Shayna Jacobs
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT — A music industry bigwig credited with discovering the Ramones and Madonna testified in court Thursday about a conversation he had with the woman accused of murdering his ex-wife and best friend, Linda Stein, just hours after the slay.
"I asked her where Linda was and I was told she was out running," Seymour Stein testified at the trial of Stein's accused killer and personal assistant, Natavia Lowery.
Seymour, 67, said he spoke with Linda about two hours before she was bludgeoned to death in her Fifth Avenue apartment.
After Linda's death, which prosecutors said occurred between about noon and 1 p.m. on Oct. 30, 2007, Seymour tried to reach her again on her cell phone but Lowery, 28, answered instead and told him Linda had gone to the park, a lie prosecutors believe was part of an elaborate alibi she conjured to mask the brutal crime.
Lowery is accused of killing her boss after stealing about $30,000 from her.
Lowery told several people that day that Stein was out for a run in Central Park.
The next Seymour heard of Linda was that night when he received a call from his "panicked" daughter, Mandy, who discovered her mother lying face-down and incapacitated in her living room.
"I jumped in a taxi and went over to Linda's apartment on Fifth Avenue," Seymour said.
A real estate colleague of Linda's also took the stand Thursday. She told jurors Lowery told her something strange the week of the murder.
When the agent, Louise Stocker, asked Lowery how her job was going, "She answered, in a determined voice, 'We're going to put an end to this,'" Stocker testified.
Stocker also sent an anonymous tip to Crime Stoppers about Lowery after Stein's murder because of the suspicious comment.
An American Express representative is expected to testify Friday about a $150,000 transfer Lowery made from Stein's retirement fund on the day of the murder.
According to testimony Thursday, Lowery also transferred about $10,000 to her own bank accounts, which she later used to pay her first defense attorney when she was arrested as a murder suspect on Nov. 9, 2007.
