Personal Assistant's Murder Trial Heats Up

,by Cathy Scott

Two worlds collided when a quiet 26-year-old woman named Natavia Lowery went to work for the powerful, outspoken 62-year-old Linda Stein, a property broker to the rich and famous.

For years, the New York City media referred to Linda as the “realtor to the stars.” Despite her toughness, people were drawn to her. Stein, a self-made woman who swore like a sailor and smoked pot like a hippie, could command a room equally with her wit and razor-sharp sarcasm. She’d jumped head first into the music industry in the 1970s when she co-managed the legendary punk-rock band The Ramones. She had turned herself into a successful, fiercely independent businesswoman with big-name clients.

Natavia’s working-class upbringing contrasted starkly with Linda’s upper-class life. Natavia (photo right) was an only child, the daughter of a housekeeper and maintenance man, and had been raised in the Grant projects on Amsterdam Avenue in Harlem. After her father’s death, her mother eventually remarried, and the family moved to Brooklyn. Natavia excelled both academically and in competitive sports. In high school, she was a star runner on the girls' track team. Upon graduation from high school, she enrolled at North Carolina State University, where she was a member of the modeling troupe Black Finesse. She dropped out after just one semester to finish a business degree at Hunter College in Manhattan. Natavia’s classmates remember her as being soft-spoken but also sticking up for herself when she needed to.

The morning of October 30, 2007, started out like any other. Natavia showed up for work at her boss’s Upper East Side, Fifth Avenue apartment. Linda spent the morning in her bedroom doing yoga exercises while Natavia printed e-mails from Linda’s personal computer. But as the day progressed, something went terribly wrong. By the end of the day, Linda was discovered dead and the police and paramedics were investigating the crime scene inside her spotless apartment, preparing to move her body to the morgue. Six days later, Linda was buried. Four days after that, Natavia was under arrest, charged with the murder of her boss.

According to a confession made by Natavia and released by the Manhattan district attorney’s office -- which was challenged by Natavia’s lawyers but ultimately ruled admissible in court -- Linda walked to the desk in her living room, where Natavia was working on Linda’s e-mails, and asked what was taking so long. Linda started blowing marijuana smoke in Natavia’s face and berating her at the same time.

“Get the fucking e-mails! How can you be so fucking slow?” Linda reportedly hollered. If that’s what actually happened that midday, perhaps Stein’s anger was born out of frustration: she could no longer open her own messages because her right hand and arm were numb from the after-effects of chemotherapy she'd endured fighting breast cancer. Linda apparently smoked marijuana to ease the lingering pain. In addition, Linda was on prescription medication that caused mood swings. Verbally, Linda was a fighter; physically, she was not in shape to defend herself against a physical attack.

Whatever it was that sparked the tirade that day, according to Natavia Lowery’s reported account to police, Linda then waved either a walking or yoga stick at Lowery as she continued berating her assistant. Then, at about 12.30 p.m., Linda returned to Natavia's work spot and offered, as a way of making peace, to buy her assistant lunch.

“I’ve got my own money in a savings account. I don’t need you to buy me lunch,” said an indignant Natavia, who repeated the alleged conversation to detectives. “Black people don’t have any money,” Linda purportedly responded. “C’mon, save your money. I’ll buy you lunch.”

Currently being tried in a Manhattan criminal courtroom, the case against Natavia Lowery is not looking good for the former personal assistant. The scenario prosecutors have laid out for the jury is that Linda, who sold homes to Madonna, Elton John, and Angelina Jolie, confronted Natavia, and, in response, Natavia killed her. But Natavia’s team of lawyers said their client may be a thief, but she’s no killer.

This week, lead prosecutor Joan Illuzzi-Orbon presented a taped phone message from Natavia to Linda. Natavia and Linda’s daughter, Mandy Stein, were the last to see Stein alive. Each was captured on security videotape leaving the Central Park West apartment building, with Natavia the last to leave.

The message from Natavia was left hours after Linda was killed. Prosecutors contend that Natavia called in the message to create an alibi.

Instead, according to evidence presented in court, Natavia slipped up. In the message left on Linda Stein’s phone answering machine, Natavia asked Linda to give her a call before 5:30 p.m. that day.

"Hey, Linda, it's Natavia," the 28-year-old said in her message, which the prosecutor described as a “breezy" message. "I just wanted to let you know that I'm leaving work at 5:30. … If you get this message before 5:30, you can just call me. If not, talk to you later."

The problem with that statement was that message was left just after 6 p.m. -- proof, the prosecutor told the jury, that it was done to cover Natavia’s tracks.

Testimony provided by Verizon and T-Mobile phone experts show the call originating at 6:09 p.m. from Brooklyn, where Lowery lived, and not from Linda’s apartment.

It’s evidence like this -- what at any other time would be considered a small detail -- that gets people convicted.

But time will tell. The trial is expected to last another four to six weeks.

Photos courtesy of the New York Daily News.

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Betty Broderick, Convicted Double Murderer, Eligible for Parole

UPDATE: Elisabeth "Betty" Broderick has been denied parole for her conviction of fatally shooting her husband and his new wife. During the Jan. 21 hearing, which was heard two months earlier than originally scheduled, Broderick told the California parole board, "I allowed the voices in my head to completely take over. I took the lives of two wonderful people who were loved by many." After board members asked for details of the shooting in which Broderick shot the couple using a .38 caliber handgun, she told them, "Linda [the new wife] came at me and the gun went off." After the no-parole ruling, Richard Sachs, a San Diego prosecutor, told CNN that Broderick showed no remorse. The former socialite won't be eligible for parole again for another 15 years.

by Cathy Scott

It’s a new year and a new opportunity for La Jolla socialite Betty Broderick, who in 1989 murdered her ex-husband and his new wife by creeping into the couple’s bedroom before dawn and shooting them as they lay sleeping. Incarcerated since 1991, Betty is eligible for parole this March -- the first time since her second-degree murder conviction and sentence of 32 years to life in a California prison.

In March 1993, I wrote an op-ed piece about the case for the San Diego Union-Tribune. The column, below, is still relevant today:

A final chapter in the Broderick case

March 17, 1993

The never-ending saga of former La Jolla socialite Elisabeth "Betty" Broderick has again surfaced, but this time it's her children who are having the last word. And it is about time.

Three of the four Broderick children are taking their mother to court (Betty was served papers last week in prison). This is the same woman who murdered their father, garnering national attention and, at times, public sympathy after sneaking into her former husband's Marston Hills home and fatally shooting him and his wife in their bedroom. The nation watched the sickening tale unfold on television with Court TV's cable coverage of the trial, two made-for-TV movies, Oprah Winfrey interviews of two of the Broderick children and, on another occasion, Betty, not to mention newspaper accounts of the case. During Oprah's interview last November with Betty Broderick, the divorcée continued to weave the histrionic tale and sob story of a woman scorned. But this time the public knew better.

After all, with the advent of Court TV [now Tru TV], we were able to view her courtroom outbursts firsthand as the second trial aired in its entirety. Meanwhile, all has been quiet on the prison front where Broderick has been incarcerated since her murder conviction in 1991.

But now it's time for the Broderick children to have their day in court. After watching the film The Prince of Tides, I drew some obvious parallels between the fictional Wingo clan and the tragically real Broderick family.

In this motion picture about Tom Wingo and his twin sister trying to deal as adults with the effects of their highly dysfunctional childhoods, actor Nick Nolte says, "I don't know when my parents began their war against each other. But I do know the only prisoners they took were their children." The Broderick children, too, were sadly taken hostage by their parents' hatred for each other and the loathing their mother nurtured over the years for their father.

Besides the two shooting victims, attorney Dan Broderick and Linda Kolkena Broderick, the Broderick children have been horribly victimized. And like the Wingo children, they were dealt a dirty hand to sort out. At the end of The Prince of Tides, Nolte's character says, "I've learned to love my parents and all their hysterical flaws, and that there is no crime too bad that a family can't forgive."

There is, however, a crime the Broderick children can't ever forget, let alone forgive, and that's the cold-blooded murder of their father at the hands of their mother. Kim, the oldest of the Broderick children, who testified against her mother during the second trial, said it best when she told Oprah, "We've been gypped out of a nice life." Betty Broderick, in her most recent interview with Oprah, welled up with tears at the mere mention of her offspring, but shed no tears for Dan, and spoke of him in the present tense.

She referred to her children -- Kim, Lee, Dan and Rhett -- three of whom are grown, by their childhood nicknames of "Lee-Lee" and "Danny."

It's obvious that Broderick still won't let the memories of her self-described once "perfect life" die. Although Broderick seems to believe she is the sole victim in this tragic scenario, her children must live with the loss of their father and stepmother, and deal, at least on a minimal level, with their mother whose selfishness and blind greed forever took him away from them. But now the tables have turned, and Broderick is at her children's mercy. It seems only fitting that her ultimate punishment is at the hands of her offspring who, as she confessed to Oprah, hadn't once visited her in prison.

The reason, she explained, was that it's "a long, dangerous drive" to the Central Women's Facility in Chowchilla where she is serving a 32-year sentence. Despite the title of the CBS movie, "Her Final Fury: Betty Broderick, The Last Chapter," the last chapter in this sad saga appears to be the Broderick children's civil suit.

They will have the last word. Three of her four children (Kim, Dan and Rhett) are asking for more than $20 million dollars each in damages in a wrongful death suit against her. Broderick's attorney, Jack Earley, has stated that Broderick (who quitclaimed her La Jolla condo to her boyfriend) has no assets.

But with her penchant for publicity, she no doubt has a book or two in the making. Deputy District Attorney Kerry Wells, who successfully prosecuted Broderick, couldn't have said it better when she was quoted in the Nov. 2, 1992, issue of People magazine as saying, "I've had my fill of Elisabeth Broderick.

“She was not a battered woman.

“She was getting $16,000 a month alimony.

“She had a million-dollar La Jolla house, a car, a boyfriend.

“I see abused women every day with broken bones and smashed faces.

“Give me a break."

Amen.

Photos courtesy of The Associated Press.

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Forensic Psychology and Dangerous Women

by Larry A. Morris, Ph.D.

When I was approached by my agent, Claire Gerus, to write a book about women who commit violent crimes, I spent a long time considering her proposal. I had concerns. Sure I had been working as a clinical and forensic psychologist for over three decades and had lots of experience with women who murder, maim, and molest. But most people think of men, not women, when they think of violent criminals.

Even though a couple of my previous books, Males at Risks: The Other Side of Child Sexual Abuse (1989, with co-authors Bolton and MacEachron) and The Heterosexual Male: Lust in His Loins, Sin in His Soul? (1997), explored issues of interpersonal violence from a male’s perspective, the controversial finding that males can be victims of child sexual abuse and other violence perpetrated by females was also examined.

Over the years I received both praise and condemnation for suggesting that girls and women sexually abuse children, especially boys, at a rate much higher than “official” reporting statistics documented. The voices of condemnation were the loudest and most persistent.

Even now, with the media full of stories about attractive female teachers molesting grade-school boys, I am dismayed by the number of voices who try to minimize the rape of male children by female teachers by calling it something else—an affair. Even some of my male friends and colleagues joined the chorus of gender-biased sexual expectations with a refrain straight from the male socialization hymnbook: “Oh Lord! Where in the hell were these women when I was in grade school?”

If I decided to write a book about mothers, sisters, and daughters who assault, commit murder, and sexually abuse children, I knew I would be sticking my neck out again, even further this time, by exposing the darkest of the dark side of femininity. I knew I again would be faced with proponents of the pervasive cultural stereotype that women are victims, not perpetrators, of interpersonal violence. The voices of dissent would be back. In force. And, as my thirty years of experience as a clinical and forensic psychologist taught me, some women can be very dangerous.

One of my colleagues, a victim of a female stalker, suggested I should pack “heat” like she does, if I decided to write the book and make public appearances. “Don’t leave home without it,” she quipped. “And wear your body armor,” she added.

As a forensic psychologist, I have evaluated hundreds of violent criminals and testified in court numerous times. The most frequent cases involve questions about the defendant’s competency to stand trial and/or issues of insanity. Competency generally refers to an accused’s ability to understand legal proceedings and to assist legal counsel in his or her own defense. While most people think insanity is a mental-health term, it is a legal term in the courtroom and, in most states, is defined by an individual’s ability to know the difference between right and wrong at the time he or she committed the crime.

For example, a murderous mother could suffer from a serious mental illness, but if she knew what she was doing when she killed her children was wrong, she is not insane according to the law.

Because the interface between law and psychology in insanity defense cases is often like a bad marriage, forensic mental health experts often squabble about their differing opinions.

It is also common for forensic mental-health experts to evaluate defendants in order to assess their risk for committing additional violent crimes and the defendant’s chances of responding favorably to psychotherapeutic intervention.

As a clinical and forensic psychologist I have been able to draw from both areas of expertise to address these very important questions.

In spite of society’s tendency to view most female and male criminal behavior differently, I attempt to handle all forensic cases with the same level of objectivity and dedication as any criminal case, regardless of gender. I ask the referral source the same questions about the purpose of the evaluation, review countless documents related to the case, conduct incisive interviews with the defendant, and consult to the referral source about my evaluation findings and opinion about the case. I also interview others related to the case, if appropriate; administer psychological tests, if helpful; write a report, if requested; and testify in court, if summoned.

Some forensic cases require a fairly quick evaluation and a brief interaction with the court. Many require countless hours of work and lengthy adversarial encounters. Case files can fill a warehouse. Interviewing defendants and others associated with a case can go on for hours. Court testimony can stretch into days. Even though forensic work can be grueling, I always look forward to the next interesting and challenging cases.

As a clinical psychologist, I specialized in treating victims and perpetrators of interpersonal violence, especially child sexual abuse. My clinical work helps me understand both sides of the tragedy of trauma. Seeing the terrible damage done by childhood abuse, I am not surprised when I find a history of trauma in my forensic cases. And, yes, more women are victims than men.

As I continued to consider my agent’s book proposal, I thought about presenting cases of girls and women who murdered and/or committed sexual crimes with an eye toward understanding and prevention. I opened my forensic files of dangerous women to see what I could find. Their stories were compelling. I decided to write the book. We settled on a title: Dangerous Women: Why Mothers, Daughters, and Sisters Become Stalkers, Molesters, and Murderers. It has been released to the public. Should I strap on a new set of body armor? . . .


Larry A. Morris, Ph.D. is a clinical and forensic psychologist who has been in private practice for more than thirty years. He is the author of four books including The Male Heterosexual, plus book chapters in A New Psychology of Men and Adult Survivors of Sexual Abuse. Dr. Morris lives in Tucson, Arizona.

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Very Desperate Housewives Marathon Tonight

7 EPISODES: 7 WOMEN WHO WANTED IT ALL

New York online marketing manager Michelle Sandoval is working with Oxygen Media to get the word out about "Snapped," a true-crime series that profiles women who kill. Michelle contacted Women in Crime Ink and asked us to give the show some ink. The following material is reproduced from the Web site:

Each year, approximately 16,000 people are murdered in the United States. According to the FBI, 7% of the killers are female. Who are these women and what drives them to kill?

Oxygen's hit true-crime series "Snapped" profiles the fascinating cases of women accused of murder. Did they really do it? And, if they did, why? Whether the motivation was revenge against a cheating husband, the promise of a hefty insurance payoff or putting an end to years of abuse, the reasons are as varied as the women themselves. From socialites to secretaries, female killers share one thing in common: at some point, they all snapped.

"Snapped" is produced in conjunction with Jupiter Entertainment, the creators of City Confidential and Dominick Dunne's "Power, Privilege & Justice." Narrated by veteran news reporter Sharon Martin, each episode of "Snapped" chronicles the life of a woman who has been charged with murder. These shocking but true stories turn common assumptions about crime and criminals upside down, and prove that even the most unlikely suspects can be capable of murder.

Tonight at 7:00 EDT, "Snapped" kicks off its "Very Desperate Housewives Marathon" with the story of Joyce Cohen, a pampered trophy wife who hired three thugs to kill her multi-millionaire husband in a fake home invasion robbery. Here are tonight's other desperate housewives:

Manuela Garcia - The Garcias seemed like an average American family, that is, until Manuela attacked her husband with an axe. The murder triggered an investigation that would expose a life of unhappiness, abuse and desperation.

Phyllis Nelson - Angry over her estranged husband's affair, Phyllis Nelson decided to confront him at his new apartment. They had a heated argument that ended abruptly when Dr. Nelson "ran into" her knife.

Joan Shannon - When Joan Shannon's soldier husband was shot to death by her teenaged daughter, it didn't take long before authorities suspected that mom may have played a role in the demise of her well-insured spouse.

Dora Cisneros - When Dora Cisneros' daughter was dumped by her high school sweetheart, Dora immediately consulted with her fortune-teller. And when the boy was later found dead, police would learn that it wasn't a conjured spirit that took his life. It was an overzealous mom and an elaborate murder plot.

Susan Polk - During an acrimonious divorce, Susan Polk and her husband Felix both threatened to kill each other, but only one of them actually followed through.

Darlene Gentry - Marriage and three kids didn't stop Darlene Gentry from her favorite pursuits: drinking, drugs, and dancing. But when money troubles threatend to spoil her fun, she decided her husband was worth more to her dead than alive.

Watch the preview and bonus clips here.

After tonight's marathon, "Snapped" returns to its regular programming at 10:00 EDT Sundays. Real Women. Real Stories. Real Murder.

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