Transgender Serial Killer Sentenced To Life In Prison For Murdering, Dismembering Woman He Met At Women’s Shelter

An 88-year-old transgender serial killer has been sentenced to life in prison for the brutal murder and dismemberment of a woman he met while staying at a women’s shelter in New York City. This is the third time Harvey Marcelin, who also refers to himself as Marceline Harvey, has been convicted of killing a woman.

Marcelin’s victim was 68-year-old Susan Leyden, who was murdered in March of 2022 and had her body parts scattered throughout the neighborhood. Leyden’s headless torso was the first part of her body found after a passerby spotted it in an abandoned shopping cart. The gruesome discovery was blocks away from Marcelin’s Brooklyn apartment, prompting police to search Marcelin’s residence as he had a criminal record that included multiple murders.

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.

Days later, 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 was seen casually 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 in the store.

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 used feminine pronouns to refer to Marcelin throughout the conference, and often referred to him as a “female person of interest” during the investigation.

Harvey Marcelin’s victim, 68-year-old Susan Leyden.

In May, the jury swiftly convicted Marcelin after just one hour of deliberations, and this week he was sentenced to life in prison for the brutal murder.

While some outlets have referred to Leyden as being Marcelin’s “girlfriend,” there is no evidence that the two had a confirmed intimate relationship.

As previously revealed by Reduxx, Marcelin had known the victim and was interacting with her on Facebook, but that Leyden appeared to be somewhat hesitant about Marcelin due to his concerning behavior.

While it is unclear exactly when Marcelin and Leyden first began to interact on social media, 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.

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.”

Both Marcelin and Leyden were transient, and at one point stayed at the same shelter for homeless seniors in the women’s section. Prior to living at the Sage Center at Stonewall House, Marcelin had stayed at multiple shelters in the Brooklyn area, and left a trail of concerned staff in his wake.

In July of 2025, 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.

In December 2022, just months after Marcelin’s arrest for Leyden’s murder, a 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 by the The New York Post, Marcelin “made constant threats to kill” Archer and other personnel, and was even 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.”

Prior to the murder of Susan Leyden, Marcelin was already 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.”

It was after his second slaying that Marcelin began identifying as a woman. While at Auburn State Prison, he began taking Premarin, a type of estrogen intended for post-menopausal women. His decision to begin identifying as transgender reportedly came after meeting trans-identified male inmate at the facility. Bizarrely, the killer appears to treat his “male” and “female” personas as two separate entities, with his “feminine” side being named Marceline Harvey while his “masculine” side is Harvey Marcelin.

“Harvey’s not a good guy, he’s a tough guy,” Marcelin said during a 2022 interview with The New York Post, “Marceline’s nice and gentle and loving, you know, lots of laughter, fun to be with. She’s the one who’s perfectly normal.”

Throughout the course of his trial, Marcelin changed his gender identity. Earlier this year, he reportedly announced he no longer identified as a woman, though it is unknown if that was yet another fleeting change in his gender identity. He remains classified as a “female” inmate in the New York City Department of Corrections database.

For the past four years, Marcelin had been held at the Rose M. Singer Center for female inmates on the basis of his self-declared gender identity, but he was recently moved to the Bellevue Hospital Outposted Therapeutic Housing Unit, likely due to his failing health and advanced age.

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