Heartbroken family of Long Island dismemberment victim speak out
CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. - The female victim in the heinous Babylon body parts case has been officially identified by police.
The male victim is still with the medical examiner, forensic evidence pending, but a family has come forward identifying themselves as his next of kin.
Tears flowed outside arraignment court in Central Islip as a family identified themselves as siblings of the 53-year-old male victim whose body was chopped and strewn in locations across Suffolk County.
"We just want justice for our brother, Malcolm Craig Brown," Coreen Bullock and Charles Williams said. They flew in from California and Pennsylvania, aghast at what they said they learned from police.
"Nobody deserves murder like this, and his cousin had something to do with it," Bullock said.
His cousin, they said, is Steven Brown, one of four co-defendants charged with tampering with evidence and concealing a human corpse and hindering prosecution in the case.
"We've lost a brother. Steven Brown is our cousin, and our parents and his mother - my aunt - are still at home, suffering. Hurting. He's got to tell his story so we can move on," Williams said.
Police identified the female victim as 59-year-old Donna Conneely of Yonkers.
All four suspects in the human remains case will keep their GPS ankle monitors, per a judge's order.
"It's absurd, bail reform, that four people can murder two people and just walk out like that," Bullock said.
"I will have further discussions with the DA's office, hopefully get some evidence. That would be nice to see exactly what they claim my client did, what part - if any - that he took," Brown's defense attorney Ira Weissman said.
"We were all raised together. We are a family. At least, I thought we were a family. We are just looking for answers," Bullock said.
The relationship between the cousins?
"I thought they were running buddies, that they were close," Williams said.
"This is such a heinous crime. Our mothers, our families, everybody is up in arms over this," Bullock said.
The Brown family is from Yonkers, and say they do not know what brought their brother and cousins to Long Island.
The suspects are due back in court next week.
Prosecutors have not explained the relationships among the defendants and the victims, or identified a potential motive.
There's been no word yet from the medical examiner about the official cause of death.
