An 87-year-old parolee from Brooklyn has been convicted in the killing and dismemberment of a woman whose body parts were discovered in plastic bags near her East New York apartment, prosecutors said last week.
After roughly an hour of deliberations, a Brooklyn Supreme Court jury found defendant Harvey Marcelin guilty of first-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence and concealment of a human corpse.
Prosecutors said the victim, 68-year-old Susan Leyden, was last seen alive entering Marcelin’s apartment on Pennsylvania Avenue in East New York on Feb. 27, 2022. Surveillance video presented at trial showed Leyden entering the apartment building, but she was never seen leaving.
Additional surveillance footage captured Marcelin several days later rolling a wheeled shopping cart carrying a black plastic bag, according to evidence presented in court. In the early morning hours of March 3, 2022, police discovered Leyden’s torso inside the bag on a Brooklyn street.
Authorities later searched Marcelin’s apartment, where investigators recovered additional body parts, including the victim’s head and limbs. Detectives also found blood, cleaning supplies, a hammer and packaging from an electric saw, prosecutors said.
On March 7, 2022, investigators recovered one of Leyden’s legs near a garbage can about three blocks from the apartment. Surveillance footage also showed Marcelin purchasing a saw and cleaning supplies at a Manhattan Home Depot around the time Leyden disappeared, according to prosecutors.
The city Medical Examiner determined Leyden died from blunt force trauma to the head and other injuries.
Investigators said Marcelin and Leyden, from Clinton Hill, previously lived in the same Bronx shelter in 2019, though prosecutors said the nature of their relationship remains unclear.
Prosecutors said the first-degree murder charge was based in part on Marcelin’s prior conviction for first-degree murder in Manhattan in 1963.
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said the conviction ensures Marcelin “will never walk free again” after what he described as a “cruel and reprehensible” killing.
“This conviction holds the defendant accountable for the cruel and reprehensible murder of Susan Leyden. Following the senseless murder, the defendant desecrated the victim’s remains in a manner that truly shocks the conscience,” Gonzalez said in a statement. “I hope Ms. Leyden’s family finds a measure of solace in this guilty verdict, which ensures this defendant will never walk free again.”
Marcelin has a long criminal history, including a 1963 murder conviction for shooting her then-girlfriend and a later 1986 conviction for first-degree manslaughter in a separate killing in which a woman’s body was dumped in Central Park; she was released on lifetime parole in 2019 before the present case.
After her 2022 arrest, Marcelin maintained her innocence, telling press outside the precinct, “I need a lawyer. I did nothing wrong!”
Former NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig previously called the case “a gruesome and barbaric homicide” and said it “takes a serial killer off our street,” describing it as part of what he characterized as a lifetime of repeated violent offenses.
Marcelin is scheduled to be sentenced on June 10 and could receive life in prison without the possibility of parole.
