A Brooklyn judge sentenced Harvey Marcelin, 88, to life without parole on Thursday for the 2022 murder and dismemberment of Susan Leyden, ending any possibility that he will ever be released from prison. The decision came after a case that left Leyden’s remains scattered across East New York and brought a third murder conviction for Marcelin.

That sentence is why the case is drawing attention now: it is the final punishment in a killing that had already exposed how many times Marcelin had been before a murder court. Leyden was 68 when she was killed, and the judge said Marcelin’s release would be too dangerous to imagine, adding that if he ever got out again, he had no doubt Marcelin would kill again.

Marcelin did not accept responsibility in court. He denied killing Leyden and blamed Lisa Lindahl, who testified against him and was inside the apartment during the aftermath. Marcelin told the court, “I was crazy about Leyden,” and apologized to her family for not doing enough to protect her.

The sentence also closed the last open question the court could answer: what punishment fits a defendant convicted three times of murder. Marcelin said he had pleaded guilty to one of the earlier killings to receive a reduced sentence, a claim that only deepened the sense that this latest case was less an outlier than the latest chapter in a long record of deadly violence.