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Kevin Gavin Is Sentenced to 30 Years to Life for Killing Three Elderly Brownsville Neighbors

The 71-year-old handyman pleaded guilty in April to murdering three women, aged 78 to 83, inside their apartments in the Brooklyn public-housing building where he also lived.

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Illustration: a small brick police station at dusk with patrol cars outside

Kevin Gavin lived in the same building as the three women he killed. In the Carter G. Woodson Houses, a New York City Housing Authority development on Powell Street in Brownsville, Brooklyn, he made himself useful to elderly neighbors, doing repairs and running errands for them, and that, prosecutors said, was how he got through their doors. On May 20, 2026, Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Dineen Ann Riviezzo sentenced the 71-year-old to 30 years to life in prison.

Gavin had pleaded guilty on April 24 to one count of first-degree murder and three counts of second-degree murder, covering the deaths of three women over more than five years.

Myrtle McKinney, 82, was the first. On or about November 8, 2015, Gavin stabbed her in the neck with a knife inside her apartment. On or about April 30, 2019, he stomped on the neck and chest of Jacolia James, 83, in hers. And on or about January 14, 2021, he robbed Juanita Caballero, 78, and strangled her by wrapping a phone cord around her neck.

It was the last killing that undid him. After Caballero's death, surveillance cameras caught Gavin using her debit card at several locations, and a week later, on January 21, 2021, detectives from Brooklyn North Homicide and the 73rd Precinct arrested him. He confessed to all three killings, and told investigators that the attacks grew out of disputes over money he claimed the women owed him. Investigators had connected him to the earlier deaths through what the three women shared: their ages, the way they lived, and the building where they and Gavin all made their homes.

"These were acts of shocking depravity and cruelty against three elderly women who should have been safe inside their own homes," said Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez. McKinney, James and Caballero, he said, "were beloved members of their families and their community, and this defendant exploited their trust, entered their homes, and took their lives with brutal violence." The sentence, he said, ensures that Gavin will spend the rest of his life in prison.

Gavin pleaded guilty to four counts covering three women's deaths; he was convicted of three murders, not four. The account of each killing and of his confession and claimed motive is the Brooklyn District Attorney's.

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