New York Post
Leona's Gross Gains
By DAREH
GREGORIAN
January 24, 2003
 A TALE TO WINCE AT:
Leona Helmsley at court with Khady
Kanji, who told of cleaning the hotel ex-manager's mess.
N.Y. Post:
Don Halasy
|
It's torture cleaning Charles
Bell's room.
That was the claim two Helmsley Park Lane Hotel room attendants
leveled in court yesterday, where they testified that bloody towels, an
"artificial penis" and used condoms were their daily hazards in the former hotel
general manager's room.
One of the attendants, Khady Kandji, said she'd had two other
problems trying to clean Bell's room - one a naked man, and the other 10 men
decked out in black leather.
Kandji and fellow room attendant Roselyn Lee provided the
X-rated testimony on behalf of their boss, Leona Helmsley. Bell is suing the 82-
year-old billionairess for $40 million, charging she verbally abused and then
fired him because he's gay.
Bell lawyer Geri Krauss said the attendants' tales were fantasy,
and "that the defense has to resort to this smear campaign is the best evidence
that their case has no merit."
Bell lived and worked at the hotel between November 2000 and
March 2001, and Kandji said she'd clean his chamber of horrors about four times
a week.
"I found dirty towels - bloody towels - and bloody sheets . . .
a lot of times," Kandji told Helmsley lawyer Jeffrey Taub.
"Almost every day, there were dirty condoms - sometimes in the
bed, sometimes in the towels."
And sitting on Bell's night table "anytime I was in the room"
was an "artificial penis," she said.
She said that two times, she couldn't get in to clean at all.
The first time, there was "someone laying on the floor, and someone on the
couch." Both men appeared to be sleeping - and the one on the floor was naked,
she said.
Then on Valentine's Day, she walked into Bell's room to find
roses, balloons and about 10 men decked out in leather outfits drinking and
listening to music.
"I asked them if they needed service. Mr. Bell said, ‘We don't
need service tonight,' " Kandji said.
Lee said she only cleaned Bell's room twice - and that was more
than enough. "The sheets were bloody, the toilet was bloody and wet all over,
and there were condoms all over the place," she said.
She said she complained to her supervisor and vowed not to go in
there again, but got stuck doing it on one other occasion when she was caught
"in the wrong place at the wrong time." Justice Walter Tolub allowed the racy
testimony so Helmsley could challenge Bell's credibility. The 48-year-old had
testified he never left sex toys or condoms lying around.
Cleaning Helmsley's Park Lane apartment is apparently no treat
either - another witness testified that according to union rules, only room
attendants with the least amount of seniority have to work in the hot-tempered
hotelier's home, and they get paid an extra $15 a day.
Bell lawyer Elizabeth Holtzman called the extra cash "combat
pay."
New York Post
Initial Defense Witness Proves Queer
Choice
By DAREH GREGORIAN
January 23,
2003
Leona Helmsley began her defense of charges
she's biased against gays yesterday - and her first witness was a homosexual
employee who said she'd illegally asked him his sexual orientation.
"She asked me if I was gay or happy," Nicolas Daeppen, the current general
manager of Helmsley's Park Lane Hotel, testified.
He said the question "troubled" him because he knew it was legally none of
her business, but he replied anyway.
"I answered I was gay, but it had nothing to do with my work performance,"
Daeppen said, adding he's never heard his boss make any discriminatory remarks
about gays - and that she even invited him and his partner to have Thanksgiving
dinner with her this past November.
Daeppen was the first witness Helmsley's lawyers called to the stand to
counter Charles Bell's contention that she harassed and then canned him when he
was general manager at the Park Lane because of his sexuality.
Daeppen told the jury and Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Walter Tolub that
Helmsley fired him, too, about a month after he revealed he was gay, but
insisted the termination had nothing to do with his sexuality.
He said he was fired for refusing Helmsley's order to ax someone he had just
hired: Michael Ward. Helmsley was apparently put off by Ward's moniker - the
boyfriend she fired as her operations chief after she discovered he was gay was
named Patrick Ward.
"She said, 'We're not going to hire this gentleman. He's not for us,' "
Daeppen quoted Helmsley as saying. Daeppen said when he found out that Ward,
who's also gay, planned on suing over the broken deal, he got him a job at
another Helmsley hotel.
When Helmsley found out Daeppen had disobeyed her, both he and Ward were
given the boot. She later rehired Daeppen.
At one point, Deappen thought the firing might have been because of his
sexuality, but now believes it was because he abused his power.
New York Post
Leona's Wild Cruise Slur
By LAURA ITALIANO
January 22,
2003
 CRUISE BRUISER:
Hotel millionairess Leona Helmsley,
arriving at court in Manhattan yesterday, allegedly said of actor Tom
Cruise, "He's a fag!"
- NYP: Don Halasy |
Millionaire
hotel magnate Leona Helmsley called Tom Cruise a "fag" according to more wacky
testimony, as her gay-bash trial continued in Manhattan yesterday.
"He's gay! He's a fag!" the so-called Queen of Mean once blurted out when she
saw Cruise on TV, her ex-security chief testified.
It was part of ex-employee Charles Bell's $40 million legal bid to paint
Helmsley as compulsively seeing gays everywhere - and not liking what she sees.
Bell is seeking the big payout by claiming he was fired as general manager of
the 600-room Park Lane Hotel because he's gay.
Cruise - an avowed ladies' man who last week received a $10 million judgment
against a man who claimed they shared a tender moment - joins an ever-widening
population of men Helmsley has allegedly labeled as gay.
In yesterday's testimony alone, her fired ex-security chief, John Moore,
claimed to have overheard Helmsley saying of Manhattan's most notoriously hetero
developer, "The only reason Donald Trump has so many women around him is because
he's gay."
Helmsley asked job applicants and even her own lawyer, "Are you gay?" Moore
claimed. She called the two men hired to do her Christmas decorations "Frick and
frack - her little girls," he said.
"What are all these gay guys doing here," she once thundered as she surveyed
the Park Lane lobby, Moore, who is also suing Helmsley, told jurors. "It looks
like a queer convention," he said she added.
Helmsley doesn't like blacks either, according to a Moore account that is
being withheld from jurors.
"They're monkeys - feed them bananas," Moore alleges she said of his
dark-skinned children when he complained he couldn't feed his children after his
firing.
Outside court, Helmsley denied the allegations. "That they're accusing me of
not liking children because of their skin [color], I think that stinks," she
said.
Helmsley is trying to paint herself as a gay-hugging, philanthropic patriot -
at one bizarre point yesterday, two members of her legal team literally unfurled
and held aloft a flag in her defense.
The flag was presented to her by grateful firefighters after she made a $5
million contribution to the New York Police & Fire Widows & Children's
Benefit Fund, her lawyer, Steven Eckhaus, told jurors.
"Your honor, I offer this flag into evidence," Eckhaus, holding its corner,
told Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Walter Tolub.
Moore's take on the flag was somewhat different. He claimed it was presented
to Helmsley by a grateful firefighter, Dan Potter, now retired from Engine Co.
10, after Helmsley gave him free hotel lodging when the World Trade Center
collapse damaged his apartment.
Within days of receiving the flag, she kicked him out and billed him for his
stay, Moore said.
obs.
"She said they serve that need and purpose, as far as picking out fabrics and
furniture," Moore said.
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