Murder charges have been lodged against two of the suspects arrested in the Babylon Body Parts case, which caused an uproar when they were originally set free back in March with no bail. This time, District Attorney Raymond Tierney will make sure they stay behind bars as they await trial on the upgraded charges.
Arrested for second-degree murder were Alexis Nieves, 33, and Jeffrey Mackey, 38. They were occupants of an Amityville home where evidence of the gruesome dismemberment of Malcolm Brown, 53, and Donna R. Conneely, 59, both of Yonkers, took place, according to Tierney.
Police were alerted to the murders after a group of children walking to school encountered body parts allegedly disposed of by the suspects in Babylon’s Southards Pond Park. Additional remains were located a few days later in a wooded area of Bethpage State Park.
Two other suspects were implicated in the body parts case, but are not yet facing new charges: Steven Brown, 44, a cousin of victim Malcolm Brown, and Amanda Wallace, 40, who was already in jail for breaking the terms of her cashless bail agreement by getting arrested for shoplifting.
The case led to a public spat between Gov. Kathy Hochul and Tierney, who chastised the governor for supporting bail laws that permitted the suspects to walk free after being charged with felony counts of first-degree hindering prosecution, concealment of a human corpse, and tampering with physical evidence by concealing or destroying it. Hochul shot back, saying the suspects would not have been released had the district attorney leveled murder charges right out of the gate. Tierney scoffed at that notion, stating that though he had evidence of the dismemberment, he still needed time to build a solid murder case.
Suffolk officials from both sides of the political aisle called for the crimes charged against the four suspects to be added to the list of offenses that require bail. Republicans took it a step further by calling on Hochul and her Democrat colleagues in the state legislature to scrap the cashless bail system altogether and start over. Their proposal would have given the judge in the case, District Court Justice Edward Hennessey, the discretion to hold the suspects while Tierney built his murder case.
Tierney reported that at the time of the prior arrests, substantial evidence against the four defendants was uncovered, including human remains, meat cleavers, butcher knives, and significant amounts of blood at the Amityville house, in addition to video surveillance.