Assistant goes on balloon in ex-punk administrator slaying

NEW YORK – The acknowledgment was affecting and videotaped. The complaining woman declared to a prosecutor how she fatally bludgeoned her bang-up — punk-rock avant-garde and celebrity absolute acreage agent Linda Stein — with a allotment of exercise equipment.

The suspect, Stein's claimed assistant, said she airtight afterwards Stein angered and accursed at her and blew marijuana smoke in her face.

"'Leave me alone. Leave me alone!'" Natavia Lowery said she recalled cerebration while clubbing Stein six times in the agent's Fifth Avenue apartment.

Lowery has back said her acknowledgment was apocryphal — a affirmation at the affection of the 2007 annihilation case as it active for trial. Jury alternative is accepted to alpha as anon as Monday.

After accident a bid to accumulate Lowery's statements from actuality acclimated at her trial, her attorneys appetite jurors to apprehend about the attitude surrounding apocryphal confessions, over prosecutors' objections. A adjudicator hasn't yet ruled.

Stein, 62, was a accoutrement in the jailbait arena that centered on the abrasive club CBGB in the 1970s, and co-managed the Ramones in their heyday. Her ex-husband, Seymour Stein, was the admiral of Sire Records, a ablution pad for such artists as Madonna and the Talking Heads. Elton John is asperse to one of her daughters.

She afterwards parlayed her bedrock roots into a high-flying career brokering apartments for Madonna, Sting, Billy Joel and added entertainers. Brassy and irrepressible, Stein told an accuser in 2005 that "the bedrock 'n' cycle business is balmy compared to the absolute acreage industry." And added, "I'm still rockin.'"

She was begin asleep in her $3 actor accommodation on Oct. 30, 2007, the victim of a blood-soaked assault that burst her skull.

Stein's absolute acreage close assassin Lowery in July of that year as her abettor — a job that ranged from accounting assignment to accomplishing Stein's beard and loading her marijuana pipe, Lowery afterwards told authorities.

She had afresh accelerating from academy with a business degree, and had founded a high-school apprentice mentoring affairs at her church, aegis attorneys accept said.

Prosecutors say a heavily accountable Lowery acclimated her admission to Stein's coffer annual advice to abduct added than $30,000 through a alternation of artificial checks and added tactics, application the money to pay apprentice loans and added bills.

Lowery dead her bang-up back Stein accomplished the theft, again acclimated the collapsed woman's ATM agenda to advice herself to $800 account later, prosecutors said.

"Natavia Lowery is a bandit and a barbarous analgesic who concluded her victim's activity to awning up the connected and abysmal abuse of trust," Manhattan Abettor District Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon wrote in cloister papers.

Lowery, now 28, told a altered adventure in her acknowledged confession.

After initially adage she knew annihilation about the killing — and again blaming it on a masked drifter who told her not to abode it — Lowery corrective a account of a foul-mouthed, calumniating bang-up who pushed her over the bend of self-control. She said her "mind went into abeyance mode" as she burst Stein in the arch and close with a board stick acclimated for addition exercises.

Defense attorneys accept acclaimed that Lowery fabricated those statements afterwards actuality questioned through the night for added than 12 hours — afterwards a lawyer, admitting badge knew her ancestors had assassin one.

"In its following of Natavia Lowery, the government conducted a anarchic and actionable investigation," aegis advocate John Christie wrote in cloister papers.

Prosecutors say Lowery fabricated it bright to badge she didn't appetite the advocate there. A adjudicator agreed, cardinal in April that her acknowledgment could be acclimated as evidence.

Lowery's attorneys now achievement to aphasiac its appulse with affidavit on badge claiming approach and the affidavit bodies sometimes accept to crimes they didn't accomplish — if the adjudicator allows the testimony.

Courts are breach on whether false-confession attitude passes acknowledged muster. Sometimes alike board in the aforementioned case disagree.

The adjudicator who presided over the aboriginal two trials of a man accused of murdering a Long Island bet beneficiary in 2004 barred a false-confession able from testifying, but a altered adjudicator accustomed it in a third trial. The defendant, Herve Jeannot, is apprehension a fourth balloon afterwards the antecedent affairs concluded in afraid juries and an chaotic conviction.

In the Lowery case, Ohio analyst and advocate Solomon Fulero has said he wouldn't abode her acknowledgment anon if acceptable to booty the stand. But at a November hearing, he said he would adverse "the allegory that cipher would acknowledge falsely to article that has real-life after-effects unless they were adolescent or brainless ... or crazy."

Prosecutors said in cloister abstracts that the anatomy of ability about apocryphal adventures "is scientifically adolescent and unreliable."

If convicted, Lowery faces 25 years to activity in prison.