FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A clown came to Marlene Warren’s door on a May morning in 1990, handed her carnations and balloons and then shot her dead in front of her son. On Tuesday, her husband’s second wife pleaded guilty to being the killer, closing a case that is strange even by Florida standards.
Sheila Keen-Warren, 59, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in a deal that will likely see her released from prison in no more than two years. Long suspected of being the shooter, Keen-Warren has been jailed awaiting trial for first-degree murder since 2017, when Palm Beach County sheriff’s investigators said improvements in DNA technology revealed that a hair found in the clown’s getaway car came from her.
Keen-Warren still insists, however, that she is not the killer.
“The State of Florida originally wanted to execute her, but now she is going home in 10 months,” said her attorney, Greg Rosenfeld. “While it was difficult to plead guilty to a crime she did not commit, it was kind of a no-brainer when there is a guarantee that you will be home with your family.”
The deal calls for a 12-year sentence, and Keen-Warren has already served six years awaiting trial. With sentence reductions for good behavior, Rosenfeld said he expects her to be released early next year. The prosecutor’s office disputed that, saying she will be in prison at least two more years.
Her trial was set to start next month, and if convicted she would have received a life sentence. Originally, prosecutors sought a death sentence but eventually dropped that.
Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg said in a statement that the plea deal “obtained a measure of justice” for Marlene Warren and her son.
The son, Joseph Ahrens, watched the proceeding online. He was 21 when he saw his mother murdered.
At the time of the shooting, Keen-Warren was an employee of Marlene Warren’s husband, Michael, at a used car lot. Since 2002, she has been his wife — they eventually moved to Abington, Virginia, where they ran a restaurant.
Witnesses had told investigators in 1990 that Sheila Keen and Michael Warren were having an affair.
Detectives said costume shop employees identified Sheila Keen as the woman who had bought a clown suit a few days before the killing. One of the two balloons — a silver one that read, “You’re the Greatest” — was sold at only one store, a Publix supermarket near her home. Employees told detectives a woman who looked like Keen had bought the balloons an hour before the shooting.
The presumed getaway car, found abandoned, had been reported stolen from Michael Warren’s car lot a month before the shooting. Keen and her then-husband repossessed cars for him.
Relatives told the Palm Beach Post in 2000 that Marlene Warren, who was 40 when she died, suspected her husband was having an affair and wanted to leave him. But the car lot and other properties were in her name, and she feared what might happen if she did.
She allegedly told her mother, “If anything happens to me, Mike done it.” He has never been charged and has denied involvement.
In a separate case, Michael Warren was convicted in 1994 of grand theft, racketeering and odometer tampering. He served almost four years in prison — a punishment his then-attorneys said was disproportionately long because of suspicions he was involved in his wife’s death.
Michael Warren did not return a call Tuesday seeking comment.
Rosenfeld contended the state’s case was falling apart, with DNA samples showing confusing and contradictory results. Even if the hair in the presumed getaway car did come from Keen-Warren, he pointed out, it could have been left there during her legitimate work for the dealership.
Aronberg, in his statement, conceded that there were holes in the case, saying they were caused by the three decades it took to get it to trial, including the death of key witnesses.
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