The Killing of Lisa Steinberg

"Lisa Was So Full of Life" New
York Post, November 4, 1987.
(Mark Gado)

Lisa was born on May 14, 1981, at Beekman Downtown Hospital in lower Manhattan. She was the daughter of Michele Launders, 19, and a 20-year-old  college student unable to provide financial support. Opposed to having an abortion, Michele visited a physician sympathetic to her plight. He made arrangements for the baby to be adopted. Through the doctor, Michele met Joel Steinberg, introduced to her as a lawyer who handled many adoptions.

Steinberg told Michele that he would do his best to find a suitable couple for her baby and assured her that the child would have a good life, better than any she could ever hope to provide. This was important to Michele because even though she had chosen to relinquish her baby, she  wanted the child to have a comfortable life. When the baby was born, Joel Steinberg had Michele signed some documents. That was the last day Michele saw her baby alive.

But Steinberg simply took the baby home and kept her. No legal adoption was arranged. She grew up with Steinberg as her father and Hedda Nussbaum as her mother. Some law enforcement officials speculated that Steinberg avoided the usual adoption procedures because he wanted to bypass the legally mandated in-house visit after a child has been adopted. A legal adoption would also have required an inquiry into his domestic life – including an interview with Hedda Nussbaum. Meanwhile, Michele was told that a well-to-do attorney on Manhattan's Upper East Side had become the adoptive parent. She went on with her life, convinced that Lisa had a safe and wonderful future.

Lisa attended New York City Public School 41. Teachers remembered her well. She had a way with adults that did not go unnoticed. "She was the most wonderful, loving creature, who could talk to you like an adult, which was an extraordinary gift," said a family friend.

It is unclear when the abuse of Lisa began. Some tenants at 14 W. 10th Street claimed they called the police many times to report Steinberg's suspected abuse of Hedda. But the child abuse allegations seem not to have begun until about 1983 when one of Hedda's colleagues called a hot line to report suspected abuse of Lisa. Another tenant called the hot line because she felt that if Hedda was being beaten, Lisa was also in jeopardy. Suzanne Trazoff of the Human Resources Administration told a reporter that the complaints were investigated in 1984 – which included a visit to the Steinberg residence -- but no signs of child abuse were found.

Teachers at P.S. 41, where Lisa attended the first grade, did see a few bruises on her face. When Elliot Koreman, the school principal, asked about the injuries, Steinberg and Nussbaum said that Lisa was struck by her 16-month-old brother, Mitchell.  "Don't you think we've tortured ourselves asking if she exhibited anything in school?" Koreman later told reporters. "Things like this happen," he said, "We have no foolproof method of detecting them. We're doing the best we can." But inside her home, Lisa must have been suffering terribly.

Doctors and nurses at St. Vincent's were appalled when they examined Lisa on the morning of November 2, 1987. She had cuts on both of her arms, legs, abdomen, stomach and head. Her feet and ankles were covered with a crust of black dirt and grime. Lisa's long, once-beautiful hair was a twisted, matted mess and had not been washed for quite some time. Under her tangled mane, doctors discovered a severe, fresh bruise on her forehead. When they turned Lisa over on her belly, they found one large, unusual bruise near the center of her lower back. Her upper back was covered with both old and new bruises, red, black, and blue in color. Both calves had yellowish-brown marks, apparently from old injuries. She had bruising and trauma marks on her buttocks. How precisely she obtained these injuries remained unclear since Lisa never regained consciousness. Her brain was hemorrhaging and she was already near death.

Lisa Steinberg holding baby Mitchell

Lisa had been prone on the bathroom floor for hours, unattended, while Joel Steinberg, fully aware that she was injured, went out to meet friends. Hedda stayed home alone with Mitchell, the 18-month-old baby, and waited. Never did she lift up the telephone to call for an ambulance, a friend, a neighbor, or anyone else. "Joel said he would take care of her, he would get her up when he got back," Hedda later told the court through her tears, "and I didn't want to show disloyalty or distrust to him, so I didn't call."