JERSEY CITY — A story in the Sunday Star-Ledger details how former mayoral aide Leona Beldini, 72, who was arrested last July as part of 44 officials and religious leaders nabbed in an FBI corruption sting — was once a famous stripper named “Hope Diamond, burlesque queen.”
In an article filled with clever lines, the newspaper notes that this week she will be on trial “accused of taking cash that did not go into a garter belt, but rather into Jersey City’s tumultuous mayoral campaign.”
Not only was Beldini well-known on the national burlesque circuit throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the story says, but she was inducted into the Burlesque Hall of Fame in Las Vegas in 1995.
The story says she never tried to hide her past career from her public or her family. She joined a chorus line after high school and took a burlesque job later because it paid an extra $50 a week.
She eventually became a real estate agent and met Healy 20 years ago when she was on the Jersey City rent board, the story says.
This week, she will go on trial as one of the political leaders who allegedly accepted money from an FBI informant posing as a developer who wanted help on his projects.
She has pleaded not guilty.
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