Testimony ends in Warner trial
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By DAVID PANIAN
ADRIAN — After calling three witnesses Tuesday, Dale Warner’s defense rested in his trial on open murder and evidence tampering chargers.
This was after a week in which the jurors were told one of Warner’s fingerprints was found on a sticker affixed to an anhydrous ammonia tank, and detectives testified about their roles in investigating what happened to Dee Warner in 2021 in the trial in Lenawee County Circuit Court.
Testimony in the trial began Feb. 12. It wrapped up Tuesday with the defense calling Dale’s ex-wife, an employee of the Warners’ trucking company, and Dee’s older brother, Gregg Hardy, as witnesses.
Dee Warner disappeared in April 2021 after an argument with her husband, Dale, who asserted to police that she must have left him, their daughter and her adult children. He was charged in November 2023 with open murder and evidence tampering in her death and disappearance. Her body was found inside an anhydrous ammonia tank in August 2024 after Michigan State Police detectives developed a “welding theory” and decided to look at the many fertilizer tanks that were stored on Warner property after thinking that Dee’s body had been buried in one.
Dee was last seen or heard from by friends and her adult children on April 24, 2021. Her children reported her missing on April 25, 2021, after they could not contact or find her, which they said was unusual because she almost always replied to text messages or answered phone calls right away.
The sticker with Dale’s left middle fingerprint was on the tank in which Dee’s body was found, a Michigan State Police forensic scientist told the jury Feb. 27. One print was found on the adhesive side of one of the stickers that read “ammonia” on one end of the tank, Amanda Isett said.
In body-worn camera video captured April 27, 2021, during a walk-through of the property by Detective Kevin Greca of the Lenawee County Sheriff’s Office, the tank in which it is believed Dee was entombed is seen near the “burn pile” where the Warners would burn trash behind their home and barns. The white-painted tank does not have stickers on it.
Greca was the lead detective on the case until the state police took over at the sheriff’s office’s request in August 2022.
The video was shown Feb. 27 as Greca testified in court. Dale is seen accompanying Greca as he checked vehicles and several of the barns on the property in what is known as a “consent search,” meaning Dale had given Greca permission to search the property.
Greca, who said he grew up on a farm, testified that the tanks on the property did not concern him.
“A farm is expected to have tanks,” he said. “Didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary with them.”
He said the Warners also had a business selling farm chemicals, including anhydrous, as the crop fertilizer is commonly called.
Warner’s lead attorney, Mary Chartier, asked specifically about the white tank at the burn pile.
“Was there anything about that tank that stood out to you when you walked by it?” Chartier asked.
“I didn’t even recall seeing the tank,” Greca said. He said the only tanks he recalled seeing were the large fuel tanks nearby.
“Did anyone while you were investigating or involved in the case ask you any questions about that tank?” Chartier asked.
“They did not,” Greca said.
A state police detective said he and his partner did not start looking at tanks stored above ground until August 2024. Retired Detective/Sgt. Scott Singleton said Feb. 26 they had evidence of internet searches for burying anhydrous tanks. It was then that now-Detective/Lt. Daniel Drewyor decided to look at all of the tanks that were stored on Warner properties to see what they could find.
The welding theory, Singleton said, started to develop after he and Drewyor joined a task force of state police and FBI personnel who were asked to assist the Lenawee County Sheriff’s Office with its investigation into Dee’s disappearance. The task force was formed in March 2022.
Singleton reviewed hundreds of hours of video as part of the investigation, he said while being questioned by Lenawee County Prosecutor Jackie Wyse. Some video from the farm’s surveillance system showed Dale inside one of the farm’s shops on April 25, 2021, he said. Dale was looking at a welding machine at 4:52 p.m. when “it appeared from my view that he heard something because he looked out the big, bay door. And then he kind of crouched down and was looking in a suspicious manner, so it looked like he was startled that somebody may be on the property.”
Chartier asked if he or Drewyor asked Dale about that incident when they interviewed him in December 2022 at the state police post in Monroe. Dale was accompanied by his attorney at the time, Lawrence Lieb.
“No, we did not ask him that,” Singleton said. “There was so much in that two hours that we did cover, that is not something that we asked him at that time.”
“So you just ran out of time?” Chartier asked.
“No, it was just there was other important matters,” he answered. “Like I said, this just struck me as initially it was kind of a light bulb, like maybe I better check on that later. It wasn’t the ‘aha moment’ we were looking for or anything like that.”
“Right, you’d agree it’s not the aha moment, correct?” Chartier said.
“It’s a moment that caused me to look further into that theory,” Singleton said.
“And a moment that you never bothered to ask him about or his lawyer at the time, Mr. Lieb, right?”
Wyse objected on the grounds that Chartier was becoming argumentative and the question had been asked and answered. Judge Michael R. Olsaver upheld the objection.
After Dee’s body was found, Singleton said, they executed a search warrant at the farm that sought items specific to the way in which she was found.
“When you view something without context, it may be there, but you don’t necessarily see it until you receive that context,” he said.
They also spoke to a welding expert, and the information he provided helped give context to some things they had seen in videos, such as Dale being seen on April 25 with an angle grinder and a tank that appeared to be the same one that was found being captured on body-worn camera video from April 27 at the farm.
Using the farm video, Singleton said he was able to put together a timeline of when Dale might have been in the farm’s “spray barn” on April 25. That is where the prosecution suspects Dale cut off one end of the tank Dee’s body was found in and welded it back together. He said those times were 1:26 to 1:46 p.m., 3:41 to 4:29 p.m. and 5:07 to 6:06 p.m. Those were all after he was seen collecting the grinder and other items that could be used to cut and weld the tank. At 6:37 p.m., the farm’s front-end loader is seen leaving the area of the spray barn with something white in its bucket — the view is obscured by a large pine tree. At 6:39 p.m., the circular end of a white tank can be seen among other items in the burn pile area when it wasn’t there earlier.
The video also showed a welder in one of the shops was moved, Singleton said. It was in one place next to a large tool box at 3:12 p.m. and then in a different spot next to the tool box at 6:43 p.m. and Dale is walking away from it toward an exterior door. The motion sensor on the camera in that shop was “hit or miss” on picking up motion to activate the recording system, Singleton said, so it didn’t show what happened to the welder between those times.
Welding theory
Justin Schmidt, a certified welding inspector and educator who teaches welding at the Lenawee Intermediate School District Tech Center and Jackson College, described his review of the tank in which Dee’s body was found. He looked at it four times from August 2024 until earlier this month.
There was an obvious repair weld on one end of the tank, Schmidt said. It appeared that the end cap or domed end had been cut off with an angle grinder, he said.
Lenawee County Assistant Prosecutor Dave McCreedy showed photos of the weld, taken of both the outside and inside of the tank, as he asked Schmidt about the weld. He also showed still images taken from the farm’s security video system that showed Dale holding an angle grinder and a grinding or cutting disc on April 25, 2021.
The repair weld was done using gas metal arc welding, Schmidt said. The quality of the weld showed it had been done by “somebody who had prior welding experience, so they were somewhat familiar with the process but did not identify as having formal weld training at the time that this was produced.”
Schmidt observed that the weld was not liquid tight, as there was a paint drip inside the tank where white paint had leaked through the weld.
When doing gas metal arc welding, Schmidt said, the person doing the welding typically would wear personal protective equipment, such as a welding mask and gloves. He said they might also wear a welding jacket and a cap to protect against sparks from the welding process and the ultraviolet light given off by the welding process.
“Depending on how long the duration was, the UV light that’s produced in the welding arc is extremely intense and it can burn uncovered skin relatively quickly,” he said.
McCreedy showed a still image from Greca’s body camera video from April 26, 2021, of Dale’s arm that showed his forearm was reddish while his hand and wrist were pale.
“That is very indicative of what a burn from UV light produced by the welding arc would look like, especially if one was wearing a glove on the hand,” Schmidt said.
McCreedy asked how long it would take to cut off the end of the tank, weld it back on and then paint it. Schmidt said he tested cutting similar metal and estimated it would take about 50 minutes or more to cut the tank, which had a circumference of 128 inches. The welding, he said, would take between 21.3 minutes for someone working as fast as the welder would allow to 35.5 minutes. Those times did not include the time it would take to move items into position to do the work. The work could be done by one person, he said.
Property searches
Greca also testified about the searches of the Warner property in the week after Dee went missing, and a state police detection dog handler described his and other dog handlers’ roles in those and other searches.
Dale almost always gave consent to the many searches that were conducted, Greca said. Answering a question from a juror, he said the only time Dale restricted access to anything was that early visit on April 27, 2021.
That search ended at the north side of the farm’s “spray barn.” Dale and Greca did not go in, as Greca instead went to brief others who had arrived, including his supervisor, Lt. Dustin Reckner, and the county’s drone team, about the search he wanted to conduct. He then went in the house to talk more with Dale.
As that conversation wrapped up, Greca and Dale stepped out to the back porch and parking area where they talked with Reckner about flying the drones so that they could check the neighboring fields to look for Dee. Greca told Reckner that Dale wanted them to come back the next day because he had work to do. Greca also told Dale that the sooner they searched the better it would be, both in case Dee was unconscious in one of the fields and to prevent Dee’s adult children from saying he gave Dale “24 hours to do this or that.”
Reckner asked for 15 to 20 minutes to fly a drone.
“No, I’m done,” Dale said in the video, adding that if they had told him in the morning they could have started earlier.
They packed up and left, Greca said, but they returned at 8:44 p.m. with a search warrant. Wyse played Greca’s body-camera video showing him talking to Dale’s daughter at a door to the house and on the phone with Dale explaining that they were back with the drones and that search dogs would be there in about 20 minutes.
Testimony Feb. 24 from retired Madison Township Fire Chief Ryan Rank, who was part of the county’s drone team, included video from the drone team and the farm’s video system showing Dale during the evening search driving the farm’s front-end loader with a white anhydrous tank from the burn pile to the spray barn.
Trooper Jack Taeff of the Michigan State Police was at the Warner property for both the aborted search early on April 27 and the full search that evening as well as many following searches. He testified that the ammonia and the tank itself would have been complicating factors in whether a cadaver dog would have sniffed out Dee’s body.
Ammonia fumes probably would mask any odors that a cadaver dog would otherwise detect, Taeff said.
A body being sealed into a tank also would prevent a cadaver dog from picking up on the scent, Taeff said, answering a question from McCreedy. Even two or three pinholes that had been painted over would not have allowed enough scent out of the tank for the dog to detect.
In all of the searches that were done by his dog and a cadaver dog, they didn’t find anything, Taeff said. He was asked about having the dogs around anhydrous, and he said because of the hazardous nature of ammonia fumes he wouldn’t intentionally run his dog near those tanks unless the dog pulled him in that direction.
Other prosecution witnesses
Jurors also heard from Parker Hardy, who said he saw a rusty anhydrous tank in the spray barn on April 27. He said that was unusual because tanks were not kept in the spray barn and they were usually well maintained. He said he asked Dale about the tank.
“He told me that he had some employees bring in some tanks at night or at some point so that he could paint them at night,” Hardy said. “He said he was having trouble sleeping because he was worried about where his wife was.”
That particular tank was not one that he wanted, Hardy said, and it was going to be swapped for another one that only needed minor painting.
Hardy also said he noticed tracks from the front-end loader leading up to the Warner home’s back door while he was driving around the property, looking for his aunt, on April 25.
Two witnesses, Sgt. Jeff Hooper of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, and Danielle Vandenheuvel of the state police, testified about digital evidence they extracted from Dale’s iPhones and iPad. Several photos of Dee’s phone showing text messages between Dee and her son, Zack Bock, and between Dee and Dale were found.
The iPhone showed that it accessed the myCadillac app at 7:08 a.m. April 25, sent Dee a text at 7:45 a.m. that he was going to spray, used the Find My iPhone app at 8:48 a.m., used the app for the farm’s video system at 8:49 a.m., texted Dee again at 10:02 a.m., and accessed the Find My iPhone app again at 10:28 a.m. On April 27, there was a call from Greca at 8:39 p.m. and calls between Dale and his son, Jaron Warner, between 8:38 and 8:49 p.m.
The iPad showed that someone had used it on May 5, 2021, to do a Google search for “what to do with 1000 gal propane tanks,” Hooper said, reading from the data extraction report.
In Dale’s pickup, FBI Special Agent Henrik Impola said, there were calendars, planners and journals, notebooks and loose-leaf paper with handwritten notes. Some of the loose papers were printouts of screen captures of vehicle locations with handwritten notes about where Dee was, what she was supposed to be doing, her disposition, and how Dale thought Dee was lying about what she was doing. The journal entries tended to match things Dale had told investigators about his and Dee’s relationship, including the weekend she went missing.
Defense witnesses
After Olsaver denied a motion from Dale’s defense for a directed verdict — which is where the judge is asked to find that the prosecution has not presented enough evidence to prove their case beyond reasonable doubt — they called three witnesses.
Julie Bock testified about her relationship with Dale. They started dating as teenagers, then were married for about 15 years, she said. They divorced in 2003. The divorce was amicable, she said. They even shared an attorney.
They did have a legal battle over custody of their children, she said. She ultimately was awarded custody and Dale was ordered to pay $1,200 a month in child support. That was later increased to $1,600 per month.
One of Dale’s attorneys, Marisa Vinsky, asked about a cough that Dale developed during their marriage. She described it as a throat clearing and said it started within the last five years of their marriage. She noticed he still had it in 2017 while at a school function for one of their daughters.
Todd Neyrinck worked for the Warners’ trucking company. He managed the trucks and drivers but would drive, too. He said he had a good relationship with Dale and Dee. He said he was closer to Dee. He said the last time he saw her was at about 3:30 p.m. April 24, 2021, which was a Saturday. He said she was agitated and not herself, wearing sweatpants and a loose-fitting top. Answering a question from Wyse, he said Dee was “always dressed up and ready to take on the world every day.”
He was at the farm at 3:25 a.m. April 25 to take a delivery to Burns Harbor, Indiana, he said. He was at the farm for 10-12 minutes. In that time, he said, he noticed that the light over the kitchen sink in the Warners’ home was on and the TVs in the living room and a bedroom were on. He said Dee’s Hummer and Dale’s pickup were parked behind the house.
When he returned a about 3:30 p.m., Dee’s nephew Parker Hardy, her daughter Rikkel and son Zack were in the office looking at security video. He said Greg Hardy had called him about half an hour before he arrived back at the farm.
He later saw Dale at the spray barn where he was loading a sprayer, he said. They talked, but Neyrinck said he did not go in the spray barn. He said Dale was not welding and he did not do much welding at the farm, but he would weld things if they needed fixing and no one else was available to do it.
Gregg Hardy became emotional at times as he discussed his efforts to find out what happened to his sister, and Olsaver told him to answer Chartier’s questions directly after he did not give direct answers to a couple of questions. He denied having said in media interviews that he had directed police to look for a particular anhydrous ammonia tank. After being shown a clip of a recent TV documentary about the case, he said he had given police direction, but not to the tank in which Dee’s body was found.
Under cross-examination by McCreedy, Hardy said the tank he was referring to was the rusty tank he saw in the spray barn in the week after Dee went missing.
Hardy also admitted under questioning by Chartier that he had written a text message that he had potential liability if Dale was not convicted of Dee’s murder because of public statements he had made about the case.
Hardy described how he and others tried to figure out what happened to Dee, from offering a cash reward to putting up billboards to reviewing her phone records and talking to anyone he could think of to ask if they knew where she might be. He described how a search party of about 30 people walked 500 to 1,000 acres of property in the vicinity of the farm to try to find a sign of her, but Dale didn’t participate.
Chartier asked Hardy if he remembered Dale telling him that he would be with his and Dee’s daughter during the search. He said he did not.
He said he had many conversations with Dale in the weeks following Dee’s disappearance, but Dale never described any efforts to try to find her. Eventually, he said, what had been a good relationship soured over the two months after Dee went missing.
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