Child Abuse Murder Trial Opens in N.Y.

Lisa Steinberg, whose death last year became a symbol of child abuse in America, was viciously beaten by the only father she ever knew, a prosecutor charged this morning as the murder trial of Joel Steinberg began.

Lisa died last Nov. 5 when she was removed from a respirator, but “she was really killed days earlier,” Assistant Dist. Atty. Peter Casolaro told the jury. “Steinberg beat Lisa so severely that he inflicted those injuries which caused her death.”

Casolaro told the panel that “graphic and grotesque” evidence and testimony will prove that Steinberg murdered the child. Six-year-old Lisa was found unconscious in the Steinberg apartment early Nov. 2, 1987, and died of her injuries three days later.

Steinberg, a disbarred lawyer who took the child illegally at birth from an unwed Long Island teen-ager, is charged with second-degree murder.

Defense attorney Ira London said the evidence will not support the prosecution’s claim.

“It will not be proven in this case that Lisa Steinberg was murdered nor will it be proven that Lisa was a battered child,” London said in a brief opening in which he also attacked Hedda Nussbaum, Steinberg’s live-in companion, an anticipated key prosecution witness.