John Jefferson
Left: Dale Warner (Lenawee County Jail). Right: Dee Ann Warner (Crimestoppers)
State police in Michigan said they found human remains on property belonging to a murder defendant months after he was charged with killing his missing wife. Cops have not said whether this is in fact the victim, Dee Ann Warner, 52, because they are still working on positive identification, but they say that they have contacted her family about the discovery.
Dale Warner was charged back in November 2023 with open murder and tampering with evidence. Cops said Sunday that they found the remains while executing a search warrant on property belonging to him in Lenawee County.
“During the execution of a search warrant in Lenawee County on property belonging to Dale Warner human remains were found,” they wrote. “The remains are currently in the process of being recovered and there will be a great deal of work and testing completed before positive identification is made.”
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Family reported Dee Warner missing on April 25, 2021 — she had been last seen either on that day or the 24th of that month. Authorities charged her husband a year and eight months later. Her family believed he abused her.
“Our family has suffered a long share (and) there’s one person who could have eliminated all of that, and that’s the person who is in jail tonight,” her brother, Gregg Hardy, told Detroit-based NBC affiliate WDIV in a report from Nov. 22, 2023. “My sister was a very strong person. I do believe that she thought she could handle the task at hand. She suffered from the same thing a lot of battered women have, and that is (thinking) they can change the person that they’re married to.”
The missing woman ran a trucking company out of the barns located on her property on Mugner Road in the Lenawee County township of Franklin, roughly 70 miles southwest of Detroit, according to the outlet. On May 6, 2021, some two weeks after her family last made contact with her, the non-profit Crime Stoppers shared information about her case and requested the public’s assistance in helping to solve the mystery of her disappearance. By then, Dee Warner’s cellular phone was dead and there was no activity in her bank accounts.
Colin Kalmbacher contributed to this report.
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