Editor's Letter

Mute Hostage

When the New York police delivered sixyear-old Lisa Steinberg to St. Vincent's Hospital at 6:56 on the morning of November 2, she was comatose. It seemed to be a classic case of neglect and cruelty, particularly since the little girl's mother was herself badly beaten. Then other facts began to emerge, and the classic case, which is now in the courts, became a mystery.

The apparent mother and father had wanted a child enough to adopt Lisa illegally and with subterfuges, and had then adopted another, Lisa's sixteen-month-old "brother," Mitchell, who was physically undamaged. The "father," Joel Steinberg, was a rich lawyer. The "mother," Hedda Nussbaum, was a former children's book editor. They lived on one of the most beautiful blocks in Greenwich Village, but their wellsituated apartment was a pigsty in which the children slept on the couch. How could it happen? And how could Lisa's obvious neglect go on for so long? Joyce Johnson, in her reconstruction of the tragedy, reports that on more than a dozen occasions neighbors told the authorities of their fears for Lisa— and nothing was done.

This is one of the reasons why Vanity Fair took the case as a subject for exploration. It was just because Lisa's parents were from the privileged middle class that the authorities took no notice of the complaints. So why did this assumption prove so cruelly incorrect? Novelist and editor Joyce Johnson immersed herself in the case, haunted by an image of Lisa Steinberg's last photograph, taken in the middle of a first-grade Halloween party. It was, says Johnson, the image of "a mute hostage," and it stayed with her as she explored why Nussbaum, a self-possessed and intelligent woman of good looks and a promising career, could fall so far into a world of darkness and pain. And, more horrifyingly, relinquish a child to such a world. On page 116, Johnson traces the disintegration of Hedda, through friends, co-workers, and teachers.

Joel Steinberg took the initiative from his cell on Rikers Island, where he is being held without bail, to talk to Maury Terry and put forward his version of what happened on that terrible night (page 120). Terry is the author of The Ultimate Evil, which revealed for the first time the cult involvement in the Son of Sam murders, and Steinberg had seen him on television. In Terry's report on Steinberg's state of mind, one thing in particular strikes a chilling note. In the accused man's highschool yearbook, says Terry, his schoolmates listed how people would be remembered—for Steinberg they joked: Joel's alibis.

Editor in chief