Body parts hacked up with a meat cleaver and scattered around Long Island were identified as the remains of a Westchester County man and woman, police and family announced Monday.
Suffolk County Police Department identified 59-year-old Donna R. Conneely of Yonkers as one of the two victims, while relatives said the other remains were of 53-year Malcolm Craig Brown, a man she lived with who is allegedly the cousin of one of four people arrested for concealing the corpses.
None of the suspects have yet been charged for killing the couple and remain free with ankle monitoring because the charges they face are not bail eligible under state law.
The dismembered limbs – which included two severed heads – were found strewn about Suffolk County starting on Feb. 29, when a girl spotted a man’s arm in a bush near Southards Pond Park in Babylon.
Cops deduced that the body parts belonged to Conneely, a news release said. But police didn’t name Brown on Monday, saying in the brief statement that his identity is still being confirmed by the Suffolk County Medical Examiner.
Brown’s sister Coreen Bullock, who identified her brother as one of the victims, told ABC 7 New York, “it’s absurd that four people murder two people and just get to walk out like that.”
Brown’s brother Charles Williams shouted out to suspect Steven Brown, 44, who he said is his cousin.
“We have parents, we’ve lost a brother, Steven Brown is our cousin and our parents and his mom, my aunt, they’re home, they’re suffering, they’re hurting and he has nothing to say,” Williams said, according to ABC.
Prosecutors charged four people last week in connection to the grisly find: Roommates Steven Brown; Jeffrey Mackey, 38; Amanda Wallace, 40; along with homeless woman Alexis Nieves, 33.
Each of the gruesome foursome pleaded not guilty and were quickly released with ankle monitors because despite their heinous acts – and charges of hindering prosecution, concealment of a human corpse and tampering with physical evidence – they couldn’t be held on bail due to the Empire State’s criminal justice reform laws.
That drew the ire of Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney, who has long been a critic of the state’s lenient bail reform policies.
“This is yet another absurd result thanks to ‘Bail Reform’ and a system where the Legislature in Albany substitutes their judgment for the judgment of our judges and the litigants in court,” Tierney said in a statement.
“We will work with the Suffolk County Police Department to resolve this investigation as soon as possible and implore our Legislature to make common sense fixes to this law.”
Some state lawmakers agreed, with a group of GOP state Senators proposing a bill last week to make mutilation of a human corpse a bail-eligible offense.
“New York State’s cashless bail fiasco forced the release of those charged in this heinous case, and that is simply unacceptable,” state Sen. Mario R. Mattera, a Long Island Republican who sponsored the bill, said in an accompanying statement. “It is now obvious to all with common sense that we need to repeal — not reform — this pro-criminal fiasco.”
State Sen. Anthony Palumbo, another Long Island Republican and sponsor, echoed Mattera’s comments in his own statement.
“Nobody with an ounce of sensibility would say it’s a good idea to let someone charged with the sickening act of human dismemberment leave bail and roam the streets,” Palumbo said.
“Yet here in New York, that’s exactly the situation that the irresponsible Democrats who ostensibly lead this state have put us in due to their radical, nonsensical policies of putting criminals first.”
The bill has moved to the upper chamber’s Codes Committee, according to the state Senate website.
The proposal is the latest sign of outrage in the wake of the eye-popping case, which has drawn an increasing amount of national attention as more grisly details emerge.
Cops raided the quartets’ horror home on Railroad Avenue in Amityville last week, where three of the accused had moved just weeks earlier, prosecutors said.
The four allegedly removed “sharp instruments, multiple body parts and other related items” from the two-family house between Feb. 27 and last Monday, when cops busted in, Suffolk police said.
The sink, showers, drains and toilets were rendered inoperable because of their attempts to dispose of the two bodies, Assistant District Attorney Frank Schroeder said at Mackey’s arraignment.
Authorities have collected a heap of evidence including body parts, meat cleavers, butcher knives and a significant amount of blood, he added.
Subsequent police searches have turned up an assortment of body parts in Southards,in the West Babylon woods several miles away and in Bethpage State Park, police and sources have said.
But no one has hinted at a motive for the killings, and officials haven’t confirmed the relationship between any of the suspects and victims.
The defendants’ attorneys say their clients are maintaining their innocence — and they plan to vigorously fight the accusations.
