, but he didn’t recall the exact amount.

“It was a big number because I remember being very upset about the fact that they had as much money in the safe in the house that they did when I was struggling to be able to pay the bills for the company,” he said.

Dee’s children and Alexander also spoke about Dee’s personality and her and Dale’s relationship, including the almost daily arguments that dated back to the beginning of their 15-year marriage. The arguments were usually about money or something related to the businesses, Zack said.

Dee regularly talked about wanting to divorce Dale, they said, but when she talked about it on April 24 she was much more upset, particularly about the text she received from the employee’s girlfriend that said Dale had told her about Dee taking Xanax. Dee had been crying and looked unwell. Amber said Dee vomited after she arrived at her home after receiving the text message while at her young daughter’s soccer game.

Dee’s esthetician at Salon Lucero, Kelli Stace, also told the jury that Dee was upset when she arrived for her regular eyelash appointment at 11 a.m. to noon April 24. Dee eventually calmed down and stopped crying so that Stace could apply the eyelash extensions, and before Dee left she made two more appointments.

Dee did not answer two phone calls that rang through to her phone while she was at the salon. One was from Dale, Stace said. Dee not answering calls was unusual, her children said, describing Dee and practically having the phone attached to her.

“The only time that she’s never responded to me was when she was killed,” Zack said.

Dee not answering calls or replying to texts on April 25 was part of what raised their alarm that something was wrong and this wasn’t like one of almost monthly times she would leave her home for a day or two after a fight with Dale. She usually would go to Zack’s home, but sometimes she would stay with Amber or her brother and sister-in-law, Gregg and Shelley Hardy.

While Dee and Dale argued regularly, the fights were never physical, Rikkel, Zack and Amber said.

Dee could be dramatic and argumentative, they said.

“She’d get into fights with I think just about anybody,” Zack said. “Mom stood up for what she believed in, and if your opinion was different than hers, then … she was going to have her opinion and you were going to hear it.”

On April 24, though, they sensed a difference in how Dee was affected by what was happening at work and with Dale.

“My mom is a react-er and she’s going to yell and have an argument, but this time she was almost calm,” Rikkel said.

This was the first time Rikkel said she had heard her mother say she wanted to sell the trucking business.

Alexander also said this time was not like the others.

“There was just something about her that was different,” she said.

Alexander suggested that Dee and Dale’s young daughter spend the night with her and Dale’s brother, Bill Warner, and their daughter. The girls were about the same age and regularly played together. She stopped by the Warners’ home at about 7:45 p.m. to pick up the girl.

Where is Mom?

That Sunday morning, Rikkel said, she and her boyfriend and their kids went to the Warners to meet Dee for breakfast. They started making breakfast, and Rikkel texted her mother to see what she was doing but didn’t get a reply. She then looked around the house a little to see if anyone was there, but no one was home. She then saw her mom’s Hummer and the farm’s front-end loader parked by the office, so she thought Dee was at the office. They finished their breakfast and went back to Rikkel’s home.

Rikkel tried calling her mom, but the call went straight to voicemail. She then went to the farm office to see if her little sister was there because she thought maybe Dale and Dee was arguing there. No one was there, so she went back home and called Amber and Zack to see if they knew where Dee was.

Zack said he tried calling Dee, but it went straight to voicemail. He tried sending a couple of text messages, but they didn’t go through.

Meanwhile, Rikkel texted Dee’s friend and secretary at work, Stephanie Voelkle, to ask about Dee. She then drove to her uncle Gregg Hardy’s farm, which is about a mile away, thinking that Dee might be there. Then she went to her uncle’s home and talked to her aunt Shelley Hardy.

At this point, Dale called Rikkel asking about Dee’s whereabouts. Rikkel surmised that Voelkle had called him. Rikkel asked about her little sister, and Dale told her she was with Alexander and Dale’s brother.

Shelley Hardy joined Rikkel, her boyfriend and their kids to go to the Warners’ property at M-50 and Onsted Highway to check a barn there. After not finding Dee, they went back to the Warners’ home where they did a more extensive search of the house and garage.

Zack headed over to the farm office. He saw the Hummer there, which he said was weird because Dee had been driving her Escalade recently.

Where the Hummer was parked on the night of April 24 and the morning of April 25 was of particular interest. Rikkel said Dee and Dale had used it to take their camper to Florida in March. When they returned, the Hummer was parked behind their house by the sliding glass door to the living room, which was the main entry into the house. Rikkel recalled driving past the house later on the night of April 24 and seeing the Hummer behind it. The next morning, when the search for Dee began, the Hummer was parked by the farm office, which was across a driveway from the house and connected to a barn.

In the office, Zack looked through the rooms, then went to the back of the farm property to check the truck of the driver who’d been fired to see if he had cleaned out his belongings. The driver’s things were still there.

Zack started to walk back to the house and saw Dale who asked if he knew where Dee was. They then walked back to the office. As Zack went to check the computer server room, he heard Dale yell out, “Aw, f---!” Zack looked and saw Dale holding Dee’s wedding ring in his hand.

Figuring that Dee would’ve been in the office at some point in order to leave the ring, Zack used her computer to view the security video footage to see if she had been there. He didn’t see her on the video. Dale was still in the office, though he was walking around. Rikkel, Amber, their brother TJ Bock, Shelley Hardy and Rikkel’s boyfriend were there, too.

They then met Dale at the house, and Dale asked Rikkel if she knew Dee had a secret phone, that she’d been leaving in the middle of the night and had “pills everywhere.” He also showed him that Dee had left her wedding ring on his desk at the office.

In the kitchen, Rikkel said, “he opened up the medicine cabinet and started talking about the pills again and then said, ‘Everything I’ve worked for is gone.’”

Dale told her that he and Dee “barely fought” that night, he gave her a massage, she fell asleep and he put her on the couch. During the argument, Dale asked Dee if she still loved him through sickness and health and for richer or for poorer.

Later in the day, Rikkel said, she expressed to Dale that she wanted to call hospitals to see if she had checked herself in, check phone records and call the police to file a missing-person report. Dale replied that he would take their daughter to school in the morning and if Dee hadn’t returned by then he would stop by the police department.

She said Dale was acting typically and said there was no need to call the police yet because he thought Dee had left voluntarily like she regularly did after an argument.

Zack said he left the office and checked his house to see if Dee had maybe been picked up to go out to breakfast and then gone to his home to hide out. He went back to the farm, then to the grain elevator in Britton, trying to think of any possible place where Dee might be. On his way back to the farm from Britton, he called a friend who’s a Tecumseh police officer and explained the situation. The friend advised Zack to call the Michigan State Police.

He called his siblings to relay that advice and asked them to meet at his house. They looked up a phone number for the state police. Their call went to a dispatch center, which connected them to the Lenawee County Sheriff’s Office. They were told a deputy would be sent out.

Of all the times Dee had left the home after arguing with Dale, this was the first time they called the police to report their mother missing, Rikkel said.

The next morning was Monday, and Zack arrived for work at the farm at about 9. Like he normally does, he said, he checked the latest activity on the company credit card. He usually does that to make sure the drivers can buy fuel with it, but he also wanted to check for any activity that could’ve been charges made by Dee. He also checked for usage of his mom’s credit cards. He didn’t find any activity.

Later on Monday, Detective Kevin Greca from the sheriff’s office called. Zack told him he planned to go to TLC Community Credit Union where they had their personal and business accounts to see if there had been any activity on his mom’s account. Greca joined him. They were told there was no activity on the account.

He and Greca drove separately back to the farm, where Greca met with Dale.

Investigation begins

That was the second time an officer met with Dale. The first to interview Dale about Dee’s disappearance was Deputy Austin Hall of the Lenawee County Sheriff’s Office. Hall, who has since left the sheriff’s office, testified about meeting with Dale on the evening of April 25 and also about accompanying Greca on some interviews.

Wyse played the body camera video from Hall’s first interaction with Dale, which took place in the driveway area between the Warners’ home and the office. In it, Dale explains that he wasn’t too concerned about Dee’s disappearance because she had done it before, except this time she left her wedding ring and she didn’t take her daughter. He said Dee had COVID-19 two or three weeks before and “she ain’t acted right since” and had been having bad migraines.

Because her Escalade and Hummer were both still at the house, Dale told Hall, he thought someone must have picked her up.

“She’s with someone somewhere,” he said. “…I don’t know what else to do other than wait a day or so and see if she shows up.”

Hall told Dale that the sheriff’s office had “pinged” Dee’s cellphone to try to locate it. The last location came back to the farm at “7:something” in the morning.

Dale told Hall that Dee had a secret phone that he had seen when they were on vacation. Before leaving, Hall asked Dale to look for information about the second phone so they could try to ping it.

The next clips Wyse played were from interviews of Dale that Greca conducted at the Warners’ home. In the first, at a little after 4:30 p.m. April 26, they started out in the kitchen, but also moved about the house as Dale showed Greca what he did after being told Dee was missing.

During the interview, Dale raised Dee’s bout with COVID and how it affected her.

“Ever since she started getting over COVID she doesn’t remember things. It wasn’t my wife anymore,” Dale said. “It’s like her whole personality, everything about her, changed.”

Greca asked a few times if Dee might have been having an affair, but Dale said he didn’t think so.

Dale told Greca that Dee was trying to help the truck driver in his relationship with a woman. He said he tried to stay out of their employees’ personal lives, but he described Dee as a “fixer.” He said the driver and the woman were married, but in the text message Dee received, the woman described herself as the driver’s girlfriend.

Dale said the driver was getting a divorce and Dee had put him in contact with an attorney. Dee also got frustrated that the driver was having a hard time cutting ties with the woman. Dee became upset when she learned the driver was not paying the attorney.

In an interview on April 29, Dale told Greca that their argument on the night of April 24 was about Dee’s involvement in the situation with the driver’s relationship with the woman who was his wife or girlfriend.

Dale told Greca that on April 23, Dee, the driver and their dispatcher, who is the driver’s brother, had an altercation at the farm about the driver’s relationship. Then, the woman and Dee had a “text war” in which the woman made the comment about Dee taking Xanax.

When Dee called him during the day April 24 about the text message, Dale said, she accused him of telling the woman about her taking Xanax and not being supportive or appreciative of her. She then said they were done and she wanted to sell the businesses.

He told Greca about him and Dee going to marriage counseling and the counselor telling them about deescalating their arguments.

That Saturday evening, Dale told Greca, when he got home he intended to take their daughter to see her calves, but Dee told him that Alexander was coming over to take the girl for the night. Dee also was still upset about the driver.

“She just could not stop and couldn’t let it go,” he said.

He then recounted how Dee started to get a migraine and took some medication, he rubbed her back to help her calm down and she eventually fell asleep in the living room at about midnight or 1 a.m. When he went out to spray some fields at about 6 a.m., she was still asleep on the couch. At 7:45 a.m., he texted her and got no response. He figured she was still asleep, but he noticed later that the message didn’t go through. He thought her phone’s battery had gone dead because she hadn’t charged it or her smartwatch.

“I wasn’t really alarmed,” he said. “I thought she was still sleeping.”

At one point during the discussion, Dale shows Greca his phone so he can see what the last several text messages between himself and Dee were.

When Dale texted Dee again at about 10 a.m. and she didn’t answer, he thought that was odd because she was usually up by then. Voelkle then called to ask about Dee because Rikkel had called her. Dale told Greca he thought it was odd that Voelkle called and not Rikkel. He called Rikkel, telling her Dee was asleep when he last saw her.

Dale showed Greca the bedroom and Dee’s bathroom, explaining that her curling iron, hair dryer and makeup bag were gone. He also showed where Dee kept medications in the bedroom. Greca asked if they have guns, and Dale opened a safe to get Dee’s .380-caliber semiautomatic pistol, which was in its case.

In a bar area next to the kitchen and dinner table, Dale shows Greca a cupboard containing about a dozen medication bottles. Dale says that Dee is being treated for pinched nerves in her neck and was scheduled to have a blood test done in May because the clinic wanted to “make sure she’s not taking a bunch of oxycodone and stuff like that.” He said he was concerned about how many pills Dee was taking.

“My concern is every vehicle she’s got … there’s four, five bottles and all of them have oxycodone,” Dale said. The bottle labels have her doctor’s name on them, he said, “but I’m not so sure if she isn’t buying it somewheres else and putting it back in the bottle.”

Dale also told Greca that they were going to marriage counseling because Dee had been taking money out of the business accounts. Greca asks what Dale thinks she was using the money for as Dale walks back to Dee’s bedroom closet where he takes out some jewelry in plastic envelopes that he said he found in her car. He said the purchases go back to 2018.

“It’s fine. My wife’s high-maintenance, so, whatever,” he said, putting the envelopes down on a dresser.

Dale said $50,000 to $100,000 was missing. He said didn’t know the exact amount.

Along with Dee being away from their daughter, Dale said, he’s also concerned about the wedding ring being left on his desk.

“If she’s out for money and she doing something, there’s about $35,000 to $40,000 right there in that ring that she left on my table,” Dale said.

In an interviews on April 27 and 29, 2021, Greca asked about the GPS tracking through a device that was plugged into Dee’s Hummer and the OnStar service on the Escalade. Greca said a theory he was exploring was that Dee was seeing someone and didn’t want to drive either vehicle because she knew they could be tracked.

Dale said Dee knew that he could track her in the Escalade through OnStar and the GPS device he had his brother-in-law put in the Hummer. He said he first had that device in his pickup to diagnose a problem, which it did. Then he had it put in the Hummer because it also had a problem. It didn’t work in the Hummer and his brother-in-law was going to try to find out how to correct it. He forgot about it, and six months later Dee found the device and became upset.

Greca and Hall met again with Dale in the afternoon of April 29, 2021, to talk again about the previous Saturday and Sunday. They talked more about Dale finding the wedding ring in the office. Greca asked about the security cameras, and Dale told him it would be possible to go into the office by the dispatcher’s work area and not be on the video. He said there weren’t any cameras in the house. He also said the path to drive the Hummer from the house to the office wouldn’t be on video.

During that interview, Dale talked about how he and Dee had worked at Crop Production Services, then “built an empire together.” Then in 2015 they bought a vegetable farm in Manchester that “damn near f------- bankrupted us.”

“Up until then, there was nothing that we couldn’t do and conquer it,” he said.

“The biggest thing is I want my wife back,” Dale said earlier in that interview. “No matter what she did, it’s irrelevant at this point. I want to know why she left” their daughter. “That girl’s her world.”