Leona Helmsley, Hotelier and Real Estate Icon, Dies (Update2)

Leona Helmsley, the existent estate developer and hotel operator convicted of taxation equivocation and dubbed ``The Queen of Mean,'' died today. She was 87.

Helmsley died of bosom failure at her summertime place in Greenwich, Connecticut, said spokesman Leslie Howard Rubenstein. With her husband, Harry, she helped construct a place empire that was once valued at $5 billion. It included involvements in the Empire State Building, the Park Lane Hotel on Central Park South and the Helmsley Hotel on 42nd Street.

``She was a tough lady,'' said Prince Edward Koch, the former New House Of York City city manager who first met Helmsley in the late 1970s. ``She set criteria for hotels and service.''

Her strong belief in 1989 on federal taxation equivocation complaints made her somes symbol of the surpluses of the 1980s and put her on the presence pages of the tabloids. She and her hubby were charged with authorship off redevelopments to their $11 million Greenwich estate as concern expenses.

Helmsley served 18 calendar months in prison house after an eight-week trial in which former employees painted her as a cold-hearted foreman who fired workers on a caprice and told a housekeeper at her estate that ``only the small people pay taxes.''

The lawsuit was the footing for a 1990 made-for-television film ``Leona Helmsley: The Queen of Mean.''

New House Of York Max Born

In a statement, developer Donald Trump said: ``Leona was definitely one of a kind. Harry loved being with her and the exhilaration she brought -- and that is all that really matters.''

Helmsley was born Lena River Rosenthal on Independence Day in 1920 to a hatter and housewife, both Polish immigrants, in Marbletown, New York, wrote Michael Moss, a New House Of House Of House Of York Newsday newsman at the time, in his 1989 book ``Palace Coup: The Inside Narrative of Harry & Leona Helmsley.''

Her household moved to New York City as the economic system in Marbletown, a cement factory hamlet, started to decline, Moss wrote.

Helmsley claimed to have got got attended Hunter College in Manhattan, although school annuals have cast small visible light on that period. She later claimed to have got worked as a Fourth Earl Of Chesterfield coffin nail theoretical account before taking a occupation as a secretary at New House Of York existent estate company Pease & Elliman.

She rose through the ranks to saleswoman, selling co-ops and condominiums, and worked early in her calling for residential existent estate agent Brown Townsend Harris Stevens, Rubenstein said. She also headed the new co-op unit of measurement of Sutton & Towne Residential, the New House Of York Times reported in a 1988 profile.

Meeting Harry

While narratives of how she met Harry Helmsley vary, she went to work for a subordinate of the Helmsley Organization in 1970 and married the existent estate Mogul two old age later.

It was her 4th marriage. The first was to lawyer Lion Panzirer, with whom she had her lone son, John Jay Panzirer, and she married garment industry executive director Chief Joseph Lubin twice.

After marrying Harry Helmsley, Leona's duties within the existent estate empire grew.

``Her top part to life would be the very warm, affectionate, comfy life she gave to her husband,'' said Koch.

She took on day-to-day operations of the 950-room Helmsley Palace when it opened in 1981. The palace, a 51-story gleaming glass tower melded with the James Madison Avenue landmark residences, became Leona's signature project.

High Standards

She gained control of the others after a wager, the Times reported. She challenged the hotels' interior designer to a competition: she and the professional each designed three rooms. After her hubby picked hers, she was named president of the hotels, the Times said.

``The quality and criteria that she invoked in her hotels were appreciated by a batch of people, a batch of customers,'' said Kenneth Patton, manager of the New House Of York University existent estate institute and a former senior frailty president of Harry Helmsley's direction company, Helmsley Spear Inc. ``Her human relationships were not the top or the best, but on the other manus her criteria were exceptionally high.''

Soon Helmsley became known as queen of the hotel chain, as she was depicted in ads ``standing guard'' over the hotel and ensuring nil but first-class service.

``They had fantastic advertisements conveying that she was the queen of the hotels that Harry owned and you had the feeling that she made certain that everybody did their job,'' said Koch.

Greenwich Trouble

Her attending to item became legendary and so did her preference for tirades, employees would later say.

Those narratives culminated in the late 1980s after a grouping of employees and contractors on the Helmsley's Greenwich estate went to the New House Of York Post with records showing the couple dodged taxations by charge their companies for redevelopment work on the estate.

In 1988, a Manhattan expansive jury indicted the Helmsleys on complaints that they evaded more than than $4 million in income taxations by charging furnishings and redevelopments for the 28-acre estate to the existent estate business. Prosecutors also alleged Leona Helmsley extorted kickbacks from hotel providers and contractors.

Mr. Helmsley, almost 80 at the clip of the indictment, was determined not mentally competent to stand up trial.

A jury convicted Leona Helmsley of evading $1.2 million in federal income taxes, though it acquitted her of extortion.

Feared Foreman

During her trial, Helmsley's repute as a unkind foreman became so well-known that her defence squad cited it in arguments, with lawyer Gerald Feffer reminding jurymen in gap comments that while his client might be an unpopular adult female she wasn't on trial for ``being a tough bitch,'' the New House Of York Times reported.

Former employees testified at the trial about how they feared her, with one recalling how she casually fired him while she was being fitted for a dress. Housekeeper Elizabeth Ii Frank Baum testified that after saying to Helmsley at the Greenwich estate that she must pay a batch in taxes, Helmsley replied: ``We don't pay taxes. Only the small people pay taxes.''

Helmsley's ``Queen of Mean'' mental image stuck during her future years.

When her hubby died in 1997, Leona took over his empire and began selling some holdings. She had an estimated network worth of $2.2 billion, according to Forbes Magazine, which in 2006 ranked her No. 350 on its listing of the world's wealthiest people.

Jury Award

A jury in 2003 awarded $11.2 million in amends to a former director of Helmsley's five-star Park Lane Hotel who claimed Helmsley fired him for being gay. A justice later reduced the awarding to $554,000, although Helmsley was also ordered to pay more than than $638,000 of her former employee's legal expenses.

Helmsley did show intimations of a soft side from clip to time.

Just before a justice sentenced her to four old age in prison house for the tax-evasion conviction, a sentence later reduced, she pleaded with him for lenience as she recounted the trouble of losing her boy Jay, who died of a bosom onslaught in 1982 at age 42.

``I implore you. Don't allow me lose Harry too,'' she told federal Judge Toilet M. John Walker Jr., the Times reported. ``Please don't. Our whole life have been work and each other. We have got nil else.''

Thomas More recently, she donated $5 million to the American Red Cross for Hurricane Katrina relief. She also contributed $25 million to New House Of York Presbyterian Hospital and $5 million after Sept. Eleven to assist the households of firefighters. In the late 1990s, she gave billions to reconstruct African-American churches that were put afire in the South, Rubenstein said.

Hospital installations at New House Of House Of York Presbyterian, New York University Checkup Center and Greenwich Hospital in Greenwich, bear the household name in award of donations.

Helmsley is survived by her blood brother Alvin Rosenthal and his wife, Susan; four grandchildren, Saint David Panzirer and his married woman Karen; Craig Panzirer and his married woman Grace; Bruno Walter Panzirer and his married woman Tina; and Megan Wesolko and her hubby Uncle Tom Wesolko; and 12 great grandchildren.

Funeral agreements were not immediately announced.

To reach the newsman for this story: Claude Shannon D. Harrington in New House Of York at
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