Murder in the Heartland

DEE WARNER WENT MISSING—THEN THREE YEARS LATER WAS FOUND DEAD IN A FERTILIZER TANK ON HER FAMILY’S MICHIGAN FARM. INSIDE THE SHOCKING CASE

- K.C. BAKER,CHRISTINE PELISEK

A MOM MOURNED Authorities allege Dale Warner killed his wife, Dee (inset); her body was discovered on the couple's property in Tipton, Mich.

As an entrepreneur who managed farming, fertilizer and trucking businesses alongside her husband in rural Michigan, Dee Warner had a reputation for being aggressive. “She had a tough personality,” says her older brother Gregg Hardy, 76. Yet despite being the boss at work, the 52-year-old mother and stepmother of nine children could also be funny and affectionate with family.

“She was never not sarcastic and laughing and giving me a hard time,” her nephew Parker Hardy, 31, fondly recalls. But on April 23, 2021, when Parker stopped by the 1,500-acre farm in Tipton, Mich., where Dee lived with her husband, Dale, 57, and their then-9-year-old daughter Angalena, he was struck by his aunt’s melancholy mood. “She was just very different that day,” he says. “ ‘Defeated,’ I think, would be the best terminology.”

ON VACATION Dale and Dee Warner (inset) took their children from previous marriages and baby Angalena (far right) on a trip to Cancún, Mexico, in 2013.