Sheila Keen Warren, disguised as a clown, shoots her lover’s wife dead nearly 30 years ago, police say.
She later marries the dead woman’s husband and starts life anew in Virginia.
And when Halloween comes — of all the costumes available — guess which one she picks? Clown.
Newly released court records in South Florida’s 1990 killer clown case show investigators have unearthed a photo of Sheila Warren in clown costume for Halloween many years after the murder.
The picture shows her smiling big. Her face is painted red on her cheeks, with a red painted nose and large red painted lips. She wore an orange short sleeve blouse, black skirt and a scarf with ghosts and pumpkins. She appears to be standing in the kitchen of Purple Cow restaurant in Kingsport, Tenn., which she and her husband, Michael Warren, owned and operated until late 2016.
Investigators years ago revived the unsolved murder case, and in 2017, they arrested Sheila Warren in the fatal shooting of Marlene Warren, 40, in Wellington.
It’s not clear how investigators in 2018 learned about the Sheila Warren clown photo, but a report notes there were considerable efforts to find it.
Investigators set out to interview nearly 100 people who used to work for Sheila and Michael Warren at the restaurant. The investigators, Michael Fincannon and Mark Anderson, asked the employees if they knew about the Sheila Warren clown photo, as part of the many questions they were asking about the case.
One worker told the investigators employees used to wear costumes around Halloween, and recalled one year that the woman he knew as “Debbie” Warren once dressed up as a witch. The worker remembered a photo of Warren wearing a clown outfit at the restaurant and would search for it. He later found the photo and let investigators take it.
They retrieved the picture in Tennessee early last year, nearly six months after Sheila Warren was arrested near her southwest Virginia home. The original photo is now evidence held by Palm Beach County prosecutors, who are seeking the death penalty for Sheila Warren.
It is not known whether the clown photo can or will be used in Warren’s trial, which is set to begin with jury selection on Jan. 31.
