Before bludgeoning his latest victim’s head and sawing apart her body, octogenarian serial killer Harvey Marcelin became so fixated on the victim that he created multiple Facebook accounts, all with the woman’s photo as his profile photo, prosecutors allege.
Sitting in a wheelchair, dressed in a black jacket, pants and a white shirt, Marcelin, 87, sat at the defense table in Brooklyn Supreme Court Monday, on trial for the gruesome murder of Susan Leyden, whose headless and limbless torso was discovered on a Brooklyn street in 2022.
“On Feb.27, 2022, Susan Leyden went over to the defendant’s apartment at 50 Pennsylvania Ave., carrying her grey and black rolling bag with her, there to see her friend,” Assistant D.A. Viviane Dussek told jurors in her opening argument Monday.
“Susan Leyden walked into that building not knowing she would never walk out again.”
Marcelin wound up using that very bag to dispose of Leyden’s torso, Dussek said.
After buying a reciprocal saw from a Manhattan Home Depot, he started, “cutting through skin, cutting through flesh, through tissue, through bones. So many bones. So many cuts,” Dussek said. “He packages Susan’s body up in plastic bags.”
Leyden, 68, was down on her luck — she lost her jewelry business, became estranged from her daughter and at some point ended up in a homeless shelter, Dussek said, but added that before the killing, “She started getting back on her feet, started getting back on track.”
Marcelin, who has identified as both male and female over the years, has already served time for fatally shooting one girlfriend in early 1963, then stabbing another to death on Oct. 30, 1985.
Before the trial began, Marcelin insisted he be referred to as Harvey, then clarified, “Well, Mr. Harvey, if you don’t mind.”
The jury won’t hear about the 1963 case, how Marcelin, was found guilty of shooting girlfriend Jacquieline Bonds in the hallway of an Harlem apartment, then chased her into a bedroom and shot her again. Judge Danny Chun ruled last week that the killing happened so long ago that it would serve only to prejudice the jury against Marcelin.
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Prosecutors will be allowed to bring up the 1985 killing only if Marcelin takes the stand in his own defense, Chun said. Marcelin, who pleaded guilty to manslaughter, stabbed Anna Laura Serrera Miranda to death in their apartment, a year after being released on lifetime parole in the 1963 case, then brought down the body in a bloody garbage bag shoved into a shopping cart.
At a June 25, 2019 parole hearing, Marcelin vowed, “I give you my word, I will never re-offend.”
A gruesome discovery in the wee hours of March 3, 2022, proved that vow to be a lie, as prosecutors tell it.
At about 12:30 a.m., e-bike rider Ramon Lopez spotted a grey and black rolling bag near the corner of Pennsylvania Ave. and Atlantic Ave. in East New York, not far from Marcelin’s home.
Lopez stopped to have a look, and what he saw made him jump back, he testified. It looked like a torso.
“I saw kind of like the shoulder and one of the breasts and the neck. Chopped off, no head,” he told jurors. “I jumped back, scared, shocked, and called 911. When they got there, they were also surprised.”
Assignment – DISMEMBER
The jury saw photos and video of the scene, including one gory top-down photo. One juror took a deep breath, rubbed her chest and took a swig of water after seeing the picture.
Police reviewed video from the scene and determined Marcelin left the bag, and when they checked his apartment, he answered the door, wearing the same tan pants and brown boots from the video, Dussek told jurors.
He had a Home Depot receipt in his pocket, and more video showed he was wearing the same outfit when he bought the saw and saw blades, the prosecutor said.
Cops searched the apartment, and found black plastic garbage bags tied up, with Leyden’s thighs, hand, arm and head inside, Dussek said. Marcelin also stuffed part of the victim’s left leg into his electric wheelchair and went shopping before disposing of the limb, prosecutors allege.
The victim’s right leg, left arm and left hand were never recovered, Dussek said.
Prosecutor allege that another woman, Lisa Lindahl, who was homeless and had a heroin and crack habit, visited Marcelin to do drugs in the apartment, and walked in on a crime scene. Lindahl is expected to testify for the prosecution.
“She’ll tell you that the apartment was dark when she arrived. It smelled of urine. It was disgusting,” Dussek said. “That’s when lisa made the next horrifying discovery. On the floor was.a body, a dead body, Susan Leyden’s body, with her head covered up. She was scared. She was scared, she was high. She didn’t know what to do.”
Marcelin’s lawyer, Alison Stocking, suggested Lindahl could be responsible for the killing, challenging the prosecution’s notion that the killing clearly happened before she arrived.
They want you to narrow your consideration of the timing of Susan Leyden’s death in a way that works better for their theory of prosecution” Stocking said, adding that Lindahl’s DNA was never tested against DNA found on a hammer, or found under Leyden’s fingernails.
Stiocking said Lindahl told police and a grand jury “the lies that were enough to get her out” of trouble after the murder.
“Of course she lied, she was desperate, and now instead of being charged with murder, Lisa Lindahl is the prosecution’s star witness against Mr. Harvey,” the defense lawyer said.
“Your task here is not to decide who is more likely the perpetrator, Mr. Harvey or Lisa Lindahl,” Stocking said. “If there’s reasonable doubt about who killed Susan Leyden, then you must find Mr. Harvey not guilty.”