Dismembered man was killed after fight over rent with Brooklyn roommate, cops say

Police have tracked down the man who killed his roommate, cut the victim up and stuffed his body parts in a freezer in their Brooklyn apartment, cops said Tuesday.

Nicholas McGee, 45, was serving time in a Virginia jail for identity theft when the NYPD caught up with him for the grisly Jan. 22 discovery.

Kawsheen Gelzer, 40, had been couch surfing at McGee’s apartment on Nostrand Ave. near Farragut Road in East Flatbush, where he lived with his longtime girlfriend Heather Stines, 45, Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said at a news briefing Tuesday.

Gelzer was a registered sex offender convicted of sexually abusing a 12-year-old boy in 2004.

In March 2022, Gelzer and McGee argued over drugs and nonpayment of rent, Kenny said.

McGee told NYPD officers interviewing him in the Virginia jail that he confronted Gelzer over the rent, and the two argued.

“[McGee] waits until the victim goes to sleep, when he beats him with a hammer,” Kenny said. “The victim wakes up during the beating, and at this time McGee takes out a knife and stabs him.”

The attacker dismembered Gelzer’s body with a Leatherman multitool and wrapped the pieces up in black bags, Kenny said.

He placed the bags in a refrigerator in the apartment, glued the door shut and wrapped it in tape. He left the city sometime after June 2023, cops said.

“He’s just a thief,” Kenny said of McGee. “He goes where the money takes him.”

Gelzer’s mother reported him missing on April 22, 2022, but he was not discovered until cops, working off a tip, arrived at the apartment nearly two years later and uncovered the body parts of the 6-foot-tall, 200-pound man.

Following the horrifying discovery, Stines was arrested and charged with concealment of a human corpse.

McGee has 15 prior nonviolent arrests in the city, Cincinnati and Kentucky, where Stine is originally from, Kenny said. He was being sought for seven thefts across the city at the time of the killing.

McGee was indicted on a murder charge and will be extradited back to Brooklyn for a court hearing, sources said.

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