A week before she died a violent death at the hands of her sadistic stepfather, a battered and forlorn Nixzmary Brown confided, "I wish my mommy and daddy were dead." Perry Robinson will never forget those words — or any of the other unsettling encounters he had with the solitary, sad-faced 7-year-old in the park across from her family's apartment in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. The retired paralegal used to see Nixzmary in Tompkins Park while he played with his nieces and nephews — and he "was not surprised" when her lifeless, battered body was found naked on the...