Parents of Girl, 6, Charged With Murder After She Dies

Parents of Girl, 6, Charged With Murder After She Dies

By ROBERT D. MCFADDEN

LEAD: Brain dead from a fierce beating, 6-year-old Elizabeth Steinberg was taken off life-support systems and died yesterday at St. Vincent's Hospital. Her adoptive parents, a Greenwich Village lawyer and a former writer and book editor, were charged with murder.

Brain dead from a fierce beating, 6-year-old Elizabeth Steinberg was taken off life-support systems and died yesterday at St. Vincent's Hospital. Her adoptive parents, a Greenwich Village lawyer and a former writer and book editor, were charged with murder.

An immediate autopsy by the New York City Medical Examiner's office showed that Elizabeth had died of a brain hemorrhage and suffered extensive cuts and bruises of the head, back, legs and arms. The death was listed as a homicide.

The Manhattan District Attorney began presenting evidence to a grand jury against the parents, Joel B. Steinberg, 46, and Hedda Nussbaum, 45. The grand jury was expected to return an indictment today against Mr. Steinberg. But action in the case against Ms. Nussbaum was not expected before next week.

Mr. Steinberg was being held without bail, and Ms. Nussbaum was remanded in an arraignment at a Queens hospital where she was being treated for broken bones, a battered face and other injuries believed to have been sustained in repeated beatings by Mr. Steinberg. Cuts on Steinberg's Knuckles

A lawyer for Ms. Nussbaum, who wept in a wheelchair as the death of her daughter was described at the arraignment, said the mother would waive immunity and testify before the grand jury when she was able, perhaps next week. There was no indication Mr. Steinberg would testify.

The knuckles of both of Mr. Steinberg's hands were cut, and it was he, the authorities said, who apparently inflicted the child's fatal injuries last Monday. The child was found battered and unconscious at the couple's filthy apartment at 14 West 10th Street, a building off Fifth Avenue where Mark Twain once lived. Police said drugs also were found in the apartment.

A 16-month-old adopted boy, Mitchell, was found tethered to a chair and wallowing in excrement, but he was otherwise unharmed after Ms. Nussbaum had summoned the police to obtain help for her daughter. Ms. Nussbaum told the police that the girl was choking on food and had recently ''fallen a lot on roller skates.'' The boy has been placed in a foster home. #67,750 Abuse Reports in '86 As death came to the girl known as Lisa, officials and ordinary people raised a host of troubling questions in a case that has stunned a city where 67,750 children were reported abused last year and at least 42 of them - and perhaps many more - died of abuse. Among the conundrums were these:

* How did it happen that a girl who seemed, to teachers and playmates, happy, healthy and bright only a year ago, was suddenly dead?

* What had happened to scores of calls neighbors said they made to the police and welfare authorities?

* Were Lisa and her infant brother legally adopted?

* To what extent does violence lurk behind the facades of middle-class life in New York? And what can be done about it?

City officials and neighbors said the abuse of Lisa was apparently a recent development in a family long caught in a turmoil of drug use and other problems. Ms. Nussbaum, it appeared, had been beaten over many years, they said, in a pattern of violence that may have engulfed Lisa only recently, when she reached an age at which she could protest. Hospital Turns Off Respirator

The girl, who never recovered from the coma in which she was found, was pronounced dead at St. Vincent's Hospital at 8:40 A.M. yesterday, minutes after hospital officials had turned off a respirator sustaining her heart and lungs.

The hospital, through a spokeswoman, Barbara Franzese, issued a brief statement shortly before noon saying, ''Life-support systems were disconnected earlier this morning as legal issues were resolved.'' Ms. Franzese said there would be no other comment from the hospital.

But state and city officials said medical authorities at St. Vincent's, where Lisa was declared legally dead Wednesday at 4:30 P.M. after the cessation of all her brain functions, decided to end her life on the basis of guidelines recently issued by the State Health Department. Brain Death as Legal Standard

The guidelines, recommended by a panel named by Governor Cuomo and based on a 1984 decision of the State Court of Appeals, establish brain death as the legal standard in the state and free hospitals from all obligations to continue treating anyone with an irreversible loss of brain functions.

''Under the state regulations, the hospital has no obligation to obtain consent from family or legal guardians prior to discontinuing treatment for an individual who is brain dead,'' said Tracy Miller, executive director of the New York Task Force on Life and the Law, which recommended the guidelines. She said 39 states and the District of Columbia now defined death as the cessation of brain functions.

Hours after the respirator sustaining the girl's heart and lungs had been turned off, the Manhattan District Attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, raised the charges against Mr. Steinberg and Ms. Nussbaum from assault and attempted murder to second-degree homicide. Two counts of endangering the welfare of children remained unchanged.

An assistant district attorney began presenting evidence in the case to a grand jury. Besides the death of Lisa and the abuse of her brother, the charges were expected to cover drugs found in the apartment and other issues, including any irregularities found in the still-cloudy circumstances of their adoptions.

Bridget Brennan, speaking for the district attorney, said Mr. Steinberg and Ms. Nussbaum were accused of ''acting in concert'' in causing Lisa's death and of having ''failed in their duty'' to provide for their children's ''physical, mental and nutritional needs.''

The complaint said the police saw ''contusions on knuckles of both hands of Joel Steinberg,'' and it listed the extensive injuries suffered by the girl. Even if just one parent had inflicted the injuries, officials said, the other would also be guilty under New York law, for failing to act to prevent the abuse.

Mr. Steinberg, a graduate of Fordham University and the New York University Law School has practiced criminal and civil law in the city since 1970. He was arraigned earlier in the week, pleaded not guilty and was being held without bail.

Ms. Nussbaum, a writer and editor of children's books who had been employed at Random House from 1974 to 1982 and who has lived with Mr. Steinberg for 17 years, was arraigned in a ward at the City Hospital Center at Elmhurst, Queens, where she was being treated for nine broken ribs, a broken jaw, a broken nose and numerous bruises. Sobbing and Glaring

In a 20-minute proceeding before Judge Randall T. Eng of Criminal Court, Ms. Nussbaum was ordered held without bail for a hearing next Thursday. Her face pale and puffy with bruises and a prominent cut on her nose, Ms. Nussbaum was seated in a wheelchair near her parents, William and Emma Nussbaum of Teaneck, N.J. Ms. Nussbaum said nothing, except to whisper occasionally to her lawyer, Barry Scheck.

But she sobbed silently when a clerk read details of Lisa's death from a complaint, she glared at the court officer when he read from a police account that her apartment smelled of urine, and she shook her head negatively when he declared that all the food in the apartment had spoiled.

Ms. Brennan of the district attorney's office declined to comment on reports that Ms. Nussbaum had been asked to testify against Mr. Steinberg in exchange for lesser charges against her. But there were indications that this was so.

Both Mr. Steinberg and Ms. Nussbaum had been represented by Robert I. Kalina until yesterday, when Mr. Kalina withdrew from Ms. Nussbaum's defense. Mr. Scheck, who said he had been hired by Ms. Nussbaum's family to represent her, served notice that Ms. Nussbaum would waive immunity and testify before the grand jury.

Although neighbors had said they had called the police many times in the last 10 years to report Ms. Nussbaum was being beaten, the police said yesterday that a check of computer records showed there had been just one call in the last year for police aid at their address.

That call, on Oct. 6, was made anonymously. Two officers were first denied admittance by Mr. Steinberg, were then allowed in, and found Ms. Nussbaum with face bruises and other injuries. She refused medical aid and declined to press charges.

City officials said that the Office of Special Services for Children had investigated two reports of mistreatment of Elizabeth, but that the records of the first, in 1983, had been purged and the second, in 1984, had been found to be unsubstantiated.