OCTOGENARIAN Serial killer, Indicted in a case of a dismembered body found in Brooklyn

A man found a woman's body, missing a head, arms and legs inside a black plastic bag

By M.P. Pellicer (Eerie.News)
​Perhaps older, but just as lethal, an 83-year-old convicted serial killer has been indicted in the murder of a victim, whose dismembered body was found in a shopping cart in Brooklyn last week.

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Harvey Marcelin has been arrested in the murder of a woman. The victim's head was found in Marcelin's apartment

On March 7, at Jamaica Avenue near Vermont Street, a passerby saw a very unusual thing inside a discarded tire; it was a severed human leg. It would have been more shocking to police if it wasn't for the fact that four days before a dismembered torso was found inside a shopping cart. 

According to the NYPost, this discovery was made by another unfortunate passerby who came to investigate what was inside a black plastic bag inside the cart, and found a human torso, minus a head, arms and legs.

Harvey Marcelin, a transsexual, was caught on surveillance video disposing of human remains. A search warrant was issued and upon further investigation, the victim's head was found in his apartment along with electric saws he bought at a nearby Home Depot.

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Sources identified the victim as Susan Leyden, 68, formerly of Teaneck, New Jersey, and an acquaintance of Marcelin. She was last seen entering Marcelin’s apartment

Susan Leyden, 68, formerly of Teaneck, New Jersey is the victim whose body parts were found discarded in black bags on the streets of Brooklyn. On March 2, a missing person's report was issued for Susan. Leyden lived in Stonewall House, an LGBTQ senior center on St. Edwards Street in Fort Greene.

On February 27, a surveillance camera filmed Leyden entering Marcelin's apartment, located in a newly opened affordable housing development. Susan was carrying a "multi-colored bag with a flower decal". Leyden was never seen alive again.​

Three days later Marcelin was filmed leaving the building with the same bag. He rolled it to the corner of Pennsylvania and Atlantic Avenues, and threw it in the trash.

Leyden's torso was found stuffed into a bag resembling the multi-colored one brought to Marcelin's apartment.

In 1962, Marcelin had voluntarily admitted himself to Bellevue and was discharged into the custody of his wife, Florence Jackson, who he had married in 1961. He was found not to be psychotic.

On April 18, 1963, Jacqueline Denise Bonds, 21, was murdered by Marcelin inside a Harlem apartment on Eighth Street. Several eyewitnesses testified that Marcelin shot Bonds in the public hallway of the apartment. After shooting her once, Marcelin followed her into a bedroom, and shot her once more with a .32 caliber revolver. She ran to the living room, but there was no escape from her murderer, and she died there with three bullets in her body.

Prior to this Marcelin had already exhibited his violent temper towards women. On April 5, 1963, a grand jury in Brooklyn indicted him  on charges of attempted first degree rape, second degree assault and second degree burglary committed against Clementine Benifield. These crimes were committed on March 14, 1963.

Marcelin claimed he had been with Jacqueline Bonds at the time of the alleged crimes. She was subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury to provide an alibi for him on the day of her murder. She didn't appear, nor testified before the grand jury which could have been a motive to kill her.

During the trial Marcelin was examined by three Bellevue psychiatrist and they concluded that he was "without psychosis, although he was possessed of 'schizoid personality with sociopathic features'", but he was competent to stand trial.

Marcelin was paroled in 1984.

This decision to set Marcelin free on society proved to be deadly for another woman, who was killed by Marcelin less than a year after his release. Anna Laura Serrera Miranda was repeatedly stabbed to death. Her murderer was sentenced to a prison term of 6 to 12 years following a manslaughter conviction in the first degree.

​In a similar MO to this crime, he stuffed the victim's body in a bag, and dumped it on the sidewalk by Central Park.

At a State Parole Board in 1997, Marcelin said that he had "problems" with women.

​He was released in 2019.

Harvey Marcelin was already in jail when the grand jury indicted him for murder. He is currently in custody and being held without bail at Riker’s Island.

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Police say Marcelin was seen in a 99-cent store with this motorized scooter — with his victim's leg tucked under the seat (Source - DCPI)

UPDATE
On March 30, Marcelin was charged with "first- and second-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence and concealment of a human corpse in the death of Leyden." The victim reportedly struggled with addiction and mental illness in recent years. The two met in Tompkins Square Park in the East Village, Marcelin referred to Leyden as one of his "coven" of women.

Marcelin said he has two sides, Harvey and Marceline. He said women friends provoked him into violence. "I tell them, there's a side of me you don't want to see... but they don't listen."

Leyden's head and limbs, along with blood, cleaning supplies, a hammer and box for an electrical saw were found in Marcelin's apartment, according to the prosecutors.
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ACCORDING TO THE NY POST:
​Leyden was one of three women who occasionally crashed at Marceline’s East New York apartment. One of the trio, called Jillian, is reportedly cooperating with the police; the other one, according to Marceline, is the murderer.

“She was jealous of Susan,” Marcelin said.

She added that while it’s too bad that Leyden is dead, she resents how the deceased is being presented in the press.

“She wasn’t no Mother Teresa,” Marcelin said. “They make her look like a saint, like a sweet little darling.”

​During her two previous prison stints she often acted as her own lawyer in a number of lawsuits — asking for new trials, complaining that one all-female parole board was “sexist” in denying her release in 1997, and trying to get in on a class-action suit because she was at Attica state prison during the 1971 riots.

Harvey Marcelin c.2022

Harvey Marcelin was born in 1938. His father died when he was 10, and his mother worked as a seamstress. They were born in Harlem but later moved to Washington Heights.

Court records indicated that Marcelin was referred for a psychiatric examination in 1952 when he was 14 by Catholic Charities due to incidents of "truancy, theft, heterosexual and homosexual activity and cross-dressing."

In 1957, Marcelin started committing burglaries as documented in court records.

His next court date is April 19.

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