An alleged 83-year-old transgender serial killer in New York City has been charged with second-degree murder in connection to a woman’s dismembered torso found in Brooklyn earlier this month.
Harvey Marcelin, a biological male who identifies as a woman, was arrested on March 4 and charged with concealment of a body, the New York Daily News reports. While executing a search warrant at his apartment, investigators found a decapitated human head, believed to be that of 68-year-old Susan Leyden. They also discovered electric slaw blades, WNBC notes. On Thursday, Marcelin, who was previously convicted of killing two of his girlfriends, was hit with a second-degree murder charge and additional charges following an indictment, according to the Daily News.
Leyden’s dismembered torso was discovered inside of a bag in a shopping cart at the corner of Pennsylvania and Atlantic Avenues on March 3 – near Marcelin’s apartment. Days later, on March 7, authorities found a human leg nearby, Breitbart News reported. It is believed to be Leyden’s, WABC reports.
Police believe surveillance footage allegedly shows Leyden entering the apartment building on February 27, the outlet notes. On March 2, Marcelin was allegedly seen leaving the building with a bag that held her torso.
“[Leyden] never exits the residence,” court documents state, per the Daily News.
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez released a statement following the indictment, according to WNBC:
Last week my Office charged Harvey Marcelin with allegedly concealing the severed head of a woman in her home and discarding the victim’s torso in a bag on the street. Today, the grand jury indicted Harvey Marcelin for murder, and my office is committed to vigorously seeking justice. The facts of this horrific case are gruesome and unsettling and my heart is with the victim’s family and friends.
Marcelin was previously convicted of murder in the 1960s and manslaughter in the 1980s. On April 18, 1963, he used a .32 caliber revolver to shoot is his girlfriend Jacqueline Bonds in the hallway of their apartment building, court documents from 1972 state. She ran then ran into a bedroom where he subsequently shot her again, and she died in the living room.
Roughly a month and a half prior to the murder, Bonds, who was with her mother, told Marcelin she did not want to be with him anymore. He pointed at Jacqueline and exclaimed, “I’ll get you!” the court documents state.
“When the jury couldn’t agree on imposing the death penalty, the judge in the case sentenced Marcelin to life in prison,” the Daily News reports. In May of 1984, he was released from prison on lifetime parole, according to WABC. A year-and-a-half later, he struck again, fatally stabbing his girlfriend in Manhattan on November 2, 1985, and discarding her body in a plastic bag near Central Park, the outlet notes.
He pleaded guilty to a manslaughter charge and received a six to twelve year prison sentence, “concurrent with the life sentence in the first murder,” the outlet reports.
His parole requests over the next thirty years were repeatedly denied, the New York Times notes. “During one State Parole Board hearing in 1997, Marcelin admitted to having ‘problems’ with women, according to court records,” WNBC reports. “Other boards rejected parole, citing Marcelin’s ‘attempt to place the blame’ on the victims.”
He was released on parole in August of 2019, according to the Daily News.
Robert Boyce, an ABC News contributor who formerly had a career in the NYPD, was the first officer on the scene in the 1985 case, according to WABC.
“He dismembers the body and puts it out on the street not far from where he lives,” Boyce told the outlet of Marcelin’s latest arrest. “I don’t care how old he is, if it was compassionate release because of his age. He’s still dangerous.”
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