An 87-year-old, transgendered New York Metropolis serial killer is making an attempt to remain out of jail for a 3rd time, as his trial for viciously butchering a lady after which driving round together with her severed arm in his mobility scooter started this week in Brooklyn.
Harvey Marcelin stands accused of gruesomely slaying 68-year-old Susan Leyden and chopping up her physique into items, which he stuffed in a bag and dumped on an East New York road earlier than taking his disturbing scooter journey in March 2022.
Marcelin sat in a wheelchair, wearing a black jacket, pants, and a white shirt, as a jury was advised how he allegedly grew to become so obsessed together with his sufferer that he created a number of Fb accounts utilizing her picture as his profile image, the NY Day by day Information reported.
“On Feb.27, 2022, Susan Leyden went over to the defendant’s condominium at 50 Pennsylvania Ave., carrying her gray and black rolling bag together with her, there to see her good friend,” Assistant D.A. Viviane Dussek advised the jury throughout her opening argument Monday.
“Susan Leyden walked into that constructing not figuring out she would by no means stroll out once more,” she added.
Marcelin, who requested to be known as “Mr. Harvey” in courtroom regardless that he has beforehand recognized as transgender, allegedly bludgeoned Leyden to dying and used a reciprocal noticed to dismember her physique at his Cypress Hills condominium, in line with prosecutors.
“Chopping by means of pores and skin, chopping by means of flesh, by means of tissue, by means of bones. So many bones. So many cuts. He packages Susan’s physique up in plastic luggage,” Dussek stated.
Leyden had been down on her luck on the time after dropping her jewellery enterprise, turning into estranged from her daughter, and ending up in a homeless shelter, however had “began getting again on observe” simply earlier than the homicide, Dussek stated.
Prosecutors allege Marcelin disposed of Leyden’s torso in the identical rolling bag she introduced over, earlier than heading to a 99-cent retailer with a part of her left leg stuffed into his electrical wheelchair.
After e-bike rider Ramon Lopez found Leyden’s torso close to the nook of Pennsylvania Ave. and Atlantic Ave. and alerted the police, the NYPD reviewed video of the scene and decided that Marcelin had left the bag.
Inside his condominium, they discovered Leyden’s thighs, hand, arm and head, stuffed into black plastic rubbish luggage.
The sufferer’s proper leg, left arm and left hand had been by no means recovered, Dussek stated.
Marcelin served time for fatally capturing his girlfriend, Jacquieline Bonds, within the hallway of a Harlem condominium constructing.
On Oct. 30, 1985, he stabbed one other girlfriend, Anna Laura Serrera Miranda, to dying of their condominium, a 12 months after being launched on lifetime parole for Bonds’s homicide.
He introduced her physique down in a bloody rubbish bag earlier than shoving it right into a buying cart.
In 2019, Marcelin was launched on parole after vowing to maintain his nostril clear.
“I provide you with my phrase, I’ll by no means reoffend,” he advised the parole listening to on June 25, 2019, lower than three years earlier than he would kill once more.
Nevertheless, prosecutors will solely be allowed to carry up Miranda’s homicide if Marcelin takes the stand in his personal protection, after a ruling from Decide Danny Chun final week.
The jury will be unable to listen to any particulars from the Bonds homicide, after Decide Chun dominated that it had occurred so way back that it will solely serve to prejudice the jury in opposition to Marcelin.
Marcelin has maintained his innocence all through the case.
His lawyer has prompt that one other girl, homeless drug addict Lisa Lindahl, could possibly be chargeable for the killing.
Lindahl, who had visited Marcelin on the day of the homicide to do medicine with him, reportedly strolling in on the horrific crime scene.
“She lied, she was determined, and now as a substitute of being charged with homicide, Lisa Lindahl is the prosecution’s star witness in opposition to Mr. Harvey,” protection lawyer Alison Stocking advised the jury.
