Family: Meds Caused Slain Broker's Rage

Medical problems may have spurred a celebrity real agent's outburst at an assistant accused of killing her over the remarks, the victim's daughter and the family's lawyer said.

Linda Stein - who co-managed the storied punk rock band the Ramones before becoming a broker to such clients as Sting and Steven Spielberg - was diagnosed with a brain tumor weeks before she was beaten to death in her Fifth Avenue apartment on Oct. 30, Samantha Stein-Wells and lawyer Eddie Hayes said Saturday. They said she was taking medicines that sent her on an emotional roller-coaster.

"She had always been prone to mood swings, but the medications and her illness intensified them," Hayes said. "People who worked with her knew this."

A large number of people who have what are called metastacies in the head from breast cancer or lung cancer have personality changes, memory loss and mood changes, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a breast cancer specialist at the National Institutes of Health told The Early Show.

"When patients do end up with mood changes from tumors in their brain, it can be very scary, even for professionals and doctors in the hospital and nurses who have a lot of ability to control the situation," says Emanuel. "So that families are scared is
very, very common."

Police say Stein's personal assistant, Natavia Lowery, told investigators her boss deluged her with profanities and insults as they worked in the apartment Oct. 30. Lowery told police she lost control when Stein blew marijuana smoke in her face while telling her to hurry in retrieving an e-mail from Stein's computer.

Stein's family attorney said she was smoking marijuana to help the side effects of the powerful cancer medicine she was taking, reported CBS News correspondent Bianca Solorzano.

The assistant then grabbed a yoga stick out of Stein's hands and used the stretching device to bludgeon her boss in the head and neck, police said.

Lowery, 26, is being held without bail on a second-degree murder charge. Her lawyer, Gilbert C. Parris, has said her statements to investigators were made after lengthy questioning and without his presence, although he had told police and prosecutors to notify him.

Stein's real estate resume boasted Sting, Madonna, and Angelina Jolie. Elton john is the godfather to one of Stein's daughters, reports Solorzano.