LENAWEE COUNTY, Mich. — Family members of Dee Warner, who has been missing from Lenawee County since April, 2021, have petitioned a court to declare her dead.
Warner's daughter, Rikkell Bock, 28, of Tecumseh, has filed a petition with the Lenawee County Probate Court, asking that a jury be empaneled to consider whether Warner can be declared legally dead.
The filing also claims that since Warner's disappearance, her husband, Dale Warner, has used power of attorney to take out loans against his wife's property and that her assets are being depleted.
Bock's petition includes affidavits from her siblings and others who say there is enough circumstantial evidence that the devoted mother would never willingly abandon her family to conclude that she died sometime around April 25, 2021.
Warner, 52, was last seen April 24, 2021, when she dropped off her young daughter with a friend before going to meet her husband, according to an affidavit from the friend, Amy Alexander. Alexander also said that Warner had told her she planned to divorce her husband.
On April 25, 2021, Rikkell took her children to her mother's house as planned for a family lunch but found her mother missing, she wrote in her affidavit.
Though local law enforcement and community members have searched, they have found no sign of Warner. The court filing from her daughter also claims that Warner's phone and passport have not been used since her disappearance and she has made no contact with family or friends.
"There has never been a period in my life when I have gone more than a week without speaking to my mother," Rikkell said in her affidavit. Her adult siblings, Amber Million, Zack Bock and Timothy Bock, also told the court they were extremely close to their mother and never went more than a few days without speaking to her.
The adult siblings and family friends who contributed affidavits to the filing all also said it is entirely out of character for Warner to leave her now 10-year-old daughter.
In August the Michigan State Police took over the investigation into Warner's disappearance.
Warner's children had been critical of the Lenawee County Sheriff's Office's work on the case.
The court has scheduled a hearing for March 9 on Bock's petition.
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