They don’t call him “Mad Max” for nothing.
The unhinged 24-year-old who pleaded guilty to a bloody killing spree threatened to kill his victims’ loved ones and cursed out the judge who sentenced him to life in prison during a brief court appearance this afternoon.
Standing in an orange prison jumpsuit with a sick smirk on his face, Maksim Gelman lashed out against Gerard Honig, the boyfriend of Yelena Bulchenko. Gelman killed both Bulchenko and Bulchenko’s mother during his Feb. 11 killing spree.
“You fell in love with a heroin addict,” Gelman screamed at Honig. “Say my name in vain and I’ll have you murdered, you faggot.”
Gelman was removed from the court after his outburst, but he wasn’t done when he was brought back.
In a rambling statement, he told the court that the DEA had a navigation device on his car and that it was the NYPD’s fault for not stopping his rampage sooner.
He then screamed racist and sexual epithets at Judge Vincent Del Giudice as court officers took him back to his prison cell.
Del Giudice sentenced Gelman to more than 200 years in prison, calling the convicted murderer a “pathologically violent predator” and a “sociopath.”
Aside from Gelman’s theatrics, the sentencing itself was largely unsurprising, given the severity of Gelman’s crimes — and his decision to own up to the heinous acts. Gelman was accused of killing four people and wounding several others during his 28-hour rampage across the borough that ultimately ended in Manhattan.
His lawyer, Edward Friedman, said Gelman pleaded guilty because he was anxious to begin his sentence — but argued that his client had a diseased mind even if he wasn’t clinically insane.
“There was, at one time, a different Max Gelman,” Friedman said.
A Manhattan judge promised to tack 25 years onto Gelman’s sentence for the crimes he committed there, but the families of those Gelman killed said no sentence could justify what he had done.
“Whatever maximum sentence you give it won’t be enough,” Andre Lev, Bulchenko’s brother, explained. “My child is never going to see his grandmother or aunt.”
And Gelman may be responsible for even more murders.
Days before his sentencing, Gelman confessed to killing six other people during a twisted jailhouse interview with our sister publication, the New York Post — including two men he claimed to have run over in Sheepshead Bay when he was 18. Gelman also expressed his desire to murder accused child-killer Levi Aron in prison before Aron was transferred to another facility.
The police are looking into the new confessions, but they may not hold water: police sources say there are no unsolved two-person hit-and-runs in Sheepshead Bay in 2004 or 2005 — when Gelman claimed the killings took place.
Reach reporter Eli Rosenberg at erosenberg@cnglocal.com or by calling (718) 260-2531. And follow him at twitter.com/emrosenberg.
