by A woman convicted in 1990 of dressing up as a clown and killing the wife of a man she later married has been released from prison, putting to rest one of the most bizarre cold cases Florida has ever seen came.
Sheila Keen-Warren, 61, was released from prison Saturday, about 17 months after pleading guilty to the second-degree murder of Marlene Warren, her current husband’s previous wife, according to online Florida Department of Corrections records.
Keen-Warren was arrested in 2017 in Washington County, Virginia, in connection with Warren’s 1990 murder. She was sentenced to 12 years in prison after pleading guilty, but had already spent seven years in custody since her 2017 arrest.
Her release from prison comes after she reached a plea deal that was struck shortly before her trial was scheduled to begin, The Associated Press reported. Florida’s 1990 law allowed significant credits for good behavior, and Keen-Warren was expected to be released in about two years. She has maintained her innocence even after pleading guilty.
In May 1990, Marlene Warren was shot in the face when she opened the front door of her home in Wellington, near West Palm Beach, and was confronted by a brown-eyed woman carrying balloons and wearing a clown costume and an orange clown wig. authorities said.
One of the balloons said, “You’re the best!” and the other had Snow White painted on it, according to reports at the time.
“This is the strangest thing I’ve seen in all my 19 years in law enforcement,” Bob Ferrell, then spokesman for the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, told the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel newspaper the day after the killing.
Keen-Warren had been a suspect in the murder almost from the start, but prosecutors never had enough evidence to charge her until new technology allowed them to retest the DNA evidence after the cold case was reopened in 2014.
Initially, suspicion quickly focused on Michael Warren, the victim’s husband, as friends and family said the couple was having marital problems.
Then the murder investigation led police to unrelated evidence of misconduct at Michael Warren’s car rental company, and in 1992 he was sentenced to prison on 43 counts of odometer tampering, grand theft and extortion, The Palm Beach Post reported at the time.
Michael Warren spent three years in prison and disappeared in 1997. But he resurfaced in 2002 and married Sheila Keen – the same Sheila Keen-Warren now charged with murdering his ex-wife. Sheila had worked for Michael in car repossessions.
Detectives said they learned just four months after the murder that Michael and Sheila had had an affair and that Warren had paid rent on Keen-Warren’s apartment after she divorced her first husband.
It is unclear at this time if Keen-Warren has an attorney.
The Associated Press contributed.
