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Missing Woman Dee Ann Warner's Family Speaks Out After Human Remains Are Found on Husband's Property
Dale Warner was previously charged in connection to the suspected murder of the Michigan mother.
Investigators have discovered human remains on property owned by the husband of missing Michigan mom, Dee Ann Warner.
The Michigan State Police discovered the remains while searching property in Lenawee County belonging to Dee’s husband Dale Warner, who is already facing murder charges in connection with her 2021 disappearance.
“The remains are currently in the process of being recovered and there will be a great deal of work and testing completed before positive identification can be made,” police said in a statement shared to social media, adding that it “continues to be an ongoing investigation.”
Although the remains have yet to be positively identified, her family believes the remains, which were discovered hidden in an anhydrous ammonia tank inside a barn, likely belong to the devoted mom.
“After so many disappointments and so many tries and so much effort, it was hard to believe that we could actually have that kind of a finding,” her brother Gregg Hardy told Michigan station WILX after the discovery.
In an interview with WDIV-TV, Hardy said that he was the one who suggested police look inside the tanks while they were executing a search warrant on the property. He alleged that his brother-in-law hid the body in the tank, even having “the gall to put his logo on it to make it look like it was normal,” and then stored it among the other tanks in an attempt to conceal the body.
“That’s so premeditated and so heinous that he deserves nothing less than murder one, no parole,” Hardy said. “He lied to his family and put them through all kinds of pain. He hid the evidence. He went to a lot of trouble to hide the evidence. He lied to officials, investigators, repeatedly.”
Dale has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.
When did Dee Warner disappear?
Dee disappeared on April 25, 2021, just one day after telling her daughter that she planned to leave Dale, according to the Dateline: Missing in America podcast, which featured the case in 2022.
Billy Little, a former military investigator and attorney assisting the family, told Detroit news station WXYZ, that Dee sent the couple’s 9-year-old daughter to stay with a friend on the night she disappeared so that she could talk to Dale about ending their marriage.
That friend texted Dee at 10:24 p.m. that night to ask how things were going, but only got a single letter response 29 minutes later that read “K.”
“She was very talkative, very expressive, she texted a lot. Never once, not one single time was her response the letter ‘K.’” Little said. “So after the friend says ‘how are you doing,’ no response – half an hour later, the letter K, and the phone gets turned off.”
Dee’s family discovered something was wrong the next morning when Dee failed to show up at a regular weekly Sunday family breakfast at her own house.
“I texted her. She didn’t answer. I called her. Her phone went straight to voicemail, which never has happened and there was just something in my gut that told me something was really wrong,” her daughter, Rikkell Bock, said in the podcast.
Dale told her family, according to the podcast, that he and Dee did have an argument that night, but insisted they'd worked it out and claimed he’d given his wife a massage later that night. He said she fell asleep during the massage and he carried her to a nearby couch before going to bed himself. When he woke up the next morning, he said that she was gone.
He allegedly suggested at the time, according to the family’s account, that she may have run off with another man.
When was Dale Warner arrested?
Dale quickly became a “person of interest” in the case, but he wasn’t officially charged in connection with the case until November of 2023, after Dee was declared legally dead by the courts, according to WTOL.
Prosecutors planned to proceed with a trial, even though Dee’s body had never been found.
After the discovery of human remains on Friday, Hardy said — if the remains are determined to be Dee’s — it could be a critical break in the case.
“This is basically, for me, it’s the epitome of additional evidence that brings the case completely whole,” he told WILX.
An autopsy is scheduled for Tuesday, according to multiple news outlets.
Dale is scheduled for a pre-trial hearing on Sept. 6.
