WATCH: Hidden in Plain Sight: The Disappearance and Discovery of Dee Warner

Outside of her community, the world first knew of 52-year-old Dee Ann Warner through a notice from Lenawee County Crime Stoppers, when the organization asked the public to help find a missing woman. 

She last was seen in the early morning hours of April 25 at her residence on Munger Road in Franklin Township, with family and friends saying they had no contact with her since then and no activity shown on her social media or electronic devices. 

RELATED: 'Her spirit's gone a long way': Dee Warner's family holds press conference, gives update on investigation

At the time, detectives with the Lenawee County Sheriff's Office said they were responding to a lot of tips from the community, according to Sheriff Troy Bevier. 

“Mother's Day passed and she wasn't around and didn't make contact with anybody," the sheriff said.   

Not only did Mother’s Day pass, but months, then years went by with no sign of her despite the Lenawee County Sheriff's Department, Michigan State Police, federal agencies and community members repeatedly searching. The case threatened to go cold. Her family refused to let that happen, though.  

Acknowledging the worst-case scenario, they established a $50,000 reward for anyone who could help find her remains, as they no longer believed she was alive. The family did believe, however, that her husband knew Dee’s fate. Despite this, Dale Warner, Dee's husband, and his lawyer argued that Dee was still alive. 

Throughout the investigation into Dee's disappearance, Dale's attorney argued that Dee had packed up and left, citing that Dee had done this with Dale before. Authorities confirmed that Dale and Dee had in fact got into an argument before Dee went missing. 

But Dee's family did not believe what Dale's attorney was stating. They sought to have Dee legally declared dead by the courts so other pieces of her case could move forward and also filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Dale in May 2023.  

More legal issues mounted for Dale, as he was found to be in contempt of court for selling off assets that belonged to both him and Dee in September 2023.  

RELATED: Dale Warner arrested again for contempt of court for not cooperating with conservator in his missing wife's case

Then, law enforcement officials sharpened their focus on Dale Warner, 56, who was arrested and charged with her murder on Nov. 21, 2023. The investigation revealed a deeply troubled relationship marked by alleged domestic violence and control.  

Finally, 855 days after she was suspected of going missing, Dee’s body was found on Aug. 17, 2024, hidden in a resealed anhydrous tank on Dale’s property. 

Dale's defense attorney, Mary Chartier, declined to make herself or Dale available for an interview.. She did provide a written statement following the positive identification of Dee's remains: "The latest update from the police confirms this tragic turn of events. However, this does not change Mr. Warner's position, and we are prepared to fight for him at trial."

“You never in a million years think this is ever gonna happen to you,” Parker Hardy, Dee’s nephew, reflected. “When it does happen to you, you don’t in a million years think that you’re gonna have the support that we’ve had.”  

The community’s support was a beacon of hope for the family during dark times. Vigils were held, and signs bearing Dee’s name were displayed across town, symbolizing a collective determination to get justice. 

“A lot of it had to do with the community she built for herself. She’s been here her entire life, so everybody knew Dee. She was extremely social and very involved in 4-H. The farm community was pretty close to her,” said Kathryn Adams, Dee’s friend and leader of Justice for Dee. “When she went missing, so many people wanted to help, whether it was through foot searches or other means. It was a testament to who she was. There are still people who message me, saying they lived down the street or rode the bus with her, asking what they can do to help.” 

Parker believes Dee would have been amazed at the turnout because though she was widely known, she felt that she wasn’t always accepted because of a personality that even her friend termed as “abrasive” at times.  

“That’s why you hear us say she would be floored at how many people care for her,” Parker said. “It’s because Dee suffered a little bit from feeling like she wasn’t always socially accepted. Sometimes her personality was so strong that some people would shy away from it a little bit. It could be off-putting at times when really she wasn’t trying to do that at all. 

“She was trying to help, but it was so forceful. A good example would probably be at the fair. She wanted everything so perfect for her 4-H kids that some of the other parents took it a little bit offensively at times. That wasn’t how she wanted to be, but she suffered with a bit of social anxiety.” 

Dee's strong personality and her drive to succeed was a Hardy family trait, Parker said, and served Dee well when she was making her way as a woman in the traditionally male-dominated world of trucking and agribusiness.  

“She was growing up in a man’s world back then. She had to prove her dominance that she could survive in this type of industry. It wasn’t like anybody was saying, ‘Oh, you’re a woman, you can’t survive in this.’ It’s just how it is,” Parker said. “She had a major drive to be successful. Her brother’s been successful over the years, and she wanted to follow right in his path, if not beat him. It was always a competition of who could get there first.” 

Dale Warner was Dee’s second husband, and a choice that her family said struck them as an odd pairing, but one that made sense given Dee’s drive for success and, as Parker put it, an opportunity for “empire building” in the agribusiness world. 

“When they met, I know it was a bit of a shock to everyone. Nobody would ever put those two together if you just took a picture of them,” he said. “He was very much the farm boy. I can tell you that I never saw Dale out of cowboy boots, jeans, his work shirt, and a cowboy hat.” 

But with Dale, Dee was able to begin realizing her vision for businesses, including a custom fertilizer application company and a successful trucking company. Parker said what she saw in Dale included “power and success.” 

"She had a drive to be very successful. Her first husband did not have that at all,” Parker said. “He was very happy with what he had, you know, go from day to day, get your farming done, make a living, support your family. ... She wanted to build an empire, without a doubt.” 

That empire building came at a cost, though, with stresses stemming both from business pressures, navigating blending their families and the couple’s personalities.  

Some of the pressures were brought on by the difficulties of balancing a blended family, including facing the awkwardness of seeing ex-husbands and ex-wives in social settings. At times, family members said, that awkwardness bubbled over to anger.  

Parker further explained the origins of Dale and Dee’s relationship. They both worked together at a custom fertilizer application company, which eventually spurred them to start their own. At the time, Dee was married to Tim Bock and Dale was with a woman named Julie. Dee and Tim had four children together: Amber, TJ, Zack and Rikkell. 

Eventually, there was a divorce between the two couples. Tim and Julie then got married. Dee and Dale began dating publicly once the divorce was over, then were married and had their daughter, Angelina.  

“It was hard on the kids because of the fights,” Parker said. “When you have this ‘wife swap’ situation, it just got (to be) ‘he, she, they, theirs,’ and it was really hard on the kids. I remember especially during fair time, you had both sets of kids growing up in 4-H, and everybody had to eventually meet up at the fair to see the kids show and stuff like that. Both sides were extremely supportive of their kids, but it was very socially uncomfortable.” 

At a preliminary hearing in May, Dee's daughter, Rikkell Bock, testified that her mother and Dale Warner's marriage was a tumultuous one. 

"There was a lot of yelling. There was a lot of cussing, slamming things, maybe," she said at the time. 

Kathryn recalled disagreements between Dee and Dale that ranged over a wide variety of hurts, from business to family issues.  

“I had asked her a couple of times what she was doing, you know, like when they would be fighting, and I’m like, ‘Why are you still doing this?’ And it was always the farm, Angelina - their daughter - there was always something,” she said. “But I can see that towards the end ... it was more along the lines of, ‘I’m done. I’m talking to a lawyer.’ It kind of progressed until the end.” 

Kathryn believes “the end” came in a final fight between Dale and Dee, when she believes Dee was making her intention to leave the relationship known.  

“I think she wanted to put things in motion, and I think that might have been what the discussion was about that night,” Kathryn said. 

It is unknown if Dale abused his wife, but according to Bock's testimony, he more than just yelled at Dee. He allegedly placed a tracking device on her car. 

Bock said at the preliminary hearing in May she was aware of Dale tracking Dee and that her mother showed her the device. She also testified that in the months leading up to her mother’s disappearance in April 2021, Dee regularly discussed divorcing Dale. 

Parker recalled the last time he ever saw his aunt alive, noting the surprise he felt as his spunky, brash aunt appeared hollow, almost defeated.  

“The last time I ever saw her was Friday afternoon. Ironically enough, we were working on anhydrous tanks, not working on them, but swapping anhydrous tanks out. We were using them, and that was the last discussion we ever really had in person,” he said. “I remember getting out of the car; she was exhausted. She was babysitting my youngest cousin’s youngest daughter. I went to grab the baby for her, and she said, ‘No, it’s OK, honey, I got it.’ Normally, our relationship is giving each other a hard time, joking, stuff like that. She was just head down, just different. 

“This thing was going on - this defeat as you would maybe call it - definitely started sometime Friday. That was definitely the look on her face.” 

The family’s suspicions about Dale grew as the investigation into Dee’s disappearance progressed. 

“At first, I thought she had committed suicide,” Parker admitted. “She was that distressed. But there was just an eerie feeling with him (Dale).”  

Kathryn said Dee was always reachable, always responsive and always had her youngest daughter with her. When she couldn’t get ahold of Dee and learned that Angelina wasn’t with her, alarm bells rang.  

“On Sunday, I was trying to get ahold of her, and she wasn’t answering, which was definitely not like her. She was immediate, and if she didn’t answer, you’d get a text saying, ‘I’ll call you right back.’ That was alarming,” she said. “I still hadn’t heard from her on Monday, so I reached out to Amber, her oldest, and said, ‘Hey, I can’t get ahold of your mom. What’s going on?’ That’s when I was told she was missing.” 

Red flags started flying for Kathryn about a number of things – and one of the biggest flags for her was Dale’s response to the situation.  

“That following Saturday, we did a friends and family search. We started at the farm, went through my grandparents’ place, and then came here. Dale sat in the house, and that was red flag number one. The next red flag was when I heard that Angelina wasn’t with her. They were attached at the hip. There was no way Dee would have gone somewhere without her. So within the first week, and even the first month for me, it was like, she’s gone.” 

This suspicion was further fueled by Dale’s behavior during the searches, a point on which Parker elaborated, recalling a conversation he had with Dale early on in the search efforts.  

“I think the search was a big thing. When he came over to me during that search, you know, everybody’s crying, everybody’s having a very emotional time. My dad could hardly get through thanking everyone for coming out and searching. We searched hundreds of acres that day,” he said. “Dale, the entire time instead of helping us search, talked to my uncle. When we got back from the search, (Dale) said, ‘Well, you know, that was really nice of everybody to search for Dee, but my wife wouldn’t be out walking in the woods.’ That was all he could say to me.  

“Right then and there, I said to myself, ‘Yeah, you’re damn right. She wouldn’t be walking out in the woods. You put her somewhere.’ This woman never walked anywhere. I think that’s what he was trying to portray. She never walked anywhere. The house was right next to the office. She would always drive everywhere. She always had her keys, always had her phone, always had her car nearby.” 

Dee's disappearance grabbed headlines nationwide, and led to the involvement of renowned investigator Billy Little in March 2022. According to Parker, his mother watched Little on "48 Hours" one evening and stressed to Gregg Hardy that she thought Little would be a difference-maker in the case. 

"She grabbed my dad the next morning and said, 'You gotta watch this guy. I think this guy could help us.' Kathryn found his number. ... He came within a week and the wheels just started turning slowly again," Parker said.  

“Billy Little is a private investigator, a world-renowned private investigator. He helps advocate for people who feel like they’re at a brick wall. He had a case very similar to this, and that was what was airing on '48 Hours.' That’s what drew us to him," Parker continued. "As he always explains, and I’ll explain it right now, he came here looking for Dee. A lot of people think he was hired by us. He was not hired by us. He came here looking for her body to help a family. That’s all he was looking to do.

"He told us point blank, ‘I’m here to find Dee pro bono. If the case leads me to you guys, it’s going to lead me to you guys. I just want to warn you that, yes, I’m sitting here in your facilities, but if you had anything to do with this, it’s going to lead me there.’ We all said, ‘Go right on ahead. We have nothing to hide.’”

Despite years of searching over thousands of acres of farmland, Dee’s body was found incredibly close to home – very nearly in plain sight. Parker recalled questioning Dale about what, in hindsight, he called suspicious behavior with an anhydrous ammonia tank just days after Dee’s disappearance.  

“My father and I were the ones that originally saw (Dale) about two or three days after working on that very tank. It was always a weird thought to me why he was doing that. We questioned him. His exact statement to me was, when I kind of chuckled and said, ‘What the heck are you doing with that tank? It looks like somebody had an accident.’ ... I thought it rolled off the cart and ended up in a pond or something.  

“He said, ‘Oh, that rusty thing. I told the guys that I haven’t been able to sleep at night, and I would paint them at night when I couldn’t sleep down here in this fertilizer barn. No cameras, no nothing.’ "Anhydrous is very corrosive, so it will rust the outside of the tank. Every so many years, you paint the tanks, just lather some white paint on. That’s what he said he was doing. It seemed kind of strange to me, especially the rusty tank. I’d never seen it before, just kind of appeared out of nowhere. I didn’t think much of it. In the back of my head, it was just very weird, but I drove out of there and kept working.” 

The strange activity with the tank weighed on the mind of Parker’s father, Gregg Hardy, as well, who checked in on the tank and saw Dale the next day – just a couple of days after Dee’s disappearance. Gregg Hardy told his son that Dale looked exhausted.  

“My dad goes down the next day, and Dale’s got that tank that he said he wasn’t going to paint still sitting there half-painted. At that point, that means to us, that she wasn’t in that tank when I was there (the previous day). She was in that tank when my dad was there the next day,” Parker said.  

“(My dad) remembers the look on his face. (Dale) had not slept all night. There’s no doubt he had been up all night working, which takes a lot of work to remove that cap, place her in there, get her from wherever he had her, place her in there, weld the tank back up, and begin painting it. He wanted to get it painted far enough where you couldn’t see the new welds.  

“After you got past that, he was home free because people would just think, ‘Oh, he’s just working on a tank. It’s taking him a long time.’ He didn’t want anybody to see that he’d been welding on it. There would never be a reason to weld on a tank. You get rid of it if there was something wrong.” 

But what led investigators to finally search that specific tank on that specific property, after three years of numerous agencies scouring the grounds? Parker said it was a collaboration the family finally had with law enforcement, though he wishes details and knowledge had been better shared between the two earlier on.  

“The likelihood of this ever happening was just very unheard of. I mean, it never happened before. Nobody’s ever cut a tank open and done anything with the inside of it. We always just kind of pushed it off as, ‘That’s just crazy.’ But they knew my story. I think I had told them my story and what I just told you, but it never went any farther than that,” he said. “My mom and dad kept pushing here lately when we were running out of options of finding her, that something was weird about that story. There were no other options. One thing that I can say, the state police and everybody have done a fantastic job. But one thing I could criticize them on just a little bit - it’s friendly criticism - is that they were a little bit too secretive.” 

A search warrant for that property on Paragon Road was executed on Aug. 16, and during that search, two large anhydrous tanks were taken by investigators, one of which contained the remains of Dee Warner. It was not the first time that property was searched, however. Parker said the entire Paragon Road property had been searched multiple times.  

“It’s very safe to say when the Lenawee County Sheriff’s Department was doing their initial search after she disappeared, she was not in that tank. She was somewhere on that property, hidden very well,” he said. 

Parker and Kathryn said that a previous search at the Paragon Road property was one of the only ones that Dale attended – and that he appeared to be agitated during it.  

“When we searched across the road, that was the only search Dale ever came to, ever. I was there fairly early, it was like 7:30, before 8 in the morning, and he had his boots thrown on, his pants. I’ve never seen that man look like that in my life, like he just rolled out of bed and came here like lickety-split,” Kathryn said. 

Parker recalled, “This guy was always shoes tied, cowboy boots on, pants pulled over the cowboy boots, shirt tucked in, always well put together.” 

“Yes, and he was not well put together,” Kathryn continued. “You could tell he flew out of the house, flew over to Paragon, and he was very nervous. He was talking to the detectives, and obviously being a small community, I knew the neighbors. So, I kind of just hung out over there and kept an eye on what was going on. Him and his dad just circled the block, must have been every hour we saw one of them go by.” 

Parker reinforced that it was unusual to see Dale at a search for his wife, and his appearance at this search stuck out.  

“I told everybody that when he showed up there, as Kathryn said, he never showed up to any of the searches before. We would be crying our eyes out on my cousin’s lawn as they’re digging, thinking we finally found her, and he’s just in the field over watching us, mind you, but he’s just over in the field next to us, just smug as can be like, ‘Ha ha, I got them.’ He did have a smirk, always had a smirk on his face.  

“Now that I look back on it, every time we brought an excavator out, he knew there wasn’t anything to worry about.” 

The discovery of Dee’s body brought a mix of relief and sorrow to her family, they said.  

“Now it’s just so surreal that now we have a body to place in her gravesite,” Parker said. “That’s the biggest thing. She’s back with us.”  

Dee’s daughter Rikkell posted on Facebook after it was confirmed that her mother’s body had been found in that anhydrous ammonia tank, vowing to continue to fight for justice.  

“The news we’ve waited 3 1/2 years to hear but we never wanted," she wrote. "We can now lay our beautiful mother down properly to rest. This is not over, it’s only beginning. We will fight even harder to make sure we get the justice she deserves. She will forever be missed absolutely NEVER forgotten. We love you so much momma." 

The family plans to hold a small, private funeral to honor Dee’s memory, with her gravestone not bearing her married name.  

“We couldn’t bring ourselves to put (Warner)…  A lot of people know her as “Dee Warner,” obviously. ... It’ll say ‘Dee Ann,’ is all it says. It says, ‘The daughter of Rainer and Wanda Hardy’ on it. We just couldn’t bring ourselves to put the name of the man who did all this to her,” Parker said. “We all knew deep down in our hearts once we finally came to an agreement as a family that she wouldn’t want the name of that put on her gravesite, either. She didn’t want to be remembered by that for the rest of her life. She wanted to be remembered by who she personally was, not what her marriage was.” 

Throughout their journey, the family has been driven by a desire to keep Dee’s legacy alive. Parker established the Dee Warner Distinguished Junior Member Award to honor 4-H members who exemplify the qualities Dee cherished.  

“My goal is to make it something that the kids almost rival over in a good way,” Parker explained. “It’s meant to be, in my mind, one day a prestigious award.” 

As they prepare for the upcoming trial, the family remains steadfast in their pursuit of justice. 

“We go to war when something’s happened to one of our own,” Parker stated. “When you do something like you’ve done to an innocent family, innocent person, we just take no prisoners.” 

Back in May 2024, a judge heard evidence to determine whether or not Dale Warner would go to trial This preliminary hearing lasted three days and was continued into June. 

Then, on June 7, 2024, a judge ruled that Dale Warner would face a jury on charges of open murder and tampering with evidence. His trial was set without Dee's body being found.  

Warner is being held on a $15 million bond and has a pretrial hearing in Lenawee County Circuit Court on Sept. 4. He was ordered to hand over passports belonging to him and his daughter in case he posts bond.  

An open murder charge allows a jury to decide the degree of murder - first or second - should the case go to trial. First-degree murder involves premeditation and has a mandatory life sentence without parole. Second-degree murder is punishable by up to life in prison with the possibility of parole. 

If you or someone you know are a victim of abuse, you can get help through the National Domestic Violence Hotline by clicking here.