- Marlene Warren was serving breakfast to her children when a clown holding balloons came knocking on her door
- Without warning, the clown pulled out a gun and shot Marlene dead on her doorstep
- It took 27 years for the truth of who was inside the clown costume to emerge – Sheila Keen Warren who has since married Marlene’s husband
It was a very cheerful start to the day in Marlene Warren’s house.
Her 21-year-old son, Joe Ahrens, had broken his leg a few weeks earlier but, with her support, he was starting to feel better.
That morning in May, Marlene had prepared a special breakfast for Joe and his friends.
When they sat around the kitchen table tucking into their food, a white car pulled into the driveway of the home just before 11am.
As a clown with an orange wig and a big red nose got out of the vehicle, brandishing flowers and balloons, Joe smiled, assuming he was about to receive a ‘Get well’ gift.
One of the balloons said, You’re the greatest.
The other one had a picture of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs on it.
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Marlene got up to open the door and Joe heard her say, ‘Oh, how pretty’.
Then there was a very loud ‘bang’.
As Marlene fell to the ground bleeding, Joe realised in horror she had been shot.
He rushed to dial emergency services, while also trying to get a good look at the clown, who was walking slowly back to the car.
Joe caught site of solid black combat boots, white gloves and ‘big brown eyes’ before the culprit drove away.
Marlene was rushed to hospital, where her son sat at her bedside in ICU. Sadly, Marlene died two days later.
In the meantime, police found the white car abandoned in a parking lot. Inside they found traces of synthetic orange fibres that had come from the clown wig.
The clown suit and the gun were never found.
They also found strands of long brown human in the car, but at that time, DNA was only in its infancy.
Who had wanted Marlene dead?
First, the police looked at her husband Michael, who was Joe’s stepfather. He had a solid alibi – he’d been travelling to a racetrack for a day out with friends at the time of Marlene’s murder.
They did, however, discover that there were rumours Michael was having an affair with a woman named Sheila Keen.
She was a repossession agent at the used car lot and rental car agency Michael owned.
When questioned, Michael denied the affair, and so did Sheila.
Police then managed to track down the costume store where the clown suit and balloons had been purchased.
Store employee Deborah Offerman told officers she remembered selling the clown costume, flowers and balloons to a woman, just before closing time.
When police showed this witness a photo of Sheila Keen, she identified her as the woman who’d purchased the costume.
But when police searched Shelia’s home, they found no evidence to warrant an arrest.
The case went cold.
Michael went to jail for fraud, unrelated to the murder case, but when he was released, he reconnected with Sheila, and they married in 2002.
While this seemingly confirmed the affair rumours, their union wasn’t a crime.
The couple moved states to avoid scrutiny, and ran a burger joint called Purple Cow.
In the years that followed, Joe fell into depression and began abusing alcohol. Eventually, he went to rehab and got dry.
But he never stopped wondering who had murdered his kind, loving mum.
In 2014, the case was reopened and police conducted DNA analysis of the evidence that’d originally been found in the car involved in the murder.
It confirmed the hairs belonged to Sheila Keen, now Sheila Keen-Warren.
In 2017, 27 years after Marlene was shot, Sheila Keen-Warren was arrested and charged with first-degree murder.
Police believed the motive was the affair, and wanting to get Marlene out of the picture so Sheila and Michael could be together.
There was no evidence linking Michael to the crime, and he wasn’t charged.
For five years, Sheila Keen-Warren awaited trial in jail, while maintaining her innocence.
Her husband Michael said he believed she was falsely accused.
Her defence team questioned the validity of forensic testing on evidence that had been in storage for so long.
They also suggested that Marlene’s killer – the clown – had been a man. But Joe was wasn’t convinced.
‘Sheila Keen-Warren was the murderer of my mother,’ he later told ABC News.
‘I was there. I saw her eyes… they’re the eyes. I’ll never forget them.’
In April 2023, Sheila Keen-Warren was facing trial for first-degree murder.
She agreed to plead guilty in a Palm Beach court, Florida, to a lesser charge of second-degree murder in exchange for a 12-year sentence, with five and half years already served.
However, her defence team maintained she was innocent.
A few days after the plea deal was finalised, Joe visited his late mother Marlene’s grave.
‘I was telling her we finally got the truth,’ he said in a TV interview. ‘We finally got closure.’
Keen-Warren is believed to be still married to Michael Warren. She was released from prison in November 2024.
