Leona Helmsley

Leona Helmsley, the imperious Manhattan hotel magnate who was derided as "the Queen of Mean" in the late 1980s when she was on trial for income tax evasion and was deemed the woman New Yorkers most love to hate, died Monday at her summer home in Greenwich, Conn. She was 87.

Helmsley, whose $2.5 billion personal fortune last year had her tied as No. 117 on the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans, died of heart failure, said her publicist, Howard Rubenstein.

Although she denied saying it, Helmsley might be best remembered for a comment attributed to her by a housekeeper: "We don't pay taxes; the little people pay taxes."

A one-time model who became a successful New York real estate broker and executive, Helmsley was a senior vice president of Helmsley-Spear Inc., the largest of real estate magnate Harry Helmsley's real estate sales organizations, when she married him in 1972.

Eight years later, while Harry remained chairman, he made Leona president of his hotel empire that included more than two dozen hotels, several of which were luxury establishments in New York City. Leona Helmsley quickly gained public notice in a high-profile advertising campaign that centered on the showcase Helmsley Palace in New York City -- over which she presided as its self-proclaimed "queen."

She bragged about her attention to detail in a 1985 interview with Savvy magazine.

"I know if a bulb is out in Room 14 of the Harley (hotel) before the manager does," she said. "I know if there's a torn pillowcase at a suite in the Palace. I read every card guests filled out from every one of the hotel, especially the negative ones. And I answer them personally."

The Helmsleys' personal empire in 1988 included a 28-room, 26-acre estate in Greenwich, which boasted a walk-in silver vault. They also had a penthouse duplex apartment in the Park Lane Hotel in New York, which featured a living room on each floor, a greenhouse and a pool. And they flew to their penthouse in Palm Beach, Fla., in their 100-seat jet.

But then the society couple suddenly found themselves the subjects of far-less flattering news coverage.

In April, 1988 "the billionaire baron and baroness of the hotel industry" -- as a story in The Los Angeles Times called them -- stood accused in federal and state indictments of evading $4 million in income taxes between June 1983 and April 1986.

A year later -- in August 1989 -- 69-year-old Leona Helmsley was found guilty of 33 felony counts, including tax evasion, filing false tax returns and mail fraud. Helmsley was convicted of evading $1.2 million in federal income taxes by charging personal expenses to Helmsley-controlled companies.

Harry Helmsley was found incompetent to stand trial because of his failing memory.

Much of the two-month trial, according to an account in The Times, focused on references to the couple's luxurious lifestyle and Leona Helmsley's imperious personality.

In 1992, after being free on $25 million bail, Helmsley began serving a 4-year sentence for income tax fraud at a medium-security prison in Lexington, Ky.

"I'll do what I have to do to get back to Harry and to get on with my life," said Helmsley, who served less than 2 years and reportedly paid about $8 million fines and restitution.

Like her Bronx-born husband, Helmsley came from humble beginnings.

The daughter of a milliner, Leona Mindy Rosenthal was born July 4, 1920, and grew up in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, N.Y.

After studying English for two years at Hunter College, she quit to become a model. Under the name Mindy Roberts, she appeared in ads as a Chesterfield cigarette girl but soon married Leo Panzirer, a lawyer with whom she had her only child, Jay Robert Panzirer, who died of a heart attack in 1982 at 40. Helmsley's second husband was Joseph Lubin, a garment-industry executive.

In 1962, three years after she and her first husband were divorced, she started working under the name Leona Roberts as a receptionist at a New York real estate company, Pease & Elliman.

She eventually rose to senior vice president and sold apartments that were being turned into cooperatives on the Upper East Side. After the company formed a cooperative division, Sutton & Towne Residential, she became its president.

In 1970, Harry Helmsley hired her as a senior vice president of a Helmsley real estate subsidiary. They were married in 1972, not long after the childless Harry divorced his wife of 33 years.

Naming her president of the Helmsley Hotels in 1980, she said in an interview at the time, was "Harry's idea."

"He thinks I work hard, he thinks I deserve it, he thinks I'm good. ... He said the best thing about it was that the board of directors meeting was over when we got out of bed."

Despite his wife's reputation for toughness and being hard to work with, Harry Helmsley by all accounts was said to have been spared his wife's wrath.

"They are devoted to each other," a former employee told The Times in 1988. "There is no question of the fact that she has also changed his life for the better. He is more fun-loving and outgoing than he was before he met her. The difference is night and day."

Her devotion to her husband was particularly evident during the months before his death in 1997 when she reportedly never left his side as his health further deteriorated.

"It was a real romance," Rubenstein, the family's spokesman, told The New York Times at the time.