TIPTON, Mich. — It has now been two years since Lenawee County woman Dee Ann Warner disappeared.
"On the one hand it feels like a very short time," said Dee's older brother, Gregg Hardy. "On the other hand, it feels like 100 years."
Dee Ann Warner was 52 when she was last seen on 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, who also said that Warner had told her she planned to divorce her husband.
After she did not show up for a planned family meal on April 25, Dee Warner's family reported her missing. Hardy and Dee's adult children believe she's not missing, but in fact dead. Last September, they petitioned a Lenawee County judge to declare her so and that case has begun working its way through the courts.
In his first television interview, Dee's son, Zack Bock, talked to WTOL 11 about his mom and what life is like now for him.
"My mom was my best friend," Bock said. "I talked to her every day. I still talk to her. It will be hard but she's still with me."
Dee's husband, Dale Warner, believes she left on her own accord to start a new life. His attorney, Larry Leib, spoke to WTOL 11 for the first time on camera and said Dee is alive, possibly living under an assumed identity.
"There's easy ways to get identification from the internet, from resources overseas," Leib said. "You can get identification. You can even get a different identity. It's possible today, I guess, to even get a new Social Security number."
Hardy strongly disagrees.
"I think they're lying 100%," Hardy said. "I think that's there only possibility of a narrative that they think they can try to turn the public on to think that this story of theirs about her vanishing is anywhere even possibly something that logical people could believe."
Though local law enforcement and community members have searched, they have found no sign of Warner. The court filing seeking to have her declared dead also claims that Warner's phone and passport have not been used since her disappearance and that she has made no contact with family or friends.
The trial to have Dee declared dead begins in June.
Leaders at the Lenawee County Sheriff's Office said there is no suspect, and no one has been criminally charged in the disappearance of Dee Ann Warner at this time.
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