Linda Stein

Last May, Linda Stein sat in her living room and told The Observer about her one grandchild: She said her own daughter had "crawled out of her crib when she was two years old and found Iggy Pop rolling a joint on the living-room floor with Paul Simon and Elton John sitting there. So for my daughter to be wrapped up in a white picket fence is the most extraordinary thing."

A few months later, Stein was found in that 18th-floor co-op bludgeoned to death.

According to a New York magazine item today, the broker's daughter, Samantha Stein Wells, has written a children's book to help console her daughter Dora after the death.  read more »

Samantha Stein-Wells, the daughter of Manhattan real estate broker Linda Stein, who was murdered in her Fifth Avenue apartment last November, is about to turn 35. To celebrate the milestone, she is throwing a birthday party at Marquee, the Chelsea nightclub, tonight.

The invitation Ms. Stein-Wells sent to her friends after the jump.

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Elton John and his partner David Furnish were across the world from each other last night, with Mr. Furnish in Australia rehearsing for his role in the musical Billy Elliot while Mr. John found himself at a party held at the new Chopard flagship store at 63rd and Madison to celebrate its opening.

The 60-year-old Mr. John was only one of a list of celebrities to bathe in the fuchsia glow of colored floodlamps pointed at the store for the event but he looked the most at home in the strangeness of it.

How is life with David since they became domestic partners in 2005, a reporter asked?

“I don’t think it makes any difference, because we’ve been together for 13 years, and now we’ve been together for 14 years," he said. But! "And it feels so much better, to be honest.”

He said he talks to the 42-year-old Mr. Furnish on the phone 10 or 12 times a day; they're planning to spend the holiday season in Venice before going on safari in Africa, "which we always do."

When The Daily Transom caught up to him we wanted to ask him about the murder of his good friend Linda Stein, the famous real-estate broker who was found bludgeoned to death in her Fifth Avenue apartment and who used to buy Mr. John's art for him at auction to keep him from spending too big on shoes and coats.

“I’m not here to talk about that," he said. "I mean, I find it…It would be inappropriate for me to say something. I’ll say something when the time is right.”

Brooklynite Natavia Lowery, assistant to 62-year-old star real-estate broker Linda Stein, is held without bail on charges she beat Stein to death after a confrontation in her boss' Fifth Avenue apartment. Ms. Lowery, 26, had been her assistant for four months.

The medical examiner “says she died of multiple skull fractures, and so we’re going to charge that the death occurred because the defendant hit her six or seven times in the head with a hard object," Barbara Thompson, director of communications for the District Attorney’s office, told The Observer Friday.  read more »

According to Police Commissioner Ray Kelly’s press conference just now, Natavia Lowery confessed to killing 62-year-old broker to the stars, Linda Stein. In her confession, he said, Ms. Lowery told police that on the afternoon of the Tuesday she was murdered, Stein had been yelling at her 26-year-old assistant.  read more »

Natavia Lowery, the 26-year-old assistant to the late Linda Stein, will be charged later this afternoon with second degree murder.

“The ME”--medical examiner--“says she died of multiple skull fractures, and so we’re going to charge that the death occurred because the defendant hit her six or seven times in the head with a hard ob  read more »

On Yom Kippur, Linda Stein was in her apartment roasting chickens for her elderly father. "Unknown to her,” neighbor Jerry Miller told The Observer, “I think her maid had stored a basket in the broiler. She put her chickens in the oven, turned it on, of course, and all of a sudden she had a fire.”

So Stein rushed down to see Ms. Miller, who happens to be a broker for the chic Sothby’s International Realty--Stein’s old firm. “She said, ‘Jerry, can I bring my food down?  read more »

According to news reports this morning, Brooklynite Natavia Lowery, star broker Linda Stein's personal assistant, and the last to speak with her before the murder, is in custody.

An NYPD spokesman said charges are still pending, but that Ms. Lowery "made statements implicating herself" in Stein's death.  read more »

The outlandish and very powerful attorney Ed Hayes, who inspired the character Tommy Killian in Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities, is the perfect match for the late Linda Stein (who inspired the realtor in the movie Wall Street).  read more »

Redefined real estate; can I imagine who would kill Linda? I guess so.  read more »

At home in punk and posh, murdered broker never missed chance to be brash.  read more »

There’s a rumor going around the high-end brokerage community today that Linda Stein’s ex-assistant Raoul Garcia Bernal is in custody. Mr.  read more »

Linda Stein, the quintessential star real estate broker, would have been elated to see her overfilled service today at Riverside Memorial on West 76th Street.

“She’s up there with The Ramones, reveling in the publicity,” eulogized Danny Fields, who co-managed that glorious punk band with Stein in the ‘70’s. Mr. Fields arrived late with Joey Ramone’s brother Mickey Leigh, and wasn’t let into the overfilled service until just before his speech.  read more »

The reports this morning on the investigation into mega-broker Linda Stein's death are like bad pulp fiction: For starters, The Daily News says cops are looking for pot dealers who delivered to Stein's apartment: "All of them dressed well and some delivered weed to her flat in wooden boxes inlaid with ivory, pals said."

And the murder weapon, according to that paper, was a hammer.

Then there are the reportedly spurned men, like Stein's ex-lover Francisco Arena (a contractor), and Raoul Garcia Bernal, a "handsome Romeo type" known as The Cuban. He used to work with Stein through Prudential Douglas Elliman, but they fell out over a sale.

Meanwhile, Newsday says police took DNA and clothing fibers from the nine workers who had painted the 16th-floor terrace red.

Despite all that, the NYPD has named no suspects, and hasn't yet made any arrests.

Real estate broker Linda Stein was found Tuesday night bludgeoned in her 18th-floor apartment at 965 Fifth Avenue. She was 62.

Nearly all news reports of the murder called Stein a “broker to the stars,” which misses the point. It’s not that Stein represented celebrities; it’s that she was the star herself: a hard-charging, wine-drinking, enormously magnetic persona. She was the first and essential luminary New York agent.

“Brokers really never marketed themselves, they just didn’t,” said Dottie Herman, the CEO of Prudential Douglas Elliman, where Stein worked. “It was only about the firm.”

Stein famously sold two apartments to Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley, which they combined, then helped sell the duplex to Sting once they divorced—and was listing the apartment for Sting and his wife when she died.

Even after battles with breast cancer, Stein emanated rock star sheer.

“She was shocking, she was over the top, and she was bawdy. It was as if Sophie Tucker and Auntie Mame had a child,” said her friend Steven Gaines, the author of The Sky’s The Limit: Passion and Property in Manhattan. “Out of the 35 years I knew her, I would say she wouldn’t talk to me for half. And that was a good thing, because I needed the years she wasn’t talking to me to recover from the years she was! I loved her, and I can’t imagine any circumstances of any son of a bitch hitting that five-foot woman over the head.”  read more »

When Manhattan mega-brokers are found bludgeoned in their posh apartments, scary stories follow. But despite a report this morning that the late Linda Stein had broken up with a "Latin lover-type last year"--a man that then "would show up uninvited at her beach house"--the NYPD told The Observer this morning that there are no suspects in the homicide investigation.

In early May of this year, The Observer's Max Abelson sat down with Linda Stein to talk about her two careers--the first as a music manager for the likes of The Ramones and her second as a highly successful broker to stars like Sting and Billy Joel. Stein was found murdered on Tuesday night in her Fifth Avenue apartment.

Some excerpts from the May interview are below. The complete interview can be read here.  read more »

Linda Stein, the original celebrity real-estate broker, was found by her daughters bludgeoned to death Tuesday night in her Fifth Avenue apartment.

Ms. Stein, who sat down for an interview with The Observer in May, became a broker after her breakup with Seymour Stein of Sire Records. Before that, she had been a fixture on the downtown music scene, helping to form the careers of New York artists like The Ramones and Madonna. She was also the lifelong friend of Elton John, who issued the following statement on hearing of her death: “I’m absolutely shocked and upset. She’s been a friend for over 37 years and will be greatly missed. She did so much for breast cancer and was a huge supporter of my AIDS foundation.”

Here's The New York Times:

Ms. Stein’s body was found face down in the living room in a pool of blood, the police said. She was wearing a sweatshirt with a hood, which was pulled over her head. Investigators at first believed the bleeding could have resulted from a fall, but when the hood was pulled back, a severe skull injury was exposed. Yesterday, the medical examiner’s office ruled the death a homicide.

Ms. Stein had many tumultuous relationships in her life, but investigators have not focused on any particular people, and did not comment on possible motives, a law enforcement official said. Investigators said they thought Ms. Stein was seen alive earlier on Tuesday, and they were trying to determine who was with her later that day.

UPDATE: The Observer's May interview with Stein can be found here.

UPDATE: An update on the police investigation can be found here.