ADRIAN — The stepson of a Tecumseh, Mich., man charged with murder for his wife's 2021 disappearance testified Thursday that his mother texted him the day before she vanished about her intent to sign the family trucking business — the only one of several family enterprises that was solidly profitable — over to him.
"I'm done with this, I'm signing everything over to you," Zack Bock said the text from Dee Warner told him.
The next day, Mr. Bock recounted, he went to the offices at his mother's and stepfather's farmstead and encountered Dale Warner near a parked truck as he tried to figure out why Mrs. Warner didn't seem to be around.
"He said, 'You really don't know where your mom is?' and I said, 'No,'" Mr. Bock testified in Michigan District 2A Court.
The two men entered the office building and, shortly thereafter, Mr. Warner produced Mrs. Warner's wedding ring, which he said he had found on the desk in his office there.
Mr. Bock testified he then spent several hours reviewing surveillance footage from inside the office as well as other parts of the grounds to see if Mrs. Warner appeared anywhere since the previous day, since he had not noticed the wedding ring when he previously observed Mr. Warner's desk.
Mr. Bock's turn on the witness stand began an abbreviated second day of a preliminary examination of Mr. Warner, 56, who is charged with open murder and tampering with evidence for the April 25, 2021 disappearance and presumed death of Mrs. Warner, 51.
The hearing began at midday because visiting Judge Anna Frushour, from Washtenaw County, had morning business at her home court.
Whether Mrs. Warner even had the ability to turn the trucking business over to her son was called into question by Mr. Warner's defense lawyer.
Attorney Mary Chartiers asked Mr. Bock if he was aware of a probate proceeding that, among other things, determined the Warners had 50/50 ownership of all of their ventures rather than the wife being the sole owner of the truck operation. Mr. Bock said he did not know that.
The defense lawyer also called out Mr. Bock for having watched an online playback Wednesday evening of his sister Rikkel Bock's testimony that afternoon in the same proceeding.
Mr. Bock responded that he knew he was not allowed in the courtroom while any prior witnesses took the stand, but said he was never told why nor understood watching the video playback to have violated the court's "separation of witnesses" order.
"I wasn't aware I shouldn't watch TV," he said before remarking that what his sister said "wasn't affecting anything I would have said."
Rikkel Bock and Amy Alexander, the wife of Mr. Warner's brother Bill Warner, had both said on the witness stand Wednesday that Mrs. Warner had broached the subject with them of divorcing Mr. Warner. Ms. Bock also said her mother had mused the day before she disappeared about the possibility her husband could make her disappear the way it often happened in cases described on the Dateline documentary television show she regularly watched.
Mr. Bock said his sister's was the only testimony he had watched from Wednesday's proceedings.
Although he admitted during cross-examination to having no formal accountancy training, Mr. Bock said he kept the books for the Warners' businesses starting in 2008, when he was 16, until he was "24 or 25," and came back shortly thereafter to "clean up the books" after an accountant had been fired.
He said the Warners jointly owned two farm businesses and an agricultural supplier.
A vegetable farm among the ag businesses was a financial drain and the other farm was marginal, Mr. Bock said.
Money was repeatedly transferred from the trucking company to offset the other ventures' losses, he said, and for a while, the Warners were threatened with both foreclosure of their farm properties and repossession of their farm machinery because of loan delinquencies. That was resolved when they sold the real estate to a local John Deere dealer who then sold it back to them under a land contract, he said.
The Warners also became the subject of an Internal Revenue Service audit, Mr. Bock said. It was not clear from his testimony if that audit has been resolved.
Mr. Bock also said he had several discussions with his stepfather about his farming operations' financial viability in which he described them as "a failing company that was going to take everything down."
To that Mr. Warner responded, Mr. Bock said, that he was a farmer with no friends, no hobbies, and nothing else he could do.
Mr. Bock said he and his mother jointly acquired the "lake house" on Sand Lake in northern Lenawee County to which she retreated once a month "on average" after arguments with her husband.
The residence on Munger Road had belonged to Mrs. Warner's family and was handed down to her, he said.
Representatives of General Motors and the Michigan State Police also testified Thursday, and they described data retrieval from the OnStar system on a Cadillac Escalade Mrs. Warner regularly drove and from a cell phone belonging to Mr. Warner.
Devin Newell, a senior technical expert for GM, said that between Jan. 1, 2020 and April 28, 2021, the Cadillac's OnStar received more than 2,000 vehicle-location requests, with "numerous cases" occurring when the vehicle was moving. All of the requests from March 22, 2021 onward came from a cell phone of the same model that the state police said belonged to Mr. Warner.
The last request to the OnStar system, on the morning of April 25, 2021, was an "unlock door" request.
However, Mr. Newell acknowledged under cross-examination that the system only recorded the unique device identifier in the OnStar system. There was no way to know who was using the cell phone involved, he said.
The preliminary examination serves a purpose resembling that of a grand jury proceeding, except that prosecutors present their case to a judge and witnesses testify in open court and may be cross-examined by the defendant's counsel. Judge Frushour, in this case, will decide if sufficient evidence exists to bind the case over to circuit court for a possible trial.
Mrs. Warner's body has never been found. A probate judge ruled in mid-March that she is dead, although that finding has been appealed.
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