Leona Helmsley,
the cutthroat hotel magnate whose title as the ''queen of
mean'' was sealed during a tax evasion case in which she was
quoted as snarling ''Only little people pay taxes,''
died Monday at age 87. Helmsley died of heart failure
at her summer home in Greenwich, Conn., said her
publicist, Howard Rubenstein.
Already
experienced in real estate before her marriage, Helmsley
helped her husband run a $5 billion empire that
included managing the Empire State Building. She
became a household name in 1989 when she was tried for
tax evasion. The sensational trial included testimony from
disgruntled employees who said she terrorized both the
menial and the executive help at her homes and hotels.
In 2001, an openly gay man who worked for
Helmsley at a Manhattan hotel filed a $10-million
discrimination lawsuit against her alleging
that he suffered emotional distress from
the steady stream of derogatory remarks she
made about gays and lesbians.
But the image of
Helmsley as the ''queen of mean'' was sealed when a
former housekeeper testified that she heard Helmsley say:
''We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay
taxes.''
Helmsley denied
having said it, but the words followed her for the rest
of her life.
She clearly
enjoyed the luxury of her private fortune, flying the globe
in a 100-seat jet with a bedroom suite. She and her
husband's residences included a nine-room penthouse
with a swimming pool overlooking Central Park atop
their own Park Lane Hotel; an $8 million estate in
Connecticut; a condo in Palm Beach; and a mountaintop
hideaway near Phoenix.
''Leona Helmsley
was definitely one of a kind,'' said Donald Trump, whose
rivalry with the Helmsleys made headlines in the 1990s.
''Harry loved being with her and the excitement she
brought, and that is all that really matters.''
The Helmsleys'
financial excesses overshadowed millions in contributions
for medical research and other causes. In recent years, she
contributed $25 million to New York Presbyterian
Hospital, $5 million to Katrina relief and $5 million
after Sept. 11 to help the families of firefighters.
Yet Helmsley
nickel-and-dimed merchants on her personal purchases,
stiffed contractors who worked on her Connecticut home and
terrorized both menial and executive help at her homes
and hotels, detractors say.
When her husband
died in 1997 at age 87, Helmsley said in a statement:
''My fairy tale is over. I lived a magical life with
Harry.''
Earlier this
year, Forbes magazine ranked her as the 369th richest person
in the world, with an estimated net worth of $2.5 billion.
She was 51, with
the good looks of a former model and already a
successful seller of residential real estate in a hot New
York market, when she married Harry Helmsley in 1972.
He was 63 and one
of the richest men in America.
In 1980 he made
her president of Helmsley Hotels, a subsidiary which at
the time operated more than two dozen hotels in 10 states,
including the Park Lane, St. Moritz and Palace in New
York and the Harley Hotels. Harley was a contraction
of Harry and Leona.
For the better
part of a decade, a glamorous Leona Helmsley smiled out of
magazine ads dressed in luxurious gowns and tiara,
advertising that the Palace was the only hotel in the
world ''where the Queen stands guard.''
The press
portrayed them as an adoring couple, with Leona calling
Harry ''gorgeous one'' and ''pussycat.'' Friends and
acquaintances described her as generous, charming,
playful and having a good sense of humor.
She threw parties
on his birthdays at which guests wore buttons that said
''I'm Just Wild About Harry'' and he wore a button that said
''I'm Harry.'' The couple would dance until dawn.
On July 4, 1976,
Harry Helmsley lit the Empire State Building in red,
white and blue -- a tribute not to the Bicentennial,
but to his wife's birthday. It cost $100,000 --
''less than a necklace,'' he said.
But the
Helmsleys' charmed life ended in 1988 when they were hit
with tax-evasion charges.
Harry's health
and memory were so poor that he was judged incompetent to
stand trial. His wife, after an eight-week trial, was
convicted of evading $1.2 million in federal taxes by
billing Helmsley businesses for personal expenses
ranging from her underwear to $3 million worth of
renovations to the Dunellen Hall estate in Connecticut.
Sentenced to four
years in prison, she tried to avoid jail by pleading
that Harry might die without her at his side. Her doctor
said that prison might kill her because of high blood
pressure and other problems. (At a March 1992 hearing,
the judge rejected that argument and even ordered her
to surrender on April 15 -- tax day.)
Helmsley served a
total of 21 months and was released in January 1994.
She had 150 hours added to her 750 hours of community
service because employees had done some of the chores
for her.
Several top
executives at Helmsley companies said their firings
coincided with her release. She maintained she
couldn't have fired them because she had given up her
management post -- as a convicted felon she was barred
from running enterprises with liquor licenses, such as
hotels. The State Liquor Authority said it had no
evidence that she was still in charge.
In 1996, two of
Harry Helmsley's longtime partners accused his wife of
scheming to loot the main corporation, Helmsley-Spear Inc.
They said she was stripping away company assets to
avoid paying $11.4 million owed them and to make the
company worthless, because Harry Helmsley had given them
an option to buy Helmsley-Spear at a bargain price upon his
death.
After he died a
few months later, the dispute with the partners was
eventually settled and control of Helmsley-Spear was turned
over to them. The settlement freed Leona Helmsley to
sell off other assets.
The Helmsleys'
charitable gifts may have run to the tens of millions, but
people who dealt with them spoke bitterly of being stiffed.
One of them, a
painting contractor, said Leona Helmsley wouldn't pay an
$88,000 bill for work on Dunellen Hall because she was
entitled to a ''commission'' for the $800,000 worth of
other jobs he got in Helmsley buildings.
After making a
sales clerk rewrite a bill for earrings to save $4 in
sales tax, she reportedly said: ''That's how the rich get
richer.'' Her lawyers suggested that the government
came after her to make an example of someone with high
visibility.
Helmsley was born
Leona Mindy Rosenthal on July 4, 1920, the daughter of
a Manhattan hat maker. She left college after two years to
become a model.
She married a
lawyer, Leo Panzirer, whom she divorced in 1959. Their only
child, Jay Panzirer, later ran a Florida-based building
supplies company that did extensive business with
Helmsley properties. She later was briefly married to
a garment industry executive, Joe Lubin.
Before her son's
death of a heart attack in 1982, she told interviewers
she would not talk about him ''because terrible things can
happen to people these days.''
She evidently was
referring to being knifed by robbers at her Palm Beach
home in 1973. She was stabbed in the chest and suffered a
collapsed lung, and Harry was wounded in the arm.
After her son
died, she sued the estate for money and property she said
her son had borrowed, and an eviction notice was served on
her son's widow, Mimi.
Mimi Panzirer
said afterward that the legal costs wiped her out and ''to
this day I don't know why they did it.''
Helmsley is
survived by her brother and his wife, four grandchildren and
12 great-grandchildren. Funeral arrangements have not yet
been announced. (Richard Pyle, AP)
