Dee Warner's son testifies about family businesses; digital evidence reviewed in hearing

ADRIAN — Details about Dee and Dale Warners' businesses and the digital investigation into what happened to Dee Warner were part of the second day of a hearing to determine if the murder case against Dale Warner will proceed toward a trial.

Dee Warner's son, Zack Bock, testified Thursday about the Warners' farming and trucking businesses, the family's property and the day his mother went missing. After Bock, a General Motors employee reviewed data related to the OnStar system in Dee's Cadillac Escalade and a Michigan State Police analyst testified about data pulled from Dale Warner's cellphone.

The testimony in Lenawee County District Court is part of the preliminary examination in the case against Dale Warner, 56, of Franklin Township who is charged with open murder and tampering with evidence in his wife's disappearance in April 2021. Visiting Judge Anna M. Frushour, who is a Washtenaw County district judge appointed to hear the case after Lenawee County's judges disqualified themselves, will determine whether there is sufficient evidence to bind the charges over to Lenawee County Circuit Court for further proceedings.

The case's original judge, Lenawee County District Judge Laura J. Schaedler, removed herself from the case after disclosing she had past professional and personal contact with the Warners and their extended families over the years. The county's probate and circuit judges also disqualified themselves, using the standard disqualification form provided by the Michigan State Court Administrative Office and selecting the option that states, "based on objective and reasonable perceptions, my continued assignment would create an appearance of impropriety."

On the hearing's first day, former Warner employees Brian Bush and Todd Neyrinck, former IT consultant Kyle Wagner, friend Amy Alexander, and Dee's daughter Rikkell Bock testified.

Testimony was scheduled to continue Friday.

Family business

Zack Bock described the family's businesses, including the profitable trucking company DDW Investments and the struggling farming businesses. He said he handled the finances and DDW's profits were propping up the other businesses. DDW, he said under questioning by Lenawee County Assistant Prosecutor Dave McCreedy, was solely owned by Dee while the others were jointly owned by Dee and Dale.

Responding to questions from Dale's lead attorney, Mary Chartier, Bock said he was unware that Lenawee County Circuit Judge Michael R. Olsaver ruled in October that DDW was equally owned by Dee and Dale.

In 2018-19, Bock said, the farming property surrounding their home on Munger Road went into foreclosure, then the businesses defaulted on loans for their John Deere equipment. Eventually, a resolution was reached between the bank that held the loans on the farm property, John Deere and the dealership that sold the equipment where the Warners regained the farm property through a land contract. He said the trucking company was not involved in those deals.

While DDW was bringing in about $3 million in revenue a year with a profit in 2020 of about $700,000, Bock said, War-Ag Farms was not profitable and the farm services business was mostly selling seed. All of DDW's profits went to pay the other companies' debts, he said, and the companies struggled to make payroll.

He and Dale had several conversations about the farming business's viability, Bock said. He described it as a cancer, while Dale would tell him, "I'm a farmer. That's all I've ever known."

In 2018, Bock said, he and Dee bought a house on Sand Lake. He said his mother wanted it as an investment and as a "safe haven" where she could go when she and Dale got into fights. He said he lived there and she would go there about once a month, always with her and Dale's young daughter. He said Dee and the girl were inseparable.

Chartier asked Bock what happened to the lake home. He said it had been sold and he got the proceeds.

Dee and Bock shared a safe where she kept a large quantity of money, he said. He described a situation in October 2019 when he had trouble with the safe's electronic combination lock, and when he opened it with the key he found the money was missing. Later, she told him that Dale took it, though under cross-examination he said he didn't see Dale take it.

Dee had small amounts of cash stashed in many places, Bock said.

Late in the morning of April 24, 2021, at his sister Amber's house, Bock said, he saw his mother who looked like she had been crying. That afternoon, Dee texted him about her plans for the trucking business, saying, "I'm done with this. I'm signing everything over to you."

On the morning of April 25, 2021, Bock said, he was at the lake house and got a call from Rikkell about Dee not being at the Warners' home on Munger Road. He tried texting Dee, and it didn't go through. He tried calling, and it went straight to voicemail.

He went to Dee's home, arriving at about 10:30 or 11 a.m. and first went to the farm office building where he, Dee and Dale had their individual offices. He noticed Dee's Hummer and the JCB loader were parked in front of the office. No one was in the office, so he walked up to where one of DDW's semis was parked by one of the barns. He said he wanted to check if the driver, who had quit the day before, had cleaned his belongings out of the truck. The belongings were still there.

He then saw Dale as he was walking away from the truck, Bock said.

"You really don't know where your mom is?" Bock recalled Dale saying. Dale then talked about the fight he and Dee had the night before.

He and Dale walked back to the office, Bock said. When they got inside, Dale called out, "Oh, f---. This was on my desk," and showed him Dee's wedding ring in his hand and added the fight had been really bad. He later mentioned that about $100,000 was missing from a safe in the house and described what he had done that morning: waking up and seeing Dee asleep on the couch at about 6 or 6:30, going out to spray the fields, returning to feed the dogs and going back to the sprayer to work a field off Carson Highway.

Bock said he started reviewing the office security video to see if he could see Dee come in the office and leave the ring. The only person he saw in going back through the video to the previous day was Rikkell at about 8:30 or 9 a.m. that day. He explained the video system is activated by motion, so there were only brief clips recorded when the system sensed someone in the room.

Dale initially watched the video with him, Bock said, but then he said he was going back out to the field. He would return 10 minutes later and repeat that pattern.

Eventually, Rikkell and her boyfriend and their aunt Shelly Hardy also arrived at the farm.

While looking through the video, Bock said, he checked a drawer in Dee's desk to see if some money she kept there was missing, but it was still there.

At about 2 p.m., he left for his home and then went to their "Cedar Point" property to look for Dee. He then returned to the farm to watch more security video. Then he drove to Britton to see if Dee was at their grain bin system. On the way back home, he said, he called a police officer friend for advice.

When he got home with Rickell and their brother TJ, they first tried calling the Michigan State Police directly, but because it was a weekend got a recording. They then called 911.

At some point on the 25th, Bock said, he stopped by the Warners' home, and Dale's daughter Jennica was there, cleaning and cooking a roast. He said the house was spotless.

Later, Bock said, Dale told him to stop writing Dee's paychecks.

He said he stopped working for the company in June 2021, and a former accountant, Mark Weisberg, returned. He said Dale and Dee had disagreed about Weisberg's involvement with the businesses.

Bock said Dee did not have a second phone. Regarding her issues with chronic migraines and neck pain, he said he never saw her intoxicated on medication or showing signs of addiction.

Chartier grilled Bock about him watching a TV newscast's online video of Rikkell's testimony. She asked him why, since he had been subpoenaed to testify and knew that witnesses are not supposed to be in the courtroom to hear other testimony before it is their turn, he watched it. He said he wasn't aware he wasn't allowed to watch the video of it and it wouldn't affect his testimony, anyway.

Digital evidence

The prosecution also called two witnesses to testify about digital evidence collected by investigators. First, Devin Newell, a senior technical expert at General Motors, reviewed data pulled from the company's logs of the usage of the OnStar app connected to Dee's Escalade. OnStar is a system that provides a variety of remote services for GM vehicles, including making emergency phone calls and being able to use an app on a smartphone, tablet or personal computer to run diagnostics on the car, start the engine, lock and unlock doors, and track the vehicle's location.

The OnStar accounts are connected to specific devices, and the logs show from which devices each remote command came from, Newell said. The Escalade's account had Dale's email address and showed activity from two devices: an Apple iPad 6 and an Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max. In reviewing about two years of data, there were more than 2,000 requests for the Escalade's location including some that showed the vehicle was in motion when the request was made.

Under cross-examination, Newell said the logs only showed from which device a request came from, not who was operating the device.

Danielle Vandenheuvel, a digital forensic analyst with the Michigan State Police, reviewed data extracted from Dale's iPhone 12 Pro Max. She said there were two extractions done of the data, the first by the Monroe County Sheriff's Office and the second by the state police. McCreedy asked her about the data pulled by Monroe County.

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Lenawee County sheriff's deputies, who initially handled the investigation into Dee's disappearance, sometimes would ask Monroe County to extract data from digital devices because Monroe had the proper equipment and it was more expedient to ask their detectives than waiting for the state police, which receives many requests to pull data from around the state.

McCreedy asked Vandenheuvel about data related to three apps on the iPhone: Find My iPhone, Milestone and myCadillac. She said the Find My iPhone app last connected with a cellular network three times on April 25, 2021. The Milestone app, which works with the farm's camera system, was accessed four times on the morning of April 25, 2021. And the myCadillac app was last used at 7:44 a.m. April 25, 2021, she said. The data recorded was from the phone being connected to its cellular service, not Wi-Fi, she said.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Dale Warner murder preliminary examination continues for second day