He Was Paroled After Two Murder Convictions. Then Susan Leyden Disappeared.

Harvey Marcelin killed his first girlfriend in 1963 and was sentenced to life in prison. He was released in 1984. The following year, he killed another woman and was convicted again. He was released in 2019, at the age of 81. Three years later, Susan Leyden was dead.

On April 20, 2026, Marcelin - now 87 and brought into Brooklyn Supreme Court in a wheelchair - went on trial for the third time. He is charged with first and second-degree murder, concealment of a human corpse, and tampering with physical evidence in the death of Leyden, 68, whose dismembered remains were found scattered across East New York in March 2022. He has pleaded not guilty and asked to be referred to in court as Mr. Harvey.

The Woman Who Let Him In

Susan Leyden had known Marcelin for roughly two years before her death. She had grown up in Teaneck, New Jersey, and had once built a career as an entrepreneur in New Jersey, but by the time she met Marcelin in late 2019, she was living in an LGBTQ senior shelter in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, struggling with mental illness and addiction. She was, as prosecutors would later describe her, someone who had fallen on hard times and was looking for companionship.

According to prosecutors, Marcelin became obsessed with Leyden. He followed her on social media, used her photos as his own profile pictures on multiple Facebook accounts, and developed what the Brooklyn DA’s office called an infatuation that Leyden did not reciprocate.

On February 27, 2022, Leyden was captured on surveillance footage walking into Marcelin’s apartment building near Pennsylvania Avenue in East New York. She was never seen leaving.

What Police Found

On March 3, 2022, a passerby found a torso - headless and missing its limbs - inside a grey and black rolling bag at the corner of Pennsylvania and Atlantic Avenues, steps from Marcelin’s building. Surveillance footage reviewed by investigators showed Marcelin wheeling the same bag from his building to that corner the day before.

Police executed a search warrant on the apartment and found Susan Leyden’s severed head. They also found an electric saw and cleaning supplies. A leg was later found in a trash bag blocks away. In one piece of footage that drew national attention, Marcelin was recorded at a store riding a motorized scooter - with what investigators say was Leyden’s leg positioned beneath him.

Marcelin was arrested and charged with murder. At the time, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez called the case “gruesome and unsettling” and said his office was committed to seeking justice for Leyden and her family.

A System That Let Him Out Twice

Marcelin’s first conviction came in 1963 for shooting and killing Jacqueline Bonds, a girlfriend, inside a Manhattan apartment. He was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole and released in 1984 after sentencing laws changed during his incarceration.

Within a year, he stabbed another girlfriend to death and left her body in a trash bag in the street. He was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to six to twelve years, but parole boards resisted releasing him for decades - at one hearing in 1997, Marcelin admitted to having problems with women. He was finally paroled in 2019, after spending more than 55 total years behind bars across two separate convictions.

At trial Monday, Assistant District Attorney Viviane Dussek told jurors the evidence would demonstrate what the surveillance footage, the DNA, and the blood-covered apartment already suggested. “Looks can be deceiving,” she told them. “It can be hard to fathom that at age 83, this defendant killed Susan Leyden. He decapitated her and cut her limb from limb.”

The Defense’s Argument

Marcelin’s attorneys with Brooklyn Defender Services are pointing to a third person - a woman named Lisa Lindahl, who they say was also present in the apartment between Leyden’s last sighting and the discovery of the body. Defense attorney Alison Stocking told jurors that DNA from an unidentified person was found on a hammer and under Leyden’s fingernails, and that the NYPD never tested that DNA against Lindahl’s profile.

The defense argues Marcelin cannot be convicted because the evidence does not exclude another possible perpetrator.

Susan Leyden

Susan Leyden was 68 years old. Her neighbors in Brooklyn described her as quiet and stylish. She had once built a life for herself as an entrepreneur. By the time she disappeared, she had lost much of that - but she had found a community, and she had people who cared whether she came home.

She did not. And the man prosecutors say is responsible for that is now in a Brooklyn courtroom for the third time in his life, charged with killing a woman who trusted him.

References: Trial for 87-year-old East New York serial killer begins with gruesome testimony | 83-year-old ex-convict charged after woman’s head found in New York City apartment