If you think you have the assistant from hell, you’ve never met Natavia Lowery, who was convicted yesterday for murdering her boss Linda Stein in 2007 by bludgeoning her to death. She was also convicted of stealing tens of thousands of dollars from Stein, who was a celebrity real estate agent and former manager of The Ramones.
Linda Stein was found murdered in a gruesome scene at her Upper East Side Apartment in October 30 2007, and ten days later Natavia Lowery confessed to the murder, saying that Stein berated her and blew marijuana smoke in her face, which provoked her to grab the yoga stick Stein was brandishing and beat her with it. This taped confession had several details that didn’t add up, including the fact that Stein had no marijuana in her system at the time. Lowery later recanted the confession, but the prosecution used it as key to their case despite any factual errors.
Something else was going on with Lowery and Stein that Lowery failed to mention in her confession: she was running up huge bills on Stein’s credit cards totaling about $30,000 and hid what she’d done for her boss by putting a note on the mailbox asking for the mail to not be delivered. According to a court brief, the day she was murdered Linda Stein had found out about her assistant’s spending fancies and confronted her with the charges, which led to her death. The prosecution argued that Lowery used the marijuana-smoke story to lead the prosecution away from her true motives for blugeoning her boss.
Here’s the note Lowery put on the mailbox to conceal her credit card splurges:
It turned out that Natavia used Stein’s credit cards to score entry to events so she could meet celebrities she was obsessed with, like when she used Stein’s account to donate $4000 to The Boys and Girls club so she could get tickets to American Gangster and meet Denzel Washington. Nevermind the fact that Linda Stein herself knew anybody worth knowing, and probably could have gotten her some free connections to the celebrities she craved to see.
Lowery was convicted of second-degree murder and stealing charges. The 28-year-old faces 25 years to life in prison when she goes in for sentencing Marsh 22, 2010.
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Photo: Linda Stein in 2004, Katy Winn/Getty Images
