Billboard trolls missing Michigan woman Dee Warner’s husband, suspected of her murder

Dee Warner disappeared on a Sunday morning in the spring, just as the first crops were being planted in the farmland of Lenawee County, Michigan. Warner, 52, was living on a farm with her second husband, Dale Warner, and their one child together, then 9. The Warners ran three main businesses from their farm, and Dee Warner had four adult children from her first marriage — all living on their own.

Dee Warner’s daughter, Rikkell Bock, lived about a half-mile from her mother’s farm — close enough to see her mom’s house from her own front yard.

It was Bock who first noticed Dee Warner was missing, on April 25, 2021, when she came over for their weekly Sunday breakfast and found no sign of her mom at home. Both of Dee Warner’s cars were on the property, and she was not responding to calls or texts, which Bock says was very unusual. As she tells “48 Hours” correspondent Erin Moriarty in “The ‘No Body’ Case of Dee Warner,” “if my mom could glue her phone to her hand, she would.”

Dee and Dale Warner owned a trucking business with about 15 employees. They also had a farm business, raising crops, and a chemical company that sold fertilizer and seed, all based on their rural property. Dee Warner is described by friends and family as a good businessperson — tough, generous and hard-working. 

Bock says she and her adult siblings had seen their mother the day before she disappeared and says Dee Warner told them she had been in a fight with two employees from the trucking business that Saturday. Bock says her mom was very upset that day, which is part of the reason they made the decision to call the sheriff’s office and report her missing that Sunday.

After police got that call, the Lenawee County Sheriff’s Office sent a deputy out to the Warner home. Dale Warner met the deputy and told him about his wife’s fight with their employees the day before. He said Dee had been upset, but that he wasn’t that alarmed because he noticed her makeup bag, hair dryer and curling iron were gone. He also said his wife had been known to leave before when upset. Dale Warner told police that he thought his wife would cool off and come back home.

Dee Warner’s brother Gregg Hardy and his wife Shelley Hardy say they were worried that Dee Warner had been so upset that she may have harmed herself — and wondered if that was why no one could find her. Gregg Hardy says he organized about 50 people to do a foot search of the farmland around his sister’s farm the weekend after she was reported missing, to see if they could find any trace of her. Their search came up empty.

Gregg Hardy says on the day of that search, Dale Warner showed up on a four-wheeler and “doesn’t really participate.” Gregg Hardy says he soon began to fear that Dale Warner may have harmed his sister, telling Moriarty, “I was getting these, call it a gut feeling if you like, whatever you’d call it, but I was very suspicious of his mannerisms.” 

As time passed, Gregg Hardy says his suspicion only grew. Hardy says it was about six weeks after Dee Warner had disappeared when he asked Dale Warner how he thought the investigation was going. He says Dale Warner told him he thought the search for his wife was a little slow, but OK, and Hardy says he accused Warner of lying about what happened to his wife and vowed to get him.

Police had searched repeatedly for any trace of Dee Warner, but found no sign of her dead or alive, and no signs of violence. Dale Warner spoke to police many times voluntarily about his wife and allowed them to search his properties on several occasions. He would later assert, through an attorney, that he had not harmed Dee and that he had repeatedly denied harming her in his conversations with police.

Gregg Hardy organized a public vigil at his farm in the fall of 2021 to publicly ask for justice and draw attention to his sister’s case. At that vigil, Hardy accused Dale Warner of telling a concocted story that his sister had left on her own. Hardy told “48 Hours” that he was impatient for police to make a move. But the now former county prosecutor says he emphasized to Hardy at the time how important finding a body or similar physical evidence was and was aware of the risks of making an arrest too quickly.

Three months after that vigil, Shelley Hardy was watching an episode of “48 Hours” about a case where the victim’s family suspected foul play, but there was no body. The episode featured attorney and investigator Billy Little, who said about that other case, “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.”

Gregg and Shelley Hardy say they were both moved by that statement, and wanted to find Little and see if he could help them with Dee Warner’s case. Little came to Lenawee County the next month to do what he could to assist.

Part of Little’s help, Gregg Hardy says, was strategic: he gave Hardy advice on how to use the press to get the word out about Dee Warner’s case. And Little says he did a lot of footwork — talking to potential witnesses, walking properties where Hardy thought they might find evidence, and flying drones over the land to look for clues.

Part of that effort, they both say, was to make Dale Warner feel the pressure of their investigation. Soon after Little came to help, Hardy says he paid for a billboard that read, “Help Dale Find Dee,” and put it up at a big intersection near the Warner home, where, Hardy says, the truck drivers from their trucking company would be sure to see it.

The billboard was intended sarcastically, Little and Hardy say, since they both didn’t think Dale Warner was acting like a concerned husband. Little also said the billboard was intended almost as a form of psychological pressure on Warner, and to publicly shame him for their belief that he was not doing enough to find his wife.

With a community of Dee’s friends and supporters, Little and Hardy continued to hold more rallies, and vigils, and lobbied to have state police take over the case from the county sheriff. Michigan State Police did take over Dee Warner’s case in August 2022, but had been assisting on the investigation before that, as did the FBI. In November 2023, state police arrested Dale Warner and charged him with Dee Warner’s murder. Dale Warner pleaded not guilty.

At the time of that arrest, police still had not found any trace of Dee Warner. Dale Warner was bound over for trial in June of 2024 and his trial for murder is slated to begin on Sept. 2, 2025.

Dale Warner and his attorney declined to speak to “48 Hours” about the case pretrial, as did the state police and the county prosecutor. Warner’s attorney told “48 Hours” in an email that “Mr. Warner maintains his innocence, and we are prepared to vigorously fight for him in court and present his defense.”

In August 2024, soon after Dale Warner was bound over for trial, police found a major piece of physical evidence in the case.

For details of that discovery and more about the case, watch “The No Body Case of Dee Warner.”