The Queen of Mean is dead of heart failure at her summer house in Greenwich, Connecticut. From: National Post
NEW YORK -- Billionaire hotelier Leona Helmsley
, who famously declared "only little people pay taxes" and later went to prison for tax evasion, died Monday at the age of 87, her publicist said.
Ms. Helmsley died of heart failure at her summer house in Greenwich, Connecticut, publicist Howard Rubenstein said.
Leona Helmsley was a former model and twice-divorced real estate agent when she met Harry Helmsley, a multimillionaire real estate investor who was married at the time. They wed in 1972.
At the couple's zenith, Harry Helmsley was worth $5-billion. His company controlled some of New York's finest hotels and managed the Empire State Building.
In advertisements, Ms. Helmsley was the welcoming spokeswoman of the couple's hotel chain and billed as "the queen" of the Helmsley Palace hotel.
But behind the scenes she was considered arrogant, quick-tempered, petulant and prone to shouting and firing employees on the spot. The image hurt her when the couple was charged with tax fraud in 1988 by then-U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani and she became widely known in the media as "the queen of mean."
While she may have been tough on employees, Helmsley was lovingly dedicated to her husband. "My fairy tale is over," she said when Harry died in 1997 at age 87. "I lived a magical life with Harry."
Harry Helmsley left her his entire fortune, which was likely worth about $1.7-billion at the time of his death. Ms. Helmsley sold many of the Helmsley holdings and in 2007 Forbes magazine estimated her fortune had increased to $2.5-billion.
She retired as the face of the hotel chain but continued to run it. In 2002, a former employee, Charles Bell, sued her for being fired for being homosexual and was paid $554,000 in damages.
The Helmsleys had no children but Ms. Helmsley had a son from a previous marriage.
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