From its debut in 1978, ABC’s “20/20” has delved deeply into a series of chilling true-crime stories to really shed light on the nefarious, repulsive side of human nature. It follows the 1990 murder of Marlene Mae McKinnon Warren at the entrance of her own home in the season 45 special “The Case Of The Killer Clown,” which is obviously no different. We now have the information you need to learn more about the incident, with an emphasis on the events that occurred, the investigations that followed, and the overall effects.
How Did Marlene Warren Die?
Marlene was born on April 15, 1950, into a fairly middle-class family in Michigan, but because to her determination, by 1990 she was living an entirely different life in Florida. In actuality, the 40-year-old not only handled the family’s rental properties while living in the opulently exclusive Wellington Aero Club community as a married mother of two. Yet, as everything flipped upside down, what mattered to those closest to her was not her wealth or success but rather the way she’d always been a kind, kind, cheerful, and adoring lady.
Marlene was actually shot at point-blank range on May 26, 1990, when she opened the front door of her 15470 Takeoff Place home to a clown impersonator. According to reports, before shooting their firearm directly at her face, the latter had silently handed her a basket floral arrangement of carnations and two balloons, one of which inscribed, “You’re the finest.” The truth is that she was almost immediately transported to Palms West Hospital by emergency personnel, but she tragically passed away from her wounds two days later because the bullet had lodged in her spinal cord.
Who Killed Marlene Warren?
Official records state that since Marlene’s son Joseph “Joe” Ahren, then 21, was still residing at home at the time of her senseless murder, he had seen practically every element of it. According to his police testimonies, he had really called several friends over and was enjoying breakfast with them in the family room when the doorbell abruptly rang, causing mayhem. He clearly recalls the moment when the clown calmly approached their car after the gunshot and her mother cried, “Oh, how pretty!” at the sight of the flowers.
While Joseph and his pals attempted to care for Marlene, a neighbour called 911. Joseph later said to authorities that the clown was clothed in the most conventional manner conceivable. They drove a white Chrysler convertible that had been stolen from Michael Warren’s dealership a month earlier. They also had a bright orange wig, a red bulb nose, and an unkempt smile painted on them. But since the woman had no known enemies and these apparently vital pieces of information produced no tangible physical evidence or probable suspects, her case quickly became unsolved.
Hence, a new line of inquiry focusing on Marlene’s recent months ostensibly didn’t emerge until a few other persons came forward with details about her personal life. Due to the obvious motive behind it, it had always been obvious that her shooting death was the result of a crime of passion, but new allegations particularly claimed that her husband Michael may have been involved. After all, a convict named Edward Bahr said he had hired him to kill her while family members claimed she wanted to leave him over concerns he had been having an affair but was scared anything would happen because the dealership and other assets were in her name.
Edward allegedly told a fellow prisoner that “a ‘female biker type’ got the clown costume from the Stoplight costume shot, [and that] he was hired by the husband of the murder victim during a meeting at the Mermaid Bar.” Marlene reportedly went as far as to tell her mother, “If anything happens to me, Mike done it.” By saying that “he dressed up as a clown and shot the woman, that her husband operated a used car dealership named Bargain Motors, that a young male had come out of one of the rooms shortly after the shooting,” the latter had seemingly even provided correct facts of the incident.
Unfortunately, none of these assertions could be corroborated at any stage during the subsequent investigations, so Marlene’s case remained unresolved until authorities decided to reexamine it in 2014. Then, with the aid of developments in DNA technology, Sheila Keen-Warren—not Michael, but rather his putative mistress-turned-wife (2002)—was allegedly connected to the gruesome 1990 homicide.
According to court documents, the orange and brown fibres that were retrieved from the Chrysler LeBaron that was discovered abandoned in 1990 are the DNA samples that are being used as evidence in this case. Along with finding evidence of identical elements in Sheila’s home, the owner of a nearby store positively identified Sheila as the person who had bought a clown outfit just days earlier.
Furthermore, it has been proven that Sheila purchased the two balloons from a Publix store outside her house one hour prior to Marlene’s shooting. This suggests that this was the only store where they could have been purchased. She was thus detained from her residence in Abingdon, Virginia, in September 2017, only to be swiftly extradited to Florida where, on April 25, 2023, she ultimately entered a plea of guilty to one count of second-degree murder.
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