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Sheila Keen-Warren, the infamous woman accused of dressing as a clown to murder Marlene Warren in 1990, has had her name plastered across headlines for decades because of the bizarre circumstances surrounding the case. Almost 27 years later, Sheila Keen-Warren was arrested in 2017 for the murder, opening a new chapter on one of Florida's longest-running cold cases.
ID's Married to Evil Season 2, which premiered on August 25, 2024, will follow the crime in detail. As of 2024, Sheila Keen-Warren is still at the center of ongoing legal proceedings. She pleaded not guilty after her indictment in 2017, and her criminal trial has been postponed numerous times.
The latest developments show that Sheila Keen-Warren has avoided a complete criminal trial despite the evidence against her. Because of the ambiguity of this mystery, the new true-crime documentary features her and her convoluted involvement with the notorious "clown murder."
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The clown murder: The tragic case of Marlene Warren
On May 26, 1990, Marlene Warren was shot and killed in front of her Florida home by a man dressed as a clown, who came to her front door with flowers and balloons. Joe Ahrens, Marlene's son, watched in horror as his mother happily accepted what he believed to be gifts.
The clown whipped out a gun and shot her on the spot. The motive, at the time of the murder, was not known, and suspicion quickly fell on Marlene's husband, Michael Warren, in a possible love triangle involving Sheila Keen-Warren.
Police investigations linked Sheila Keen-Warren to being an employee at Michael Warren's car repossession business and suspected the two were having an affair. Ruling out Michael Warren based on an alibi, the trail finally landed on Keen. Investigators found she had purchased a clown costume and flowers and balloons in the days leading up to the murder.
Arrest and legal battle of Sheila Keen-Warren
That fruitless wait for the Warren family finally got a ray of hope in 2017 when a cold case unit relooked evidence to find that one DNA matched Sheila Keen. The breakthrough came when her hair was found in a car that fit the getaway car's description.
By this time, Keen had married Michael Warren in 2002, and the couple had been living in Tennessee and running a burger joint called the Purple Cow. Sheila Keen-Warren was arrested in September 2017 and charged with the murder of Marlene Warren.
Prosecutors alleged that Keen-Warren had disguised herself as a clown to carry out the crime, saying it was motivated because of an affair with Michael Warren. While circumstantial, the evidence proved enough to charge her with first-degree murder.
Despite the indictment, Keen-Warren has maintained her innocence throughout. Her defense insists that the detectives botched the case and that absolutely no good evidence exists against her other than the DNA match. Three times, her trial has been delayed because of legal challenges, prolonging the case further and leaving many questions unanswered.
What Happened to Michael Warren?
To date, law enforcement has not charged Michael Warren, Marlene's husband and the man who many believed was the mastermind of the crime, with her murder. Initially, he was a person of interest in the case, but investigators couldn't find concrete evidence of his involvement in the crime.
Warren remained in a relationship with Sheila Keen after Marlene's death; the two eventually married and relocated to Tennessee. Some point to Warren as having masterminded the murder, as he was having an affair with Keen.
He has denied it ever since, and an alibi for the time of the murder, saying that he was en route to a horse race, has held up, with no more action taken against him in the years since the arrest of Sheila. Warren has remained free, and his life was unimpeded by the courts, even though his involvement with Keen and the case has continued to haunt him.
Current status of Sheila Keen-Warren
As of 2024, Sheila Keen-Warren has not gone to trial yet. Her lawyers claim there is no evidence to convict her, and the prosecutors take this to court. Keen-Warren spent years in prison following her arrest but without going to trial in front of a jury.
The delays have been frustrating for the Warren family, which has sought justice on behalf of Marlene for over thirty years. With the trial still pending, Sheila Keen-Warren is in the public eye, and her fate is yet to be sealed.
Whether she will be convicted or otherwise of the alleged crime of Marlene Warren's murder remains to be seen. Nonetheless, one thing is certain: the upcoming ID documentary Married to Evil will bring new eyes to her case.
