Nicholas McGee, left inset, faces charges in the death and dismemberment of Kawsheen Gelzer, right inset. (Gelzer photo from CriminalJustice.NY.gov; suspect photo and crime scene screenshot from Eyewitness News ABC7NY/YouTube)
A New York man is accused of stabbing and hitting his drug dealer, sex offender roommate with a hammer following a dispute over drugs, then cutting up and storing the remains in his refrigerator and freezer, prosecutors said.
Nicholas McGee, 45, faces charges of murder, robbery, tampering with physical evidence and concealment of a human corpse in the 2022 death of Kawsheen Gelzer, 39. Escorted by police in handcuffs outside the 67th Precinct on Friday, he stuck out his tongue as reporters recorded the moment, local ABC affiliate WABC reported.
“This was a gruesome and horrific murder that we allege began with an attack on the victim as he slept,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said in a statement. “We will now seek to hold the defendant accountable for this senseless crime.”
The bloodshed happened in March 2022 at an apartment in Flatbush. McGee allegedly stabbed Gelzer in the back while he slept on the couch. Gelzer woke up and was stabbed multiple times and hit with a hammer during a struggle with the suspect, prosecutors said. Afterward, McGee allegedly took drugs out of the Gelzer’s pocket and began dismembering his body using a small saw and a hammer, prosecutors said.
McGee put most of the remains in plastic bags and into a suitcase, then put the victim’s head and torso in the refrigerator and his arms and legs in the freezer, prosecutors said.
“The refrigerator was taped up,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said at a Tuesday news briefing. “They were trying to hole up, I guess, the smell inside.”
The case came to light on Jan. 22, when police responded to the location after getting an anonymous tip that Heather Stines, the suspect’s wife, was keeping a body in her refrigerator. Police found the remains, and she was arrested. Stines, 45, faces charges of first-degree hindering prosecution, concealment of a human corpse and tampering with physical evidence, prosecutors said.
McGee was arrested in Chesapeake, Virginia. He had been in custody on an unrelated identity fraud case and allegedly admitted to the killing to investigators interviewing him in the lockup there, WABC reported. He was returned to New York this week and is expected to appear in court on Monday.
“He’s just a thief,” Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said of McGee, adding he had arrests in Cincinnati and Kentucky, the New York Daily News reported. “He goes where the money takes him.”
Gelzer was a registered sex offender convicted of sexually abusing a 12-year-old boy in 2004, the newspaper reported.
The Associated Press reported on Friday that it left phone and text messages for McGee’s lawyer, and Stines’ lawyer did not return a text message.
The New York Daily News quoted Stines’ brother-in-law as saying, “She does not have it in her to do something like this. It’s a lot of commitment.”
The victim was a registered sex offender, court records show. The New York Daily News reported he was a known drug dealer who’d been couch surfing at the apartment.
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