[MUSIC PLAYING]
The evil clowns you see in the movies,
well, it came to life in this case.
When your mom was growing up, was she fascinated with clowns?
She was.
She even painted pictures of them.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
My mother, Marlene Warren, was a beautiful person.
She was loving, caring, kind.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
On May 26 1990, a woman answered her door
in front of her 21-year-old son and saw a clown
at the door handing her balloons and flowers.
That was the worst day of my life.
We were eating breakfast.
We saw the colors of the reflections through the glass.
It looked like a clown costume.
My mother opened the door and I heard, how pretty.
And I heard a bang.
I saw her fall, and I ran toward her
as the clown was walking away, and I
saw that she'd been shot in the face.
At that moment, I felt my heart and my soul
just rip out of my body.
What did you see on the clown's face?
Well, it was a white face, nose, orangish-red hair,
and it was just a clown suit.
What does the clown do?
Calmly walks right back to the car like nothing happened.
A person disguised as a clown walked up
to Marlene Warren's Aero Club home in Wellington
and shot her in the mouth.
I was working as a prosecutor here
in this office when it happened.
And it was big news.
Meanwhile at her home, investigators
gather evidence searching for clues.
Killing with a great costume to conceal one's identity.
And anybody passing by would probably
say, oh, isn't that nice?
Somebody's getting flowers.
It wouldn't be suspicious, and it would certainly
make for the perfect crime.
Marlene Warren was someone without any known enemies,
someone who cared deeply about her family.
And they lived in a home in a pretty secluded part
of Palm Beach County.
Michael Warren was married to Marlene Warren.
Michael was a local businessman in the car business.
The Warren's marriage seemed to be an ideal marriage
but for the people on the inside that knew better,
Marlene was expressing issues with Michael Warren.
The people closest to Michael Warren that worked with him
knew there was something wrong because they were observing
Michael Warren's interactions with a woman
by the name of Sheila Keen.
And the rumors was what about Sheila and Mike?
Well, it was more than a rumor that Sheila Keen and Michael
Warren were having an affair.
It was not hidden from any of the employees.
In the hours after the murder of Marlene Warren,
the suspects became clear, it was Sheila Keen
and was Michael Warren.
But Michael Warren had an alibi.
Michael and Sheila thought that they
could get away with anything.
It took over 30 years to make sense of it all.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
This house was the scene of a bizarre murder.
That shooter, a clown, carrying flowers and balloons.
It's easy to see why this case has so much interest.
Who isn't afraid of a killer clown?
The 1990 murder of Marlene Warren
shot by someone dressed as a clown haunted
not just the public but the Palm Beach County State Attorney's
Office.
Despite identifying two suspects, the case for decades
went unsolved.
Dave Aronberg is the current state attorney.
This was an assassination.
This was not a random act of violence.
This was not a robbery.
The unknowingness of this heinous crime, the fear,
it was hell.
Joe Ahrens was 21 living at home with his stepfather,
Mike, and his mother, Marlene, when she was murdered.
She was a good mother.
Everything she did, she took pride in.
The morning of May 26, 1990 had started as a cheerful one.
Joe, recuperating from a broken leg,
was having breakfast at home with his mom
and three friends when they saw a clown approaching carrying
balloons and flowers.
And we kind of figured I had to cast on,
somebody was sending to heal and for gesture.
This is like oh, what a delightful gift to cheer you up
with your broken leg.
Right.
My mother opened the door and then we heard a bang
and she fell.
At that point, we knew something was wrong.
My mother was struggling to breathe.
And then I jumped to the phone and called 911 right away.
As the clown slowly and silently walked to a car,
Joe and some of his friends tried
to get a closer look at anything that might help describe
the disguised attacker.
The only thing that didn't have any color on it
was the shoes that were solid black and the white gloves.
And did you notice anything about the clown's eyes?
I did.
That's the most thing I saw was the big, brown eyes.
And the clown gets in the car.
What kind of car was it?
It was a white LeBaron.
And does the car peel off?
No.
It just goes into gear and drives off like nothing
happened.
While some of Joe's friends remained at his house waiting
for EMS, Joe got into Marlene's car
and tried to chase down the clown,
but he couldn't catch up.
He is seen here back home afterwards where TV News
crews were on the scene.
Meanwhile, with the clowns balloons and flowers
left behind, Marlene was rushed to the hospital barely alive
where she was put on life support.
I kept telling her I love her and I don't want her to go
and please, don't leave me.
Two days later with no hope of a recovery,
life support was removed and Marlene died.
I knew my life was going to change,
and I knew it was going to become hell because she
wasn't here to help me.
A top clue the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office had
was Joe's description of the clown.
About 6' 1", tall, skinny, with orange hair, a red nose,
and a big orange smile and male.
And those balloons left behind, they now
seemed cruelly mocking.
"You're the greatest."
One said.
The other had a picture of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Authorities had also spoken with Joe's stepfather, Mike Warren,
who they learned had an alibi.
He was in a car with friends heading to a race track
when the shooting took place.
Growing up with Mike Warren, what was that like?
Was he a good dad?
I thought so.
That's the only father I knew.
I mean, I was really young when my real father and mother
separated.
Marlene and Mike were married when Joe was just three.
They had built a comfortable life
in Wellington, Florida, an affluent suburb.
Marlene owned several businesses,
including apartment complexes.
And the couple ran Bargain Motors,
specializing in used cars and rentals.
While business was good, the marriage, says Joe,
was troubled.
He says his mother became convinced Mike was having
an affair, making her fearful.
She said, "If anything does happen to me,
your father did it."
She said that to you.
I told her, "No way, he would never do anything like that."
She said, "Don't put it past him."
Marlene shared that same fear with her mother, Shirley Twing.
She says, "If anything happens to me, Mike did it."
We interviewed Shirley in 2017 when 48 Hours started
investigating Marlene's murder.
That's an ominous thing to say.
Did you sense fear in her voice?
Sure.
Yes, I did.
So when Shirley learned her daughter had been murdered,
her mind went to Mike.
Right away.
I figured that Mike had something to do with it.
That's for damn sure.
But Mike had that alibi, so authorities
were looking for someone else.
And when they visited Bargain Motors,
Mike's place of business, one name kept popping up.
That woman with whom Mike was supposedly having an affair.
Everybody at the Bargain Motors were
reporting that, you should look first at Sheila Keen.
Olathe McRoberts, an assistant state attorney
in Palm Beach County, has worked on the case from the beginning.
And within the next day or so, tips
were being called in that you really should investigate
Sheila Keen and Michael Warren.
They were definitely seeing one another.
Della Ward worked at bargain Motors with Mike Warren.
He had a lot of compassion, a lot of empathy.
And people just were drawn to him, especially women.
One of those women Della believed was Sheila Keen.
I found her very nice, very bubbly.
You knew the way she looked at Michael, you just loved him.
You could see it.
Sheila, who also had a reputation for toughness,
was a repo woman.
Repossessing cars at Bargain Motors.
To do repos, you have to have some kind of guts.
She told me, "I keep a gun for my protection
because people are crazy, what they do."
Sheila told investigators she was out
working at the time of Marlene's murder.
She claimed that she was looking for repossession vehicles
but she was unable to provide any address that she went to
so that they could follow up and confirm it.
As for the affair, both Sheila and Mike
told investigators they were just friends.
But that's not what authorities learned when they
talked to Sheila's neighbors.
The neighbors at that apartment complex
believed that Michael Warren and Sheila
Keen were husband and wife.
Is there any doubt in your mind that there
was a romantic relationship?
There's no doubt.
And they didn't hide it.
An affair though, isn't necessarily
a motive for murder.
Did anyone profit financially from Marlene's death?
Yes.
So Michael Warren profited largely.
The properties and assets that they owned together
were in her name.
So by her predeceasing him, he was
able to obtain 100% of the assets.
Investigators were also trying to locate local stores that had
recently sold clown outfits.
Debra Offord had been working at a costume shop
when two nights before Marlene's murder, a customer
knocked at the door at closing time.
She wanted to see the clown costumes.
I said, "Can you come back tomorrow?"
And she said, "No, I need something right now."
Debra told investigators the customer paid cash,
buying a clown suit, an orange wig, makeup, and a red clown
nose.
She was I would say about 5' 10",
long, thick, straight, chocolate-colored hair.
Big, brown eyes.
Detectives later presented Debra with a photo lineup
that included a picture of Sheila Keen.
Debra identified Keen and one other woman
as possibly being the person who bought the clown costume.
The Sheriff's Office also believed
they located where the shooter bought those flowers
and balloons.
This supermarket.
The buyer described as a White female with dark brown hair.
The description of the customer given by the worker
at the supermarket, brown hair.
And at the costume store, brown hair,
brown eyes was consistent with Sheila Keen.
And there was Sheila's reported affair with Mike Warren.
It was intriguing circumstantial evidence.
But would it be enough to make an arrest?
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Before they turned the machine off on my mother--
God, I wish you could be here with me.
I told her that I loved her very much
and that we were going to get justice.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
As Joe Ahrens mourned the loss of his mother, Marlene,
investigators continued looking for additional evidence tying
Sheila Keen to Marlene Warren's murder.
You talk about this case to anyone
and the first place people go is yeah, it's the mistress.
So investigators focused on Sheila Keen.
And soon, a big break when detectives
located this abandoned white Chrysler
LeBaron matching the description witnesses
gave of the getaway car.
What was found inside that Chrysler LeBaron?
There was synthetic fibers, similar type fibers
to a clown wig.
They were orange, the same color as the wig Joe Ahrens
says the assailant was wearing.
Also inside the car, they found a human hair.
It was brown like Sheila Keen's.
Sheriff's detectives executed a search warrant
at the home of Sheila Keen.
Inside Sheila Keen's closet, detectives
say they recovered orange fibers that a forensic examination
later concluded were similar to the ones found in the Chrysler
LeBaron.
And another breakthrough was made
when Sheila's hair from her apartment
was compared to the one recovered from the getaway car.
That was scientifically microscopically
examined and found to be consistent.
Consistent with Sheila's hair.
But DNA technology was still in its infancy in 1990
and scientists were unable to make a definitive connection.
There were other challenges for investigators.
The gun used to kill Marlene and the actual costume the killer
clown wore were never found.
And remember, Joe thought the attacker was a 6 foot tall man.
Sheila didn't fit either of those descriptions.
We're talking about an event that took seconds.
Glances of this clown was a second or two.
Also, McRoberts says any eyewitness
would have a hard time describing someone
in a baggy clown costume, make up, and a wig.
It's basically a clown is a clown.
And there was Sheila's alleged affair
with Mike Warren, those fiber and hair results,
and those sales clerks at the costume and grocery stores
whose description of the customer purchasing
the clown outfit, balloons, and flowers was
consistent with Sheila.
This sounds like the evidence is really building up.
It's like you've got enough there to make an arrest.
What happens?
Well, there was certainly argument
about that and opinions that differed at the time.
And then there's an indecision about do I do it now
or should we keep trying and get a little bit more?
As investigators looked for more evidence,
they discovered that Mike Warren's business, Bargain
Motors, was connected to the suspected getaway car.
They learned an employee stole the car from a competitor
several weeks before the murder.
And that's how they got the Chrysler LeBaron.
Sheriff's detectives spent about five hours Thursday night
searching the offices of Bargain Motors at--
And as they investigated Mike Warren's business,
they discovered widespread fraud,
charging him with racketeering, insurance fraud, and odometer
tampering.
He ultimately was convicted on 43 counts of fraud
and sent to prison.
It was for fraud.
And so you just can't extrapolate one to the next.
I mean, there's no evidence that he's a murderer.
We do have our suspicions though.
He was not charged with any crime in connection
with Marlene's murder.
And Warren felt he was a victim in this case, sentiments
he shared in a radio interview before he went to prison.
They wanted to put me out of business.
Warren speculated that Marlene might actually
have been the victim of an angry tenant or car buyer.
I really can't think of a reason why
other than the fact of the type of businesses that we're
in as far as them landlords and crossing a few people
by repossessing their car.
But law enforcement did not think
Marlene Warren's murder was the work of a disgruntled tenant
or customer.
And as the years passed, the case grew cold.
And as for Sheila Keen, she seemed to disappear.
Nobody ever brought her name up again.
For many years, I was suffering in despair.
After Mike Warren went to prison, Joe says he
and his stepfather became estranged.
And as he continued to grieve the loss of his mother,
he was consumed by her case going unsolved.
And give me a sense of what problems you fell
into after your mother's murder.
Oh, wow, where do we start?
Alcoholism, drugs, I mean, you name it.
It was especially painful, says Joe,
on each passing anniversary of the shooting.
I would blow up that day and go get drunk
and just go to her gravesite, it was sad.
Would you go out to her grave to talk to her?
I did a lot to try to find answers.
But I was so confused.
I was getting nothing.
I was just lost.
I miss you.
I wish you could help me through these hard times.
Joe eventually emerged from the fog of drugs and despair.
With that behind him, he became increasingly certain of who
murdered his mother.
I concluded that Sheila was the one that did it.
She probably never thought in a million years
she'd be held accountable for her crimes
She thought she'd got away with it.
What do you make of the evidence against Sheila Keen?
Chat now with the 48 Hours team on Facebook and X.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
These are paintings that Marlene had painted when
she was about 14 years old.
I kind of grin because I can almost see her doing this.
Shirley Twing and her daughter, Marlene, shared a fascination
with clowns.
And over here--
In Shirley's home, she even kept a room full of clown art
and figurines.
This one says to me things will get better.
The sad sometimes unsettling images
brought comfort to Shirley despite the fact
that a clown had so brutally ended her daughter's life.
I don't hate clowns.
I just hate one.
Although the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office
hadn't given up on solving Marlene's murder,
27 long years had passed without an arrest.
Then by 2017, a cold case unit made a breakthrough.
State attorney, Dave Aronberg, finally
had new important evidence.
The hairs that were found in the LeBaron
were able to be traced to Sheila Keen through DNA technology.
With that new DNA match, detectives
believed they could now definitively connect
Sheila to the alleged getaway car
and to Marlene Warren's murder.
And when Sheriff's found suspect, Sheila Keen,
they were blown away to learn whom she had married.
After Michael Warren got out of prison,
he reconnected with Sheila Keen.
Here's someone whose wife had been murdered,
and he just married the chief suspect.
What did that tell you?
When you combine the fact that the two of them
were in affair at the time of the murder
and then later they got married, it
did seem like mission accomplished.
That marriage was in 2002.
The Warrens, now middle-aged, settled into a new life
in Tennessee, running this burger joint called Purple Cow.
She took Mike's Last name but in an interesting twist,
assistant state attorney Olathe McRoberts
says she changed her first name.
Sheila Keen-Warren introduced herself to their friends
in that life that her name was Debbie.
She had dyed her hair blonde, changed her name,
and was living a full life.
We would have dinners.
They were wonderful cooks.
The Warrens befriended Brooke Blevins.
This is Mike Warrens house.
A neighbor at a weekend property the couple
purchased in the Virginia mountains.
When we spoke to Brooke in 2018, she
said she knew Mike's wife as Debbie
and was told it was a childhood nickname.
Her dad nicknamed her that when she was small.
I only ever called her Sheila.
I always called her Debbie.
Former Purple Cow employees, Ashley Sexton
and Cynthia Swafford, say they knew Debbie as a tough boss.
I mean, she was awful aggressive mean.
And even heard an alarming rumor about her past.
The rumor around Purple Cow when we worked there was Debbie
killed Mike's ex-wife.
I thought that it was blowing off steam.
I was like, OK, whatever.
But the rumors said it more than once,
even to where we knew she dressed up like a clown.
According to an employee, Sheila had
appeared in clown makeup at the restaurant one year
during Halloween.
By the fall of 2017, the Warrens had sold the business
and retired full time to the house in Virginia.
Meanwhile, state attorney Aronberg
felt the case against Sheila had only gotten stronger.
When you combine the fact that they got married and seemingly
lived happily ever after, with the new DNA breakthrough,
we're able to get enough evidence to make an arrest.
On September 26 2017, 27 years after Marlene's murder,
authorities arrested Sheila Keen-Warren driving
on a road near their home.
She was charged with first-degree murder.
Sheila did not murder Marlene Warren.
Greg Rosenfeld, Sheila Keen-Warren's defense attorney
says Sheila was not the shooter.
Everything was so methodical.
This person walking up to the house,
committing this shooting, and then slowly walking away.
We're dealing with someone who had experience in committing
a hit or a murder.
That's not Sheila.
That is not Sheila.
Shortly after Sheila's arrest, Dave Aronberg
addressed reporters.
Today, we filed a notice of intent
to seek the death penalty in this case.
Can you say whether Michael Warren is a suspect?
I can't say that.
Olathe McRoberts says there was something
Sheila asked as she was being taken into custody that
caught prosecutors attention.
One of the first things she said is well,
you are going to arrest him too, pointing to her husband.
Which suggests what to you?
That she knew exactly what she was being arrested for,
and they had done it together.
Joe had come to the same conclusion,
that his stepfather and Sheila were both involved
in his mother's murder.
Would you like to see Mike Warren charged
in the murder of your mother?
Yes, I would.
With Sheila in custody, we wanted
to speak with Mike Warren.
We're going to go to his front door, give it a knock,
see if he'll answer a couple of questions.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
After the arrest of Sheila Keen-Warren in 2017,
48 Hours wanted to talk to Mike Warren about what he
knew about his wife's murder.
Here he comes.
Hey, Mike.
I'm Peter Van Sant with CBS News.
He wouldn't open the door, but we spoke through it
for several minutes competing with a barking dog.
Did you have anything to do with planning the murder
of your wife, Marlene?
You did not.
He was adamant that neither he nor Sheila Keen-Warren
had anything to do with Marlene's murder.
Did you suggest to Sheila that she dress in a clown outfit?
You're saying, "Sheila, Sheila."
Who says she even did that?
I don't think she had anything to do with this.
If I thought she had something to do with this,
I wouldn't have been with her.
Do you believe, based on the evidence
over the years that Mike Warren knew what
was going to happen that day?
I don't believe there's any direct evidence of that.
There just wasn't enough evidence
to prosecute Michael Warren.
But if evidence emerges, we'll pursue it.
As they prepared for trial, despite never recovering
the clown disguise or the gun, prosecutors
were confident they could prove that Sheila Keen-Warren
committed the murder so that she could marry Mike Warren.
Sheila Keen-Warren had the means, the motive,
and the opportunity to do this.
We will never know who killed Marlene Warren
because the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office and the State
Attorney's Office did such a poor job investigating
this case.
I can tell you without question that it was not Sheila Keen.
Sheila Keen-Warren's defense attorney, Greg Rosenfeld,
says she's innocent.
A victim of the state attorney's reckless desire
to close a notorious cold case.
And they said, you know what?
This is our suspect.
We're going to stick with it.
Even though the pieces of the puzzle didn't fit the puzzle.
Rosenfeld says there were other potential suspects authorities
ignored, including an inmate who supposedly bragged in prison
about murdering Marlene.
But prosecutors say he was investigated and cleared.
It's not surprising that they would
try to point the finger at law enforcement
for not looking at every potential suspect.
But if you look at the evidence, it
pointed to one person all along, Sheila Keen-Warren.
The state was confident Sheila Keen-Warren
was responsible for Marlene's murder.
But Rosenfeld plans to poke holes in its case at trial.
How do you overcome DNA evidence?
The State Attorney's Office should
be embarrassed about the DNA evidence in this case.
Rosenfeld agrees the hair prosecutors
say was found in the LeBaron getaway car
could be from Sheila Keen-Warren.
But he says it could also be from about 4%
of the US Caucasian population.
They couldn't exclude Marlene Warren from that hair sample.
So that was their groundbreaking DNA evidence.
And if you concede that the hair is
from Sheila Keen-Warren, says Rosenfeld,
there's an innocent explanation as to how it got there.
The LeBaron was on the lot at Bargain Motors
where she worked.
Sheila may have been in the car used in this murder.
That's it.
The defense attorney says, well of course,
her hair might be in there.
It doesn't suggest that she was driving
at the time of the murder.
What do you say to that?
It's just one more link.
Once you put that one thing with the totality
of all the circumstances, then it
starts to become overwhelming.
Rosenfeld says the orange fibers found
in the car which prosecutors say could be from the clown costume
should also be excluded.
So the fibers found in the car were synthetic fibers.
That same type of fiber could be used in thousands
of different products.
So the state likes to present it as clown wig fibers
but that's factually incorrect.
Even more troubling than the evidence gathered,
says Rosenfeld, is how it was handled over the decades.
What are we looking at here?
These are evidence bags at the Palm Beach County Sheriff's
Office evidence unit torn open.
Just gaping holes in these evidence bags.
If there's gaping holes, what can that do to the evidence
inside?
That's precisely how you have cross contamination.
Now, look at--
I can zoom in here.
This bag contains a clown wig investigators
purchased similar to the one they believed
was worn by the assailant.
They used it to compare to the fibers found in the LeBaron
and in Sheila's home.
This is an open evidence bag with the wig sticking out.
This is horrifying.
And so your bottom line is that this evidence is unreliable
now.
Without question.
Can it not be argued that some of the evidence in this case
was indeed bungled?
You're asking a lot of law enforcement
to be perfect from 1990 to today.
Some of the evidence was kept in an evidence storage
area that wasn't ideal.
Any mistake, any small opening will be
exploited by defense lawyers.
Prosecutors were still certain they had the right person
for Marlene's murder.
But in February 2020, after a re-evaluation
of Sheila Keen-Warren's case, they
announced they would no longer seek the death penalty.
Were you told by the prosecutor's office
that there was always a chance in a jury trial
that she might even be acquitted?
Yes.
See more evidence from the case at 48hours.com.
When you think of your mom today, what do you think about?
What images come to mind?
Well, she was robbed and so was I.
It is said the wheels of justice turn slowly.
And when it came to the murder of Marlene Warren,
that grind often seemed to come to a halt.
After the 27-year wait for an arrest,
Sheila Keen-Warren's trial kept getting delayed.
By 2022, she had spent five years in jail.
Her trial postponed six times.
And then we had COVID.
So it just was one thing after another,
decades of accumulation of files and photographs
and mountains of evidence and documents.
Defense attorney, Greg Rosenfeld,
was also trying to work his way through all that evidence.
And he says, adding to the delays
was a lack of cooperation from the state.
Evidence kept I'd say disappearing.
Rosenfeld says one crucial piece of evidence
for the defense that disappeared for years
was what investigators called the clown sighting file.
These were all the tips about people
who alleged to have seen clowns in the area.
That opens up for you new avenues as
to possible suspects.
Absolutely.
I think the Sheriff's Office and the State Attorney's Office
just decided they didn't want to look for this evidence.
But then suddenly in October of 2022,
as another trial date neared, the file was found.
It was located not with the Sheila Keen clown murder boxes,
it was actually a file out of place.
They find this clown sighting file and there's 35 tips.
We begin to investigate them, now
we're 32 years after the murder.
We couldn't track down these witnesses.
I've seen it, and it's silly things.
Clearly clown sightings that had nothing
to do with the Marlene Warren.
And it wasn't being intentionally hidden
from the defense.
Absolutely not.
We were meticulous about making sure they had everything.
Though, as the trial neared, the decades of delays
were causing problems for the prosecution as well.
Every day that went by, it was a tougher case.
Witnesses die, memories fade, evidence spoils.
One of our key witnesses passed away.
He was the one who compiled the evidence
and without him, we lost a chain of custody
for some crucial evidence relating to the fibers.
I can zoom in here.
This is an open evidence bag.
Evidence the defense already claimed had been poorly stored
and mishandled.
Contaminated, inadmissible, unreliable.
It just goes to show you how poor of an investigation
that was done.
They were going to be able to argue that because
of the opening of the bags, that the evidence was spoiled
and because of the break in the chain of custody because
of the death of our witnesses, it shouldn't even be admitted.
So you had some real potential for reasonable doubt.
There was beyond reasonable doubt.
On April 25th 2023, two weeks before Sheila Keen-Warren's
trial for the murder of Marlene Warren was to begin,
there was yet another surprise in a case that had been
filled with the unexpected.
A plea deal was reached.
Ms. Keen-Warren, the defendant herein,
will agree to withdraw her previously entered plea of not
guilty and her plea of guilty.
Sheila Keen-Warren whose case at one time
included the death penalty, then life imprison,
would now plead guilty to second-degree murder
and be sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Under sentencing guidelines for time served,
she is expected to be released in 2025.
Perhaps sooner.
We had to make a judgment based on what we had.
Because the fear is what if you take this to trial?
The worst thing that could happen
would be that Sheila Keen-Warren would be found not guilty.
Not because she was innocent but because after 33 years,
we could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt
that she was the one who did it.
But Sheila Keen-Warren did have to publicly pay
a price for this plea deal, admitting in open court
that she, in fact, did murder Marlene Warren.
If this case were to proceed to jury trial,
the state would present evidence that on or about May
the 26th of 1990, the defendant was
responsible for the death of Marlene Warren.
Keen, did you hear all that?
Yes, sir.
And do you agree with that factual basis?
Yes.
Despite admitting her crime, Sheila Keen-Warren,
through her attorney, still maintains she is innocent.
Sheila did not commit this murder.
It was very difficult for her to admit to committing a crime
that she did not commit.
But as a matter of law, she has admitted
to committing the murder by saying yes.
Correct.
For the purpose of--
So she is a convicted murderer.
Insofar as the logos, sure.
But when you're told you can be home
or you can play Russian roulette and risk spending
the rest of your life in prison, it's kind of a no-brainer.
The defense cannot have it both ways.
So she will be a murderer for every day
for the rest of her life.
Even when she gets out of prison one day,
she'll still be a convicted murderer.
When she does get out of prison, she
will reunite with her husband, Michael Warren.
Sheila's going home to Tennessee.
She's going back to her life.
Michael Warren in a statement provided
to 48 Hours regarding the plea said, "My wife
did not commit this crime.
It was difficult to see her plea to a crime she did not commit,
but it wasn't worth the gamble when
she was offered a deal that will have
her home in 16 to 18 months."
With this deal, there is a chance
that Sheila might get out of prison
within the next year or two.
Are you all right with that?
Well, I'm not all right with it but I have to be.
Still, Joe Ahrens approved the plea deal
feeling it wasn't worth the gamble of going to trial.
That was very emotional because that
was the end of something so huge that
grew for 33 years of my life.
Finally, it's over.
Finally.
It was--
The demons that once occupied Joe's mind are gone,
replaced with loving memories of how his mother, Marlene, lived
rather than how that life was so violently taken.
What would you say to your mother
if you could speak to her today?
Wow, what can I say to my mother?
Thank you for showing me how to love and be peaceful.
And thank you for being in my life.
Hurts.
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