Talking Dateline: The Day Dee Disappeared

**Josh Mankiewicz** (0:05)
Hi, everybody, I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and we're all here to play Password. Wait, sorry, different program. I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and we're Talking Dateline. Today, with Andrea. Hi, Andrea.
So we're here to talk about Andrea's episode, which is called The Day Dee Disappeared, which is actually one of the very few Dateline stories that two Dateline correspondents covered. These two, both of us.

**Andrea Canning** (0:34)
You, for Missing in America, and me.

**Josh Mankiewicz** (0:36)
For TV, yes. Now, if you've not seen this episode, you can watch it on Peacock, you can listen to it on the Dateline podcast feed, and then come back here. And then later, we have an extra clip about a psychic's theory about what might have happened to Dee Warner. But first, let's talk Dateline. Now, for anybody who did not see the broadcast, here's what you need to know. The victim was Dee Warner, and she was a successful farmer and businesswoman. She was reported missing in April of 2021 Now, from very early on, investigators suspected her husband, Dale, had killed her.
And they ended up arresting him in November of 2023, even though they had not found Dee's body. Her body was found much later, and they found it on the property, hidden in a fertilizer tank. Dale ended up being convicted at trial, and he was sentenced to 70 years behind bars. So, one of the things that I thought was really interesting about this when I was looking at it for Missing in America is it seemed impossible to imagine that Dee Warner was not on that property somewhere. I mean, everything she had was there, her car was there.
Like, she didn't just go away. She was somewhere on that property. It certainly seemed that way from the beginning.

**Andrea Canning** (2:05)
That was the thought of most people close to the case. And one person from law enforcement told us, and we didn't include this in the show, but that they had actually had an FBI profiler looking at the case at one point, who said that they believed that Dee was somewhere on the property, and likely buried. So the buried part was not accurate, of course, but what went into this theory by the FBI certainly panned out.

**Josh Mankiewicz** (2:39)
So when I was first working on this story, I heard about this giant property on which Dee was missing, because it's not just the buildings there, but obviously many, many, many more acres around it.

**Andrea Canning** (2:55)
Yeah, it's huge.

**Josh Mankiewicz** (2:57)
When I saw the farm, it looks like a farm out of a movie.
And I sort of didn't think of it as sort of that pristine and camera ready. It's interesting what your mind does, because when I was hearing about it on Missing in America, I was like, this is some like giant sprawling property where the buildings are all a couple of miles apart. But that's not true. It's all kind of, the working part of it is actually concentrated, and then the fields are spread out around it.

**Andrea Canning** (3:32)
Yeah, acres and acres and acres of land. I mean, and it's beautifully kept, as you say, beautiful.

**Josh Mankiewicz** (3:41)
And all of that had to be searched, because nobody knew where she was. But they strongly believe she was out there somewhere.

**Andrea Canning** (3:48)
Yeah, and that's such a daunting task. They used drones, they used dogs, they had the PI use drones, the state police used drones, the county police. I mean, they looked everywhere for her, and they just could not find her.
And that's where Dale's diabolical plan was working for a long time with the tank.

**Josh Mankiewicz** (4:12)
You know, let's sort of, I mean, put yourself in his mind. What do you think the end game was here? How was he going to get away with this? Eventually, he was going to just dispose of the tank some, you know, some time in the future, just drive it off the property somewhere, bury it, break it open and move her again?

**Andrea Canning** (4:31)
I mean, I don't know. There was a search he had done for how to move, you know, a very large tank. So, like, I don't know if he was planning on moving it at some point. It was, you know, his plan was working until it wasn't.
It was, to me, it was sort of like this evil genius of like, you know, I'm going to use my skills and cut this tank open and put her in. And, you know, it's pretty, oh, like it gives you chills when you think about someone going to those lengths to hide a body.