Babylon body parts suspects Jeffrey Mackey and Alexis Nieves fatally stabbed Malcolm Brown and wife Donna Conneely, prosecutors say
An Amityville man repeatedly stabbed a Yonkers couple to death before his girlfriend beat one of them with a meat tenderizer and they chopped up their bodies and scattered the remains following a dispute over an armed robbery, a Suffolk prosecutor said at their arraignment on murder and conspiracy charges Monday.
Jeffrey Mackey, 39, and Alexis Nieves, 33, both pleaded not guilty at their arraignments before State Supreme Court Justice John Collins in Riverhead. They face the possibility of life in prison if convicted of the top charges in the gruesome case that caused a media frenzy when the remains of their two victims were found scattered around parts of Babylon and Bethpage in February and March.
“While the case involves the cutting up of bodies of two human beings, the barbarity of those acts were only exceeded by the brutality of the murders themselves,” Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney Frank Schroeder said.
The prosecutor said that on the morning of Feb. 27, Mackey stabbed Malcolm Brown, 53, multiple times in the neck and torso, killing him inside the Amityville home where they all had been living before turning to Brown's wife, Donna Conneely, 59, and stabbing her repeatedly in the neck and back. Nieves then smashed Conneely multiple times in the head with a meat tenderizer and stabbed her as Mackey strangled her, Schroeder said.
Prosecutors said the knife Mackey used in the Railroad Avenue attack was the same knife he used in a Feb. 20 robbery at a Valero gas station in Copiague. Schroeder said the robbery serves as a possible motive for the killings. Mackey is also charged with first-degree robbery.
“The robbery is very much intertwined with the murder,” Schroeder told Collins.
Schroeder said statements from eyewitnesses aided investigators in securing the indictment on upgraded charges against the couple. Two other suspects, Steven Brown, 44, a cousin of Malcolm Brown, and Amanda Wallace, 40, have not been charged in the killings, though a district attorney's office news release indicated Steven Brown helped plan the killings and the indictment shows he will be arraigned on a conspiracy charge Tuesday that Nieves and Mackey were charged with Monday.
Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said Malcolm Brown and Conneely had participated in the planning of the Feb. 20 knifepoint robbery of the Valero gas station, which each of the four suspects in their killings and dismemberment played a role in. He declined to discuss how that robbery fit into the motive.
“There was a lot of illegal conduct occurring between the victims and the defendants, which in part was the impetus for the murders, presumably,” Tierney said. “But we don't have to prove motive, so I'm not gonna talk about it.”
Malcolm Brown and Conneely's body parts were scattered almost immediately after their deaths, with the first of the remains discovered two days later, Tierney said. All of the remains have been recovered, the district attorney added.
The judge set bail for Nieves at $1 million cash or $10 million bond. Mackey was remanded to the county jail without bail. Both suspects are due back in court June 3.
John Halverson, Mackey's assigned defense counsel, said he believes investigators have charged the wrong couple in the killings.
“The prosecution's witnesses … likely have unclean hands,” the Patchogue attorney said. “That's going to be our position.”
Halverson said he had not heard his client was accused in a robbery before the unsealing of the indictment.
Defense attorney Christopher Gioe, assigned to represent Nieves, said his client maintains her innocence.
“Alexis has claimed she is not guilty. She has denied these charges and she remained in the jurisdiction,” the Hauppauge attorney said.
Nieves, who is homeless but had been living in the Amityville home, is not expected to post bail, Gioe said.
The defense attorneys and prosecutors mostly declined to speak to how all four suspects, who were first arrested March 4, are connected to each other, though it is known they had been living in the Amityville house together. Tierney said they also were involved in some illegal activity together, including the charged robbery and possible drug-related crimes.
The conspiracy indictment charging all four suspects, which was handed down by a Suffolk County grand jury Friday, includes 10 counts in all. Mackey is charged in both slayings and Nieves is accused of killing Conneely. Wallace and Brown are also facing first-degree robbery charges for their involvement in the gas station robbery, court records show.
All four defendants already had pleaded not guilty in March to felony counts of first-degree hindering prosecution, concealment of a human corpse and tampering with physical evidence by concealing or destroying. They were released without bail, since they were not charged with any bail eligible offenses at the time. They continue to face charges for hindering prosecution and concealment of a human corpse.
Wallace has been in jail since being arrested for shoplifting days after they were released.
Suffolk prosecutors have alleged that between Feb. 27 at 10:53 a.m. and March 4 at 4:08 a.m., the four defendants removed from their shared Railroad Avenue home “sharp instruments, multiple body parts and other related items and dispose[d] of them to conceal the crime of murder in the second degree,” according to court records.
The documents said the defendants “did conceal, alter and destroy human body parts” and the “dismembered body parts were removed” from the home and were “concealed at multiple known locations.”
Schroeder said at the defendants’ initial arraignments that authorities had significant evidence against the four defendants, including human remains, meat cleavers, butcher knives, significant amounts of blood and video surveillance.
A group of high school students on their way to school in Babylon in February made the first gruesome discovery in the case, finding Malcolm Brown's heavily tattooed forearm in a tangle of branches on the edge of a popular park.
One student called her father, who then called Suffolk County police, setting in motion a massive search, using police K-9 unit dogs, that ended with police finding the body parts of both victims.
An Amityville man repeatedly stabbed a Yonkers couple to death before his girlfriend beat one of them with a meat tenderizer and they chopped up their bodies and scattered the remains following a dispute over an armed robbery, a Suffolk prosecutor said at their arraignment on murder and conspiracy charges Monday.
Jeffrey Mackey, 39, and Alexis Nieves, 33, both pleaded not guilty at their arraignments before State Supreme Court Justice John Collins in Riverhead. They face the possibility of life in prison if convicted of the top charges in the gruesome case that caused a media frenzy when the remains of their two victims were found scattered around parts of Babylon and Bethpage in February and March.
“While the case involves the cutting up of bodies of two human beings, the barbarity of those acts were only exceeded by the brutality of the murders themselves,” Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney Frank Schroeder said.
The prosecutor said that on the morning of Feb. 27, Mackey stabbed Malcolm Brown, 53, multiple times in the neck and torso, killing him inside the Amityville home where they all had been living before turning to Brown's wife, Donna Conneely, 59, and stabbing her repeatedly in the neck and back. Nieves then smashed Conneely multiple times in the head with a meat tenderizer and stabbed her as Mackey strangled her, Schroeder said.
WHAT TO KNOW
- An Amityville man stabbed a Yonkers couple to death before his girlfriend beat one of them with a meat tenderizer and they chopped up their bodies and scattered their remains after a dispute over an armed robbery, a Suffolk prosecutor said.
- Jeffrey Mackey, 39, and Alexis Nieves, 33, both pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder and conspiracy at their arraignments in Riverhead on Monday in the killings of Malcolm Brown, 53, and wife, Donna Conneely, 59.
- They face the possibility of life in prison if convicted of the top charges in the case that caused a media frenzy when the remains of their two victims were found scattered around parts of Babylon and Bethpage in February and March.
Prosecutors said the knife Mackey used in the Railroad Avenue attack was the same knife he used in a Feb. 20 robbery at a Valero gas station in Copiague. Schroeder said the robbery serves as a possible motive for the killings. Mackey is also charged with first-degree robbery.
“The robbery is very much intertwined with the murder,” Schroeder told Collins.
Schroeder said statements from eyewitnesses aided investigators in securing the indictment on upgraded charges against the couple. Two other suspects, Steven Brown, 44, a cousin of Malcolm Brown, and Amanda Wallace, 40, have not been charged in the killings, though a district attorney's office news release indicated Steven Brown helped plan the killings and the indictment shows he will be arraigned on a conspiracy charge Tuesday that Nieves and Mackey were charged with Monday.
Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said Malcolm Brown and Conneely had participated in the planning of the Feb. 20 knifepoint robbery of the Valero gas station, which each of the four suspects in their killings and dismemberment played a role in. He declined to discuss how that robbery fit into the motive.
“There was a lot of illegal conduct occurring between the victims and the defendants, which in part was the impetus for the murders, presumably,” Tierney said. “But we don't have to prove motive, so I'm not gonna talk about it.”
An Amityville man stabbed a Yonkers couple to death before his girlfriend beat one of them with a meat tenderizer at 25 Railroad Rd. in Amityville, Suffolk prosecutors said Monday. Credit: Newsday/Alejandra Villa Loarca
Malcolm Brown and Conneely's body parts were scattered almost immediately after their deaths, with the first of the remains discovered two days later, Tierney said. All of the remains have been recovered, the district attorney added.
The judge set bail for Nieves at $1 million cash or $10 million bond. Mackey was remanded to the county jail without bail. Both suspects are due back in court June 3.
John Halverson, Mackey's assigned defense counsel, said he believes investigators have charged the wrong couple in the killings.
“The prosecution's witnesses … likely have unclean hands,” the Patchogue attorney said. “That's going to be our position.”
Halverson said he had not heard his client was accused in a robbery before the unsealing of the indictment.
Defense attorney Christopher Gioe, assigned to represent Nieves, said his client maintains her innocence.
“Alexis has claimed she is not guilty. She has denied these charges and she remained in the jurisdiction,” the Hauppauge attorney said.
Nieves, who is homeless but had been living in the Amityville home, is not expected to post bail, Gioe said.
The defense attorneys and prosecutors mostly declined to speak to how all four suspects, who were first arrested March 4, are connected to each other, though it is known they had been living in the Amityville house together. Tierney said they also were involved in some illegal activity together, including the charged robbery and possible drug-related crimes.
The conspiracy indictment charging all four suspects, which was handed down by a Suffolk County grand jury Friday, includes 10 counts in all. Mackey is charged in both slayings and Nieves is accused of killing Conneely. Wallace and Brown are also facing first-degree robbery charges for their involvement in the gas station robbery, court records show.
All four defendants already had pleaded not guilty in March to felony counts of first-degree hindering prosecution, concealment of a human corpse and tampering with physical evidence by concealing or destroying. They were released without bail, since they were not charged with any bail eligible offenses at the time. They continue to face charges for hindering prosecution and concealment of a human corpse.
Wallace has been in jail since being arrested for shoplifting days after they were released.
Suffolk prosecutors have alleged that between Feb. 27 at 10:53 a.m. and March 4 at 4:08 a.m., the four defendants removed from their shared Railroad Avenue home “sharp instruments, multiple body parts and other related items and dispose[d] of them to conceal the crime of murder in the second degree,” according to court records.
The documents said the defendants “did conceal, alter and destroy human body parts” and the “dismembered body parts were removed” from the home and were “concealed at multiple known locations.”
Schroeder said at the defendants’ initial arraignments that authorities had significant evidence against the four defendants, including human remains, meat cleavers, butcher knives, significant amounts of blood and video surveillance.
A group of high school students on their way to school in Babylon in February made the first gruesome discovery in the case, finding Malcolm Brown's heavily tattooed forearm in a tangle of branches on the edge of a popular park.
One student called her father, who then called Suffolk County police, setting in motion a massive search, using police K-9 unit dogs, that ended with police finding the body parts of both victims.
Grant Parpan covers Suffolk County courts and federal courts for Newsday. A Long Island native, he joined Newsday in 2022.
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