Harvey Marcelin: Brooklyn Man, 88, Sentenced to Life Without Parole for Murdering Third Woman After Prior Releases
On June 10, 2026, Harvey Marcelin, of East New York, was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for the 2022 slaying of 68-year-old Susan Leyden.
The sentence arrived after a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder last month. With this new sentence, Marcelin will not have another chance at freedom as he had been released twice in the past for the murders of two other women.
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| Susan Leyden |
The recent case against Marcelin began in early March 2022 when a person riding an e-bike in Brooklyn came across a gray and black rolling bag.
Inside was a woman’s torso, with no head or limbs, so the rider immediately called the police, leading to an investigation.
Police soon traced the remains back to Marcelin’s apartment on Pennsylvania Avenue, and when detectives searched his apartment, they discovered black plastic garbage bags containing Leyden’s thighs, hand, arm, and head.
According to police reports, Marcelin also stashed part of her left leg in his electric wheelchair and then went shopping before getting rid of that limb. Some of Leyden’s body parts — her right leg, left arm, and left hand — were never found.
During the investigation, detectives learned that Leyden had walked into Marcelin’s apartment on February 27, 2022, and simply never came out.
Further investigations uncovered that Marcelin had become obsessed with her, even creating multiple Facebook accounts that used her photo as the profile picture.
At the time, Leyden was a woman who had fallen on hard times, losing her jewelry business, becoming estranged from her daughter, and spending time in a homeless shelter.
But she had been working to turn her life around, according to prosecutors, before she crossed paths with Marcelin, as per NY Daily News.
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| Harvey Marcelin’s mugshot from the 90's |
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| Marcelin’s arrest for a prior crime |
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| Harvey Marcelin at his 2026 sentencing |
During the trial, a key witness named Lisa Lindhal testified that she visited Marcelin’s squalid apartment to use drugs and saw Leyden’s dead body.
Marcelin, who has identified as both male and female over the years and asked to be called “Mr. Harvey” in court, claimed he was framed when he took the stand in his own defense.
Speaking from his wheelchair and wearing a brown knit cap, he told the court that Lindhal was the real killer and accused the prosecution of manipulating her.
“I sincerely wish I could reassemble the embodiment of my Susan Carol Leyden, whom I was crazy over,” Marcelin said, “and whom I witnessed murdered by an evil crackhead, that the prosecutor Rosini unlawfully manipulated, and framed me and railroaded me through a kangaroo court using terrorist tactics against the jury.”
Jurors rejected Marcelin’s account and found him guilty, and at his sentencing, Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun made it clear that Marcelin’s age would not shield him from a final, permanent sentence.
“The cold fact is that every time you were released, you killed someone else, which leads this court to believe that, regardless of your age, if you are ever paroled again, I have no doubt that you would kill again,” Justice Chun said.
Marcelin had a documented history of violence against women. In 1963, he shot his girlfriend Jacqueline Bonds in a Harlem apartment hallway and then chased her into a bedroom and shot her again. A jury could not agree on the death penalty at the time, so Marcelin was sentenced to life without parole.
But a change in state law later allowed his release, and he walked out of prison on lifetime parole in 1984. Just one year later, he stabbed another girlfriend, Anna Laura Serrera Miranda, to death and left her remains near Central Park in October 1985.
When a judge asked him about the stabbing during that case, Marcelin responded, “It was just — I was doing it, you know.” He pleaded guilty to manslaughter for that killing.
He was freed again, and at a June 2019 parole hearing he gave his word that he would never re-offend. Less than three years later, Susan Leyden was dead.
At sentencing, Assistant District Attorney Rosini told the court that Marcelin remains a threat to anyone around him. “Every single time the defendant has been released from prison, he has shortly thereafter killed a woman,” she said. “There is no hope for rehabilitation…. I believe that the defendant is still a danger to society, that his impulses, his urges, his rage, whatever makes him harm these women, has not gone away.”
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez noted the deep cruelty of Leyden’s killing. “The brutality of this shocking crime is almost beyond words,” Gonzalez said. “This defendant committed a horrific murder that took Susan Leyden’s life and inflicted unimaginable pain on her family and loved ones.”
With Wednesday’s sentence, Harvey Marcelin’s decades-long trail of violence reached its legal end, ensuring that the 88-year-old will remain behind bars for the rest of his life.
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