Nor was she a crazy eccentric. Thick black eyebrows set off her striking indigo-colored eyes. . She grew up near Towson, an upper-middle-class suburb of Baltimore, and graduated from Notre Dame Prep, a private Catholic girls' school, in 1971. Heffner is also claiming her right to inherit two trusts which Buck Duke created in 1917 and 1924, on the ground that she is his lineal descendant and grandchild. ''Doris and I had been in the Gobi Desert together, and we found out they were becoming a threatened species." "It was unbelievable how hard she worked. In Newport, she loved going to the jazz festival, and then one would sometimes have dinner in that huge house with the ferocious dogs snarling behind the gates. I think this was the steroid thing happening. Through shrewd investments and her legendary parsimony, she managed to more than triple her holdings. Her telephone was not listed in the Los Angeles area. She was so alive. He was very good at repairing old costumes and fabric. The Untold Truth of Stephen Hawking's Son - Ti. The power that this will gives Bernard Lafferty is "awesome," says one attorney. "She got us our first booking, in that black church in New Jersey. I would have to reheat it. Duke last made news in 1988, when she posted the $5.3 million bail for her close friend Imelda Marcos, the former Philippines First Lady. Brooklyn Beckham, whos 21, has announced hes marrying Nicola Peltz, 25. Enzo Natale concurs: "Chandi and Bernard were twins.". Shortly after Duke's 80th birthday, in November, Nelson Seabra saw her at C. Z. Alec Cunningham-Reid. ", Robert Farrah agrees: "Doris Duke was not this elusive reclusive. ", The day after the adoption, the economist Woody Brock went to lunch at Duke Farms with Duke's New Jersey neighbor Jane Engelhard. Seemed. After Heffner returned to Hawaii, she kept in touch with Farrah and Saretta, and in February 1983 helped them organize a Middle Eastern dance seminar in Honolulu. Heffner takes credit for everything from improving the dairy herd at Duke Farms to arranging the sale of Duke's gold deposits in Switzerland. Moreover, Heffner's legal complaint against Duke states: Doris . "We kept it to ourselves for months, until around July 1990. . "One hears all sorts of stories about how Rubi started in life, that he was Trujillo's sort of 'Press the doorbell, you answer the doorbell, and he went bang-bang.' Doris Duke committed suicide. I said, 'Doris, do it, I think it's a good thing.' Her second husband, Dominican playboy Porfirio Rubirosa, fared only slightly better: His divorce settlement was estimated at $1 million. ", Thomas Rybak maintains, "I personally believe that Chandi was pushed out by Bernard. After Tirella's death, she seemed consumed with the idea of actually becoming a performer. But she got up again, and we did our steps. One of Chandi's doctors thought that pregnancy might help her conditions, and Chandi was discussing this with Doris one evening in Newport while I was sitting there. Guest introduced Duke to Leon Amar, a 30-year-old Moroccan decorator. In 1985, she met Chandi Heffner, a 32-year-old Hari Krishna devotee. This was the fifth time that Duke had rewritten or revised her will since Heffner's banishment 26 months earlier. I remember that the captain of the helicopter was very worried and wanted her to leave early. It must end, Drugmaker Eli Lilly to slash insulin prices, Stocks slip as stubborn inflation raises rate expectations, TikTok to set default daily time limit of 60 minutes for minors, Column: While workers struggled during the pandemic, CEO pay went up, up, up, The chance of a lifetime: Five friends ski the tallest mountain in Los Angeles, Best coffee city in the world? The two women developed a deep bond almost instantly. ", By the time Duke returned to Shangri La that fall, she and Heffner were getting together on an almost daily basis, and when it was time to move back to Duke Farms in the spring of 1985, she invited Heffner to go with her. "They did not meet in dance class," he insists. He spent many weekends at a guesthouse at Duke Farms and was her escort when she went into the city for lunches and dinners with friends such as Diana Vreeland, Nan Kempner, and Kenneth Jay Lane. Doris seemed very, very happy. Chandi sued Dukes estate and wound up inheriting $65 million. That was a going-out-of-your-way gesture." Heffner pleaded on his behalf and asked to speak to Duke, but Robinson told her that Duke was tired. "He was marvelous," says Claus von Blow, who later became Duke's neighbor in Newport. It would be the last time the paparazzi caught her, and, true to form, she slapped Rossellini for not telling her the photographers would be there. He was cooking and she was serving. . Warmer storms could cause problems, Dramatic before and after photos from space show epic snow blanketing SoCal mountains, Hyundai was poised to become Teslas top contender. When Duke was 27 years old, she delivered a premature baby daughter who died just 24 hours after being born. Lafferty had been working for Nelson and Claudia Peltz for the previous seven months, and Rybak says, "The Peltzes put him in a 28-day program. A stingy southern belle, Nanaline Holt Inman was a widow with one son when she married Buck Duke in 1907. When he went to pick her up, Lafferty told him, "Always keep me informed, so that I can be sure everything works." Although she was constantly compared to Hutton from the time they both had fairy-tale coming-out parties the year after the stock market crashed, Duke always hated the comparison to the much-married Woolworth heiress, who died penniless. Duke. Born on 1940 to James Henry Roberts Cromwell and Doris Duke. After repeated requests for an interview, I received the following statement through the New York public-relations firm representing him: "My duty to Miss Duke is to maintain her privacy even though she is gone.". According to financial accounts shes posted on her website, she has about $700,000 parked in CDH to help India. Richard Banks called Lafferty the next day. ", Donald Robinson, who represented Duke in the Marcos matter, recalls going out to Duke Farms after Imelda Marcos posted bail in New York: "The group was Imelda and her lawyer, one of her daughters, Franco Rossellini, his friend Enzo Natale, Chandi, and Doris. ", Burns began working out with Duke on a regular basis. His movie reviews are carried by Rotten Tomatoes, and he is a member of both the movie and TV branches of the Critics Choice Awards. Even Imelda didn't see her.". He had also treated Chandi Heffner, and counted both women as friends. And then he was going to A.A., and he did very well in A.A., as far as I know. In 1969, socialite C. Z. He wanted me out of there. I was constantly arguing with Bernard . They had done the whole kitchen togetherthe carpentry, everything. I used to tell her, 'You know, Doris, some people do like you for yourself. Two years later she bought Falcon's Lair, the Beverly Hills house where Rudolph Valentino once lived. Instead, she was cremated during the weekend following her death, and her ashes were scattered over the Pacific Ocean off Shangri La on November 17, 1993, by Bernard Lafferty and Johnny Gomez, along with the hibiscus leis she loved. There was a gradual onset of a depressed relationship between Doris and Chandi, starting about the middle of 1990 and going progressively downhill. ", According to Farrah, Heffner never actually took part in a dance class, because her leg was in a cast. Because just as Doris was taking me to the door, there was Chandi with the caretaker. . In 1925, at the age of 13, she inherited an estimated $100 million in trusts from her father, James Buchanan Duke, a coarse but brilliant self-made man who founded the American Tobacco Company and the Duke Power Company, and who endowed Trinity College in North Carolina with millions, reportedly on the condition it change its name to Duke University. It doesn't mean I'll go to bed with them.". Charlene Gail Heffner goes by the name Chandi Duke Heffner. Miss Duke's will went on: "I am extremely troubled by the realization that Chandi Heffner may use my 1988 adoption of her (when she was 35 years old) to attempt to benefit financially under the . And then eventually somebody else dropped back. The 1987 will had designated Heffner executor. That was Doris. She told me during a break that she had studied reiki, a Japanese healing rite, and she said, 'Maybe I could help you with your knee.' Heffner said that she had asked for them almost as a joke, and that Duke was laughing when the agent for the ownerrumored to be Adnan Khashoggi or a Kuwaiti sheikhcalled back and agreed. Despite the negative publicity, she fought her husband in the courts for five years, until he gave in. Her telephone was not listed in the Los Angeles area. If someone crossed them, they just put them out of their lives. She did not directly accuse Lafferty of turning Duke against her. Last year she gave $40,000 to help people in India, $45,000 to Bronx Veterans Medical Research, and $2000 to the Hawaii Saddle Club. Then one day in June, Miss Duke called me and said, 'Thomas, have you seen Bernard? ", Heffner was sitting in the Manhattan apartment of one of her lawyers on a Saturday afternoon late last December. If you want, we will give Bernard another chance, or we will get another butler. ' One time we were performing at an Arab party at this catering hall in Brooklyn called the Venetian Manor, and Doris and I were partners. "It was ironic that the man Doris loved the most was the greatest gigolo of all time," says Marina Cicogna. And let me tell you that she gave a really nice dinner party for me at the nadir of my fortunes. In 1945, Duke began a short-lived career as a foreign correspondent for the International News Service, reporting from different cities across the war-ravaged Europe. . Christopher Duffy, the former manager of Duke's Hawaiian estate, has told of a volatile relationship between the billionaire and Heffner, including frequent arguments and thrown crockery. Duke's Los Angeles decorator Tony Duquette adds, "He was just marvelous to Doris, and not at all sinister. Steve said, 'Your food has changed so suddenly Miss Duke thinks you must be on drugs.' Then [Franco and I] didn't see Doris anymore. A Peltz-family friend told me that, contrary to reports in the press, "there was never any rivalry of any kind at any time between Claudia and Chandi. Column: 15 minutes of fame flies by. I suppose it was Doris's fault for never talking about what she did.". To this day he maintains, "A lot of injustice was done to me. As a young girl, she wrote him love notes, which he pored over again and again. View their profile including current address, phone number 808-882-XXXX, background check reports, and property record on Whitepages, the most trusted online directory. He was later retried and acquitted. Lafferty served. Doris wouldn't take a pill unless she really needed it. Franco Rossellini assured everyone that he was all for it. Banks never saw her again. ", Dr. Demopoulos told me, "I spoke to her in early January. Both Duke and Heffner served as close advisers to Marcos during her trial for fraud and racketeering. Phyllis Saretta says, "Chandi told me that her sister had a butler and a chauffeur and the whole thing. He was born on August 27, 1952, in Peekskill, New York, USA, as Paul Rubenfeld. "It was strange. "Chandi loved animals. He had been recommended by Ron Oldenburg, a Honolulu lawyer who handled immigration matters for the employees of both Doris Duke and Imelda Marcos, and hired as a bodyguard for Heffner when she was hospitalized for severe sinusitis in February 1989. and I finally quit just before Labor Day. ". ", In February, a few weeks after Protas returned to New York with Graham, he received a phone call from Duke at three in the morning. Each evening she would return to Duke Farms or her Manhattan apartment in time for dinner alone on a tray. ", "I was not involved. "He was doing a lot of embroidery work for Doris. ", Thomas Rybak, who had been working as Doris Duke's chef for several months when Lafferty was hired in May 1987, at a salary of about $500 a week, paints a different picture. We'll have a great life together. Heffner, who lives on the Big Island of Hawaii on a ranch that Duke previously purchased for her, said in court papers that after their February 1991 breakup she learned that Duke had made changes in her will, and "the estate has not been left to Chandi as Doris had agreed." I called the California home and the other sites many times. Chandi was into environmental concerns. Ari Emanuel lets his AI alter ego open Endeavors earnings call, Sam Bankman-Fried increasingly isolated as another associate takes a plea deal, How Black Market Flea and Everyday People brought the buzz of Black life to the Beehive. In an April 1992 codicil, she replaced them with her nephew, Walker Inman Jr., and Bernard Lafferty, and in a March 1993 codicil she made Bernard Lafferty her sole executor. . I took her to six or seven dinner parties. Apparently, the warm weather had had a good effect. Paul and his family moved to Sarasota, Florida, when he was nine years old. And he would tell me, 'Miss Heffner's complaining.' And the whispers about Duke's last years continue. Chandi Heffner choked back tears as she talked about Doris Duke, the worldly and restless tobacco heiress who legally adopted her in 1988, when Heffner was 35 and Duke was 75, and cast. He always seemed to be there whenever she needed him. Because it was her major incapacity; there really wasn't anything else wrong with Doris. In November 1991, Duke had a new will written, naming Irwin Bloom and Chemical Bank as executors. It was perhaps her last romantic affair, and in some respects foreshadowed her relationship with Chandi Heffner. "When we were together," Heffner continued, "when things were really great, Doris was in wonderful shape. Meanwhile, Heffner is holed up on her Hawaiian ranch. . Heffner told me that Duke was annoyed with Rossellini for falling behind on the rent on the New Jersey guesthouse. When she was a cult member of Hare Krishna she got adopted by a Billionaire Heiress of a Tobacco company and Philanthropist, Doris Duke when she went to Hawaii in the 1980s. "She moved very well for that kind of dancingwe called it Middle Eastern, or danse orientale, but essentially it's belly dancing. He also hoped she would finance his 1940 campaign for U.S. senator from New Jersey; instead, she helped ruin his political career by snubbing Eleanor Roosevelt and putting private detectives on him to collect evidence of his extramarital affairs. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. A member of Heffner's family said yesterday that it is likely Chandi Duke Heffner, who legally changed her name, will accept a settlement for several million dollars. Doris Duke met Chandi Heffner in 1985 and felt a strong maternal connection to Her. After testy negotiations with local authorities, she finally shipped the pieces to New Jersey and installed them in her indoor tennis court. Lee told me, "Ten or 15 years ago, I went to sing in the Versailles Room at the old Bellevue, and Bernard was the manager of the room, and we became friends. Heffner Duke, adopted in 1988 when she was 38 and the heiress was in her 70s, could not be reached for comment. Chandi Heffner In 1984, Doris met a woman named Chandi Heffner in Hawaii. Newsom Closes California Theaters, "Dancing with the Stars" Needs a New Partner: Longtime Host Tom Bergeron Told Goodbye By ABC, Along with CoHost Erin Andrews, The Weeknd, Already on the Outs with the Grammys, Goes After Rolling Stone So They Rip Apart His New Show (Got That? Rybak maintains, `` he was going to A.A., and he did very well in A.A., as as... Family moved to Sarasota, Florida, when he was going to A.A., and counted both women as.... 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