Jeffrey Mackey, Alexis Nieves sentenced to reduced prison terms for killing and dismembering couple, avoiding potential life sentences

A Yonkers couple who killed and dismembered a husband and wife, and then scattered their body parts around Long Island, avoided a potential sentence of life behind bars by blaming the victims who had abused them.

Jeffrey Mackey, 40, and his girlfriend, Alexis Nieves, 35, received reduced sentences based on submissions under the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act by their lawyers, arguing that Malcolm Craig Brown, 53, and his wife, Donna Conneely, 59, had mistreated them while they lived together in an Amityville home on Railroad Avenue.

The couple convicted of killing were facing lengthy prison time before an agreement was struck between prosecutors, the judge and defense attorneys.

Under a negotiated plea with the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office and defense attorneys Anthony La Pinta, Marc Cohen and Christopher Gioe, Mackey received two 11-year sentences for each killing, to run consecutively. That means he will serve 22 years in prison; Nieves was sentenced to one 11-year sentence.

LaPinta told the court that his client’s actions were the "product of profound domestic abuse at the hands of the victims."

Charles Williams and Coreen Bullock, the older brother and sister of Brown, who spoke in court on Tuesday, said they were not aware of the abuse allegation or the plea deal before it had been completed. They denied their brother had abused the defendants.

LaPinta and Cohen submitted a brief under the 2019 domestic violence survivor law, arguing that the abuse suffered by Mackey and Nieves at the hands of Brown and Conneely qualified them for a reduced sentence.

Supreme Court Justice John Collins, who agreed with the reduced sentences, sealed the sentencing submission in a verbal ruling. He declined a Newsday request to unseal it or release portions of the brief on Tuesday.

Mackey admitted stabbing Brown in the neck shortly before noon on Feb. 27, 2024, inside the home. He then stabbed Conneely and began to choke her.

Nieves smashed her in the head with a meat tenderizer as she was being strangled, according to prosecutors.

She had pleaded guilty on Nov. 20, 2024, to manslaughter

"I really wish none of this ever happened and that I never met these people and that we could all still be alive," Mackey, wearing green prison scrubs, said as he faced the judge.

Nieves, dressed in a long brown coat, just said, "I’m sorry" faintly before she was sentenced.

Gioe, Nieves' lawyer, said that his client, the mother of two with no previous criminal history, had been using drugs and alcohol at the time of the killings.

"I think that the district attorney's office, the homicide section of the Suffolk County Police Department, conducted a very thorough investigation as to what was going on in that house," he said outside the courtroom. "There were issues of domestic violence that were utilized as a potential defense, and as a result of that, we were able to work out a disposition in this manner of the time frames that both defendants received."

Details are scant about how or where the bodies were dismembered, but teenagers found the first pieces of the victims in Southards Pond Park in Babylon.

"I will never understand why this happened and the way it happened," the judge said, calling the crime "unique, bizarre and unfathomable."

"This is one of the more horrific incidents that I’ve come across in my 45 years," in the criminal justice system Collins said.

More of Brown's and Conneely's remains were found in late February in wooded areas in West Babylon and at Bethpage State Park.

The grisly discovery had the community on edge, fearing a resurgence by the violent street gang, MS-13, whose members had been responsible for several killings on Long Island.

The exact motive for the crime remains a mystery to the public, but a law enforcement source said that all four had been involved in several armed robberies together, including a recent gas station stickup, with a meat cleaver and the same knife used in the killings, prosecutors said.

A law enforcement source not authorized to speak said that the couple was killed in a dispute over money.

Investigators linked Mackey and Nieves to the crime through the murder weapon, video surveillance and blood evidence.

"This heinous and horrific crime has shaken my family to the core," Brown’s older sister, Bullock, said. She then addressed Mackey, "Not only did you murder them, you chopped them up and dumped them like they were trash. They were people. They had families. ... May God have no mercy on your souls and may you rot in hell."

Steven Brown, a cousin of Malcolm Brown, who was there during the killings and helped dispose of the bodies, was also sentenced on Tuesday. He pleaded guilty in September 2024 under a negotiated plea deal for 5 years in prison.

Williams also addressed the court.

"He was your cousin; what could Craig have possibly done to deserve getting chopped up?" Williams asked. "I cannot believe you were only sentenced to 5 years. The pain that my mother feels will last a lifetime."

The judge took a moment to question Brown about statements he made to the Suffolk County Department of Probation that showed no remorse or empathy with the victims for what he had done.

"I don’t know you, sir, but you must be one awful human being," the judge said.

A fourth defendant, Amanda Wallace, was sentenced on Nov. 20, according to defense attorney Keith O'Halloran. Wallace, who had been incarcerated since her arrest in March 2024, was nearing the end of her agreed-upon sentence for pleading guilty to concealment of a human corpse, hindering a prosecution and second-degree robbery.

Newsday's Grant Parpan contributed to this story.

CORRECTION: Jeffrey Mackey's sentence was incorrect in a previous version of this story.