Warner Trial Daily Updates

2/20 – Warner employees review farm video, discuss welding and anhydrous tanks during murder trial 

ADRIAN — Two employees of Dee and Dale Warners’ farming businesses told jurors about what they saw the weekend that Dee went missing, how anhydrous ammonia tanks work and the farm’s operation during testimony Friday in Lenawee County Circuit Court.

Ivan Boyd and Jim Hawkins were the last witnesses for the week in Dale Warner’s trial on open murder and evidence tampering charges. Warner, 58, is accused of killing his wife, Dee, and hiding her body in April 2021. Jurors heard Thursday from a Michigan State Police detective and a forensic pathologist about Dee’s remains being found inside an anhydrous ammonia tank in August 2024 and that the 52-year-old Tipton woman died from strangulation and blunt-force trauma to her head.

Boyd said he did field work and ran truck for the Warners. He also did maintenance and service work on the trucks as well as occasional, small welding jobs. Hawkins said he is in charge of the anhydrous ammonia tanks.

Anhydrous, as it is called for short, is a common crop fertilizer. The Warners had it for their own fields and sold it to other farmers.

During Boyd’s testimony, Lenawee County Prosecutor Jackie Wyse played video from the farm’s surveillance system that showed Dale at the Warners’ farm on Munger Road in Franklin Township during the day on April 25, 2021. That was the day Dee’s adult children reported her missing after not being able to contact or find her earlier in the day. In the video, Dale is at times seen holding an angle grinder, a length of chain and welding equipment as well as adjusting the settings on a welder. Over the course of several hours, he is seen driving different vehicles on the farm property, including a front-end loader, a utility vehicle, a tractor pulling a corn planter and a field sprayer.

In the video at 6:41 p.m. April 25, Boyd identified the front-end loader with a welder in its bucket being driven away from the farm’s “spray barn.” He earlier testified that welding only took place in the farm’s old or new shops and not in the spray barn. Hawkins also told the court that welding wasn’t done in the spray barn.

Dale’s lead attorney, Mary Chartier, objected to a question from Wyse about where Boyd would do welding. Wyse said whether welding took place in the spray barn was relevant because that’s where they are alleging Dale welded the anhydrous tank shut with Dee’s body inside.

In the prosecution’s opening statement on Feb. 12, Lenawee County Assistant Prosecutor Dave McCreedy told the jury that a welding expert told police that whoever sealed Dee’s body inside the tank would have needed a tool like an angle grinder to cut the tank open and something to hold the end of the tank in place while it was welded shut. The expert also said to look for what would look like a sunburn on the person’s arms because of the heat and light that the welder would give off.

Boyd identified Dale in the video based on his posture and clothing. Dale was wearing a short-sleeve work shirt.

“If you weld with a short-sleeve shirt on, what’s going to happen?” Wyse asked Boyd.

“You are going to get something called welder burn, which is kind of like sunburn,” he answered. 

“OK. And how soon after you get this sunburn would that appear?” Wyse asked.

“Within hours. If you were welding in the afternoon, by the evening time, you would experience it,” he said. “Prolonged exposure. I would say you’d have to be welding for at least an hour, pretty continuously, in order to get well burned.”

In a police body camera video of an interview with Dale the day after Dee was reported missing, his forearms are reddish with his hands and wrists pale as if he had been wearing gloves while exposed to the sun or another heat and light source long enough to be burned.

Wyse showed a still image showing Dale’s reddish arms and asked Boyd what the image appeared to show. Chartier objected on the grounds that Boyd is not an expert on welder burns. Judge Michael R. Olsaver sustained the objection.

“I don’t think there’s a sufficient basis for him to offer an opinion on this issue,” Olsaver said.

Chartier asked Boyd about the differences between using an angle grinder or a plasma cutter to cut metal. In the farm surveillance video, a plasma cutter is seen along with welders and other tools. Boyd said a plasma cutter would be faster.

Wyse asked about which would make a straighter cut. Boyd said the grinder would.

Boyd said April 25 was a day off from work for him, but he was at the farm to replace radiator hoses in his pickup. He said he spoke to Dale while he was there, and Dale told him Dee was missing. He said Dale seemed concerned about what had happened.

“He said that she must have left,” Boyd said. “I can remember him telling me that she had taken some items with her. He noticed that they were missing from the house, and I would say he was visibly worried about where she might be or if she might be OK.”

Dale expressed those same concerns “several times after that,” Boyd said.

When Wyse began reviewing the surveillance video from April 25, one of the first clips was of Dale driving the front-end loader at 6:58 a.m. Boyd identified him by his name tag on his shirt, his posture and his hairline, noting that it was unusual for Dale to not be wearing a hat.

“I can count on one hand the times I’ve seen Dale out of the house without a hat,” he said.

Answering a question from Chartier after almost three hours on the witness stand, Boyd said he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary around the farm that day.

“To be fair, I wasn’t looking for anything out of the ordinary,” he said. “It was just another day.”

Working with anhydrous

Hawkins and Boyd both talked about the Warner farm’s anhydrous operations, including how they used properties on Carson Highway and Paragon Road to store extra tanks. The Carson Highway property is essentially around the corner from the Warners’ home and farm on Munger Road. The Paragon Road property is about two miles south.

The tank in which Dee’s body was found was off by itself in a barn on the Paragon property, with the end that had been welded shut parked up against a wall. It had a War-Ag Farms logo on it, but both Hawkins and Boyd said it was different from the other tanks they usually worked with. A main difference both witnesses noticed was shape of the cover on the relief valve. 

On one of the tank’s valves a hand-written tag had been attached that warned that it wasn’t to be used. Hawkins said he’s never done that on a tank that was out of service. To questions about whether he’s ever painted an anhydrous tank, cut the end off an anhydrous tank or seen that particular tank before, Hawkins answered, “No.”

2/19 – Jurors see Dee Warner autopsy photos, hear form state police detective

ADRIAN —Dee Warner died from strangulation and blunt force trauma, the forensic pathologist who conducted the autopsy on her remains testified Thursday in Lenawee County Circuit Court.

Jurors also learned about the Tipton woman’s remains being found in 2024 inside an anhydrous ammonia tank from the Michigan State Police detective who led the investigation after the state police took over the case in 2023.

Dr. Patrick Cho and Detective/Lt. Daniel Drewyor took the witness stand as testimony continued for a fifth day in the murder trial against Dale Warner. He is charged with open murder and evidence tampering in his wife’s death and disappearance in April 2021.

Photos from the autopsy were only shown to the jurors and Dale Warner’s legal team during Cho’s testimony. Circuit Judge Michael R. Olsaver issued a protective order forbidding dissemination of the photos on the grounds that the “unauthorized proliferation of these images would constitute a significant and irreparable injury to the victim’s family based on the nature of those photographs.”

Olsaver said he reviewed the images following a request from the Lenawee County Prosecutor’s Office that the photos not be disseminated by the media. He cited the court’s supervisory power over its own records, state law and U.S. Supreme Court cases as the basis for his decision.

Dale Warner’s lead attorney, Mary Chartier, told Olsaver she agreed with the prosecution’s request to not have the photos be publicized.

Instead of showing the photos on the courtroom’s large monitor where other photos and videos have been shown during the trial, two smaller, portable monitors were set up in front of the jury box. Dale Warner and his legal team gathered at one end of the jury box to be able to see the images while Cho stood by one of the monitors and described the injuries he found during his examination of Dee Warner’s body.

Drewyor said state police searched properties on Paragon and Carson highways for anhydrous ammonia tanks on Aug. 16, 2024. There were several tanks on the Paragon Highway property. He said the tank containing Dee’s remains was off by itself in a barn. It, like the other tanks, was painted white. On one end it had a non-factory weld, and a hand-written tag that said “Do Not Fill” was attached with a wire to a valve on top of the tank.

Police towed the tank to the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit where it could be X-rayed, and what looked like a body was seen in the image. The tank was then transported to the state police crime lab in Northville to be processed and then taken to the state police post in Monroe where it was stored overnight.

The next day, Drewyor said, police first cut a small, rectangular “window” into the end of the tank opposite from the weld and where the body was in the tank. That allowed them to look inside, and they could see something was wrapped in a blue tarp. They continued to open the tank and removed the tarp-enclosed item. They opened the tarp and found human remains, which they took to have an autopsy performed.

There was a half-inch to an inch of what smelled like ammonia in the tank, Drewyor said.

Autopsy report

Cho is a deputy medical examiner in Oakland County. He said he does contract work with Lenawee County as well as Jackson, Hillsdale and other counties in Michigan. He said he conducted the autopsy on Dee Warner’s remains on Aug. 20. At the time, her identity had not been confirmed, but she later was identified through dental records.

Dee’s body was wrapped in two polyethylene tarps that were secured with duct tape, Cho said. Her legs were bound with duct tape, her arms were bound to her torso with duct tape, and there was duct tape over were nose, mouth and part of her head. It appeared she was wearing underwear and pajamas, though the clothing could have been light-weight sweats. She also had a single earring in each ear and a ring on right, fourth finger. The jewelry featured clear stones.

There also was a brown and red, mud-like substance that Cho said might have been a mixture of dirt and fluids but he had not ever seen anything like it before.

After removing the tape, Cho said, he observed contusions to her left and right cheeks, near her left eye and on the back of her head. In the internal examination, he found blunt-force injuries on the left side and top of her head, subdural hemorrhages on the brain, bruises on the back of the tongue and petechial hemorrhages on the epiglottis, which is the flap of tissue that prevents food and liquids from going down the windpipe when swallowing.

There were no skull fractures, he said.

The petechial hemorrages — red pin-points visible in the tissue — are caused when “intense pressure” is applied and forces the blood to move along smaller vessels until it reaches an end point and the vessel bursts, he said.

Based on the injuries he observed, Cho said the causes of Dee’s death were strangulation and blunt-force trauma. He said either were enough to have caused her death. He said the manner of death was homicide.

Despite the severity of the injuries, they would not have necessarily caused external bleeding, he said, answering a question from Wyse.

The date of death — on or about April 25, 2021 — was based on information from law enforcement on when Dee was last known to be alive, Cho said. Without that information, he would not have been able to determine when she died. He said that wouldn’t have been possible from the condition of the body alone.

Dee’s body was well preserved from being sealed in the tank with little to no exposure to oxygen or water, Cho said. He said oxygen in the air or water would have sped up the decomposition. Ammonia also can accelerate decomposition, but at a slower rate than oxygen.

The toxicology report showed no evidence of oxycodone, Cho said, answering a question from Chartier.

Dale has asserted in police interview videos played earlier in the trial that he thought Dee may have become addicted to oxycodone that she was prescribed for neck pain.

State police interview

One of those videos was played earlier Thursday at the beginning of Drewyor’s testimony. Drewyor and another state police detective interviewed Dale in December 2022 at the state police post in Monroe. Dale was accompanied by his attorney at the time, Lawrence Lieb.

Drewyor said he first spent about 45 minutes introducing himself to Dale. That part of the interview was not played in court. Near the start of the almost two hours that was played in court, Drewyor asked Dale what he thought should happen to someone who did something to Dee.

“I’m not so sure that someone did anything to her,” Dale said. “I think she just left with someone. She obviously had a … good plan.”

He said he thought Dee was in Jamaica or Mexico. He said she was fascinated by both places. Drewyor asked how she would get to either place without a passport or crossing a border.

“You don't need a passport to get into Mexico. You don’t even need one to get into Jamaica,” Dale said.

“How would you have gotten there without one? Can you describe that to me?” Drewyor asked.

“She's going to get driven down to Florida. She's going to get on a boat,” Dale said. He said someone can get into Jamaica for $50 or Mexico for $10. He said they had trouble bringing some migrant workers across the Mexican border two years before and were able to cross by giving an official $10.

They spent a long time talking about the Warners’ businesses and farming in general, including their financial difficulties, transferring the trucking business to Laidlaw, and a deal with Dee’s brother Gregg Hardy that he said left a sour taste in his mouth and Dee bitter toward Hardy. They also talked about Dee and Dale’s arguments, including the one on the night Dee went missing. Dale denied their arguments were ever violent. Other topics included whether Dee might have had an extramarital affair; Dee’s neck pain, migraines and medication; and the diagnostic or tracking device that Dale had put in Dee’s Hummer.

Drewyor asked about how the Hummer got moved from behind the house on April 24 to over by the farm office on the morning of April 25. He had Dale mark on an overhead photo of the house and farm buildings the location of where he parked the front-end loader on the morning of April 25. Wyse asked him why he cared about where the front-end loader was parked that morning.

“There were tire tracks observed from the front-end loader, and when asked about it, Mr. Warner later explained that he returned to the house in the front-end loader. Where this X is marked and where those tracks were is also where the Hummer is typically parked and where it was parked that day,” Drewyor said. “His statements were that Dee must have moved the Hummer to the office, but he states when he returns to the house in the front-end loader and parks in this spot that she's inside sleeping. So then it begs the question of these two objects cannot be in the same place at the same time, which means the Hummer must have already been moved when he pulled up to the house.”

Drewyor also asked Dale about accessing three smartphone apps on the morning Dee went missing: the app to view the farm’s security videos, an app to locate Dee’s iPhone and the app to remotely monitor Dee’s Escalade.

“Why are you asking these questions?” Wyse asked.

“He's very consistent in that the first time he knows that she's missing is when he receives a phone call at approximately 10:30,” Drewyor said. “However, he accessed all of these applications, in his words, to find her well before he knows that she's missing.”

Wyse said she would have Dewyor back another day to continue describing the investigation. Chartier said she would save her questions for when he returns.

Order to take down videos

Before breaking for lunch, Olsaver ordered media organizations to take down online videos from the first two days of testimony because they showed images of jurors. He had earlier in the trial ordered the videos to be edited to remove the parts that showed jurors, but he said he had viewed the video during a break that still showed jurors.

“That, to me, is unacceptable,” Olsaver said. “It is becoming a disruption to these proceedings.”

He said a Michigan court rule says no one may photograph, record, broadcast or livestream any juror or anyone called to court for jury service.

2/18 - Warner murder trial jury hears testimony it wasn’t supposed to 

ADRIAN — Jurors considering the murder and evidence tampering charges against Dale Warner in Lenawee County Circuit Court were not supposed to hear testimony about whether Dee and Dale Warners’ nanny saw Dale grab and shake Dee during an argument.

But when asked Wednesday afternoon about seeing Dee and Dale argue, Madison Wolf briefly mentioned seeing Dale grab Dee before Lenawee County Assistant Prosecutor Dave McCreedy cut her off.

Dale Warner, 58, of Tipton is accused of killing his wife, Dee, during an argument on the night of April 24-25, 2021, and hiding her body, which was found in August 2021 inside an anhydrous ammonia tank on property the Warners owned about two miles from their home and farm on Munger Road in Franklin Township. The Warners owned a large farming business as well as farm services and trucking companies.

Dale Warner was arrested in November 2023. Testimony in the trial began Feb. 12.

Wolf was the last witness to testify Wednesday. Earlier, a Michigan State Police cellphone records specialist testified about Dee’s cellphone usage and location data and a senior technical expert from General Motors reviewed the use of tracking technology in Dee’s Cadillac Escalade.

Circuit Judge Michael R. Olsaver ruled Wednesday before Wolf took the stand that the testimony about Dale grabbing and shaking Dee would not be allowed. Dale’s lead attorney, Mary Chartier, objected to the prosecution’s intent to have Wolf testify about seeing Dale grab Dee. She argued that the prosecution’s notice to use “other acts” evidence regarding arguments between the Warners in person and by text message did not include Wolf. She said they had only just learned Wednesday morning about the prosecution’s intent to ask Wolf about the grabbing. When the prosecution had given notice of having others testify about other acts by Dale, Chartier said, it was done with enough time for them to prepare Dale’s defense. Allowing Wolf to testify about the alleged grabbing now would be “late notice, unfair surprise and unfairly prejudicial to Mr. Warner,” she said.

Chartier made a similar argument about Wolf testifying to seeing a goose-egg bump on Dee’s head. She said the prosecution’s notice about the bump included an earlier witness, Dee’s friend and work assistant Stephanie Voelkle, but not Wolf.

McCreedy argued that Wolf’s description of the argument where she allegedly saw Dale grab and shake Dee was included in a Michigan State Police report that the defense had a copy of for more than a year.

Olsaver agreed with Chartier on Wolf’s testimony about the specific argument with the alleged grabbing. He allowed the testimony about the bump.

The prosecution’s notice about including testimony about arguments between the Warners in person and by text messages was not “sufficient to give the defense a real understanding of what incident the people are trying to admit under that category,” Olsaver said. “It's a general category. It doesn't make any reference to any specific incident. It doesn't make any reference to any report, although it is disclosed in a report, it doesn't make any reference to any report to tell them what we might be talking about or who even might be testifying about it.”

He said that though the court is allowed to reduce the notice time period he did not see a good reason to do that in this situation. He also said notifying the defense only three or four hours before the testimony “impairs their ability to prepare their examination of this witness.”

He said Wolf could testify about seeing the bump because it “was simply an observation of the condition of the person.”

At the end of Wednesday’s session, Chartier told the court she did not object to the brief mention of the grabbing incident to avoid highlighting it more. She asked that upcoming witnesses be made “really clear” of what they can and cannot say.

“Once we start building on inappropriate comments, we have to start making decisions on how much the jury is hearing that they shouldn’t,” she said.

Nanny’s testimony

Wolf told the court she was hired by Dee Warner in 2015 when she was 16 to be a personal assistant and nanny to the Warners’ daughter. She said she was 16 then and was familiar with Dee through 4-H before being hired to work for her. She said she would work Monday through Friday. She eventually also would hang out with the Warners on weekends and go shopping with Dee, who became like a mother to her. She said she sometimes stayed the night and went on a Disney vacation with the Warners once.

Wolf said Dee was not very tech savvy and she would help her remember passwords. She said when driving her Escalade she would use the Maps app on her iPhone and not the SUV’s built-in navigation. She said she did not recall seeing the myCadillac app on Dee’s phone.

When they returned from shopping trips, Wolf said, Dee would leave her purchases in the Escalade or have Wolf put them in the attic. Olsaver upheld an objection by Chartier to Wolf testifying about why Dee left items in the SUV or had Wolf put them in the attic on hearsay and speculation grounds. Wolf said she knew why Dee did that because Dee told her, so McCreedy moved on to his next question.

McCreedy asked Wolf to describe the Warners marriage.

“In the beginning, I didn't know them that well, so it seemed like it was OK,” she said. “And then over time you could see that it was more of like a business-oriented relationship.”

“What kinds of things did you observe that made you make that conclusion?” McCreedy asked.

“They were always arguing about money,” Wolf answered.

Dale would try to touch Dee and she would pull away, Wolf said. Dee would bring up the topic “quite a bit.”

When they argued, Dee would have a “very stern voice” and talked with her hands, including pointing fingers, and Dale would sit and listen. Sometimes he would get upset.

“Did you see him sometimes act in a way that wasn't calm?” McCreedy asked.

“Yes,” Wolf said.

“Describe that,” McCreedy said.

“There was one time where he had, like, grabbed her shoulders—” Wolf said.

“Oh,” McCreedy said, realizing they had broached the topic that was not supposed to be mentioned. 

“Sorry,” Wolf said. 

“So to the police you used — let me move on from there, sorry,” McCreedy said.

When Dee and Dale argued, Dale’s voice could be “very stern to yelling,” Wolf said.

Dale didn’t call Dee names, Wolf said, but he had a derogatory term for her, referring to how much she weighed back then.

When Dee would leave the home after arguing with Dale, she would take their young daughter and a few times Wolf would go with her, she said. That started happening while Wolf was in college, so she wasn’t around as much.

Dee mentioned having an extramarital affair to Wolf, she said. That last about a year and ended in January 2020. She said Dee had the man in her phone’s contacts under a different name.

Wolf also recalled being shown body-camera video by Detective Kevin Greca of the Lenawee County Sheriff’s Office. She said the video was from inside the Warners’ home while he talked to Greca after Dee went missing. The sound was muted because Greca wanted her to only watch to see if anything seemed out of place. She noticed that Dale’s forearms were red as if they had been burned, which was unusual.

Another of Dale’s attorneys, Marisa Vinsky, asked Wolf about her telling police that Dee would “snoop” through Dale’s belongings. Wolf asked several times to see the police reports or listen to a private investigator’s interview recording to refresh her memory. She said there was a time when Dee gave to her a checkbook that was in her name that Dale had and a cellphone that was Dale’s. She said she later gave the cellphone to Greca.

Wolf also said there were times, usually when she would be talking about wanting to divorce Dale, that Dee drank too much to be able to drive. One time she had to go pick up the Warners’ daughter from school because Dee had had too much to drink.

Answering a question from a juror that was given to Olsaver, Wolf said she had no recollection of Dee ever taking off her wedding ring following an argument with Dale. Answering a follow-up question form Vinsky, she said she was aware of a time when Dee thought she had lost her wedding ring after a vacation to Florida.

Vehicle-tracking and cellphone data

Previous witnesses have testified about Dale’s efforts to track the location of Dee’s Escalade and Hummer. Devin Newell, a senior manager and senior technical expert at General Motors, reviewed data from Dee’s Escalade that showed how someone had used the myCadillac app to remotely check on the Escalade.

From January 2020 to April 28, 2021, Newell said, more than 2,100 commands were sent to the Escalade by an iPhone 6, an iPad Pro and an iPhone 12 Pro Max. Of those, 1,700 were for its location. Others were for data such as tire pressure or fuel level or to unlock the doors. He said the iPhone 12 appeared to have replaced the iPhone 6 in March 2021, with the iPhone 12 being the only device that sent commands to Dee’s Escalade from March 22 to April 25, 2021. During that time, 59 commands for the SUV’s location were issued.

Regarding the location data, Newell said a command for a vehicle’s location could come from accessing the vehicle location through the app or by starting to use the vehicle’s navigation system, since the system would need to know the vehicle’s location before plotting a course to take to a destination.

Georgia Ziegler, a cellphone records specialist with the Michigan State Police, reviewed data from Dee’s cellphone provider, Verizon, related to her iPhone’s location and when it was connected to Verizon’s network.

There are two towers near the Warners’ home, one to the north and one to the southeast, that the phone was communicating with before disconnected from the network on April 25. Using data from Verizon, Ziegler said she was able to narrow down the phone’s location to somewhere on the Warners’ farm and home on Munger Road on the morning of April 25, 2021. The last times the phone communicated with those towers were between 7:04 and 7:14 a.m. There were no other towers it connected to that day.

The last data usage initiated by the phone was between 7:01 and 7:05 a.m. April 25, according to a report that Ziegler prepared and McCreedy showed on the courtroom’s large monitor.

Ziegler also looked at how many phone calls to Dee’s phone went to voicemail from the end of March through April 28, 2021. From March 30 to April 25, there were no more than two calls that went to voicemail. There were some days when no calls went to voicemail. On April 25, when she first went missing, there were 75 calls that went to voicemail followed by 43 on April 26, 33 on April 27 and 16 on April 28.

That data corresponds to previous testimony that Dee almost always answered phone calls.

In response to a question from a juror, Ziegler said cellphones can lose contact with towers because they’ve run out of battery power, gone out of range or been put into airplane mode, destroyed or powered off.

2/17 - Warner murder trial testimony resumes

ADRIAN — Jurors in the Warner murder trial saw another police body-camera video and heard more about Dale and Dee Warner’s relationship during testimony Tuesday in Lenawee County Circuit Court.

During an hour-long interview on May 3, 2021, the Lenawee County Sheriff’s Office detective leading the initial investigation told Dale Warner that he was a “huge, potential suspect” in his wife’s disappearance eight days before.

“Oh, I’m sure,” Warner replied in the same understated manner that he displayed during previous interviews with police that have been shown in Lenawee County Circuit Court since testimony in Warner’s trial on open murder and evidence tampering charges began Feb. 12.

Dee Warner was reported missing April 25, 2021, by her adult children when they couldn’t find her that day. Her remains were found in August 2024, entombed in an anhydrous ammonia tank on property the Warners owned about two miles south of their Franklin Township home and farm. Dale Warner was arrested in November 2023 and has been held on a $15 million bond in the Lenawee County Jail since then.

The Warners own a farming business that owns or leases 3,000 acres of land as well as a farm services business that sells fertilizer and chemicals to other farmers and a trucking business.

As the trial resumed Tuesday, Lenawee County prosecutors called six witnesses to testify. Former Lenawee County Sheriff’s Deputy Austin Hall resumed his testimony about assisting Detective Kevin Greca in the case’s first week. Prosecutor Jackie Wyse played body-camera video recorded by Hall and Greca for the jury during Hall’s testimony.

After Hall, the boyfriend of one of Dee’s adult daughters, Dee’s massage therapist, her secretary at work, the information technology consultant for the Warners’ businesses, and Dale’s former son-in-law testified.

Dustin Lolley, who is Rikkel Bock’s long-time boyfriend, described how he, Rikkel and her siblings looked for Dee on April 25, 2021, after she wasn’t home when they visited for their weekly Sunday breakfast together. Rikkel is one of Dee’s adult children. She testified on Feb. 12. He also testified about his relationship with Dale and about helping Dee identify a GPS tracking device that she found plugged into her Hummer.

Lolley testified that he and Rikkel had bought a house from Dale and Dee that was about a half-mile from the Warners’ home. They gutted it and were remodeling it, so they would eat meals at the Warners’ home and stay the night at Rikkel’s father’s home. He said when they were with Dale and Dee, that Dee would be more quiet when Dale was around, and that Dale would make degrading comments about Dee’s cooking and clothing. When Dale wasn’t there, she could be herself.

Lenawee County Assistant Prosecutor Dave McCreedy asked about a pair of incidents that happened after Dee disappeared. In one, Lolley said, Dale told him that Dee hated him and speculated that Dee ran off with another man, which was not something Lolley had heard him say before. In the other, Dale said that police were trying to “pin this on me” because he “kicked them off the property, and they wanted to get in that barn, the sprayer barn.”

Stacey Brodie testified to her relationship with Rikkel as her massage therapist, treating her weekly for chronic neck and back pain for about five years. They became friends. She said she never saw her under the influence of anything. She said eight to 10 times she noticed bruises on Dee, including one on her upper, right arm that was shaped like a handprint as if someone had grabbed her. The last time she saw Dee was the Wednesday before she disappeared. Brodie said Dee had been crying, was shaking a little and said “she was tired of how things were going and she wanted to see a lawyer.”

Stephanie Voelkle was Dee’s assistant at work who handled accounts payable and receivable and billing for the trucking company. They gradually became best friends over the five years she worked for Dee. She discussed arguments she saw between Dee and Dale, which she said were usually about money, Dale’s kids or his father. After arguments, she said, Dale would try to rub Dee’s shoulders but she would shrug him off.

Voelkle testified about Dee’s reaction to finding the tracking device in her Hummer. She said she had identified it as a tracking device from a charge on Dale’s credit card and looking it up online.

A juror, through a question handed to Judge Michael R. Olsaver, asked whether Dee mentioned side effects from having COVID. Dale had told police that she had been sick with COVID-19 about three weeks before she went missing and had acted differently since then. Voelkle said Dee had not, acknowledging that Dee had been in bed for about two weeks from the illness. Wyse asked if Dee’s personality seemed different when she recovered, and Voelke said no.

Kyle Wagner, the Warners’ IT consultant, discussed the farm’s video surveillance system, a request Dale made to copy data from Dee’s cellphone, and changing passwords to the computer system and who had remote access to the video system after Dee disappeared.

Regarding Dale’s request to “clone” Dee’s phone in 2019 or 2020, Wagner said he refused to do it “because I didn't have D's permission and I didn't feel it was right.”

The day after Dee disappeared, Wagner said, Dale called him in the morning and asked to meet. Wagner told him he was going to do some work at Hardy Farms, which is near the Warners’ farm, and offered to go to Dale’s office. Dale didn’t want to meet at the office, Wagner said, so they met at Hardy Farms. Dale wanted the app for remotely viewing the security cameras put back on his phone. Wagner said he updated the setting on Dale’s phone that allowed access to the cameras. After he changed that setting, only Dale had access to view the cameras remotely. Previously, Dee’s son, Zack, and nephew, Parker Hardy, had access.

Changing the passwords for the computer servers and the financial software also meant only Dale had access to those, Wagner said. Even Dee would not have had access.

Brian Bush, who was married to one of Dale’s daughters, talked about how he worked for Dale and in 2019 bought a safe that was identical to one that Dee and Zack used. He also testified to being directed by Dale in 2020 to buy and use the tracking device that Dee found in the Hummer. He said Dale would have him check the Hummer’s location about 50 times a week.

Under cross-examination by one of Dale’s attorneys, Marisa Vinsky, he acknowledged that in the case’s preliminary examination he testified he tracked the Hummer once or twice a week and that he also checked the diagnostics of the Hummer.

He also testified that Dale asked him about placing trail cameras in their house.

“He wanted to see if there's anybody coming in with documentation and papers in their hands,” he said.

Bush’s testimony about buying the tracking device was at odds with Voelkle’s testimony. He said he used his credit card to buy it, told Dale what the amount was and Dale reimbursed him. 

Fifth police interview

At about 3 p.m. May 3, 2021, Greca and Hall returned to the Warners’ home on Munger Road. This was the fifth time one or both of them had talked to Dale. His lead attorney, Mary Chartier, asked Hall if Dale had voluntarily talked to them, and he said Dale had and he hadn’t asked for them to turn off their body cams.

Wyse asked if Dale had kicked officers off the property on April 27, 2021. Hall said he did, just as the drones were about to be launched and search dogs were to go out.

Chartier countered, asking about the timeframe Greca had given Dale for the search. Hall agreed with Chartier that Dale told the search team he had to go farm and couldn’t stay but invited them back the next day or later that day if it rained.

Wyse asked if Dale gave a direction to the search team that they could search “anywhere but here,” and Hall agreed. Neither Wyse nor Hall specified where “here” was.

In the video as Greca and Hall sat with Dale in the Warners’ kitchen, they rehashed a lot of the main points about what Dale did the weekend that Dee went missing. The argument on the night of April 24 was not one of their worst, Dale said. One a scale where a 10 would be the worst, that one was a five.

“It was over a frickin’ employee,” he said. “And she's, like. ‘We're going to sell everything.’

“I'm like, ‘No, Dee. No, we’re not.’

“How did an employee get her this worked up?”

Hall asked Dale what might have sent Dee “over the edge” and want to leave.

“I don’t understand it at all, other than the COVID,” he said. “She’s not been right since COVID.”

In earlier interviews, he had told Hall and Greca 

An item Hall asked about was Dale finding Dee’s wedding ring on his desk in the farm office.

“What would be the significance for her to set the ring on your desk at the workplace instead of at your home?” Hall asked Dale.

“I don’t know,” Dale said. “Is there something from the office that she went out to get that we don't know is missing yet?”

They also talked about the value of the ring and other jewelry Dee wore. Greca said the ring by itself might not interest a criminal, but a lot of jewelry could have made her a target.

Greca asked about why there were tire tracks from the front-end loader that went up to the back porch of the house. The sliding door from the porch is the main entrance the family used.

Dale said he drove the front-end loader up to the house shortly after he left the house Saturday morning because he realized he forgot a tool and returned to get it.

Hall asked about whether Dee had a substance abuse problem and if Dale thought she might check herself into a rehabilitation facility. In an earlier interview, he expressed concern that she had become addicted to oxycodone that she had been prescribed for her chronic neck pain.

“I can't put that out in the realm that she could check herself into some places,” Dale said.

During the interview, Greca asked to take pictures of Dale’s arms to look for evidence of a physical altercation, such as scratches or bruises. Dale took off his shirt, and Greca photographed his bare arms and upper body. There were no injuries visible, and after the video played, Hall said only substantial bruising would have been visible that many days after the argument.

Greca asked how Dale would feel about the sheriff’s office using social media or Crime Stoppers to try to get tips. Dale said he was OK with it, but he would want to ask her kids first.

Greca explained that publicizing the case could help get a report from a hospital or rehab facility because police can be stymied by the federal health privacy law.

“We're the police,” Greca said. “We call and they're like, ‘We can't tell you.’”

Dale offered to contact their health insurance company to see if it had any recent record of Dee using her insurance.

Dale expressed regret at having worked both days that weekend. He said on Sundays he makes breakfast for Dee, their daughter and the others. 

“This Sunday, I decided to work. Why?” he said. “The same with Saturday. Why didn’t I just go to the game.”

The Warners’ young daughter had a soccer game that Saturday.

Greca asked Warner what he should do next. Warner suggested looking through Dee’s Facebook contacts to see who might have picked her up.

“There's got to be somebody who would pick her up. There's got to be,” he said, becoming more animated.