LI couple admits to hacking up roommates with meat cleavers, scattering their heads

A murderous couple who hacked up two housemates with meat cleavers and then scattered their heads and other severed remains across Long Island confessed to the grisly horror in court Tuesday.

Jeffrey Mackey, 40, was spared a life prison sentence, instead receiving 22 years behind bars, after he claimed he was abused by the victims, while his girlfriend Alexis Nieves, 35, landed 11 years as part of plea deals.

“While the crimes that were committed were violent and tragic — justice in this case required balancing accountability for the harm caused with recognition of the documented abuse history which we cannot comment on,” Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said in a statement.

The killers confessed to murdering and chopping up Malcolm Craig Brown, 53, and his wife Donna Conneely, 59, in the Amityville home they all shared in 2024.

Nieves smashed Conneely in the head with a meat tenderizer — kicking the woman as she choked on her own blood — while Mackey fatally stabbed Brown.

Mackey and Nieves then joined up with two other housemates to cut up the bodies with meat cleavers — a task so gruesome that the drains, toilets, sinks and showers in the house became choked with blood and some of the remains.

The rest of the victims’ body parts were found over the span of a week in late February and early March 2024, scattered across Southards Pond Park in Babylon, wooded areas in West Babylon and throughout Bethpage State Park, according to police. 

The first discovery came when a group of high school students stumbled onto what turned out to be Brown’s severed arms while walking to class. 

Police then found two severed heads in the same park later that day, prompting speculation that the Long Island gang MS-13 could be responsible. 

At Tuesday’s hearing, Mackey’s lawyers, Anthony La Pinta and Mark Cohen, submitted to the judge a forensic psychiatric report detailing the abuse Mackey allegedly endured, according to Newsday.  

Prosecutors said Suffolk Supreme Court Justice John Collins referenced the findings in his ruling, but the 28-page report itself has been sealed, according to the court. 

The Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act, passed in 2019, lets judges hand down lighter sentences to domestic-violence survivors if they can show the abuse played a major role in the crime, according to the state’s Office of Indigent Legal Services.

A third couple who lived in the Amityville house, one of whom is Brown’s cousin — Steven Brown, 46 — and Amanda Wallace, 42, already pleaded guilty in September to felony charges tied to dumping the remains and to a robbery committed a week earlier. 

All four guilty housemates admitted they dismembered and dumped the bodies to keep police from investigating the deaths, which happened one week after Brown and Wallace helped Mackey carry out a knifepoint robbery at a Valero gas station in Copiague.

That same knife was used to murder and dismember Brown and Conneely. 

As part of his plea deal last year, Steven Brown admitted he served as a lookout for Mackey at Valero and is set to receive five years in prison for first-degree robbery. 

Wallace is expected to serve two years in jail.

All four are scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 13.