Hotelier Leona Helmsley dies at 87
BY JOSEPH MALLIA
10:45 AM EDT, August 20, 2007
Billionaire hotel owner Leona Helmsley, who was nicknamed the "Queen of Mean" for her treatment of employees and who was jailed for tax evasion, died Monday at age 87 at her summer home in Greenwich, Conn.
The cause of death was heart failure, said her publicist, Howard Rubenstein.
She was notorious for a statement attributed to her during courtroom testimony, when a former housekeeper said she heard the hotelier say: "We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes."
Helmsley denied having said it, but the damage was done.
Years before her death her name and face had disappeared from advertisements and Web sites for Helmsley Enterprises, a Park Avenue company she ran with her late husband Harry. Its holdings included the Empire State Building and numerous hotels.
Leona Helmsley's latter-year obscurity came after years of derisive front-page stories that depicted her as a tyrant in the workplace.
She was tried in 1989 on tax evasion charges, and disgruntled employees testified that she terrorized both menial and executive help at her homes and hotels.
She was also the target of a gay discrimination suit brought in 2003 by an ex-hotel manager; a jury award of $10 million to the fired manager was later reduced to $554,000.
A Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans in September put her at #117, with a personal fortune of $2.5 billion.
All I can think of saying about this epitome of evil hotelier is, thank bloody god she never made it down here.
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