N.Y. Child Killer Who Personified Abuse Is Paroled

Convicted killer Joel Steinberg left prison Wednesday, focusing attention once again on a crime that shocked this city nearly 17 years ago and came to symbolize the problem of child abuse nationwide.

The 63-year-old former lawyer climbed into a white stretch limousine outside the Southport Correctional Facility in Pine City, N.Y., and drove off with a caravan of reporters and photographers in pursuit. Once in Manhattan, Steinberg switched vehicles and was taken to a halfway house where, looking anxious, he stumbled up the front steps.

On five occasions, a parole board had rejected Steinberg’s bid for early release, saying he had shown little or no remorse for beating his 6-year-old adopted daughter, Lisa, to death. But authorities were required to parole Steinberg after he had served two-thirds of his 25-year manslaughter sentence because he had displayed good behavior while incarcerated. Conditions of his parole include performing community service, attending drug counseling and anger management classes and observing a curfew.

Steinberg had no comment Wednesday, but Gov. George E. Pataki labeled his discharge “despicable.”

“Let him feel every New York eye burning straight through his rotten soul,” the New York Daily News said in a front-page editorial. “Joel Steinberg doesn’t like to be stared at. That rattles him. That’s why he broke apart a little girl with his bare hands.”

“It seems to me he could have done more time,” said Donald Florence, who lives near the red brick townhouse in Greenwich Village where Lisa was beaten.

On the morning of Nov. 2, 1987, police and ambulance attendants -- responding to a 911 call from Hedda Nussbaum, Steinberg’s live-in companion -- entered the apartment. They found Nussbaum, her face battered, and Steinberg carrying his daughter in his arms. She was unconscious, naked, filthy and badly bruised. An infant was lying on the floor, tethered to a playpen with a rope.

Lisa died of severe brain injuries three days later.

Steinberg was indicted on charges of second-degree murder, first-degree manslaughter and endangering the welfare of a child. Prosecutors said Nussbaum, who had entered a psychiatric hospital, was in no way responsible.

Nussbaum “was probably the most battered woman I have ever seen,” recalled Monica Drinane, who represented Steinberg’s adopted son in court proceedings and who now heads the Legal Aid Society’s human rights division. “You had no idea of who the person was,” Drinane said of Nussbaum, “and who was surviving inside this very battered physical existence.”

Nussbaum became the prosecution’s chief witness, recounting multiple beatings by Steinberg, including 10 black eyes, broken ribs and a ruptured spleen. She said that while Lisa lay unconscious on the bathroom floor, she and Steinberg had used cocaine; he told her he knocked Lisa down because Nussbaum and the two children were staring at him.

After deliberating for eight days, the jury found Steinberg guilty of first-degree manslaughter.

As his parole date approached, Nussbaum, 59, announced she would leave her job at a domestic violence center and move away from New York rather than face her former lover. Steinberg’s illegally adopted son, Travis Smigiel, has been raised by his birth mother and is scheduled to start college in the fall.

“The Steinberg case helped the whole system understand the connection between domestic violence and child abuse,” said James Purcell, executive director of the Council of Family and Child Caring Agencies. “It was a terrible milestone.”

But the child welfare system in New York City, Purcell said, “is a much better and stronger system today than when Lisa was killed,” citing lower case loads, better training of child services workers and an emphasis on violence prevention.

“I think there is a lot more time and attention paid to the placement of children in pre-adoptive homes and follow-up to make sure when they are adopted, where they are placed is suitable,” Drinane said.