TECUMSEH, Mich. — Sorrow emanates from residents’ T-shirts, from frayed purple ribbons around trees, from signs in store windows next to ones exhorting the high school team.

It’s written all over the face of Tecumseh.

Alas, deliverance may be on its way as opening statements were held Thursday in the murder trial of a Tecumseh farmer in Lenawee County Circuit Court in Adrian.

The prosecution began its opening remarks by describing Dale Warner’s farming businesses as struggling and his marriage to Dee Warner as being in free fall.

In the weeks leading up to Dee’s disappearance in 2021, the couple fought nearly every day by text or face to face, Assistant Prosecutor David McCreedy said.

Dale stalked his wife by considering installing cameras in his home, asking a farm worker to buy a GPS tracker to place on one of her cars and used a mobile phone app to check the location of her other vehicle 2,000 times, McCreedy said.

“This marriage had no intimacy, only secrecy,” McCreedy said. “They didn’t sleep together. They were just roommates.”

The day before Dee’s disappearance, she was livid when she learned Dale had told an acquaintance she was on Xanax, a depressant, McCreedy said.

Dee told a friend that was the final straw, that she was going to get divorced and sell the business, according to the prosecutor.

Dale told police he argued with his wife about the issue but he soothed her feelings and rubbed her shoulders, McCreedy said. Dale told police that she was asleep on the living room couch the next morning when he left to work on a neighboring farm. It was the last time he saw her, he said.

But McCreedy said testimony will show Dale later drove a vehicle to a door leading to the living room. Dee’s body would eventually be found in a fertilizer tank that had been moved from the farm shortly before investigators' cadaver dogs searched the property, the prosecutor said. The tank was later found in a storage building on Warner family land in Tipton, several miles from the couple's home near Tecumseh.

The prosecutor stressed the turbulent state of the marriage, using his PowerPoint presentation to show several text messages Dee had written to friends.

“I’m ready to move out and be done with it,” she wrote at one point. “I won’t live like this.”

But the defense argued that a troubled marriage doesn’t equal murder.

Marisa Vinsky, Dale’s lawyer, whose brief opening statement contrasted with the prosecutor’s lengthy one, said the prosecution’s case is based on speculation, assumption and innuendo.

She said Warner couldn’t have killed his wife, hid her body in a fertilizer tank and repainted the tank in the short timeframe given by the prosecution.

Also, there were too many people at the farm who would have noticed such actions, she said. At one point during the day, seven people were on the property.

“All of this was being done while Mr. Warner was working on other chores, supposedly,” said Vinsky. “The law doesn’t allow imagination to replace the truth.”

A community in trauma

Tecumseh, which is 60 miles southwest of Detroit, was once the Refrigeration Capital of the World. Its identity was wrapped around Tecumseh Products, which made refrigeration compressors.

The company employed up to 5,000 people, which was more than half of the town’s population of 8,680. But the firm and its jobs left in 2008.

Residents said they’re attracted by the quality of the schools and seeming safety of the town. The collection of colonial and Victorian homes is a good place to raise a family, they said.

“It’s slower paced but in a good way,” said Rae Baker of Tecumseh. “You don’t see some of the problems you have in other places.”

Baker, who moved from Cleveland, said her new home offers a respite from worries about crime that beset her in Ohio.

The death of Dee Warner seized the attention of the small town and, five years later, still hasn’t loosened its grip.

It was a tragedy in three acts: her disappearance in 2021, the arrest of her husband two years later, and the discovery of her body in a fertilizer tank on a family farm in 2024.

In the tidy downtown, which boasts a winery and artisan cheese shop among the 19th century storefronts, Rosie’s Tecumseh Café is a popular brunch spot that specializes in comfort food. But its cheese curds and fried pickles bring little relief nowadays.

Restaurant patrons said earlier this week the placidity of life in Tecumseh was jolted by the disappearance of a 52-year-old woman in 2021.

Dee Warner owned a trucking firm, but agriculture was in her blood. Her family were longtime dairy farmers whose roots in the area went back five generations. She was active with Lenawee County 4-H, serving as a mentor at the county fair.

It wasn’t just people who knew Warner who were flustered by the mystery of her whereabouts. Kathy Dickinson, a Tecumseh resident who never met the Warners, wondered how something like this could happen in such a peaceful setting.

“I can’t remember the last time with something like this,” Dickinson said while nibbling a Greek salad at Rosie’s. “It’s not the first thing you think of here. It’s out of place.”

She said the criminal case may be the most traumatic thing that has happened in town since the departure of Tecumseh Products. But this wound felt much more personal, she said.

Residents were still grappling with the sad riddle of Warner’s disappearance when her husband, Dale, a longtime farmer, was arrested and charged with her murder.

After not knowing what happened, residents suddenly knew too much.

Vigils and memorials turned into rallies and press conferences calling for Dale Warner’s conviction. Flyers in store windows that once asked about Dee Warner’s whereabouts now asked that justice be done on her behalf.

Joy Dalton of Tecumseh said she and her friends suspected Dale Warner was involved in his wife’s disappearance. But suspecting it and then seeing him arrested were two different things, she said.

“It made it real. It was a nightmare,” she said. “To think somebody could have done something like that is just – I don’t know.”

Dalton didn’t know the Warners but said friends who do were shocked by the turn of events.

“You think you know people,” she said. “It makes you look differently at people. It puts you on guard.”

For residents, there was no escaping the tragedy. In a small town, where everyone knows everyone, a death reverberates in all directions.

A black-and-yellow billboard hovered over town with a plaintive wail: “Justice for Dee.”

One of the ubiquitous signs with that message turned up at the Appleumpkin Festival in October. The annual celebration of the fall harvest attracts thousands of visitors from the southeast corner of Michigan.

By that point, it wasn’t necessary to give Dee’s last name. Nearly everyone knew who she was. When 96 residents were questioned by lawyers about serving on the jury in the murder case, only four said they hadn’t heard about the incident.

Richard Green of Tecumseh said you can’t go anywhere in town without being reminded about the ordeal, whether it’s a purple ribbon around a tree or another resident who shares the latest gossip about the criminal investigation.

“It’s on the top of everyone’s mind,” he said. “For a while, it was the only thing people talked about.”

The discussion quieted down for a while but now, with the beginning of the trial, people have revisited the subject, he said. He expects the chatter to become louder as revelations spill from the testimony.

Somewhere amid the tumult, residents hope to find solace.

“It will get worse before it gets better,” said Green. “Hopefully it will be over soon and we can be normal again.”

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