A bloodthirsty Brooklyn murderer who hacked up his former roommate and drug dealer, then stored the man’s body parts in his fridge, will spend the rest of his life behind bars — and a new court filing offered a harrowing blow-by-blow description of the horrific crime.
Nicholas McGee, 48, turned his Flatbush apartment into a grotesque scene that would give a grindhouse B-movie director pause when he killed 39-year-old Kawsheen Gelzer in a seedy dispute over sex, drugs and disrespect in March 2022.
A Brooklyn Supreme Court jury convicted McGee of first-degree murder last month. On Wednesday, Justice John Hecht sentenced him to life without parole.
McGee and his wife, Heather Stines, lived in the apartment on Nostrand Ave. near Farragut Road in East Flatbush, and Gelzer and others dealt them heroin and crack, assistant District Attorney Cassandra Pond said in a Tuesday sentencing memo that described the gory crime in detail.
Gelzer would give the couple drugs in exchange for sexual favors from Stines, and for the couple letting him crash on their couch.
That arrangement came to a violent, angry end on March 25, 2022, when Gelzer asked Stines for oral sex, and she refused. He then fell asleep on the couple’s couch, and McGee shook him awake, demanding drugs.
Gelzer wouldn’t give McGee what he wanted, so McGee stormed out and found another dealer.
He got high and came home, stewing in rage over what he felt was Gelzer’s disrespect, prosecutors said.
“I’m going to kill him. F— this motherf—er,” McGee told Stines.
Gelzer was still asleep, face-down on the couch, but not for long.
McGee grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed him in the back, causing Gelzer to leap up in shock. McGee kept stabbing and slashing, and Gelzer fought back, knocking the knife to the ground.
Undaunted, McGee picked up a hammer and repeatedly slammed it into Gelzer’s head, giving McGee the opening to reclaim the knife.
Gelzer, still conscious, tried to flee the apartment, but slipped on his own blood and dropped to the floor.
“Why are you doing this?” Gelzer pleaded, and McGee responded, “Because you’re a piece of s—, smart-mouth motherf—er and I’m tired of you,” according to the prosecution sentencing memo.
McGee then stabbed Gelzer repeatedly in the chest, finishing him off. He searched the dead man’s pockets for drugs — which he and Stines smoked on the spot — and cash.
McGee then dragged Gelzer’s body to his bathtub, leaving it there to rot for several days until a leak from upstairs flooded the tub.
So he hid Gelzer’s decomposing body in another room while a maintenance worker drained the tub, then later dragged the corpse back into the living room and laid it on a blanket.
He then sawed through Gelzer’s arms, legs and neck — police said he used a Leatherman-like multitool — and used a hammer to break his legs. McGee placed the body parts in black plastic garbage bags, stuffed the torso in a suitcase, shoved it all in his refrigerator and freezer, and taped the fridge shut.
Gelzer’s mother reported him missing a couple of months later. McGee and Stines would lie whenever someone came calling about him, claiming he left the apartment after selling them drugs.
All the while, the couple kept getting arrested for retail shoplifting to fuel their drug habits. In September 2023, McGee headed to Chesapeake, Va., where he was busted for trying to get a bank statement in someone else’s name.
On Jan. 20, 2024, while he was locked up, someone called an anonymous tip to 911 that Stines had a body in the refrigerator. Stines let the police in, and officers immediately noticed the large tarp hanging from the kitchen doorframe.
When an officer tried to open the fridge, Stines became agitated and combative, so the cops cuffed her and took her into the living room.
They opened up the refrigerator, found Gelzer’s severed, decaying head inside, and immediately called detectives and crime-scene investigators to secure the apartment.
NYPD detectives traveled to the Chesapeake Sheriff’s Office to interview McGee on Jan. 31, 2024, and after they agreed to give him a cigarette, he described the crime in detail.
“I don’t feel bad at all. Like, I should, but I don’t,” he told a detective at one point. And sitting in a courthouse, he made another admission: “The first one was easy. If I was out, I would probably have two or three more bodies, it was so easy.”
McGee even got a tattoo on his arm memorializing the killing, prosecutors said. Sources said the ink appeared to be an image of a severed head and a kitchen knife.
“This was a deeply disturbing act of violence by a defendant who not only stole a man’s life, but then desecrated his body. The cruelty and disregard for human life shown in the case are almost beyond comprehension,” Brooklyn D.A. Eric Gonzalez wrote Wednesday. “Today’s sentence holds the defendant accountable for his horrific crimes and serves as a reminder that those who commit such heinous crimes in Brooklyn will face the most serious consequences under the law.”
Stines, 48, pleaded guilty on Oct. 24, 2024, to concealment of a human corpse and third-degree bail jumping.
