The suspect in the Christmas beating of an 88-year-old Brooklyn woman was identified Thursday as a career criminal busted for robbery as recently as August but freed without bail — leaving his latest victim terrified he’ll strike again.
“It’s not right. I don’t understand how they could release someone like that,” victim Lyubov Faynshteyn said of Marc Malone, who is now being hunted by the NYPD for allegedly entering the woman’s Coney Island apartment Tuesday and mercilessly pummeling her.
“I’m scared that he’ll be back.”
Malone, 50, has a rap sheet that spans more than half his life and dozens of arrests, among them for robbery and gun possession, officials said.
He has done four stints in prison — and was most recently released in 2013 after serving six years on robbery and attempted assault, according to state corrections records.
He has been arrested twice this year alone. And the courts aren’t slowing him down.
When a screwdriver-wielding Malone allegedly stole $800 from an East New York Laundromat on Aug. 2, cops cuffed him the next day, officials said.
But despite his decades-long criminal history and Brooklyn prosecutors requesting $50,000 bail, Malone was cut loose without bail by Judge Sharen Hudson, court records show.
With that case still pending, Malone was arrested on Dec. 13 for trespassing in a NYCHA building on West 23rd Street — just two blocks east of Faynshteyn’s home in the Haber Houses, records show.
This time, Judge Michael Kitsis set bail — but at a mere $1 as a clerical move to flag that he had skipped court on the August robbery case.
Malone plunked down the buck and allegedly let himself into Faynshteyn’s apartment early Christmas Day and beat her. He ran off when the senior set off her medical-alert alarm.
“They just let him out this month, and he’s back at it,” said the slight Russian immigrant, whose cheekbone was fractured.
Faynshteyn had complained that the lock on the NYCHA building’s front door had been broken for years, allowing Malone to enter the building. It was finally repaired on Wednesday.
But, Faynshteyn fears, “They’ll release him again and then he’ll be back to finish me off . . . It will be the end.”
Additional reporting by Priscilla DeGregory
