TECUMSEH, Mich. – Shortly after his sister Dee Ann Warner vanished, Gregg Hardy happened into a barn on the Lenawee County property where she and her husband, Dale, lived to find Mr. Warner spray-painting an old anhydrous ammonia tank.
Mr. Warner’s explanation that it was a simple maintenance task didn’t seem right, Mr. Hardy said Sunday, because the fertilizer tank was as small as others he had been selling off, and in any case Mr. Warner tended not to do such manual labor himself.
But relatives and friends were dubious enough of the tank’s significance that Mr. Hardy didn’t advocate for a more thorough look at it until earlier this month, he said, when a conversation with Michigan State Police investigators led him to suggest it as one of several potential search locations that deserved another look.
The tank, Mr. Hardy said, was intended to be Mrs. Warner’s tomb.
The state police announced Sunday morning that human remains had been found “during the execution of a search warrant in Lenawee County on property belonging to Dale Warner.”
The announcement said the remains were “currently in the process of being recovered and there will be a great deal of work and testing completed before positive identification is made.”
Mr. Hardy said he is confident, however, that the remains are those of his sister, considering the degree of effort required to get a body into such a tank.
The tank would have to have been cut open at a seam, then welded back together afterward, he said. And whoever did such a thing would have had to know that the tank was so old that any residual product inside would have had time to vaporize and seep out, he said, because otherwise a cutting torch might be hot enough to trigger an explosion.
The discovery “is a relief,” Mr. Hardy said, even though “what he went through to hide her body was pretty hard to stomach.”
An autopsy is scheduled for Tuesday at the Jackson County Medical Examiner’s office.
Mrs. Warner went missing April 25, 2021 from her home on Munger Road in Franklin Township, northwest of Tecumseh, and searches of the surrounding area turned up nothing.
Despite the absence of a body, Mr. Warner, 56, was arrested in November and charged with open murder and tampering with evidence.
County authorities declared Mrs. Warner legally dead in March, and in June, Anna Frushour, a visiting judge from Washtenaw County, found probable cause for the charges against Mr. Warner and bound them over to circuit court after hearing three days of testimony.
Relatives described during the hearing a turbulent relationship between the Warners that had worsened after the family’s farm services businesses began to collapse financially. On the night before she went missing, Mr. Warner later recounted to investigators, Mrs. Warner told him she was "done with him and wants to sell everything."
But he dismissed her disappearance at the time as something she occasionally did to cool down after arguments. Relatives countered that while that was true, she remained in contact with them during prior occasions.
In March, 2022, authorities announced the formation of a task force that included the county sheriff, Michigan State Police, and the FBI as part of the investigation into Mrs. Warner's disappearance.
An investigator who carried the case with him to the state police after initially pursuing it for the county testified during the spring hearing that more than 3,000 acres had been searched.
Mr. Hardy said Sunday there had been “a noticeable shift” in investigators’ approach to the case after the hearing before Judge Frushour. One recent conversation about what the state police determined regarding her last known location, he said, prompted a recollection about the old fertilizer tank.
After state police retrieved the tank Friday, Mr. Hardy said, it was taken to a border inspection station and X-rayed. While the X-ray wasn’t sharp enough to show a skeleton, he said, it was clear enough that a body form was inside that the tank was cut open Saturday and the remains, wrapped in a blue plastic tarp, were taken out.
“They found it,” Mr. Hardy said. “That’s what matters, and we’re very grateful.”
Mr. Warner’s next appearance in 39th Circuit Court in Adrian is scheduled for Sept. 4.
First Published August 18, 2024, 5:53 p.m.
