Monday, August 20, 2007 3:07:34 PM
The "Queen of Mean" Leona Helmsley has died at the age of 87. The multi-billionairess reportedly once said "We don't pay taxes... Only little people pay taxes." She was convicted in 1988 of evading $1.2 million in federal taxes by billing Helmsley businesses for personal expenses ranging from her underwear to $3 million worth of renovations to her estate in Connecticut, and sentenced to 4 years in jail plus 750 hours of community service. Her husband Harry was judged incompetent to stand trial. She served 21 months of the sentence, and later had to have her community service extended by 150 hours when it was learned that she had ordered employees to perform some of the service.
Known as "pussycat" to her husband, she was also known for nickel-and-diming merchants on her personal purchases, stiffing contractors who worked on her Connecticut home and terrorizing both menial and executive help at her homes and hotels. For years she ran her husband's hotel business until, as a convicted felon she was barred from running it because it had liquor licenses. Nevertheless on the day of her release from prison her business's top executives were fired. She claimed to have nothing to do with it.
On July 4, 1976, Harry Helmsley lit the Empire State Building (which they owned) in red, white and blue - a tribute not to the Bicentennial, but to his wife's birthday. It cost $100,000 - "less than a necklace," he said.
When her husband passed away she attempted to loot his corporation and make it worthless to avoid paying her husband's longtime partners the $11.4 million that was due them, and because her late husband had given them an option to buy the corporation at a bargain price.
Helmsley refused to pay a painting contractor $88,000 for painting her Conneticut mansion, calling it her "commission" for all the other work she had given the contractor at her hotels.
Once, after making a sales clerk rewrite a bill for earrings to save $4 in sales tax, she reportedly said: "That's how the rich get richer."
After her son died, she sued his estate for money and property she said her son had "borrowed", and served an eviction notice on her son's widow, Mimi. The widow said afterward that the legal costs wiped her out and "to this day I don't know why she did it."
She owned more than two dozen hotels, advertising one of them as "the only hotel in the world where the Queen stands guard." In 2001 she fired the general manager of her swank Park Lane Hotel in New York (in which she lived) because she noticed a number of gay vacationers were staying there. "What are all of these gay men doing in my hotel!?", she screamed in public. "It's disgusting! I want it stopped!" The general manager, himself gay, sued her over his firing, and won.
Here in San Francisco she is remembered for evicting poor people from their homes without any hint of concern.
Friends describe her as generous, charming, playful and having a good sense of humor.
She died the 369th richest person in the world.
Known as "pussycat" to her husband, she was also known for nickel-and-diming merchants on her personal purchases, stiffing contractors who worked on her Connecticut home and terrorizing both menial and executive help at her homes and hotels. For years she ran her husband's hotel business until, as a convicted felon she was barred from running it because it had liquor licenses. Nevertheless on the day of her release from prison her business's top executives were fired. She claimed to have nothing to do with it.
On July 4, 1976, Harry Helmsley lit the Empire State Building (which they owned) in red, white and blue - a tribute not to the Bicentennial, but to his wife's birthday. It cost $100,000 - "less than a necklace," he said.
When her husband passed away she attempted to loot his corporation and make it worthless to avoid paying her husband's longtime partners the $11.4 million that was due them, and because her late husband had given them an option to buy the corporation at a bargain price.
Helmsley refused to pay a painting contractor $88,000 for painting her Conneticut mansion, calling it her "commission" for all the other work she had given the contractor at her hotels.
Once, after making a sales clerk rewrite a bill for earrings to save $4 in sales tax, she reportedly said: "That's how the rich get richer."
After her son died, she sued his estate for money and property she said her son had "borrowed", and served an eviction notice on her son's widow, Mimi. The widow said afterward that the legal costs wiped her out and "to this day I don't know why she did it."
She owned more than two dozen hotels, advertising one of them as "the only hotel in the world where the Queen stands guard." In 2001 she fired the general manager of her swank Park Lane Hotel in New York (in which she lived) because she noticed a number of gay vacationers were staying there. "What are all of these gay men doing in my hotel!?", she screamed in public. "It's disgusting! I want it stopped!" The general manager, himself gay, sued her over his firing, and won.
Here in San Francisco she is remembered for evicting poor people from their homes without any hint of concern.
Friends describe her as generous, charming, playful and having a good sense of humor.
She died the 369th richest person in the world.
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