A clown came to Marilyn Warren’s door one May morning in 1990, handed her carnations and balloons, and then shot and killed her in front of her son. On Tuesday, her husband’s alleged mistress and future wife-to-be finally pleaded guilty to being the killer — though she still insists she wasn’t. It’s weird Even by Florida standards.
Sheila Kane WarrenThe 59-year-old has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in a deal that will likely see her released from prison within a year. Case ends after Marilyn Warren’s family agrees to plea bargain, CBS affiliate WPEC-TV mentioned.
Long suspected of being the shooter, Keen-Warren has been jailed awaiting trial for first-degree murder since 2017, when Palm Beach County Sheriff’s investigators said improvements in DNA technology proved that hair found in the clown’s car was came from her.
Palm Beach County District Attorney Dave Aronberg said in a statement that the plea bargain “earned a measure of justice” for Marilyn Warren and her son. No public notice was given of Tuesday’s hearing in West Palm Beach, which would otherwise have drawn a crowd of reporters and onlookers. Instead, it was handled quietly during Circuit Judge Scott Suskauer’s lunch break from another murder trial.
“Sheila Kane Warren was finally forced to admit that it was she who, dressed as a clown, took the life of an innocent victim. She will remain a convicted murderer for the rest of her days,” Aronberg said.
“This is an amazing victory for Ms. Kane-Warren,” her attorney, Greg Rosenfeld, told The Associated Press in a phone interview, insisting she was not the killer.
The deal calls for a 12-year prison sentence, but Keen-Warren has already served six years awaiting trial. Also, Florida law in 1990 allowed extended leave for good behavior, so Rosenfeld expects her release early next year. Her trial was due to begin next month, and if convicted she would have been sentenced to life in prison. Originally, prosecutors sought a death sentence but eventually dropped that.
Mark Randall/Sun Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
“The state of Florida originally wanted to execute her, but now she’s going home in 10 months,” Rosenfeld said. “While it was hard to plead guilty to a crime you didn’t commit, it was kind of a no-brainer when there’s a guarantee that you’ll be home with your family.”
Joseph Ahrens, Marilyn Warren’s son, watched the action online. Only 21 when he saw his mother murdered, now in his fifties, his only message to the court and Ken-Warren was, God bless her.
At the time of the shooting, Ken Warren was an employee of Michael, Marilyn Warren’s husband, in the parking lot of his used car. Since 2002, she’s been his wife—and they eventually moved to Abington, Virginia, where they ran a restaurant just across the Tennessee border.
Eyewitnesses told investigators in 1990 that Sheila Warren and Michael Warren were having an affair, though both denied it.
Over the years, investigators said, costume store employees identified Sheila Warren as the woman who had purchased a clown suit a few days before the murder.
And one of the two balloons – silver with the words, “You are the greatest” It was only sold in one store, the Publix supermarket near her house. Staff told investigators that a woman who looked like Warren had purchased the balloons an hour before the shooting.
The supposed car was found abandoned with orange hair-like fibers inside. The white Chrysler convertible was reported stolen from Michael Warren’s auto lot a month before the shooting. Sheila Warren and her then-husband returned cars to him.
Relatives told The Palm Beach Post in 2000 that Marilyn Warren, who was 40 when she died, suspected her husband of having an affair and wanted to leave him. But the location of the car and other possessions was in her name, and she was afraid of what might happen if she did.
She allegedly told her mother, “If something happened to me, Mike did it.”
But Rosenfeld said the state case is collapsing. One of the DNA samples, he said, somehow showed both male and female genes, and the other could have come from 1 in 20 women – even Marilyn Warren.
And even if that hair came from Keen-Warren, it may have been filed before the car was reported stolen. Ahrens and another witness, he said, told investigators that the car they found was not the killer’s, though investigators insisted it was.
In his statement, Aronburg acknowledged holes in the case, saying it occurred because of the three decades it took to go to trial, including the deaths of key witnesses.
Michael Warren was convicted in 1994 of grand theft, racketeering, and odometer tampering. He served nearly four years in prison – a sentence his lawyers said at the time was disproportionately long due to suspicions of his involvement in his wife’s death. He was never charged with her murder.
In January of 2019, “48 Hours” correspondent Peter Van Sant He approached Mike Warren at his home.
Warren did not open his front door, but he spoke with Van Sant for more than seven minutes through the door glass. When Van Sant asked, “Did you have anything to do with plotting to kill your wife, Marilyn?” Warren replied, “I didn’t.” When asked again, he replied, “Absolutely not.”
Van Sant also asked Warren if he suggested Sheila dress up like a clown. Warren replied “Who said she even did that?”
He went on to say, “I don’t think she had anything to do with this. If I thought she had anything to do with this, I wouldn’t be with her.”
Warren did not return a call Tuesday seeking comment from The Associated Press.
[ad_2]
