Case of the Killer Clown

On the morning of May 26th, 1990, 21-year-old Joe Ahrens was eating breakfast with a few of his friends and his mother, Marlene Warren, when somebody approached the front door. Through a window, Joe could see that it was somebody wearing a clown costume. The clown was just over six feet tall, with a skinny build, and was wearing a curly orange wig, a red prosthetic nose, and face paint. 

At first, Joe didn’t think anything of it. He had recently broken his leg, and assumed that one of his loved ones was dressed as a clown to brighten his day. The clown knocked on the front door of the house, and Marlene went to open it. There was a loud bang, and Marlene crumpled to the ground. The clown had shot her.

Joe and his friends panicked, running to call 911. Marlene was still alive, but it was clear that she was having difficulty breathing, and she couldn’t get back to her feet. Meanwhile, the clown turned and silently walked away, leaving the bunch of flowers and two balloons sitting outside the front door. It climbed into the driver's seat of a white car parked outside, and calmly drove away.

Joe left his friends at the house waiting for first responders to arrive while he got into his own car and tried to pursue the clown. However, he had been slowed down by his broken leg, and he lost sight of the other vehicle. Back at the house, Marlene was in critical condition, and once she was transported to the intensive care unit of the hospital, her condition showed no sign of improving.

For two days, Joe sat by his mother’s bedside. “I kept telling her I love her,” he said, “And [that] I don’t want her to go, and ‘Please don’t leave me.’” But Marlene’s injuries were too serious, and eventually, she was taken off life support and passed away.

Now, all that Joe Ahrens had left was the only father figure he’d ever known - his stepdad, Mike Warren. Marlene had married Mike when Joe was a toddler, and the two of them had started up a used car business together. However, while their business was successful, they had recently been having difficulties with their marriage, and Marlene had confessed to Joe that she suspected Mike was cheating on her.

At around the same time, Marlene had become increasingly paranoid that Mike would harm her. She told Joe and her own mom, Shirley Twing, the same thing: that if anything happened to her, Mike would be the culprit. Shirley saw that Marlene was genuinely fearful, and when she heard the news of her daughter’s death, she immediately believed that Mike was the killer. As well as his suspected affair, Mike had a lot to gain from her death. Most of the assets that the couple co-owned were in Marlene’s name, so upon her death, he would gain all of their assets as well as their properties.

Investigators were also quick to look into Mike Warren, but they discovered that he had an alibi; he’d been driving with friends at the time the clown had arrived at Marlene’s door, and multiple people were able to confirm his whereabouts. However, there was one name that kept cropping up in the early stages of the police investigation: all of Marlene and Mike’s coworkers at their company, Bargain Motors, suggested that officers needed to talk to a woman named Sheila Keen.

Marlene had been right about Mike’s infidelity, and as it turned out, a lot of people knew that Mike was having an affair with Sheila, who also worked at Bargain Motors. One of their coworkers, Della Ward, described Mike as someone who had “a lot of compassion [and] a lot of empathy”, saying that this made him very attractive to women. Della believed that Sheila had quickly developed feelings for Mike, and that the affair had become serious.

Sheila might have had a soft spot for Mike, but she was known for being a tough lady. Her job at Bargain Motors was to repossess cars, and she had to carry a gun with her throughout the day in case any of the cars’ owners became violent. When investigators questioned Sheila about her alibi, she told them that she had been working when Marlene was killed…but she was unable to provide any details that would verify this. 

There was one thing that was consistent in Mike and Sheila’s interviews with police: both suspects insisted that their relationship had been purely platonic. However, when investigators interviewed Sheila’s neighbors and showed them pictures of Mike, the neighbors responded that they had been under the impression that Mike was Sheila’s husband.

It didn’t help the case that the killer had been extremely well-disguised. The only details that authorities had about the clown’s appearance were its height, and the fact that Joe had noticed the clown had “big brown eyes” beneath the white face paint. In an effort to identify the clown, investigators began searching for anybody who had recently purchased a clown costume or a specific type of balloon. One of the balloons the clown had been holding was a metallic silver color, with lettering that said, “You’re the greatest.” The silver balloon was only stocked by only one retail outlet in Florida - a Publix supermarket.

Supermarket employees remembered that the balloons and a bunch of flowers had been bought by a white woman with brown hair and brown eyes - a description that matched Sheila. A woman of the same description had also purchased a clown costume from a local store two days before the crime. 

One of the costume store’s workers, Deborah Offord, had been annoyed when the woman arrived at the store right before it closed, asking to buy a clown costume. Deborah had asked her to come back the following day, but the woman had been insistent, saying, “No, I need something right now.” Paying with cash, she had purchased the clown costume as well as face paint, a curly orange wig, and a clown nose.

There was now highly suspicious circumstantial evidence surrounding Sheila, but none of it was enough to convict her. Meanwhile, the local community was terrified by the idea that a killer clown was on the loose - and Joe needed closure about what had happened to his mother.

The next break in the case took place four days after Marlene was murdered, when an abandoned white car was located. It was a Chrysler LeBaron - the same vehicle that Joe had seen the clown drive away in. Inside the car, investigators found synthetic orange fibers that appeared to come from a wig, as well as a single long brown hair. During a search of Sheila’s apartment, they found the same two things: long brown hairs, and orange wig fibers. However, it was the 1990s, and while the hairs were found to be consistent under a microscope, DNA technology wasn’t able to confirm that the hair definitely belonged to Sheila, or that the fibers were from the same clown wig.

While Sheila was free to continue living her life, there was a widespread public belief that she was the killer. Despite always maintaining that they’d never had an affair, Mike and Sheila entered a public relationship. In 2002, they got married, and Sheila became Sheila Keen-Warren.

For more than two decades, the case remained unsolved. Then, in 2017, there was an update: Sheila Keen-Warren was arrested for Marlene’s murder after advanced DNA testing confirmed that the long brown hair inside the killer clown’s vehicle belonged to her. In 2023, six years later, the case went to trial - and although Sheila continued to insist that she hadn’t killed Marlene Warren, she decided to plead guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for a plea deal that would result in a reduced sentence. The deal calls for a 12-year sentence, but Keen-Warren has already served six years awaiting trial. Also, Florida law in 1990 allowed significant time off for good behavior, so her attorney expects her to be released sometime this year.

Attorney Dave Aronberg gave a statement about the deal, saying, “Sheila Keen Warren has finally been forced to admit that she was the one who dressed as a clown and took the life of an innocent victim. She will be a convicted murderer for the rest of her days.”

Joe Ahrens had only been 21 years old when his mother was killed in front of him. By the time Sheila pleaded guilty, he was in his early fifties. He watched the court proceedings via an online video feed, and when asked to give a message to Sheila and the court, he simply said, “May God be with her.”