posted on August 20, 2007 08:21:12 AM new
Leona Helmsley, known of 'queen of mean,' dies
Associated Press
NEW YORK -- Leona Helmsley, the hotelier who went to prison as a tax cheat and was reviled as the "queen of mean,'' died today at age 87.
Helmsley died of heart failure at her summer home in Greenwich, Conn., said her publicist, Howard Rubenstein.
Helmsley and her husband, Harry, ran a $5 billion real estate empire that included managing the Empire State Building. She was tried in 1989 on tax evasion charges in a sensational trial that included testimony from disgruntled employees who said she terrorized both menial and executive help at her homes and hotels.
Her image was sealed when a former housekeeper testified that she heard Helmsley say: ``We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.''
She denied having said it, but the words followed her the rest of her life.
It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.George S. Patton
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