", Duke had a passion for the performing arts all her life. 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. Her Newport artist pal Richard Banks said that that summer "Doris decided to do the whole social thing and she loved it. She had received another $10 million of her inheritance in 1937, and would receive at least as much in 1942. Her first husband, James R. Cromwell, called Duke "my frigidheiress" and engaged in a lengthy court battle to win a financial settlement. Like all of her houses, it was guarded by fierce Dobermans or German shepherds. "Cromwell was quite nice," says Nelson Seabra, a rich Brazilian friend of Duke's. She said, 'I'm very frightened. I think somebody is trying to kill me.". This stuff was from Miss Duke's father. She never married again, and from then on the men in her life, whether they were lovers or not, were considerably younger and came from the creative world. In the proceedings, Heffner formally renounced her natural parents, certified that she was not consenting to be adopted out of financial considerations, and legally changed her name from Charlene Gail Heffner to Chandi Duke Heffner. Her second husband, Dominican playboy Porfirio Rubirosa, fared only slightly better: His divorce settlement was estimated at $1 million. . Then one day in June, Miss Duke called me and said, 'Thomas, have you seen Bernard? '", In 1947 she married again, but handed the groom a prenuptial agreement at the altar. 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." Demopoulos said that Duke had mentioned her suspicions that she was being poisoned. We would hear it, and we would just joke about it. Heffner pleaded on his behalf and asked to speak to Duke, but Robinson told her that Duke was tired. She was ahead of her time. Ignoring Chandi Heffner, the latter-day flower child whom she adopted in. I'll go to dinner with them. And all of a sudden I started hearing, 'The food is cold.' And I didn't sense any antagonism between Chandi and Bernard." 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. He used to take her to Gold's Gym." "We concentrated on her leg-muscle group," he said. . In her will, Duke requested that no funeral or memorial service be held for her. "No cane. "He was marvelous," says Claus von Blow, who later became Duke's neighbor in Newport. 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. "We were sitting on the rocks, and she said, 'I will take care of you and all of your animals for the rest of your life. "He seemed depressed, and Doris thought it would give him more self-esteem. Chandi Duke Heffner is known for Oh My God (2009). . 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. He came over here, and she died. She was alarmingly fragile." Incredibly, she was awarded a $65 million settlement. Doris wouldn't take a pill unless she really needed it. Heffner told me, "Doris used to call James 'Teach.' Keep in mind, people are entitled to a change of heart. She was very happy doing that.". 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. In return, Heffner claims, the twice-divorced Duke promised to "take care" of Heffner for the rest of her life. 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. 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.. I said, 'Doris, do it, I think it's a good thing.' The next morning, the day after Valentine's Day, James Burns remembers, Duke told Heffner she had a dentist's appointment and left the house with Bernard Lafferty. 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. Chandi Duke Heffner net worth is $300,000. 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. Chandi said, 'But where do I find a man?' Chandi was into environmental concerns. The next day I got a phone call from Doris to thank me. This is a short video of an imaginary conversation between tobacco heiress Doris Duke and her adopted daughter Chandi Heffner, whom she met in a dance class . Her telephone was not listed in the Los Angeles area. ", In late 1990, he said, "I detected a growing unhappiness on Doris's part. . (Burns dismisses reports that he was once a Chippendales dancer: "Not that I haven't been asked. We had a nice dinner with appropriate toasts, and Franco entertained us with anecdotes and imitations. And along about March, I sent flowers and candy to her California home. Her former physician, Dr. Harry Demopoulos, is seeking to unseat Lafferty as co-executor. . Like Doris, actually." 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. People get annoyed with their kids. And then the wine was $1,000 a bottle; it came from her father's cellars. "It was shocking," Heffner told me. 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. When Doris was only 14, she successfully sued her mother to stop her from selling Duke Farms, the estate her father had created out of New Jersey flatlands, including a 30-room mansion with an indoor pool and indoor tennis courts, artificial lakes, and man-made hillocks. "Bernard got out of the hospital. Duke died last October, leaving an estate reported to be between $750 million and $1.3 billion and lengthy obituaries which focused on her husbands and lovers, her houses in New Jersey, Rhode Island, California, and Hawaii, her collections of Oriental and Islamic art, her $5 million bailout of Imelda Marcos, and her perplexing relationship with Chandi Heffner. I hired him to come out [to Los Angeles] and work for me, to kind of be my majordomo here. 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 . ", 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. (1940 - 1940) Photos: 19. She was not on steroids in the latter half of 1990, and this was not a mood swing. . 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. Duke was spending the spring, as usual, at her 2,700-acre Duke Farms, in Somerville, New Jersey. He wanted me out of there. Everything good I could say about Bernard, I do. On an employment application Lafferty filled out for the Pavillion Agency in New York in September 1986, he said he had worked at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia from 1972 to 1983 and at the Sands Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City from 1983 to 1985. What did Disney actually lose from its Florida battle with DeSantis? Thick black eyebrows set off her striking indigo-colored eyes. Of course, many of the sources for these allegations are people who were left out of the will, or cut out of the will, or people who hope to eventually receive grants from the Duke foundations. When he went to pick her up, Lafferty told him, "Always keep me informed, so that I can be sure everything works." . 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. So we went into the room, and Bernard was buck naked, bent over a chair, passed out. "They did not meet in dance class," he insists. It wasn't until the following winter, however, Burns told me, that he became romantically involved with Heffner. So we let him start, and we had problems with the alcohol and did our best to put him in a situation where he dried out. There's no question that Bernard was more than just a butler. He has an alcohol problem, but he's a basically good person. Both Duke and Heffner served as close advisers to Marcos during her trial for fraud and racketeering. I really don't know what the hell was going on, frankly. ), HBOs Hit Show The Last of Us Finally Vaults Over 1 Million Viewers on Main Channel. 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. We knock, we bang, we yell. 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. . She was contemplating having knee replacements. Sometimes he acted as the butler, others as a general assistant. About Heffner's sister. Chandi Heffner was "planted" on Doris Duke by Imelda Marcos. Chandi called Steve Levyhe did security for Doristo find out what to do. Nelson Peltz is financing Chandi Heffner's legal battle. The private pilot hired to fly Duke's Boeing 737 quit his job because of Heffner, and filed a letter with the Federal Aviation Administration complaining of her unstable behavior. "I looked upon Bernard as a member of the small Doris Duke family," says Donald Robinson. After she returned to Newport later that month, Banks invited her to a concert, but she forgot the date. Duke may have been infatuated, but friends of Tirella's told me that he was unabashedly gay. 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. Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. I remember that most: that she seemed very happy with her life at that period. That evening, I sent up dinner and Chandi came downstairs and said, 'Tom, Bernard just dropped the entire tray.' And let me tell you that she gave a really nice dinner party for me at the nadir of my fortunes. She was having a real whirl." "Chandi loved animals. . That's not the Doris I knew. Duke died at age 80 in 1988, leaving a hotly contested $1.5 billion estate. ", Sometimes, Robert Farrah recalls, "Doris would throw up her hands and say, 'No wills! She has also been involved in equestrian sports and was the owner of the horse Authentic, whose rider took home the Gold Medal in show jumping for Team USA at the 2004 Athens Olympics. In May, a New York judge approved a plan to send the bulk of her estate to charity. His mother was a teacher, while his father fought as a pilot during WWII. "We kept it to ourselves for months, until around July 1990. . 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. There were four witnesses, including Dr. Charles Kivowitz, a fashionable Beverly Hills internist. Two years later she bought Falcon's Lair, the Beverly Hills house where Rudolph Valentino once lived. Farrah says that Duke had returned from her first visit to Manila, with Rossellini, about a week before meeting Heffner. Steve said, 'Your food has changed so suddenly Miss Duke thinks you must be on drugs.' (Duke had a similar fascination with spiritualism: she gave $100,000 to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the 60s; fell under the spell of Norbu Chen, a pseudo-Tibetan lama, in the 70s; and left $500,000 to the Self-Realization Fellowship.). It was perhaps her last romantic affair, and in some respects foreshadowed her relationship with Chandi Heffner. James Burns, 32, in a lawsuit filed Wednesday, claimed Chandi Gail Heffner Duke owes him half of the $66 million she was awarded after Duke die in 1988. Steve comes about four, and he and I go up to Bernard's room. Newport police declared it an accident, and her friends still swear that it was. 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. She really considered herself a dancer. Banks never saw her again. . One repeated her response to a straight man who was reluctant to have dinner with Rock Hudson for fear that he would be molested. ", 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. In court papers, Heffner -- a Baltimore native -- says the two women met in Hawaii in 1981. According to a half-page biography released by Howard J. Rubenstein Associates, Bernard Lafferty was born in Ireland in 1945 and immigrated to the United States more than 20 years ago. I've talked to bankers who said she knew where every last nickel was. She was a cool lady. . I said, 'Doris, get out of that house. . 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 was not aware of his drinking problem when I placed him there, but I did inform Chandi [before sending him to Doris Duke's]. I was not aware of what management roles he might or might not have had. According to Robert Farrah, the director of the Ibrahim Farrah company, for several months in the late 60s she took private belly-dancing classes with him every morning for two hours in New York and then flew from LaGuardia to Detroit, where she had rented a motel room near the airport and installed a piano for her afternoon singing lessons with Aretha Franklin's father. Chandi Duke Heffner, Self: Oh My God. The reason it didn't last long was she didn't want them. Franco Rossellini assured everyone that he was all for it. And all around him were all these liquor bottlesGrand Marnier and sherry. ", After Thanksgiving, as she had for five decades, Duke left for Hawaii. Use of and/or registration on any portion of this site constitutes acceptance of our. ", Nonetheless, Duke seemed increasingly pleased with Lafferty. Around Christmas, Duke rented a house in Honolulu for Martha Graham and Ron Protas. He was going to A. I turned and saw her on the floor. (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. We came out from opposite sides of the stage, and I got to the middle and she wasn't there. All; Titles; TV Episodes; Celebs; Companies; Keywords; Duke was twice divorced and had no other children. Duke." She really had a feeling for him, and expressed annoyance with Imelda. Other people told me that Duke suspected Heffner of poisoning or drugging her, and that she credited Lafferty with saving her life. Ron Protas, the artistic director of the Martha Graham Dance Company, says, "Doris was very shy, and never thought enough of herself, because she was so beat up emotionally by her father. Do you think you could help him out?' 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 reclusive 80-year-old billionaire reneged on her promise to make Heffner the sole beneficiary of her estate. Mercedes Bass remembered Duke's coming for tea at the Carlyle Hotel a year or so earlier and introducing Heffner as "my niece." When I go I'll be eaten by the sharks.". In November 1991, Duke had a new will written, naming Irwin Bloom and Chemical Bank as executors. 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.' ", Duke gave him a house in Paris for a wedding gift, and a plane before their divorce one year later. I almost feel . Los Angeles, A $150,000 executive protection dog? He had also treated Chandi Heffner, and counted both women as friends. Meanwhile, Heffner is holed up on her Hawaiian ranch. 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