Should of burnt this POS at the stake.
Posted on 07/01/2004 10:10:39 AM PDT by FeliciaCat
July 1, 2004 -- Sadistic child-slayer Joel Steinberg sauntered out of an upstate prison in style yesterday, sliding into a chauffeured stretch limo that broke speed limits and wove wildly through traffic as it raced back to New York City with a mass of media in hot pursuit.
When the worn and graying Steinberg, 63, arrived in Manhattan yesterday afternoon, he immediately was taken to the West Harlem headquarters of the Fortune Society, a prisoner-rehabilitation group, where he is expected to stay as he is counseled about re-entry into society after serving nearly 17 years for fatally beating his illegally adopted 6-year-old daughter, Lisa.
Greeting Steinberg were two cardboard posters a neighbor hung on a parking-sign pole. "A Baby Killer Lives Here," read one. "Rest in Peace, Poor Lisa," read the other.
"Joel Steinberg killed a baby and almost killed a woman," longtime area resident Lazanus Charles, 52 — father of a 10-year-old son — shouted as he hung the signs. "Shame on you guys," he yelled to Fortune Society staffers and clients who were outside.
"He's a bad man," said Eddie Rodriguez, 52, who works next door to the Fortune Society's castle-like offices on Riverside Drive. "People who live here are scared and nervous about this guy . . . I hope he doesn't stay long."
Steinberg was convicted in 1989 of manslaughter in Lisa's death, which occurred after the ex-lawyer pummeled her in the squalid Greenwich Village apartment where they lived with his brutalized lover, Hedda Nussbaum, and another illegally adopted child, 17-month-old Travis Smiegel.
Steinberg, who apparently became enraged because Lisa had stared at him, smoked crack cocaine just after the Nov. 2, 1987, attack from which the girl died three days later.
Although Steinberg was sentenced to up to 25 years in prison, he went free on parole yesterday morning, as the law allows, after serving two-thirds of his sentence.
"The fact that a despicable child-killer like Joel Steinberg is being released from prison before serving his full sentence is not only wrong — it's an outrage," said Gov. Pataki, who added that recent legal reforms will prevent such early releases in the future.
Steinberg's status as one of the most reviled criminals in the nation ensured that he'd draw a swarm of reporters and camera crews to the Southport Correctional Facility in sleepy Elmira, N.Y., to record the fiend's release from prison.
A white, stretch limousine carrying his lawyer, Darnay Hoffman, and others pulled up to the brick prison's gates just before 8 a.m. At 8:45 a.m., a calm Steinberg, looking grayer but otherwise much the same as when he was convicted of Lisa's death, and four armed Parole Division employees walked from the prison to the limo, pushing a handcart carrying six large bags of his belongings, which they stuffed into the trunk.
Photographers tried to block the limo from leaving, grabbing at the locked car doors, but the driver managed to speed away with Steinberg, Hoffman and an armed parole officer inside.
"It was absolutely a madhouse," said James Edstrom, a spokesman for Hoffman. "I think they [the Parole Division] were concerned for his safety, and they were very concerned about the press."
Media cars kept pace with the limo and two parole cars as they sped toward New York City, 240 miles away. The limo was routinely hitting 85 mph, and nearly causing accidents as it tried to shake its pursuers.
Once in the city, the limo wove a circuitous route through The Bronx, cutting off cars and running red lights, before stopping at 145th Street in Manhattan, where a bewildered-looking Steinberg — clad in jeans, a white dress shirt, a windbreaker and baseball cap — and his bags were hustled into a parole officer's car. That car then raced to the Fortune Society, where Steinberg stumbled as he was ushered into the front door at just after 1:15 p.m.
He was expected to stay at the Fortune Society last night in a room shared by up to six other ex-cons. He could spend several weeks there. Hoffman has said he has offered Steinberg a free apartment near Central Park, and a $250-per-week internship with a cable public-access show called "New York Confidential."
The Fortune Society's executive director, JoAnne Page, said clients such as Steinberg typically spend their first day meeting their roommates, reviewing their parole conditions, and meeting with a counselor who would "set short-term and long-term goals, put together a plan and map out the rest of the week."
Page said every client at the nonprofit group has a 9 p.m. curfew — which jibes with Steinberg's parole conditions — and must undergo an eye-scan each day to test for drug use.
"He's just like any other client to us. We treat him like anyone else," said Page of Steinberg.
Some 30 neighbors protested outside the society last night, some carrying votive candles and shouting, "Baby killer out of here!" in English and Spanish.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
What made this case "infamous" was that Steinberg wife didn't do anything and helped cover it up - but she got off with the first winning case of "battered wife syndrome"
Its sickening that this dirt bag is out of jail at all and that Hedda never served a day. And this is Justice???
Perhaps he won't. I wonder if there are any civic-minded mafiosi left who have a sense of honor and justice.
I wonder if some outraged citizen would get more than 16 years from the wizards in the NYS court system for presenting him with a "service to youth award" cast in the finest lead.
Someone should send flyers to cancer clinics offering a free funeral and a cash award for doing the deed in a cretive way.
OK, so I need to repent. But so does Monster Joey......
Here in Texas, he would have gotten a sentence of life, in all likelihood, the needle. In N.Y., a killer of a 9 year old gets out of prison in 17 years. IMHO, it's N.Y. , not Texas, that's barbaric and uncivilized. Evidently, children's lives mean very little there.
In NYC they televised portions of home video of Hedda Nussbaum around the time she had first met Steinberg.
She was a beautiful, coherent woman - not the hard-to-look-at wreck she is today.
Twelve years of Steinberg later she was a shattered wreck of a person - it was clear from comparing the before and after that her nose must have been broken on several occasions, that she had accumulated scars and that she was not all there.
She is guilty of not helping Lisa and she should be in prison too.
But she was definitely a broken person.
Should of burnt this POS at the stake.
Only in New York.
Hopefully Steinberg will meet up with a self-appointed avenger in a dark alley in Manhattan...and soon.
Yes, I realize that I am quite evil, but I couldn't resist...
Nope. All about money, Madam, All about money.As the old saying goes, "America has the best criminal justice system money can buy."
evil is as evil does. The resemblence is kinda weird!!!!
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