17 years ago, Shelia Warren dressed as a clown and fatally shot Marlene Warren, her now-husband’s wife. After shooting the Wellington woman dead, she would go on to marry the dead woman’s husband.
In the summer of 1990, Shelia Warren, then 26-year-old Sheila Keen, dressed as a clown and traveled to Marlene Warren’s South Florida home. Holding balloons, Keen knocked on the front door. The victim answered and commented, “how nice,” before Keen released the balloons, produced a firearm and shot her in the face.
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One balloon read, “You’re The Greatest,” the other was a Snow White balloon, said the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office Thursday.
The clown calmly left the scene in a white Chrysler LeBaron.
Marlene Warren died at a local hospital two days later as a result of her injuries.
Keen eventually married Michael Warren in 2002. The couple moved to Tennessee, where they opened a restaurant.
Investigators had long considered Sheila Warren to be a suspect in the shooting, but she was never arrested over a lack of evidence. It was rumored that she and the victim’s husband were having an affair, but at the time, a prior relationship could not be substantiated.
Shelia Warren, now 54, was arrested Tuesday in Washington County, Virginia. She is charged with first-degree murder in the May 26, 1990, shooting of Wellington resident, Marlene Warren.
If Marlene Warren was aware of the alleged liaison, investigators haven’t disclosed. But even if she had known, she had no reason to be suspicious of the clown who came to her door in the upscale Aero Club community that morning. “One balloon said, ‘You are the Greatest’ and the other one, I believe, was a Snow White balloon,” the detective told reporters. source
Homicide investigators reopened the unsolved case in 2014, re-interviewing witnesses and collecting new DNA evidence.