Big Broker Neighbor On Stein Assistant: 'She Had A Nice Smile'

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? My chickens!’ And I said, ‘Of course!’ … She said, ‘Oh my god, everything happens, I don’t understand it.'”

When Stein came down, she brought her housekeeper and her assistant, Natavia Lowery--the woman in custody this morning after implicating herself in Stein’s brutal murder. “She had a nice smile, she was an attractive black girl. She seemed very nice,” Ms. Miller said.

“She was in my apartment for an hour or more, when I think about it, I go: 'Oh my god, I had a murderer.'”