Every year in the U.S. more than 1,000 children die from physical abuse, but Lisa Steinberg is the one whose name is stamped in the public mind. Though her short, unhappy life of six years was spent in a middle-class Manhattan household, it was in circumstances of stunning callousness and squalor. Joel Steinberg, 47, the disbarred attorney who illegally adopted her, spent days at a time in a cocaine stupor. His live-in companion Hedda Nussbaum, 46, was a former children's book editor with a boxer's dented profile, the result of years of beatings by Steinberg. And while only Steinberg stood trial...
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