NEW YORK — The woman who was allegedly murdered and then dismembered by an 83-year-old Brooklyn serial killer was beaten and died from a blow to the head, the city’s Medical Examiner’s office said Saturday.
An autopsy of Susan Leyden’s scattered remains showed that she died of “homicidal violence including blunt force trauma to the head,” a spokeswoman for the Medical Examiner’s office said.
Her death has been ruled a homicide.
Leyden, 68, was reported missing March 2. The next day, her headless, limbless torso was discovered stuffed in a shopping cart on Pennsylvania and Atlantic avenues in East New York.
On March 10, police released video of Leyden’s accused killer, Harvey Marcelin, shopping in a 99 cent store in Brooklyn with Leyden’s severed leg, cut from the knee down, wrapped in a garbage bag.
Marcelin, 83, served two stints in prison for killing two girlfriends in Manhattan and now identifies as a transgender woman, police said.
Leyden’s severed head was found in a black garbage back in Marcelin’s apartment when cops executed a search warrant, police sources said. Marcelin was arrested for concealment of a human corpse on March 4 and ordered held without bail. On March 10, she was indicted on second-degree murder and other charges in Leyden’s death.
During an emotional funeral on March 13, Leyden was described as a devoted single mother who suffered from an untreated mental illness in the last years of her life.
“The last 12 years were a struggle for her. She had untreated mental illness that presented strongly in her 50s and it contributed to so much pain and suffering,” the daughter, Nicole Haymo, recounted during her eulogy at Leyden’s New Jersey funeral. “I want to be open about it because maybe if there was less shame around it people would get the help they need. And if there was more education around it we could be better equipped to help those who need it.”
Marcelin was convicted of murder in Manhattan for the 1963 shooting of girlfriend Jacqueline Bonds. A year after release, Marcelin fatally stabbed another girlfriend, Anna Laura Serrera Miranda, dumping her body near Central Park in 1985.
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