'Queen of mean' Helmsley dies

NEW YORK - Leona Helmsley, who ran a $5 billion real estate and hotel empire and came to symbolize the greed of the 1980s after a tax-evasion trial that sealed her reputation as the "queen of mean," died yesterday. She was 87.

She died of heart failure at her summer home in Greenwich, Conn., said her publicist, Howard Rubenstein.

Helmsley faded from the spotlight in the last decade, a sharp departure from her 1989 tax-evasion trial that provided endless sensational headlines.

The trial included testimony from employees who said she had a brutal temper and terrorized menial and executive help at her homes and hotels.

When a former housekeeper testified that she heard Helmsley snarl, "We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes," her notoriety was sealed. She denied having said it, but the words followed her the rest of her life.

Helmsley was remembered yesterday by other leaders in the industry, including real-estate tycoon Donald Trump, whose rivalry with Leona and her husband, Harry, was well-chronicled.

"Leona Helmsley was definitely one of a kind," Trump said. "Harry loved being with her and the excitement she brought and that is all that really matters."

The Helmsleys ran a giant real-estate enterprise that included managing the Empire State Building, as many as 27 hotels, and thousands of apartments. Leona Helmsley was featured in a national ad campaign wearing a tiara and gown as the "queen" of Helmsley hotels.

Harry Helmsley died in 1997, also at age 87. After his death, Leona largely faded from public view.

Their 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 Hurricane Katrina relief, and $5 million after Sept. 11 to help the families of firefighters.

A much different reputation emerged during the 1980s.

The Helmsleys were accused in 1988 of charging millions of dollars in lavish personal expenses to their businesses.

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 in renovations to their Connecticut estate.

She was sentenced to four years in prison, fined $7.1 million, and ordered to perform 750 hours of community service. She served 21 months behind bars and was released in 1994.

Helmsley tried to avoid jail by pleading that Harry might die without her, and her doctor said high blood pressure and other problems could kill her in prison. In 1992, a judge rejected those arguments and ordered her to surrender on April 15 - tax day.

When she married Harry Helmsley in 1972, she was a 51-year-old former model and already a successful seller of residential real estate in a hot New York market. He was 63 and one of the richest men in America.

In 1980 he made her president of Helmsley Hotels, which at the time operated more than two dozen hotels in 10 states, including the Park Lane, St. Moritz and Palace, in New York.

Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, noted that Helmsley was a player long before women were well-represented in the industry, when "this was an old boys' club."

Although she spent the last decade in relative obscurity, Forbes magazine recently ranked her as the 369th richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $2.5 billion.

The Helmsleys' residences at one time included a nine-room penthouse with a swimming pool overlooking Central Park atop their own Park Lane Hotel; a 28-room estate in Connecticut, a condo in Palm Beach and a mountaintop hideaway near Phoenix. She flew the globe in the couple's 100-seat jet with a bedroom suite.

But people who dealt with the couple said she nickel-and-dimed merchants on her personal purchases and stiffed contractors who worked on her Connecticut home. It was tips from disgruntled employees that led to the tax-evasion charges.

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, he said. It cost $100,000 - "less than a necklace."

Helmsley is survived by her brother and his wife, four grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.

Funeral arrangements had not yet been announced. *