True Crime of Palm Beach County: Killer clown with balloons fatally shoots woman at front door in Wellington
Holly BaltzMarlene Warren's killing in 1990 kicks off a new True Crime series by The Palm Beach Post.
Victim: Marlene Warren, 40
Suspect: Sheila Keen-Warren, age 27 at the time of the slaying
Where: Wellington, FL
Date: May 26, 1990
“Oh, how sweet,” Marlene Warren said that Saturday morning in May 1990 when she saw a clown with flowers and balloons at the front door of her Wellington home.
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That was the last thing Warren, 40, said as she opened the door and was shot point-blank in the face by the clown, who was wearing an orange wig, red nose and a painted-on happy face.
Her 21-year-old son, Joey Ahrens, ran to her as she collapsed in the doorway and looked the clown in the eye — deep brown eyes, he remembers. The killer sauntered away, climbed into a white Chrysler LeBaron that had no license plate and drove away. Marlene died two days later at Palms West Hospital.
Her husband, Michael, managed their car lot, Bargain Motors, on North Dixie Highway in West Palm Beach. Marlene had taken care of the couple's rental properties, worth about $1 million at the time. They had been married 20 years.
The Warrens lived in the exclusive community called Aero Club in Wellington where homes had an air strip nearby to land personal aircraft and hangars in the backyards.
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The woman who was to become Michael Warren's second wife, Sheila Keen-Warren, stands accused of being the clown at the door. She's been in jail since 2017, awaiting trial after her arrest in Virginia where she and the victim's widower lived.
The balloons the clown brought came from the Publix at the corner of Community Drive and Military Trail in West Palm Beach, according to police. It was the only Publix that sold that brand of Mylar balloons — one of which was heart-shaped and read "You're the Greatest" and the other depicting Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
The Publix was only a half mile from Sheila Keen's apartment.
The flowers, left just outside the front door after the shooting, were red and white carnations arranged in a basket.
Four days after the shooting, the LeBaron was found in a Winn-Dixie parking lot at Okeechobee and Royal Palm Beach boulevards. Neither the costume nor the gun was ever found.
Keen-Warren was a suspect soon after the shooting. The 27-year-old was married at the time but was rumored to be having an affair with Michael Warren, who was her boss at a used-car lot, Bargain Motors, in West Palm Beach.
Keen and her then-husband, Richard, were running a car repo business when Michael Warren hired them in 1990 — five months before Marlene was killed.
Marlene Warren to family: If anything happens to me, my husband did it
Marlene Warren reportedly told family that if anything happened to her, it was her husband who did it. Michael Warren was on his way to Calder Race Track in Miami Gardens when the clown came to Marlene's door.
A year before, Michael Warren was at the Palm Beach County courthouse, walking out of a courtroom with attorney Christopher Desantis when he asked the lawyer a question.
If a husband were to kill his wife, what would happen to her estate?
"My first impression was, 'Is this guy nuts?' because why would you ask that question with your wife there?" Desantis told police in 1991. "Then I took a look around, and his wife wasn't there."
Desantis had been representing Marlene's son in a 1986 assault case and Marlene talked to Desantis frequently. Desantis said he always thought there were no problems in the Warrens' marriage.
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The attorney said he figured the question was a curiosity, like a law school question.
In this case, Florida law was "peculiar," Desantis told Michael Warren.
"What I said to him is. 'It really isn't an issue of whether a man kills his wife. The question is whether the man is convicted of murdering his wife because if he's convicted of murdering his wife, he wouldn't inherit, but if he were convicted of a lower charge, he would.
"Not only that," Desantis went on, "but if he had a friend who did it and they couldn't tie him as an accessory to the friend. he'd get away scot-free."
No suspect would be arrested until 27 years after the killing.
But Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office detectives didn't give up. They followed hundreds of tips, including a "clown coven" in Greenacres.
Detectives in 2013 started running DNA tests on the original evidence. It would take three years to get the results. The tests found an identical match on orange hairs inside the LeBaron and those found in her apartment. They also found matches between her hair and hair found in the car.
Michael and Shelia Keen-Warren had been married in 2002 and were living in southwest Virginia near the Tennessee line when she was arrested in 2017.
They had just sold a restaurant they were running named the Purple Cow in Kingsport, Tenn. They had bought a house worth $600,000 in 2004.
Michael Warren has never been arrested in connection with Marlene Warren's death.
Attorney Desantis talked again to police around the time Keen-Warren was arrested in 2017.
He remembered telling Michael Warren something else:
A killer dressed as a clown would likely "get off" because witnesses couldn't tell whether it was a man or a woman.
Holly Baltz is the investigations and schools editor at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at hbaltz@pbpost.com. Support local investigative journalism. Subscribe today