A Sister Fights for Justice for Her Brother 28 Years After Hanging

In 1939 the great songstress Billie Holiday recorded, “Strange Fruit” and the lyrics are compelling:

“Southern trees bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the popular trees”

In 1939, Billie Holiday recorded “Strange Fruit,” a song about lynching in the American South. Nearly fifty years later, and far from the South, a family in Montgomery County, Maryland, would come to know its meaning.

Keith Waddell Warren was 19 years old. He had been accepted to North Carolina Central University and was set to begin that fall. On July 31, 1986, he was found hanging from a tree.

His death was ruled a suicide. There was no criminal investigation and no autopsy.

Case Status

Updated October 2026

2024: A new law. Sherri Warren testified in favor of Maryland House Bill 969, the Katherine Morris Death Reclassification Act. Under the law, when a medical examiner changes the manner of death on a death certificate to undetermined or homicide, law enforcement must reopen or reinvestigate the case. It was signed in May 2024 and took effect October 1, 2024.

2024 to 2025: Death certificate changed. In April 2024, Maryland’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner notified the family that it would change Keith’s manner of death. The change became official in February 2025, when the certificate was updated from “Suicide” to “Undetermined.” It took four separate copies, issued at four different times, before the family received the finalized certificate from the state’s vital records office on August 4, 2025.

October 2025: Case reopened. The Montgomery County Police Department reopened the investigation into Keith’s death.

Where things stand. The investigation is open, and the family’s questions remain unanswered.

What the family is asking for. Full transparency, and a review by an independent outside agency of how the case was handled in 1986.

These steps came 39 years after Keith’s death. They are not closure. They are the first official acknowledgment that the original ruling could not stand.

What the Family Has Always Questioned

The family was not notified until about six hours after Keith’s body was found.

The lead detective relied on information from an unknown, unrelated third party to rule the death a suicide.

No one with a medical background examined Keith’s body before it was sent to a funeral home chosen by the lead detective.

His body was embalmed right away, without an autopsy and without the family being told beforehand.

The clothing Keith was wearing when he was found was not his own.

The tree was cut down quickly and taken into evidence. It cannot be found.

There was no sign of a criminal investigation: no crime scene tape and no questioning of witnesses.

The Independent Examination

In 1994, the family hired forensic pathologist Isidore Mihalakis, MD, and Keith’s body was exhumed. Dr. Mihalakis reported abnormal levels of a chemical solvent in Keith’s system. In his opinion, the findings did not support a hanging, and the death should be investigated as a homicide.

A Family’s Search

Keith’s mother, Mary Warren Couey, dedicated her life to finding out what happened to her son. She searched for answers at great personal and financial cost until her sudden death on May 23, 2009. Keith’s sister, Sherri Warren, has carried the search forward.

For decades, the family asked for one thing: a real investigation. They asked the Montgomery County Police Department. They asked the State’s Attorney. They asked the Attorney General of the United States.

In February 2025, the word “suicide” came off Keith’s death certificate. In October 2025, the Montgomery County Police Department reopened his case.

His mother did not live to see either one. Forty years later, the family is still asking: who will stand for justice for Keith Warren?