FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A woman who pleaded guilty to dressing as a clown and in 1990 murdering the wife of a man she later married was released from prison Saturday, ending a case that has been strange even by Florida standards.
Sheila Keen-Warren, 61, was released 18 months after she pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for the shooting of Marlene Warren, Florida Department of Corrections records show. The plea deal came shortly before her trial would have started.
Keen-Warren, who has maintained her innocence even after her plea, was sentenced to 12 years in prison. But she had been in custody for seven years since her arrest in 2017, and Florida's law in 1990 allowed significant credit for good behavior. It had been expected she would be released in about two years.
“Sheila Keen-Warren will always be an admitted convicted murderer and will wear that stain for every day for the rest of her life," Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg said in a statement Saturday.
Greg Rosenfeld, Keen-Warren's attorney, has said she only took the plea deal because she would be released in less than two years and had been facing a life sentence if convicted at trial.
“We are absolutely thrilled that Ms. Keen-Warren has been released from prison and is returning to her family. As we’ve stated from the beginning, she did not commit this crime," he said Saturday in a text message.
Marlene Warren’s son, Joseph Ahrens, and his friends were at home when they said a person dressed as a clown rang the door bell. He said that when his mom answered, the clown handed her some balloons. After she responded, “How nice,” the clown pulled a gun and shot her in the face before fleeing.
Palm Beach County sheriff's investigators had long suspected Keen-Warren in the slaying, but she wasn't arrested until 27 years later when they said improved DNA testing tied her to evidence found in the getaway car. Rosenfeld has called that evidence weak.
At the time of the shooting, Keen-Warren was an employee of Marlene Warren’s husband, Michael, at his used car lot. Since 2002, she has been his wife — they eventually moved to Abingdon, Virginia, where they ran a restaurant just across the Tennessee border.
Witnesses told investigators in 1990 that the then-Sheila Keen and Michael Warren were having an affair, though both denied it.
Over the years, detectives said, costume shop employees identified Sheila Warren as the woman who had bought a clown suit a few days before the killing.
And one of the two balloons — a silver one that read, “You’re the Greatest” — was sold at only one store, a Publix supermarket near Keen-Warren's home. Employees told detectives a woman who looked like Keen-Warren had bought the balloons 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. Keen-Warren and her then-husband repossessed cars for him.
Relatives told The Palm Beach Post in 2000 that Marlene Warren, who was 40 when she died, suspected her husband was having an affair and wanted to leave him. But the car lot and other properties were in her name, and she feared what might happen if she did.
She allegedly told her mother, “If anything happens to me, Mike done it.” He has never been charged and has denied involvement.
But Rosenfeld said last year that the state’s case was falling apart. One DNA sample somehow showed both male and female genes, he said, and the other could have come from one out of every 20 women.
And even if that hair did come from Keen-Warren, it could have been deposited before the car was reported stolen. He said Marlene Warren's son and another witness also told detectives that the car deputies found wasn’t the killer’s, though investigators insisted it was.
Aronberg last year conceded that there were holes in the case, saying they were caused by the three decades it took to get it to trial, including the death of key witnesses.
Michael Warren was convicted in 1994 of grand theft, racketeering and odometer tampering. He served almost four years in prison — a punishment his then-attorneys said was disproportionately long because of suspicions he was involved in his wife’s death.
He did not respond to a phone message left for him Saturday.
This article corrects the spelling of the city of Abingdon, Virginia.
FILE - Attorney Richard Lubin speaks during the first court appearance of his client Sheila Keen Warren, Oct. 4, 2017, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (Adam Sacasa/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP, Pool, File)
FILE - This booking photo provided by the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, Fla., shows Sheila Keen Warren, Oct. 3, 2017. (Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office via AP, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are drifting Monday ahead of a momentous week full of potential flashpoints, but other markets are already moving more sharply, including a rise for oil prices and drops for Treasury yields.
The S&P 500 was edging up by 0.1% in midday trading and near its record set last month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 144 points, or 0.3%, as of 11:15 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.3% higher.
Marriott International fell 2.1% after reporting weaker profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. But Fox climbed 4.4% after reporting a stronger profit than expected. That was despite increases in some costs, including for newsgathering at Fox News to cover this election cycle.
Election Day will arrive Tuesday, but its result may not be known for some time as officials count all the votes. That’s raised fears about the possibility of sharp swings around the world because markets infamously hate uncertainty.
History may be less foreboding. The broad U.S. stock market has historically gone on to rise regardless of which party wins the White House. And in 2020, U.S. stocks climbed immediately after Election Day and kept going even after former President Donald Trump refused to concede and challenged the results, creating lots of uncertainty. A large part of that rally was due to excitement about the potential for a vaccine for COVID-19, which had just shut down the global economy.
“Bottom line – the US election is incredibly important, but the process is likely to be incredibly noisy,” according to Michael Zezas, a strategist at Morgan Stanley.
For markets, Zezas also points to how prices may have already moved ahead of expected outcomes from the election. A win for Trump this election could mean U.S. tariffs on Mexican imports, for example, which could hurt the value of the Mexican peso. But the peso has already fallen against the U.S. dollar in recent months, which could limit further moves if a Trump win were to actually happen.
A Trump victory would also be less of a surprise to markets this time around than in 2016, when Treasury yields soared amid expectations for tax cuts that could fuel a stronger U.S economy or further inflate the nation's debt. Treasury yields have already climbed in recent weeks, in part due to rising expectations in some market corners for a Trump win, along with a spate of reports showing the U.S. economy has remained stronger than feared.
On Monday, Treasury yields gave back a chunk of those gains. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.30% from 4.38% late Friday.
Another investment that’s become a barometer in the market for Trump’s perceived chances of victory was swinging sharply. Trump Media & Technology Group veered between a loss of 3.8% and a gain of 6.3% within the first half hour of trading. It was mostly recently up 1.4%.
The stock of the company behind Trump's Truth Social platform had been ripping higher from a bottom in September, until it hit a wall last week and dropped at least 11% in three straight days.
In the oil market, the price for a barrel of U.S. crude rose 2.3% to $71.12 after Saudi Arabia and other oil exporters said they would delay plans to increase the amount of crude they produced. Brent crude, the international standard, rose 1.7% to $74.36.
The price of Brent is still down for the year so far, in part because of worries about how much demand China will provide given challenges for the world's second-largest economy.
The Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress is meeting this week, and analysts are predicting the government may endorse major spending initiatives to boost its economic growth amid troubles for the real-estate industry.
Beyond that meeting and Election Day in the United States, this week will also feature the latest meeting of the Federal Reserve, where the widespread expectation is for it to cut its main interest rate for a second straight time.
The Fed kicked off its rate-cutting campaign in September with a larger-than-usual cut of half a percentage point, as it widens its focus to include keeping the job market humming. It's a sharp turnaround after the Fed kept its main interest rate at a two-decade high in order to slow the economy enough to stamp out high inflation.
The hope that's propelled U.S. stock indexes to records recently is that the U.S. economy can manage to avoid a long-feared recession, in part because of the coming cuts to rates expected from the Fed.
On Wall Street, Nvidia rose 2.5% and was the strongest force pushing upward on the S&P 500. That's often been the case in recent years as demand surges for its chips that are powering the move into artificial-intelligence technology.
Nvidia's stock has been so strong that S&P Dow Jones Indices said on Friday that it and Sherwin-Williams will join its Dow Jones Industrial Average. They are replacing Intel and Dow, the chemical company. Sherwin-Williams climbed 4%.
In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed after rising in much of Asia.
AP Business Writer Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
Trader Jonathan Mueller works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Trader Michael Milano, foreground, works with colleagues on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Trader Michael Capolino works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Trader Robert Chamak, left, and specialist James Denaro work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Specialist Stephen Naughton work at his post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Specialist Meric Greenbaum work at his post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Specialist Anthony Matesic works at his post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
A screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024 shows a broadcast talking about Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
FILE - A sign marking Wall Street is shown near Trinity Church in New York's Financial District on Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)
A food vendor's cart is parked across from the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan)
Currency traders talk near the screen showing the foreign exchange rates at a foreign exchange dealing room in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Nov. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
Stock market today: Asian shares are mostly higher as China begins major economic meeting
Stock market today: Asian shares are mostly higher as China begins major economic meeting
A currency trader walks by the screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at a foreign exchange dealing room in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Nov. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
