'Queen of Mean' Hotelier Helmsley Dies (Wizbang Pop!)

Leona Helmsley, the hotelier who went to prison as a tax cheat and was reviled as the "queen of mean," 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.

That 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."

She denied having said it, but the words followed her for the rest of her life.

Helmsley clearly enjoyed the luxury of their private fortune, flying the globe in the couple's 100-seat jet with a bedroom suite. The couple'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.

[Breitbart]

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Comments (1)

I worked as one of the late... (Below threshold)

1. Posted by Steve Peacock | August 23, 2007 3:24 AM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)

Steve Peacock:

I worked as one of the late Leona Helmsley's house security officers at her flagship Helmsley Palace hotel from 1987-1992 - the tumultuous years before, during, and after her federal tax-fraud conviction. The short story is this: Leona was a walking contradiction. Sometimes she quietly passed through the Palace lobby en route to her executive office. And yet other times she was as mean and out of control as her reputation now accurately reflects.

During that time I had personally witnessed Leona's increasingly erratic behavior, which included face-to-face encounters with the self-appointed Queen. One day, for instance, she simply halted her entourage while walking through the Palace lobby, for the express purpose of gently saying, "Get a haircut"; and yet, in another incident -- and while in a drunken rage -- she screamed in my face, arms flailing, because a visitor moments earlier was smoking in the lobby; something that was permitted at the time. She was utterly unpredictable.