PALM BEACH COUNTY, Fla. — Attorneys for a woman charged in Florida with a 1990 murder say an inmate at a Maine prison told prosecutors another man confessed to the crime the following year.
Defense attorneys for accused murderer Sheila Keen-Warren filed a motion to continue on Thursday, objecting to prosecutors' conduct regarding discovery. The motion was denied.
Keen-Warren is charged with murder in connection with the May 26, 1990, death of Marlene Warren in Wellington. Prosecutors said she was dressed like a clown and holding balloons when she rang Warren's doorbell and then shot her, WPTV reported.
According to the motion, an inmate in a Maine prison, Jeffrey Libby, told officials in 1991 that another inmate, Edward Bahr, confessed to killing Warren.
When the lead detective in Florida traveled to Maine to speak with the two men in, Bahr reportedly told the detective that "he would tell him everything he knows" about Warren's death if the detective "could promise him he would not get the electric chair."
According to the motion, when the detective said he couldn't promise that, Bahr consulted an attorney and declined to speak further.
However, Keen-Warren's attorneys said prosecutors never listed Bahr as a witness in her case.
The motion also stated that defense attorneys learned Bahr had been arrested in Florida in May 2021 on a warrant for grand theft. Still, prosecutors never disclosed that a potential suspect in the Warren murder was in custody and had been interviewed by detectives.
But Keen-Warren's attorneys said prosecutors never listed Bahr as a witness.
They also said that although Bahr was arrested in Florida in 2021, "for ten months, the state failed to disclose to the defense that Ed Bahr — a suspect in the death of Marlene Warren — was in custody in Palm Beach County ... and only disclosed this information upon the defense inquiring after stumbling upon a few photographs during an evidence view."
