A Brooklyn judge on Wednesday sentenced Harvey Marcelin, 83, to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the brutal murder and dismemberment of 68-year-old Susan Leyden. The sentencing in Brooklyn Supreme Court marked the culmination of a case that exposed a chilling pattern of violence spanning decades.
Justice Danny Chun declared that Marcelin, who has been convicted of killing three women over more than 60 years, remains a danger to society and must never be released again. “The cold fact is that every time you were released, you killed someone else,” Chun said.
“Regardless of your age, if you are ever paroled again, I have no doubt that you would kill again.”
Marcelin was found guilty of first-degree murder last month for the February 2022 killing of Leyden. Prosecutors said Marcelin bludgeoned Leyden in his East New York apartment, then used a reciprocating saw purchased from Home Depot to dismember her body.
An e-bike rider discovered her headless and limbless torso inside a gray and black rolling bag left on a Brooklyn street days later.
Assistant District Attorney Leila Rosini argued that Marcelin has shown no capacity for rehabilitation. “Every single time the defendant has been released from prison, he has shortly thereafter killed a woman,” Rosini said.
“There is no hope for rehabilitation. His impulses, his urges, his rage, whatever makes him harm these women, has not gone away.”
Marcelin, who has identified as both male and female over the years, presented himself as male during the trial and asked to be addressed as “Mr.” He maintained his innocence in court on Wednesday, claiming he was framed by the prosecution’s star witness, Lisa Lindhal, a homeless woman with a history of drug addiction who testified that she saw Leyden’s body in Marcelin’s squalid apartment.
“I sincerely wish I could reassemble the embodiment of my Susan Carol Leyden, whom I was crazy over,” Marcelin said, “and whom I witnessed murdered by an evil crackhead, that the prosecutor Rosini unlawfully manipulated, and framed me and railroaded me through a kangaroo court using terrorist tactics against the jury.” Rosini and her co-counsel, Assistant District Attorney Viviane Dussek, reacted with visible disgust and disbelief.
Marcelin’s violent history began in 1963 when he shot his girlfriend Jacqueline Bonds in a Harlem apartment. He was initially sentenced to life without parole, but after a change in state law, he was released on lifetime parole in 1984.
Within a year, he stabbed another girlfriend, Anna Laura Serrera Miranda, to death and dumped her remains near Central Park. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter in that case.
At a parole hearing in June 2019, Marcelin vowed, “I give you my word, I will never re-offend.” He broke that promise less than three years later when he became infatuated with Leyden, creating multiple Facebook accounts using her photo as his profile picture. Leyden, who had lost her jewelry business and become homeless, was rebuilding her life when she visited Marcelin’s apartment on Pennsylvania Avenue on February 27, 2022, and never emerged.
After the discovery of her torso, police found black plastic garbage bags in Marcelin’s apartment containing Leyden’s thighs, hand, arm, and head. Prosecutors allege that Marcelin also stuffed part of her left leg into his electric wheelchair and went shopping before disposing of the limb.
Surveillance video captured him standing up from the wheelchair inside a store after the murder. The victim’s right leg, left arm, and left hand were never recovered.
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez condemned the crime. “The brutality of this shocking crime is almost beyond words,” he said.
“This defendant committed a horrific murder that took Susan Leyden’s life and inflicted unimaginable pain on her family and loved ones.”