A Long Island couple who pleaded guilty to killing and dismembering another couple before scattering their body parts across Suffolk County received reduced sentences on Tuesday in a deal struck with prosecutors.
Jeffrey Mackey, 40, and his girlfriend, 35-year-old Alexis Nieves, avoided potential life sentences after their lawyers successfully argued that they sustained “extensive and profound abuse” at the hands of their victims, Malcolm “Craig” Brown, 53, and wife Donna Conneely, 59.
The couple had allegedly mistreated and abused them while they all lived together with Brown’s cousin, Steven Brown, and his girlfriend, Amanda Wallace, in Amityville.
In a plea agreement with the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office, Mackey was sentenced two 11-year sentences for murder, to run consecutively, while Nieves was handed one 11-year sentence.
Both had been facing the possibility of life behind bars for the fatal February 2024 stabbings, but a judge determined they qualified for reduced sentences under New York’s Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act. A forensic psychiatric report detailing the evidence of domestic abuse was sealed by Supreme Court Justice John Collins.
Mackey in November pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, admitting that he stabbed Brown on Feb. 27, 2024 before choking and stabbing Conneely. Nieves pleaded guilty to manslaughter for smashing Conneely’s head with a meat tenderizer while she was being strangled.
Steven Brown and Amanda Wallace pleaded guilty in September 2024 to their roles in helping to cover up the murders by dismembering the victims and then disposing of the body parts. Steven Brown was sentenced on Tuesday to five years under a negotiated plea deal. Wallace, at the time of her sentencing in November, was already nearing the end of her agree-upon prison term as she’d been behind bars since her arrest in early 2024.
It’s unclear exactly how the victims were dismembered or where all the body parts scattered, but the first discovery was made by teenagers in Southards Pond Park in Babylon in February 2024. More remains were later found in remote areas of West Babylon and at Bethpage State Park.
The four housemates were arrested in March 2024.
Mackey and Nieves’ two young children are being raised by a relative, according to LoHud.com.
