DISMEMBER SUSPECT VOWED TO BEHAVE
After prior slay, told parole panel she’d be model citizen; now held as B’klyn butcher
Three years before she was accused of murdering and dismembering a friend in Brooklyn, serial killer Harvey Marcelin sat before a New York state parole board and promised to never be in handcuffs again.
“I give you my word, I will never re-offend,” Marcelin, an 83-year-old transgender woman, told the board at a June 25, 2019, hearing at which she discussed a criminal record that dated to the 1950s and included convictions for two homicides.
“Parole means giving your word, and I give you my word that I will be an exemplary parolee,” Marcelin told the hearing, according to a transcript obtained by the Daily News through a freedom of information law request.
But her words didn’t stick.
Marcelin faces homicide charges once again, this time for killing Susan Leyden, whose headless and limbless torso was discovered on a Brooklyn street on March 3.
Security footage showed Leyden, 68, entering Marcelin’s home on Pennsylvania Ave. in East New York on Feb. 27 with a multicolored bag. She was never seen leaving.
Five days later, Marcelin left her apartment building rolling the same multicolored bag out. She dumped the bag near the corner of Pennsylvania Ave. and Atlantic Ave. in East New York, just a short distance from her home.
The bag contained Leyden’s dismembered torso. Marcelin also shopped at a 99 cent store with
Leyden’s leg tucked away in an electric wheelchair, cops say.
When cops went to Marcelin’s apartment they discovered the victim’s head in a plastic bag.
Marcelin is currently on Rikers Island, held without bail in Leyden’s killing.
The dumping of Leyden’s body was hauntingly similar to how Marcelin got rid of his second homicide victim, the transcript reveals.
In 1985, Marcelin stabbed to death Anna Laura Serrera Miranda. The morning after Miranda was stabbed, Marcelin was “observed bringing down from the apartment a shopping cart containing a garbage bag which had ripped and had dripping blood,” the 2019 parole transcript notes.
The garbage bag containing Miranda’s corpse was found near Central Park later that day, police said.
During the 2019 parole hearing, Marcelin blamed Miranda for instigating the fight that led to her death.
“She was a prostitute ... and she didn’t come up with the rent,” Marcelin told the parole commissioners. “She kept stealing from the apartment.
“One night we had a very serious argument and she came at me with a knife. I grabbed her wrist, took the knife and went berserk.”
“I went out of my mind. I was berserk. I stabbed her six times,” Marcelin said.
“Well, it was spontaneous, I was on cocaine, and I’m very sorry that it happened, but I just lost it for a minute.”
According to the transcripts, Marcelin lost it for longer than that. Court papers read at Marcelin’s hearing said she stabbed Miranda 33 times. Marcelin said Miranda stole his flute and his cufflinks.
Marcelin pleaded guilty to manslaughter for Miranda’s killing, and was sentenced to six to 12 years in prison.
After the guilty plea, Marcelin’s lifetime parole was revoked in her conviction for murdering another girlfriend in 1963 in Manhattan. In that case, Marcelin shot the woman three times, and the shooting was witnessed by several people, records show.
During one hearing, Marcelin shed some light on her killing spree, saying she overcompensated with violence for not feeling manly enough around women.
At a parole hearing in 1983, Marcelin said that she narrowly avoided the electric chair in the 1963 murder. “Since I have been in prison, I have learned a lot,” she told the parole board. “I’ve learned my lesson. I’ve learned a lot.”
Marcelin used similar words at the June 2019 hearing, at which she greeted the parole board members with the word, “Peace.”
At that hearing, Marcelin — 81 years old at the time — claimed she learned a lot from prison rehabilitation programs.
“I gained a lot of introspection through my programs that I’ve taken ... and I’ve looked into myself a lot, and I feel that I have positively transformed as an individual,” she said. “I have gained profound insight.”
Marcelin claimed she learned valuable computer skills in prison, and wanted to help the community if she was released.
“I feel I can really volunteer for some of the soup kitchens and help out in community services by cleaning up to parks and whatnot and instruct people not to go the route that I’ve gone,” she said.
Marcelin was released on parole again in August 2019.
She has a court hearing in May in Leyden’s killing, for which she faces charges of murder, concealment of a corpse and evidence tampering.