I didn't see it with the mod_perl tarball. I'm using mod_perl 1.29 btw. This server is a fresh install. Permissions haven't been modified.
FYI... I did a locate and noticed DBI.pm in several locations. None of them were in my @INC path. Interesting. At this time it's working and I'll be messing with some Perl on Apache.
You're right, it seems to have been removed at some point. So, the advice to install without CPAN was the right one. It just doesn't have tests that play well with the CPAN module.