How Dee and Dale Warner’s marriage took a deadly turn
Rikkell Bock remembers her mom, Dee Warner, as somebody who wanted “to take care of people.” (ABC News)
It wasn’t unusual for Dee Warner to leave home when she was upset, her family and friends said. April 25, 2021, however, was different.
That day, the 52-year-old businesswoman and mother of five disappeared and didn’t respond to messages or calls, sparking an investigation that lasted years.
A new “20/20” episode, “Help Dale Find Dee,” airing Friday, Oct. 23, at 9 p.m. ET on ABC and streaming the next day on Disney+ and Hulu, examines Warner’s case.
You can get more behind the scenes of each week’s episode by listening to “20/20: The After Show” weekly series right on your 20/20 podcast feed on Mondays, hosted by “20/20” co-anchor Deborah Roberts.
Warner, who lived in a small community in southeastern Michigan, was known for her fiery personality and care for others.
“[She was] vibrant, loving, nurturing,” her daughter Rikkell Bock told ABC News’ Linsey Davis. “Always somebody that was wanting to take care of people.”
Bock went to Warner’s house that Sunday morning with her partner and two children, but her mother was nowhere to be found. She began to worry after her mother didn’t respond to messages and calls.
Warner’s husband, Dale, said he saw his wife at 6 a.m. that day, when he left to go spray the crops the couple managed on their farm. Her children called police that Sunday evening to report her missing.
Dale Warner told authorities in initial interviews that he was not worried about Warner’s disappearance, as it was typical for her to leave after an argument, which he said the couple had engaged in the night before she went missing. He insisted he had no knowledge of her whereabouts.
Searches of the home revealed no initial evidence of a murder scene. Warner appeared to have taken her toiletry bag and hair tools with her, and her wedding ring was left on Dale Warner’s desk.
After requesting a ping of Warner’s phone, police discovered it had been off since 7:14 a.m. on Sunday.
The Warners owned an agricultural business, a trucking company, and a commercial spraying and farm services company. According to prosecutors, the only part that was going well financially at the time of Warner’s disappearance was the trucking company, which was entirely in her name. The others were shared with Dale Warner.
On the night of her disappearance, Warner was supposedly planning on telling her husband she wanted a divorce, according to her friend Stephanie Voelkle.
Suspicious of Dale Warner and his apparent lack of assistance in search efforts, Warner’s brother, Gregg Hardy, bought a billboard that read “Help Dale Find Dee” to put pressure on his brother-in-law.
It escalated when townspeople began urging state police to take over the investigation and took to the streets chanting “Jail for Dale.” The Lenawee County Sheriff’s Office ultimately turned over the case to the Michigan State Police.
Investigators learned Dale Warner had made an internet search following Warner’s disappearance in which he clicked on a video showing how to bury a 1,000-gallon propane tank.
Michigan State Police launched a large-scale search of the couple’s property, which spanned 1,500 acres. Believing Warner could be buried somewhere there, teams began searching underground.
Warner’s family member also reported tracks from heavy machinery leading up to the house where a car was usually parked, indicating the machine could have been used to haul Warner’s body from the house.
Though a body had not yet been found, police felt they had enough information to arrest Dale Warner in November 2023. He pleaded not guilty to the murder of his wife.
Eventually, police came across a suspicious looking anhydrous tank — a heavy-duty, pressurized metal container — on the property with a fresh coat of paint and sticker that read “do not use.” An X-ray revealed Warner’s body inside — she was in her pajamas, barefoot and wrapped in a tarp.
The body was well-preserved due to the tank’s conditions, and medical examiners determined that she died of strangulation and blunt force trauma to the head.
In February 2026, at Dale Warner’s trial, prosecutors alleged that killed his wife and stored her body in the tank. They claimed he learned that night he was facing a divorce that would have left him with a struggling farm business.
Dale Warner was found guilty and sentenced to up to 70 years in prison. His attorney said he will seek an appeal.
Hardy said he grieved his sister the day he knew she was gone, and that his life will never be the same without her. Warner’s daughter, Bock, wants to remember who she was in life.
“What happened to her does not define who she is,” Bock said. “She was a strong, strong woman and the people that knew her the most knew that they could rely on her for whatever it was and that is the truth. She was a good person.”
Laura Rojas Ortiz has been in ICE detention for more than 40 days, her family says. (Photo courtesy Laura Rojas Ortiz’s mother, Paolo)
(WASHINGTON) — A 21-year-old pregnant mother has been detained, along with her infant son, for more than a month at the family immigration detention center in Dilley, Texas, her family and an advocacy group told ABC News.
Laura Rojas Ortiz was in the process of applying for a U visa — which is for victims or witnesses of crimes — when she was detained during a check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Texas, her mother said.
“She was called to appear [at an ICE office] in Dallas,” her mother, Paola, said in Spanish. “She showed up like she always does, and they detained her.”
Paola told ABC News that her daughter turned herself in at the southern border over a year ago with her infant son and partner. The mother claims Rojas Ortiz later began the process of applying for a U visa after there was a shooting in her neighborhood and a bullet went through the walls, allegedly grazing her son.
According to Paola and a friend of Rojas Ortiz, the 21-year-old had been wearing an ankle monitor and regularly checking in with ICE before she was detained with her son as part of the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown.
Rojas Ortiz, who is five months pregnant, has been detained for more than 40 days, her family said. Her mother says Rojas Ortiz has a high-risk pregnancy and has not been seen by medical staff at Dilley.
“To this day, she hasn’t gotten an ultrasound or been seen by a specialist,” Paola told ABC News. “They haven’t done blood tests or anything.”
Immigrant advocacy groups have said that arrests and detentions of pregnant women violate an ICE directive stating that the agency should not “detain, arrest, or continue to detain individuals known to be pregnant, postpartum, or nursing” except under exceptional circumstances.
Paola said her grandson, who had been drinking only lactose-free milk, has been given whole milk at Dilley.
Paola also told ABC News that when lawmakers recently visited the facility, ICE staff moved her daughter to a “medical room,” where she was told she was going to be checked by a doctor.
“And when they left — so that the politicians wouldn’t see her pregnant — that’s when they let her out of that medical room,” Paola said.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
Last week, Rep. Joaquin Castro, along with a group of Democratic lawmakers, visited the Dilley facility, where he said more than 500 people are currently detained. Castro said he was only allowed by staff to meet with one minor.
“There are now more children there than there were before,” Castro said at a press conference last week. “I believe that is the result of the ICE surge that we’ve seen over the last month or so. We’ve seen these raids on the street. We’ve seen families that have been torn apart on the street, brutality on the street.”
Casey Revkin, the executive director of Each Step Home, an organization that supports immigrant detainees, told ABC News that her group has been providing Rojas Ortiz with financial assistance.
“We’ve been filling Laura’s commissary account and the accounts of the families at Dilley every week. These deposits are a lifeline to families in detention,” Revkin said. “It’s heartbreaking to think of a child not eating, and we’re always so relieved when we hear that a mom was able to use the commissary support to buy her children food they can enjoy.”
Immigrant advocates, medical professionals, and lawmakers have previously raised concerns about conditions at the South Texas facility.
The top medical official at the Department of Homeland Security, which operates the nation’s migrant detention centers, has disputed any suggestion that detainees are being denied proper care.
“These allegations of illegal aliens being denied proper medical care in ICE custody are FALSE,” DHS Chief Medical Officer Dr. Sean Conley previously told ABC News in a statement. “It is both policy and longstanding practice for aliens to receive timely and appropriate medical care from the moment they enter ICE custody. This includes medical, dental, women’s health, mental health services, any needed follow-up medical appointments, as well as 24-hour emergency care.”
“This is better, more responsive healthcare than many aliens have ever received in their entire lives,” Conley’s statement said.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina Ellis Boyle (R) and FBI Director Kash Patel at a press conference on April 28, 2026, at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., after announcing charges against former FBI Director James Comey. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Less than a month after former FBI Director James Comey’s indictment earlier this year, prosecutors sought the assistance of the notorious gangster Sammy “The Bull” Gravano to build their case against him, his defense lawyers alleged in a court filing on Tuesday.
A prosecutor and FBI agent allegedly interviewed Gravano to understand if Comey’s experience prosecuting the Gambino crime family in the 1990s would have led him to believe the term “86” was a reference to murder or violence.
A federal grand jury indicted Comey on two charges in April for posting a picture on his Instagram account of seashells spelling out “8647,” which federal prosecutors say constituted a threat against the president’s life.
Gravano — who confessed to his involvement in 19 murders, including those of his best friend and his brother-in-law, before cooperating with prosecutors — told the prosecutor and FBI agent that he did not interpret Comey’s “8647” seashells post to be a personal threat to President Donald Trump, according to defense lawyers.
“While Mr. Gravano claimed that all law enforcement agents would be familiar with the term’s alternative organized crime meaning referring to murder, he also claimed that a ‘gangster would never use that term’ because they knew that law enforcement knew what the term meant,” the filing said. “Mr. Gravano did not indicate that he understood the seashells post to be a threat by Mr. Comey to carry out violence personally.”
The new claims about the case against Comey were included in court filings on Tuesday as part of Comey’s push to throw out evidence seized from Apple and Google through search warrants. Comey’s lawyers say the evidence should be tossed because agents knowingly omitted details in their search warrant applications that would have “eviscerated” their case theory about the meaning of Comey’s “8647” post.
“The Fourth Amendment safeguards all Americans’ privacy against arbitrary government invasions. It does so by generally requiring the government to obtain a warrant from a magistrate before conducting a search,” Comey’s lawyers wrote. “Here, the government upended that constitutionally-mandated process by misleading the issuing magistrates about fundamental facts of the case.”
According to defense lawyers, federal agents “spent months poring over records of Mr. Comey’s government service and interviewing people who worked on organized-crime cases more than thirty years ago” to try to find evidence that Comey would have interpreted “86” to have a violent meaning. They searched the records in the case, an FBI database, trial transcripts, the FBI file from the Gambino case, and AI search engines with no success, before turning to Gravano, according to the court filing.
However, neither Gravano nor two retired FBI agents who spent decades working organized crime cases recalled the term “86” being used to reference murder. That conclusion would undermine a central element of the case against Comey — that he would have believed “86” connoted violence because of his years of work in federal law enforcement, defense lawyers say.
“As the former Director of the FBI, he knew full well the attention and consequences of making such a post,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement announcing the indictment.
Defense attorneys seek to paint witness as unreliable
In the filing that detailed alleged conversations with “The Bull,” defense attorneys claim that prosecutors not only omitted details about the lack of evidence linking “86” to violence, but also relied on the testimony of an unreliable witness who told them that they hope Comey “goes to jail” for the “crimes that he committed” as FBI director.
Defense lawyers did not identify the witness or their connection to Comey, but claimed the individual reached out to Comey’s wife shortly after he posted the seashells photo to Instagram. According to defense lawyers, Comey removed the photo after the individual raised concerns the post could be a “call for violence.” Agents later cited that witness’s account in a search warrant affidavit to claim he “immediately perceived the term ’86’ 47′ as a call to get rid of, in a violent way, or even to assassinate President Trump,” according to the filing.
However, defense lawyers allege that prosecutors failed to include critical information about that witness’s credibility, including his estrangement from Comey, his own assessment of Comey’s mental state as “speculation” and “conjecture,” and experience in rehab after ending their career.
“Person-1 admitted that they had been estranged from Mr. Comey and had not spoken to him for at least two years; Person-1 also made clear their intense bias against Mr. Comey, stating that they hoped Mr. Comey ‘goes to jail. for the ‘crimes that he committed’ as FBI Director,” defense lawyers wrote. “Although Person-1 indicated that they had left a prior career and entered ‘rehab,’ there were no follow-up questions about what issues led to the need to enter rehabilitation or whether those issues had been resolved.”
According to defense lawyers, the individual originally interpreted “86” through it’s “food service meaning,” but later believed the term “86” was associated with violence after listening to an episode of Rudy Giuliani’s podcast.
“Mr. Giuliani claimed that Mr. Comey had worked on organized crime cases in which mafia members used the term ’86’ to mean ‘kill,’ as reflected in tapes and transcripts,” the filing said. “Thus, in Person-1’s view, ‘there was no way [Mr. Comey] didn’t know how that was at least going to be interpreted.'”
Defense seeks case’s dismissal in separate filing
Comey’s lawyers in a separate motion filed late on Tuesday sought to use the statements of Trump and his allies to have the case against the former FBI director thrown out.
Comey’s defense lawyers argued that Trump’s repeated calls for Comey’s prosecution and criticism of his public statement “leave no doubt as to his genuine animus” and demonstrate that the case against him for allegedly threatening to kill Trump by posting photos of seashells on a beach is vindictive.
“The ensuing indictment is not based on a good faith application of the law to the facts; instead, it effectuates a yearslong campaign by the President to use the criminal process to punish Mr. Comey for his protected speech and because of the President’s deep-seated animosity,” Comey’s lawyers wrote.
Comey’s lawyers also pointed to allegedly violent statements about government officials made by Trump’s allies to argue that the Department of Justice is not evenly applying the law to prosecute similarly threatening statements.
“Several public figures have recently made statements about government officials that were comparable to, or far more violent than, Mr. Comey’s statement here. None was charged,” his lawyers wrote.
The motion follows a similar effort by Comey’s legal team to have his case tossed before trial on the basis that the Justice Department’s indictment fails to prove Comey’s post wasn’t within his First Amendment rights — while noting that immediately after he was notified the post was creating controversy, he deleted it and clarified it as non-threatening.
Regarding the specific “8647” phrase at the center of the government’s case, Comey’s lawyers noted that Amazon has listed 209,052 items that display the numbers “8645,” “8646,” or “8647,” and none of those items have led to similar prosecutions. Comey’s attorneys say that following his Instagram post of the seashells, the FBI “instituted a new policy, effective immediately, to treat the phrase ‘8647’ as coded language for threatening the President.”
“Mr. Comey’s prosecution appears to be the first indictment solely for publishing ’86’ in connection with a public official,” the motion said.
The filing includes dozens of pages of Trump’s own public statements dating back to 2016 of what Comey’s attorneys allege is an unrelenting campaign of harassment to target one of the former top law enforcement officials in the country.
“Ample objective evidence — much of which comes directly from government officials’ own public statements and admissions — establishes that the President’s animus toward Mr. Comey led to this vindictive and selective prosecution,” the filing said.
Defense lawyers also say former Attorney General Pam Bondi was fired in part because of her failure to prosecute Trump’s political opponents. They argued that the new case against Comey was an “audition” for Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
“Here, the inference is clear: the newly installed political officials in the DOJ strove to accomplish what their predecessors could not, namely, effectuating the President’s desire to punish Mr. Comey,” they wrote.
Trump, in announcing Bondi’s departure, lauded her as “a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my Attorney General over the past year.”
In addition to their motion to dismiss for vindictive and selective prosecution, Comey’s lawyers also requested that prosecutors turn over the transcripts and recordings of grand jury proceedings in the case. They argued that “the government may have misstated key factual and legal issues to the grand jury” and mentioned the issues that came up in the other, now-dismissed case against Comey in Virginia. In that case. prosecutors acknowledged that the entire grand jury did not see the final indictment in the case.
“The record in this case raises a significant risk that irregularities in the grand jury process influenced the grand jury to return an indictment,” the motion said.
The Department of Justice has defended its work prosecuting Comey, arguing they are treating the case no differently than any other threat to a public official. The White House has also denied that Trump is using the Department of Justice to target his political adversaries, though Trump has repeatedly called for Comey to be prosecuted.
“Our office regularly pursues threat cases including those against public officials. The Grand Jury examined the evidence in this case and found probable cause to indict Mr. Comey. We will continue to pursue the case as we regularly do every day to protect the people of this District and the United States,” U.S. Attorney Ellis Boyle said when announcing the indictment in April.
Forecasters now expect more rain for us than at first, and the chance for severe storms has increased on Sunday. The rain associated with the remnants of Hurricane Isaias has arrived, and gusty winds will soon follow. By tomorrow, damaging winds and a tornado could occur. We expect between one and three-quarters to three and one-quarter inches of rain by Sunday night.
