And, like Heffner, after following Duke from Duke Farms to Rough Point to Falcon's Lair to Shangri La for more than six years he was suddenly given a few hours to pack his bags and leave. . I would have to reheat it. But she got up again, and we did our steps. He said the couple, who lived together from 1990 until 1993, agreed that Burns would be not only be her confidante-companion but ``cook, body guard, security specialist and assist in financing any claims Heffner Duke may find it necessary to bring to enforce her rights against Doris Duke.. Ron Protas told me that in February or March of last year Duke agreed to guarantee a loan of $1 million for the Martha Graham Dance School. Although Duke was determined to produce his own heir, Nanaline was as surprised as everyone else when she became pregnant at the age of 42, and she always favored her son, Walker Inman, over Doris. Incredibly, she was awarded a $65 million settlement. "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. The press decided she had become an eccentric recluse. One evening Steve Levy said that Miss Duke wanted him to administer a urine test on me. Column: 15 minutes of fame flies by. (Other sources say the meeting took place in 1985.) Brooklyn Beckham, whos 21, has announced hes marrying Nicola Peltz, 25. It's so hard for me still, so hard." ChatGPT who? . After testy negotiations with local authorities, she finally shipped the pieces to New Jersey and installed them in her indoor tennis court. "Both of them greeted us at the door. She had this terrible fear of fire." And the whispers about Duke's last years continue. 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. ", James Cromwell maintained that it was not his child, and friends assumed that it was Cunningham-Reid's. . ") 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. He rushed to complete what was then the most expensive house on Fifth Avenue in time for her birth at home, on November 22, 1912. and as we were leaving they exchanged telephone numbers. And then the wine was $1,000 a bottle; it came from her father's cellars. "He had done her hair in a pageboy, and she looked so pretty, though she was painfully thin." Lafferty was accused of conspiring to kill his terminally ill employer with morphine. ", She had already been planning to divorce Cromwell, but he apparently demanded a $7 million settlement. "They did not meet in dance class," he insists. According to her New York Times obituary, the cause of death was "pulmonary edema resulting in cardiac arrest." Nelson Peltz is financing Chandi Heffner's legal battle. Chandi Heffner is a small, sturdy woman with thick black shoulder-length hair and bone-white skin, Thick black eyebrows set off her striking indigo-colored eyes, She was wearing a dark-blue Paradise on show: Inside the exotic retreat of tobacco More Than $65 Million For Adopted Duke Daughter BILLIONAIRE'S HEIR OUT OF PLACE His mother was a teacher, while his father fought as a pilot during WWII. In May, a New York judge approved a plan to send the bulk of her estate to charity. 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. "I looked upon Bernard as a member of the small Doris Duke family," says Donald Robinson. She was contemplating having knee replacements. I said, 'Doris, get out of that house. Chandi Heffner is 69 years old today because Chandi's birthday is on 08/26/1953. James Burns, now an aspiring actor in Los Angeles, says that he and Chandi "are giving each other space for a while.". ", Duke had a passion for the performing arts all her life. Demopoulos said that Duke had mentioned her suspicions that she was being poisoned. And then Chandi said something that took me aback: 'Bobby, I can't understand why you have a friend like that and yet you're struggling to have a dance publication. 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. We would go into the kitchen, just the four of us. Bernard Lafferty recently lunched in Manhattan with William Luers, president of the Metropolitan Museum, which was left $10 million by Duke. Youth," says Phyllis Saretta, an instructor with the Ibrahim Farrah Near East Dance Group, which Duke funded and danced with in the early 1970s. She was not on steroids in the latter half of 1990, and this was not a mood swing. "Not at all. The baby's death profoundly affected Duke, and she even hired psychics to try to. She was very happy doing that.". As the organization grew, she set up a program exclusively focused on serving people in rural communities where money, jobs, health care, and education are scarce. Doris Duke dumped Chandi Heffner because Heffner wanted to marry one of their bodyguards. One repeated her response to a straight man who was reluctant to have dinner with Rock Hudson for fear that he would be molested. "You know, fate is strange. She had had several leg operations, after a riding accident, but she participated in the seminar. "There were clear indications of a growing trust, affection, and devotion between them. Over the next few years, she bought almost an entire neighborhood of dilapidated 17th- and 18th-century houses, restored them, and rented them to town residents. All; Titles; TV Episodes; Celebs; Companies; Keywords; She said, 'I'm very frightened. ), HBOs Hit Show The Last of Us Finally Vaults Over 1 Million Viewers on Main Channel. She was alarmingly fragile." When tobacco heiress Doris Duke died last October, she left a will that shocked even those who had known her best. "And believe me, she didn't get to $1.3 billion without working at it. Heffner told me she had left "the farm community" and was living with Gordon Damon, a real-estate agent whose house was near Duke's Diamond Head estate. Guest's in Old Westbury: "She came by helicopter. "She forgave Rubi everything," says Reinaldo Herrera, even his subsequent marriage to Barbara Hutton. ", After Thanksgiving, as she had for five decades, Duke left for Hawaii. One week later, Doris Duke stunned the world again by adopting Chandi Heffner at the Somerset County Court House in Somerville, to which the two women were accompanied by Donald Robinson. . Duke left most of her money to charity and named her butler, Bernard Lafferty, co-executor of the estate. While Lafferty was hospitalized, Rybak says, "Doris said to me, 'Tom, we are going to leave this up to you. He has an alcohol problem, but he's a basically good person. We would hear it, and we would just joke about it. 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. ", A few days before I interviewed Heffner, an item had appeared in Cindy Adams's gossip column: Robert Ibrahim Farrah, an instructor of Middle Eastern dance, who says he introduced Heffner to Duke in 1984, claimed that Duke had come to fear Heffner. He is also the writer and co-producer of "Only the Strong Survive," a selection of the Cannes, Sundance, and Telluride Film festivals, directed by DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus. 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. If you want, we will give Bernard another chance, or we will get another butler. ' . "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.". On rare occasions I got Bernard. When he went to pick her up, Lafferty told him, "Always keep me informed, so that I can be sure everything works." Chandi called Steve Levyhe did security for Doristo find out what to do. Then [Franco and I] didn't see Doris anymore. . 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. ", Almost every friend of Duke's I talked to, including her many homosexual friends, told me that she had always been an avid heterosexual. . On Thursday, October 28, 1993, Duke died at Falcon's Lair. You felt that she was going to break. . 'Doris Duke really was the last Chinese empress, the last of a type that doesn't exist anymore. "It was really sad," Heffner said, "because Martha arrived and Doris wouldn't go see her. And he confirmed that he had been named an executor when Duke revised her 1987 will in March 1991. The circumstances of Dukes death remain under investigation. About the time Bloom was fired, Duke also abruptly left Chemical Bank and replaced her estate lawyer, William Zabel, of Schulte Roth & Zabel, with William Doyle, of the Chicago firm of Katten Muchin & Zavis. Duke turned up at the Ritz in Paris that October walking with a cane. 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.' Rich L.A. homeowners are snapping them up, Column: Supreme Court conservatives may want to block student loan forgiveness. On the last day of the seminar, he spent the afternoon with Duke at Shangri La. All. "She designed those houses and she saw to every color," says Newport artist Richard Banks. Chandi Duke Heffner, Self: Oh My God. He also said he had worked on and off for Peggy Lee for 10 years. Menu. A few hours later, when Heffner returned from a show-jumping lesson, she was informed that Doris had flown to Los Angeles. When Duke was 27 years old, she delivered a premature baby daughter who died just 24 hours after being born. Doris said, 'Do you have time for a drink?' 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. 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. Peltz, a Michael Milken protg, was beginning his rise to the top of the junk-bond heap; he would soon take over Triangle Industries, then National Can and American Can, and be worth $400 million by 1989. And then he was going to A.A., and he did very well in A.A., as far as I know. (After Duke's death, the trustees of her estate became defendants in this lawsuit.). ", In late 1990, he said, "I detected a growing unhappiness on Doris's part. Duke may have been infatuated, but friends of Tirella's told me that he was unabashedly gay. 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. Heffner, 40, a former belly dancer and member of the Hare Krishna, was left nothing by Duke and claimed the heiress was not of "sound mind and memory" when she rather feebly signed the new. "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. I remember that most: that she seemed very happy with her life at that period. ", "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. "It was unbelievable how hard she worked. Even Imelda didn't see her.". ", Heffner was sitting in the Manhattan apartment of one of her lawyers on a Saturday afternoon late last December. In return, Heffner claims, the twice-divorced Duke promised to "take care" of Heffner for the rest of her life. She also asked to be buried at sea. ", 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. She was so distressed about losing the baby. The incredibly eccentric Duke who used to throw lawn birthday parties for her llamas complete with cake and funny hats adopted adult Chandi, after being convinced she was the reincarnation of her dead baby. 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.". 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 she was so frail. Both Heffner and her lawyers emphatically deny that Nelson Peltz is financing Heffner's legal efforts. I came back clean as a whistle. People get annoyed with their kids. Because it was her major incapacity; there really wasn't anything else wrong with Doris. I never heard from Doris again and I could never reach her again. . "She's an unusually intelligent person: perceptive, articulate, well-read, culturally alive. Although polo and horse jumping are her favorite equestrian activities, Chandi Heffner currently spends the majority of her time overseeing CDHIF USA and CDHIFI. We were joking around, because we both had bad knees. The only times I saw Doris really relaxed were these few times in Beverly Hills.". Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. ", 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. Shortly after Duke's 80th birthday, in November, Nelson Seabra saw her at C. Z. '", In 1947 she married again, but handed the groom a prenuptial agreement at the altar. I almost feel . The reason it didn't last long was she didn't want them. Before moving to Chandi's current city of New York, NY, Chandi lived in Kamuela HI and Kawaihae HI.In the past, Chandi has also been known as Duke Chandi, Chani Duke Heffner, Chani D Heffner, Chandi K Heffner and Chandi Duke Heffner. Now, please understand that I'm not accusing anyone of anything.". This gives her the air of philanthropy. 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. Her longest relationship was with Joey Castro, the Mexican-born jazz pianist at the Mocambo nightclub in Los Angeles, whom she met in 1950, when he was 23 and she was 38. He came over here, and she died. Around Christmas, Duke rented a house in Honolulu for Martha Graham and Ron Protas. . "She got baby doses for a few weeks and that was it. Years ago, she was talking about the things we all talk about nowthe environment, battered women and children, animal rights. I fumbled through an introduction. She got right up like a trouper and fell right down again. "O.K., I'm not going to see her, but. Do you think you could help him out?' Moreover, Heffner's legal complaint against Duke states: Doris . To this day he maintains, "A lot of injustice was done to me. Her mother was another story. Steve comes about four, and he and I go up to Bernard's room. Like Heffner, Amar quickly became involved in the running of Duke's houses, business affairs, and charities. And he called from a pay phone, and I felt so sorry for this guy, I said, 'Come to Somerville.' ", Glenn Scott Greenhouse, the president of the Pavillion Agency, confirmed that Lafferty's drinking became an issue at the Peltzes'. Burns said that he was also training Lafferty, to help him lose his paunch. He always seemed to be there whenever she needed him. Imelda stayed for a week, I think. . . 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. As a young girl, she wrote him love notes, which he pored over again and again. Her last will is dated April 5, 1993, was drawn up by Katten Muchin, and was signed at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. I knew from the beginning she was a son of a bitch." Doris wouldn't take a pill unless she really needed it. . 'I loved her so much. He's standing on a street corner in New York right now and needs a place to go. In any case, their friendship ended in tragedy that October, when Duke ran him over as he was opening the gate of Rough Point. They were putting up a curtain rod together. Chandi Duke Heffner is known for Oh My God (2009). ", In either March or April, Demopoulos said, he received a call from Irwin Bloom, who told him that he had been fired by Duke. . By 1963 she was having Castro trailed by a private investigator. 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. The two exchanged their "vows" at Duke's Hawaiian mansion, but it was revealed the whole thing was a hoax. Call your pilot tonight and leave immediately and go to Los Angeles and get checked up.' 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. A member of the Duke family, who requested anonymity, said yesterday, "I think Doris will turn it over to her lawyer and say, 'Crush her.' "He wanted a settlement," says Nancy Cooke de Herrera, "but you could not get a nickel out of Doris if you came at her the wrong way." LOS ANGELES (AP) _ An ex-Marine sued the adopted daughter of late tobacco heiress Doris Duke for $33 million in palimony, claiming he gave up three years of his life to encourage her friendship with Duke. Chandi was into Eastern cultures and all that stuff, and so was Doris. 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. This should be some rehearsal dinner! "No cane. Up to that point, Heffner alleges, the two women shared an extremely close relationship, enjoying not only the opulence of Duke's estates, but also trips to Russia, "fountain of youth" treatments in Romania, finding suitable maids for the ornery billionaire after she'd been "blacklisted" by employment agencies, shopping for a $25 million Boeing 737, and a shared belief that Heffner was the reincarnation of Duke's only child, a daughter who died shortly after birth in 1940. Most of Duke's friends hadn't had an inkling. 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. And that's how the relationship evolved. . "Io sono molto contento. 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. They hired him on Ferencz Soltesz's recommendation. "Chandi works very hard for Doris. Contrary to Heffner's version of events, he told me that he had prescribed anabolic steroids for Duke for her knee problems in late 1989 or early 1990. But on Nicolas mothers side, things get more interesting. Heffner takes credit for everything from improving the dairy herd at Duke Farms to arranging the sale of Duke's gold deposits in Switzerland. Movies. In November 1991, Duke had a new will written, naming Irwin Bloom and Chemical Bank as executors. Franco Rossellini assured everyone that he was all for it. Heffner told me, "Doris used to call James 'Teach.' Ignoring Chandi Heffner, the latter-day flower child whom she adopted in. 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. Learn how your comment data is processed. ". Charlene Gail Heffner goes by the name Chandi Duke Heffner. ", Heffner blamed Duke's altered feelings on the steroids she claims Duke was taking then. One night at dinner, Heffner told me, "Doris said to me, 'You're my daughter reincarnated. The first one, in Hawaii, didn't work out: she wanted to make a museum out of a Thai temple that she had saved from destruction on one of her many trips to Southeast Asia. Chandi Duke Heffner, age 60s, lives in Kamuela, HI. After the war, she moved to Paris and wrote for the magazine Harper's Bazaar . ", Duke gave him a house in Paris for a wedding gift, and a plane before their divorce one year later. In later years she did have problems with her hearing and with her legs, but nothing major. So I fixed another tray and brought it upstairs. Musks master plan for Tesla is built around sustainable energy economy, What to expect from Elon Musks third master Tesla plan, Before and after photos from space show storms effect on California reservoirs, Yet more rain expected to hit California in March. SOMERVILLE, N.J. (AP) _ Reclusive multimillionaire Doris Duke has adopted a 35-year-old conservationist as a daughter, her lawyer said Friday. A Hare Krishna, sort of, Chandi went to Hawaii in the late 1980s and inveigled herself into the life of another billionaire, Doris Duke, the richest woman in the world. . For Industry Professionals. . "She was told she has a pretty good case," the family member said. "It was strange. Chandi Duke Heffner net worth is $300,000. Phyllis Saretta told me that Duke performed with the Farrah company four or five times, wearing a long black wig. 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. SOMERVILLE, N.J. (AP) _ Reclusive multimillionaire Doris Duke has adopted a 35-year-old conservationist as a daughter, her lawyer said Friday. ", 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. Shes the daughter of billionaire Nelson Peltz. The balance is due Wednesday. So we went into the room, and Bernard was buck naked, bent over a chair, passed out. His family all died, and he had one remaining relative, in Philadelphia. Also at Duke Farms, she constructed a series of 11 greenhouses containing elaborate recreations of English, French, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Persian, and other gardens, which she opened to the public. I used to tell her, 'You know, Doris, some people do like you for yourself. He received nothing. "She looked great," Warnecke says. (We covered the story in Fame magazine in 1990, and New York magazine did it again in 1993.). "Rubi" was also presented with a string of polo ponies and a house in Paris. "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.' They all of a sudden just totally cut me off, and I can't believe that was Doris. I tried to see her the following week when I was in California, and there were about a dozen times since then that I called when I made trips to California, where I would simply get a response on the other end of the line that was: 'Miss Duke is doing well. 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. Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. . She clapped her hands in glee. "He seemed depressed, and Doris thought it would give him more self-esteem. "We discussed cremation, and she said, 'Never, never, ever let anyone cremate me.' Chandi said, 'But where do I find a man?' We don't hear anything. April 7, 1993 Chandi Duke Heffner, the 39-year-old former belly dancer and Hare Krishna devotee who was legally adopted by American Tobacco Co. heiress Doris Duke in 1988, now claims the. How do we get rid of her? A cult member of Hare Krishna, Chandi went to Hawaii in the late 1980s and met with a billionaire, Doris Duke, a billionaire tobacco heiress, philanthropist, art collector, horticulturist, and socialite. Later on we would sleep together and Doris would come in most mornings and sit there on the bed with us and talk. Who can help student-athletes cash in? Duke's Los Angeles decorator Tony Duquette adds, "He was just marvelous to Doris, and not at all sinister. She was ahead of her time. She also told me that Duke was much more taken with Ferdinand Marcos, who was gravely ill in Honolulu, than she was with his wife. . Heffner spent almost six months on and off in two Honolulu hospitals, because she also developed a heart problem. 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. "Doris did this more for the president. It was 1982, and Heffner was taking a class at Farrah's studio near Times Square. Why doesn't she help you?' The Untold Truth of Stephen Hawking's Son - Ti. In May, a New York judge approved a plan to send the bulk of her estate to charity. ", "I'm crazy about Bernard," says Oatsie Charles. Chandi got a couple of the housemen, and they brought him to the Somerville hospital." I know a lot of bull dykes. Meanwhile, Bernard said he wasn't feeling well and went back up to his room. But she had a dramatic change in her lifeand it was weird. Enzo Natale concurs: "Chandi and Bernard were twins.". ", The day after the adoption, the economist Woody Brock went to lunch at Duke Farms with Duke's New Jersey neighbor Jane Engelhard. These are just some of the accusations, strange rumors, and conspiracy theories that I heard concerning the last years of Doris Duke's life: Her estate is really worth at least $2 billion. "She got us our first booking, in that black church in New Jersey. Duke believed that Heffner was the reincarnation of her daughter, Arden. . Chandi Heffner was "planted" on Doris Duke by Imelda Marcos. After Tirella's death, she seemed consumed with the idea of actually becoming a performer. Guest introduced Duke to Leon Amar, a 30-year-old Moroccan decorator. If someone crossed them, they just put them out of their lives. Her stage name was Sahda. No wills! Id love to be a fly on the wall when David and Victoria Beckham meet their sons fiancees family. It's not true. Mercedes Bass remembered Duke's coming for tea at the Carlyle Hotel a year or so earlier and introducing Heffner as "my niece." "At the beginning of 1991, she placed an increasing reliance on me and Bernard," Demopoulos told me. In 1995, Chandi Heffner Duke, the disinherited adopted daughter, reached a $65 million settlement with Mr. Lafferty and the estate. "But she thought everybody was after her money. Burns served as Chandi Heffner Duke's "companion, confidant, cook, bodyguard," according to the suit, and she, in turn, agreed that they would divide "her expected inheritance." What did Disney actually lose from its Florida battle with DeSantis? 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.
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