Natavia Lowery has confessed.

Linda Stein’s personal assistant was arrested Friday after she confessed in the bloody beating of the punk pioneer and Realtor to the stars.

Natavia Lowery, 26, who told police she was subjected racist slurs from Stein, bludgeoned her boss with a weighted yoga-stick used for stretching exercises.

She finally snapped after Stein blew marijuana smoke in her face and told her to hurry up, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly announced in a press conference Friday afternoon.

Stein, whose real estate clients included high-profile celebrities such as Angelina Jolie, Sting, and Steven Spielberg, was discovered on Oct. 30 in her posh 5th Avenue apartment lying in a pool of blood.

The grisly killing touched off an investigation that included many in Stein’s inner circle, including an Italian former lover, upscale pot dealers and a former assistant described as a handsome Romeo type, as well as contractors who were working on the roof of her swanky building on the Upper East Side.

Police were finally led to Lowry, whose previous brushes with the law had been unknown to Stein.

Lowery was taken to the 7th Precinct in Manhattan after being nabbed at her Brooklyn apartment, law enforcement officials said.

Sources said Stein hired Lowery in early summer after firing her previous personal assistant. Stein, an old-school style broker, conducted most of her business through personal contacts and lunch and dinner meetings.

In the aftermath of this tragedy, The New York Times’ Sewell Chan offers some commentary on the workaday life of the personal assistant.

Personal assistants are ubiquitous in New York, a city full of powerful financiers, lawyers, celebrities and other professionals who need others to answer their phones, set up their appointments, get their coffee and walk their Bichon Frisé. “The job requires walking a fine line between intimacy and professionalism, a bit like the nanny who is paid to feed, bathe and hug your child,” Patricia Cohen wrote in a 2004 article about assistants to celebrities.

Based on the police account, it appears that Ms. Stein and Ms. Lowery were caught in a deadly, real life version of this story. Even in death, Ms. Stein was remembered for having a hot temper and a combative, even pugnacious, personality. In investigating the slaying, the police interviewed the superintendent of Ms. Stein’s apartment building, who had argued with her over roof repairs. Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly this afternoon that Ms. Lowery struck Ms. Stein with the exercise stick six or seven times after a torrent of verbal abuse from Ms. Stein.

The boss-assistant relationship rarely descends into violence, but it can be intense nonetheless, as Roseanne Badowski, a longtime executive assistant to the General Executive leader Jack F. Welch, explained in a 2004 book, “Managing Up.” And it is a recurring theme in pop culture, from Wilhemina and Mark on ABC’s “Ugly Betty” to Ari and Lloyd on HBO’s “Entourage”; or in the book and film “The Devil Wears Prada” and many of its forebears, including “Swimming With Sharks” and “Nine to Five.”

Here is an AP video report from a few days ago when the murder was still unsolved.