Sheila Keen-Warren is accused of dressing up like a clown in 1990 and fatally shooting her lover’s wife has been booked into a Florida jail [right]. She faces the death penalty

A Virginia woman accused of dressing up like a clown and fatally shooting her lover’s wife has been booked into a Florida jail and told she faces the death penalty, 27 years later.
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against 54-year-old Sheila Keen-Warren, who was ordered held without bond at a court hearing, said State Attorney Dave Aronberg
Keen-Warren was booked into a jail on Tuesday after being extradited from Abingdon, Virginia, where she had lived with her husband Michael Warren for years.
The suspect made her first court appearance in Palm Beach County, Wednesday morning
On a May morning in 1990, then 27-year-old Marlene Warren answered her front door in an upscale Florida suburb to find a clown in an orange wig, red nose and white face paint handing her carnations and foil balloons.
“How pretty!” she exclaimed, court documents said.

Sheila Keen-Warren [left], disguised as a clown shot Marlene Warren [right], her lover’s wife in Wellington, Florida, in May 1990, prosecutors said

The clown then pulled a gun, shot 40-year-old Marlene Warren in the face and drove away. The victim died two days later. The case has been cold for 27 years, as various leads fizzled out.
On September, 27, authorities say they have arrested the clown: a woman who was said to be having an affair with Warren’s husband and, years after the killing, married him.
Detectives said advances in DNA technology, combined with evidence gathered decades ago, show Sheila Keen Warren, now 54, was the killer.
At the time of the shooting, she was an employee of Marlene Warren’s husband, Michael, at his used car lot. Since 2002, she has been his wife.
She was arrested Tuesday at the home she shared with him in Abingdon, Virginia, and was jailed without bail to await transfer to Florida on first-degree murder charges.

Michael Warren in court in 2000 – He was married to Marlene at the time, was initially believed to be the suspect because the two had been having marital problems, friends and family said 

Michael Warren, 65, has not been charged, but detectives refused to rule him out as a suspect and said he was interviewed again Wednesday.
Palm Beach County authorities said Thursday the new examination of DNA collected in 1990 gave them what they needed to arrest Sheila Warren, who had been the primary suspect all along. Without it, there might not have been enough evidence to convince a jury, they said.
Witnesses had told investigators in 1990 that Sheila Warren and Michael Warren were having an affair, though both denied it.
Over the years, detectives say, costume shop employees identified Sheila Warren as the woman who had bought a clown costume a few days earlier.
And one of the two balloons, a silver one that read, “You’re the Greatest”, was sold at only one store near her home. Employees at Publix supermarket told detectives a woman who looked like Warren bought the balloons just an hour before the shooting.
The presumed getaway car was found abandoned with orange, hair-like fibers inside. The white Chrysler convertible had been reported stolen from Michael Warren’s car lot a month before the shooting. Sheila Warren and her then-husband repossessed cars for him.

She allegedly told her mother, “If anything happens to me, Mike done it.”
In 1994 Michael Warren himself was convicted of grand theft, racketeering and odometer tampering and served almost four years in prison. He bounced back as he and Sheila recently sold a popular restaurant in Kingsport, Tennessee, according to the Bristol Herald Courier.
Marlene’s son Joe Aherns, who was 21 when he witnessed the killing. He celebrated the alleged killer’ arrest on his Facebook page and told a friend, “I am happy but sad. … I miss [her] bad.”

Michael Warren [seen left] with his accused killer spouse Sheila, was present when his second wife was arrested last week. He was married to Marlene at the time, was initially believed to be the suspect as friends and family said that the two had been having marital problems. He later married Shiela Keen and the two remain married to this day.

Sheila Keen-Warren was booked into Palm Beach County Jail  Tuesday, pictured. She’s charged with first-degree murder

WPTV reports a judge set no bond in the case and ordered her to have no contact with the victim’s son.
Keen-Warren was arrested last month after a Florida grand jury indicted her on a first-degree murder charge.
Officials say Marlene Warren, 40, was shot in the face by a clown delivering carnations and balloons.
Authorities say she was confronted by a brown-eyed woman carrying balloons and wearing a clown costume with an orange wig on May 26, 1990.

‘This is the strangest thing I’ve seen in all my 19 years in law enforcement,’ Bob Ferrell, then a spokesman for the Palm Beach County sheriff’s office, was quoted as saying the day after the murder.
She went to the door, and there was somebody wearing a clown suit and a clown mask.
‘As she went to take the flowers and balloons, the clown shot her. As far as I know, nothing was said.’

Keen-Warren had been a suspect for the murder early on but authorities  never had enough evidence to charge her but it all changed after the cold case was reopened in 2014, when new technology allowed for prosecutors to retest DNA evidence.
Michael Warren was initially believed to be the suspect as friends and family said that he and Marlene had been having marital problems.
In 1992, he was sentenced to prison on 43 counts of odometer tampering, grand theft and racketeering after digging done by investigators for the murder showed foul play at his car rental agency.

Michael Warren was present when his second wife was arrested last week.
As early as four months after the murder, detectives were informed of the affair between Michael and Sheila. Warren had even gone as far to pay for Keen’s rent after she separated from her first husband.
Michael Warren, 65, has not been charged, but detectives refused to rule him out as a suspect and said he was interviewed again Wednesday.