Heffner told me that Duke was annoyed with Rossellini for falling behind on the rent on the New Jersey guesthouse. Because MyLife only collects this data and does not create it, we cannot fully guarantee its accuracy. She got right up like a trouper and fell right down again. Menu. On the last day of the seminar, he spent the afternoon with Duke at Shangri La. . 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. [15] Display construction began in 1958. $473,000 in today's dollars[37] was divided among Tirella's eight siblings when Duke was found negligent after a trial five years later. On rare occasions I got Bernard. . He was born on August 27, 1952, in Peekskill, New York, USA, as Paul Rubenfeld. ", 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. 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. . Upon her father's death in 1925, the 13-year-old Doris Duke -- known as "The Richest Girl in the World" -- inherited several hundred million dollars. She has completely wired the small house on her own, and she boards horses and cows for neighbors for $15 a head per month. Cary W. Goldstein, Burns lawyer, says Heffner Duke broke ``a very explicit deal she had with Burns, although it was never written down. [38][39] Later biographies and her obituaries repeated the official finding. Chandi has taken control of this Reputation Profile & made sections private. I would have to reheat it. [62] Duke initially maintained that Heffner was the reincarnation of her only biological child Arden, who died soon after birth in 1940. It doesn't mean I'll go to bed with them.". Duke's interest in horticulture led to a friendship with Pulitzer Prize-winning author and scientific farmer Louis Bromfield, who operated Malabar Farm, his country home in Lucas, Ohio in Richland County. And in recent months the man who, nominally at least, earned his living as a butler had acquired a butler of his own. Chandi got a couple of the housemen, and they brought him to the Somerville hospital." 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 will,. I knew from the beginning she was a son of a bitch." 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. In any case, their friendship ended in tragedy that October, when Duke ran him over as he was opening the gate of Rough Point. Duke turned up at the Ritz in Paris that October walking with a cane. He also instilled in her an almost reflexive inability to trust people. Why doesn't she help you?' 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. Chandi Heffner has led the nonprofit charitable foundations CDHIF USA and CDHIFI India for more than a decade. Banks never saw her again. "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. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. Release Calendar Top 250 Movies Most Popular Movies Browse Movies by Genre Top Box Office Showtimes & Tickets Movie News India Movie Spotlight. Despite the negative publicity, she fought her husband in the courts for five years, until he gave in. ", "When one of Doris's love affairs ended, there was always great drama," says her friend Consuelo Crespi. ", She had already been planning to divorce Cromwell, but he apparently demanded a $7 million settlement. 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. Heffner takes credit for everything from improving the dairy herd at Duke Farms to arranging the sale of Duke's gold deposits in Switzerland. New York magazine reported after her death that she had a knee operation at U.C.L.A. ", After Thanksgiving, as she had for five decades, Duke left for Hawaii. In the 17th Century, Sir William Petty began writing about the valuation of lives in terms of the productive skills of individuals - a precursor of human capital considerations. I never heard from Doris again and I could never reach her again. Chandi Heffner and Doris Duke were having a lesbian affair. Duke spent her early childhood at Duke Farms, her father's 2,700-acre (11km2) estate in Hillsborough Township, New Jersey. [4] At his death in 1925, the elder Duke's will bequeathed the majority of his estate to his wife and daughter,[5] along with $17 million in two separate clauses of the will, to The Duke Endowment he had created in 1924. During this period, Duke also plunged into three large-scale public projects. Duke's passions varied wildly. ", In late 1990, he said, "I detected a growing unhappiness on Doris's part. Both Duke and Heffner served as close advisers to Marcos during her trial for fraud and racketeering. She told me that in the months prior to her fall from grace one of Duke's doctors was injecting her with steroids, for knee problems, and that the psychological side effects of "the substance enabled the other people to talk her into whatever they wanted. 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. The rest of the house was dark, which was odd. Kids get annoyed with their parents.". . She continued to give him money, and friends say that their sexual relationship never really ended. 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. [36], What Lance was able to find showed that Duke's account of the incident had changed and was inconsistent with the evidence. There was a deadly side to Doris. . Chandi, which means "female energy personified" in Sanskrit, was born Charlene Heffner in Baltimore on August 26, 1953, the eldest of three daughters of William Heffner, a lawyer, and his wife, "Bunny," a nurse. And the servants were absolutely bizarreponytailed, rings, sandals ". Enzo Natale says, "Chandi had accused me of trying to rape her in Honolulu. She was very intelligent and very together. Contact Chandi, search articles and Tweets, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place. This should be some rehearsal dinner! 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. The 20 foot high bedroom in which he was found was draped in wine red velvet and lit by a Venetian chandelier. How could they forgive him, an uneducated Irishman who carried out his duties barefoot, topped with full butler's regalia, ear stud and ponytail? Keep in mind, people are entitled to a change of heart. It will be wonderful.' Heffner also claims she saved the heiress's life on more than one occasion: once when Duke collapsed at her Newport estate in a "pool of blood," and a second time when Heffner recalls diving into the freezing Atlantic to save Duke from drowning. We had a nice dinner with appropriate toasts, and Franco entertained us with anecdotes and imitations. I thought she was really nice, genuine.". ". ", Sometimes, Robert Farrah recalls, "Doris would throw up her hands and say, 'No wills! In an earlier will, Demopoulos had been named executor[68] and challenged Lafferty's appointment. He was the legendary Latin lover Porfirio Rubirosa, the former son-in-law of the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. She told me that her parents did not approve of her lifestyle, and that they'd cut her off from everything. Keyko said that $800,000 was paid to Heffner on Friday. He could barely speak.". You're Arden. '" She had episodes of pneumonia, she had clots in her veins, and some of those clots may have traveled to her lungs. Her former physician, Dr. Harry Demopoulos, is seeking to unseat Lafferty as co-executor. So did Imelda. to see complete work history. . There were four witnesses, including Dr. Charles Kivowitz, a fashionable Beverly Hills internist. Even Imelda didn't see her.". If you want, we will give Bernard another chance, or we will get another butler. ' English translation by Lszlo Vekerdi.] 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 her out less than three years later. [15] She studied singing with Estelle Liebling, the voice teacher of Beverly Sills, in New York City. According to the Mansfield biography, Cromwell asked her on their sexless wedding night what his annual income from her would be. 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. I said, 'Doris, get out of that house. (Other sources say the meeting took place in 1985.) "Darling, the girl is out the door without a cent," Franco Rossellini trilled to a friend. In the last year of Duke's life, Bernard Lafferty persuaded her to drop her physician of 12 years, her accountant, her bankers, and the lawyer who drew up her next-to-last will. Their childhood included documented neglect, abuse, parental violence and addiction.[74][75]. 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. . [17] 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. She began trying to walk while she was still heavily medicated and fell, breaking her hip. ", Almost every friend of Duke's I talked to, including her many homosexual friends, told me that she had always been an avid heterosexual. Heffner claims she gave up her own life to immerse herself in being a companion to the eccentric Duke: helping to manage the Duke Farms dairy, advising her on financial matters, overseeing her "disorganized and run-down estates," selling gold deposits from her myriad Swiss bank accounts and hiring a bodyguard to protect her from kidnappers. Adam Smith followed a century later with direct consideration of the . Like Doris, actually." For access to this information, contact Chandi. When he went to pick her up, Lafferty told him, "Always keep me informed, so that I can be sure everything works." Probability theory. I really don't know what the hell was going on, frankly. 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. On New Year's Day 1964, she ordered him out, and he retaliated by suing her, claiming that they had been secretly married. 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. Alec Cunningham-Reid. As she spoke, she leaned forward like a child who is eager to please, but when she sat back and let her lawyers take over, her face lost its animation and she seemed older, harder, drained. Heffner Duke, adopted in 1988 when she was 38 and the heiress was in her 70s, could not be reached for comment. Newport police declared it an accident, and her friends still swear that it was. And the whispers about Duke's last years continue. 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. . 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. This stuff was from Miss Duke's father. . The Sands says that Lafferty managed the theater, which headlined such stars as Bill Cosby, Joel Grey, and Rita Moreno. An autopsy has been carried out, and while they await the toxicology results, which could take anything from two weeks to 90 days, everything so far points to death from natural causes. 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. Chandi called Steve Levyhe did security for Doristo find out what to do. "He was doing a lot of embroidery work for Doris. The daughter of James B. Duke, the tobacco and electric power magnate and the benefactor of Duke University, Miss Dukes wealth is estimated by Forbes magazine at $800 million and by her former business manager at $2.5 billion. [1] Her great wealth, luxurious lifestyle, and love life attracted significant press coverage, both during her life and after her death.[2]. It's not true. . Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. Heffner told me, "Doris used to call James 'Teach.' Chandi was into environmental concerns. Inspired by this trip, they bought the most spectacular piece of property near Diamond Head in Honolulu, on which they built a Mogul-style fortress and named it Shangri La. After Tirella's death, she seemed consumed with the idea of actually becoming a performer. The following February, Farrah repeated the seminar, and it was apparently then that Chandi Heffner entered Doris Duke's life. And he confirmed that he had been named an executor when Duke revised her 1987 will in March 1991. They hired him on Ferencz Soltesz's recommendation. Doris Duke was murdered. Heffner also said that Duke confided that she thought her mother had wanted to abort her. Doris and I used to go fairly regularly to see the president in the hospital; she would give him reiki treatments.". She said, 'There was nothing to do on that train.' Only one other trustee was named in the will, Marion Oates Charles, Duke's longtime summer neighbor in Newport, Rhode Island. "There were clear indications of a growing trust, affection, and devotion between them. "The butler word they like," Lafferty lamented at the time, "because the butler always did it. It was clear that something adverse was going on in the latter part of 1990 in Hawaii. One night at dinner, Heffner told me, "Doris said to me, 'You're my daughter reincarnated. One of the first things she did was to caution Duke, on the advice of Nelson Peltz, against an investment proposed by her then business manager, Patrick Mahn. "She looked great," Warnecke says. 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." And all of a sudden I started hearing, 'The food is cold.' If so, wrote Donders, "interposing into the process some new components of . (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 an interview after Duke's death a few years ago, Lee was unstinting in her support for Lafferty: "Everything good I could say about Bernard, I do. The adoption proceeding took place Thursday before state Judge Wilfred Diana and went into effect immediately. As founder and president of the Chandi D. Heffner International Foundation (CDHIF) and its counterpart foundation in India (CDHIFI), Chandi Heffner has directed numerous projects to ease suffering and improve the condition of hundreds of thousands of people in India. The enemies then took him to court (provoking his denunciation by the unsympathetic judge), ostensibly to stop Lafferty spending Duke's fortune on himself, and won. 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. Apparently, the warm weather had had a good effect. In 1933, when she turned 21, Doris Duke came into the first $10 million left by her father. Her Newport artist pal Richard Banks said that that summer "Doris decided to do the whole social thing and she loved it. In addition to providing medical care, food, and veterinary care, Ms. Heffner . After a two-week rejuvenation cure in Romania with the controversial Dr. Anna Aslan, they stopped in London. At 250lb and living a sedentary existence, he was always a candidate for a heart attack, and the coroner's office in Los Angeles says no foul play is suspected. ", In either March or April, Demopoulos said, he received a call from Irwin Bloom, who told him that he had been fired by Duke. [64] The Surrogate Court of Manhattan overrode Duke's will and appointed new trustees from among those who had challenged it: Harry Demopoulos; J. Carter Brown (later also involved in overturning the will of Albert C. Barnes);[70][citation needed] Marion Oates Charles, the sole trustee from Duke's last will; James Gill, a lawyer; Nannerl O. Keohane, president of Duke University; and John J. Mack, president of Morgan Stanley. His articles have appeared in dozens of publications over the years including New York Magazine, where he wrote the Intelligencer column in the mid 90s and covered the OJ Simpson trial, and Fox News (when it wasn't so crazy) where he covered Michael Jackson. ", "Doris Duke had it all -- and now her foundation is giving a lot back", "Doris Duke Leaves $1 billion to a New Charitable Foundation", "Doris Duke Biographical History and Archival Collections (Duke University Libraries)", "The Beatles' magical mystery tour of India", "The Myth & Mystique of Doris Duke's Inner Circle", "Inventory of the Doris Duke Foundation Records, 1934-2009 (Duke University Libraries)", "Sarandon to Play World's Richest Little Girl", "Top Three Inheritance Disputes LegalZoom.com", "Deal Reached over the Estate of Doris Duke", "Bernard Lafferty the Butler for Doris Dukes Dies at 51", "Famed Duke Gardens To Become Ambitious 'Green' Lab", "Sale of Rare Carpet to Benefit Newport Restoration Foundation Collections Fund", "The Darkness of Riches: Born Billionaires but Starved, Neglected and Locked in a Basement", "The Eccentric Heiress Who Lived Inside an Epic Monument To Islamic Art", Doris Duke Biographical History and Archival Collections (Duke University Libraries), James Cromwell, Doris Duke and Frank Murphy attending Jackson Day dinner, Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame Women Inductees, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Doris_Duke&oldid=1150842887, Articles with dead external links from January 2017, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from October 2016, All articles needing additional references, Articles needing additional references from May 2021, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from March 2021, Articles with unsourced statements from May 2021, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Pony Duke, her disinherited nephew, and Jason Thomas published. That fall, she attended a tribute to Sophia Loren at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and a fancy party afterward at Tatou, with Imelda Marcos, Rossellini, Natale, and Lafferty, who wore a ski sweater. His paternal grandparents were Polish Jewish immigrants. "Chandi loved animals. "It was strange. At her father's estate in Hillsborough Township, New Jersey, she created one of the largest indoor botanical displays in the United States. ", 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. "We discussed cremation, and she said, 'Never, never, ever let anyone cremate me.' Duke was the life beneficiary of two trusts created by her father, James Buchanan Duke, in 1917 and 1924. They were initially awarded a larger sum that was subsequently reduced with the aid of Duke's lawyers. Tirella's family sued Duke for wrongful death and won $75,000. There's no question that Bernard was more than just a butler. . Through shrewd investments and her legendary parsimony, she managed to more than triple her holdings. Alan Deutschman, Bob Colacello, Steven Daly, 5 more Use of and/or registration on any portion of this site constitutes acceptance of our. I used to tell her, 'You know, Doris, some people do like you for yourself. Lafferty also may pay fees to and divide commissions among the trustees as he sees fit. Her telephone was not listed in the Los Angeles area. Lafferty was accused of conspiring to kill his terminally ill employer with morphine. ", James Cromwell maintained that it was not his child, and friends assumed that it was Cunningham-Reid's. [44] In 1988 Duke adopted 32-year-old Chandi Heffner in Hawaii.