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

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

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

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

Dee and Dale Warner owned a trucking company with about 15 employees. They also owned an agricultural business, growing crops, and a chemical business that sold fertilizer and seeds, all based on their rural property. Dee Warner is described by his friends and family as a good businessman: tough, generous and hardworking.

Bock said she and her adult siblings had seen their mother the day before she disappeared and that Dee Warner told them she had gotten into a fight with two trucking company employees that Saturday. Bock says her mother was very upset that day, which was part of the reason for the decision to call the sheriff’s office and report her missing that Sunday.

After police received that call, the Lenawee County Sheriff’s Office sent a deputy to the Warner home. Dale Warner met with the deputy and told him about his wife’s argument with their employees the day before. He said Dee had been upset, but he wasn’t that alarmed because he noticed her makeup bag, hairdryer and curling iron were missing. He also said his wife had already left when she was upset. Dale Warner told police he thought his wife would calm down and come home.

Dee Warner’s brother Gregg Hardy and his wife Shelley Hardy say they feared Dee Warner had been so upset that she had harmed herself – and wondered if that was why no one could find her. Gregg Hardy says he organized about 50 people to conduct 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 searches proved fruitless.

Gregg Hardy says that on the day of this search, Dale Warner showed up on a four-wheeler and “wasn’t really participating.” Gregg Hardy says he soon began to fear that Dale Warner might have harmed his sister, telling Moriarty: “I was getting this, call it a hunch if you want, whatever you want to call it, but I was very suspicious of his ways.”

Over time, Gregg Hardy says his suspicions only grew. Hardy says it was about six weeks after Dee Warner’s disappearance 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 swore to get her.

Police repeatedly searched for any trace of Dee Warner, but found no sign of her dead or alive, nor any signs of violence. Dale Warner voluntarily spoke to police on several occasions about his wife and allowed them to search his properties on several occasions. He would later claim, through a lawyer, that he had not harmed Dee and that he had repeatedly denied harming her during his conversations with police.

Gregg Hardy held a public vigil on his farm in fall 2021 to publicly demand justice and call attention to his sister’s case. At that vigil, Hardy accused Dale Warner of telling a concocted story that his sister had left alone. Hardy told “48 Hours” he can’t wait for police to take action. But the former county prosecutor says he stressed to Hardy at the time how important it was to find a body or similar physical evidence and that he was aware of the risks of making an arrest too quickly.

Three months after this vigil, Shelley Hardy watched a episode of “48 hours” about a case in which the victim’s family suspected foul play, but there was no body. The episode featured attorney and investigator Billy Little, who said of that other case, “You don’t have a body. So what? You can’t get away with murder because you’re good at disposing of bodies.”

Gregg and Shelley Hardy say they were both moved by the statement and wanted to track down 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 help.

According to Gregg Hardy, Little’s help was partly strategic: he gave her advice on how to use the press to publicize Dee Warner’s case. And Little says he did a lot of footwork — talking to potential witnesses, walking around properties where Hardy thought he might find evidence, and flying drones above the grounds to search for clues.

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

The billboard was intended to be sarcastic, Little and Hardy say, because they both didn’t think Dale Warner was acting like a worried husband. Little also said the billboard was almost intended to be a form of psychological pressure on Warner and to publicly shame him for his belief that he was not doing enough to reunite with his wife.

With a community of Dee’s friends and supporters, Little and Hardy continued to organize more rallies and vigils, and pushed for state police to take over the case from the county sheriff. Michigan State Police took over Dee Warner’s case in August 2022, but had already assisted in the investigation, as had the FBI. In November 2023, state police arrested Dale Warner and charged him with the murder of Dee Warner. Dale Warner has pleaded not guilty.

At the time of this arrest, police had still found no trace of Dee Warner. Dale Warner was scheduled to go to trial in June 2024 and his murder trial is scheduled to begin on September 2, 2025.

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

In August 2024, shortly after Dale Warner went to trial, police found a major piece of physical evidence in the case.

On March 10, 2026, a jury found Dale Warner guilty of second-degree murder and tampering with evidence in the death of Dee Warner.