In the early morning hours of May 26, 1990, Marlene Mae McKinnon Warren was fatally murdered at her front door, shocking not only Florida but the entire country. That’s because the 40-year-old mother of two’s attacker was disguised in a full jester costume to conceal their identity, as meticulously detailed in ABC’s “20/20: The Case of the Killer Clown.” The discovery that her husband Michael Warren’s claimed lover-turned-wife Sheila Keen-Warren was to blame took more than three decades and the development of DNA technology.
Who is Michael Warren?
According to reports, Michael first met Marlene Ahrens, a newly divorced single mother of two, in 1980. Despite having a two-year age difference, the two fell deeply in love. Thus the pair hurried to the altar before settling down in Wellington, Florida as a blended family, where they gradually created a wonderful life for themselves through pure determination and hard work. She actually managed all of their rental properties in West Palm Beach while the former owned and operated a used car dealership and rental car agency (created in the name of his devoted wife).
Yet after Marlene’s son John ‘Johnny’ Ahrens Jr., 22, sadly died in a vehicle accident in the autumn of 1988, the couple’s happiness seemed to start to crumble. It was the businessman who allegedly started to distance himself from the family, leading his wife to believe he was having an affair with worker Sheila Keen (born Sheila Marie Sheltra). She actually did question if she could leave him, take everything she was legally entitled to with her, and then abruptly pass away. Her husband, though, had a good alibi; he was in Miami.
Michael was soon found guilty of felony racketeering and odometer tampering, but the suspicion never completely left his mind when he was sentenced to 312 years in jail (until 1997). It didn’t help his cause either that he really wed Sheila in 2002 and moved to Virginia with her after maintaining they had never been romantically linked. Then there are the allegations made by Edward Bahr, an apparent prisoner from 1991, that he shot a woman in Florida after being hired by her husband to do so because he didn’t want a divorce.
Where is Michael Warren Now?
Despite all of the rumours that have been spread about Michael throughout the years, the truth is that no incriminating evidence has ever been discovered against him, and as a result, he has also never been formally accused. However his wife Sheila cannot say the same because Genetic evidence conclusively tied her to Marlene’s killing, leading to her arrest on September 27, 2017, and her guilty plea on April 25, 2023. By spring 2016, the pair had sold off their fast-food Purple Cow restaurant in adjacent Tennessee and retired, so the husband was first very affected by the woman’s incarceration.
In terms of Michael’s current situation, it appears that he is still a resident of Virginia and spends the most of his time doing DIY projects, gardening, and landscaping. To put it another way, the former businessman, who is now in his early 70s, prefers to maintain a quiet life away from the spotlight, especially since he has already made it clear that he completely believes in his wife’s innocence.
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