A prolific transgender serial killer with prior convictions for the murders of two women has been convicted for the third time in the grisly slaying and dismemberment of a third female victim. Harvey Marcelin, 87, who previously claimed to identify as a “lesbian” called Marceline Harvey, was convicted in a New York court last week of the murder of 68-year-old Susan Leyden.
In March 2022, Leyden’s headless torso was found in a shopping cart blocks away from Marcelin’s Brooklyn apartment, prompting police to search Marcelin’s residence. There investigators discovered Leyden’s head, as well as a number of saws and bloody sheets. One of Leyden’s legs was found near a garbage can a few blocks away.
On March 11, the NYPD held a press conference with updates on the gruesome crime in which they released surveillance footage from a retail store featuring Marcelin. In it, Marcelin is seen utilizing a motorized wheelchair with what appears to be a severed human leg on the seat, visible when Marcelin stands from the chair to look at products.
During the conference, Kings County District Attorney Eric Gonzalez introduced Marcelin as a “female” and stated he was “born a male, but prefers the pronoun ‘miss.’” Gonzalez uses feminine pronouns to refer to Marcelin throughout, and often refers to him as a “female person of interest.”
Leyden’s body was found in pieces scattered across the neighborhood, with parts being found on two separate days. Her leg was found on March 7, poking out of a discarded tire, and her headless torso was found in a shopping cart blocks away on March 9, along with a number of electric saws.
During court proceedings, one witness testified to having come across the shopping cart while on his way home to Brooklyn from a night out. After deciding to take it with him, he peered into a plastic shopping bag that had been placed inside the cart. Ramon Lopez told jurors that within the bag, he “found a body.” Lopez said he called the police immediately.
Prosecutors told the court that inside the bag were some of Leyden’s remains. Surveillance footage showed Marcelin pushing the shopping cart the day before it was discovered.
The jury swiftly convicted Marcelin after just one hour of deliberations, reports The New York Times. While the outlet had previously referred to Marcelin as a woman, their most recent article regarding his conviction refers to him as a man repeatedly, and states that “at the start of his trial last month, Mr. Marcelin told the court that he identifies as a man.”
On July 30, 2022, The New York Times released a lengthy sympathetic profile on Marcelin and his crimes, utilizing “she/her” pronouns throughout. The article insisted “transgender people are far more likely to become victims of violence, not perpetrators,” and implied that Marcelin’s history of violence against women was a result of his internal “gender identity” conflict.
As previously revealed by Reduxx, Marcelin had known the victim and was interacting with her on Facebook. Reports from last week’s trial confirm that Marcelin had met his latest victim after being granted access to a homeless shelter for women. When they met, Leyden was a resident of the Sage Center at Stonewall House, an LGBTQ residence in Brooklyn that also houses homeless seniors.
While it is unclear exactly when Marcelin and Leyden first began to interact, one of his many Facebook profiles reveals a communication with the victim dated 2019, just after he was released from the upstate Cayuga Correctional facility on the provision of lifetime parole.
It was at this time that both Marcelin and Leyden were seeking housing. Leyden, who was reportedly struggling with declining mental health and drug addiction, eventually secured an apartment within the Stonewall House.
Marcelin used Leyden’s own photo as his own profile image on more than one Facebook account and had repeatedly posted her picture to his Facebook pages. In October 2021, just months before Leyden was murdered, Marcelin responded to her with the comment, “Love personified.”
Yet a few comments made from Leyden’s Facebook account suggest that the feeling was far from mutual.
In November 2020, Marcelin uploaded a photo of a young blond woman as his main profile photo, the identity of whom is unknown. Beneath the photo, Leyden commented: “That is not a picture of Marceline Harvey… [he] is nice but crazy… Marcaline [sic] is a freak.”
On one Facebook account, Marcelin referred to himself as “the Queen of Loisaida,” an area in Manhattan.
The New York serial killer arrested in March for dismembering a woman had been granted entry to a women's shelter, where he met with his victim and began to obsess over her on Facebook.
— REDUXX (@reduxx) July 31, 2022
Harvey Marcelin, 84, identifies as a transgender lesbian.https://t.co/MUjR0clOl3
In December 2022, just months after Marcelin’s arrest, former social worker at a Manhattan senior shelter filed a lawsuit against her ex-employer, claiming she lost her job after she warned her bosses that the convicted serial killer had made threats against her life while she worked at the facility.
Monica Archer was let go from her position at George Daly House, a short-term housing alternative for elderly residents in Alphabet City, even after convicted serial killer Marcelin was charged with the brutal slaying and dismemberment of Leyden.
According to an exclusive published in The New York Post, Marcelin “made constant threats to kill” Archer and other personnel, and was permitted to keep a gun on the premises.
Archer had suggested to her supervisors that Marcelin be transferred to a facility specializing in mental health disorders, but was ignored. She had also recommended Marcelin be placed in an “appropriate setting for the serial killer who has issues that I can’t address.”
But Archer says that management continued to allow Marcelin to reside at the shelter, despite “knowing that [he] had been accused of and convicted of several murders, allegedly possessed a gun, and regularly threatened to kill staff members.”
A former social worker at a New York senior shelter is alleging she was fired after raising concerns about a transgender serial killer who had been granted access to the facility.
— REDUXX (@reduxx) December 7, 2022
Harvey Marcelin was arrested for the murder of a third woman shortly after.https://t.co/BkFONXlP6U
Marcelin had also reportedly begun following Archer after she left work for the evening, leaving the social worker so frightened that she began using alternative routes to commute after work.
Despite Marcelin’s “erratic” and “dangerous” behavior, he was released from the senior care shelter to live independently. Yet Archer remained troubled by his behavior and filed a complaint against the facility with the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration for exposing her to risk.
She alleges that management then retaliated against her, putting her on janitorial duty and refusing to let her work remotely. Two months after Marcelin was taken into custody, Archer alleges she was fired for insubordination, a move she says was punishment for raising the alarm in the first place.
Archer was not the only woman to raise concerns about Marcelin prior to the murder of Susan Leyden.
In July, a nurse who worked intake for a shelter in the Bronx spoke to The New York Times and revealed she had great concerns about Marcelin being allowed access to the women’s section of the facility.
Anne Brennan questioned whether Marcelin should be permitted to reside in the women’s area of the shelter, but was told by her supervisors to grant Marcelin entry.
“Apparently his feelings and identity were far more important than all the other women that were terrified of him,” she said.
Prior to the murder of Susan Leyden, Marcelin was well-known to police, having been convicted in the brutal deaths of two other women on two separate occasions.
In 1963, Marcelin was arrested for shooting his then-girlfriend Jacqueline Bonds three times inside their Manhattan apartment. He was sentenced to 20 years to life and was paroled in 1984. After his release, he went on to stab another female sexual partner to death, stuffing her corpse in a garbage bag and then dumping it on the street near Central Park.
Marcelin was arrested in 1986 for the second murder, but was once again released on parole in 2019. At the time, he told a parole officer that he had “a problem with women.”
Prior to the murders, Marcelin was accused of attempted rape when he was just 14 years-old; the allegation was made by a girl aged 8.
A 1963 psychiatric examination conducted by three unnamed doctors at Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital concluded Marcelin had “schizoid personality with sociopathic features” but was not deemed criminally insane nor psychotic. In contrast, a previous hospital record from 1962 suggested he may have had “delusional grandiosity,” “suggestions of chronic schizophrenia” and “paranoid reaction personality.”
Curiously, Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital was where the term “transgender” was coined. Dr. John F. Oliven was employed at the psychiatric institution where Marcelin would become a patient, and in his 1965 manual for psychiatrists, Sexual Hygiene and Pathology, Oliven wrote that in regards to male “transgender” patients, “sexuality is not a major factor in primary transvestism,” thereby re-framing the fetish as a matter of identity rather than as a paraphilia. The section in the manual which focuses on transsexualism and transgenderism solely discusses male inclinations and behaviors, and does not acknowledge it as a female phenomenon.
Marcelin began identifying as a woman while at Auburn State Prison for his second slaying, and started taking Premarin, a type of estrogen intended for post-menopausal women, after meeting trans-identified male inmate at the facility. The killer appears to treat his “male” and “female” personas as two separate entities. In an interview he gave to The New York Post in 2022, Marcelin claimed it was his “male” persona that was responsible for his history of crime.
“Harvey’s not a good guy, he’s a tough guy,” Marcelin said, “Marceline’s nice and gentle and loving, you know, lots of laughter, fun to be with. She’s the one who’s perfectly normal.”
Marcelin described his male “side” as a “pimp” and blamed his female victims for inciting him to violence. “I tell them — there’s a side of me you don’t want to see… but they don’t listen,” he told The New York Post.
Due to Marcelin’s self-identification as a woman, he was quietly placed in a women’s housing unit at Rikers Island while awaiting trial. For the past four years, Marcelin had been held at the Rose M. Singer Center, but he is currently being held at the Bellevue Hospital Outposted Therapeutic Housing Units, likely due to his failing health and advanced age.
Despite having an erratic “gender identity” that has changed multiple times, Marcelin has been recorded by the New York City Department of Corrections as a “female” inmate.