Harvey the Serial Killer

By M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
​Perhaps older, but just as lethal, an 83-year-old convicted serial killer was indicted in 2022, for the murder of a woman whose dismembered body was found in a shopping cart at a Brooklyn street corner.

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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, 2022 at Jamaica Avenue near Vermont Street, a passerby saw a very unusual thing inside a discarded tire — it was a severed human leg. 

A few days before another gruesome discovery was made by another unfortunate passerby, who came to investigate what was inside a black plastic bag inside a shopping cart. It was a human torso, minus a head, arms and legs.

Harvey Marcelin who goes by the name of Marceline Harvey, a transsexual, was caught on surveillance video disposing of the 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, 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 Leyden who lived in Stonewall House, an LGBTQ homeless shelter on St. Edwards Street in Fort Greene, New Jersey. She was estranged from her loved ones due to an untreated mental illness, and she also suffered from drug addiction.

The 68-year-old lesbian had own sad  history. In the 1970s she lost her father, and her two twin brothers. In 1992, she became a single mother after her 16-year marriage ended in divorce. By the time she drifted into homelessness she had lost her mother and remaining sister. 

She met Harvey Marcelin in 2019.

On February 27, 2022 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.

Marcelin had a very troubling and dangerous history.

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. It was a troubled marriage since he cheated on her many times with other women. He was found not to be psychotic.

In March, 1963 Harvey Marcelin along with his latest girlfriend, Clementine Benifield were arrested on charges of attempted rape, 2nd-degree assault and burglary. Once arrested Marcelin implicated, Jacqueline Bonds, a former girlfriend who had ended their relationship. He 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. She was also set to testify for the prosecution against Marcelin for an incident that occurred on March 14, 1963.

During the ongoing investigation Marcelin was bailed out by his mother.

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.

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. This victim's name was Anna Laura Serrera Miranda.
 
Roberto Romano was "smoking reefer" in the lobby of the Cambridge Residence Hotel in Harlem where he lived; it was the day before Halloween, 1985. Then the tenant from apartment 602 came by pushing a shopping cart with a garbage bag inside. In the report Romano later gave police he said, "the bag ripped on the first step and blood came out."

Like the incident in 2022, a pedestrian on Manhattan's Upper West Side saw a plastic bag dumped at the entrance to Central Park at 106th Street. What caught his attention was the blood dripping from it. Inside was Sierra's bound legs; the rest of her was found scattered around Central Park. Later it was found she had been stabbed more than 30 times, and tied up with rope. She had a history of prostitution arrests and had a heroin habit. One of the places she frequented was apartment 602 at the Cambridge Residence Hotel, known as the address for Harvey Marcelin, who didn't hold down a stable job, and had aspirations of becoming a pimp.

Her murderer was sentenced to a prison term of 6 to 12 years following a manslaughter conviction in the first degree.

In 1993, while incarcerated at the Auburn Correctional Facility, Marcelin met with a transsexual inmate who advised her to start taking the hormone therapy medication Premarin, after which Marcelin completely dedicated himself to transitioning. 

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

​He was released in 2019.

According to Dr. Katherine Ramsland, professor of forensic psychology and criminal justice at DeSales University: "Anger doesn’t dissolve at 84, it wouldn’t surprise me that a person who killed earlier — even 50, 60 years earlier — out of anger, would feel the same compulsion."

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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)

On March 30, 2022, 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 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.

Leyden was one of three persons who would occasionally sleep over at Marcelin's East New York apartment. Marcelin told police one of the other two were responsible for the murder due to jealousy.

During his previous prison terms, Marcelin acted as his own lawyer in a number of lawsuits. He complained the all-female parole board were "sexist" when they denied his release in 1997.

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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 indicate 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." He had also attempted to rape an 8-year-old girl.

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

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Monica Archer

Monica Archer was a case worker at George Daly House in Alphabet City where Harvey Marcelin lived. She started in September, 2019, and everything was fine until she spoke out about how Harvey, "often acted in an erratic and dangerous manner." Despite warnings, Harvey Marcelin was allowed to have his own apartment, and within a week he murdered Susan Leyden.

For her troubles Archer was fired, and in December, 2022, she filed a complaint with the Manhattan Supreme Court. She described where Marcelin "made constant threats to kill" her and other staff members, and kept a gun at the shelter despite being on parole for life. She started to take alternate routes home after work, when Marcelin tried to follow her home a few times. Her supervisors were made aware of the situation, and allowed the felon to keep living there.

Archer continued to raise the alarm and filed a complaint against the facility with the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the suit says.

Her supervisors retaliated by putting her on janitorial duty, and refusing to let her work remotely.

According to the suit, she was suspended without pay on May 24 and one week later, was fired for insubordination, “although they had no documentation, written or otherwise.”

The facility's parent company the New York Foundation for Senior Citizens received at least $95 million in city funding since 2009 for support services, transportation costs, and at least $5 million from the state since 2008.

After the crime Harvey Marcelin, was charged with Leyden's murder, and has pled not guilty. He now claims that he's transitioned to a lesbian named Marceline Harvey, who is a personality that controls Harvey Marcelin.

Marcelin is slated to got trial for the 2022 murder in the spring of 2024.

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