FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A woman who pleaded guilty to dressing up as a clown in 1990 and 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 later 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 his trial began.

Keen-Warren, who maintained her innocence even after pleading guilty, was sentenced to 12 years in prison. But he had been in custody for seven years since his 2017 arrest, and Florida’s 1990 law allowed significant credit for good behavior. She was expected to be released in about two years.

“Sheila Keen-Warren will always be an admitted convicted murderer and will wear that stain every day for the rest of her life,” Palm Beach County State’s Attorney Dave Aronberg said in a statement Saturday.

Greg Rosenfeld, Keen-Warren’s attorney, has said she only accepted the plea deal because she would be freed in less than two years and faced a life sentence if convicted at trial.

“We are absolutely thrilled that Ms. Keen-Warren is out of prison and back with her family. “As we have said from the beginning, she did not commit this crime,” he said in a text message Saturday.

Marlene Warren’s son, Joseph Ahrens, and his friends were home when they said a person dressed as a clown rang the doorbell. He said that when his mother responded, the clown handed him some balloons. After she responded, “How cute,” the clown pulled out a gun and shot her in the face before fleeing.

Palm Beach County sheriff’s investigators had long suspected Keen-Warren was involved in the murder, but she was not arrested until 27 years later, when they said enhanced DNA testing linked her to evidence found in the car. of the escape. Rosenfeld has called that evidence weak.

At the time of the shooting, Keen-Warren was employed by 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 across the Tennessee border.

Witnesses told investigators in 1990 that then-Sheila Keen and Michael Warren were having an affair, although both denied it.

Over the years, detectives said, costume store employees identified Sheila Warren as the woman who had purchased a clown costume a few days before the murder.

And one of the two balloons, a silver one that said, “You’re the Greatest,” was sold at only one store, a Publix supermarket near Keen-Warren’s home. Employees told detectives that a woman who looked like Keen-Warren had purchased the balloons an hour before the shooting.

The alleged getaway car was found abandoned with orange hair-like fibers inside. The white Chrysler convertible had been reported stolen from Michael Warren’s parking lot a month before the shooting. Keen-Warren and her then-husband recovered 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 property were in his name and he feared what would happen if he did so.

He allegedly told his mother, “If anything happens to me, Mike did 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 male and female genes, he said, and the other could have come from one in 20 women.

And even if that hair came 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 officers found was not the killer’s, although investigators insisted it was.

Last year, Aronberg admitted there were gaps in the case, saying they were caused by the three decades it took to bring it to trial, including the deaths of key witnesses.

Michael Warren was convicted in 1994 of grand theft, extortion and odometer tampering. He served nearly four years in prison, a punishment his then-lawyers said was disproportionately long because of suspicions that he was involved in his wife’s death.

He did not respond to a phone message left Saturday.

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