Dee Warner, 52, went missing on April 25, 2021 — and her case is examined on ‘People Magazine Investigates: Vanished in the Heartland,’ airing Jan. 12 at 9/8c on Investigation Discovery and streaming on Max

As an entrepreneur who managed farming, fertilizer and trucking businesses alongside her husband in rural Michigan, Dee Warner had a reputation for being aggressive. “She had a tough personality,” says her older brother Gregg Hardy.

Yet despite being the boss at work, the 52-year-old mother and stepmother of nine children could also be funny and affectionate with family.

“She was never not sarcastic and laughing and giving me a hard time,” her nephew Parker Hardy fondly recalls.

But on April 23, 2021, when Parker stopped by the 1,500-acre farm in Tipton, Mich., where Dee lived with her husband, Dale, 57, and their then-9-year-old daughter Angalena, he was struck by his aunt’s melancholy mood. “She was just very different that day,” he says. “’Defeated,’ I think, would be the best terminology.”

Dee And Dale Warner at a concert pre 2016
Dee And Dale Warner at a concert pre 2016.Courtesy Billy Little

Sadly, it would be the last time Parker saw her alive: Two days later Dee Warner disappeared without a trace. Her daughter from her first marriage, Rikkell Bock, was the first to sound the alarm when she arrived at her mother’s house for their usual Sunday breakfast and Dee was nowhere to be found. Her Hummer and Cadillac Escalade were still parked at the property, but an overnight bag — along with a curling iron, a makeup bag, her phone and her purse — was missing.

According to Dale, who claimed he last saw his wife sleeping on a couch early that morning, the couple had quarreled the night before. Bock and other family members say Dale told them that he figured Dee had run off, leaving her $40,000 wedding ring on his desk in the farm’s office, but predicted she would return home — just like she always did. But this time was different.

Flyer for missing mother Dee Ann Warner
Flyer for missing mom Dee Warner.

The story of Dee’s mysterious disappearance and the more than three-year investigation that led to the arrest of her husband and the shocking discovery of her body hidden in a fertilizer tank on the family’s land is told in “Vanished in the Heartland,” the season premiere of People Magazine Investigates, on Jan. 12, at 9/8c, on Investigation Discovery and streaming on Max. (An exclusive clip for the episode is shown above.)

On Nov. 22, 2023, Dale was charged with murder and tampering with evidence in connection with Dee’s death by strangulation and blunt-force injuries. Dale pleaded not guilty and is being held in Lenawee County Jail while awaiting a trial scheduled to begin on Jan. 27.

In pretrial hearings, his attorneys have argued that he did not kill his wife and that he was not the only person on the property when Dee vanished. But prosecutors are expected to argue he allegedly plotted in detail how to dispose of his wife’s body.

Dee Warner, her husband Dale Warner and their children.
Dee Warner and her husband Dale and their children.Courtesy Rikkell Bock

“He had a well-thought-out plan of creating the perfect crime, and he came very close to doing that,” says Dee’s brother Gregg, who worked with authorities and private investigators to find his sister’s alleged killer.

Farming ran deep in Dee’s family, who had worked the fertile land of southeastern Michigan since 1831, raising dairy cattle and growing wheat, corn and soy. Dee learned from an early age about hard work, Gregg says. “She wanted to be successful,” he says. “She wanted people to respect her.”

After high school Dee dabbled in real estate before, as a married mother of four, landing a job in sales at a fertilizer and agricultural-supply company in Blissfield, Mich. There she met Dale, who was also a married parent of four. Despite their farming families’ history of rivalry, sparks flew. “He was an empire builder, and she was attracted to that,” says Gregg of his sister.

The couple embarked on an extramarital affair before eventually divorcing their respective spouses and marrying in 2006. After a short period of harmony, tensions in the marriage soon became apparent. While Dale was a homebody who preferred work to socializing, Gregg says, “Dee was a social butterfly.”

Gathering to honor Dee Warner. April 25, 2022.
Gathering to honor Dee Warner on April 25, 2022.Courtesy Parker Hardy

Money problems tested their relationship, as the trucking company run by Dee prospered while the couple’s farming and fertilizer businesses struggled to turn a profit. Her family later learned that on April 23, 2021 — the day Parker found his aunt in a bleak mood — Dee had an angry confrontation over financial issues with two employees of the trucking company. She was furious that Dale failed to come to her defense, says daughter Bock, who claimed in a pretrial hearing that Dee was ready to divorce Dale and liquidate their shared assets.

Dale Warner, center, looks back at family and friends in the gallery of a Lenawee County District Court courtroom Friday, June 7, 2024, as he is returned to the Lenawee County Jail following the preliminary examination of the open murder and evidence tampering charges against him. He is accused of murdering his wife, Dee Ann Warner, who was reported missing in April 2021 and has not been seen since.
Dale Warner at the Lenawee County Court house.David Panian/The Daily Telegram / USA TODAY NETWORK

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When Dee went missing two days later, Gregg quickly gathered 40 people to search the property — to no avail. According to Dee’s family, Dale, who they say appeared to be calm and resigned in the wake of his wife’s disappearance, suggested that Dee might have run off with another man, while some members of her family suspected she may have died by suicide. Her family’s suspicions grew when Gregg came to believe that Dale had transferred assets from Dee’s trucking business to a new company he started after she went missing by allegedly forging her signature on legal documents.

Views of the Fertilizer tank where the body of Dee Warner was found on the Franklin township MI farm. August 16, 2024.
View of the fertilizer tank where the body of Dee Warner was found.WTOL

About six months after Dale’s arrest, Gregg received a call from a detective who told him that Dee’s last known location had been tracked with electronic data to a barn on the property. Gregg remembered seeing Dale in that same barn, where he was painting a rust-covered fertilizer tank, days after Dee disappeared. “He could have cut a hole in that tank, stuffed her body in there and welded it shut,” Gregg speculated to his wife. “And that’s why he painted it.”

Weeks after Gregg shared his theory with authorities, a detective delivered startling news in the form of an X-ray image of a well-preserved body inside a tank. Dental records were used to identify the body as Dee Warner’s.

After three and a half years of waiting, Dee’s family were finally able to honor her with a dignified burial on Aug. 30, 2024, as they continue to seek justice. “She’d burn this entire town down if it was one of us,” says Parker. “She wouldn’t stop. That’s just the woman she was.”

People Magazine Investigates: Vanished in the Heartland, the season premiere of People Magazine Investigates, airs Jan. 12 at 9/8c on Investigation Discovery and streams on Max.