Warner Trial Update – Week of Feb. 23

2/27 – Murder trial testimony: Dale Warner fingerprint found on tank; 1st lead detective questioned

ADRIAN — One of Dale Warner’s fingerprints was found on a sticker on the tank in which Dee Warner’s body was found.

That was one of the pieces of evidence presented to jurors Friday in Lenawee County Circuit Court before they heard from the first lead investigator assigned to the disappearance of the Tipton woman in April 2021.

Dale Warner, 58, is charged with open murder and evidence tampering in his wife’s death and disappearance. Her remains were found inside an anhydrous ammonia tank in August 2024. The second full week of testimony in the trial wrapped up Friday with three Michigan State Police analysts testifying about fingerprints, paint and cellphone data before Detective Kevin Greca took the stand.

Greca led the Lenawee County Sheriff’s Office’s investigation for more than a year before the sheriff’s office handed the case off to the Michigan State Police in August 2022. He retired Aug. 20, 2024.

Like all of its witnesses in the trial, the Lenawee County Prosecutor’s Office subpoenaed Greca to testify at the trial. Prosecutor Jackie Wyse has said the sheriff’s office tried for eight months to serve the subpoena on Greca without success. She eventually filed a petition to have Greca brought to Lenawee County to explain why he should not be held on bail to appear as a material witness, and in December he was taken into custody in Lucas County, Ohio, by U.S. marshals. He waived extradition and was brought back to Lenawee County.

On Dec. 11, Greca waived his Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate himself and stated his intention to testify in the trial. On Friday, he testified for about an hour and a half, providing some insight into the early days of the investigation but also expressing difficulty remembering some details.

Greca said he had a hard time differentiating in his memory between the multiple times he met with Dale. He said because he’s retired, he no longer has access to his reports or body-camera videos from the case to prepare for the trial.

Toward the end of his testimony, Warner’s lead attorney, Mary Chartier, asked him if he wanted to testify in the trial.

“Yes and no,” he said. “The yes part, just for the truth to be able to come out.”

“And what’s the no part?” she asked.

“I’m retired. $1.50 an hour, I believe is what I get paid to testify today.”

Michigan law requires witnesses in court proceedings to be paid $12 for a full day or $6 for a half-day or up to $15 to make up for lost working time. Greca was at court all day, waiting to testify.

The timing of his retirement from the sheriff’s office after 31 years there was preplanned, he said, and involved him picking up overtime hours during a race weekend at Michigan International Speedway to help boost the calculation for his pension.

“Our retirement is based on our best consecutive four years,” he said, calling the race weekend overtime “big money.”

His retirement coincided with when Dee’s body was found.

Under questioning by Wyse, Greca said he did not know Dee or Dale before learning about the missing person report on the morning of April 26, 2021. He said one of his colleagues, Detective Dale Sharp, told him about the report. Later that day, Tecumseh Police Officer Paul Wolf called him to tell him about the situation. One of Dee’s sons, Zack Bock, testified earlier that he called Wolf on April 25 while looking for her to ask for advice.

Greca said he called Bock to see if he had access to Dee’s bank accounts. He did, so they met in Tecumseh and checked at Dee’s financial institution to see if there had been any activity on her credit card. There hadn’t been any activity for a few days.

He then went to the Warners’ home and met with Dale, he said. Body-worn camera video from that interview was played earlier in the trial, with Greca asking Dale about his and Dee’s relationship, what happened between them the night of April 24 and Dale showing him around the house and talking about his concerns that money was missing and that Dee had become addicted to oxycodone that had been prescribed for her chronic neck pain.

On April 27, Greca said, he returned to the Warner residence earlier in the day and conducted a search of the farm property around the house. It was a “consent search” as opposed to one done with the legal authority of a search warrant. Dale showed Greca around the property where he looked in chicken coops, vehicles and most of the barns. He said it was normal to have a property owner participate in a consent search.

At one point while walking around the property, they went past the “burn pile” where the Warners would dispose of trash. They walked past a white anhydrous ammonia tank that is suspected of being the tank in which Dee’s remains had been sealed. The prosecution has played videos showing Dale on April 25 with an angle grinder, welding gear and other items that they allege show Dale had the materials, equipment and time to cut open a tank, weld it back together and paint it that day.

“Did any of the tanks, the chemical tanks that you saw on the property, raise any concerns with you?” Wyse asked.

“They did not,” Greca replied. “A farm is expected to have tanks. Didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary with them.”

The Warners also had a business selling fertilizer, he said.

Greca explained later that he grew up on a farm and was familiar with anhydrous ammonia, which is a common fertilizer. He said he also had training as a narcotics officer regarding anhydrous ammonia’s use in making methamphetamine.

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. “I recall seeing other tanks, but they were like fuel, I think one regular gas, one road diesel and then one off-road diesel. But as far as those tanks there, I didn’t even recall seeing those.”

“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.

Greca said while he was involved with the case there was no “welding theory” about where Dee’s body was hidden.

The tour ended at the north side of the farm’s “spray barn.” They 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 now 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.

“She left here,” he said.

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.

“This will shut up the other side of the family. You get that?” Greca said to Dale. After a brief pause, he said, “Well, no, no, you’re absolutely right. I’m sorry, you’re 100% right. It will not shut up the other family.”

Wyse asked if it was typical to contact the property owner when executing a search warrant.

“Yes, for two reasons,” he said. “I normally look to cross a t, dot an i. We have a search warrant so we can do it, but I also normally do a consent search as well. It assists in case you find something else that you’re not looking for or if there was an issue with a search warrant. You could cover it.”

The scene was not secured, Greca said.

“We didn’t tape it off or we didn’t have them evacuate,” he said.

“During the course of this search, did you find anything?” Wyse asked.

“Nothing of evidentiary value,” Greca said.

Testimony earlier this week included video from the drone team and the farm’s video system showing Dale during that search driving the farm’s front-end loader with a white anhydrous tank from the burn pile to the spray barn.

As the investigation continued, Dale offered Greca access to spend time with the Warners’ 9-year-old daughter, Greca said in response to questions from Chartier. Later, Greca agreed with Chartier that because the girl lived with the Warners that she would have observed their relationship.

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.

Chartier asked Greca about a meeting on March 9, 2022, with Dale, his family and Dee’s family. Greca said that meeting was with members of the newly formed task force, including state police and FBI representatives. The purpose of the meeting was to provide an update on the investigation but to also ask everyone — other than Dale, whose phones and iPad had already been searched — to consent to have their cellphones searched. He said there were state police analysts there who could download the data from the phones and return them right there.

During that meeting, Greca said, Dee’s brother, Gregg Hardy, along with the private investigators he had hired, Billy Little and Chris McDonough, pulled him aside into a hallway. He said they wanted to make it look like Hardy had consented to have his phone searched without having it actually be searched. Greca said he did not agree to that, and Hardy’s phone was not searched.

“When dealing with an individual such as this case, Mr. Warner, if they catch you in a lie, it can hurt you later on down the investigation,” Greca said. “We can lie as law enforcement to individuals when we’re talking to them. However, you lose face and it could harm his cooperation in the future.”

Wyse asked why Hardy didn’t want to have his phone’s data downloaded.

“He stated that a federal law enforcement officer was providing him information that he would get in trouble for providing,” Greca said.

“And was this information about his sister?” Wyse asked.

“That’s what I took it as,” Greca said.

Following up, Chartier asked, “What would be the problem with that from a law enforcement perspective providing detailed information to a family member?”

“There were several,” Greca replied. “The information wasn’t coming to not myself, law enforcement. It was going to a family member and appeared to be confidential information obtained, we’ll say through illegal means.”

“And can that impede the investigation?”

“It can.”

Chartier asked Greca if he has done any work on or monitoring of this case since he retired. He said he had been in contact with an “old, lady farmer,” Ruth Nortley, who knew both the Warner and Hardy families. He said she would send him letters at least once a week that were for Dale that she wanted Greca to read before forwarding them in a self-addressed, stamped envelope to Dale.

He said there was an incident involving Hardy that he wanted to get in writing from Nortley, but she died before he could do that, he said.

A juror asked a question related to an audio recording from Greca’s body camera that was played in court Tuesday. The audio was of poor quality because Greca placed the camera in his vehicle before talking to Dale’s son, Jaron Warner, during the evening search on April 27. The question asked if putting the camera in the vehicle was an attempt to have an off-the-record conversation with Jaron. Greca said it was not.

Another juror asked if Dale ever showed tears or emotion about Dee.

‘Tears, no. Emotion, yes,” Greca said.

Fingerprint found

Amanda Isett, a state police forensic scientist at the crime lab in Northville, described her work to look for fingerprints on the tank in which Dee’s remains were found.

One print was found on the adhesive side of one of the stickers that read “ammonia” on one end of the tank, she said. Each end of the tank was marked with curved stickers with green, all-caps lettering that read “anhydrous” on the top half of the end cap and “ammonia” on the bottom half. The fingerprint was found on the edge of an “ammonia” sticker on the end closest to the first “a.”

Isett explained how she reviewed the print, looking for features in the ridges of the print that would aid in comparing it to a known print. In this case, she used a fingerprint card obtained from Dale and matched the print from the sticker to Dale’s left, middle finger.

Paint comparison

Michelle Ponschke, a lab manager at the Michigan State Police crime lab in Lansing, testified about comparing paint samples from the tank in which Dee’s body was found and paint found in a shop on the Warner farm. She said she took samples from the end of the tank near and along what she called the “aftermarket” weld on one end of the tank. A detective used paint stir sticks to collect paint samples from three cans and a plastic food container. She also analyzed paint collected from a trash can lid from the farm.

After providing lengthy explanation of how she does her work to visually and chemically analyze paint samples while being questioned by Assistant Prosecutor Dave McCreedy, Ponschke said the top, white-colored layers from two samples taken from near the weld were chemically similar to paint from two of the cans at the farm. However, she couldn’t say they were a match because they didn’t physically fit together, like what might happen with paint that transfers from a vehicle onto clothing if the vehicle were to strike a pedestrian.

She said she can’t determine the paint’s manufacturer from the chemical characteristics.

Digital evidence

Another state police analyst, Danielle Vandenheuvel, reviewed what was found on Dale’s iPhones and iPad. One of his phones, an iPhone 12 Pro Max, had about 90 photos of Dee’s phone showing text messages between Dee and Zack, Dee and Dale.

The iPad had internet searches for chemical cremation, an article on the website Gizmodo titled “What Is Liquid Cremation and Why Is It Illegal?”, an article on wired.com on alkaline hydrolysis and liquid biocremation, what to do with 1,000-gallon propane tank, and searches for dating sites for widowers, she said. There were no dates for the searches, she said, but the iPad had been activated in 2020 and the data was extracted on May 12, 2022.

Dale’s iPhone 6 had the myCadillac and Vyncs apps listed. Vyncs is a vehicle-tracking app. Vandenheuvel said the data showed it was purchases on Jan. 11, 2020, but was not installed on the phone.

Police have never found Dee’s iPhone, but data from her phone’s iCloud backup was analyzed, Vandenheuvel said. Neither the myCadillac nor Vyncs apps were in the backup, nor was the AppleID from Dale’s devices.

2/26 – Data reviews, dog searches, documents highlight testimony

ADRIAN — As early as the spring of 2022 investigators working on the Dee Warner case had a theory that welding was somehow involved in her disappearance a year before.

It wasn’t until her body was found in August 2024 that they had a better idea of what to look for.

“When you view something without context, it may be there, but you don’t necessarily see it until you receive that context,” retired Detective Sgt. Scott Singleton of the Michigan State Police said Thursday in his testimony in Lenawee County Circuit Court.

Singleton was one of four witnesses from three law enforcement agencies who testified in the trial of Dale Warner, 58, who is charged with open murder and evidence tampering in his wife Dee’s death and disappearance. Dee, who was 52 at the time, was last seen or heard from by friends and her adult children on April 24, 2021. Her children reported her missing the next day when they couldn’t contact or find her. Dale was charged in November 2023. In August 2024, Dee’s remains were found, welded into an anhydrous ammonia tank that was stored in a barn on property the Warners owned on Paragon Road, about two miles south of their home and farm on Munger Road in Franklin Township.

Anhydrous ammonia is a common crop fertilizer. Along with their own farm business, the Warners owned a farm services business that sold fertilizer and other chemicals to other farmers.

Testimony in the trial began Feb. 12. On Wednesday, jurors traveled to see the tank in which Dee’s body was found, the Warners’ farm on Munger Road and the property on Paragon Road.

Singleton and Trooper Jack Taeff, a detection dog handler, were the witnesses who testified Thursday from the Michigan State Police. Other witnesses were Sgt. Jeff Hooper of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office and FBI Special Agent Henrik Impola.

The welding theory, Singleton said, started to develop after he and Detective/Lt. Daniel 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.”

Dale’s lead attorney, Mary Chartier, questioned whether he looked suspicious.

“I knew that nobody else was on the property at that point, and he just seemed startled and was looking out and trying to duck out of view,” Singleton said.

Chartier said to her the motion seemed like Dale bent at the waist more than crouched or ducked. She also questioned if it looked like Dale had stepped behind his pickup, which was parked within a couple of steps of him in the shop. Singleton said it did.

“At that time it was early on in the investigation. We didn’t know what happened. I was still investigating, you know, everything,” he said. “But that just stood out to me in the video. One of those things to mark and check on later.”

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 an 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. 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 she was found in 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 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 an area known as the burn pile 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 active the recording system, Singleton said, so it didn’t show what happened to the welder between those times.

Dale was at various locations around the farm that day, including at the office when Dee’s adult children, nephew and sister-in-law were there, looking at the farm’s video to see if they could see Dee on it from earlier in the day, Singleton said. Dale also left the premises at times.

Dee was not on the video, Singleton said.

Singleton also testified about collecting samples of white paint from three cans and a plastic food container that were in one of the farm’s shops. He said state police crime lab personnel had asked for the samples after they collected paint samples from the tank in which Dee’s body was found.

Another aspect of the case that Singleton looked into were the farm’s and Dee’s finances. He said there was a theory that Dee had taken as much as $1 million from the businesses and was living off it somewhere. He said he found about $34,000 that was not accounted for during the 2 1/2 years before she disappeared.

A question that has come up was about when the Lenawee County Sheriff’s Office first searched the Munger Road property on April 27, 2021, and why the search team left the property when Dale asked them to leave and come back the next day because he had to go do farming work, others have testified. The sheriff’s office then obtained a search warrant for the property and returned that evening and searched the property. During that search, a member of the drone team that captured photos and video said, Dale was seen using the front-end loader to move the white tank from the burn pile to the spray barn.

Singleton explained that from the body-worn camera video he reviewed, the earlier search was when Dale had given permission to have the property searched. When he revoked that consent, the search team left, obtained a search warrant and returned.

Prior to August 2024, Singleton said, they had been operating under the assumption that Dee might have been buried underground in a tank. He said they had evidence of internet searches for burying anhydrous ammonia tanks. It was then that Drewyor decided to look at all of the tanks that were stored on Warner properties to see what they could find.

Searching with dogs

Singleton and Taeff testified about the searches of various Warner-owned properties in the area that they were a part of. Taeff also explained the abilities of detection and cadaver dogs. He said the dog he works with is trained to detect narcotics and do tracking of individuals. After he arrived at the Warner home for the first time on April 27, he said, he called for a cadaver dog to assist, since it was a missing person case.

Cadaver dogs can sniff out human blood, bone and tissue, Taeff said. In all of the searches that were done by his dog and a cadaver dog, they didn’t find anything. He was asked about having the dogs around anhydrous ammonia, 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.

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 Assistant Prosecutor Dave McCreedy. Even two or three pinholes that had been painted over would not have allowed enough scent out for the dog to detect.

On April 29, 2021, there was a conversation between Taeff, Dale and the case’s original lead detective, Kevin Greca of the Lenawee County Sheriff’s Office, that included a conversation about the spay barn. Dale said they had been loading insecticides and fungicides that could be harmful to dogs, and the floor of the barn was still covered in the chemicals.

“They’ll soak up through the feet,” Dale is heard saying on Greca’s body-camera video. “We lost one of our shepherds that way.”

McCreedy asked if Taeff took his dog into the spray barn that day. He said he did not, but it wasn’t because of the chemicals. He said he looked in the barn and decided because of its layout and what was inside that it would be better to have a cadaver dog search it.

Taeff also said where the dog handlers search on any case is at the direction of the officer in charge. At that time in this case, that was Greca. He said he did not see the cadaver dog go in the spray barn.

Digital evidence

Hooper testified about extracting data from Dale’s iPhone and iPad. He said at the time the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office sometimes would help do that for their Lenawee County counterparts. 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 data also showed a gap with no data between April 1 and April 26 that could indicate data was deleted from the phone, Hooper said. Chartier asked if that also could indicate the phone was restored from a previous backup, and he said he couldn’t answer that.

The iPad showed that someone had used it on May 5, 2021, to do a Google search for “what to do with 1000gal propane tanks,” Hooper said, reading from the data extraction report.

Found documents

Impola said he was part of an FBI evidence response team that assisted with a search of the Warners’ Munger Road property on Oct. 11-12, 2021.

In Dale’s pickup, he said, there were calendars, planners and journals and loose-leaf paper with handwritten notes. Wyse walked him through what was written. 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. Those were dated in September and November 2020.

Inside a journal were what appeared to be handwritten notes about text messages between Dee and her son, Zack Bock, starting in December 2018 and going until June 15 on the last page, perhaps in 2019 based off a date on the previous page.

There also was a customizable calendar that started in 2019 and a day planner for 2021. These contained entries about Dee and work and personal matters, such as vacations. One of them talked about finding two cellphones in Dee’s luggage while on a trip, which is something Dale was recorded telling police after she went missing. Other entries expressed that Dale thought Dee continued to lie to him about what she was doing when she was away from the house. One note from March 2021 surmised Dee started a fight so she could sleep on the couch then sneak out at about 2 a.m. and return around 4 a.m. and asked if she was meeting a drug dealer or boyfriend. 

Some of those documents seemed to reference each other, Impola said.

The entries on April 23 and April 24, 2021, referenced the disagreement Dee had with two employees and that she tried to argue with him about that. On April 25, he wrote that Dee left the house at about 9:30 a.m. The entries on April 27 and 29 mention the searches of the property. Other entries are about his initial thoughts that Zack was lying about not knowing where Dee was, which he had shared with police in videos shown in court.

The next entry is on May 9, which was Mother’s Day and how Dale and Dee’s young daughter was “very upset” but had suggested they switch Mother’s Day and Father’s Day so they could have Mother’s Day when Dee was home.

“She is so smart!” the entry read.

The last entry was May 10, saying the sheriff’s office had no new leads but took his iPad and Dee’s retainer and got permission to get her dental records.

A spiral notebook contained more notes about the weekend Dee disappeared, including that she hadn’t contacted anyone and wondering if she had gotten into a worse relationship. It listed places she might have gone and aliases she might have used. Another note was about Dee having nightmares and talking in her sleep about someone not being able to protect her and she “would get you the money.”

Hostile witness request

Wyse asked that when she called Greca to testify that he be considered a hostile witness based off his avoiding the subpoena to testify for eight months. Chartier objected, citing caselaw that says declaring someone a hostile witness had to be based off how the testimony was going. Olsaver agreed, calling declaring Greca a hostile witness now “premature.”

2/24 – Welding, movement of anhydrous tanks highlight Feb. 24 Warner trial testimony

ADRIAN — Anhydrous ammonia tanks took center stage Tuesday as Dale Warner’s trial on open murder and evidence tampering charges resumed in Lenawee County Circuit Court.

A welding expert testified about how the anhydrous ammonia tank in which Dee Warner’s body was found could have been cut open and resealed after others testified about at least two tanks being moved into the Warner farm’s “spray barn” in the days following Dee’s disappearance.

The 52-year-old Tipton woman was last seen or heard from on April 24, 2021. Her adult children reported her missing the next day when they couldn’t contact or find her. Dale, now 58, was charged with his wife’s death and disappearance in November 2023. Her remains were found in August 2024, hidden inside an anhydrous ammonia tank that was located on property the Warners owned about two miles south of their Munger Road home and farm.

The Warners owned farming and trucking businesses, including a farm services business that sold anhydrous — as the crop fertilizer is commonly called — to other farmers.

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 a 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, or metal inert gas (MIG), welding, Schmidt said. McCreedy showed a photo of one of the welders found at the Warner farm, and Schmidt said he had used that model of welder many times and it fit the specifications for the kind of welder that would have been used to seal the tank.

The quality of the weld, which Schmidt said has a “sloppy appearance,” 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 had been grinded down in places to improve its appearance. It also was not liquid tight, he said, because he found a paint drip inside the tank where white paint and leaked through the weld. That indicated whoever welded it did not intend for the tank to hold any significant amount of pressure.

He also explained how, because of the way in which anhydrous tanks are manufactured, the dome portion will spring outward if the end is cut off, meaning it will not align perfectly with the cylinder part of the tank if someone tries to reattach the end. He said this was evident in this tank, and whoever had welded the end back on had used something to cradle the tank during the welding process and that the bottoms of the cap and cylinder were lined up but the tops were not.

McCreedy asked if equipment such as a pallet jack or forklift and items such as two-by-fours and chains found in the Warner farm’s shops could have been used to hold and maneuver the parts of the tank so they could be welded together. Schmidt said they could. He noted that there was a spot on the end cap where something had been welded to it.

“It appears that a chain link would have been welded there,” he said.

When doing gas metal arc welding, Schmidt said, the person doing the welding typically would wear personal protective gear, 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 police body-camera video from April 26, 2021, of Dale Warner’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.

Cutting with an angle grinder would be loud, Schmidt said in response to a question from Warner’s lead attorney, Mary Chartier. It would exceed the level at which the use of ear plugs or muffs is recommended.

Chartier asked Schmidt about the number of times he inspected the tank. He said he didn’t notice the mark where he said a chain could have been welded onto the end cap until the third time, which was this past January. It wasn’t until earlier this month that he told McCreedy and Michigan State Police Detective/Lt. Daniel Drewyor that the tank they had him inspect was consistent with one that was outdoors at the Warner farm in body-camera video taken shortly after Dee disappeared.

Moving tanks

A Lenawee County Sheriff’s Office detective, a Warner employee, a relative and a drone team member testified Tuesday about tanks being moved around the Warner farm or where they saw a particular tank.

Warner employee Jason Gravelle said he was working at the farm on April 26, 2021, when Dale told him that Dee had left. He had trouble remembering some things, which he attributed to having sustained a brain injury less than a year ago. However, he said he remembered moving an anhydrous tank for Dale on April 27, 2021. The tank had been in an area called the “burn pile” toward the back of the area of the farm where the barns and house are. He said he put it in the spray barn because Dale wanted to clean it up.

Wyse showed photos that showed a rusty anhydrous tank — not the one that Dee’s remains were in — inside the spray barn on April 27. The photos were taken by Detective Dale Sharp of the sheriff’s office while a search warrant was executed on the Warner property.

Parker Hardy, Dee’s nephew, said he saw the rusty tank in the spray barn when he went to the farm on April 27 to get fertilizer.

“It was very unusual for an anhydrous tank to be in that condition on the Warner farm,” he said. “They were typically very well kept and painted.”

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.”

However, that particular tank was not one that he wanted, Hardy said.

“He said, ‘But I didn't want this tank. I wanted one of the ones on wheels and one that I just needed to do some minor painting on.’

“So he then proceeded to tell me that they were going to move that tank out.”

McCreedy played Hardy a portion of his interview with state police in 2022 where he told investigators about that interaction with Dale. However, in that interview he didn’t mention the part about Dale wanting a tank on wheels.

“He just wanted a different tank brought in,” Hardy said after listening to that part of the interview. “Never mentioned wheels.”

Sharp testified about seeing Dale moving two tanks while the sheriff’s office was searching the property. He was at the spray barn when he saw Dale moving the tanks.

“While I'm taking pictures, Dale is moving a tank,” Sharp said. “I don't know where the tank is coming from. It's an anhydrous tank, and he puts it in that building. Then he takes another tank out.”

Dale moving the one tank into the spray barn was captured on video from the farm’s surveillance system and from the Lenawee County Drone Team, which assisted in the search. Former Madison Township Fire Chief Ryan Rank was part of the drone team and was operating the drone during the search on the evening of April 27, 2021.

Investigators were at the Warner property twice that day. The first time, Dale asked them to leave a few minutes after the drone team had launched their drone.

“He said he had to go back to farming and we could come back the next day if we wanted, but he just had too much stuff to do and he didn't want us on the property,” Rank said.

When they returned that evening, Dale initially wasn’t there. Rank said he started taking photos of the Warner property with the drone. When Dale returned, he switched to video.

“We wanted to follow him,” Rank said.

Tire tracks

Hardy also testified about seeing tracks from the farm’s front-end loader in the gravel by the back of the Warners’ home. He said he saw them while driving a utility vehicle around the property on April 25 while he, his mom and his cousins looked for Dee. He said that was noticeable to him because earlier in the day, Dee’s Hummer had been parked by the farm office. But when he saw the tracks, the Hummer was parked on top of them.

The tracks went right up to the back porch of the house, he said, and the way the gravel had been thrown indicated the front-end loader was moving quickly when the tracks were made.

“And, also, it's a little bit unusual for that loader to be pulled that close up to the house,” he said.

McCreedy asked Hardy where the front-end loader’s bucket would be if it was parked at the back of the house like that.

“The bucket would be clear up on the porch, almost to the door,” Hardy said.

Body-camera audio

An FBI digital forensic examiner testified about being asked in late March or early April 2025 to assist with the audio from a body-camera video. Detective Kevin Greca of the sheriff’s office had put his body camera inside a vehicle while he was talking to Dale’s son Jaron on the evening of April 27, 2021. The camera continued to record audio, but because it was inside the vehicle, the sound volume of the conversation outside was very low.

Jordan Graves of the FBI explained to the jury what he did to try to enhance the audio. The video with the enhanced audio was played during Graves’ testimony, and the unenhanced video was played during Sharp’s testimony. What was being said was difficult to make out in both versions that were played in the courtroom.

Circuit Judge Michael R. Olsaver denied a request to use a transcript of the video due to the poor audio quality.

“It should be left to the jury to listen to that and determine for themselves what they hear,” he said.

Jury site visits

On Wednesday, the jurors were to visit the Warners’ farm and the location where the anhydrous tank that contained Dee’s remains was found. They also were expected to be able to see the tank in person. Circuit Judge Michael R. Olsaver said the public’s and media’s access to those locations would be limited, in part to prevent any video or photos of the jurors to be taken.