IT CUT through Fay Rosenbaum’s heart like a circular saw.
“It was March 31, 1998,” Fay sadly recalled.
“Lemrick Nelson turned to me in court and said: ‘I’m really sorry about the loss of your son, but I didn’t do it.’ My blood boiled.”
What a difference five years make in one of the most screwed up cases of the law that I’ve ever seen.
“It’s not the right thing for a lady to say, but I hope he rots in hell. Lock him up and throw away the key,” Fay added. “Now 12 years later, Nelson says he did kill my son, Yankel.”
Today, Fay will give a victim’s impact statement in Brooklyn Federal Court in the sentencing of Lemrick Nelson Jr., who admitted to killing Australian rabbinical student Yankel Rosenbaum during the Crown Heights riot of October 1991.
Nelson could be out in 10-months time after serving only 10 years for a killing that brought the city to a trembling cliff.
“In my statement I’ll address what people are calling a need for closure,” Fay said. “What closure? There’ll be no closure for our family. There will be no closure for justice 100 years down the track.
“Yes, I’m living, but for the past 12 years, I haven’t lived life like I used to.”
Fay recalled a court scene in which Nelson’s mother, Valerie Evans, approached her and said: “I lost my son too.”
“At first I thought she was the mother of a murder victim, and then I found who she was. I was furious. My son is six feet under and the way things look, her son will be free next year,” said Fay.
Norman Rosenbaum, a lawyer, and Yankel’s brother, on his hundred and third trip to the United States from Australia since his brother was murdered, accompanied his elderly parents to be in court today during the victim’s impact statement. He has lobbied for Nelson to get life for murder, but adds, quietly:
“Lemrick Nelson has used and abused the system to a shocking degree. The system wants to give him 10 years for cold- blooded murder. Thereby, the system has aided and abetted this use and abuse.
I’m sure my mother, as a mother of a vibrant young man, will make the point abundantly clear.”