EX CONVICT SENTENCED TO LIFE IMPRISONMENT FOR MURDERING A
CLOSE FRIEND OF HIS EX-LOVER AND DUMPING HER DISMEMBERED BODY IN
A TRASH BIN
Bronx District Attorney Robert T. Johnson announced today that a 51-year-old Brooklyn man was sentenced to a maximum term of up to life imprisonment for the stabbing death of a 53- year-old woman on March 5, 2005.
Marvin Byer, of 101 Woodruff Avenue, Brooklyn, was found guilty last month of Murder in the 2nd degree in the death of Eleanor Jackson. State Supreme Court Justice Megan Tallmer sentenced Byer to the maximum term of 25 years to life imprisonment. Byer killed Jackson while he was on parole after serving a six-year sentence for an unrelated attempted murder in 1997.
The jury heard testimony that Jackson’s murder was the result of a break-up between Byer and his girlfriend Phyllis Howard, following an abusive and violent relationship. Jackson was Howard’s closest friend and Byer blamed her for the end of his relationship.
When Howard moved out of the Brooklyn apartment that she had shared with Byer and returned to her own apartment in the Bronx, she asked Jackson to stay with her. Howard also asked Byer to return a set of keys to her Bronx apartment. He refused but let himself into the apartment on March 5, 2005, while Howard, was at a medical facility receiving a dialysis treatment. He found Jackson there alone, flew into a rage and stabbed her numerous times. The jury heard testimony about the defendant’s oral and written statements to police in which he described the murder and subsequent dismembering of the victim’s body, which was placed in plastic bags and taken to a dumpster at Morris Avenue and East 171st Street.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Leah Takantzas of the Trial Division.
|