Four people were charged with concealing a human corpse and tampering with evidence in connection with two bodies found mutilated and scattered in parks in Long Island last week.
Steven Brown, 44; Amanda Wallace, 40; Jeffrey Mackey, 38; and Alexis Nieves, 33, have not been charged with murder or any other violent crime and were released on supervised release without bail, Newsday reported.
The victims’ identities have not been released, although police did say that one was a 53-year-old man and the other a 59-year-old woman.
Teenagers found an arm last week on the edge of Southards Pond Park. Police found another arm, both belonging to man, and the head, parts of two arms, and a leg belonging to the woman on the other side of the park, as CrimeOnline reported.
Further searches uncovered the man’s head and more body parts in West Babylon and Bethpage State Park.
Police wrote in charging documents that the defendants removed from their shared home “sharp instruments, multiple body parts and other elated items and dispose of them to conceal the crime of murder in the second degree,” but they did not charge them with murder in any degree, according to Newsday.
Assistant District Attorney Frank Schroeder said at separate arraignments for the defendants that authorities have significant evidence, including human remains, meat cleavers, butcher knives, significant amounts of blood and video surveillance, although he did not say why prosecutors did not charge them with murder.
Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney, in a statement, complained before the arraignments that the the crimes charged in the case are not eligible for bail because of changes in the bail laws five years earlier.
“It is our understanding that the Suffolk County Police Department is still investigating these murders,” Tierney said. “Unfortunately, due to ‘Bail Reform’ passed by the New York State Legislature in 2019, charges relating to the mutilation and disposal of murdered corpses are no longer bail-eligible, meaning my prosecutors cannot ask for bail.”
The New York state legislature changed the laws in 2019 in an attempt to reduce the massive overcrowding of the state’s jails. The laws would also encourage police, if they are concerned about bail, to charge defendants with crimes that warrant it.
The four defendants were ordered not to leave Suffolk County, to wear GPS monitors, to report to probation weekly, and to surrender their passports, if they have them.
The four people were living together in a home on Railroad Avenue at the time of their arrests, but officers executing search warrants on the home made it “uninhabitable” by damaging the plumbing, toilet, and sinks, Schroeder said in court.
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[Featured image: Newsday screenshot]
