The Monster is being set free
This pig should have been sentenced to death!! I am beyond furious!!!
Joel Steinberg To Be Released From Prison
Convicted Of Killing 6-Year-Old Lisa In 1987
Jun 26, 2004 9:11 am US/Eastern
NEW YORK (AP) The simple stone marker carries a heartbreaking message from a mother to the daughter she never knew.
'If tears could build a stairway, and memories a lane,' it reads, 'I'd walk right up to heaven and bring you home again.'
Beneath the sad epitaph lies a girl named Lisa, dead at age 6 after a vicious 1987 beating in a Greenwich Village apartment where violence was part of the daily routine.
On Wednesday, Lisa's killer — her adopted father — goes from prisoner to private citizen.
Joel Steinberg, now 63, will exit the Southport Correctional Facility with his public perception as a monster only reinforced by his repeated denials of any role in Lisa's death.
According to Steinberg, he shared a unique, loving relationship with the slain girl — an assertion that repulsed many and led to five rejections from the parole board.
'A lot of people are not happy with the fact he's getting out,' said Steinberg's civil attorney, Darnay Hoffman. 'But he has done the time.'
The case drew national attention, pushing societal hot buttons from adoption fraud to spousal abuse. But it centered particularly on child abuse, since there were warning signs before Lisa's death.
'The whole issue was higher on people's consciousness than it used to be,' said Dr. Kathryn Grimm, a New York-based children's advocate since 1974.
Child abuse hot lines sprang up nationwide, and a poll showed two out of three Americans felt child abuse cases needed more aggressive investigation.
As prescribed by state law, Steinberg will have served two-thirds of his maximum 25-year manslaughter sentence. Yet the passage of time has done little to ease the agony that he inflicted.
Steinberg's former lover, Hedda Nussbaum, recently announced she would flee New York rather than face him again. Initially his co-defendant, she became a key prosecution witness after detailing how Steinberg had beaten her unrecognizable.
Lisa's birth mother, Michelle Launders, wouldn't discuss Steinberg's release. But she won a 1987 court fight to block Steinberg from burying the child, and ordered his name deleted from Lisa's death certificate.
'Baby Girl Launders, also known as Lisa,' it simply reads.
The case defied many stereotypes about child abuse. This was a middle-class family, with a lawyer and a book editor raising two children in a historic brownstone where Mark Twain once resided.
This wasn't supposed to happen, but it did. 'The House of Terror,' read a Daily News headline.
At 6:40 a.m. on Nov. 2, 1987, police arrived at a dark and filthy West 10th Street apartment after Nussbaum called 911 to report her daughter had vomited after choking on food.
A naked, bruised Lisa was not breathing; her feet were black with dirt so thick it was later scraped off. Her adopted 17-month-old brother was tethered to a nearby playpen, surrounded by his own excrement and drinking spoiled milk.
Nussbaum had a split lip; doctors later found she had broken ribs, a broken nose and a fractured jaw, all inflicted by Steinberg. According to Nussbaum's later testimony, Steinberg had struck Lisa for staring at him.
With the mortally wounded child in the same apartment, Steinberg ignored her injuries and smoked cocaine, Nussbaum said.
Lisa died three days later.
The city, if not the nation, was stunned. More than 1,000 mourners, including the late Cardinal John O'Connor, visited her tiny casket; few had ever met the child, yet all felt compelled to embrace her in death.
Lisa's brother, Travis Smiegel, was returned to his birth mother. The teen will start college in the fall.
'Steinberg and Nussbaum are but a footnote in this story,' the Smiegel family said in a statement. 'Let them face the darkness, and may the light of God continue to shine on this boy.'
Steinberg was as docile behind bars as he was domineering while free, chalking up only a half-dozen disciplinary infractions. Despite his good record, the parole board extended his jail time by almost a decade.
Once free, Steinberg has offers of an apartment on Central Park West and a $250-a-week job with a local cable television show — not bad for an inmate with $104 currently in his prison account. Hoffman, his lawyer, offered both the job and the apartment.
So life goes on for Steinberg, who will have to make regular visits to a parole officer through October 2012. But for Lisa, there was no prom or graduation, no wedding day smile or walk down the aisle.
On May 14, 2004, Lisa would have turned 23.
(© 2004 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. )
Joel Steinberg To Be Released From Prison
Convicted Of Killing 6-Year-Old Lisa In 1987
Jun 26, 2004 9:11 am US/Eastern
NEW YORK (AP) The simple stone marker carries a heartbreaking message from a mother to the daughter she never knew.
'If tears could build a stairway, and memories a lane,' it reads, 'I'd walk right up to heaven and bring you home again.'
Beneath the sad epitaph lies a girl named Lisa, dead at age 6 after a vicious 1987 beating in a Greenwich Village apartment where violence was part of the daily routine.
On Wednesday, Lisa's killer — her adopted father — goes from prisoner to private citizen.
Joel Steinberg, now 63, will exit the Southport Correctional Facility with his public perception as a monster only reinforced by his repeated denials of any role in Lisa's death.
According to Steinberg, he shared a unique, loving relationship with the slain girl — an assertion that repulsed many and led to five rejections from the parole board.
'A lot of people are not happy with the fact he's getting out,' said Steinberg's civil attorney, Darnay Hoffman. 'But he has done the time.'
The case drew national attention, pushing societal hot buttons from adoption fraud to spousal abuse. But it centered particularly on child abuse, since there were warning signs before Lisa's death.
'The whole issue was higher on people's consciousness than it used to be,' said Dr. Kathryn Grimm, a New York-based children's advocate since 1974.
Child abuse hot lines sprang up nationwide, and a poll showed two out of three Americans felt child abuse cases needed more aggressive investigation.
As prescribed by state law, Steinberg will have served two-thirds of his maximum 25-year manslaughter sentence. Yet the passage of time has done little to ease the agony that he inflicted.
Steinberg's former lover, Hedda Nussbaum, recently announced she would flee New York rather than face him again. Initially his co-defendant, she became a key prosecution witness after detailing how Steinberg had beaten her unrecognizable.
Lisa's birth mother, Michelle Launders, wouldn't discuss Steinberg's release. But she won a 1987 court fight to block Steinberg from burying the child, and ordered his name deleted from Lisa's death certificate.
'Baby Girl Launders, also known as Lisa,' it simply reads.
The case defied many stereotypes about child abuse. This was a middle-class family, with a lawyer and a book editor raising two children in a historic brownstone where Mark Twain once resided.
This wasn't supposed to happen, but it did. 'The House of Terror,' read a Daily News headline.
At 6:40 a.m. on Nov. 2, 1987, police arrived at a dark and filthy West 10th Street apartment after Nussbaum called 911 to report her daughter had vomited after choking on food.
A naked, bruised Lisa was not breathing; her feet were black with dirt so thick it was later scraped off. Her adopted 17-month-old brother was tethered to a nearby playpen, surrounded by his own excrement and drinking spoiled milk.
Nussbaum had a split lip; doctors later found she had broken ribs, a broken nose and a fractured jaw, all inflicted by Steinberg. According to Nussbaum's later testimony, Steinberg had struck Lisa for staring at him.
With the mortally wounded child in the same apartment, Steinberg ignored her injuries and smoked cocaine, Nussbaum said.
Lisa died three days later.
The city, if not the nation, was stunned. More than 1,000 mourners, including the late Cardinal John O'Connor, visited her tiny casket; few had ever met the child, yet all felt compelled to embrace her in death.
Lisa's brother, Travis Smiegel, was returned to his birth mother. The teen will start college in the fall.
'Steinberg and Nussbaum are but a footnote in this story,' the Smiegel family said in a statement. 'Let them face the darkness, and may the light of God continue to shine on this boy.'
Steinberg was as docile behind bars as he was domineering while free, chalking up only a half-dozen disciplinary infractions. Despite his good record, the parole board extended his jail time by almost a decade.
Once free, Steinberg has offers of an apartment on Central Park West and a $250-a-week job with a local cable television show — not bad for an inmate with $104 currently in his prison account. Hoffman, his lawyer, offered both the job and the apartment.
So life goes on for Steinberg, who will have to make regular visits to a parole officer through October 2012. But for Lisa, there was no prom or graduation, no wedding day smile or walk down the aisle.
On May 14, 2004, Lisa would have turned 23.
(© 2004 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. )
