THE 33-year search for the notorious Florida clown killer came to an end thanks to a DNA discovery on a balloon she was carrying, the chief case prosecutor has exclusively told The U.S. Sun.
When tragic Marlene Warren opened the door of her home in Wellington, Florida on May 26, 1990, she was bizarrely greeted by a clown holding a basket of flowers and two balloons.
GettySheila Keen Warren appears in court for a pre-trial hearing in 2017[/caption]
CBS/ 48 HOURSMarlene Warren, pictured here with husband Michael, was brutally murdered at her Florida home in 1990[/caption]
15th Judicial Circuit CourtKeen-Warren, according to an employee at the burger restaurant she ran with her husband Michael, dressed as a clown for a Halloween party one year[/caption]
What Marlene didn’t see, however, was a concealed gun that was fired at her head, killing her instantly.
The clown fled the scene, sparking an investigation with enough twists and turns to last a lifetime.
Investigators were puzzled as to why someone wanted to kill Marlene, a small business owner with no known enemies.
Soon enough, it was suggested Marlene’s husband, Michael, was having an affair with Sheila, who decided to eliminate his wife from the equation.
Rumors of an affair have been denied over the years, although 12 years later, the pair were married, which only served to reignite the stories about the reasons for the senseless murder.
Finally, however, in 2017, new DNA evidence emerged that finally tied Sheila, now known as Sheila Keen-Warren, which eventually landed her in prison.
Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg was involved in helping put Sheila behind bars, and when he sat down with The U.S. Sun at Crimecon in Orlando, he laid bare the details that finally solved one of the strangest cold cases in history.
Aronberg and his team worked tirelessly to solve the mystery, even if previous attempts to find the killer had left him frustrated and underwhelmed.
“I don’t like to criticize former prosecutors or law enforcement, they were living in a different time,” Aronberg told The U.S. Sun.
“But I’ve always thought the evidence was overwhelming against this defendant.”
Keen-Warren and her new husband were living a new life following their marriage in 2002.
They were running a burger restaurant in Tennessee where one of the workers revealed she had dressed as a clown one year for Halloween, which naturally was music to the ears of cold case investigators who began re-examining the case 15 years later.
Suddenly, all the pieces of the puzzle began falling into place.
The problem for Aronberg was, now that he was working on a case that was almost three decades old in 2017, many of the key witnesses were either dead or incapable of taking the stand.
All he was left with was “a very powerful” motive and the testimony of an elderly person who was able to recall Keen-Warren buying a clown costume and flowers.
Unfortunately, the age of the witness would have left them vulnerable to determined defense attorneys.
“As a prosecutor when you see stuff like that, your heart sinks,” added Aronberg. “You just start thinking: ‘Why didn’t people do their jobs properly?’”
He plowed on regardless, and a breakthrough came thanks to the advancement in DNA technology.
Fibers from a car fitting the description from Marlene’s son Joe, who saw the killer flee the scene, as well as some from the orange wig the clown was wearing, were retrieved.
But when DNA was found on the hair in the car and, crucially, the balloon string she was holding at that fateful moment, Aronberg’s team finally had something to send Keen-Warren away.
She was arrested on September 26, 2017, triggering the start of a court process that lasted an astonishing five years.
Hearings over the years were canceled following arguments over various files owned by the authorities and other technicalities, while Keen-Warren sat behind bars in solitary confinement for five years before the final trial began in 2022.
Keen-Warren insisted she was innocent, but opted to take a plea deal in April 2023.
Aaronberg, who initially sought the death penalty but remained utterly convinced he’s found the killer in the “craziest” case he’s ever worked on, was certain the nightmare for Marlene’s family was finally coming to an end.
Still, however, the doubters tried their best.
“The defense said: ‘Oh, you didn’t find it for 27 years, and now you find it?’” recalled Aronberg. “They said the evidence bags at the police locker were opened and it had sort of disintegrated. They said it had spoiled.”
The jury, however, sided with Aronberg, who was particularly blown away by Joe’s moving testimony to his late mother, and Keen-Warren was told to remain in jail, where she will be until at least 2025, despite the best efforts of her legal team.
“It was never a question she committed this heinous crime, ” Aronberg concluded. “The difficulty was proving it 33 years later, but we did it.”
GettyPhotographs of balloons and flowers Keen-Warren was carrying on the day she killed Marlene Warren were put on display following her 2017 arrest[/caption]
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