ADRIAN — A stepdaughter and a sister-in-law of a Tecumseh, Mich. man accused of killing his wife and somehow disposing of her body both testified during court proceedings Wednesday that the woman was ready to divorce her husband.
And Rikkell Bock, Dee Warner’s daughter by a previous marriage, said that while her mother had left the Munger Road home she shared with Dale Warner on many past occasions, her disappearance April 25, 2021, was remarkable because she had never left before without telling others where she was going.
Ms. Bock had said earlier during her appearance at Mr. Warner’s preliminary examination that she also was troubled by the fact that both of the vehicles her mother normally drove — a Cadillac Escalade and a Hummer — were still at the home when she went there with her two children and boyfriend for their usual Sunday breakfast, but Mrs. Warner was nowhere to be found.
Ms. Bock was the last of five witnesses to take the stand in Michigan District Court 2A before Judge Anna Frushour during the first day of a proceeding expected to run at least into Friday.
But neither Ms. Bock nor any of the others professed any direct knowledge of what became of Mrs. Warner, 51, after the last time she was seen early that morning or late the previous evening.
Instead, the day’s testimony centered on what the witnesses painted as a strained relationship between the couple that included conflict over their family businesses’ finances, suspicions of infidelity, and possible drug abuse.
Mr. Warner, 55, is charged with open murder and tampering with evidence in connection with the disappearance of Mrs. Warner, whose body has never been found.
A probate judge declared her dead last month, but defense lawyers said during Wednesday’s proceeding that her actual death will be among the elements prosecutors will need to prove at trial, along with whether she was murdered and, if so, by whom. The probate judge’s ruling has been appealed.
Mr. Warner was arrested shortly before Thanksgiving. Authorities did not disclose at the time what information they had obtained that led to the arrest 2½ years after his wife went missing, although Mrs. Warner’s relatives said at the time there had been a history of domestic violence.
The preliminary examination’s purpose is to determine whether the case should be bound over to circuit court, and eventually to a possible jury trial there. In that regard, the judge will function as would a grand jury, albeit in a public proceeding rather than behind closed doors.
Amy Alexander, married to Mr. Warner’s brother Bill Warner, said Wednesday morning that when she went to Dee and Dale’s home the afternoon before Mrs. Warner vanished to pick up the Warners’ daughter, Angalena, for a play date with her own daughter and another friend, Mrs. Warner was clearly upset.
“You could tell she had been crying. She had blotchy marks around her neck,” Ms. Alexander testified, before remarking that Mrs. Warner also was comparatively disheveled compared to the usual attention she paid to her hair and makeup.
“She said she wanted to sell the trucking company and be done,” the sister-in-law said.
Asked what Mrs. Warner wanted to “be done” with, Ms. Alexander replied: “The marriage.”
Ms. Bock said divorce had been a “common conversation” Mrs. Warner had with her, but that day was different.
“She was absolutely ready to file for divorce” after having a “fight” with several employees of one of the couple’s businesses, and described her marriage as “already over,” the daughter said.
“She said, ‘I don’t even have the energy to pack my bags,’” Ms. Bock said.
And one of the last things she said her mother told her before she left the house was that she regularly watched the Dateline television show, on which real-life murder mysteries are a common subject, and believed Dale might similarly make her disappear.
Ms. Bock conceded under cross-examination that her mother was an attention-seeker “who didn’t put up with a lot of anything” and was prone to drama, overreaction, and outbursts. But “I never heard her talking about being scared” until the last time, she said.
Ms. Bock said she spoke with her stepfather later in the day Sunday, after the missed breakfast, and he seemed obsessed with the myriad medications Mrs. Warner had around the house but unperturbed by her absence, even though he had her wedding ring that he said he had found on his desk in his office.
Mr. Warner “said she was leaving in the middle of the night, and he didn’t know where she was going,” she told the court. She also said he stated Mrs. Warner had “ruined his life” and “everything I’ve worked for is gone,” yet she told the defense lawyers that her stepfather still expected his wife to return.
Also testifying Wednesday morning was Kyle Wagner, an information technology specialist who worked on the family businesses’ computers and security systems; and Tom Neyrinck, who managed DDW Investments and DDW Transportation for the couple and occasionally also drove one of the latter’s trucks.
Mr. Wagner said that at a time when Mrs. Warner was in a hospital facing a possible medical procedure, Mr. Warner asked him to clone her cell phone, but he declined to do so without the wife’s permission. And the day after Mrs. Warner disappeared, Mr. Wagner said, Mr. Warner asked to meet with him — but initially not in the DDW office — to regain cell phone access to the property’s camera network that the husband had lost about a month earlier when the system’s internet-service provider was changed.
Mr. Neyrinck, meanwhile, said he went to the Warner property about 3:25 a.m. on the 25th to drive one of its trucks to northwest Indiana — a trip he said he regularly made on Sunday mornings to haul limestone. He said he noticed a light and television on in the house, but that wasn’t unusual for that time of day.
Mr. Neyrinck said he had last seen a “frazzled” Mrs. Warner in person two days before in the DDW office building, and spoke with her by phone the following morning.
“She was just not herself. She was not dressed her normal self,” he recalled, describing her as “even more unreasonable” than she could be when she was stressed about something.
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