Fire at brother of missing woman Dee Warner's farm, office complex under investigation
TIPTON — A July 20 fire at the farm and office complex of missing woman Dee Warner’s brother, Gregg Hardy, is under investigation.
Hardy’s son Parker, who lives across the road from Hardy’s Holsteins complex at the intersection of Wisner Highway and West Munger Road, noticed the fire at the maternity barn around 11:40 p.m. He called 911 while he and Hardy tried to move the cows from the barn to safety.
By the time firefighters responded at 11:44 p.m., flames were rising through the roof of the barn, Sand Lake Fire Chief Howard Kapp said.
In addition to Sand Lake, the Clinton, Cambridge Township, Tecumseh, Raisin Township, Ridgeway Township, Addison, Manchester and Adrian Township fire departments responded to the fire at Hardy’s Holsteins. Lenawee Community Ambulance also stood by on scene.
It took approximately five hours to get the fire under control, and firefighters remained on scene putting out hot spots until 10 a.m. July 21.
The Hardys lost 28 cows, most of them pregnant, and the entire complex is a total loss. The cows in the maternity barn were special genetic show cows that were carefully nursed through the birthing process.
Hardy had just rebuilt a 200-year-old milking barn in 2018 after a 2017 fire was accidentally started by a repair person fixing a coolant line. A spark from the worker’s welder went into the barn’s insulation and over time held enough heat to explode.
“This one is much different from the other fire. There was a cause of the other fire from a repair person and that was tragic, but we knew what did it. In this particular case, we know what did not do it,” Hardy said. “I do know that it isn’t something that started organically here from the farm. I do know that for sure.”
Hardy said he confirmed this with his insurance company’s fire investigator. The fire is under investigation by the Lenawee County Fire Investigation Team, and a state fire marshal has been contacted but has been unavailable thus far, Kapp said. Hardy said he has requested state help in the fire investigation approximately 25 times and has not received a response.
The Hardys are unsure whether they will rebuild at this time. They are in the process of taking an inventory of everything that was lost.
“When you look at the personal property side, we have office furniture, we have computers, we have cameras, we had a laboratory where we did embryos. It’s endless the amount of stuff that was destroyed,” Hardy said. “It’s easy to calculate the building structure itself; it’s the contents that’s difficult to do.”
The most difficult part is salvaging personal items of sentimental value from the offices where the family and their staff worked for many years. The family has had help from close neighbors and friends to sift through the ashes and rubble to find these items, but it is difficult to assess everything they have lost, Hardy said.
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In the midst of it all, the Hardys are in a fierce legal battle with Dee Warner’s husband, Dale Warner, whom they suspect murdered Dee April 24, 2021. Several of Dee’s close friends say that she was crying all day after getting into a heated argument with Dale and was going to ask him for a divorce that night.
The Hardys are seeking a declaration of death for Dee among other legal action and hired several private investigators to look into Dee’s disappearance before settling on attorney Billy Little. Little interviewed more than 50 people in the investigation and is still in contact with Hardy on a regular basis discussing strategy and the intricacies of the case.
Michigan State Police took over the investigation in August 2022 at Lenawee County Sheriff Troy Bevier's request.
Little suspects that Dee was murdered by Dale for financial reasons.
Hardy said the family has received little communication from the prosecutor’s office or state police in the case.
This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Fire at brother of missing woman Dee Warner's farm under investigation
