Exclusive: Who Killed Linda Stein?

"I think it was her Latin lover who showed up at her beach house unanounced."
-- Legs McNeil to Tabloid Baby

"A friend of Miss Stein said she recently ended a relationship with a 'Latin lover-type'."
--London Telegraph

"She would have loved the publicity, friends said. One music-business friend said she might even have loved being part of a tabloid story."
--The stately New York Times

The murder of former Ramones co-manager Linda Stein (whose ex-husband gave the cursed band their record deal) remains a mystery and a real-life Law & Order episode (and you can bet the Law & Order writers are already working up a script befor the impending strike forces them to lay down their pencils. It is an ultimate tabloid story, which in the end will result in an arrest either all too obvious, unexpected or depressingly mundane, but whose juicy details are lovingly, meticulously savored and laid out by the stately New York Times:

"Linda Stein, the punk-rock manager turned real estate broker who was found bludgeoned to death on Tuesday in her Fifth Avenue penthouse, was a vibrant and volatile person who aroused strong and often contradictory feelings in those who knew her, friends and colleagues said yesterday as the police struggled to find a motive in her killing.

"Police... stressed that the case could still go in any direction.

"Detectives questioned nine construction workers who were on the roof... The construction foreman, Manuel Chiqui, said that the workers had signed forms allowing DNA tests and that investigators had fingerprinted them and vacuumed their clothes.

"Perhaps seeking to dispel parallels to the death last year of Adrienne Shelly, an actress who was killed by a construction worker after complaining about noise, Mr. Chiqui said the workers had nothing to do with the crime...

"The police have also questioned several people who knew Ms. Stein, including friends and relatives, an acquaintance who once worked with her, and a former companion. But they have not officially identified a suspect in the case.

"Investigators... believe Ms. Stein spent time with someone in the middle of the afternoon and then received some telephone calls.

"(Former Ramones co-manager Danny) Fields, a longtime friend, said she was struggling to break ties with a 'distasteful' ex-companion whom she dated about a year ago.

“'She hated him,' he said, adding that Ms. Stein had told him the last straw was taking the man to a $5,000 charity ball where he walked off saying, 'I’m going to work the room.'"