Remembering Lisa, Killed 30 Years Ago By Her Adopted Father

I was a young assistant DA in New York City when news broke that a 6-year-old girl had died from brain injuries inflicted three days earlier by her adopted father–a practicing defense attorney in the courts around me. It was November 5, 1987. The child, Lisa Steinberg, lived with Joel Steinberg, his longtime partner, Hedda Nussbaum, and an adopted infant brother, in a Greenwich Village apartment in a brownstone Mark Twain once lived in, an area of the city I am in quite often. I remember the reports of what officers found when they responded to the 911 call Nussbaum placed on November 2, 1987 to report the comatose child. The call was too late to save Lisa. Had Steinberg or Nussbaum called when Lisa was first injured, doctors could have saved her life. Nussbaum hesitantly answered the door–her face…