Jean Stein Was Worth $38M When She Plunged To Death From Manhattan Building
Jean Stein, the Upper East Side oral historian who recently jumped to her death at 83 years old, was worth $38.5 million, the New York Post has reported.
The Post found details of Stein’s holdings in court papers. Her assets included her $10 million co-op apartment on the Upper East Side, $13.5 million in security investments, and $15 million worth of personal property.
Stein’s 25-page will notably includes bequeathments to Diane Keaton — “my pair of French mirrors in the shape of butterflies that belonged to Truman Capote” — and the New York Public Library, which will receive her correspondence with William Faulkner, with whom she once had an affair.
Stein, whose father, Jules Stein, founded the Music Corporation of America, wrote acclaimed oral histories of Robert F. Kennedy, Edie Sedgwick and Hollywood. Twice married and twice divorced, she is survived by her daughters Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, and actor-producer Wendy vanden Heuvel, as well as their children.
The majority of Stein’s wealth will be donated to the JKW Foundation, a cultural charity she founded.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO