Judge denies request for pre-trial release in killer clown case

Circuit Judge Scott Suskauer again has denied a request that the woman accused of dressing as a clown and killing her husband’s former wife in 1990 be released ahead of her trial.

In an order last week, Suskauer wrote he denied Sheila Keen Warren’s pre-trial release for the same reasons he cited when defense attorneys last made the request in 2021, including that Keen Warren has enough money to flee Palm Beach County and that she had previously been convicted of a “crime of dishonesty.”

The killer dressed as a clown stood at Marlene Warren’s door in Wellington on May 26, 1990, and shot the 40-year-old woman in the face. Flowers and two balloons — a heart-shaped one that said “You’re the Greatest” and one with a picture of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves — were left behind.

The case went cold until Keen Warren was arrested in 2017 in Virginia, where she had made a new life under a new name with her husband and the victim’s former husband, Michael Warren.

Keen Warren’s trial had been scheduled to start Oct. 21, but Suskauer instead presided over a hearing where defense attorneys said they needed more time to investigate leads in a newly discovered “clown sighting file” that they had been seeking for years, prompting the latest delay of the trial’s start date.

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Defense attorneys asked Suskauer to grant Keen Warren pre-trial release in an Oct. 13 motion where they argued that since he denied the same request in 2021, “additional evidence has come to light which calls into question” two pieces of the state’s evidence. They asked in the motion that she be placed on house arrest on the conditions that she would not leave Palm Beach County, live with her son, that her son not have a firearm in the home, that she not have a firearm and that she surrender her passport and sign a waiver of extradition.

Prosecutors wrote in their response that they have never relied solely on the pieces of evidence the defense called into question but that the “totality of the circumstances” establish Keen Warren’s guilt. They wrote that the delayed discovery of the clown sighting file has not changed the proof they’ve given.

“This is simply a veiled attempt by the Defense to parlay the inadvertent late discovery by the State into a release from custody without proper change in circumstances,” prosecutors wrote in their response to the request for her release.

When Keen Warren’s defense attorneys sought pre-trial release in 2021, they wrote in their motion that she has “significant ties” to the community with her son living in the area and a brother living in Martin County and that she would surrender her passport, showing she is not a flight risk.

Prosecutors disagreed in their response, writing that she has over $1 million in property and cash assets that would allow her to flee. Keen Warren had also been charged with felony grand theft before, prosecutors wrote in the 2021 court filing.

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Taking her past conviction, her financial resources, the evidence against her and the seriousness of the crime of which Keen Warren is accused, Suskauer denied pre-trial release in 2021. In his recent order denying the request, Suskauer wrote that he recognizes prosecutors were responsible for the most recent delay but the past reasons for the denial remain.

Defense attorneys asked Suskauer in the Oct. 21 hearing to financially sanction the prosecutor’s office for what they said were repeated discovery violations. Suskauer has denied that motion also.

A new trial date has not yet been scheduled.