Original subtitles

What happened to Dee Warner?

That is a question state police hope to answer.

You had dive teams, cadaver dogs,

aerial searching, geographical profiling.

Dee is alive, and she's run off with some mystery man.

Somebody went missing 50 feet from where you had to be at

3 in the morning. That's bad timing.

How does someone simply vanish?

And as a family, what do you do?

I can remember him saying, "I just can't believe

she'd leave us in this mess."

I just knew they found something, and it wasn't good.

It's disgusting to think how someone would be that evil.

It seems like he was that close to a perfect crime.

My house is about a half a mile from my childhood home

where my mom lived.

And now to visually see it every single day

and drive by it is,

is hard...

mainly because I see...

devastation.

Here at "People," we've been tracking the story

from the beginning.

The case is as fascinating as it is terrifying.

What does a family do when one of their own just vanishes

off the face of the earth?

And it's all the more disturbing when you learn

the truth about what really happened.

My family settled here in 1831.

We've continuously been farming some way or another all these

generations here in this little town of Tipton, Michigan,

which I respectfully call a half-horse town.

It's not even a one-horse town.

We're safe, wholesome, God-fearing people.

My mom, Dee Warner, grew up on the farm.

Farm life is hard.

She was definitely a tough cookie, but she was the type of

person that when she walked into a room, everybody looked.

She had a vibrant personality. Her laugh was very loud.

Dee and Tim Bock got married when she was 18,

and they had their first child within a year.

And they ended up having four children together.

My mom was a very strict mother, but always

comforting when you needed it.

She was always there to support,

and always had our backs.

When my mom and dad were a young married couple,

they started a farm from nothing, from the ground up.

And my mom worked with a lot of men,

and she didn't let anybody walk all over her.

Most of the time she walked all over people when she needed to.

Dee was, without question, an extrovert.

Her husband, Tim, was a total opposite.

Their marriage had its ups and downs.

I think she wasn't getting the attention she wanted

from Tim.

I think that was the start of the breakup.

I do remember them fighting a lot.

Obviously, it was very upsetting as a child.

Dee finds herself drawn to another ambitious farmer,

33-year-old Dale Warner.

One thing that drove my mom and Dale together was them both

being ambitious.

But the Warners and my mom's family, the Hardys, have always

been kind of rivalry farmers.

The Warner family here in Tipton, Michigan, is also

a large farming operation.

They have been aggressive people in agriculture,

and so we do compete for the same resources.

The Hardy and Warners didn't really talk.

It was always kind of described as the Hatfields and McCoys.

But we put our differences aside

when Dee began dating Dale Warner.

In 2003, Dee divorces Tim to be with her family's rival,

Dale Warner.

By the time they marry in 2006, the ambitious couple already

own several businesses, including a 1,500-acre farm.

Their companies have revenues

of well over $10 million a year.

They would farm and spread fertilizer for other farmers.

They raised steers and processed the beef,

and then Dee had her trucking company that

she started from scratch.

She was the sole proprietor of the trucking business,

and it was a very, very lucrative business.

She had more than a dozen trucks, each of which could be

worth up to $250,000.

With the combination of the two families, Dee and Dale

had eight children, and then all of a sudden Dee

becomes pregnant with Angalena, and she was everything to Dee.

By 2021, Angalena is nine years old,

and the other children are now

young adults living on their own.

52-year-old Dee Ann Warner seems to have everything

she dreamed about, but tragedy's about to strike.

On Sundays, we'd eat breakfast as a family, so I showed up

to my mom's house,

but we couldn't find my mom, and we couldn't find Dale,

and we couldn't find my little sister, Angalena.

We looked around.

I called her, but her phone went straight to voicemail.

So I called all of my siblings to see if anybody

had heard from Mom.

Nobody heard anything from her.

I think the last time was the day before,

right before dinner time.

Around 11 o'clock in the morning, my wife calls me

and said, "Have you seen Dee?

We can't find her." I said,

"What are you talking about, you can't find her?"

And I said, "Has anybody checked the security cameras?"

I said, "Well, I'm gonna go down to the office and see."

We looked at video footage from the day before

all the way to current.

There were a lot of holes as far as coverage

of the facility, but that's because they were

meant to watch only major areas.

But there was just no Dee whatsoever.

While looking at video footage, Dale came in.

He said the night before, they had an argument.

"You know, she got mad.

"Well, she had a migraine, so I gave her medicine and,

"you know, I gave her a massage on the ground, and she fell

"asleep, so I picked her up and put her on the couch.

And she was there at 6 this morning when I left."

And then things just kept getting worse.

He showed me my mom's ring that

she left on his desk in the office.

It was Dee's wedding ring that she always wore.

By leaving her ring, I guess that was a final note to Dale

that she was fed up and done.

Their marriage, it was over, and she upped and left.

I asked where my little sister Angalena was.

You know, she was nine years old.

Dale said that Angalena was staying with a friend of Dee's,

and a friend had picked her up that night before.

Her Escalade was still parked in the garage,

and her Hummer was there.

Dee would not go anywhere without those cars.

Like, she literally would not go from her home to the office,

which was like 100 yards away, without driving her car.

Maybe somebody picked her up.

I latch on to that, but who

would she be close enough to

to possibly give her a ride?

I looked around inside again.

There were a couple things that, you know, could indicate

that she took off.

Her phone was gone, her purse was gone, makeup bag,

some of her hair stuff.

You know, I thought maybe she did leave.

But my mom had her phone on her at all times, always.

And it was going straight to voicemail.

So something didn't sit right with me.

Eventually, the conversation led to, "Do you think we should

call the authorities?"

And my response was, "Absolutely."

The children and the family of Dee Warner contacts

the sheriff's department, and they came to investigate.

One of the deputies shows up on that Sunday, takes a report

from them, then goes and talks to Dale.

Quite often, if Dee had an argument with Dale,

she would just stay at my house for a day or two,

and then she'd go back home like nothing happened.

Dale told the deputy that Dee was extremely upset on

Saturday, April 24th, because of the problems with

her trucking business.

We're all human beings. We all have pressure.

You know, she was running three businesses.

And is suicide a possibility? Absolutely, it could have been.

I saw her just the day before she disappeared,

and she was definitely different.

Just the amount of emotion, it looked like

she was defeated.

And so I thought she could possibly take her life.

You wanted to think that she was OK somewhere.

You didn't want to let your mind go that Dee had gone out

in a field and committed suicide.

Over the next few days, we searched

everywhere looking on the property for my mom.

We knew that Dee didn't take her car, so there was a limit

to how far she would go.

We assembled a search party of probably 40 people,

family and friends.

I was thinking maybe she had taken her life, and if she did

take her life or she started to take her life, maybe we would

find her body walking around the property.

We carefully went through the woods, a lot of the leaves

weren't on the trees so we could see very clearly right through

the forest, and we saw no sign of her.

We probably covered 500-600 acres, maybe even

a little bit more, and we came up with nothing.

I didn't know what to think.

I was really hoping that she maybe got picked up

by somebody and she needed time to gather her thoughts.

A couple of days after Dee goes missing,

the sheriff's department files an official missing person

report and begins a more thorough investigation.

The sheriff's department shows up.

They search the property,

looking for information on Dee's disappearance.

As they're processing the scene, they're not finding

any type of physical evidence that would indicate foul play.

Bookshelves weren't turned over, glass broken on the floor,

blood anywhere, so there didn't appear to be a struggle.

During the search, the detective on the case does

a recorded interview with Dale at his kitchen table.

Allegedly, they fight. They argue.

They're running businesses together.

They may not agree with businesses.

Those were the dynamics Dale was trying to explain here.

Dale is convinced that Dee is alive and that she's run off

with some mystery man, and that man picked her up

and took her somewhere.

Where that might be, no one knows.

Investigators learned through her phone records that her cell

phone died around 3 o'clock that morning and hasn't been

turned on since.

So there's no way to trace her location.

Later that week, sheriff's investigators start

talking to employees at her trucking company.

Todd and Terry are brothers.

They both worked at Dee's trucking company.

Todd had the idea that he kind of built that business,

and so Dee owed him a lot.

He essentially confronts Dee about this.

According to coworkers, the argument got so heated that

Todd accused her of failing to pay $360,000 in payroll taxes.

Todd and Terry contact Dale.

Apparently, he took their side and said, "Don't worry about

her, you know, she's crazy."

So Dee felt like Dale was stabbing her in the back.

That was the part that hurt the most.

So if you had an argument where, you know, two employees

were involved, now you have to ask the question, right?

Is there a possibility that Terry and Todd can be involved

in Dee's disappearance?

Employees tell investigators that despite the blowout,

Todd was still scheduled to be at the Warner Farm on Sunday,

the day of Dee's disappearance.

Just after 3 AM

Sunday, the 25th of April, Todd is seen on

the security cameras at Dee's house as he's coming to get

his truck and go on a run that morning.

Then, while reviewing company records, investigators uncover

an alarming detail.

Todd, he logs into the truck under a different name.

Why are you, you know,

violating federal law by doing that?

Somebody went missing 50 feet from where you had to be at

3 in the morning. That's bad timing.

Or something else is going on here.

But there's no clear evidence of their involvement in Dee's

disappearance, so sheriff's investigators can only keep

an eye on them while they explore other leads.

The family's starting to get really, really nervous because

the longer Dee is missing, it means that the chances of

finding her alive are very slim.

And Dale is still saying that he believes that Dee ran off,

but he's acting kind of strange.

After the long few days of searching, when I went down to

Dale's place, as I was entering into the barn,

I noticed that there was this

smaller fertilizer tank that's half-painted.

So I said, "What the hell are you doing with this tank here?"

And he goes, "Oh, I just haven't been able to sleep at night."

He said, "I'm worried about where Dee is."

And so he said, "Well, I've been working on these tanks

in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep."

Definitely a little bit of an anxious feeling to him.

I can just remember him constantly saying, "I just

can't believe she'd leave us in this mess."

Dee was such the face of the company,

the farming and fertilizer business, the beef business,

and the trucking company.

And it was an eerie feeling,

almost like the spirit had just left the place.

I think for my siblings and I,

we lost hope of my mom being alive.

There was no way that my mom would be gone from our lives

without any communication.

The night before my mom went missing,

she was upset and crying about the fight that she had with

some employees and Dale.

There was a part of me that wondered if maybe the fight had

something to do with her being missing.

And somebody did something to my mom.

And this is a woman who couldn't stop talking to

everybody via Facebook, literally nonstop.

But there was nothing after Saturday the 24th.

She was always on social media, and so all of a sudden,

it was like she vanished off the face of the earth.

I remember my father said that his mother came to him

in the middle of the night and said that Dee was with her,

and that she wasn't coming back.

Your dad is like your big soldier, you know?

And when you hear him like that and seeing him emotional,

it just kills you.

I remember the one night I said to Gregg, "What were some

of the avenues that we could look at?"

He said, "Shelley, I think

"you have to come to grips with it that...

that Dee's gone and she's not coming back."

There was a long lag for months after my sister went

missing where there was no other

new information in the case.

And then finally, all of a sudden, there became

this major event.

Warner has been gone missing since April.

Tonight, federal agents and local police searched

her home and the nearby property.

Sheriff Troy Bevier says they haven't gotten any

new leads, but... - We wanted to make sure

that we covered every base

and did a thorough search one more time.

They don't talk to us very much or give us any details,

so obviously when you see excavators and stuff,

we're thinking we're gonna find a body.

We had some hope that we were gonna find some answers.

Not answers that we wanted,

but some answers that we needed.

After the serious search of the property, we were expecting

that there would be a full-fledged investigation.

But there was nothing of significance that would

give you encouragement.

The Lenawee County Sheriff says it did not find a missing

woman during a two-day search near her property.

The family told us they struggled to make sense of

this lull in the investigation and independently do what

they can to find some answers.

I was unmercifully on the sheriff

demanding accountability.

It became more and more and more frustrating.

And I decided that that was the time for me to hire

professional help.

When the family first contacted me, this case was headed to

the cold case file.

We started making a list of witnesses, of evidence,

searches that we needed to do,

experts that we needed to interview.

I handed over volumes and volumes of information for

all the evidence we have been collecting as a family

up to that point.

One of the things that really stuck out was this argument

that had taken place between the trucking company

employees and Dee.

All the drama that took place leading up the argument between

Dee and Terry and Todd, it was obviously suspicious to me.

One of the investigative considerations that you have to

take in is that big question.

Are these guys motivated to murder?

The brothers needed to be eliminated from

the suspect list before we could go forward.

I did some research and fairly quickly discovered that Terry

was nowhere near the property,

even tangentially the day Dee disappeared.

Through security video, they rule out Terry.

He was at home with his girlfriend.

But who they can't rule out is Todd, the other brother.

The day Dee goes missing,

Todd was at Dee's house at around 3 in the morning.

He said he saw lights on in the house,

and the TV was going.

So he's near the home within hours of when Dee disappeared,

and it's right around the time her phone went dead.

So it's very suspicious.

Chris McDonough and I looked at electronic data from

the truck Todd was driving, which showed his location

the day Dee disappeared.

Todd, he goes back to his house with the truck, stays there for

a few minutes, and then goes and makes another stop in

sort of a truck-stop-ish area.

Then Todd goes up near Chicago to do a run.

Todd had a reputation for looking for ladies who provide

companionship with the truckers.

And there's one who he's seeing on a regular basis.

When I talked to her, she agreed to record

the conversations that they had.

I wanted her to talk about the crimes, and women, I think,

are better at that than we men are.

I mean, you feed our ego, and we'll tell you anything

about anything.

She knew how that game was played, so she did a nice job.

Despite the fact that Todd had been on the property around

the time Dee disappeared, there's no other evidence

pointing to him, and he seems genuinely distraught.

The recording helped us to believe that Todd didn't have

anything to do with Dee's disappearance,

although his timing couldn't have been worse.

And later on, Todd passed a polygraph, so I'm confident

Todd is not a suspect. He was eliminated.

In March of 2022, Chris McDonough and myself,

we're riding around the property with Gregg Hardy,

and he's showing us some locations

that could be searched.

We're standing out in a field,

and I see another truck.

I say, "OK, who's that?" And he says, "That's Dale."

And so Dale drives out to the field where all three

of us are.

Essentially confronts us.

So he went from zero to 60 in a split second.

And Dale, he just has this fit.

Then he turns on his heel,

gets back in his truck and leaves.

We saw that piece of his personality, which Gregg Hardy

told us, you never see.

We saw it that day.

I was feeling very unsure of what to think.

I just didn't want to believe the worst.

I wanted to believe that Dale didn't hurt my mom.

So I tried to listen to everything that he had to say

about what happened and what he was doing to help find her.

But every conversation I had with him, I lost hope.

He said to me at one point that she ruined his life.

Your wife's missing, and that's what

you're concerned about?

I felt like, you know, he wasn't worried

about her. He seemed angry with her.

Eventually, there was no outside communication

between me or Dale or his children.

And Dale had cut off communication with

my little sister Angalena as well, which was really hard.

Highly suspicious of Dale after his outburst,

the private investigators take a look at the Warners'

financial records and uncover some disturbing information.

The family kept their own meticulous records with regard

to Dee's finances during the time she was missing.

So the private investigators and Gregg start looking into

Dee's finances.

The first thing they realize is that Dale had created

a new company-- DDW Transportation.

That has a very similar name to Dee's Trucking Company,

DDW Investments.

A few months after Dee goes missing, Dale starts to

transfer all the assets from

Dee's trucking business into that business.

The reason why he's able to do this is that Dale had a power

of attorney, which meant that he had complete control over

Dee's assets, so he could do whatever he wanted with

any of her businesses.

But that's impossible to accomplish without

Dee Warner's signature on it.

I got a copy of the documents, and I get to

the signature line.

I said, "There's no way in hell that's my sister's signature."

I took it to the sheriff's department, and I hired

a professional handwriting expert, and I had him

analyze the signature.

And without question,

it's a total fraud. It's a forgery.

Instantly, I became suspicious, and I decided that, hell,

I can't trust Dale Warner.

our wife goes missing,

and you're moving around assets through

illegal activity, forgery. That's not a good look.

He was taking steps to take total control over a lot of

different things. I mean, that's a huge red flag.

The question is, why would Dale be doing this?

You know, what does he want? And what he wants is the money.

Dee and Dale's businesses, which they shared,

were not doing well.

Other than the trucking company, that was the cash cow.

Dee owned the trucking company, 100%.

So if the trucking company goes away, the money goes away.

I think at that time, I probably had to face it that

Dale might have done something with her.

As time goes by, despite evidence of forgery

and financial fraud, the police

investigation stalls. It's a dead end.

And so the family's starting to get really, really frustrated.

I would often go to the prosecutor.

At one point, he openly said to me, "Gregg, listen, I will never

sign a warrant for his arrest until there's a body."

If we're not able to get the sheriff or the prosecutor

to move on this case,

we're gonna need public pressure.

That's when I reached out to the press to cover the case.

Justice for Dee.

Billy was giving talks at public events that put a lot of

extra pressure on the law enforcement agency

to continue moving forward.

The sheriff knew when he went to those rallies for Dee,

people were just gonna have at him because

he hasn't gotten this case solved.

I stood right next to him at one of the rallies

and told him, "Do your job

or I'll get somebody here who can do it for you,"

and then handed him the mic.

What happened to Dee Warner?

That is a question Michigan State Police hope to answer.

They are now taking over the investigation.

We're hoping Michigan State Police can materialize

something for the prosecutor.

Michigan State Police, they invested a tremendous

amount of resources.

You had dive teams, cadaver dogs, aerial searching,

geographical profiling.

We were both encouraged, as well as the family.

This is gonna go in the right direction.

I mean, they all suspect Dale, but there was no arrests,

no charges filed.

And so nearly 2 and a half years after Dee disappears,

the family was worried, you know,

this case may never be solved.

It was just very hopeless. You don't know where to turn.

You're wanting the police to drag the person in that

you think did it and interrogate the hell

out of them, and that's just not how the system works.

November of 2023, I was at work,

and I heard the phone ring.

It was my boyfriend, and he said,

"Dale's been arrested."

It was just a flood of different emotions.

Um, I didn't know how to process it.

Murder charges against the husband of missing

Lenawee County woman, Dee Warner.

Michigan State Police remaining pretty tight-lipped about what

evidence moved them toward filing those murder charges

against her husband, Dale Warner.

Billy calls me, and he says, "Hey, Dale's in custody.

They're charging him with Dee's murder."

Why they made the decision at that time to make the arrest,

honestly, I don't know.

One of my family members called me.

Obviously, it was shocking.

We wanted to yell at the top of your lungs that we were right.

Now we need to move forward and get justice

for what's been done.

Living next to Dale was nerve-wracking.

To learn that he was arrested for murder was

really overwhelming.

But in my heart, I believe that, you know,

he did murder my mom.

And even though we didn't have a body, I was so thankful.

- Sorry. - It's hard.

This isn't about somebody against somebody.

This is about right and wrong.

She was a fighter. She would be specifically

very proud of her, her people that have fought for her.

April marks three years since Lenawee County woman

Dee Ann Warner went missing.

Dee Warner's death certificate was released just over two

weeks ago, which is something the family says they needed.

They will now have a small ceremony at their family plot

in Tipton, Michigan.

She's gonna have an official gravestone,

and her children's names will all be on there.

We didn't have her body, but we wanted a little bit of

closure for her and to

celebrate the person that she was.

My mom was hardworking, selfless,

a generous person,

and she was so good at being a mother, a businesswoman,

and a grandmother.

She was very dedicated to each and every one of those.

Yes, we celebrated her life, but it's an unsettling feeling

not having her body or remains with us is difficult.

It's very bittersweet for the family,

but the question still remains, where's Dee?

We've searched all over the place.

We've come up totally empty.

So I was going through the case over and over and over again,

and I remembered early on, right after my sister went

missing, I was down at the property...

loading fertilizer when no one is around.

And when I walked the building, for some reason, I always--

this haunts me, I always had a very eerie feeling.

Gregg Hardy remembers that the sheriff's department

never searched the fertilizer barn.

Dale had said the dogs couldn't go into the fertilizer

barn because he had had a dog himself that had gotten some

chemicals on the feet and it poisoned the dog

and killed the dog.

So they never searched the fertilizer barn.

He also recalls Parker saw

some things that are unusual in hindsight.

Parker told me that he went down to Dale's fertilizer barn

very shortly after Dee went missing and noticed this

old, small, little tank that Dale was painting.

This anhydrous tank was sitting on the ground.

It looked like it had been in a swamp forever.

It was all rusty, covered in kind of an algae.

It was basically just trash.

The type of effort he was making on something that didn't

have any value was very unusual.

He was doing it in the fertilizer barn

rather than in the workshop.

It was so strange.

I remember Gregg telling me about this, and he said,

"You don't suppose he would have put her in there, do you?"

And I said, "That would be a perfect crime."

And so I called the state police, and I said,

"You know, it sounds crazy, but there's this particular

"fertilizer tank I'd like you to investigate

at my sister's property."

At that point, the state police searched the property.

They subsequently found the fertilizer barn.

And there's a small fertilizer tank with somewhat fresh paint

and a non-factory weld on it.

It was missing that beaded seam for your factory welds.

It became clear that the tank had been re-welded.

But it was too big and there's no X-ray machine

to look at that tank.

So it was removed from the property on a truck

and brought to a weighing station where they actually

did a X-ray.

That day I went to work and they were doing another

search of my mom's property.

And I pushed it in the back of my mind.

Like, it's just another search. Don't get your hopes up.

And at the end of my workday, I got a call from my brother

that said, "We need to have an emergency meeting tonight

with the Michigan State Police detectives."

And... I knew they found something.

Dee Warner's family meets with Michigan State Police

detectives on the evening of August 21st, 2024.

It was about 8:30 that night.

All the children and all of us met here at our house.

One night we'll never forget.

I was so anxious.

I just knew they found something, and it wasn't good.

The detective said, "We think we've found Dee's body."

And we were like, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe it."

And he said, "It was in the anhydrous tank."

The detective had scans of what was inside the tank,

and it clearly showed a human body in the tank.

It was horrible.

There was Dee's body, placed inside of the anhydrous

tank, which turned out to be a good thing for

the prosecution because he made an airtight seal.

Medical examiners confirmed

the remains found on her husband Dale Warner's

property belonged to Dee Warner.

After three-and-a-half years of being encapsulated in

the cold, dark, sealed environment of

a fertilizer tank, Dee's body is very well preserved,

and authorities conclude that she was probably put there just

a short time after her death.

We certainly have positively identified my sister.

There's no variance and it's 100%, so there's nothing

to not accept as fact.

The medical examiner is able to determine that Dee Warner's

death was a homicide caused by

strangulation and blunt-force injury.

My sister was dead.

And after three and a half years,

I was in absolute disbelief.

I mean, it's disgusting to think how someone would be that

evil that he might have done that with his own wife,

putting her in a frigging fertilizer tank like that

and making it into a tomb.

I think he's an absolute piece of human trash.

Nobody deserves to be murdered

and put away like she was.

That's awful. It's an awful feeling.

It seems like Dale thought

he was that close to a perfect crime.

In August of 2024, Dee's family could finally put

her into a grave, let her rest in peace,

and then simultaneously feel that same peace themselves.

We did have a burial for Dee.

We celebrated her life,

and it does give you a feeling of closure.

The children of Dee Warner have filed a $100 million

lawsuit against Dee's husband, Dale, who is accused of

murdering his wife and hiding her body.

Todd Flood with Flood Law

not only says the money is

rightfully their property, but says it's only fair after

Dee's family spent years in legal fees trying to prove Dee

was dead, while Dale knew the whole time.

He was missing all during that time frame.

Dale knew where the body was, knew how he strangled her.

The prosecution and the defense are currently

preparing for trial.

We hope and pray as a family that the state has strong

evidence that shows what he truly did.

But we're gonna be there to

see in the trial, every moment of it.

If he's found responsible for Dee's death, I don't know how

he could live with himself knowing and seeing her last

few minutes.

He must live with that, and I hope he does every day.

It's been about seven or eight months since we buried my mom.

It is nice to have a place to come to,

but I feel like I always have her with me in my heart,

so I can always talk to her when I need to.

She deserved more than just what she went through.

She was way more than that.

She was a mother and a grandmother and a friend

and a sister, and she was a wonderful person.

It'll be a long, long process, but we're gonna get

the justice that my mom deserves.