FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) – A woman who dressed as a clown and pleaded guilty to killing the wife of a man she would later marry in 1990 was released from prison Saturday, ending a case that was bizarre even by Florida standards.

Sheila Keen-Warren, 61, was released 18 months after pleading guilty to second-degree murder in the shooting of Marlene Warren, according to Florida Department of Corrections records. The plea agreement came shortly before the trial began.

Keen-Warren, who maintained his innocence even after his plea, was sentenced to 12 years in prison. But he had been in custody for seven years since his arrest in 2017, and a 1990 Florida law provides significant credit for good behavior. He was expected to be released in about two years.

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

Keen-Warren’s attorney, Greg Rosenfeld, said he accepted the plea deal because he would be released in less than two years and faces life in prison if convicted at trial.

“We are absolutely thrilled that Ms. Keen-Warren has been released from prison and returned to her family. “As we have stated from the beginning, he did not commit this crime,” he said. he said in a text message on Saturday.

Marlene Warren’s son, Joseph Ahrens, and his friends were at the home when they said a person dressed as a clown rang their doorbell. When her mother answered, she said the clown gave her some balloons. After answering, “How nice” The clown pulled out his gun and shot him in the face before running away.

Palm Beach County sheriff’s investigators long suspected Keen-Warren in the murder, but he was not arrested until 27 years later when improved DNA testing linked him to evidence found in the getaway car. Rosenfeld said this evidence is weak.

At the time of the shooting, Keen-Warren was an employee at the used car lot of Marlene Warren’s husband, Michael.

She was his wife since 2002; They eventually moved to Abingdon, Virginia, where they operated a restaurant just across the Tennessee border.

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

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

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

The supposed getaway car was found abandoned with orange, hair-like fibers inside. The white Chrysler convertible was reported stolen from Michael Warren’s car lot a month before the shooting. Keen-Warren and her then-husband impounded cars in her name.

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 park and other properties were in his name and he was afraid of what might happen if he did so.

He allegedly said to his mother: “If something happens to me, Mike did it.” He was never charged and denied his involvement.

But Rosenfeld said last year that the state’s situation was getting worse. He said one DNA sample somehow showed both male and female genes, while the other might have come from one in 20 women.

And even if this hair came from Keen-Warren, it may have been placed in escrow before the car was reported stolen. He said Marlene Warren’s son and another witness also told detectives that the car officers found did not belong to the killer, but investigators insisted.

Aronberg acknowledged last year that there were flaws in the case, saying they stemmed from the three decades it took to bring the case to trial and the deaths of key witnesses.

Michael Warren was convicted in 1994 of grand theft, racketeering and odometer tampering. He spent almost four years in prison; His lawyers at the time said the sentence was disproportionately long because of suspicions of his involvement in his wife’s death.

He did not respond to a phone message left for him on Saturday.