Serial killer Harvey Marcelin has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the 2022 murder and dismemberment of Brooklyn woman Susan Leyden, more than two years after he was released from prison on parole.
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez announced Wednesday that the 87-year-old was given the maximum sentence allowed by law following his conviction last month on charges of first-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence, and concealment of a human corpse in Brooklyn Supreme Court.
Prosecutors said the sentence ensures Marcelin, who has spent most of his life in custody for killing women, will never be released again, according to People.
Leyden, 68, was last seen alive on Feb. 27, 2022, when surveillance video captured her entering Marcelin's Pennsylvania Avenue apartment in East New York, Brooklyn. Days later, another camera recorded Marcelin pushing a shopping cart containing a trash bag that investigators later discovered held Leyden's torso.
On Mar. 3, 2022, a passerby found the torso stuffed in a bag near the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue, prompting an NYPD investigation that led back to Marcelin's building.
Police and prosecutors said additional body parts were later recovered in nearby locations and inside Marcelin's apartment, where investigators also found blood, cleaning supplies, a hammer, and packaging for an electric saw.
The Brooklyn jury reached its guilty verdict in about an hour of deliberations after a roughly two-week trial that included graphic forensic evidence and surveillance footage, the New York Times reported.
Leyden's killing marked the third time in more than six decades that Marcelin was convicted of murdering a woman, according to court records and prosecutors.
Marcelin's case has drawn scrutiny because he was twice paroled after earlier homicide convictions.
He was first sentenced to 20 years to life for the 1963 shooting death of girlfriend, Jacqueline Bonds, in Harlem, then released on parole in 1984 before being convicted of manslaughter in the 1985 stabbing death of another woman and sent back to prison.
State records show Marcelin was again released on lifetime parole in 2019, a decision that preceded Leyden's murder by about three years, as per CBS News.
