Shirley Frondorf - Death of a Jewish American Princess: The True Story of a Victim on Trial

He will swallow up death for
ever, and the Lord God will wipe
away tears from all faces.

Isaiah 25:8

I went to Elana Steinbergs grave the other day.

I had finished the last chapter of the book, or at least I thought it was finished. It should have been a milestone event, the kind of event you celebrate, but I wasnt entirely happy. Melancholy would have been a better description of the way I felt, although it is hard to be melancholy on a brilliant blue day in Arizona. I wandered around the house moving stacks of notes and newspaper clippings, and the unease didnt go away. Suddenly, I felt that it was absolutely imperative for me to go to the cemetery, to Elanas grave. Id been there once before, so there was nothing new to see, but maybe the trip would drive away the melancholia.

Elanas mother, Edith Singer, went with me. I had brought flowers wrapped in that wet dark green tissue. I knew that you dont take cut flowers to a Jewish grave, but it was instinctive for me. We drove in my car out to Greenhaven without talking. This was unusual for both of us.

Arizona is not a good place for cemeteries. A tree has to struggle for survival in the desert sun. The few species that thrive here, like the acacia and paloverde, give little shade. Their leaves are narrow and spiky and not like real leaves, the kind that trees have in Ohio, because in the desert even the trees have to save precious water. The grass can be green in Arizona, and it is green in Greenhavena harsh artificial color and a coarse strange texture. There are no graceful hedges of forsythia or bridal wreath that make cemeteries in other climates so beautiful. Greenhaven is acually a desert wash. It is stark outside of the cemetery gate, sand and power poles. For a Midwesterner like Elana Steinberg it is a strange place to lie.

After I parked the car we walked to the Jewish section of the cemetery, marked off with a chain. The segregation is not some bit of anti-Semitism. Jews must be buried in consecrated ground, and their graves are always separated. In the middle of the section there is a large stone monument with an inscription:

B ENEATH THIS MEMORIAL

THE SACRED PARCHMENTS

RETURNING TO DUST THEIR

ETERNAL TRUTH HOVERS

ABOVE THE SOCIETY OF MAN

When I began to write this book about Elana, I didnt know what this meant; I didnt understand the reference to parchments in a graveyard. Im not Jewish, and I did not know that damaged Torah and prayer books were buried there. I had learned a lot these two years. Trying to be careful not to cover the carving on the stone, I laid my flowers on Elanas grave marker, flat on the ground like all the markers. It was done with Elanas maiden nameElana Joy Singer 19471981.

Ediths grief was instantaneous and primitive. The tears rolled down her pink-and-blond face; her sobs were uncontrollable. An older man and a woman in a blue dress who stood in the next roadway turned and stared at us. Ediths misery always surprised me, because it had been more than four years since her daughters marker had been dedicated. Though I knew Edith well by now, because we had talked together for two years, I was still amazed that she had so much pain. No one could ever doubt that the grief was genuine, but it was so fresh. I come from a family of cool and unemotional Dutch from Cincinnati. None of my relatives would dream of such outward mourning. For them the dead were buried with an expensive funeral in Spring Grove Cemetery and that was it for the most part, except for a hardheaded assessment of the estate that had been left behind. Ediths grief was so pure and primal. The intensity of her mourning resembled those funeral processions one sees on TV newscasts which show women dressed in black, following a coffin. It was not a sound you expect from a well-groomed Scottsdale grandmother dressed by Lillie Rubin.

I looked down at the flowers and the headstone and wondered what Elana would think about what I was doing. Would she approve? It is important to remember that Elana Steinberg, ne Singer, was first and foremost a traditional Jewish wife and mother. Jews have always believed that it is the role of the wife and mother to nurture, to raise the children and to keep alive the Jewish culture. Elana did that. She kept close ties with all of the relatives, she celebrated the holidays with food and gift-giving, she cared for her husband and children and her home with single-minded attention. By the standards of family life which have been so essential for Jewish survival, Elanas life was traditionally correct. What happened to her was not.

If Elana were able, I wondered if she would say, Leave it alonelet him live in peace. Youre only making it worse, and whats more, youre embarrassing me! Or perhaps she would be like her mother and father, seething with frustration and bitterness at the failure of the justice system to punish her killer or even acknowledge that her murder was a crime. I tried to think like Elana, but of course I could not. She left no writings behind. She did not know that her life and feelings would ever be of special interest to a whole community who could never forget her death.

Even now after two years of talking to people who knew Elana, of interviewing those who were her friends and those who were her enemies, and of tracing the history of Elanas vibrant immigrant forebears, I do not have an idea of how she would react. I do know that Jewish women have complex concepts of themselves. Added to the choices and decisions that all women have there is the responsibility of carrying on the cultural heritage as Jewish women have always done. In Judaism, marriage is tight and loyal, and it has always been so. Elana Steinberg was no exception; she had proved that over the years. She was a loyal wife to the very end.

Of course, there was something that Elana could never have imagined. Not only was she stabbed to death in her bedroom on McCormick Ranch, crying out to her children for help, but she was to be killed a second time in a Phoenix courtroom with the blessing of the American judicial system. Elana Steinberg could never have dreamed that being her own version of a wife and mother was fault enough for her to be judged and found guilty of causing her own murder. And certainly no one could have imagined that this particular brilliant strategy would be conceived and carried out by a team of men who were Jewish themselves.

People in Phoenix still shift uneasily at the mention of the Steinberg murder trial. With the exception of Steven Steinbergs attorneys and psychiatrists, the verdict made everyone uncomfortable. Perhaps it was because no one spoke for Elana Steinberg in that courtroom. No one objected when she was transformed from being the victim of a particularly brutal homicide to being the real defendant. But after it was over, most people felt a little ashamed.