Broker to the stars Linda Stein appeared hard at work up until the time she was murdered. Stein, 62, met with her boss Ronald Tardanico, director of sales at Prudential Douglas Elliman’s 980 Madison Avenue office, the day before she died to discuss the deals she was working on.
“It was just business as usual. She was in very good spirits,” Tardanico said.
Stein’s dramatic death — by blunt impact injuries to the head and neck in her apartment — on October 30 stunned her family, colleagues at Elliman, where she worked off and on since the early 1990s, and the general real estate community.
“It’s an enormous shock and given the circumstances [of her death], it’s an even bigger shock,” said Steven James, president of Elliman’s Manhattan brokerage division.
Stein’s 32-year-old daughter, Mandy, found her at around 11 p.m. in a pool of blood in her living room at 965 Fifth Avenue, between 77th and 78th streets, investigators said.
Long-time friend and author Steven Gaines, who dedicated a chapter in his book “The Sky’s the Limit” to Stein, responded to the news: “I was shocked. I can’t understand why anyone would hurt Linda Stein in that way.”
He added: “She was always tempestuous and had business disagreements, but no more than a lot of other brokers I could name. Real estate is a bloody business, but that’s meant figuratively, not literally.”
Stein made a name for herself among the celebrity set, closing real estate deals for Sting, Billy Joel, Michael Douglas and Steven Spielberg.
“She had a very high-profile network of friends,” said James.
Before her real estate career began, she helped manage the punk rock band the Ramones, and to sign them on to her former husband’s record label, the legendary Sire Records. She and her husband of nine years, Seymour Stein, had two daughters, Mandy, a music documentary maker, and Samantha Stein-Wells.
Stein-Wells, 34, followed in her mother’s footsteps, by becoming an Elliman broker. But after about a year or two in the business, she got pregnant, with Dora, now 3, and eventually decided to stay with her at home.
“Real estate wasn’t my calling,” Stein-Wells said. “I didn’t have it in me, to be honest with you. The ups and downs of the industry, the deals on, the deals off — that wasn’t who I am. But she could really handle it. She was really tough and dedicated.”
Stein had a passion for real estate and music but was also “a devoted mother and grandmother,” Stein-Wells said. “My mother called me every morning and said, ‘How’s my big baby, and how’s my little baby?’ She would always say, [Dora’s] the first thing she thought about every morning.”
Stein had twice battled cancer but the disease was in remission at the time of her death.
“She was a hero to many people,” Stein-Wells said. “She was the person people called when they got diagnosed with breast cancer. She was not only moral and emotional support … she helped people get the best doctors, and she gave many years and much time giving to the [Breast Cancer Research] Foundation.”
Stein’s funeral was slated for the morning of November 2 at Riverside Memorial Chapel.
Additional reporting by James Kelly.