The woman once accused of helping Joel Steinberg kill his adopted daughter has pulled off the ultimate disappearing act. Hedda Nussbaum, now 75, changed her name and moved out of New York around the time Steinberg was released from prison; someone else now lives at her last known address in Hackensack, NJ.
What did Joel Steinberg do?
Joel Steinberg (born May 25, 1941) is a disbarred New York City criminal defense attorney who attracted international media attention when he was accused of rape and murder and was convicted of manslaughter, in the November 1, 1987, beating and subsequent death of a six-year-old girl, Elizabeth ("Lisa"), whom he and ...
What happened to Nussbaum?
Hedda Nussbaum (born August 8, 1942) is an American woman who was a caregiver of a six-year-old girl who died of physical abuse in 1987.
How much time did Joel Steinberg serve?
In 2004, Joel Steinberg was released from prison after serving two-thirds of his 25-year sentence. Remarkably, he showed little remorse.
What happened in the Lisa Steinberg case?
Unable to convict Steinberg on the more serious charge of second-degree murder, the jury convicted him of the second most serious charge, first-degree manslaughter. The judge then sentenced him to the maximum penalty then available for that charge — 8 1/3 to 25 years in prison.
Where does Joel Steinberg live now?
Today, Steinberg is living the quiet life of an aging loner in Harlem, hitting up strangers for cigarettes and Wi-Fi connections as he ekes out a living as a disbarred lawyer.
Books
Crime
I knew that name. Nussbaum shot to national infamy in 1987 when she was charged, along with her live-in partner, Joel Steinberg, in the murder of their illegally adopted daughter, Lisa, age 6. On a fall night in 1987, Lisa was found unconscious in her familys Greenwich Village home, the result of a severe blow to the head. Her father, Steinberg, cl...
People was not the only publication to take the easy route of vilifying Nussbaum. In a December 1988 Washington Post column, headlined When Weakness Becomes an Alibi, Richard Cohen led with the question, Why was Hedda Nussbaum given a walk? Cohen goes on to assert that it cannot be said that she was not complicitous. For some portion of the public, time has not abat…
I was in junior high in those years, a cheerleader and student-council representative living in a nice house in a Chicago suburba life that from all appearances had nothing to do with the depravity of the Steinberg-Nussbaum case. And yet it riveted me. Heddas bruised and battered face was everywherein the papers and news programs, and plastered on magazine covers. I was only 12 …
An international expert on psychological trauma, psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk (who, as it happens, was recently fired from the treatment center he founded after allegations of bullying, allegations hes denied), was among the doctors who provided expert testimony at the Steinberg trial, explaining how the brain, in the face of ongoing psychological and physical torture, excrete…
The worst thing that happened during my childhood happened in June 1984. I was 9, and Id landed the lead in the annual fourth-grade play, which would take place on the last day of school. A couple of days before the play, my father flew into a rage. Maybe my mother undercooked the chicken, or maybe hed had a bad day at work. I dont remember the genesis of his rage on that p…
The Steinberg trial dragged on for three months. I wished I wasnt thinking about Hedda. I wanted to think about a boy named Adam and whether he would ask me to go with him to my schools winter revue. The live trial footage was broadcast while I was at school, but I caught snippets of it on the nightly news, on the car radio, in the newspaper. The specter of a Jewish father killing his …
In 2004, Joel Steinberg was released from prison after serving two-thirds of his 25-year sentence. Remarkably, he showed little remorse. In an interview with New York magazine soon after his release, Steinberg told a reporter, Of course Im sorry my daughters dead. But the medical reports showed no present or historical fractures or wounds. That means no history of abuse. Got it? Ins…
Part of that record was the memoir Nussbaum self-published in 2005. Surviving Intimate Terrorism details Nussbaums life with Steinberg from their first meeting through the trial and its aftermath. Reading about the early years of their relationship in 1970s New York City offers a startling glimpse of happier timessinging together in the car on the way to a friends house, goin…
Speaking of work, Nussbaums book could have used a good editor. In its current form, the book has an almost childlike tone, the writing littered with exclamation marks, ALL CAPS, and 1950s lingo. (Of the night she and Steinberg met, she writes, Yes, I believed someday my Prince WOULD come. Could this man with the dark curly hair, thick mustache and fire eyes be the one?) Neverth…
My mother did not leave my father that night the police came to our house. She did not leave him the following night or on any nights that followed. She did begin the process of filing for divorce, but once my fathers family heard about it, they descended into our lives and coaxed my mother into staying. Hell change, they promised. Youll see. Everything will be OK. But things were not O…