Tension, Accusations at Linda Stein Bail Hearing

Dec. 13, 2007— -- The murder of the "realtor to the stars" Linda Stein has taken a bizarre twist with the family of the alleged killer interrupting a court hearing to accuse a sobbing Mandy Stein of killing her own mother.

The confrontation erupted Wednesday during a bail hearing for Natavia Lowery, a personal assistant who is charged with beating Stein to death in her Fifth Avenue apartment on Oct. 30.

During the hearing, Mandy Stein and her sister Samantha cried as they heard the prosecutor describe their mother's injuries which included a broken neck and crushed vertebrae.

Lowery's mother, Lotti Lowery-Walsh, lashed out at Mandy Stein during the hearing and accused her of being the real killer, according to the New York Daily News.

"She knows she killed her mother, that's why she's crying," Lowery-Walsh claimed.

The confrontation spilled outside the courtroom with Lowery approaching Mandy Stein again, shouting, "You know you did it."

Natavia Lowery, 26, has confessed to killing Stein, but her lawyer Ronald Kuby accused the prosecutor of "hyperventilating" about his client and said Lowery was coerced into confessing.

Kuby said Lowery's incriminating statements were taken illegally -- outside the presence of a lawyer police knew she had. He called the videotape of her statements "the hostage video" because, he said, it was taken after she had been isolated and browbeaten for nearly 13 hours.

"Given the circumstances under which the statements were obtained, their admissibility is highly unlikely," Kuby's court papers say.

But Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon there should be no bail because Lowery's admission to Stein's killing "was extremely specific and includes things that could have been known only by someone who was there."

She also said Lowery admitted using the dead woman's automatic teller machine cards to withdraw $800, a fact police did not know until Lowery told them. Police later found surveillance video of Lowery at an ATM, Illuzzi-Orbon said.