condominiums. They won, and she was forced not only to compensate the tenants but to give them three-year leases. Her real estate license was also suspended, so she focused on running Harry's growing hotel empire. Supposedly under her influence, Harry began a program of conversion of apartment buildings into condos. He later concentrated on the hotel industry, building the Helmsley Palace Hotel on Madison Avenue. Together, the Helmsleys built a New York real estate empire that included 230 Park Avenue, the Empire State Building, and the Tudor City apartment complex on the East Side, as well as Helmsley-Spear Inc., their management and leasing business. The couple also developed properties that included the Helmsley Palace Hotel, the New York Helmsley Hotel, the Park Lane Hotel, and hotels in Florida and other states. By the beginning of 1989, twenty-three hotels in the chain were directly controlled by Leona Helmsley. Helmsley was featured in an advertising campaign portraying her as a demanding "queen" who wanted nothing but the best for her guests. The slightest mistake was usually grounds for firing, and Helmsley was known to shout insults and obscenities at targeted employees just before they were fired. On March 31, 1982, Helmsley's only child, Jay Panzirer, died of a heart attack resulting from arrhythmia. Her son's widow, who lived in a property that Helmsley owned, received an eviction notice shortly after his funeral. Helmsley successfully sued her son's estate for money and property that she claimed he had borrowed, and she was ultimately awarded $146,092. Tax-evasion conviction Despite the Helmsleys' net worth totalling over $1 billion, they were known for disputing payments to contractors and vendors. In 1983, the Helmsleys bought Dunnellen Hall, a 21-room mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut, to use as a weekend retreat. The property cost $11 million but the Helmsleys wanted to make it even more luxurious. The work included a $1 million dance floor, a silver clock and a mahogany card table. The remodeling bills came to $8 million, which the Helmsleys were loath to pay. A group of contractors sued the Helmsleys for non-payment and the Helmsleys eventually paid off most of the debt owed to the contractors. In 1985, during court proceedings in relation to the lawsuit, the contractors revealed that most of their work was being illegally billed to the Helmsleys' hotels as business expenses. The contractors sent a stack of the falsified invoices to the