Lenawee County judge reduces murder defendant Dale Warner's bond to $15 million

ADRIAN — Defendant Dale John Warner’s bond was reduced Monday to $15 million, but a judge expressed reservations about his willingness to follow court orders should he be released from jail.

Warner, 55, of Tipton has been in the Lenawee County Jail since Nov. 21 when Michigan State Police detectives arrested him on open murder and tampering with evidence charges. He is accused of murdering his wife, Dee Ann Warner, in April 2021 and tampering with evidence. Her body has not been found. Dee Warner was 52 when she went missing.

A magistrate originally set Dale Warner’s bond at $20 million — $15 million on the murder charge and $5 million on the tampering with evidence charge. Lenawee County District Judge Laura J. Schaedler on Monday reduced the bond on the murder charge to $10 million.

One of Warner’s attorneys, Mary Chartier of Okemos, argued Monday in Lenawee County District Court that $20 million is “an astronomical amount that no individual could truly meet.”

Chartier said the investigation into Dee Warner’s disappearance has been ongoing for 2½ years, and Dale Warner has made no attempts to flee during that time despite knowing he was a suspect. She noted his long, family ties to the community, where he owns a farming business.

Addressing concerns Schaedler expressed last week about the tampering charge, Chartier said if those concerns are from the criminal contempt of court charge from Lenawee County Probate Judge Catherine A. Sala in the proceedings earlier this year regarding Dee Warner’s conservatorship, they should not be the basis for concerns about what Warner might do if released.

“His property was searched multiple times by dozens, if not hundreds, of police officers, so certainly there’s no concerns about him destroying any alleged piece of evidence on his property,” she said.

They would agree to having Warner wear a GPS tracking device and the court could order him to stay at his home, Chartier said.

The information Chartier said the Lenawee County Prosecutor’s Office has provided to her showed the actions related to the probate court contempt charge happened from November 2021 to October 2022.

“Given that the police and prosecutor likely have been following what’s been going on in the conservator and other civil cases, no one had much of a concern about Mr. Warner because, again, this is well over a year ago,” Chartier said.

“We do believe that there is a significant risk of nonappearance by the defendant,” Lenawee County Assistant Prosecutor Dave McCreedy said.

The attorney for Dee Warner’s conservator has indicated that Dale Warner “has access to an unknown source of cash,” McCreedy said, and he said Sala indicated assets had disappeared from Dee Warner’s estate.

Dale Warner has traveled four times to Mexico and twice to Canada in the past two years and has a passport, McCreedy said. He also travels to Florida about once a year where people he knows live.

“He’s also indicated to police that he knows how to get out of the country surreptitiously,” McCreedy said.

“He has indicated in jail conversations as late as the end of October — granted he was not facing charges at that time — but he has told people that there is nothing keeping him here and he is going to move to Florida,” McCreedy said.

“The fact that he knows people in Florida — almost everyone in Michigan does. It’s a cold state. People like to go down there when the weather’s cold up here and it’s warm down there,” Chartier said. “A jail conversation saying he’d like to move to Florida is probably a conversation that almost any Michigander has had at least once in their life, at least thinking about it.”

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That Warner has “vague, nebulous” access to cash or assets from Dee Warner’s estate doesn’t show he is a flight risk, Chartier said.

“If Mr. Warner wanted to flee the jurisdiction, he would have been doing it before he was charged with murder,” she said.

Citing Sala’s contempt ruling that found Warner has disobeyed court orders, such as not selling assets related to their businesses, McCreedy questioned whether Warner would obey bond conditions if he were to be released from jail.

“In terms of relying on the defendant to do anything other than take action that’s against the court’s order and in his own interest now that he has been charged with murder shows that the bond should remain the same,” McCreedy said.

Chartier said the issues in the probate matter should not be considered in determining bond in the criminal case and that his extensive roots in the county and his not having been a threat to anyone for 2½ years during the investigation into Dee Warner’s disappearance should be the basis for setting bond.

Schaedler said Warner’s ties to the community are not her concern.

“What the court is persuaded by, in terms of some of the things that are set forth, is that when ordered by a court to do something or produce something, Mr. Warner has repeatedly chosen not to comply with the court’s order which resulted in him going to jail, as I understand it, for an extended period of time,” Schaedler said.

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There is also likely to be other evidence presented by the prosecution, she said, and there may be more evidence than what has been collected so far.

“To suggest that there’s no opportunity to alter evidence from this point forward, I don’t know if that’s a correct understanding of where we sit,” she said.

Schaedler reduced his bond on the murder charge to $10 million and ordered that Warner’s and his minor daughter’s passport be surrendered to the court before him potentially posting bond. She said that was due to his accidentally being released from jail early after being ordered to serve 93 days in jail by Sala.

“I don’t want him to have a passport in case there’s a screwup and Mr. Warner gets out again,” she said.

— Contact reporter David Panian at dpanian@lenconnect.com or follow him on X, formerly Twitter: @lenaweepanian.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Lenawee County judge reduces Dale Warner's bond to $15 million