Harvey Marcelin has been convicted three times in the deaths of women in six decades. In 1963 a Manhattan jury found him guilty of first-degree murder in the shooting of a girlfriend, Jacqueline Bonds, and he was sentenced to life in prison. Paroled in 1984, he was arrested again in 1986, charged in the death of another woman, and he pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter. Parole boards turned him down again and again for more than 30 years. In 2019 the state released him on lifetime parole.
Less than three years later, in March 2022, Susan Leyden, a 68-year-old woman from Clinton Hill, was found dead in East New York, Brooklyn, where Marcelin lived. Prosecutors said surveillance video showed her walking into his apartment on February 27 and never coming out. A Brooklyn jury convicted him of first-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence and concealment of a human corpse in May 2026, after deliberating for about an hour. On June 10, 2026, at the age of 88, he was sentenced to life without parole. "He must be locked away," Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said, "and today's sentence ensures that he will never be able to hurt anyone else again."
Court papers of past decades identified Marcelin as a man, and the appeals he filed from prison between 2009 and 2013 were brought under the name Harvey Marcelin. By the time of the 2022 arrest he had for some years identified as a woman, acquaintances told the Associated Press, and police booked him as a woman. CBS New York reported that he was also known as Marceline Harvey, and the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office used "she" and "her" in its 2022 arraignment announcement. In 2024 he phoned WABC-TV from jail and asked to be called Marceline Harvey, and the station reported that he was being held in a women's jail facility.
When the trial opened in April 2026, he asked to be referred to as a man, News 12 reported. The district attorney's sentencing announcement in June 2026 used "he".
Little about Marcelin's childhood or family appears in the public record. Police records described by WABC-TV and CBS New York in 2022 list a felony assault arrest in 1957 and an arrest for rape in 1963. According to the Associated Press, when he went on trial for murder in 1963 he also faced an attempted rape charge involving another woman. What became of that charge was not reported.
On April 18, 1963, Marcelin shot and killed a girlfriend in Manhattan, WABC-TV reported in 2022, drawing on police records. The Associated Press named her as Jacqueline Bonds. CBS New York and WABC-TV placed the killing in Harlem.
Public sources record very little about Jacqueline Bonds herself beyond her name and the fact that she had been in a relationship with him. No comment from her family was reported.
According to the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office, Marcelin was convicted of first-degree murder in Manhattan on October 16, 1963. The Associated Press reported that the jury could not agree on whether he should be put to death, so the judge sentenced him to life in prison. A 2010 decision of the New York Supreme Court in Albany County confirms that he was serving "a term of life imprisonment under a sentence imposed for a murder he committed in 1963." CBS New York, citing state records, and the Brooklyn Paper gave the term as 20 years to life; the court decision describes it simply as life.
That 1963 conviction mattered again in 2022. The Brooklyn District Attorney's Office said the old Manhattan conviction formed the basis of the first-degree murder charge against him. The Manhattan District Attorney's Office tracked down the original case files for the Brooklyn prosecutors.
Marcelin spent about two decades in prison on the 1963 sentence. New York's sentencing laws changed while he was inside, WABC-TV reported in its review of his parole records, and his case came before a three-member parole board. The station, which examined parole hearing transcripts covering 60 years, reported that a board member told him that his behavior had been "seriously assaultive to females," and that he answered that "this will never happen again." The board granted parole. He was released on lifetime parole in May 1984, according to WABC-TV.
About a year after his release, in the autumn of 1985, another woman was killed. WABC-TV and the Associated Press described her as another girlfriend; other reports describe a woman he had been living with. He stabbed her to death, according to the 2010 court decision, which records that she was killed by stabbing while he was on parole for the 1963 murder. Her body was found in Manhattan. WABC-TV gave the date of the killing as November 2, 1985, in one report, and placed the discovery of the body in October 1985 in later ones.
Robert Boyce, then a police officer and later the New York Police Department's chief of detectives, was among the first officers at the scene. He told WABC-TV in 2024 that Marcelin confessed soon after his arrest.
In 1986 Marcelin was arrested and charged with first-degree manslaughter, the Albany County court recorded in 2010. "As the result of a plea bargain," the court wrote, he "was sentenced to an additional term of imprisonment of six to twelve years." The Associated Press and the Brooklyn Paper also give the sentence as six to 12 years. The 2010 decision gives his state prison number as 86-A-7063.
The plea did not end the life sentence. When Marcelin later argued that he had served the full term of his plea bargain and was owed his release, the court rejected the claim. The parole violation and the new conviction had not cancelled his original life term, it ruled, and the six-to-twelve-year term had been added to it, so his maximum term remained life. At his 2026 sentencing Marcelin said that he had pleaded guilty to one of his earlier killings in order to receive a reduced sentence, News 12 reported.
When Marcelin became eligible for parole again in the 1990s, state officials were reluctant to let him go, the Associated Press reported. At a 1997 hearing he admitted having "problems" with women. Later boards turned him down, citing what they called his "attempt to place the blame" on the women he had killed.
The court record fills in part of the years that followed. In August 2007 the Board of Parole denied his release and ordered him held for another 24 months. He appeared again in June 2009 and was refused. He was refused again in May 2011, and again on June 4, 2013. He challenged several of those refusals in court, representing himself, and none of the challenges succeeded.
One of those refusals was the subject of a written decision by Justice George B. Ceresia Jr. of the Supreme Court in Albany County, dated September 16, 2010. Marcelin was then held at Gouverneur Correctional Facility, and he had appeared before the board by teleconference rather than in person.
The board's written reasons, quoted in the decision, described the manslaughter as a stabbing that killed a woman while he was on parole supervision for a murder conviction in which another woman had died. The board said his actions showed a propensity for extreme violence and a depraved indifference to human life. It noted his positive programming and improved disciplinary record, but concluded that releasing him would deprecate the seriousness of his crimes, and that there was a reasonable probability he would not live at liberty without breaking the law.
Marcelin raised five complaints. He said the board had ignored the factors the law required it to weigh; that refusing parole after he had served his plea term denied him the benefit of his bargain; that the teleconference violated his rights to due process and equal protection; that the delay by the parole appeals unit had harmed him; and that a commissioner had shown bias. The last point concerned a remark during the interview. When Marcelin, who was 47 when he committed his second homicide, attributed it to "youth and poor judgment and stupidity," Commissioner Hernandez called him a "grown-ass man." The court said other words might have been chosen but found no sign that bias had affected the result. It found that the board had considered his programming, his academic achievements, his disciplinary record and his release plans along with the seriousness of his crimes, and it dismissed the petition.
Marcelin took his parole cases to the Appellate Division, Third Department, three times. In November 2009 the court dismissed as moot his appeal over the August 2007 refusal, because the board had since heard him again in June 2009 (Matter of Marcelin v Alexander, 67 AD3d 1240). In July 2011 it dismissed as moot his appeal from the Albany County judgment, because he had been heard and refused again in May 2011 (Matter of Marcelin v Evans, 86 AD3d 880). In July 2013 it dismissed as moot his appeal over the May 2011 refusal, because he had been refused again on June 4, 2013, and it found that no exception to the mootness rule applied (Matter of Marcelin v Evans, 108 AD3d 979).
After more than 30 years in prison, Marcelin had another parole hearing, WABC-TV reported. One board member called him "a great danger to his community," but the board voted to release him. He left prison on lifetime parole in August 2019, according to WABC-TV. CBS New York reported that by then he had spent more than 50 years behind bars.
In 2019 he and Susan Leyden were living in the same shelter in the Bronx, the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office later said. By 2022 he had an apartment in East New York, Brooklyn.
When asked about the case in 2024, the New York State Board of Parole told WABC-TV that it is an independent body and that each case is different. It said it weighs factors such as statements from victims' families, disciplinary records and the risk to public safety.
Susan Leyden was 68 and lived in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. Neighbors described her to the Associated Press as a quiet woman who liked to shop and was "really stylish." One neighbor told CBS New York she was heartbroken. The district attorney's office said she and Marcelin had lived in the same Bronx shelter in 2019, and that the nature of their relationship was unclear. WABC-TV reported that investigators believed the two had known each other for at least two years, and CBS New York reported that police believed Marcelin had befriended her on social media about two years before her death. At the 2026 trial, prosecutors said Marcelin had been infatuated with her; she had been living in a shelter at the time, according to News 12.
On February 27, 2022, surveillance cameras recorded Susan Leyden entering Marcelin's apartment building in East New York, according to the district attorney's office. She was not seen leaving alive.
Early on March 3 a passer-by found part of her remains in East New York and called 911; prosecutors said surveillance video tied the discovery to Marcelin. When police searched his apartment under a warrant, they found evidence that the district attorney's office said linked him to her death.
Investigators also gathered video from two stores. Prosecutors said footage showed Marcelin making purchases at a Manhattan store around the time she disappeared; CBS New York reported, citing police, that a second woman was with him on that trip. Police later released video from a store in Queens that they described as further evidence against him. The city medical examiner found that Susan Leyden died of blunt force trauma.
Marcelin was arrested in March 2022 and first charged with concealment of a human corpse. WABC-TV gave the arrest date as March 4, the day after the discovery; the Brooklyn Paper and CBS New York reported that he was arrested on March 10. Outside the precinct, according to the Brooklyn Paper, he said: "I need a lawyer. I did nothing wrong!" He was held without bail on Rikers Island.
At a police briefing on March 11, Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell and Chief of Detectives James Essig set out the case. Essig said the evidence included "extensive video canvassing" and interviews of witnesses, and he said the arrest "takes a serial killer off our street." Another senior officer, Chief John Chell, said police were still looking for a motive. CBS New York reported that detectives were reviewing missing-person cases in the area from 2019 onward to see whether any could be connected to him. No further charges of that kind have been reported.
District Attorney Gonzalez said at the time that his heart was with Susan Leyden's family and friends. Marcelin's court-appointed lawyer did not respond to the Associated Press.
A grand jury indicted Marcelin in March 2022, and the charges were raised to murder and tampering with physical evidence. On March 30, 2022, he was arraigned before Justice Danny Chun of Brooklyn Supreme Court on an indictment charging first- and second-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence and concealment of a human corpse. He was held without bail. Gonzalez said few crimes in his long career had reached such a level of depravity. The case was handled by detectives Thomas Pisano of the Brooklyn North Homicide Squad and David Quattrocchi of the 75th Precinct Detective Squad.
In an interview with UnHerd in March 2022, Oren Yaniv, the district attorney's communications director, said the office respected the defendant's gender identity and referred to Marcelin as a woman.
In February 2024 WABC-TV reported that Marcelin had pleaded not guilty and that a trial date had been set for March 1. In a call to the station from jail he asked to be called Marceline Harvey and described having transitioned.
The station's 7 On Your Side Investigates team used the case to examine why Marcelin had been free to kill again. Its review of the transcripts, in Dan Krauth's reports in 2024 and 2026, set out the board's earlier findings next to its decisions to release him.
Opening statements were heard in Brooklyn Supreme Court on Monday, April 20, 2026. Marcelin, then 87, arrived in a wheelchair. Jurors were warned that they would see graphic evidence and hear upsetting testimony. They were not to hear about his two earlier convictions, News 12 reported.
Assistant District Attorney Viviane Dussek told the jury that the evidence would show Marcelin killed Susan Leyden in early March 2022 and then tried to dispose of her body. She pointed to the surveillance video and said Marcelin had been infatuated with the victim. The prosecution was led by Assistant District Attorney Leila Rosini, chief of the Homicide Bureau, with Dussek.
The defense told the jury that another woman, who had been in the apartment, was the killer and had blamed Marcelin out of desperation. The first prosecution witness was the passer-by who called 911.
The central witness was the woman the defense blamed. She testified for several hours, News 12 reported. She said she had been homeless and addicted to heroin at the time, and that Marcelin invited her to stay the night in early March 2022. She testified that she did not learn of the killing until the next morning, and she acknowledged going with Marcelin to the store and helping him afterward. Asked why she had not left or called the police when he went out twice, she said she had been "too overwhelmed to do anything."
Defense lawyers pressed her on cross-examination. They argued that she had helped choose the items bought at the store and may have played a larger part than she admitted. The question for the jury, as the station put it, was whether she had only been a witness or bore some responsibility for the killing.
At his sentencing Marcelin repeated the defense case. He denied killing Susan Leyden and blamed the woman who had testified against him.
The jury began deliberating after a trial of about two weeks, WABC-TV reported. After about an hour it found Marcelin guilty of murder in the first degree, tampering with physical evidence and concealment of a human corpse. The district attorney announced the verdict on Friday, May 8, 2026, saying the jury had returned it "yesterday afternoon."
"This conviction holds the defendant accountable for the cruel and reprehensible murder of Susan Leyden," District Attorney Gonzalez said. He said he hoped her family would find "a measure of solace" in the verdict, which meant Marcelin "will never walk free again." The maximum penalty on the top count was life without parole.
It was the third time Marcelin had been convicted in the death of a woman, WABC-TV noted.
On June 10, 2026, Justice Chun sentenced Marcelin, then 88, to life in prison without parole. In court Marcelin denied the killing again, News 12 reported. He said he had been infatuated with Susan Leyden and apologized to her family for not doing more to protect her. The judge said that if Marcelin were ever released, he had no doubt that Marcelin would kill again.
"He must be locked away, and today's sentence ensures that he will never be able to hurt anyone else again," Gonzalez said in a statement that day.
As of the district attorney's announcement of June 10, 2026, Marcelin was serving life without parole for the murder of Susan Leyden. He also remains subject to the life sentence imposed for the 1963 murder, on which the 1986 manslaughter term was added, according to the 2010 court decision.
Several points in the public record remain unsettled or are reported differently by different sources.
The 1963 sentence. The Associated Press and a 2010 court decision describe it as life imprisonment. CBS New York, citing state records, and the Brooklyn Paper describe it as 20 years to life.
The 1963 verdict date. The Brooklyn District Attorney's Office gives October 16, 1963. A 2024 WABC-TV report says he was convicted in April 1963, the month of the shooting.
The date of the 1985 killing. WABC-TV gave November 2, 1985, in 2022 and October 1985 in its 2024 and 2026 reports; the Brooklyn Paper says November 1985.
The 1985 outcome. Every court record and most reports describe a plea to first-degree manslaughter. One 2026 News 12 report says he had been convicted of murder in 1963 and 1985; the court record shows manslaughter for the second killing.
The 2022 arrest date. WABC-TV gives March 4, 2022; CBS New York and the Brooklyn Paper give March 10.
Other cases. Police said in March 2022 that they were checking missing-person cases from 2019 onward for any link to him. No such link has been reported, and he has not been charged in any other death.
The relationship with Susan Leyden. The district attorney's office described the nature of their relationship as unclear, even after the trial. Police said he had befriended her on social media; prosecutors said he was infatuated with her. He told the court at sentencing that he had been infatuated with her.
1957: arrested for felony assault, according to police records described in 2022.
1963: arrested on a rape charge, according to the same records; at his murder trial he also faced an attempted rape charge involving another woman.
April 18, 1963: Jacqueline Bonds is shot and killed in Manhattan.
October 16, 1963: convicted of first-degree murder in Manhattan; the jury does not agree on a death sentence, and he is sentenced to life.
May 1984: released on lifetime parole.
Autumn 1985: a woman he had been living with is stabbed to death in Manhattan.
1986: arrested and charged with first-degree manslaughter; pleads guilty under a plea bargain and receives an added six to twelve years.
1997: at a parole hearing, admits having "problems" with women; parole refused.
August 2007: parole refused; held for another 24 months.
June 2009: parole refused.
November 19, 2009: Appellate Division dismisses his appeal over the 2007 refusal as moot.
September 16, 2010: Albany County Supreme Court dismisses his challenge to a parole refusal.
May 2011: parole refused.
July 28, 2011: Appellate Division dismisses his appeal from the 2010 judgment as moot.
June 4, 2013: parole refused.
July 18, 2013: Appellate Division dismisses his appeal over the 2011 refusal as moot.
2019: he and Susan Leyden live in the same Bronx shelter.
August 2019: released on lifetime parole.
February 27, 2022: Susan Leyden is recorded entering his East New York apartment building.
March 3, 2022: her remains are found in East New York.
March 2022: arrested; charged first with concealment of a human corpse, then murder.
March 30, 2022: arraigned on an indictment charging first- and second-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence and concealment of a human corpse; held without bail.
February 2024: has pleaded not guilty; trial set for March 1.
April 20, 2026: trial opens in Brooklyn Supreme Court before Justice Danny Chun.
May 2026: jury convicts him (verdict announced May 8, 2026) of first-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence and concealment of a human corpse.
June 10, 2026: sentenced to life without parole.