TRIAL
didn’t speak during Monday’s brief hearing.
The next court hearing will be a case status check between the judge and the attorneys on Jan. 23.
Defense attorney Richard Lubin said prosecutors just days ago handed over the first batch of evidence in the case, which he called “complicated” because it’s so old.
“I don’t really know anything about the case yet,” Lubin told the judge.
Detectives say Marlene Warren answered the door to her home in the Aero Club community to accept a bouquet and two balloons from a clown wearing an orange wig, a red bulb nose, gloves and a smile painted on its white face.
Immediately, the clown fired at Warren’s face. She died within two days.
The clown fled in a white Chrysler LeBaron, which was found four days later abandoned at a shopping center parking lot. Sheila Keen and Michael Warren were originally identified as persons of interest but neither was charged at the time.
Keen, then 27, had been working for Warren’s used car dealership, Bargain Motors Inc. of West Palm Beach, helping to repossess cars.
The case went cold until 2014, when Palm Beach County detectives took a fresh look at DNA evidence. They also learned the Warrens married in Las Vegas in 2002.
Sheriff Ric Bradshaw and State Attorney Dave Aronberg have told reporters that Sheila Warren’s Sept. 26 arrest in southwest Virginia resulted from a DNA link and recent witness interviews.
They did not offer any specifics about the evidence, and there is no arrest report filed in the case that outlines what led to the charge.
After the killing, detectives told reporters that a search of Keen’s home yielded fibers from a bright orange wig. And similar fibers were found in the getaway car.
For the past 15 years, the Warrens lived in small, historic Abingdon, Va., within the Blue Ridge Mountains.
They had a reputation as a hardworking, sociable couple who until last year operated a popular fastfood restaurant in nearby Kingsport, Tenn.
After news of Sheila
Warren’s arrest made national headlines, their neighbors and customers have said they were unaware of their past alleged ties to one of South Florida’s high-profile murders.