Babylon body parts case: Steven Brown, Amanda Wallace plead not guilty to new charges

An Amityville man conspired with two housemates accused of killing his cousin and wife to mutilate and scatter the victims' body parts across Long Island in February and early March, a Suffolk prosecutor said at the man's arraignment Tuesday.

Steven Brown, 44, a cousin of Malcolm Brown, 53, who was killed on Feb. 27 along with Donna Conneely, 59, pleaded not guilty to upgraded charges that include second-degree conspiracy and first-degree robbery in State Supreme Court Justice John Collins' courtroom in Riverhead.

Steven Brown's girlfriend, Amanda Wallace, 40, pleaded not guilty to first-degree robbery for assisting in a robbery prosecutors say is connected to the killings.

Steven Brown and Wallace had been accused of helping the alleged killers, Jeffrey Mackey, 39, and Alexis Nieves, 33, scatter the victims' body parts in Suffolk and Nassau counties.

Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney Dena Rizopoulos said the killings were related to a conflict over an armed gas station robbery that Steven Brown and Wallace are alleged to have committed with Mackey on Feb. 20. Prosecutors said Malcolm Brown and Conneely helped plan the robbery before they were killed.

“The robbery is intrinsically intertwined with the murders,” Rizopoulos told Collins on Tuesday.

The prosecutor, who is trying the case against all four defendants with fellow Assistant District Attorney Frank Schroeder, did not elaborate in court on why the six individuals, who all lived together in the Amityville house where the slayings took place, had a falling out after the robbery. Schroeder said Monday that the alleged dispute may have provided a motive for the killings.

Attorneys Ira Weissman, who represents Brown, and Keith O'Halloran, representing Wallace, said prosecutors have not yet presented evidence connecting their clients to the crimes they are accused of, which include hindering prosecution and concealment of a human corpse.

“Steven Brown did not kill anybody,” said Weissman, of Central Islip. “And that's been borne out in the indictment, because he's not charged with murder. He's charged with some other crimes that I await to see discovery on.”

Collins remanded Brown, who faces up to 25 years in prison on each of the top charges, to the county jail in Riverhead after his arraignment. Bail was set at $750,000 cash or $7.5 million bond for Wallace, who faces a maximum of 25 years behind bars for the robbery charge. Wallace has been in jail since being arrested on unrelated shoplifting charges days after they were released.

Mackey and Nieves both pleaded not guilty to top charges of second-degree murder and conspiracy at their arraignments Monday, when prosecutors unveiled a grand jury indictment against them. Mackey was additionally charged in the robbery. 

Schroeder said that on the morning of Feb. 27, Mackey stabbed Malcolm Brown multiple times in the neck and torso, killing him inside the Amityville home before turning to Malcolm Brown's wife, Conneely, 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 one he used in a Feb. 20 robbery at a Valero gas station in Copiague.

Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney, speaking at a news conference Monday, declined to say why investigators believe the four defendants chose to scatter the remains of the deceased before the body parts were first detected Feb. 29 by a group of high school students walking near a park in Babylon.

“I don't think there was a whole lot of thought behind this dismembering … From a law enforcement standpoint, I don't think it was a very prudent plan or a smart plan,” Tierney said. “But it was a plan that they undertook. And, you know, fortunately, they did, because it certainly allowed us to figure out what was going on a lot quicker.”

By Grant Parpan

grant.parpan@newsday.com@GrantParpan

Grant Parpan covers Suffolk County courts and federal courts for Newsday. A Long Island native, he joined Newsday in 2022.