Woman who dressed as clown to kill love rival and marry her husband is jailed
Florida’s so-called ‘killer clown’ who fatally shot a woman on her doorstep in 1990 has pleaded guilty more than three decades later.
Sheila Keen-Warren, 59, handed Marlene Warren, 40, carnations and balloons before shooting her in the face in front of her son on May 26, 1990, in Wellington.
After 33 years, the case finally closed on Tuesday when Keen-Warren pleaded guilty to second-degree murder as part of a plea deal.
The deal, struck behind closed doors during the judge’s lunch break, will see the victim’s alleged mistress and now wife likely be released from jail within a year.
In West Palm Beach, Circuit Judge Scott Suskauer accepted her plea in exchange for a 12-year prison sentence, taking into account how she already served five and a half years in prison while awaiting trial.
Keen-Warren’s trial had been due to start next month after she was first jailed for first-degree murder in 2017.
She was long a top suspect in the case, given that she was having an affair with Michael, Marlene’s husband, and worked under him at his car dealership, assistant state attorney Reid Scott told the court on Tuesday.
Keen-Warren, however, always denied this even when she married Michael some 12 years later.
Relatives told The Palm Beach Post in 2000 that Marlene had suspected her husband was having an affair and wanted a divorce.
Costume shop staffers identified Keen-Warren as the person who purchased a clown suit, flowers and a balloon only days before the killing, the prosecutor added.
One of the two balloons she handed Marlene read ‘You’re the Greatest’ and was sold at just one store, a Publix Super Market store by Keen-Warren’s home.
Publix workers said a woman fitting her description bought the balloon one hour before the shooting.
Orange hair-like fibres were found inside the alleged getaway vehicle, a white Chrysler convertible reported stolen from Michael’s car lot a month in April 1990.
The car was found abandoned in a parking lot four days after the murder.
But the authorities lacked conclusive evidence to charge Keen-Warren.
Palm Beach County sheriff’s investigators tied her to the killing after decades of improvements to DNA technology proved her hair was found on the clown’s getaway car.
Palm Beach County state attorney Dave Aronberg said: ‘Sheila Keen-Warren has finally been forced to admit that she was the one who dressed as a clown and took the life of an innocent victim.
‘She will be a convicted murderer for the rest of her day.’
Yet given when the offence was committed, she will likely be let free within only a few months, Keen-Warren’s lawyer, Greg Rosenfeld, said.
State sentencing guidelines allow prisoners to shave off some of their sentences by showing good behaviour – this is called ‘gain time’.
Current policy says that regardless of the gain time accrued, inmates must complete at least 85% of their sentence – but Keen-Warren is not subject to this requirement as it was not in place in 1990.
‘The state of Florida originally wanted to execute her,’ Rosenfeld said, ‘but now she is going home in 10 months.
‘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.’
Aronberg’s office, however, says Keen-Warren will likely spend two years in jail.
In 1994, Michael was convicted of grand theft, racketeering and odometer tampering.
He spent four years behind bars, a sentence his attorneys said at the time was overly long and fuelled by suspicions he was involved in his wife’s death.
Keen-Warren’s sentencing was a long way coming.
A laundry list of logistical issues delayed the trial for years from early 2020, including the coronavirus pandemic, eleventh-hour discoveries and hard-to-track-down witnesses forgetting what happened, per The Palm Beach Post.
Rosenfeld, as well as defence attorneys Amy Morse and Jess Isom, filed hundreds of motions trying to stop the court from using the hair fibres and other key evidence ahead of the trial scheduled for May 12.
She finally pleaded guilty, however, prosecutor Scott said, ‘because she is guilty’.
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