The Killer Clown and the Murder of Marlene Warren

Who was Marlene?

Marlene Mae McKinnon Warren was born on April 15th, 1950 in Mount Clemens, Michigan. She spent most of her childhood on her grandfather’s farm in the small town, just north of Detroit. She was the middle of three girls and her mother, Shirley Twing, said that she was always smiling. Bill, Marlene’s stepfather, agreed with his wife, who described Marlene as kind, loving, and always helpful. 

Marlene got married at a young age, and by the time she was 18 years old, she had two children, John and Joseph (Joey) Ahrens. Unfortunately, it wasn’t very long before the young family experienced a devastating loss. Marlene’s husband died and, by the age of 20, she was a widow with two young children. Despite the responsibilities that she was shouldering at such a young age, Marlene was a wonderful mother. Her youngest, Joey, later described his mother as a “person of love”.

When Michael Warren came into Marlene’s life, she quickly fell for him. The two soon married and Mike became a stepfather to John and Joey. Joey said that Mike quickly filled the father figure role that the two boys were missing. He thought that Mike was a great husband to his mother and the family seemed to be rebuilding after their tragedy. Marlene and Mike decided to move the family to south Florida for a fresh start. They eventually ended up residing in Wellington, Florida in an exclusive community called Wellington Aero Club. The city of Wellington was one of the richest areas in Palm Beach county. Several celebrities have owned houses there, including Vanilla Ice, Bruce Springsteen, Tommy Lee Jones, and Bill Gates. The Aero Club had many houses that were built around a grass airstrip. The homes had airplane hangers in their backyards for residents to park their planes or helicopters. One resident described the area as a real life “nirvana”.

Unfortunately, in 1988, the family was hit with another life-shattering event. John, the oldest of Marlene’s sons, was 22 years old when he ran through a stop sign in West Palm Beach and struck another vehicle. He was pronounced dead on scene. 

Though Marlene was devastated by the loss of her son, she did what she could to keep her life together. She’d become a very successful businesswoman, and owned about 17 pieces of rental property in a lower income area of Palm Beach County, while Mike owned a used car lot named Bargain Motors. To neighbors, it seemed like Marlene was continuing to thrive in both her personal and business life. She was still the same woman who always had a smile on her face and was willing to help anyone who needed it.

The Day of the Murder

On the morning of Saturday, May 26th, 1990, Memorial Day Weekend, 21-year-old Joey was at his family’s ranch-style home in south Florida. His friends, Jean and Wendel Pratt and Mindy Perez were at the home as well, joining Joey and his mother for breakfast. Marlene was in the kitchen, preparing breakfast for the group. The doorbell rang and Marlene left the kitchen to answer the door. Joey heard his mother open the door and excitedly say, “oh, how pretty!” He then heard a loud bang. 

As Joey walked into the foyer, he saw his mother fall to the ground. She was gasping for air and it was clear that she’d been shot in the face. Joey’s friends were stunned, as they watched him kneeling on the floor beside his dying mother. 

It was later determined from witness accounts and evidence that when Marlene opened up the door, she found a clown standing on the doorstep. The clown, who was dressed in costume with a wig, nose, and white face paint, was holding two foil balloons and a white basket full of red and white carnations. One of the balloons was a red, heart-shaped one that said, “you’re the greatest”. The clown handed the balloons to Marlene, then pulled out a gun and shot her in the face. The clown then walked back down the steps and to a white Chrysler LeBaron that they’d parked in the Warren’s driveway. 

Joey watched as the clown walked off and got into the driver’s seat of the car, too shocked to do anything. All he could focus on were the clown’s eyes. They were brown. Once he was able to react, Joey hurried to his car and took off, trying to follow the clown, but he was unable to.

A neighbor, Bill Kramer was out walking his dog when he heard a loud noise that he described as sounding like a nail gun. Several people ran out of the Warren’s front door yelling “they’ve shot Joey’s mother”. Paramedics arrived on scene and rushed a critically injured Marlene Warren to the hospital, while investigators sealed off the crime scene and began their investigation.

The Investigation

Joey told police everything he could remember about the clown, including the eye color and the fact that the person was dressed fully in a clown costume except for the footwear. Rather than wearing big clown shoes, the person had dark boots on. Joey described the vehicle that the clown drove off in, and police immediately put out a BOLO for the white Chrysler LeBaron. 

Marlene was clinging to life at the local hospital as doctors did everything they could to give her the best chance at survival. They found one bullet embedded in the C-2 vertebrae of her spine in the neck area. It appeared to be from a 0.38 caliber gun. 

Mike Warren had left the home earlier, around 10AM, heading to a racetrack in Miami with a friend. He was about halfway to Miami when he received the call that his wife had been shot and was in critical condition. He immediately turned around and headed back to Wellington.

Police were collecting evidence and looking for clues at the Warren house, hoping to find answers as to who would want Marlene dead. Nobody knew of her having any enemies or anyone who would commit such a vicious attack, especially while dressed as a clown. The biggest pieces of evidence that investigators had were the two foil balloons and the basket of carnations. Luckily they’d been left with Marlene and the clown hadn’t taken them. No shell casing or gun was found.

Investigators began canvassing the area for stores that might’ve sold the clown the balloons and the flower basket. Luckily for them, they found that the heart balloon that read, “you’re the greatest” was only sold in one store: a nearby Publix grocery store. Two clerks at the store recalled selling the exact same basket of flowers and balloons to someone, just an hour and a half before the shooting took place. 

Two days after her daughter was shot, Marlene’s mother finally made the impossible decision to take her off of life support. On May 28th, Memorial Day, Marlene Warren passed away at Palms West Hospital, with her son and her mother by her side. Joey had been holding her hand all day, hoping that he’d feel something, but never did. 

Not long after, Joey went on a local radio show to talk about what happened, in hopes of generating any new leads. The radio host asked him if he could tell if the murderer was a man or woman by their gait. Joey said he assumed it was a man based on their big hands and because they seemed very tall. He also mentioned that the boots the clown was wearing seemed like tactical boots. 

Police were now on the lookout for a murderer. Feeling confident that the shooter had purchased the gifts at the local Publix, they set out to find out where the clown costume had come from. They called all costume shops in the nearby area until they found a West Palm Beach shop where two employees said that they’d sold a clown costume to someone a few days prior to the murder.

Deborah Offord, a clerk at West Palm Beach’s Spotlight Capezio shop, had locked the doors to the store and was closing everything up on the evening of May 24th when someone knocked on the door. The person asked if they could run in and grab what they needed. Deborah and her co-worker told the person that they were closed and they could come back tomorrow. The person was very insistent and told them that they wouldn’t be long, that they knew exactly what they needed. Finally, Deborah relented and let the person in. 

The person quickly picked out a standard clown suit, along with a curly wig, sponge nose, and a set of clown makeup. They didn’t pick anything special, getting the cheapest options for the costume. They did however, make a point of asking for extra white makeup because they needed to make sure that their face was covered.

Deborah described the person as looking very androgynous. She said they were tall, maybe around 5’8, and wearing jeans, a plaid button up shirt, and work boots. They were uninterested in purchasing any clown shoes. 

Finally, the store clerks asked the officers why they were so concerned with the customer. They were devastated to learn that they may have been the ones to sell the costume to a murderer. Despite the gut-wrenching feeling the store clerks now had after possibly unintentionally helping a murderer, they had provided investigators with a SIGNIFICANT clue; the person who’d purchased the clown costume was a woman.

On May 30th, just four days after the murder, employees called police to report what appeared to be an abandoned vehicle in the parking lot of a local Winn-Dixie shopping center. The employees said it’d been there for a few days, with nobody in or around it. It was a white Chrysler LeBaron. Investigators quickly sealed off the vehicle, obtained a search warrant, and towed the vehicle back to their headquarters where it could be thoroughly inspected.

There were obvious red/orange curly fibers in the front seat, back seat, and on the driver’s door. The fibers were sent out for analysis and were determined to be acrylic, likely from a wig. The license plate on the vehicle was traced back to Payless Car Rental, a local lot. The company had reported the vehicle as stolen about two weeks before.

Mike

The more that investigators dug into the vehicle and where it might’ve come from, the stranger things became. Payless Car Rental was at a business war with Bargain Motors, the car lot run by Mike Warren. The two businesses often competed for sales and business, but recently Bargain Motors had done something that really pissed Payless off. Bargain had placed an ad in the yellow pages that read “PAYLESS” in big letters, with their information underneath. It began leading those who were looking for the phone number and information for Payless to unintentionally call Bargain Motors. Payless reportedly sued Bargain Motors over the ad.

A couple told investigators that they’d rented a vehicle from Payless. When it was time to return the vehicle, they accidentally called Bargain Motors. Whoever they spoke to directed them to leave the rented vehicle in the Payless lot, outside of the gate with the keys inside. It was rumored that Mike and one of his employees stole the vehicle to get back at Payless for the lawsuit.

As detectives continued to dig into Mike’s business dealings and a possible connection to Marlene’s murder, they found that he was being investigated by other authorities for suspicion of rolling back odometers on the vehicles at his lot. They also learned of rumors that Mike was having an affair with a woman named Sheila Keen at Bargain Motors. Employees reported having seen Mike and Sheila engage in sexual acts in his office. Both Mike and Sheila denied any sort of relationship. 

On October 25th, 1990, police executed a search warrant at Bargain Motors. The nighttime raid, where they seized filing cabinets full of documents, gave them enough ammunition to arrest Mike. On the next day, October 26th, Mike Warren was arrested and charged with over 60 charges, including odometer tampering, grand theft, and racketeering. Detectives had proof that Mike had been repossessing vehicles that were sold by his dealership, then reporting them stolen and collecting the insurance money. 

As Mike waited for his day in court, Marlene’s murder remained unsolved. It seemed as though Mike was not as perfect of a husband as some thought. In fact, a lot of people who knew him said that it seemed as though trouble followed him. He once owned a plane that suddenly disappeared, then was found with a broken engine. He had owned race horses, and once randomly turned up dead. Something about him just rubbed some people the wrong way. He seemed to fit the stereotype of a pushy car salesman. He was charming and appeared trustworthy, but below the surface, Mike was a bit of a conman. 

Some close to the Warrens said that Marlene and Mike’s relationship was in trouble. They were unable to get a divorce due the financial complications that would come with dividing their assets, like the car lot and the rental properties. Mike was spending more and more time at work and less at home. This only added to the rumors of infidelity from Mike.

In 1992, Mike went to trial on the charges related to Bargain Motors. During the trial, one of the assistant state attorneys mentioned that Mike was suspected of being involved in the murder of Marlene. This gave Mike’s attorney the avenue to accuse investigators of railroading his client to ultimately charge him with murder. While the judge agreed with the defense attorney, the jury still found Mike guilty of 43 of his charged counts and he was sentenced to nine years in prison. 

Though Mike was headed to prison, Marlene’s friends and family strongly believed that he should be facing time for some sort of involvement in Marlene’s murder. Her stepfather said that he had a gut feeling about Mike, that he was hiding something. He didn’t believe Mike had committed the murder himself, but thought that he knew more about what had happened. 

Investigators felt the same way, but Mike had a rock solid alibi and all of the evidence they had against him having involvement was circumstantial. Their suspicion increased even more when they received an anonymous phone call telling them that in addition to looking into Mike, they needed to investigate Sheila Keen, the woman that there were reports of Mike having an affair with. The caller said that the two knew what happened to Marlene.

Sheila Keen

Sheila Keen grew up in a small country town. She was a pretty girl, with long brown hair, and someone that was always noticed for her looks. She wanted a life with money and worked to find that life for herself. 

She was married when she first met Mike. Sheila was just 27 years old, while Mike was almost 40. She began working at Bargain Motors, repossessing vehicles. Sheila was described as fearless, so she was a perfect person to go into dangerous areas of the city and repossess vehicles. In 1990, she filed a petition with the court against her husband due to reports of domestic violence. After the temporary injunction was granted, Sheila moved out of the house she shared with her husband and into an apartment. An apartment that was paid for by Mike Warren.

Residents who lived in the same apartment complex as Sheila said that they thought Mike was her husband because of how often he was at her apartment. People thought that Marlene had become suspicious that Mike was cheating on her. Could this have led him to seeing only one way out of the marriage. Unfortunately, though detectives and Marlene’s loved ones strongly believed that Mike and Sheila were involved in Marlene’s murder, there was nothing concrete to charge either one of them and the case went cold.

DNA Bitch

In 2013, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office received a federal grant for $125,000 to take another look at cold cases. Marlene’s case was reopened and the sheriff’s office now had money for enhanced testing, along with advances in DNA testing since the 90’s. Additionally, there was a new sheriff and a new assistant district attorney. The sheriff made it a priority to look at Marlene’s case with fresh eyes.

The first thing that detectives did was go back to the physical evidence found in the white Chrysler LeBaron. They sent the curly synthetic fibers in for testing, along with strands of what looked like long, brown, human hair. Detectives hoped that the hair would have DNA that could connect the vehicle to a suspect. 

In 1997, Mike had been released from prison and promptly moved out of Florida and to Virginia, along with his girlfriend, Debbie. The couple lived in a huge mansion on a lake with a boat dock. They even owned a popular fast food restaurant called the Purple Cow. The couple were adored by their employees, who looked at Mike and Debbie as family. They worked hard, doing multiple jobs at the restaurant, and doing everything they could to keep the business thriving so they could pay their employees very well. Mike and Debbie’s neighbors said that the two were just a happy, fun couple. It was difficult to find anyone that had anything negative to say about the two. Difficult, but not impossible.

One neighbor said that they had an odd run-in with Mike on their property. One day, Mike was in their backyard by the water, trying to haul rocks away with his tractor. The neighbor told Mike that he needed to get off their property. Mike asked if they could just be neighborly, to which the neighbor responded that the neighborly thing to do would’ve been for Mike to ask them beforehand. After that, Mike began cursing and yelling at them. They said that Mike was really just a big bully. 

With Marlene’s case reopened and actively being investigated, several local Florida investigative reporters were following Mike’s actions closely. One reporter in particular followed Mike all of the way to Virginia. She spoke to his neighbors, who all had lovely things to say about Mike and Debbie. One neighbor invited the reporter in to elaborate on what they knew about Mike. The reporter asked about Sheila Keen, to which the neighbor told them that there was no Sheila Keen, that Mike’s girlfriend’s name was Debbie. 

It didn’t take long for the reporter to realize that GASP…DEBBIE WAS SHEILA. This bitch was living under a different name and had dyed her hair blonde. It was found that once Sheila FINALLY divorced her husband, she and Mike got married in 2002 at the Little White Chapel in Las Vegas.

In 2017, Palm Beach County Detectives, armed with the new results of their DNA testing, called the Washington County Sheriff’s Department in Virginia and issued a warrant for the arrest of Sheila Keen. On September 26th, 2017, as Mike and Sheila were returning from a road trip to Vermont, they were pulled over by police in their black Cadillac Escalade. They told Sheila that they had a warrant for her arrest for the murder of Marlene Warren. She was taken into custody, while Mike was left with his vehicle. Unfortunately, there was no evidence to directly prove his involvement in the murder. 

The Trial

Sheila was quick to waive her rights to an extradition hearing. Police said that she seemed eager to be brought back to Palm Beach County to have her day in court. The day following Sheila’s arrest, the Palm Beach County State Attorney announced that if Sheila was convicted, they would be seeking the death penalty or life in prison.

Sheila, of course, denied any involvement in the murder, and said that she was out repoing cars when Marlene was murdered. Despite facing murder charges, Sheila had a big smile on her face in her mugshot. It was eerily similar to a mugshot from when Sheila was 21 years old and arrested for shoplifting. 

In 2018, the sheriff’s office released the DNA evidence they had that solidified their arrest warrant: the brown hairs found in the Chrysler LeBaron, along with the curly wig fibers, were a DNA match to Sheila. Additionally, one of the clerks at Publix positively identified Sheila as being the person who bought the two balloons and basket of carnations on the day of the murder. Both of the women who’d been at the costume shop positively identified Sheila in a photo lineup as the woman who purchased the clown costume a few days before Marlene’s murder. 

Joey told a reporter that he’d actually met Sheila before his mother was killed. Six months before the shooting, there was a party at the Warren’s house. Mike’s mother had seen Sheila and made the comment to Marlene that she was going to have to watch “that one” because she was so pretty, referring to Sheila. It was an eerie prediction as to the events that would happen just a few months later.

Sheila’s defense attorney was prepared to argue his client’s innocence, based on several things. He brought up the fact that almost all witness descriptions of the murderer emphasized how tall she was, and that even Joey said the clown was over 6 feet tall. Sheila was just between 5’6 and 5’7. The attorney brought up the ambiguity of the sex of the shooter, and the fact that everyone who’d been on scene believed them to be a male. Additionally, one of the strands of hair in the LeBaron was found to have a mix of male and female DNA. 

Despite her continued denial of being involved in Marlene’s murder, in April of 2023, Sheila Keen pleaded guilty to second degree murder. Her plea deal was made in exchange for a 12 year sentence with credit for time served. Having already served five and a half years, along with “gain time”, Sheila will not spend much time in jail. Florida’s gain time incentivizes good behavior, cutting time off of an inmate’s sentence for each month they’re in jail without incident. A law was enacted that required these inmates to still serve 85% of their time, regardless of their gain, however, because Sheila’s crime was committed before the law was made, she wasn’t subject to the gain limit. It’s likely that Sheila will serve no more than two years in prison. 

After his wife’s arrest and imprisonment, Michael sold the restaurant that they owned, but remains in Virginia. He has never been formally charged in Marlene’s murder, nor has there been any concrete evidence to connect him.