ICYMI: Author Jean Stein Plunges To Death From Window Of Upper East Side Building

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Well-known Author Jean Stein plunged to her death Sunday morning from a window in one of the Upper East Side's most prestigious buildings, an NYPD spokesman told Patch.

Stein, 83, was found dead on an eighth floor balcony of 10 Gracie Square — near East 84th Street on the East River — around 10:35 a.m. Sunday, police told Patch. Police believe that Stein jumped from a window of her 15th Floor penthouse in the building.

Paramedics pronounced Stein dead on the scene, police said.

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"I saw what looked to me like a dummy, like a fake TV thing, except there’s blood dripping down," David Beckerman, 65, told the New York Post. "It’s gruesome. We were saying, whoever was in that apartment at the apartment that someone landed on their patio, that’s got to be pretty horrible."

Stein began her writing career at prominent literary magazine The Paris Review when she was in her teens, according to the Review. In 1956 she interviewed William Faulkner for the magazine and by her early 20s she joined the Paris Review as an editor.

Her best-known works were oral histories of the Hollywood and literary elite, according to the Paris Review. Stein paired up with George Plimpton to write the oral histories "American Journey: The Times of Robert Kennedy" in 1970 and "Edie: American Girl" in 1994. "Edie" an oral history of socialite and Andy Warhol muse Edie Sedgewick became an international bestseller.

Last year Stein published "West of Eden: An American Place," an oral history about five elite Los Angeles families. The book is a New York Times bestseller.

Stein was born in Los Angeles in 1934. Her father was Jules Stein, a co-founder of the Music Corporation of America. Stein married William vanden Heuvel, a special assistant to U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and later was married to Torsten Wiesel, the recipient of the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Stein is survived by her daughters Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, and Wendy vanden Heuvel, an actress.

The NYPD investigation into Stein's death is still ongoing, police said.

In 1988, Carter Cooper — son of Gloria Vanderbilt and brother to CNN's Anderson Cooper — jumped to his death from the penthouse at 10 Gracie Square, according to a 1988 New York Times article. Cooper was 23 at the time of his death.

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