Hedda Nausbaum and Joel Steinberg

A Dysfunctional Couple Who

Destroyed 2 Young Lives

by Lynn A. Granata

It was almost 29 years ago that an illegally adopted 6 year old girl was beaten to death. On November 2, 1987, police were summoned to a large Gothic style apartment located in New York City's stylish Greenwich Village.

The sight of Hedda Nausbaum (left) left it's mark on humanity, Joel Steinberg (right) made Hedda's appearance
an atrocity which took years in the making.  Photo courtesy of API (November 2, 1987).

 This place was just not any old place, but a place where story book legend Mark Twain lived.

At the exact same apartment, police knocked on the door at 6:30 am. The large oak doors slowly creaked open, behind it within the unveiled darkness an elderly woman answered it. The small hunched over dark- haired woman with hints of grey strands, appeared much older than her normal age.

She had old injuries healing over new injuries on her pain ridden contorted face. She was frail and emaciated. Behind her was the wafting wailing sound of a man's raspy voice hollering maniacally "Hedda, "she's stopped breathing!"

As law enforcement forced their way through the heavy oak doors and into the squalid apartment what they found was the most heart breaking scene ever.

Inside the apartment, was a disheveled couple wielding the limp, battered, bruised, and unconscious body of a small female child. In the next room, an 18 month old male child was found tethered to a playpen lying in dirt. He was rescued unharmed. And taken by police to Child Protective Custody.

The rescue crew quickly sprang into action and started giving the child, whose name is Lisa Steinberg CPR. The little girl was bruised and had overt signs of regular beatings showing on her pale skin. Old bruises healing over new ones donned her back, trunk, arms and legs.

Lisa was rushed to St.Vincent's Hospital. She had a large fist sized bruise over her right forehead. Upon further examination by medical professionals, she also had numerous other bumps and bruises about her head. She was unable to breathe on her own and was placed on a respirator.

It was later determined that she had a subdural hematoma exerting too much pressure on her brain. Lisa was technically declared brain dead and taken off life support and died 3 days later.

The police questioned the two unkempt mentally incoherent adults at the New York Police station. Upon further investigation, the police obtained enough evidence to arrest them both on aggravated felony assault and murder of a minor.

I will discuss this case in more depth in later blogs. The new blog is just to give you an introduction into the case and players involved for now. This is a very long and complex saga. And requires more than one posting. To be continued...

Kimberly Fry

                                    A Hometown Woman

                                 With Multiple Personalities

By Lynn A. Granata

     Back in October 2011, a 35 year old mother was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole, but not until 2034.She murdered her 8 year old daughter Camden Fry on a warm summer evening in 2009. Camden was killed by her own mother all because she refused to take a bath that night.

A beautiful Camden Fry

     But during her trial which took place in a Rhode Island Superior Courthouse room, Kimberly was emotional putting on her best courtroom drama act. Kimberly, behind crocodile tears, feigned how she was really the victim and not necessarily Camden. The burden of proof showed different results. The mountain of evidence presented to the jury. Her husband found his little daughter's limp unresponsive and pale body in her bed late that night when he returned home from a hockey game.

    Camden died from asphyxiation. Kimberly as presented in the room sat on her face, literally.It is not really known if Kimberly strangled her daughter by strangulation. By placing her hands around Camden's neck. Kimberly had a psychiatric evaluation at the time when Camden was found dead, because she attempted suicide by poisoning herself with the anti anxiety medication clonazepam.  

Kimberly Fry looking very much like a victim.

    During the trial Kimberly was like a real life Sybil, showing the entire community that she was deranged enough to malinger a multiple personality disorder. Kimberly came from a pathetic abusive background, with two abusive parents who abandoned her. Hopefully, she's regaining her foothold in a maximum security prison, she hopes to regain her sanity, so that by 2034, her release date; she will be long past menopause.

Clayton D. Lockett

Bad Seed or Bad Start?

By Lynn A. Granata

     Whenever a death penalty execution by our criminal justice system occurs the media goes on an immediate frenzy.

        On April 29, 2014 an angry young man, Clayton D. Lockett was executed by a botched lethal injection in an Oklahoma penitentiary.

        He started his life on the wrong foot. His mother abandoned him when he was three years old, and his father forced him into a life of crime and violence.

         In fact, both of his parents were drug addicted degenerates. At some point in his young life, his drug afflicted father, with which whom he lived with as a child remarried.

      Lockett never had any say in the matter just like with every other malevolent eventful turn of unfortunate circumstances. A wicked stepmother, so what difference does it make? Lockett may have been born bad, but what other way else can you say or rephrase this fact? You can also say he was born into a life where he never had a chance.

     Okay, but that's no excuse for the brutal rape, robbery, torture and murder of Stephanie Neiman, he committed back in 1999.

     What motivated him to do such evil? He was angry because Neiman represented everything in life that Lockett wanted, felt he should have had and hated her because of it. He was consumed by anger and malevolent jealously, a bad combination.

     Why was he ever born in the first place? He was unwanted. What was his biological mother thinking? She abused him and threw him away.

      What chance does anybody have in life when the cards are clearly stacked against you? No one around to teach this "boy" right from wrong.

     Maybe we ought to set more laws for parents. Parents who are unfit should not be allowed to bear children. But that would be a moot point to ponder. His mother was given free will. There's no reproduction law, aside from legalized abortion, that states that you can't have children.

      Again, free will is what God has given us. If his mother didn't understand the meaning of free will, she would never be able to teach the concept of it to her son.

      You can say anything you want about Clayton D. Lockett. He was evil, he was a monster, he got what he deserved, etc. Let the truth be told he just never had a chance, period.