"No cane. We came out from opposite sides of the stage, and I got to the middle and she wasn't there. It happened on a train to California. Both Heffner and her lawyers emphatically deny that Nelson Peltz is financing Heffner's legal efforts. Irwin Bloom had made the arrangements and then Duke called Protas from Los Angeles and joked, ''For God's sake, try to pay it back," Protas recalled. Chandi Heffner In 1984, Doris met a woman named Chandi Heffner in Hawaii. Nine months earlier, she had sued her adoptive mother for breach of contract, claiming that she had promised to maintain her in the Duke lifestyle for the rest of Heffner's life and to make her the principal heir of her estate. ", 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. Sources at Duke's estates, however, portrayed Heffner in a different light. Then she became pregnant and had a premature daughter named Arden, who lived only 24 hours. There was a deadly side to Doris. One repeated her response to a straight man who was reluctant to have dinner with Rock Hudson for fear that he would be molested. Everything good I could say about Bernard, I do. Heffner paints a sedate portrait of their life together, with Doris retiring to her music room, Chandi dealing with the employees and both women sharing vegetarian dinners. She started taking piano lessons before she went to school, had pianos in every one of her houses as well as in the black lacquered living room of her Park Avenue penthouse, and played every afternoon. Chandi Duke Heffner is known for Oh My God (2009). 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 . "Elvis made whites interested in black music," she once told me, "which was very important, because race is the biggest problem we have in America.". She continued to give him money, and friends say that their sexual relationship never really ended. Earlier this year, Manhattan Surrogate Court Judge Eve Preminger removed Lafferty from that position for allegedly squandering the estates assets on lavish living but Lafferty is appealing the ruling. "I don't think you're supposed to use alcohol with steroids, and she was drinking sherry in the evenings." She clapped her hands in glee. Bernard Lafferty, a cook named Colin Shanley, and her longtime Tongan maid, Nuku Makasiale, were at her bedside. ChatGPT who? They all of a sudden just totally cut me off, and I can't believe that was Doris. We would hear it, and we would just joke about it. Lafferty was accused of conspiring to kill his terminally ill employer with morphine. . ", Dr. Demopoulos told me, "I spoke to her in early January. And when I smacked my lips in ecstasy, I found that three or four bottles would be left off at my house the next day as a gesture. And so I decidedthe biggest mistake of my 41 yearsto give this son of a bitch a second chance . He also instilled in her an almost reflexive inability to trust people. Steve comes about four, and he and I go up to Bernard's room. According to financial accounts shes posted on her website, she has about $700,000 parked in CDH to help India. In 1987, Heffner handled the negotiations for Duke's most talked-about acquisition: two Bactrian camels, which were thrown in as a sweetener on the deal to purchase a 19-passenger Boeing 737-300 for $25 million. 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 and I used to go fairly regularly to see the president in the hospital; she would give him reiki treatments.". She was having a real whirl." A stingy southern belle, Nanaline Holt Inman was a widow with one son when she married Buck Duke in 1907. And last May, Surrogate Preminger accepted Miss Duke's. They were disciples of A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the spiritual master of the Hare Krishna movement, and they had been unofficially married in a ceremony in India in the 70s. According to a frequent guest at Duke's various houses, Duke became more and more upset with Burns: "Doris told me that James started to strut around the place as if he was Mr. '", In 1947 she married again, but handed the groom a prenuptial agreement at the altar. (Von Blow is referring to a 1982 dinner party Duke gave at '21' in New York for his friends shortly after he had been convicted of attempting to murder his wife, Sunny. 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. This was at 11 in the morning. On April 5, 1993, one week after Heffner had sued her, Duke signed her last will, cutting off her adopted daughter in brutally explicit terms: I am extremely troubled by the realization that Chandi Heffner may use my 1988 adoption of her to attempt to benefit financially under the terms of either of the trusts created by my father. . Immediately prior to going to work for Duke, he was employed by Heffner's sister Claudia and her husband, Nelson Peltz, one of the leading takeover tycoons of the 80s. We would be four, six, eightOatsie Charles, Nuala Pell, Minnie Cushing, Lita McBean and her husband, and Sunny and me. Two years later she bought Falcon's Lair, the Beverly Hills house where Rudolph Valentino once lived. When Doris died, there was a well publicized estate fight between Chandi and Doriss ex butler, Bernard Lafferty. We were joking around, because we both had bad knees. How do we get rid of her? 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.' Things escalated. We took him to Newport. He also said that she had lent $600,000 for his company, Health Maintenance Programs, Inc., in 1989; the loan is to be converted into stock, according to the will. "She forgave Rubi everything," says Reinaldo Herrera, even his subsequent marriage to Barbara Hutton. We'll travel together. And then the wine was $1,000 a bottle; it came from her father's cellars. Heffner also said that Duke confided that she thought her mother had wanted to abort her. "There was such a myth about Doris being a solitary person and not going out, so when she showed up somewhere, it was an event. Nicolas mother, Claudia, has a sister we havent forgotten about. Her Newport artist pal Richard Banks said that that summer "Doris decided to do the whole social thing and she loved it. Shortly after Duke's 80th birthday, in November, Nelson Seabra saw her at C. Z. She told me she was supposed to start hula dancing professionally at a hotel in Hawaii. But she had a dramatic change in her lifeand it was weird. Miss Duke, 75, adopted Chandi Hefner, who owns ''extensive property in Hawaii,'' and has been living with her for three years, attorney Donald A. Robinson said. Imelda stayed for a week, I think. The two women developed a deep bond almost instantly. She was wearing a dark-blue turtleneck, old Levi's, cotton socks, and scruffy moccasins. "It was unbelievable how hard she worked. The tobacco heiress fortune, one of the largest in U.S. history, has been the subject of complicated legal wrangling since she died at age 80 in 1993. They were putting up a curtain rod together. This whole thing is such a shock." He received nothing. In 1966, a few days after Duke suddenly shut down the record company she had started for Castro, he broke her jaw, according to Mansfield, and she fled to Newport with Eduardo Tirella, a handsome young set designer. She took daily tap lessons from Bill "Bojangles" Robinson at the Cotton Club, and for years studied ballet under Cyd Charisse's ex-husband, Nico. 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 a settlement signed Thursday by Manhattan Surrogate Court Judge Renee Roth, Chandi Duke Heffner, 42, dropped claims to the $1.2-billion estate and dropped a breach-of-contract suit contending that Duke reneged on a promise to support her for life, said Heffners lawyer, David Keyko. "I got a call from my sister's major-domo, Ferencz Soltesz," said Heffner, who had been living with Duke for two years at that point. Denise Hale recalls meeting Eduardo Tirella on the set of The Sandpiper, which was directed by her then husband, Vincente Minnelli, and having several dinners at Falcon's Lair. "People always think that if you can have 200 people to dine at home without moving the chairs around and you don't, you must be very sad," says Claus von Blow. Jay Rockefeller Net Worth. Lafferty has released few details about Duke's final illness. Some questioned Reubens sexuality at the time until in 1989 when Reubens engaged in a "mock wedding" with Chandi Heffner, the adopted daughter of tobacco heiress Doris Duke. ''Doris and I had been in the Gobi Desert together, and we found out they were becoming a threatened species." Surrogate Court Judge Wilfred P. Diana asked Duke if she understood that the adoption "creates a relationship between you and Miss Heffner as if she were born to you in wedlock," and Duke said yes. Last year she gave. He could barely speak.". ", Duke gave him a house in Paris for a wedding gift, and a plane before their divorce one year later. The gate had obviously been left open. . ", Like many of her friends, Protas is unclear about when Duke went into the hospital for the operations on her knees, or when she came out. Heffner was also responsible for hiring a new accountant, Irwin Bloom, and a security consultant, Steven Levy, both of whom had worked for Nelson Peltz. . Donald Robinson then called and informed Heffner that Duke wanted Burns out of the house. 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." ", Thomas Rybak maintains, "I personally believe that Chandi was pushed out by Bernard. Doris bought her a sprawling horse farm worth then 30 years ago over a million bucks. "There was a rumor that she did it deliberately. ", Another of Duke's intimates said that the real reason her closest friends were in favor of the adoption was that "Doris had contemplated suicide, and we thought we could have some peace of mind that she wouldn't kill herself as long as Chandi was around. In her will, Duke requested that no funeral or memorial service be held for her. But she got up again, and we did our steps. This gives her the air of philanthropy. Brooklyn Beckham, whos 21, has announced hes marrying Nicola Peltz, 25. That was a going-out-of-your-way gesture." About Heffner's sister. ", According to Farrah, Heffner never actually took part in a dance class, because her leg was in a cast. As Heffner fights to undo the will, she speaks exclusively to BOB COLACELLO, who delves into the mystery of Duke's final years. In later years she did have problems with her hearing and with her legs, but nothing major. That led to pneumonia and she couldn't eat and it was on and off, on and off, for months.". In her lawsuit, Heffner claims it was she who arranged this transaction, as well as the payment of $5 million of Marcos's legal bills. He also said he had worked on and off for Peggy Lee for 10 years. . If someone crossed them, they just put them out of their lives. She didn't like medicine in general. According to the Mansfield biography, Cromwell asked her on their sexless wedding night what his annual income from her would be. Subscribers have complete access to the archive. The following February, Farrah repeated the seminar, and it was apparently then that Chandi Heffner entered Doris Duke's life. Banks never saw her again. ", Heffner wryly noted that Bernard Lafferty, accompanied by a bodyguard and chauffeur, had sat through her depositions wearing a five-carat-diamond earring, a diamond bracelet, and a diamond watch. Bernard Lafferty recently lunched in Manhattan with William Luers, president of the Metropolitan Museum, which was left $10 million by Duke. She got right up like a trouper and fell right down again. Use of and/or registration on any portion of this site constitutes acceptance of our. (After Duke's death, the trustees of her estate became defendants in this lawsuit.). ", "What struck me about Chandi was her hairit came all the way down below her waist," says Phyllis Saretta of her first meeting with Chandi Heffner. Once Chandi was adopted she took over Dukes life. John Warnecke was told by Johnny Gomez, Duke's elderly caretaker in Honolulu, that "she was so full of beans, she decided to have both knees done at one time, and one knee got infected and she had to have another operation. Then one day in June, Miss Duke called me and said, 'Thomas, have you seen Bernard? I was constantly arguing with Bernard . ", Burns began working out with Duke on a regular basis. The agreement removed the heiresss former butler, Bernard Lafferty, as co-executor of the estate in return for $4.5 million and $500,000 a year for life. His breath almost knocked me off my feet.' That's not the Doris I knew. . "She moved very well for that kind of dancingwe called it Middle Eastern, or danse orientale, but essentially it's belly dancing. The circumstances of Dukes death remain under investigation. 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. ", "Doris wanted the things money couldn't buy. In a settlement signed Thursday by Manhattan Surrogate Court Judge Renee Roth, Chandi Duke Heffner, 42, dropped claims to the $1.2-billion estate and dropped a breach-of-contract suit. You don't have to go back. "Whenever she walked into your room, she made the room," recalls Mercedes Bass. The baby's death profoundly affected Duke, and she even hired psychics to try to. The legal challenges flooded in, in a queue headed by Chandi Heffner (a grown woman adopted, then disowned, by Duke), a doctor named as executor in a previous will and three former Duke servants. "Both of them greeted us at the door. Doris told Chandi that she was happy about her having a man in her life. . I think somebody is trying to kill me.". They had done the whole kitchen togetherthe carpentry, everything. ", Heffner was sitting in the Manhattan apartment of one of her lawyers on a Saturday afternoon late last December. In a so-called "galimony" lawsuit filed in Superior Court in Somerville, N.J., where the heiress lives several months of the year at her 5,000-acre compound known as Duke Farms, Heffner claims she is entitled to compensation from Duke, who abruptly broke off their live-in relationship in 1991. I suppose it was Doris's fault for never talking about what she did.". Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. "He was marvelous," says Claus von Blow, who later became Duke's neighbor in Newport. And all around him were all these liquor bottlesGrand Marnier and sherry. This Grand Marnier was so old the labels had been written by hand. Menu. Miss Duke lives in a walled 2,700-acre estate in Hillsborough, and rarely attracted . I knew from the beginning she was a son of a bitch." ", When I asked Chandi Heffner about the widespread rumors that she and Duke were lovers, she laughed and said, "Oh, right, I've heard that. And the whispers about Duke's last years continue. Doris's statements to Chandi to this effect were confirmed by [her lawyer Donald] Robinson as well, who told Chandi he had prepared the necessary documents to make provision for the disposition of Doris's estate, and that Chandi would be "totally in control. ", They went into Duke's fabled Islamic Room"you'd think you were in the salon of Sleyman the Magnificent" and over tea and sherry they discussed the pet boar that Heffner had nursed with a baby bottle after it had been abandoned by its mother, as well as Heffner's leg problems. Demopoulos said that Duke had mentioned her suspicions that she was being poisoned. She was alarmingly fragile." But I have no real medical knowledge of what transpired in California during the spring and summer of last year.". This only fueled rumors about his sexuality further and . Mercedes Bass remembered Duke's coming for tea at the Carlyle Hotel a year or so earlier and introducing Heffner as "my niece." 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. "We concentrated on her leg-muscle group," he said. One night at dinner, she told me, 'You know, my father always said no one would ever love me except for my money, and to be very careful.' . ", "I was not involved. Paul and his family moved to Sarasota, Florida, when he was nine years old. . Chandi Duke Heffner, age 60s, lives in Kamuela, HI. Heffner takes credit for everything from improving the dairy herd at Duke Farms to arranging the sale of Duke's gold deposits in Switzerland. 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. "That was quite an event. She had episodes of pneumonia, she had clots in her veins, and some of those clots may have traveled to her lungs. And I was surprised. 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. "It was shocking," Heffner told me. "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.' It was a really loving daughter-mother relationship. Because it was her major incapacity; there really wasn't anything else wrong with Doris. I have come to the realization that her primary motive was financial gain. . "Cromwell was quite nice," says Nelson Seabra, a rich Brazilian friend of Duke's. ", The day after the adoption, the economist Woody Brock went to lunch at Duke Farms with Duke's New Jersey neighbor Jane Engelhard. 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. 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