The Case of the Killer Clown
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Now a stunning end to one of the most bizarre cases we've ever covered. So this was someone who had a purpose in mind and took time to disguise themselves. The clown pulls out a gun and fires at point blank range to Marlene's face. The last words I heard my mother say was, oh, how pretty. And

Then you add this costume, this clown costume to it, and it just sort of created a whole bizarreness around it. It's ridiculous. This stuff should not happen. You can hear her gasp. It was just like shock after shock after shock. Marlene Warren really liked clowns. Here is a set of three clowns. Marlene painted it when she was a teenager. There aren't just random evil clowns walking around unless it's in the movies.

The clown costume is a perfect costume to commit a crime in. It's literally walking camouflage. A woman was shot at her front door by a person dressed in a clown costume, and my heart dropped. They're smiling and performing now. In a split second, they could wipe off that paint of a smile and be killers. Wellington, Florida is just a very moneyed place.

sleepy part of South Florida. It's right up against the Everglades. Wellington is one of the richest cities in Palm Beach County. You've got Palm Beach, which is the Tony Island of millionaires and billionaires. It's also home to Mar-a-Lago, President Trump's so-called Winter White House. And then you have Wellington. You've got the Wellington of the equestrian set, where Bruce Springsteen has a house.

Quiet, but lavish. The houses were built around a grass airstrip and they all had hangers out back for the owner's planes. Now this is the way to go to work every day. What we call Sunday sundown. So you take this out every day? I take it about two to three days a week when I go to the office, which is 50 miles. I just love that idea. You fly to the office. I fly to the office. Wellington was nirvana.

We're outside of what used to be Marlene and Michael Warren's home. It was Memorial Day weekend. It was a normal South Florida day, hot and humid. Marlene and Michael Warren had been married nearly 20 years. She was a working mom enjoying a morning at home with her son Joey and three of his friends.

I was 21 at the time. I was into a lot of things, you know, scuba diving, flying. Life was an adventure, you know, it was exciting. When this happened, it was all taken away. Marlene was cooking breakfast for her son Joe and his friends who were here at the house. And this Chrysler LeBaron pulls up to Marlene Warren's driveway.

and out gets somebody dressed like a clown, full curly orange wig, red bulb nose, white face makeup, big suit, the whole deal, and approaches the door with two foil balloons and a basket of red and white carnations. The clown walked to the door and then Marlene answered the door. The clown hands her balloons and some flowers. I'll still remember this to this day. One of the balloons said, "You're the greatest."

Last words I heard my mother say was, "Oh, how pretty." And... The clown pulls out a gun and fires at point-blank range to Marlene's face. It felt like slow motion. I saw her fall. Then I jumped into action. I got to the door and I saw that she's been shot. She was gasping for air.

Everybody in the house was paralyzed from shock. And that gave the clown the time to get back into the car and take off. I had my dog out for a walk. As I walked along, I heard what sounded to me like a nail gun. Some very excited young people came running out saying they've shot Joey's mother. I ran for the car to try to chase the vehicle. I had to catch who did this.

I didn't even use the road. I just drove right through property. I couldn't catch up to the car. They rushed Marlene to the hospital. She's bleeding from her mouth. She has bone and metal embedded in her tongue. When police go to the scene that morning, it's a chaotic situation. Police immediately put out a bolo. Be on the lookout for the white Chrysler LeBaron getaway car.

the investigation begins the individuals inside of the home became of paramount importance at that time are they able to give us a description what details are they able to give us i was trying to see everything i possibly could to identify color skin whatever i could not the only thing i could concentrate on there is the eyes i saw the clown's eyes when they got in the car they were brown

Joey would later talk about the incident on a local radio show. Could you tell by their gait or by their mannerisms whether the person was a man or a woman? Well, Mike, to me it seemed like a man. Why? Because of the big hands and the size of the person. From the South Florida Sun Sentinel, in association with Wondery, this is Felonious Florida, the podcast that leads you into the dark side of the Sunshine State. I'm your host, David Schutz.

This is a case that has been both fascinating and confounding to true crime enthusiasts for decades now. It was even the topic of a hit podcast called "The Killer Clown of Wellington." David Schutz was one of the podcast producers. Marlene Warren spent the bulk of her childhood on her grandfather's farm in a little town north of Detroit.

She was the middle of three sisters. She was a great mother. She was a person of love, a good wife. I mean, she was just all around the American mother. Surely this has got to be the most recent photograph of Marlene that we've got. Marlene was outstanding. Friendly, loving, kindness, do anything for anybody. Always courteous, always respectful.

She married extraordinarily young, and by the time she was 18, she already had two young children. And then a tragedy. Marlene's first husband suddenly dies, and at 20 years old, she's a widow with two young children. Not long after Marlene is widowed, she meets her next husband, Michael Warren.

We had a pretty good relationship. He became a father figure for me and my brother and a good husband for my mother. They relocate to South Florida to go and make a new start. Marlene was kind of like America's mom. Always cheery and smiley, always trying to put a good foot forward. Nobody had a bad thing to say about her.

It doesn't make sense that a person that seemed to be so kind and so genuine, that everybody genuinely loved, have this enemy out there nobody knew about that would commit a crime like this. The morning of the attack, Michael Warren headed off to Miami to go to a racetrack. He left for the racetrack with his friends somewhere around 10 o'clock. And they were midway to Miami when they got the news that Marlene Warren had been shot.

So he turns around and heads straight for the hospital where Marlene is clinging to life on life support. Ballistic evidence is limited because there's a single projectile inside of Marlene Warren. There is no shell casing, there is no firearm. What is of value are the two balloons and the flower basket that sits right at the front doorstep. That really became the focal point of the evidence inside the home.

who would make such a deadly delivery police are about to get a first-hand description from costume shop workers who might have come face to face with the killer i need to buy a costume and i said can you come back tomorrow with clothes and now i need to get a costume tonight there aren't just random evil clowns walking around unless it's in the movies so this was someone who had a purpose in mind

and took time to disguise themselves. They drove way out of their way to commit a terrible crime and then afterwards had a plan to escape. Authorities in Palm Beach County want to know just how 40-year-old Marlene Warren, who is married and moneyed, becomes the victim of a would-be killer clown. But nobody wants those answers more than her parents. I come in here and

I think of her. Marlene Warren really liked clowns. You go to a circus, you always say, "Oh, look at that one." In a kind of eerie coincidence, Marlene even had a clown-themed room in her childhood home. She liked the clowns when she was a little girl. Here is a set of three clowns. Her mom had a painting that Marlene had done. This picture here is

a painting of a clown. Marlene painted it when she was a teenager and I'll keep it forever.

In some ways, the clown costume is a perfect costume to commit a crime. It's literally walking camouflage. You have these giant eyes and there's grease paint, there's fright wigs. I, Georgie, am Pennywise the Dancing Clown. For years, we've been a culture kind of terrified of clowns. From the two-part blockbuster Stephen King series, It...

To the panic that gripped the country in 2016 when creepy clown sightings were popping up all over the country. This clown was caught on video along a dirt road in Ocala. The other thing that makes people uneasy around clowns is in a split second they could wipe off that paint of a smile and be killers. By most accounts this probably would have been yet another tragic shooting.

But then you add this costume, this clown costume to it, and it just sort of created a whole bizarreness around it. That's what really put it over the top.

The only evidence that they had of the crime scene were the balloons and the flowers that were left behind. Police start canvassing the whole area for any places that sell these foil balloons, these baskets of carnations, trying to figure out who possibly did this. Let's find out where this flower arrangement could have been purchased, where these balloons could have been purchased.

There were two balloons. One of them was an unusual balloon, believe it or not. And it was only sold at one of the Publix grocery stores in Palm Beach County. It was a red harp-shaped balloon saying, you're the greatest. Investigators followed up on several leads, one of which took them here to this Publix.

There was a clerk here who said she remembered selling the exact basket of flowers and balloons that were found at the crime scene to someone here. They were like, "We think we know who the killer might be because we saw that person coming by." The same exact stuff you're talking about 90 minutes before the murder. The detectives tried to locate the clown costume in the very same fashion they tried to locate these balloons and these flowers.

What costume shops have sold clown costumes in the past week or so? I received a phone call from a detective from the sheriff's department, and he asked me whether we rented clown costumes or sold them. The owner of a costume shop in West Palm Beach told police that two of her employees sold a customer a clown suit just a couple of days before the shooting. You had closed, you had locked the door? Right. And then what?

I need to buy a costume and I said, "Can you come back tomorrow? We're closed." And now I really need this tonight. I need to get a costume tonight. The urgency might be understandable if it was Halloween, but remember, this is May. The person was extremely persistent in wanting to get inside. "I need to purchase this. I need to purchase this. I need to purchase this." They said, "Okay, we can make this happen really fast."

They were very quick in making their selections. A Ruby's clown costume, clown wig, Bob Kelly clown makeup, and a sponge nose. They didn't buy anything that was expensive. They really bought the cheapest stuff that they had. What stuck out to the two ladies is that the person said, "I need to have extra white makeup to cover the face completely."

So the person was certainly concerned with anybody being able to see their face. When asked what the person looked like, Deborah Offord used an interesting word: androgynous. Rather tall, I'd say probably around 5'8", brown eyes. I remember thinking you really couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman. What also stuck out to the ladies was that the person was not interested in buying clown feet. They sold this individual a clown wig,

Clown costume, makeup with extra white, but no clown feet. This is a red flag for detectives because the clown who shot Marlene was not wearing typical clown shoes, as Joey had mentioned in that radio interview. Okay, were they wearing clown shoes or were they wearing civilian shoes? Something like an army boot. But it didn't look like it was part of the clown outfit. Right.

After being peppered with all kinds of questions from a detective, the costume shop owners finally asked, what is this about? I said, could I ask please what this is in reference to? And he said, well, you're probably going to read about it all over the papers tomorrow morning. But a woman was shot at her front door by a person dressed in a clown costume. And he shot her in the face and my heart dropped.

But soon enough, there'd be the first big break in this case. They found a white Chrysler LeBaron. Observable even to the naked eye are what appear to be red-orange wig fibers. Are the secrets to Marlene Warren's murder hidden in that white Chrysler LeBaron? This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Do you have a point-of-sale system you can trust, or is it...

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Marlene Warren was shot in her home in Wellington, Florida at a point-blank range by a lone assailant dressed as a clown. The clown then left the scene in a white Chrysler LeBaron. Everybody's been chasing them ever since. She didn't deserve this. She was a very caring, honest, loving, kind person. And for this to happen, it was so tragic. Marlene died on Memorial Day 1990.

I held her hand the whole day, hoping if I felt something that we would not have to unplug that machine. But there was no hope. That was the hardest thing that my grandmother had to do, to tell me to turn that machine off. Her funeral was held about a week later, and the investigators were there at the funeral, taking pictures, keeping track of who was in attendance. Investigators were watching to see how people acted and what they did.

Usually when a spouse is killed, especially when it's in their home, it's almost always the spouse. So it's no surprise when police take interest in Marlene's grieving husband, Michael Warren, who had told them he was on the way to Miami with friends on the day of the murder. Even though Mike Warren had an alibi, he is the husband, and so naturally police are going to be looking at him as having potential involvement.

Mike Warren had been selling cars in South Florida for a number of years and by 1990 he was running a lot called Bargain Motors. It was one of those places that you went if you had really bad credit and you needed something to drive. And it was used cars, rent-a-wrecks, that kind of business. He was more of a blue collar guy. People said he wasn't very educated. He looked like he had had a rough life.

He was very hardworking. He'd arrive at the lot early. He'd leave late. He was a good salesman. Very charismatic guy. Michael Warren is a confidence man. He is smooth, okay? And that's not a compliment. Bargain Motors really takes off and that becomes his main source of income.

Suzanne Gould was an office manager on Michael's car lot and she told us a lot about Michael. His smile was possessing. If you've ever met a salesman on a car lot and just felt completely like that was the most honest person, he had an air of confidence. Those who knew Michael Warren say trouble seemed to follow him everywhere.

His plane disappeared once and it shows up somewhere with a broken engine. Nobody knows what happened. He had race horses at one point and one horse shows up dead. He was that kind of guy. He always seemed to have a different side to him. Suspicious side? Just different. While Mike was managing his car lot, his wife Marlene was doing okay too in her own right, owning a slew of rental properties on the rougher side of town.

Marlene primarily.

operated a lot of rental properties in the Westgate area. She had a bunch of apartments. She would collect rent. She had it really organized. They end up amassing about 17 different pieces of property in Palm Beach County. In fact, that's one of the early leads authorities investigate that maybe one of Marlene's angry tenants shot her. She managed a number of different rental properties. So it may have been suggested at some point

Maybe it's a disgruntled renter. No viable suspect that was linked to a disgruntled tenant was ever developed. What kind of reputation did they have in the community? They were just hard, workaday people that wanted to create a good lifestyle for their family. From the outside looking in, everything may have seemed pretty normal.

But this marriage, like most, wasn't exactly picture perfect. Michael does spend a lot of time at A Bargain Motors, which causes, you know, strain on the relationship between the two of them. Michael was home less and less, and it seemed like their relationship was really kind of on its last legs. But with so many financial entanglements, divorce was out of the question. If there was ever to be a divorce, it would have been a complicated one. All of the...

things that the Warrens owned, the big house in Wellington, all the rental properties. If she were to pass away, then he would be the beneficiary. In the days following Marlene's death, her stepdad Bill has a gut feeling about his son-in-law, that he's hiding something. I says, Mike, I says, I don't think that you've done it, but I know pretty damn well that you know more about it than you're letting out. And he says, honest, honest, Bill, he says, I don't know.

Suspicions are one thing, but none of it proves Michael Warren is connected to the murder. Michael proclaims his innocence, and he even goes on a local radio show to defend himself. Four days after the shooting, police get a huge break.

I remember hearing that on the police scanner, a lot of very excited activity by the law enforcement agencies. - The getaway cars. - Yeah.

It was a couple of workers that had noticed that there was a car that had just been sitting in the parking lot and nobody had gone in or out of it. It hadn't moved and it just looked suspicious. They go there and it's a white Chrysler LeBaron, a sure match to the getaway car. They seal off the car, crime scene tape and the whole deal and get a search warrant so that they can tow it away and give it a search.

Whenever you get the getaway vehicle, it's a big fine. You just scour for any evidence. Observable even to the naked eye are what appear to be red-orange wig fibers that are easily identifiable as something that may be on a wig of some type. They don't look natural. When police seize the car, they find curly orange fibers in the front seat, in the back seat, and in the driver's door.

Those items are sent out to the FBI for fiber analysis. The results were that it's not natural, it's an acrylic, it's a man-made fiber. Can't say that these particular fibers came from any particular wig. In other words, it's not DNA. But before it was over, that Chrysler LeBaron could offer up yet another big clue in the case of the killer clown. ♪♪

The discovery of the LeBaron is a huge break. We're able to tie the LeBaron that was used in the murder to Michael Warren's lot. There's a license plate that's affixed to the crushed LeBaron when it's found at the Winn-Dixie parking lot. When they run the car, they find out that it had been from a Payless used car lot and had been reported stolen about two weeks before.

The interesting thing about Payless car rental is that A Bargain Motors is sort of at war with Payless. Bargain Motors, of course, is the car lot that belongs to Michael Warren. Michael Warren had a yellow page ad in the phone book for Bargain Motors. And the Bargain Motors ad had in very large letters, Payless. It was really an ad for Bargain Motors that looked a lot like the Payless ad.

The person who's not really paying attention, when they start to turn the yellow pages, "Oh, pay less," and then they end up calling Michael Warren. And that's what one couple told police happened to them. They say that they were duped by someone at Bargain Motors just weeks before the murder.

This husband and wife had rented that white car from Payless, not Bargain. When they went to return it, they mistakenly called Bargain Motors, thinking that it was Payless. They say they're told, "Buy someone at Michael Warren's lot. Leave the car at the Payless lot where you rented it outside the gates with the keys in it. We'll pick it up." This couple thought, "Well, that sounds really strange," but they did it anyway because they had a plane to catch.

That LeBaron was taken back to A Bargain Motors even though it didn't belong to them. And that's how police alleged the LeBaron came to be on Michael Warren's lot. One of Michael's employees was arrested in connection with the theft of the LeBaron and he was eventually convicted. Michael himself was never charged. But who was it that used that car to go and kill Marlene? That was still the question.

Despite this link between the LeBaron and potentially Michael's car lot, there's not enough there for police to make an arrest. Michael had a pretty airtight alibi with witnesses. He was in the car with his friends heading to the racetrack.

Still, he wasn't out of hot water just yet. Pretty quickly after the killing, investigators from a different police agency contact the sheriff's office and let them know that Bargain Auto Parts has been under surveillance for some shady dealings.

In fact, investigators from the West Palm Beach Police Department were looking into Mike Warren for rolling back odometers on his used cars. It wasn't just one or two cars. It was a fleet of cars that we looked at in the 90s. The cars that we're talking about all had mechanical odometers that could be manipulated. It took some skill and you had to know what you're doing, but it could be done.

For the record, it doesn't exactly work the way Matthew Broderick said it would in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Whatever miles we put on, we'll take off. We'll drive home backwards. And by October 1990, some five months after Marlene's murder, police execute a search warrant at Michael Warren's car dealership. Police conduct a nighttime raid.

And they go in, they swarm the property, they take away filing cabinets and insurance information and a slew of documents. I like the helicopter and the jet the most. Former neighbor John Herring remembers talking with Michael during this time and says he seemed to be more concerned about the impact on his business than the investigation into his wife's murder.

He said, "They're taking all my files, they're taking everything, and I'm going to be out of business." And I thought it was a little bit strange that he didn't say anything about the shooting. About his wife. And when I asked him, "Did you do it?" And he said, "Of course not." And, uh... You asked him to his face, "Did you kill your wife?" Yeah. Well, I said, "Did you have anything to do with it?" He says, "No, of course not." I said, "Good." On October 26th, Michael Warren is indeed arrested, but not for murder.

Michael is charged with 66 counts that included odometer tampering, grand theft, and racketeering. Michael goes to trial for those fraud charges, but there's one big elephant in the room. In open court, one of the assistant state attorneys said that Michael Warren was a suspect in the murder. And that opened a can of worms. It gave Michael Warren's attorney the option to say, "This is a witch hunt. You're railroading my client." And even a judge agreed with him.

The jury was considering 66 charges against Michael. They acquitted him of about a dozen of them, but found him guilty of 43 counts that included odometer tampering and fraud. And Mr. Warren was then sentenced to nine years in prison. Michael is sent to prison to start his nine-year sentence. Meanwhile, the investigation into his wife's murder was still open.

A lot of different angles were taken to try to investigate the case, trying to turn up something. A lot of other witness statements were looked into. Tips would come in and different callers would say they had a lead as to who the killer clown was. At this point, the only evidence prosecutors have is circumstantial. But prosecutors still don't have that proverbial smoking gun.

But would another woman from Michael's life hold the key to solving his late wife's murder? There were really intense rumors going around that Michael Warren was having an affair with someone at his car lot. An affair being carried out right in front of everyone's eyes.

It's 1990, and who could forget the famous intro to the number one show in the country? Cheers. Oh, come on. Not all men are evil slime. Oh, yeah, sure. You would defend them. People everywhere want a Beanie Baby. This is legs. This is gold. And nearly everybody's got Ice Ice Baby playing on their Sony Walkman. But something else is at the risk of turning cold. The case of the Killer Clown.

And it's hard to imagine who's more frustrated by it all, the police or the local media who are just fighting for any scrap of information. The police were very tight-knit on this investigation. They weren't giving the media a lot of information. They wanted to make sure that they were able to catch the killer. Murders in Florida, especially in the early 90s, are rampant.

Some local residents, though, are upset that it took the killings of tourists to focus attention on a crime problem they face every day. But what sets this case apart? The costume, the flowers, the balloons. It all seems to be so oddly personal. It made sense that the killer had to have known or been associated with the family in some way. Police get an anonymous call.

telling investigators to look into Marlene Warren's husband, Michael. This person did not identify themselves. In fact, they very much did not want to be identified. Said, Marlene Warren was just shot and killed. Somebody needs to look into Michael Warren. The people that police were questioning were telling police that Michael Warren was having an affair with a woman who worked on his car lot, Sheila Keene.

Sheila was a Glades girl. She grew up in the small towns on the outskirts of the Everglades near Lake Okeechobee. She was country, she was attractive, the boys liked her and she liked money. She wanted a rich life, she wanted nice things. She was very attractive, long brunette, you know, she had long hair.

On the podcast, The Killer Clown of Wellington, the former office manager at Bargain Motors, Suzanne Gould, remembers Sheila Keene and that she made quite an impression. That first encounter with her, never saw her before, and then bam, she's there. The very first time I saw her, I remember her long, dark hair, and she was pretty, and she was very young. She was 27 years old. Mr. Warren was, I think, almost 40.

Sheila Keen started working for Michael Warren as a repo woman. She would repossess cars, sometimes in very rough areas, and so she was fearless. She repos the cars, Michael Warren recovers his asset. Sheila Keen gets paid by the repo that she brings in. Sheila and Michael, they apparently began an affair.

The other residents at the complex where Sheila lives said, "We thought Michael and Sheila were married. He was there so often." Mr. Warren had actually paid for a place for her to live. So Michael Warren was paying for an apartment for Sheila Keene? Yes, that's according to the police. That's correct. There are reports of some witnesses from Abargan Motors that reported sexual activities inside Michael's office.

And according to witnesses, it sounds like Marlene may have been on to them. There was an affair going on between them when Marlene was alive for a while, quite a while from what I understand. She never talked about it though. When they asked Mr. Warren about the supposedly affair with Sheila Keene, he denied it. Sheila denied it outright. She would describe it, "No, we just work together. We're just doing work."

In June 1990, just hours after investigators found the Chrysler LeBaron linked to Marlene Warren's murder, police were able to get a search warrant to search Sheila's apartment here in West Palm Beach. They took a number of items, including the contents of the trash barrel in her bathroom. No clown wig or clown costume or makeup is located at Miss Keene's apartment.

No firearm that could be linked to this case is located. It's another trail that leads basically nowhere. And the truth is, the news cycle moves quickly. And with hundreds of murders happening in South Florida that year, the case of the killer clown eventually all but disappears from the headlines. Sometimes when we have these unsolved murders,

There's sometimes a squeaky wheel that gets the grease. Family members, it's not unusual to hold their own press conferences to squeeze the police departments to try to do more than what they're doing. That didn't happen in this case. Unfortunately, Marlene kind of got lost. It's out of sight, out of mind, because you get on with your life. What that don't mean is that you forget anything, because memories come back for maybe just a few seconds. That's life. It's got to go on.

It would literally take decades, but something finally breaks the case of the killer clown wide open. You see a case like this that's been open since 1990, and it's frustrating. It makes you think that there are some evil in this world that will never be punished, but then you get the breakthrough.

Hi all, Kate Gibson here of The Bookcase with Kate and Charlie Gibson. This week we talked to Whoopi Goldberg about lots of things. But one of the things we talked to her about is how as a science fiction and graphic novel fan, she never saw herself on those screens or on those pages growing up. I mean, I didn't realize that part of me until I watched Star Trek. And I saw it because I love sci-fi.

And for some reason, it never occurred to me that I was missing until I was present. You're not going to want to miss this episode of The Bookcase from ABC News. This is true crime combined with sex and betrayal and an evil clown. There's a knock at the door. Marlene Warren answers, and she's shot in cold blood. I always heard rumors, if you mess up, you won't get a visit.

I was like, "What are you talking about clowns?" I mean, many names have floated around. It's almost like out of a movie. A major break tonight in a 27-year-old unsolved mystery. Has the killer clown been on the loose for three decades? Well, not anymore after a courtroom shocker. That's an outcome that I don't think anyone expected. They were able to get away with it for so long. It was just like shock after shock after shock. There needs to be justice.

It had been more than 20 years since Marlene's murder, and yet there were no arrests made. I don't think this case was ever cold. Even though it was on the back burner, it was still on the burner. It was never closed.

So this case really took on new life in 2013 when the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office was able to get a $125,000 grant. If they would have tried to file that... The cold case federal grant has enabled them to go back to this case and say, "Hey, we've got some monies now for some enhanced testing."

Back in 1990, the labs were not even utilizing DNA as we know it now. Forensics as we know it today was in its infancy. Back then it was fingerprints, fiber analysis, eyewitness ID. That's how cases were proved. As the science has advanced, we've had the ability to then go back and say, okay, we've got this old evidence. What can we do with it?

And by 2013, the case is being handled by a new sheriff in town and a new assistant DA. I came into this and I looked at it basically with a complete fresh mind, fresh set of eyes. When you work on a cold case, it can be very challenging. Witnesses may not be around anymore. They may be deceased. Law enforcement witnesses may have retired. And you have to have an open mind in how you work on these cases.

In his fresh look at the 23-year-old case, Reed Scott goes back to that physical evidence found in the white Chrysler LeBaron, those questionable fibers and something else. Witnesses also say that there are strands of what appear to be longer human-like brown hair inside of that vehicle.

If it was human hair, that would now provide something those other fibers would not: DNA. They took a particular hair which had a portion of the root skin portion on it. And there are certain laboratories that will conduct what's called mitochondrial DNA analysis. That's a type of analysis that is conducted typically on older samples.

And beyond the physical evidence, there is yet another clue that keeps nagging at Reed Scott. Deborah Offord, the woman who managed the costume shop almost 30 years ago... She had the intention of getting a clown costume. She told the original investigators that the person who purchased the clown costume was in fact a woman. When the police ask you about a description, what did you tell them? It was very androgynous.

had on long jeans, men's work boots, and the lumberjack kind of checkered shirts, and brown eyes, and I was always looking at people's makeup, and she didn't have on any makeup, no nail polish, no girly stuff, you know.

Remember, Marlene's son Joey, who witnessed the clown leaving, said he had thought it was a man. But that was only because of the person's size. Well, to me, it seemed like a man. What? The big hands and the size of the person. One of the things that I do remember about her is that she was rather tall. I'd say probably around 5'8".

But even that critical piece of information provided to investigators right after the murder never led to an arrest. The case had long gone cold and Michael Warren was moving on with his life, seemingly leaving the grief of losing his wife behind. And in 1997, he had a new woman in his life, a girlfriend named Debbie. He moved up to the Blue Ridge Mountains, living a very quiet life.

Michael owned a little fast food joint called the Purple Cow, which he was running with Debbie. The Purple Cow is a little drive-through fast food restaurant right off of a busy little highway. Hello, how are you guys? It has three life-size purple cows out front. It was super popular.

You have ribs, fried green tomatoes. They're known for the steak bomb and they got a Mike's Intimidator, which is a pound of hamburger meat on a bun. Michael and Debbie work long hours, sometimes six days a week. Debbie would actually come on the grill. She would do the order window, the grill, the fryer, and the handout window and the phone at the same time. While Mike done all the prep, he would hand cut his steaks like his ribeyes and T-bones.

By most accounts, Debbie and Mike treat their staff like family. He would act like my dad. He taught me how to cook. Like he taught me my multiplication tables. When Mike was at Purple Cow, you know, he sent everybody on cruises and he would pay for it all. There I am in the ocean at Nassau. He'd make sure you were taken care of. They were in love. Like you can just look at Debbie and tell them she loved him. She had that sparkle in her eyes. Like every time she'd look at him, she would smile.

They had a sprawling mansion on a lake in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Steep old house, brick, very fancy with a boat dock out front. And the two of them were known in this very tight-knit community as a happy, fun, very close couple. It was just a real relaxed relationship. We all just enjoyed being each other's company. You could tell they cared about each other.

Well, they'd hold hands some. A very loving relationship. Other neighbors say they see a different side of that rough-around-the-edges former used car dealer. Vicki and John Chidester say they had a nasty run-in with Michael Warren after he suddenly shows up at their lakeside property trying to haul away rocks with his tractor.

I told him to put down the rocks and get off our property. And it's saying, can't we be neighborly about this? And I told him, I said, the neighborly thing would be to call over and ask if you could come over here and do that. He said, f*** you. And he's like, what are you going to do, you scrawny? I said, I'll tell you what I'm going to do, you fat ass. But he wouldn't get off the tractor. And so he unloaded the rock. He was the bully. Somebody who thinks he's going to get what he wants. Yes, exactly.

but will their unsuspecting neighbors living on the lake get the shock of their lives is the killer clown about to make another appearance i always heard rumors about if you mess up you're going to get a visit from clown what are you talking about clown

Mike Warren was living a new life with his significant other, Debbie, in Virginia. But dogged reporters back in Florida never gave up the scent. In May, which was the 27th anniversary of the killing, my editor said, well, let's re-look at this. So I asked our researcher to take a look at a few things.

I was assisting Barbara Marshall, who was a features reporter who was writing the article. She asked if I could find Mike Warren. She found that they were living in Abington, Virginia, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Sun Sentinel's Tanya Alanez was also hot on the trail, and she made her way up to Virginia. During my reporting visit in Virginia, I'm constantly asking about

Sheila Keene. And one of the neighbors invites me in and somewhere in the midst of our conversation she just lets it drop and refers to Debbie and Michael. And I just kind of halted the conversation. I was like, "What? What? Wait. What? Who is Debbie?" It turns out that Debbie is just an alias. She was actually Sheila Keene, the woman with whom Michael was rumored to have had an affair.

Debbie, with the long brown hair, is now 27 years older and blonde. It was not surprising that she's now called Debbie by her friends in Virginia. She tried to hide, and one way to hide is to change your name. The first time I ever seen Sheila King was when I'd actually go to a mailbox and check the mail.

And Debbie would say that was her mom. I never knew her real name was Sheila King. And there's one more surprise. In public records, who you are will be discovered. What I found was that Sheila and Mike Warren had gotten married 12 years after the murder. I went to Barbara's desk and I said, Barbara, I said, they're married.

She found that Michael Warren and Sheila Keen had gotten married 12 years after the murder in Las Vegas. That's right, Michael Warren's once alleged mistress is now his wife. The two married at that famous Little White Chapel in Las Vegas. Once Michael was released from prison, he reunited with Sheila and they took their life to Tennessee and Virginia and just carried on with a new life. They thought they were going to live happily ever after.

until law enforcement started knocking on their door in 2017. Our agency received a call in regards to the murder of an individual that occurred back in 1990. The person of interest that they were looking at did reside in our county in an area called Heron Point. They kept a very low profile. They, I guess, sort of flew under the radar. Palm Beach prosecutors have by now issued an arrest warrant based on new evidence of their own.

She and Michael were returning home from a road trip to Vermont and they were driving their black Cadillac Escalade. Vehicles were strategically placed along various locations and observed the black Cadillac Escalade. We had vehicles that were positioned to the front of the vehicle, affected the stop in this area, vehicles came up behind it.

And when the deputy came up to the driver's door, he said he had a warrant for Sheila's arrest. They had a warrant for Sheila, but not for Michael. We told her she was under arrest for the murder that had occurred in Florida a number of years ago. Michael Warren, there was no warrant out for his arrest. He was not facing criminal charges. We have our suspicions, but we don't have enough evidence to file any charges against him. Although I think it's hard to believe that

Michael Warren knew nothing about this, but as a prosecutor, we live on evidence, not suspicions. She was removed from the vehicle, placed in one of our patrol vehicles, handcuffed, and transported to the regional jail. He was questioned briefly by the side of the road, and he was released. A major break tonight in a 27-year-old unsolved mystery. Police in Florida arresting a female suspect in what had been called the Killer Clown case.

It was a bit of a media circus when we announced the arrest of Sheila Keen Warren, but rightly so. It generated a firestorm of interest. Police in Virginia have made an arrest in a bizarre 27-year-old cold case. Sheila Keen Warren accused of dressing up as a clown and killing the victim as she opened her door. This case haunted a family and a Florida community for nearly 30 years. Especially when they saw

the defendant who lived a new life in Virginia. It gets our spidey senses tingling. This was a tenacious effort on the part of the cold case detectives and the people from the state attorney's office and the FBI.

She is anxious to be transported to Florida. She is anxious to have her day in court and to prove her innocence. We filed the notice of intent to seek the death penalty today, just now, with the court. Good morning, Your Honor. Richard Lube. At first appearance, she appeared to be shell-shocked.

Sheila pleads not guilty, even with the death penalty hanging over her head. Sheila said that she could not possibly have committed this crime because she was out repoing cars at the time. Not only is she not pointing a finger at anyone else, she continues to proclaim her innocence. When the Warrens' Virginia neighbors heard about Sheila's arrest, they were just flabbergasted.

I love her unconditionally, regardless, regardless of how it turns out. And just hope and pray that she's not guilty.

But authorities are convinced she is guilty, and they're ready to go to trial. Sometimes justice can be delayed, but justice eventually arrives. While Sheila is behind bars, there's yet another surprise. Police dredge up a car from a Florida canal, hoping to find the murder weapon. The allegation was that the clown costume, the wig, and the firearm were to be found inside. ♪

Something's gotta happen. She got away with it for so long. When I heard that Sheila and Mike got married, wow, that threw me on a loop there. I turned angry when I heard Mike had married Sheila. Angry. She killed my daughter and he marries her? Sheila Keen Warren is the only one that had the means, motive, and opportunity to commit this crime.

There's this photo taken of Sheila, oddly smiling while in custody. And it's oddly reminiscent of a mugshot taken when she was 21 and convicted of shoplifting. But this is hardly a slam dunk case. Anytime you're going to try someone for murder, it does help to have two things. A positive ID from an eyewitness and the murder weapon. And in this case, you have neither.

But just five months after Sheila's arrest, investigators are wondering if they finally hit pay dirt on that missing murder weapon.

They get a tip out of the blue from one of Michael's former employees. That former employee tells investigators he has information about where to find a second car. He claims it's connected to Marlene Warren's murder. Inside that car, he says, is a critical piece of missing evidence, the murder weapon.

This is the C-51 canal and this is the place where in 2018 investigators came to look for what they thought was the second getaway car in Marlene Warren's murder. The allegation was that the clown costume, the wig and the firearm were to be found inside.

Remember, there are critical pieces of physical evidence that are still missing. So the question is, could they be hidden in that car at the bottom of that murky Florida canal? They dredged the canal. A car is pulled out of the canal at the exact location where the vehicle is supposed to be.

It's almost like a body being exhumed from the grave. They ended up fishing out a 1982 Audi from this canal here. And when they looked inside, ultimately they couldn't find anything that would connect that car to Marlene Warren's death. It turns out to be a false lead.

And that leaves prosecutors trying to build a case that is almost entirely circumstantial. It's the story that the evidence tells all together. Can you link enough of these pieces of the puzzle together to paint a compelling picture? Some of them would be things investigators learned 30 years ago that would now be critical to their case.

Investigators say that one of the very first pieces of that puzzle lies at the supermarket where the flowers and balloons were purchased. You find that two workers inside of a Publix supermarket describe a person dressed in worker clothes with gloves and long brown hair. Now, the interesting thing about this Publix here is that it is less than a mile from the apartment where Sheila was living.

This person, fitting the description of Sheila Keen, purchased three items that are subsequently found at the homicide scene 82 minutes prior to the murder. And then there's that description from those costume shop employees from the very first week of the investigation, the ones who ID'd Sheila from a photo shown to them by the police. If you look at this picture, do you see a resemblance to the woman that you saw in here? Possibly, yes.

Each lady identifies her from two photo lineups as the person who bought and purchased this clown costume. Prosecutors will build their case on a series of oddly coincidental accounts of Sheila having dressed up as a clown.

There was a man who owned an auto parts store in the little town of Pahokee, and he called police with a very interesting story about Sheila Keene. She came in wearing a full clown outfit. She said she delivered flowers and stuff as a clown. We teased her about being in the clown outfit.

Gave as good as she got. She grabbed her stuff and took on off. Never saw her again. And then there's this photo, taken years later at the Purple Cow, showing Sheila with her face painted like a clown.

There were reports that somebody fitting Sheila Keen's description had bought a clown costume. There were reports that somebody fitting her description had bought flowers and balloons. She had been known to dress as a clown previously before. There was talk that she was having an affair with Marlene Warren's husband.

Aren't those enough circumstantial bits to try to bring this thing to a case? Thinking that somebody did something, knowing it and being able to prove it in a court of law, two different things. What you do not want to do is go into court without a case and take your best shot and lose.

I 100% believe that Sheila Keen Warren is guilty of this crime. When I looked at all of the evidence, there was no doubt in my mind that we had the right person and that she needed to be brought to trial. But did authorities have the right person? What if those strands of hair allegedly linking Sheila Keen Warren to the murder actually belonged to someone else?

Joe Ahrens has spent a lifetime trying to unravel the mystery of his mom's murder. Now more than 30 years later, he suddenly recalls an ominous interaction. The first time I was in a setting with Sheila Keene was at a party at our house, probably about six months or so before the murder. Mike's mother says, Marlene, you're going to have to watch that one. She's a pretty one.

And my mom responded with, "Well, is that the only thing you're helping him with? The cooking?" And she turned around with a little smirk and said, "Yeah." You know, and that was the end of the conversation. True crime is a hot genre, and this is true crime combined with sex and betrayal. There were just a lot of unanswered questions for decades, always nagging. It has all the makings of a made-for-TV movie.

But some truth is stranger than fiction. And as prosecutors are preparing for trial in a killing three decades old, it's clear that they're depending on DNA to make their case. When this case was originally investigated, DNA was in its infancy. You had some DNA for blood evidence, but not for hair. And that's what really broke this case.

Remember those two strands of brown hair detectives discovered in the white Chrysler LeBaron found back in 1990? Decades later, they sent those old hair samples to the FBI for advanced DNA testing not available back in the 90s.

There were two hairs that were looked at. One hair was designated as hair 39-1. When they took 39-1 on and separated the root portion of the hair, mitochondrial DNA analysis was done and it was determined that Sheila Keene Warren is the source of that. That DNA match, prosecutors say, proves that Sheila Keene Warren was in fact the killer clown.

Prosecutors say the results of these new DNA tests are what they finally need to go to trial. What this case is really about is an innocent woman who's facing prosecution for a crime she didn't commit. She went into solitary confinement in the Palm Beach County Jail soon after her arrest and has been there since.

Sheila has been in jail awaiting trial for five years. In 1990, there was absolutely no forensic evidence found unseen related to or tying the murder to Sheila Keen Warren. Enter Greg Rosenfeld, a powerful, trial-tested defense lawyer who's represented several high-profile Florida defendants.

Greg Rosenfeld was one of the attorneys who represented Dahlia DiPolito, who was accused of hiring a hitman to kill her husband. This court has a legal and ethical obligation to ensure that Dahlia DiPolito gets a fair and impartial trial. Even before trial, Rosenfeld is arguing the case prosecutors have built against Sheila Keene Warren simply doesn't measure up, referring to the height of the so-called killer clown.

You have four people at the crime scene and all four of these people said the shooter was over six feet tall. Sheila Keen Warren is between 5'6" and 5'7". The fact that one witness described the clown as 6'1" does not hurt the case because you have people who identified Sheila Keen Warren as the person who bought the clown costume.

I mean, you're wearing this clown costume where you have a wig on your head and it does make you look taller. Sheila's attorney also points to all the ambiguity about the gender of the clown. Three of the four people definitively stated that the shooter was a man. If the clown wasn't dressed up as a clown, it would be problematic that Joey thought the clown was a man. But the clown was dressed up as a clown to disguise features, to disguise the clown's gender. This murderer wanted to make it harder for police to find them.

Rosenfeld even has an explanation for that all-important DNA evidence. The two hairs that prosecutors say place Sheila inside that Chrysler LeBaron. The DNA evidence is beyond questionable. Two pieces of hair found in the LeBaron might not even belong to Sheila Keen Warren. And we believe that one of them, based on the amount of male DNA on the hair root, possibly belonged to a man.

The DNA showed that Sheila Keene Warren drove that car. And she's the one who married Marlene Warren's husband after she was out of the picture. Ah, the affair. Now that's a tough one for the defense because she was rumored to be involved with him romantically and then lo and behold, she marries him after his wife turns up dead? We've got her having an affair with Michael Warren before and married to him afterwards. They made her their suspect.

And even though none of the evidence fit, they essentially have been forcing pieces to fit this puzzle that just don't fit. They went from not having probable cause to arrest Sheila Keen Warren to this forensic evidence, which is circumstantial evidence, stacked on circumstantial evidence, to indict this woman.

The long-awaited killer clown trial out of Florida. This morning a judge set a new trial date for May the 12th. These hearings will continue tomorrow. They'll be moving on to other pieces of evidence. All they have to do is convict her all the way. There needs to be justice. But with justice already delayed and the start of the trial just days away, a courtroom shocker nobody saw coming.

A huge surprise, the fabled clown sighting file has been found. It's ridiculous to have 200 people coming into courthouse today to pick a jury on this case. This stuff should not happen.

Thank you.

By late 2022, Sheila Keene Warren has been in jail for five years, awaiting trial for the murder of Marlene Warren.

It's eight days away from trial and suddenly a huge surprise. The fabled clown sighting file has been found. The clown sighting file was mentioned in a police report back in 1990. It contains roughly 40 potential leads.

These are clown sightings from the day of the murder and the days following. Sheila's defense attorneys asked the prosecutor and the investigators for that file for years, several times. And every time they were told, "We can't find it." So he finally decides to file a motion to compel the state to produce this information.

The next day, the clown sighting file suddenly appears. After three years of me asking for that clown sighting file, it was in a box for Michael Warren's odometer tampering case. This was a 33-year-old cold case with boxes and boxes of files. The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office looked for it, and they couldn't find it. And then...

It was just there. There was obviously nothing intentional. The day jury selection was supposed to begin, the attorneys had to reconvene in the courthouse to explain why this had happened. How is it possible then that the sheriff's didn't see that file, right? It's ridiculous. This stuff should not happen. So at that point, the judge gives Sheila's defense 60 days to investigate those leads.

When we received the clown sighting file, our investigator attempted to track down these people. Numbers were disconnected, people had moved.

I mean, we couldn't track down these people. You're talking 32, 33 years later. So in the months leading up to this new trial date, Sheila's defense continues to file these motions trying to suppress some of the prosecutor's key evidence. One of those pieces of evidence is a mysterious fiber.

This six to eight inch fiber was found embedded in a balloon ribbon left at the scene of the crime. But investigators didn't find it until decades later when they reopened the case. In 1990, Detective Harrison recovered the two balloons and the balloon ribbons. He looked over the balloons for any trace evidence, saw nothing, sealed them and stored them. This evidence gets passed year over year through multiple people before in 2013,

An investigator picks it up and finds a mysterious fiber that no investigator has previously reported seeing. The ribbon was a pink, white, and red ribbon. And my swab was kind of getting stuck as I was trying to go through the ribbon. And as I got closer, I noticed that there was a fiber that was in the ribbon. After 24 years, this fiber suddenly appears. It's absolutely preposterous.

We think that the fiber got in the evidence bag by contamination. It was such a minute piece of evidence that it was overlooked back then, but there's nothing nefarious about it. The prosecutor said that this fiber was consistent with another fiber found at Sheila Keen Warren's apartment, linking the two together. But her defense attorney said the only thing that this fiber is evidence of is contamination. And to back that up,

They have this report from 1999 that says that the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office was improperly storing evidence from that Wellington crime scene in open bags. The Palm Beach Post wrote a scathing article about this, describing the conditions in which the evidence was stored. County auditors have discovered some of the evidence was improperly stored.

Open bags containing a white clown glove, seven types of clown makeup, an orange wig, and a bozo-type suit linked to the Wellington murder were found this fall inside the sheriff's evidence room. The packaging of the evidence was horrific. They have evidence bags just torn open, not repackaged properly, anything. You're talking about rips of outer bags, not the inner bags. And so, look, I realize it's a bad look, but it didn't contaminate the evidence.

But in that same court hearing with the investigator who found that fiber decades later, you can hear her gasp as the ribbon falls out of the bag as she is presenting it in court. You can show the court. That's okay. Just put it back. Okay.

The prosecution did come in with this gung-ho attitude when they arrested her. And then piece by piece, her defense starts to pick holes in that argument. And so close to trial, I think you could see the prosecution losing steam. With yet another new trial date looming, everybody's summoned to the courtroom for what will be a shocking 11th hour turn of events. Stunning new developments in the killer clown murder out of Palm Beach County.

So with less than a month until trial begins, we hear that Sheila Keene Warren is about to plead guilty. This is a total shock. Ms. Keene Warren, the defendant herein, will agree to withdraw her previously entered plea of not guilty, entered plea of guilty, guilty of second-degree murder. The defendant is pleading guilty because she's guilty, and a factual basis does exist for the crime. Are you in full agreement with all those terms? Yes, sir. At one point, Marlene Warren's son spoke over Zoom. The only thing I want to say is,

All through this trial, I didn't see any remorse. God be with her. Thank you, Your Honor. Sheila's sentenced to 12 years in prison, but with sentencing guidelines and with credit for time served, she could be out in 16 to 18 months. It was just like shock after shock after shock. First execution, then life in prison, and now she's going to go home as early as 16 months from now. That's an outcome that I don't think anyone expected.

This plea deal is a compromise for both sides. For the prosecutors, they get a murder conviction. But the sentencing terms are extremely lenient for second-degree homicide. For Sheila, yeah, she's now a convicted murderer, but she will most likely be a free woman next year. I can't say this enough. Sheila is innocent. Were we disappointed that we didn't get to try this? Of course.

but our job is to get her home. It was very difficult for her to accept that she was pleading guilty to this crime, but no one in their right mind is going to play Russian roulette with their life. This is imperfect justice. This is not the happy ending that I wanted, but we don't live in a fairy tale. She will always be a convicted murderer, and that's a stain that will never be washed away.

The big question, now that Sheila has pled guilty, what about her husband, Mike Warren? Sheila Keene Warren was the murderer of my mother. I was there, I saw her eyes. I'll tell you, I will never forget him. That 21-year-old young man who saw his mother gunned down more than 30 years ago says it took a lifetime to regain his footing.

It affected me with anger, alcohol abuse. Finally, I broke down and I said, "Enough is enough. I can't do this on my own. I have to go to a rehab." At 54, Joe Aaron says he is finally letting go of the demons of his past. And just days after Sheila Keene Warren pled guilty to his mom's murder, he visited her grave.

I was telling her we finally got truth, we finally got closure, and it's been a long road. I'm glad that she was there the whole time. I mean, there's times that I thought I was alone, but I was really not. You have part relief, part gratitude, because this took a lot of work for justice to happen. This case was cold. The defendant thought she had gotten away with it. I think a lot of people did, but the long arm of the law caught up with her finally.

The woman accused of dressing up in costume and murdering her lover's wife has pled guilty. When she took the guilty plea, I was shocked. I mean, I was so shocked. You know, I thought we'd never get that out of her. That plea wasn't the life sentence Joe Ahrens was hoping for. She was not remorseful at all through the whole trial. I hope I see that come out of her. That will help me.

In a lot of ways. She's a murderer, and it hurts me to know that she will walk free one day. But at least I know that for the past five and a half years, she has sat in solitary confinement in our local jail. And for the rest of her life, she's going to be known as a convicted murderer. Guilty or not, I was going to be okay. I pray for her now that, you know, she gets through it and comes out of this. You know, it's going to be hard for her.

And now the question many are asking, what's next for Michael Warren? If we're able to obtain evidence pointing to Mike Warren, we'll prosecute him. But there's not enough evidence. It gets harder by the day to prosecute someone for a case that happened in 1990. In a statement to 2020, Michael Warren said he's innocent and the comments and actions of prosecutors, including the accusation that he was involved in Marlene's murder, are reckless and shameful.

He also said that despite the guilty plea, he believes his wife is innocent and is grateful that she'll be home in 16 to 18 months. That's a good picture. Yes, it is. 33 years to justice, a day Joe's grandmother never lived to see. My grandmother just died recently. I want my mother to know that I'm all right. I'm going to be okay. She was an angel. She did not deserve this.

She's not here in flesh, but she's still here in spirit. I do believe my mother is at peace now. With time served, Sheila Keene Warren, Marlene's killer, is now scheduled to be released early next year. And with that, a bizarre 30-year-old cold case will finally have come full circle. That's our program for tonight. I'm Deborah Roberts. And I'm David Muir. From all of us here at 2020 and ABC News, good night.

Hi all, Kate Gibson here of The Bookcase with Kate and Charlie Gibson. This week we talked to Whoopi Goldberg about lots of things. But one of the things we talked to her about is how as a science fiction and graphic novel fan, she never saw herself on those screens or on those pages growing up. I mean, I didn't realize that part of me until I watched Star Trek. And I saw it because I love sci-fi.

And for some reason, it never occurred to me that I was missing until I was present. You're not going to want to miss this episode of The Bookcase from ABC News.