Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Defense says the real ‘killer clown’ is a man
Warren’s lawyers argue actual criminal got away 30 years ago
Lawyers for the woman accused of being South Florida’s killer clown on Monday ripped into the evidence for the first time, saying “the man” who pulled the trigger got away over 30 years ago.
Prosecutors have said Sheila Keen Warren wore a clown costume while gunning down her lover’s wife on May 26, 1990, in Wellington. In 2017, they announced the cold case was solved — citing new DNA evidence, ties to the supposed getaway car and witness testimony to support a first-degree murder charge.
But her attorneys now insist there is “absolutely no evidence, albeit physical or testimonial, that Sheila Keen-Warren dressed as a clown and shot Marlene Warren.”
And because prosecutors lack solid proof, a judge should release Keen Warren, 57, on a $50,000 bond while she awaits her trial, attorneys Greg Rosenfeld, Richard Lubin and Amy Morse wrote in the new pleading.
The defense slammed the prosecution for taking a position that “Sheila Keen-Warren was having a romantic relationship with Michael Warren, so she must have been the person who killed Marlene Warren.”
Michael Warren was the victim’s husband; he owned a West Palm Beach used-car lot where then-Sheila Keen worked as a “repo lady” and they had an affair, records show.
“The State has spent the last 30 years trying to force the evidence to match this loose motive, but the pieces don’t fit the puzzle,” the lawyers wrote. “Forcing the pieces into the wrong puzzle is futile and dangerous. This is precisely how you convict an innocent person.”
The Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office will have time to file an objection, and urge a judge to keep Keen Warren in custody at the county jail.
The killing was one of the region’s most shocking crimes: Carrying a flower bouquet and two balloons in one hand and a pistol in
the other, the shooter wore an orange wig, a red bulb nose, gloves, white makeup and a painted-on smile. The clown put a bullet in the victim’s face, hopped in a white Chrysler LeBaron and drove away.
Keen Warren had been an original person of interest after the murder, prompting investigators to search her apartment and take samples of her blood and hair. Michael Warren was then a suspect too, but neither was charged in the case.
Detectives, however, then examined his business dealings and that resulted in convictions and a prison sentence for racketeering and odometer fraud.
Michael Warren and Sheila Keen Warren got married in Las Vegas in 2002, records show. They bought an estate home in southwest Virginia and worked together in the restaurant business until about a year before her arrest.
He has stood by his wife, and previously has told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that prosecutors arrested her on “fake bulls—- evidence … they had nothing before, they have nothing now.”
Prosecutors last November finally elaborated on the new DNA evidence, explaining it had to be Keen Warren and not a man who wore the clown costume for the tragic killing.
The case, they say, comes down to hair and wig fiber samples collected from the LeBaron, found abandoned in a grocery store parking lot, four days after the shooting.
An FBI study of a strand of burgundy head hair with the root attached concluded that “the skin portion of the hair root” was from Keen Warren, the prosecution said, adding she “could not be excluded” as the DNA source of the entire strand.
Further, a “microscopic analysis” revealed an identical match of orange yellow acrylic hair fibers found in the LeBaron, shoes from Keen Warren’s apartment, and on the balloon ribbons, prosecutors have noted.
But the defense shredded these allegations, saying it’s clear “someone else committed this crime.” The lawyers wrote:
—Three of the four witnesses to the shooting, including Marlene Warren’s son, Joseph Ahrens, “unequivocally described the clown as a tall man ranging in height from six feet to six feet and two inches.” Keen Warren is 5-foot-8.
—The state’s summary of the DNA and hair analyses are either “highly misleading” or false. The defense said the FBI’s report actually found “most of the DNA found on the hair root belongs to a male” and could only say that Keen Warren couldn’t be excluded as the source of female DNA on the root.
—Detectives linked Michael Warren to the LeBaron, saying he stole it as part of a feud with another car lot. But the defense pointed out that one of t he witnesses insisted the killer clown’s actual getaway car looked different.
—Keen Warren could have been in the LeBaron “any number of times in the 30 days leading up to the murder,” the lawyers wrote. “Even if the two hair samples belong to Ms. Keen-Warren and the vehicle is the vehicle involved in the murder, these new findings do not suggest when or how these two hair samples ended up in the vehicle.”
Taken all together, the prosecution is “based on flimsy circumstantial evidence stacked on flimsy circumstantial evidence,” Rosenfeld, Lubin and Morse wrote.
The lawyers say Keen Warren, if granted bond, would live with her son in Palm Beach County: “She is neither a danger to the community nor a flight risk.”