Leona Helmsley gravesite

Entrepreneur. New York City hotel operator and real estate investor. She was convicted of federal income tax evasion and other crimes in 1989 and served 18 months in prison, after receiving an initial sentence of 16 years. She was born as Leona Mindy Rosenthal in Marbletown, Ulster County, New York, and raised in Brooklyn. Before her involvement with Harry Helmsley, she was married three times. Once to attorney Leo Panzirer, by whom she had a son, her only child (who predeceased her), and twice to garment industry magnate Joseph Lubin. Leona Panzirer was a real estate agent when she met and began her involvement with the then-married multi-millionaire real estate investor Harry Helmsley. Supposedly under her influence, he began a program of conversion of apartment buildings to condominiums. He later began to concentrate on the hotel industry, building the Helmsley Palace on Madison Avenue. Leona Helmsley became infamous during the 1980s for being a tyrannical "boss from hell" whose petulance seemed ill-suited to the hospitality industry.