The Murder Of Lisa Steinberg
Reading has always been one of my favorite things to do. I learned how to read when I was 4 and from then on, I would read anything I could get my hands on. Every day before school I remember sitting at the table eating breakfast and reading the back of the cereal box or milk carton. When I got a little older I started reading the newspaper during breakfast and that’s how I learned about the case that started my fascination with true crime.
That case was the murder of Lisa Steinberg in 1987. I was just 10 years old but I couldn’t believe what I was reading and it sparked a lifelong interest deep inside of me. Criminal defense attorney Joel Steinberg, 46 years old, lived in a Greenwich Village, NYC apartment with his common-law wife, his partner of over a decade, Hedda Nussbaum who was 45 years old. Hedda Nussbaum was a children’s book editor at one time but left her career behind because of what was happening behind closed doors.
The building that they lived in, 14 West 10th Street, was the same building that Mark Twain once lived in. They had illegally adopted 2 children; a 6 year old girl name Lisa and a 16 month old boy named Mitchell. This highly educated, seemingly upper-class couple with the adorable children was hiding a nasty secret that the world would soon find out about.
On November 2nd,1987, Hedda Nussbaum called 911 and reported that her daughter Lisa had choked on her food and vomited. She also told the 911 dispatcher that Lisa had been falling a lot lately on her roller skates. The falling down story was told because at the time Lisa had several bruises on her body.
When first responders got to the apartment Lisa was unconscious. The police found 16 month old Mitchell, who was chained to his crib and laying in urine and feces, but otherwise unharmed. The apartment was disgusting and dirty; the family was living in squalor. There was $25,000 cash found in the apartment along with a lot of cocaine and other drugs. There were also blood stains found all throughout the apartment and the kitchen sink was somehow ripped off the wall.
Hedda showed signs that she had been beaten. Joel Steinberg and Hedda Nussbaum were both arrested on charges of child abuse on November 2nd and Lisa died in the hospital on November 4th. While Hedda Nussbaum started out as a co-defendant, it was later decided that the years of abuse that she suffered made her incompetent to help when Lisa was being abused. She became a witness and her version of what happened to Lisa is devastating and sickening.
According to Nussbaum, on November 1st, Joel was going out for dinner and partying with friends and Lisa wanted to go with him. He didn’t want to bring her with him and he ended up hitting her in the head with a rubber headed hammer. Nussbaum said that Lisa was already unconscious when Steinberg left the apartment, but instead of calling 911 then, she sat in the filthy apartment for several hours with baby Mitchell and Lisa who was fatally injured. She claimed that she was waiting for Steinberg to come home because she believed that he would be able to wake Lisa.
When he finally got home the couple still didn’t call 911. Instead, they decided to freebase cocaine (heating the cocaine and inhaling the vapors) so that they could “relate better”. Relate better? I don’t even know how what the fuck that means or how getting high would help them relate to anything but I digress. On November 2nd, Nussbaum would finally call 911 with the choking and falling down lies.
Lisa was only 6 years old. Her teachers would later say that she came to school with bruises and missing chunks of her hair. When asked about it, Lisa would say that her little brother Mitchell had hit her. Through all of the abuse Lisa was a smart friendly little girl. None of the teachers ever filed a report about Lisa being abused even though they believed she was.
Hedda Nussbaum was sent to a psychiatric hospital and Steinberg was charged with second-degree murder and first-degree manslaughter. It became known that during the course of their relationship, Nussbaum had suffered years of abuse, nine broken ribs, her jaw had been broken, and her nose had been broken. In exchange for her testimony against Steinberg, Hedda Nussbaum was not prosecuted at all for Lisa’s death.
Joel Steinberg was convicted by a jury of the lesser charge of first-degree manslaughter and sentenced by a judge to the maximum sentence at the time; 8 and 1/3 to 25 years in prison. Steinberg went before the parole board twice and he was denied parole both times. He always refused to express any remorse for killing Lisa, which is probably why he was denied parole those 2 times, but under New York State’s “good time” law, Joel Steinberg was paroled on June 30th, 2004.
When he was paroled, Hedda Nussbaum vowed to leave New York State because she was so terrified of Steinberg. As of 2017 she was living in an unknown state under an unknown name. As of 2017, Joel Steinberg was living in Harlem, New York City and the disbarred, disgraced lawyer is 80 years old as of today.
I was finally able to get my hands on the book that was written on the case a few years after it happened. It’s called What Lisa Knew* by Joyce Johnson. I read it many years ago and I am in the process of re-reading it now. I know that as my memory is refreshed on all of the details of the case, I’ll have more information to share with you to get even deeper into what really happened on the night that Lisa Steinberg was abused and neglected by her “parents” for the last time. There’s so much more to this case and I definitely want to share more about it, including how some laws in NY were changed after Lisa’s death. I feel like this case has been forgotten after so many years and I want more people to know about Lisa and how she touched the world.
Until then, check out our brand new merch on our website Mad Ginger Entertainment, buy a ticket to attend our Virtual Cocktails & Criminals Immersive True Crime Event that’s happening on May 29, 2021 and go back to where we started it all, with our Gypsy Rose Blanchard series on Youtube.
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Originally published at http://madgingerentertainment.com.
