48 Hours Correspondent Erin Moriarty and Producer Sarah Prior discuss the murder of Dee Warner, which they began reporting on when it was still a missing persons case. They examine the challenges of prosecuting “no body” cases, the expensive diamond ring Dee’s husband claimed she left behind, and how investigators ultimately found Dee’s body among acres of rural farmland. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Welcome back to Postmortem. I'm your host, Anne-Marie Green. And today we are digging into a case that began as a missing person investigation when Dee Warner vanished from her home in Lenawee County, Michigan, in 2021. But her family suspected foul play. And after years of searching... her body was finally found.
Joining me now to discuss this case and its twists and turns is 48 Hours correspondent Erin Moriarty and producer Sarah Pryor. Thank you so much. Hello. Good to see you. Thanks, Anne-Marie. We love to talk about the twists and turns. Indeed, and there are a lot for this one.
So first off, a reminder for everyone, as usual, if you haven't actually listened to this 48 Hours episode yet, you can find the full audio version just below this episode in your podcast fees. So go back, listen to it, and then come join us for this conversation. So let's get right into it. On the morning of April 25th, 2021, Dee's daughter Raquel comes over to her house.
They're going to have breakfast together, but the house is empty. Dee's family report her missing later on in the day when she does not return any of their phone calls. But her second husband, Dale, tells police that he's not that concerned. And he says, you know, she's done this before. She's left the house before. However, her family becomes increasingly skeptical.
Now, 48 Hours doesn't do a lot of missing persons. So I wondered about just how you approach this story when you really didn't know what the ending was going to look like.
No, that's what, honestly, Emery, that's what made this story unusual and very satisfying. It's rare that a story develops in front of our eyes. But when we start on a missing persons case, the family may have very definite ideas about what happened, but we have to be more careful. There was no evidence of a crime. There was no evidence of a crime scene.
Even though it did seem after that much time hard to believe that she had simply disappeared and gone somewhere else. I think a missing persons case is tougher to report because we have to be very skeptical.
Yeah, I mean, obviously, it became a murder case when they arrested Dale, which was November 2023. But that's just the charge. That's not a conviction by any means. So, you know, police made that arrest two and a half years after D was reported missing.
The other thing, though, about covering this case, and both Sarah and I agree on this, we realize that there's emotions and a poignancy that you don't always encounter in a homicide case, a case that has already been declared a homicide. In this case, the family members were absolutely convinced that Dee had been murdered, but they still had that question. Maybe she was out there.
So they were dealing with the kind of grief that everyone does when someone disappears, but also that fear that she had left them. And what a heartbreak that was. And we could see it in almost every interview.
And so that brings me to the amount of access that you had to the family. It seems like they were really willing to talk.
I think one of the reasons why the family was so open with us was because 48 Hours had started on this story pretty early. We have a development producer by the name of Cindy Caesar who really, about a year after Dee disappeared, had reached out to the family and spoke with them frequently and stayed in touch with them.
And I think it really opened a lot of doors for me when I came and sat down with these family members.
Yeah, Cindy went out to Lenawee County in 2022. So she had been traveling back and forth. The family had vigils and rallies, various things happening in the community to try to get publicity for the case. And Cindy was present for a lot of that and just in contact with them for those couple of years.
And that longevity you talked about when we first started this conversation, that's part of how we do our stories. And it was definitely part of this one and pretty critical.
Yeah, I mean, people should know that there are so many producers that work on an hour. And key is building these genuine relationships with the people involved. You got to be authentic. You got to be real.
Yeah. And, you know, it connects back into how Cindy Caesar, our colleague, got involved in this case. But Dee's sister-in-law, Shelley, was watching 48 Hours. She's a regular viewer, which we appreciate. And she was watching 48 Hours. story about a no-body homicide. And this investigator, Billy Little, in that episode says, you don't have a body, so what?
You don't get to get away with murder because you're good at disposing of bodies. And Shelley tells Erin, she's like, I woke Greg up. You got to see this. And that's how they came to be connected to Billy Little was after watching that show.
OK, so that brings me to this. Really early on, Dee's family suspected that Dale had something to do with her disappearance and ultimately her death. We learn in The Hour that only six weeks after Dee went missing, Dee's brother Greg confronted Dale and he says, you're a liar. I'll get you. What made Greg and the others in Dee's family so convinced that she did not leave independently?
I think there were some inconsistencies. Dale gave different accounts to different family members as they related it to us, and they also just felt like the threads of the stories weren't making sense to them. He had told them that Dee had had a migraine the night before, and they knew she got migraines. But when you have a migraine, it's pretty all-encompassing. You're pretty debilitated.
So she's somehow leaving the house early on Sunday morning with the migraine. I think her family members, when they were talking to us, just thought, this doesn't quite add up.
And everyone said this, that Dee Warner was a nonstop texter. This was a woman who, if you didn't respond to a text, she was sending you another. Everyone said that. And so while there was certainly some evidence that she had disappeared on her own, I should point out, and you hear this in the hour. Her hair iron was missing. Curling iron. Yeah, curling iron was missing.
And her makeup bag and her passport. I mean, that would point to her phone. And there was also a lot of evidence from Dale that he said, look, you know, she could have left on her own. And he was very cooperative with police when he gave police what he did the morning that she disappeared. It matched on video. So I just want to throw that out there, too. He gave reasons that seemed to make sense.
So you have all of that saying, well, maybe she did leave, but that didn't sound like Dee. And most important, at that time when she disappeared, she had a nine-year-old daughter that she was devoted to. And everyone in the family said there's no way she would have left her daughter. So that was really very strong evidence that Dee did not leave on her own.
Yeah. So the night before Dee's reported missing, her daughter had stayed at her cousin's house. And the mom, the cousin's mom, had come over to pick Dee's daughter up and take her away and, you know, then was in touch with Dee later that evening by text to check in on her.
She doesn't get an answer right away, and then she gets the letter K. And now I don't know about you, but when I get the letter K text from someone, I'm like... What's up? Are we OK? And this was not a way that any friends or family of D ever experienced her to communicate.
She never sent that text, the letter K. Well, one of the other things that Dale says is that she left her wedding ring behind. But her family doesn't buy that. Why were they so convinced? I know they said it was really expensive.
A ring worth as much as $40,000. And I can take a very small survey of the three women right now. And if we were really upset with someone, are we going to leave our $40,000 ring behind? Are we going to take it in case we need it down the road? I'm just saying. That's so funny. And I should point out that there was no surveillance video showing her leaving it behind.
It was just another one of those red flags.
Yeah, there were a lot of things that didn't sit right. I think her brother said, you know, she knew where the cameras were. If she were going to walk through to leave her ring, she would have had her middle fingers up and like, you know, march right in, I think is how he characterized it. Like it didn't sound like his sister.
And also no note, no communication after that strange letter K. Dee's family said, you know, it was a lot of things that weren't adding up.
So Greg actually paid to put a billboard up and he said, you know, the slogan was meant to be a little sarcastic. Help Dale find D. He puts it up at a major intersection near his farm. Where did he even get the idea to do something like this?
Well, I think it came from Billy Little, the investigator that they began working with. He suggested that you put pressure on both the person that you think might be involved and on investigators. Let me point out, this is a rural area. You know, if someone had killed her and put her body somewhere, there were so many places. There were acres and acres of farms. So...
It's understandable that even though the sheriff's department did at least seven searches in that first year looking for Dee, there were a lot of places to look. And so the family wanted to put pressure on investigators to say, don't give up. It's a nobody case maybe, but she can be found. Greg talked about how important it was to him and to members of the family to
to see they weren't really alone in this when he would drive in the area and see that other families had the signs that said justice for Dee. There was a lot of pressure to get some kind of justice for Dee.
And that connects, I think, back into the fact that using the press was a strategy, going out in public and the press being part of, you know, the public conversation was strategic and intentional for Greg Hardy, but also for the rest of the family. I think they saw the the power of it.
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Welcome back, everyone. So two and a half years after Dee's disappearance, police arrest Dale and they charge him with Dee's murder. But investigators still have not found her body. How difficult are no body cases to prove in court?
I mean, we were really surprised to hear this. It was actually Billy Little, the investigator who came to court. help Greg Hardy, who told us that no body conviction rates are actually higher. We ran it down and found a source that said 86% conviction rate. And we were really surprised to read that. But keep in mind, prosecutors decide which cases to prosecute, right?
So I think the thing about circumstantial evidence is it's usually an aggregate. You have to add things up and see what the picture is. And the more pieces you have, the more clear things, you know, hopefully become for a jury. And I think in a circumstantial case, there's that much more kind of diligence and attention. So maybe that's the reason. But we were totally surprised by that.
But, you know, just charging someone just means you get a preliminary hearing. Doesn't mean you necessarily get to go to trial. So they really need as much evidence as possible. But there's no evidence of a crime or evidence of a crime scene. No blood anywhere. So this is a tough one.
So speaking of the preliminary hearing, that's where we get a lot of information. And they really kind of dig into the relationship between Dee and Dale. And it wasn't so great. Is there anything that was revealed in the preliminary hearing that did make it into the hour?
Well, there was some evidence presented at this preliminary hearing that there might have been domestic abuse. Apparently, Dee had a massage therapist who testified that there were bruises on her body. But let's keep in mind that she worked on a farm and she ran a trucking business once.
When Dee's masseuse was cross-examined, of course, at that hearing, she admitted that she didn't witness anything that Dee had told her and that she didn't document that anywhere and that she didn't call police.
So for somebody who texted all the time, did she text about any of this stuff to her friends and family?
Yeah, so text messages were introduced at the preliminary hearing. The friend had shared these texts with the detective, and among them one where Dee had texted, I literally thought he could kill me. You know, he, quote, threw me at a dresser and describing her injuries. I have a large goose egg on my head and a sore neck. So there is some substantiation to this from those text messages. Yeah.
And I guess we should remind the audience that a preliminary hearing or a pretrial hearing is really just about putting all the evidence out there to determine whether or not it rises to the level of actually going to trial.
Right. The judge has to make the decision whether there is enough evidence to indicate that the defendant, the person who is charged, was involved with the disappearance and murder. But it is not a murder trial. Right.
So at this point, though, no one really knew what happened to Dee. There was no body. But incredibly, in August of 2024, over three years after Dee went missing, investigators found her body in a large metal tank that is used to store fertilizer. Can you tell us more about how they found Dee?
Can I just start with this? Because Sarah knew first and called me, and I didn't believe her. That just doesn't happen. That, you know, after more than three years that they find Dee, I was like, are they sure? And then I kept thinking why it stuck with me and sticks with me to this moment was because three weeks before they found her, I'm out 100 yards away from where her body was found.
Are you serious? And I'm interviewing her brother. And I'm like thinking, well, she could be anywhere. And she is found 100 yards behind me. I think I feel a relief like everyone else does because I had spent so much time with this family that they now knew where she was. But then this incredible sadness that you can't fool yourself anymore. She is not alive.
And there is no hope that maybe she'll come back home sometime. So it's a very powerful moment, too. Mm-hmm. And I should point out another thing. Even though her body was found on property that Dale and Dee owned, somebody could have gone, I mean, it's- Right next to the road. It is. Somebody could have gone in there and put her body in.
The only clues we have are from the warrant because this is pretrial. And those warrants talk about a security video from Dale and Dee's farm. And they had observed Dale looking for something near the welding equipment. And that, you know, stuck, it seems like, with investigators. That happened, you know, the week she went missing.
And there was on the tank that she was found a non-manufacturing welding line, which would indicate that someone else had disconnected and put this tank together. But we don't know whether it was Dale.
Some other evidence that's in the warrant talks about how there were witnesses who saw Dale painting a tank the week after Gee went missing.
And there's a great other detail that there was a sign on the tank that says, do not fill out of service. And so, again, this was kind of a red flag to them. Yeah. But I think what you can say, even though we don't know exactly all the details of what led investigators to this tank, it was good investigative work. And then they x-rayed it. In the search warrant, it says we will try to x-ray it.
And if that fails, then we will open it up. But x-raying did show a body inside the tank.
Yeah, they took it to the border. There's a border crossing to Canada at Detroit. And they put this tank on a flatbed truck. And you see video, the local affiliates were there. And you see the truck leaving with that tank. And apparently they drove it to the border and used, it's called a radiograph. I didn't know that term before working on this story. But they say they saw a body inside.
And the family says they saw that image. Oh, my gosh. It got to be a really profound moment. Oh, yeah. As Erin was talking about, they believed her to be dead. And so I think on one level, having it confirmed was a relief. But on another level, it was this incredible grief that had not been complete before because they had uncertainty. And now that changed.
Let me ask you a question just because, Sarah, you said that they believed her to be dead. They had her declared dead, which I would think would be really tough because you want to hang on to hope, but obviously they felt the declaration was important.
Did any of the family members talk about the decision to have her declared dead, why they thought they needed to do that before a body was even found?
One of the reasons has to do with legal, you know, be able to have some control over her financial assets. So part of it was just practical.
Yeah. And I think also when we were talking to her brother, Greg, He was frustrated that he wasn't learning more about the investigation. And Erin and I kept saying, that's very normal. It's really what they do. And it really probably would drive me crazy, too. But they have to protect the integrity of the investigation. So Greg's in the dark.
He doesn't know what's going to happen, even after they make an arrest, what will come of the case in court without physical evidence, because they didn't have it at the time. So I think there was a thinking in his mind and, you know, among some of the other family members to kind of do concurrently anything they could do to kind of advance things.
You know, you can have a wrongful death case in civil court once someone is declared dead. So, yeah, it was a step in that direction potentially, too. Where do you think stand with this case?
What's next? the trial. At this moment, there is a trial scheduled for fall of 2025. We know from working 48 hours, you do too, Anne-Marie, that those dates are very flexible, but that's where it stands.
Dale has pleaded not guilty. We were in touch with his attorney a bit. I got to meet her when we attended the preliminary hearing when we'd been hoping she would sit down for an interview. She ultimately declined, which is very normal pre-trial, after Dee's body was found.
She emailed me to say that Mr. Warner maintains his innocence and we're prepared to vigorously fight for him in court and present his defense. And then she went on to say, but we think it's best presented in court at this point and not to the media. So that was important to hear, especially in the context that the preliminary hearing was all before her body was found.
So they are not shifting in their defense of Dale.
There's so much we don't know. We don't have an autopsy. So we don't know if there was time of death or how she died. If they even know. Right. And there's so, so many questions that we still have that hopefully will be answered at trial. Yeah.
Well, I look forward to the update because I know 48 hours will stay on this case. It was another fascinating hour. Sarah, Erin, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for having us. If you like this series, Postmortem, please rate and review 48 Hours on Apple Podcasts and follow 48 Hours wherever you get your podcasts.
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