Marlene Warren // 418
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Thank you.

What is going on, true crime fans? I'm your host, Heath. And I'm your host, Daphne. And you're listening to Going West. Howdy, folks. We are back from our Oregon trip for Heath's birthday. We had such an amazing time. And thank you so much to everybody who checked out his very special birthday bonus episode. We called it Tales from the Campground. Yeah, that was a super fun episode. Yeah, we loved it. It's basically just us telling these true scary camping encounters. And it was so casual and fun.

and spooky and fun. I felt like we were just hanging out, which we were in the tent. Yeah, we were. We were hanging out in the tent. We were doing some creepy stories. And you guys can listen to that episode along with 110 plus other bonus episodes on Apple subscriptions or patreon.com slash going west podcast. Yes, absolutely. But over to today's case, I cannot remember how I stumbled upon this case, but it's

Even just the initial details of it unsettled me so much that I knew we had to cover it. You've heard of this, right? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I know you know the case now, but I mean, you've known about it. I have known about it. Okay. Yeah. So you guys will see why like in the intro alone, we're going to cover it.

why this case is unlike anything you've heard. It is terrifying. Absolutely. So without further ado, this is episode 318 of Going West. So let's get into it. ♪♪♪

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In May of 1990, a 40-year-old woman was murdered by a person in a clown costume after opening the door for them during breakfast. While police initially focused on her husband, he appeared to have an airtight alibi. But police would soon find someone else who had a reason to want her dead. This is the story of Marlene Warren.

so

Marlene Mae McKinnon was born on April 15th, 1950 in Mount Clemens, Michigan to Shirley and Leonard McKinnon. One of five daughters, she spent much of her childhood playing on her grandfather's farm in a small northern suburb of Detroit. Shirley described her daughter as an outstanding young woman, social and warm, and she was

and that she would do anything for anyone in need. She was also an incredibly creative and artistic child who loved to bake and paint. Now, let's talk about this painting for a little bit because Eerily, and you guys probably already know why, this is Eerily from the intro, but one of her favorite subjects to paint were clowns.

Very creepy. My dad would hate this episode. Oh, does he hate clowns? He hates clowns. I think we talked about this a few years ago because I'm really afraid of clowns as well. And I remember one of our listeners said,

Yeah.

I'm sure a lot of people are. They scare a lot of people. A lot of people think they're fun and cute and entertaining. You know, that's kind of their original point is to be entertaining. But this fact that she used to love to paint clowns as a kid would kind of come to haunt her family later. But at the time that she was painting them, her mother surely proudly displayed this collection of clowns in their house.

Now, years later, when Marlene was a teenager, she married a man named John Ahrens, and they eventually had a son with the very same name who they nicknamed Johnny. And this was all happening when Marlene was just 15 years old. It was two weeks to the day before her 16th birthday that she is married and with child. And then a short while later, her second son, Joseph, was born again while she was still a teenager.

But this relationship with John didn't last. And the reasoning is kind of a mystery because according to some sources, it was a mostly amicable split since they were both very young when they got married. But other sources say that John Sr. was actually struck and killed in a

car accident. So that's a pretty big difference from separation. I'd say so, yeah. But it's unclear to the public which is true. I mean, hell, maybe both are true. But regardless of how the marriage ended, Marlene became the single mother of two young boys by 20 years old. Despite this, she was described by her son Joe as a kind, generous, and loving person and an incredible mother.

He said fondly, quote, While starting over with her boys on her own, Marlene met the apparently very charming Michael Warren.

They enjoyed this whirlwind romance that ended in them getting married on April 27th, 1972, when Marlene was 22 and Michael was 20. So with this, Michael became the boy's father, which went well by all accounts, because Joe said that he remembers Michael as a strong father figure and a good dad to them.

Early in their relationship, Marlene and Michael relocated themselves and their boys from the Midwest to sunny Florida and settled in West Palm Beach.

At this time, Michael was working as a meat inspector as they tried to kind of get their business ventures off the ground because really Marlene and Michael wanted to own multiple businesses and just try to become really successful together, which they would do. They didn't even really have a lot of experience here, but they did manage to accomplish it, eventually establishing themselves as a well-known local couple.

So at first, Michael owned and operated a used car dealership called Bargain Motors and a car rental agency called a Bargain Auto Rentals. So they're finding success with these businesses and decided to kind of turn around and make even more money by collecting properties to fix up and rent out, which eventually totaled to more than 20 in the West Palm Beach area.

Starting in 1980, they began collecting empty land, building duplexes and apartment homes, and using the profits to purchase more properties. Marlene's mom, Shirley, said proudly, quote, she was a go-getter. She wasn't afraid to take on a lot of work.

However, Marlene kind of struggled with handling the more confrontational aspects of her business. You know, she's a super nice woman. She doesn't like having to evict tenants when they can't pay their rent. You know, this was a really tough part of the job for her. So because of this, she had a goal to sell off most of the properties and had an appointment with a real estate agent the very week that she died.

But before we get into what happened to her, let's talk a little bit more about how they got there. So after some time in West Palm Beach, the family moved just about 30 minutes away into the Arrow Club in Wellington, Florida, which

Which is essentially this upscale neighborhood in Palm Beach County that offered private airstrips to land planes. Which is going to be relevant here in a second. Now, the Warrens purchased an acre of land and built this custom ranch-style home. And although Michael loved their flashy lifestyle, Marlene really wasn't that into it. She just kind of wanted a simpler life and slower pace. And eventually hoped to sell the home and downsize to something smaller.

Michael, however, leaned fully into their lifestyle and purchased racehorses to breed and sell off. He did end up keeping some of these horses, and one of them actually went on to win $50,000 in a race. So this kind of proved to be a very profitable venture for him. And now that they're living next to this fancy airstrip, Michael started working towards his pilot's license and bought a small plane.

However, chasing this dream life caught up with him in the spring of 1983, when he found himself in a little bit of legal trouble after being caught tampering with the odometers of the cars that he was selling. He was actually accused of setting the mileage back on these used cars so that he could sell them for a higher profit, which is obviously very illegal. You can't, you know, sell a car and say that it's got 30,000 miles on it when it's got like, you know, 150,000.

And it was doing things like this that made the others in his community remember him as reckless and rough around the edges. And after this, things started to go really downhill here. Because his racehorse was allegedly kidnapped and then turned up dead, and his plane was stolen, later found without an engine. But his neighbors wondered whether he was actually behind both of these occurrences himself.

So after his legal troubles, the car businesses were both transferred to Marlene's name, and it was at this point in Marlene's marriage to Michael that their lives began to really diverge. Though Michael is remembered fondly by some, he had this darker side that few people knew about aside from his wife Marlene.

Now, both Joe and Shirley, again, Marlene's parents, have claimed since Marlene's death that she told them, quote, if anything happens to me, it was Michael. And just the amount of times that we hear almost this exact same quote on this show, by the way, but with a different person's name is fucking staggering. It is truly unbelievable, Marlene.

how many times victims actually point out who their killer really is. Yeah, and remember that for later because it's not this cut and dry. But basically, Marlene also grew suspicious that Michael was having affairs with

But the family conflicts were just beginning because Michael wasn't the only one to find himself in trouble with the law. When their son Joe was in his late teens, he fell in with the wrong crowd and happened to be in a group of friends during what turned into a case of attempted murder.

So this group of teenage boys, Joe included, beat and stabbed a man in 1986. Thankfully, the man lived, but Joe received probation for his loose involvement. He wasn't one of the ones to actually attack this man, but he was amongst the group that was responsible for it. So for this, his family retained attorney Christopher DeSantis. And in my opinion, getting this attorney and the conversation that I'm about to talk about is,

like completely changed Marlene's life. So there was a successful hearing on Joe's behalf. And afterwards, Michael pulled Christopher aside. And this is all from Christopher's perspective, by the way, he said that Michael pulled him aside and asked if someone were to kill their wife, would they still receive their wife's life insurance payout? Like you idiot. I'm,

I mean, it honestly does not get dumber than this. Asking an attorney about murder? Like, come on, man. Like, there's no logical reason other than you are planning to do that or hoping to do that, that you would ask this. Like, that's like beyond basic curiosity. Why would you even want to know that answer? Sure. And why is Christopher not, you know, skeptical of this question? Well, questioning it. It seems like he kind of was, especially when this this kind of

you know, rang in his head later, but he answered the question and said that in most cases they would not receive the life insurance policy payout, but that there were instances in which it was possible, such as if the situation was considered manslaughter or if they had gotten away with murder.

Christopher recalls joking, quote, this is what Christopher said to him. For example, if you wore a clown suit. I mean, I don't know why you're giving this person any ideas about how they could potentially pull off killing their wife. Yeah, I mean, of course, Christopher isn't being serious saying, yeah, you should wear a clown suit and that's how you're going to do it. You know, he's thinking, oh, this is like a lighthearted conversation. He doesn't think...

that Michael's necessarily going to go off and take his advice. But I would say, why even entertain this question? Yeah, I mean, if somebody asked us this, we'd be like, why the hell are you asking that? I'd be like, put this man on a list right now. Yeah, but so of course, Christopher later very much regretted his words, hoping that this didn't plant the seed of a very diabolical plot. Right.

Well, shortly after this, tragedy struck when Marlene's son, Johnny, just 22 at the time, was killed in an automobile accident on September 23rd, 1988. So this is a couple years after Joe's friends had tried to kill that man. And according to the police report,

Johnny had failed to stop at a stop sign and struck another vehicle at the intersection of Sandsbury Way and Fairgrounds Road in West Palm Beach, and he died at the scene of this accident.

I mean, this is just such a tough time for the family in general. Like, their marriage is crumbling, Joe is involved in this horrible attack, and then their eldest son dies, you know, so suddenly. Yeah, it's a lot. Especially with what's to come as well that they don't even know about. Exactly. So Marlene and Joe just kind of busy themselves with work, and Joe was really excited to help his mom with business stuff so that he could learn the ropes from her.

Well, meanwhile, Michael was focused on other endeavors. One of them being a young employee of his named Sheila Keen. So, 27-year-old Sheila worked alongside her husband at the car repossession business that Marlene and Michael owned. Sheila's husband Richard handled the towing, while Sheila brokered the repossession of the vehicle with its owner.

And since she's a very focal point of this story, let's talk about this gal. So, Sheila had grown up in Central Florida and was known to possess a pretty wild streak. She had a few arrests of shoplifting charges and had married Richard, who was 20 years her senior when she was in her early 20s, on May 13th, 1987. And just three months later, Sheila gave birth to their son, Charles.

Now, her husband Richard was a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, and he actually served time in prison for importing, exporting, and distributing marijuana. So this guy is just a racist piece of shit.

So, while serving his sentence at a penitentiary in Georgia, Sheila moved north to be with Richard and when he was released, they moved back to Florida and were then hired to repossess cars for Michael's business. So obviously the three of them worked closely together and Sheila was reportedly sometimes even used as bait.

dressing as a sex worker to distract and like ensnare men while Richard and Michael would take the cars back under less than ethical business practices. Yeah, so they're all just a bunch of schemers. Big time schemers and Michael basically is a schemer throughout this entire story and his entire life. Oh yeah. So all three of these people carried guns at work and Sheila kept a gun on her at all times, apparently in order to ensure her safety. Remember that. Right.

Though he worked closely with Sheila's husband, Michael began spending so much time around Sheila at work and outside of work that rumors swirled about their relationship, especially once Sheila and her husband Richard finally separated. On January 17th, 1990, Sheila filed for a restraining order against her husband Richard, citing domestic violence.

She claimed that he had grabbed her roughly and threatened her and that she was afraid that he would do something worse if given the opportunity. So Sheila moved out of their house and into an apartment, which was apparently being paid for by Michael. You guessed it, people. By Michael. In fact...

He became such a fixture in Sheila's apartment building that her neighbors assumed that he was her husband, even though he was still married to Marlene. You know, again, this is her apartment building. The people here don't know Marlene or Michael, but this is the impression that they're getting because they're seeing Michael come around that often. Right.

So despite him being married to Marlene still, co-workers of theirs literally saw them engaging in sexual and romantic relations on the freaking job on a daily basis when Marlene wasn't around.

Coworkers also recall the quickly deteriorating state of Marlene's relationship with Michael and that he had openly joked about hiring someone to kill her. So not only did he ask this attorney, Christopher, he's also telling his employees that he wants to plan to have his wife killed. I don't know why the hell. Insanity.

So on Saturday, May 26th, 1990, Michael headed out early for the racetracks in Miami with some friends. Marlene stayed back at the house with Joe, who was nursing this broken leg of his at the time, and he had three friends over for breakfast that morning. So they're all, you know, the friends, Joe and Marlene, are kind of downstairs in the kitchen enjoying breakfast. And at 10.45 a.m.,

Okay, first of all,

If a clown is coming onto my property without my knowledge, if I didn't hire this clown to be there... Which you wouldn't. That clown is getting the fuck off of my property. Well, because she liked clowns, she's not freaked out by this. Right, right. She actually enjoys this. So...

Basically, the flowers that the clown was holding, they were red and white carnations with some baby's breath arranged. And then the arranged, you know, within the carnations. And then the balloons were two foil balloons, one of which said, you're the greatest. And the other one featured Snow White and the seven dwarves. Very, very random. Super random. Yeah. So Joe remembers hearing his mom say, oh, how pretty. You know, again, she thinks this is awesome.

Then, 40-year-old Marlene approached the door to welcome the clown into the foyer of the home. Hearing what he initially thought was one of the balloons popping, Joe looked over to the front of the house to see his mother collapsed on the foyer rug, bleeding. She had been shot point-blank in the mouth.

Now the clown, having dropped the balloons and flowers at the front door, was now walking casually away from the house. There's no sprinting. There's no panic. They're just walking away. That's just such an insane scene that a clown just walks up,

shoots somebody, and then casually just walks off. Yeah, well, luckily, Joe was right there. He watched this happen, basically. And so he was able to lock eyes with his mother's murderer. And he described the shooter as male, about six feet tall, with big brown eyes. Now, this last detail he remembers very clearly because those big brown eyes peered back at him calmly and

and vacantly from beneath the heavy clown makeup before slowly returning to their car parked out front and driving away, which is even more horrific that they just shot this woman to death and then hung around for a second enough for Joe to make eye contact. And then they just turn around and walk away basically without a care. I mean, at no point did the clown's getaway seem horrendous.

And this is crazy, Heath, because not only is this a sunny morning in Florida's spring...

But you're in the most obvious and recognizable outfit there basically is. You know, not only do you have this orange hair and this intense makeup and all, you know, this bright color. And the squishy red clown nose. Yeah, like you're wearing colors. It's such an obvious outfit. You know, no part of you blends in with anything amongst the Florida suburban landscape. Right.

And you're casually walking away and getting into your car for all to see like you didn't just murder someone. I don't know what, where this idea came from of wanting to dress up like a clown and thinking that that was not going to get you noticed. There's going to be a lot more clown talk in this episode that I think will clear it up a little bit, but it's still so weird. I mean, it's just, it's dumb in my opinion. It is very dumb.

So after the clown left, Joe and his friends were left to try to help his mom and chase this guy down. So Joe immediately asked one of his friends to call 911, and a neighbor walking his dog by the house at the time also instructed his wife to call 911, and stood there to help the boys with Marlene.

Now, Joe leapt into his car in only shorts and the boot on his broken leg and took off after this LeBaron to hunt down this clown. That's amazing. Yeah, I mean, he's not stopping in anything to chase down his mother's killer. The ambulance that arrived shortly after collected Marlene, unconscious and gravely injured, and transported her to the hospital.

Because of where she was shot, she had a bullet lodged in her spine and was placed on life support right away. While she survived for two more days, but was taken off of life support on May 28th, 1990. Her son Joe remembers pleading with her to pull through and promising to find out who had done this to her. ♪

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Michael was there in the hospital mourning alongside Marlene's son, Joe, the rest of the family and a bunch of their friends, which quickly became kind of a sticky situation because many suspected that Michael was involved from the beginning. I mean, yeah, he's going around telling his employees that he wants to hire someone to kill his wife.

He told an attorney. Come on. Yeah, she thought he was cheating. She told her parents that if something happened to her, look at him. And then something did happen to her. Right. But here's the thing. Michael had an airtight alibi. Like, not only was he with witnesses, you know, his friends at that racetrack, but he wasn't even in Wellington. He was in Miami at the time, which is over an hour and a half's drive away. So he was very much not in the area.

So working off Joe's description, police began a frantic search for the killer clown.

But this proved to be difficult because Joe was not able to capture a completely accurate description of the culprit. You know, he said it was a male who had been dressed in a clown suit but with regular street shoes. He said they had a curly orange wig, heavy white face paint, and a red clown nose, like you said, one of those foam ones. Yeah, the squishy ones. And again, Joe believed it to be a man who was tall and thin.

He later said in an interview on a local radio station, quote, Well, to me, it seemed like a man because the big hands and the size of the person. So the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office moved forward with the information that they knew was correct, which was the color, make and model of the getaway car, a white Chrysler LeBaron.

And they found this thing fast because the day before Marlene's funeral on May 30th, 1990, a tip was called in about a car matching that description and it was parked in the parking lot of a Winn-Dixie grocery store. And that particular Chrysler LeBaron was...

was quickly linked to Marlene's murder through the mess that was Michael's shady business practices. And here is what police are finding out under the scenes. So near Michael's auto rental lot was another rental car company called Payless. And from Payless rental cars, this couple rented a white Chrysler LeBaron. And when they were returning it or they were preparing to return it, they called the listing that they found in the phone book for Payless.

but they had actually called Michael's car rental company, which remember is called a bargain auto rentals. So when Michael took out his advertisement in the phone book, he had titled it in bold black letters, Payless.

Now, the actual name of the business, again, was a bargain auto rentals, and that was listed in smaller print above. So this is also like a shady thing to do. Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's, you know, that's his competition. Yeah, and he's trying to steal their business by putting his own phone number under the

It's just a mess. So this couple was really confused about where their phone call was heading. They called the wrong company and they didn't know about it. And an employee of Michael's still instructed them to park the car on the street outside a bargain with the keys on the visor.

So when the couple left the car there instead of Payless, Payless reported it stolen because they didn't receive the car back. They didn't receive a phone call. They didn't know what happened to it. Right.

And then there it is in the Winn-Dixie parking lot, having been used as the getaway car in Marlene's murder. And this is interesting because Payless had reported this car stolen on April 14th, but Marlene was murdered on May 26th. So that was almost...

Almost six weeks prior, which is really bizarre. Yeah, I mean, I wonder what they were doing with that car for over a month. Well, because of this whole ordeal, the police's prime suspects were, of course, employees of a bargain auto rentals.

So get this, when that car was searched, that white Chrysler LeBaron, investigators recovered acrylic orange fibers believed to be that of the clown wig that was worn by the murderer, as well as long brown hairs believed to belong to the wearer of that wig. So this just confirms even more that this was the car. Yeah, absolutely.

One person of interest, perhaps the only person of interest in this case at this point, was known for her signature long brown hair. And guess who that was? Sheila Keene. So, the sheriff's office obtained a search warrant for Sheila's home, and a search of her closet revealed more of the same synthetic orange fibers believed to be a match to the ones found in the LeBaron.

Sheila gave a sample of her blood and her hair, but sadly, with the lack of advanced DNA testing at the time, police just couldn't make a match. Detectives subpoenaed phone records from both Michael and Sheila and repossessed multiple cars from a bargain motors, though they would not reveal why they had done this and what they expected to find.

When asked for her whereabouts on the day that Marlene was murdered, Sheila claimed that she was working, but she couldn't even nail down a witness or her exact whereabouts. Like, she couldn't tell... She doesn't have a solid alibi. No, she doesn't at all. She couldn't tell them, you know, who was around her that day, if anybody spotted her at this place or this place. She just basically had nothing. And nobody came forward to say, oh, no, she was with me that day. Right. Yeah, she's got nothing.

Well, investigators also discovered the costume shop that they believed sold that exact clown costume. You know, the one that the murderer had been wearing when Marlene was shot. Now, there were only so many places selling wigs, red noses, face paint, and clown costumes in the spring, so police zeroed in on a place called The Spotlight, which was a costume and dancewear shop in West Palm Beach.

So, the two women that were working that night, whose names were Barbara and Deborah, were questioned by police. And they remembered a specific transaction that stuck out to them recently. Deborah recalled a woman coming in late one night, just as they were shutting their doors. So Deborah asked the woman if she wouldn't mind coming back in the morning, but the woman was adamant that she needed the costume that very night.

This woman purchased a clown suit, a reddish-orange clown wig, a Bob Kelly brand makeup kit with extra white face paint, and a red sponge clown nose. And guess what? This transaction took place just two days before Marlene's murder.

Sounds a lot like that clown. Yeah, right?

She was wearing jeans and a menswear shirt, and these women claimed that she had a very authoritative, even masculine way about her. And when both Barbara and Deborah were then shown a roster of white women with brown hair, they both plucked two specific people from the lineup that looked like the clown costume purchaser. And one of those women was Sheila Keen.

So this was obviously a great find, but investigators were also very quickly able to identify the exact grocery store where the killer purchased those foil balloons.

This find had been pretty easy, actually, because it was the only grocery store in Palm Beach County that sold this particular type of balloon. It was a Publix grocery store, and the exact one that sold Marlene's murderer the balloons happened to be right around the corner from Sheila's home.

So that was a quick turnaround. I mean...

Just went to go buy the balloons, headed straight to Marlene's house to kill her. Well, probably got, you know, got all clowned up and then, you know, had those flowers nice and fresh, the balloons nice and inflated. Right. That was the second to last stop before putting on the get up, right? Yep.

So coincidentally, like Marlene, Sheila herself had a prior affinity for clowns. In fact, she used to like randomly dress up like a clown as a joke and to cheer up people around her. So she was already very much into clowns.

If anybody in my life tries to do that or they're thinking, you know, I'm depressed, they need to cheer me up, please do not dress like a clown. I'm just going to throw that out there right now. I feel like that's kind of an older thing. Like, I feel like it's a bit... I don't want to say outdated because I know, again, of course, there are people out there today that still love clowns and appreciate them for their non-creepiness. But I feel like...

In the past, they were a little bit more acceptable and not looked at as, you know, as terrifyingly. Yeah, like when I was a kid, having a clown at your birthday party seemed like... Did you have one? A more likely... No, I never did. I'm just saying it seemed like more of a likely scenario back in like the 80s or 90s. So true. Whereas today, you know, people are dressing up like...

the guy from Toy Story, Woody, you know, and like... Oh, at kids' parties. Yeah, at kids' parties. It's like, for what? They're just dressing up like, you know, superheroes and stuff. Right, so true. I remember when I was a kid, my dentist was covered. There was like green walls and there was just paintings of clowns all over the waiting room. Yeah. And I didn't like that. But I feel like the guy was older and I feel like, yeah, this was...

More acceptable back then, I think. So her kind of dressing up as a clown for her friends, they probably liked it. Well, and also not to kind of go off on too much of a tangent, but clowns also were represented in a very scary way in horror movies. Like we're talking about like It. Yeah, as time passed. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? So it's like that kind of made people develop

So true. We were like conditioned into fearing them. So this kind of eerie detail about Sheila already being into clowns and dressing up as them in the past was remembered by former friends and acquaintances of hers as police desperately attempted to cobble together enough evidence to arrest her. But they already seemed certain that she was involved. So...

Meanwhile, Michael was also fighting off the allegations that he was involved. And for the time being, Joe was kind of standing by the man who had spent most of Joe's life as his father.

But this was short-lived because as more information began to pour out about Michael and Sheila, like Joe left his father's side fast and started to suspect him himself. Especially when Joe looked back at the way that Sheila and Michael flirted at a company party once.

But sadly, months passed after Marlene's death with no forward momentum, even though police were confident that Sheila and Michael were behind the whole thing. Lead detective in the case, Sergeant Bill Williams, remarked sadly, quote, "'This case was a set of circumstances that pointed in one direction. Just because you can point the finger doesn't mean you got enough to convict them.'"

In the months following Marlene's horrific murder, Michael and Sheila kind of distanced themselves and probably to be more inconspicuous, you know? Yeah, of course. They don't want to be really seen together after the murder of Michael's wife. But they were.

Because just months later, they were spotted vacationing together at a romantic luxury resort in the Bahamas. So there's that. Well, I mean, yeah, they're thinking that probably nobody is going to recognize them at all. They're in the Bahamas. So they're thinking, well, we're safe here. Yeah, let's have a little getaway. Exactly. Exactly.

Although Michael and Sheila couldn't yet be tied to Marlene's murder, there were other legal infractions stacking up against Michael, which the Sheriff's Office intended to push to the fullest extent of the law, hoping to detain him and build their case against his and Sheila's involvement in Marlene's death. Now, with the case slipping away from them a bit, police obtained a search warrant for Michael's business, hoping to come across something that would incriminate him.

So they zeroed in on Abargan Motors and removed dozens of boxes of evidence containing records and paperwork that they felt proved further that Michael was scamming people, just as he had been convicted of before. Well, their investigation once again revealed that Michael had still been tampering with the odometers of his car, so he obviously didn't learn the first time because he was again adjusting them to lower mileage in order to sell them at a higher cost.

But this time, there were even more charges stacked up against him. On October 26th, 1990, Michael Warren was arrested for odometer tampering, racketeering, and grand theft. Because in addition to setting back the mileage on the odometers, he was accused of repossessing cars that he had sold, reporting them as stolen, and then collecting the insurance money. Schemer. Such a schemer.

In 1992, he was found guilty on 43 counts of these charges. Damn. And then he was sentenced to nine years in prison, for which he served three and a half. But even that wasn't long enough for detectives to link him to the murder, and he was released on New Year's Eve 1997. Because at this point, they just did not have enough evidence to prove either of their concrete connections to the murder.

A couple years after Michael's release from prison came a shocking development. In 1999, after years of estrangement, Sheila finally divorced her husband, Richard Keene. Then, despite continued denial that he was involved with Sheila, Michael married her at the Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas in August of 2002.

So he's saying that they weren't together and now suddenly they're married, which proves that this affair was very real. Absolutely. Yeah. He was full of shit. So they moved to a small town in Western Virginia and Sheila changed her name to Debbie Warren. So she went. That's not suspicious at all. Let's.

I'm just going to change my name, you know, years after the murder of my now husband's ex-wife. Yeah, exactly. Like she went from being named Sheila Keen to Debbie Warren, like a completely different name. But not only that, she also dyed her hair blonde. Remember, it was brown before. And with Michael, purchased a franchise of a fast food chain called

that they operated together. So they're still wanting to be in business, be entrepreneurs, you know, do their thing, make their money. But now they're doing it in Virginia and she is a completely different person. I would be worried about any type of business that the two of these knuckleheads are involved in. Well, here is what their business was. So it's just over the border of Virginia in a town or it was in a town called Kingsport, Tennessee.

Their fast food chain was called Purple Cow and it was a drive-thru sandwich and hamburger restaurant that made them a small fortune. A few of their employees later came forward though to claim that Sheila had been aggressive and a mean, mean employer.

A few of them also remembered Sheila dressing up as a what for Halloween? A fucking clown. Yeah, she showed up to work as a clown one Halloween. That just feels like such disrespect. Like, just...

Just the sickness that you would have the audacity to do that. Yes, and that's a good point because if they're claiming, we didn't do that to Marlene, we didn't take any part of that, you're dressing up as the character that murdered your now husband's ex-wife? That's a little insensitive. Yeah, even if you didn't, even if you didn't do it, why would you dress up as a clown? That's why it's suspicious. So according to locals who knew nothing about their collective seedy pasts,

they remembered Michael and, you know, Debbie, now we'll call her Debbie, as a happy, loving couple. They eventually settled in a sprawling white house perched on a lake, and they owned their own boat to take out on the water. Though the couple seemed to have moved on from the controversy of being involved in Marlene's murder completely...

The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office reopened Marlene's case in 2014, using a grant from the state to revive cold cases. So a couple years after this, the couple sold off their restaurant. This happened in 2016. And then they decided to kind of live a quiet life and spend, you know, all their time outdoors, make friends with the locals and tend to their home and garden.

But on August 31st, 2017, a grand jury indicted Sheila Warren, a.k.a. Debbie Warren. Or Sheila Keene. Or Sheila Keene. So many names. For first degree murder.

The most compelling piece of evidence in the prosecutor's minds was a slight DNA match between the brown hair found in the LeBaron that was parked in the Winn-Dixie parking lot. And this evidence, which was held for decades, was finally able to be tested when the case was reopened.

However, her defense attorney argued that it wasn't a definitive match and it could have matched many Caucasian women with brown hair. So this was not a slam dunk. Also, because the car had spent time on the bargain motor's lot, a strand of Sheila's actual hair could have definitely, you know, found its way into the vehicle by innocent means. Like, you know, I mean, technically, right? Of course, technically. But nobody really believes that, do they? Of course, no.

But it wasn't until a month later on September 26, 2017, over 27 years since the murder of Marlene Warren, that the first ever arrest in the case was finally made. Michael and Sheila were pulled over in Washington County, Virginia while driving home.

Sheila didn't resist or make a fuss and asked few questions, except to wonder if her husband was under arrest too. Interesting question to ask. Yeah, and he was not.

Sheila was then escorted into the back of a police car and went silently and calmly. Frustratingly, though investigators remain convinced that Michael is involved, somehow no evidence ties him to the crime. But they remained hopeful that they would somehow, someday, be able to convict him as well. Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Ehrenberg reported after Sheila's arrest, quote,

There's still a lot of questions about Michael Warren, the victim's husband, and now the suspect's husband. Will he face charges in this case? Well, I can't speak specifically to Michael Warren or any of the specific facts of this case. I can just say generally, whenever you're dealing with any homicide case, we're going to investigate anyone who may be culpable, and we'll make a decision on prosecutions as appropriate.

Well, Joe's response to the arrest was a simple quote, "She killed my mother. She will pay." When a local news station reached out to Sheila's son, Charles, asking if he had a comment on the arrest of his mother's involvement in the murder, he said flatly, quote, "I was three at the time and nope." But things took a shocking turn when on April 25th, 2023,

Sheila Warren pleaded guilty to the second degree murder of her husband's late wife, Marlene. Though both she and Michael have maintained their innocence throughout the 33 years of the investigation. Yeah, and Sheila really only pled guilty because she accepted a plea deal offered to her by the state. And this sentenced her to just 12 years with credit served for the five and a half years she spent awaiting her sentence. So,

Her defense attorney also claimed that she would likely serve only another 16 months. So this is just wild. Not justice by any means. No. So in a recent interview with CBS, Michael lamented that his wife was all but forced to plead guilty to Marlene's murder just to appease the investigators. Yeah, sure. Yeah.

In his wife's defense, he proclaimed, quote, my wife did not commit this crime. It was difficult to see her plead to a crime she did not commit, but it wasn't worth the gamble when she was offered a deal that'll have her home in 16 to 18 months. As for who he felt was responsible, he kind of theorized that it was likely a disgruntled tenant or car buyer from one of their businesses.

Come on. No, not at all. Well, neither the murder weapon nor the clown costume have ever been found. Sheila Warren remains in jail until an expected release of March 2nd, 2025. So less than a year from when we're recording this case.

Marlene's mother surely died in 2023 at the age of 92, which sadly happened just six weeks before Sheila pleaded guilty to killing Marlene. Obviously, there weren't real answers there anyway, but I'm sure she would have really loved to see that happen.

Before she died, she remarked, quote, I turned angry when I heard Michael had married Sheila, remembering that she killed my daughter and he married her. There's got to be something there. She got away with it for so long. You can't tell me that he didn't know. No way in heck. If there's a hell, I hope she rots in it.

Of everyone involved, Joe suffered the most, it seems, because he lost his biological father, then his brother, then his mom, and then his stepfather. After Sheila's conviction, Joe said, quote,

And then he continued on to say, quote, I'm still OK. I have to be. Anger is no good. It will ruin you.

Thank you so much, everybody, for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode. What a crazy story. And it took so long to get any form of justice. And the justice that this case did receive was pretty shitty. It's so disappointing. And it's really strange. I know that looks don't mean anything or they shouldn't, but...

seeing photos of Michael and Sheila, like in more recent years, they seem like this really happy, sweet couple. But I will say again, remember a lot of people in their lives don't feel this way about them and they did so many horrible things. But I think you guys will kind of be surprised seeing these photos of them because I certainly was. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, it's so disappointing. Hopefully they will find more evidence, but I can't believe in a case where it seems like

Everything was against the perpetrator. Like you're wearing a crazy obvious costume. You're committing a crime in broad daylight. There were witnesses in Marlene's house. Your car was found like, and we still don't have this clear cut, you know, plan and plot.

showing itself in front of us is just crazy. Yeah, I'm honestly so surprised that Michael never was found guilty of being, you know, involved in this case. But, you know, there's still time because after 30 years, Sheila went down. So true. Well, let us know what you guys think. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode. Remember, if you want to see photos of Marlene,

of Sheila, of Michael, of the balloons, the front door, everything like that to really set the scene. Head over to our socials. We're on Instagram at Going West Podcast and we're also on Facebook. And also before we head out, no disrespect to you clowns out there. We love you guys. We don't want to be offensive. It's not our fault. It's the movies. It's the horror movies, all right? I did not. It's Stephen King's fault, okay? True. I put it all on him. Well, anyways,

For everybody out there in the world, don't be a stranger. ♪♪♪

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