Human remains identified as Dee Warner, Michigan State Police report

JACKSON — Dee Ann Warner is no longer missing.

Human remains found in an anhydrous ammonia tank on property belonging to her husband, Dale Warner, have been positively identified as Dee, who had been missing for more than three years.

Michigan State Police announced Wednesday evening that the identification came after further investigation following the autopsy that was conducted Tuesday by the Jackson County Medical Examiner's Office. The autopsy did not immediately lead to an identification.

The remains were found after police searched Warner properties this past weekend and opened an anhydrous ammonia tank that was at a parcel on Paragon Road in Lenawee County's Franklin Township. The property is about 2 miles south of the Warners' residence and farm.

Dee Warner's death has been ruled a homicide, state police said, but how she died is being withheld.

"Although there has been positive identification on the remains and manner of death has been confirmed, this is an ongoing investigation," the post on X , formerly Twitter, said. "Investigators will continue to gather evidence and work with the Lenawee County Prosecutor’s Office to ensure a conviction."

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Dale Warner, 56, is charged with open murder and tampering with evidence in Dee's death and disappearance. He was arrested in November, and the charges were bound over to Lenawee County Circuit Court in June after a preliminary examination in district court. His next court date is a pretrial hearing Sept. 4. He is being held at the Lenawee County Jail on $15 million in bonds .

The announcement "brings some finality to this long journey, as far as finding her, which we thought we would never end. It brings some authenticity to what we've believed in for a long time," Dee's brother Gregg Hardy of Tipton said Wednesday night. "…It also kind of underscores that we were on the trail of truth and the trail of justice."

Finding Dee's remains also will quiet the skeptics who thought perhaps she had left not only Dale but the rest of her family and was alive somewhere.

"I have a lot of anger towards those people who kept propagating that kind of thing, that they had no factual information for whatsoever," Hardy said.

Dental records that were a "perfect match" were used to identify the remains, Hardy said, along with other things such as jewelry.

Police have told the family what the cause of death was.

"I'll let them make it public, but I can tell you for sure that that I do know the cause of death," Hardy said. "It was not a shock to me, because of the evidence around all the things that we had worked on so hard in preparation for trying to get a no-body conviction, so it was a confirmation of what we knew was really what it ended up being."

Police conducted the most recent search of the Paragon Road property and the Warners' residence after Hardy suggested that Dale Warner may have cut open an old anhydrous tank, put Dee's body in it, welded the tank shut and sanded and painted it. Hardy said this past Sunday that police telling him they had video showing Dale moving welding equipment into the barn at their residence and farm where he kept the fertilizer sprayer reminded him that shortly after Dee went missing he saw Dale refurbishing an old tank in the sprayer barn, and he shared that information with police.

Hardy said keeping welding equipment in the sprayer barn would have been unusual because the chemicals stored their are corrosive to the welding equipment, and it didn't make sense to him why Warner would be trying to refurbish an old tank or even do the sanding and painting himself when he ordinarily would have a hired hand do that kind of work.

The tank found on the Paragon Road property had newer paint and an unprofessional-looking weld on it and was marked "do not use," Hardy said. Police took the tank to an X-ray facility at the U.S.-Canada border in Detroit, and the images showed a body inside. When it was opened, the remains were found wrapped in a blue tarp.

Dee Warner, 52, was last seen alive April 24, 2021. She was reported missing by her adult children when she was not at home when her adult daughter arrived on the morning of April 25, 2021, for their usual Sunday breakfast together and she was not at her son's home, which is where she would sometimes go if she and Dale had an argument.

Investigators suspect Dale murdered Dee during an argument overnight April 24-25, 2021, then he hid her body.

Dee Warner was declared deceased in March by Lenawee County Probate Judge Catherine A. Sala as part of proceedings related to her estate.

— Contact reporter David Panian at dpanian@lenconnect.com or follow him on X, formerly Twitter: @lenaweepanian .

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Human remains identified as Dee Warner, Michigan State Police report