New information released on suspected serial killer Marceline Harvey after arrest in Brooklyn woman's murder
NEW YORK -- There's new information on a convicted serial killer charged with murder this week after police found a woman's body dismembered and discarded in Brooklyn.
Details around 68-year-old Susan Leyden's death are gruesome and disturbing.
The investigation began last week when police allegedly found the Brooklyn woman's torso bagged in a shopping cart on Atlantic and Pennsylvania avenues in East New York.
"Evidence includes extensive video canvassing, interviews of witnesses, search warrants executed to gather items recovered," Chief of Detectives James Essig said.
Investigators say surveillance videos led them to Harvey Marcelin, also known as Marceline Harvey, an 83-year-old trans woman and twice convicted killer, who lives around the corner from where the torso was found.
Police believe Harvey befriended Leyden two years ago via social media.
Leyden was last seen alive walking into Harvey's apartment on Feb. 27.
"On March 1, our perpetrator, Ms. Harvey, and another unknown female at the Home Depot in Manhattan, they purchased a Sawzall, trash bags and cleaning solutions," Essig said.
Police say this surveillance video from last week shows Harvey in a 99 cent store, where they believe she was sitting on a human leg wrapped in plastic.
When cops then executed a search warrant in Harvey's apartment, they found more body parts inside. She's now charged with second-degree murder.
"This is just the latest of a list of heinous offenses conducted over period of a lifetime by Ms. Harvey, and we can only hope she can do no more," Essig said.
Marceline Harvey has already spent more than 50 years in prison.
She was first arrested in 1957 for felony assault and in 1963 for rape. That same year she was arrested again for shooting a woman to death in Harlem and sentenced to 20 years to life.
Harvey was released in 1984 on lifetime parole and arrested a year later for stabbing a woman to death in Central Park.
She was just released from prison in 2019.
The NYPD is now looking back at any unsolved missing person cases in this area dating from 2019 to now to see if Marceline Harvey could have any connection.