(AP)
Updated: 2007-08-21 09:11

NEW YORK -- 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.

Hotelier Leona Helmsley shown in this September 1991 file photo, died in Greenwich, Ct., Monday, Aug. 20, 2007. [AP]

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."

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 September 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.

      1   2   3     

      1   2   3