Florida is home to some of the strangest criminals in the nation, leading to the term “Florida man.”
But one case took the cake even for the Sunshine State.
And a killer clown was set free in Florida after one horrible decision.
Florida town rocked by the not-so-funny case of a killer clown
On May 26, 1990, Marlene Warren was murdered in a shocking crime that made national headlines.
And a case that caused newfound fears of clowns.
She answered her door that day to discover a clown delivering balloons and carnations.
The clown handed the balloons to Warren.
“How nice,” Warren said.
The clown then pulled out a gun and shot her in the head before driving off in a Chrysler LeBaron.
“This is the strangest thing I’ve seen in all my 19 years in law enforcement,” a Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office spokesman said a day after the murder.
The husband of Marlene Warren at the time she was murdered, Michael Warren, was rumored to be having an affair with his employee Sheila Keen.
Both individuals adamantly denied the rumors.
But then, to almost no one’s surprise, Michael Warren and Sheila Keen got married in 2002 and moved to Virginia.
This came after he had spent three years in prison for theft, racketeering, and tampering with the odometers at his used car dealership.
Sheila Keen-Warren was a longtime suspect by police in Florida of being the killer clown but they did not have enough evidence to convict her.
Killer clown case comes back to life
Law enforcement in Palm Beach County, Florida reopened the investigation into the death of Marlene Warren after receiving a federal grant for cold case investigations.
A DNA test found that Keen-Warren’s hair matched that of hair found in the LeBaron that was seen driving away from the murder scene and later found abandoned.
The LeBaron had been reported stolen from the used car dealership that Michael Warren owned a month earlier.
And witnesses at a grocery store where the balloons were purchased described a woman matching Keen-Warren’s description.
A costume shop employee also identified a woman matching her description as the person who bought the clown costume.
Keen-Warren was finally arrested in 2017 and had been held in custody since then.
She ended up accepting a deal to plead guilty to second-degree murder but maintained her innocence.
The deal was struck before she would have gone to trial for the murder.
A judge sentenced her to 12 years in prison in 2023.
But Keen-Warren was recently released from jail after getting credit for the days she spent in custody.
Florida had a law in 1990 that allowed her to get credit for good behavior, which retroactively applied to her.
Keen-Warren’s attorney Greg Rosenfeld was very happy for his client.
“We are absolutely thrilled that Ms. Keen-Warren has been released from prison and is returning to her family,” Rosenfeld told Miami station WTVJ. “As we’ve stated from the beginning, she did not commit this crime.”
He claimed that the DNA evidence against his client was spotty and that some eyewitnesses described the killer clown as a six-foot-tall man.
Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg had a different reaction to the surprising news.
“Sheila Keen-Warren will always be an admitted convicted murderer and will wear that stain for every day for the rest of her life,” Aronberg said.