ADRIAN, Mich. (Court TV) — A man convicted of murdering his wife and welding her body in a tank was sentenced to spend up to 70 years in prison.
Dale Warner, 58, was found guilty of second-degree murder and tampering with evidence in the death of his wife, Dee Warner, 52, whose body was found buried on the couple’s property.
Dale Warner appeared at his sentencing on May 7, 2026. (Court TV)
Dee Warner disappeared on April 25, 2021, after she was last seen at her home. It took three years for investigators to find her remains, which were inside a sealed tank that had previously been used to hold anhydrous ammonia on the property. There was no ammonia in the tank, which had been sealed on both ends, when she was found. At trial, prosecutors introduced evidence showing that the victim was beaten, strangled and her mouth and nose duct-taped before her body was put in the tank.
“I did not want to believe he was capable of this, just as I did not want to believe my mother would ever leave without saying a word to us,” Dee Warner’s adult son, TJ Bock, said at Thursday’s sentencing hearing. “But only one of those things was true.”
When Dee and Dale Warner married, they each came to the marriage with four adult children from previous relationships; together, they had one child. Dale Warner had told his wife’s friends and family that she had left him without a word. “He cut off all communication between my little sister and the rest of our family,” Rikkel Bock, Dee Warner’s daughter, said in court. “He made her believe that her own mom had simply walked out of her life to start a new one in another country.”
FILE: undated photo of Dee Warner (Family photo)
Dale Warner’s defense conceded his conviction and said the case is tragic, but described the defendant as a “kind and even-tempered man who gave a lot to the community and tried to help out others where he could.”
While Judge Michael Olsaver warned those who were delivering victim impact statements at the sentencing hearing to direct all comments to him and refrain from any name-calling, Dee Warner’s brother didn’t hold back. “Dale Warner, you’re a narcissistic psychopathic liar and murderer. Your lack of any remorse for brutally killing my sister is unforgivable and deserves to be punished by the fullest extent of the law, and you certainly deserve more. The barbaric act of covering up your crime by welding my sister in a cold steel tomb is beyond human,” Greggory Hardy said. “You are a spineless piece of human debris.”
In calculating the sentence, Olsaver looked to the victim’s life. “Assuming Ms. Warner had an average life expectancy, she had about 29 years of life taken from her. But it’s not just the 29 years that were stolen from her by this act.”
Olsaver sentenced Dale Warner to serve consecutive prison sentences of 31.25 years to 60 years for murder, followed by 17 months to 10 years for tampering with evidence.
