Florida: Police claim 'clown murder' mystery solved after 27 years
Marlene Warren was shot dead by Sheila Keen who following her affair with Warren's husband, later became his second wife. Photo: AP
(Web Desk) - Homicide investigators in Florida believe to have solved the 27-year-old bizarre murder case of a young woman shot dead in May of 1990 by a balloon-carrying clown who knocked at her door.
Believed to have cracked the cold case, the authorities said on Thursday that the victim Marlene Warren was shot dead by Sheila Keen, who following her affair with Warren’s husband, later became his second wife.
According to The Guardian, Palm Beach sheriff’s detective Paige McCann has said that Keen, who earlier this week was arrested in Virginia, visited the Warren’s house in Wellington while disguising herself with white paint dressed as a clown.
“The clown had two balloons as well as a bouquet of flowers and went to hand Marlene those items. And as she went to receive those items, she commented: ‘How nice.’ It was at that time the clown pulled out a gun and shot Marlene in the face,” she told the reporters.
Detectives were initially baffled by the bizarre circumstances of the murder, which they confessed terrified them and many residents of Wellington.
Scrutinising Keen and Michael Warren during the original investigation, they had allegedly determined that Keen wore a clown’s outfit in a recent promotion for an auto parts store. But no charges were ever brought and the case lay resting until being reopened by the sheriff department’s cold case unit in 2014.
Sheila Keen Warren, 54. Photo: West Palm Beach News
McCann also told that a re-examination of existing evidence, new interviews with witnesses and fresh detective work supported with advances in DNA technology pointed the investigators back in Keen’s direction.
“The work done in 1990 laid the groundwork to Keen’s arrest this week. In cold cases, we have a big puzzle. Some of the pieces are already filled in. A lot was already filled in by the thorough investigation done by the initial detectives and we just needed a few little pieces,” said McCann.
“We were able to do that with new technologies and DNA. We were able to complete the puzzle and that led to the indictment,” she added.
The suspect, now 54, was stopped and arrested on Tuesday by police in Virginia, where Keen had lived with Michael Warren since their wedding in Las Vegas in 2002. Warren was in the car with her and allowed to leave, although McCann said “the case is still ongoing” when asked on Thursday if charges against him would follow, reported the Guardian.
“The potential penalty in this case is life in prison, and potentially the death penalty,” said David Aronberg, the Palm Beach state attorney.
