Heffner told me that "even back in high school I began kind of a quest to see if there was more to life," and that after a trip around the world, she ended up in Hawaii, meditating, surfing, and exercising polo ponies. ", In either March or April, Demopoulos said, he received a call from Irwin Bloom, who told him that he had been fired by Duke. We would be four, six, eightOatsie Charles, Nuala Pell, Minnie Cushing, Lita McBean and her husband, and Sunny and me. Richard Banks called Lafferty the next day. I said, 'Sure, have him call me.' "I looked upon Bernard as a member of the small Doris Duke family," says Donald Robinson. Her first husband, James R. Cromwell, called Duke "my frigidheiress" and engaged in a lengthy court battle to win a financial settlement. We took him to Newport. She was taking so many pills at the end and, knowingly or not, killed herself. I feel unsure of myself physically. In the morning, Bernard didn't come down until 11:30, and he was a mess. 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. He was very good at repairing old costumes and fabric. I remember her referring to 'we dancers.' We would hear it, and we would just joke about it. 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. 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. "At the beginning of 1991, she placed an increasing reliance on me and Bernard," Demopoulos told me. Like Heffner, Amar quickly became involved in the running of Duke's houses, business affairs, and charities. When he went to pick her up, Lafferty told him, "Always keep me informed, so that I can be sure everything works." Lafferty also may pay fees to and divide commissions among the trustees as he sees fit. 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. Heffner has a sister, Charlene Gail Heffner who goes by the name Chandi Duke Heffner. In published accounts of Duke's break with Heffner, Bernard Lafferty, who was worried about Duke's health, had called Rossellini in Europe a few weeks earlier and told him, "Something is really wrong here. Duke, who had managed to avoid almost all publicity since the Tirella scandal, stunned the world in November 1988 by putting up the $5 million bail for Imelda Marcos, whom the U.S. government had charged with racketeering. 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. 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. And then he was going to A.A., and he did very well in A.A., as far as I know. In June 1985, Duke and Heffner traveled to Russia together. Charlene Gail Heffner goes by the name Chandi Duke Heffner. also assured Chandi that she would be the heir to Doris's estate in return for Chandi devoting herself to Doris and to the running of her affairs. Doris Duke dumped Chandi Heffner because Heffner wanted to marry one of their bodyguards. He's standing on a street corner in New York right now and needs a place to go. Los Angeles, A $150,000 executive protection dog? . . . "She was told she has a pretty good case," the family member said. . He was cooking and she was serving. 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 . Lafferty can appoint the bank that will serve as the estate's co-executor, and three of the four other trustees of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. There was a gradual onset of a depressed relationship between Doris and Chandi, starting about the middle of 1990 and going progressively downhill. Use of and/or registration on any portion of this site constitutes acceptance of our. Seemed. Roger Friedman began his Showbiz411 column in April 2009 after 10 years with Fox News, where he created the Fox411 column. (Burns dismisses reports that he was once a Chippendales dancer: "Not that I haven't been asked. 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. "I don't think you're supposed to use alcohol with steroids, and she was drinking sherry in the evenings." The next day Duke's lawyer called Heffner again and informed her that Duke wanted her out, too. 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. Chandi Heffner and Doris Duke were having a lesbian affair. 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. Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. One evening Steve Levy said that Miss Duke wanted him to administer a urine test on me. Lafferty has released few details about Duke's final illness. She was a cool lady. I thought she was really nice, genuine.". "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]. 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. The Untold Truth of Stephen Hawking's Son - Ti. Doris loved it. 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. But I have no real medical knowledge of what transpired in California during the spring and summer of last year.". Chandi Duke Heffner, age 60s, lives in Kamuela, HI. Once a day, she meditates in her "deity room," which is filled with golden statues from India. 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 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. Medical Center last summer. She thought it was very amusing. . Bernard Lafferty recently lunched in Manhattan with William Luers, president of the Metropolitan Museum, which was left $10 million by Duke. "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. 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. It was clear that something adverse was going on in the latter part of 1990 in Hawaii. The baby's death profoundly affected Duke, and she even hired psychics to try to. 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. 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. Talent. He always seemed to be there whenever she needed him. Enzo Natale says, "Chandi had accused me of trying to rape her in Honolulu. Donald Robinson then called and informed Heffner that Duke wanted Burns out of the house. Guest introduced Duke to Leon Amar, a 30-year-old Moroccan decorator. . 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. The press decided she had become an eccentric recluse. Nelson Seabra told me, "A very close friend of Doris's said that she committed suicide. Ferencz Soltesz [the Peltzes' majordomo] told me he's an excellent butler so long as you keep him off the bottle. It was 1982, and Heffner was taking a class at Farrah's studio near Times Square. I do feel like I'm being drugged. Heffner takes credit for everything from improving the dairy herd at Duke Farms to arranging the sale of Duke's gold deposits in Switzerland. He felt deeply grateful to Doris, as I did.". 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. "I couldn't quite keep up, so I was in the back of the class. 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.' It was at this time, she said, that Duke told her that she thought her food was being poisoned. Bernard Lafferty, a cook named Colin Shanley, and her longtime Tongan maid, Nuku Makasiale, were at her bedside. Last year she gave. 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. According to financial accounts shes posted on her website, she has about $700,000 parked in CDH to help India. Mercedes Bass remembered Duke's coming for tea at the Carlyle Hotel a year or so earlier and introducing Heffner as "my niece." I called the California home and the other sites many times. ), By then the center of her social life was Franco Rossellini, the extremely amusing and gay Italian movie producer, whom she had met about 1975. Under the terms approved by Surrogate Renee Roth on Thursday, Chandi Gail Heffner will receive $800,000 by Monday and $65 million on Wednesday. Today, the museum features objects, furniture, and art selected, arranged, and used by Doris to make Rough Point a home. I'll go to dinner with them. She was ahead of her time. His family all died, and he had one remaining relative, in Philadelphia. Of course, they had a very attractive life. ", "I was not involved. I never heard from Doris again and I could never reach her again. . That's the same as around $125 million in today's dollars. 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 next day I got a phone call from Doris to thank me. That was a going-out-of-your-way gesture." "It was unbelievable how hard she worked. Doris and I used to go fairly regularly to see the president in the hospital; she would give him reiki treatments.". The two exchanged their "vows" at Duke's Hawaiian mansion, but it was revealed the whole thing was a hoax. At a 1990 lunch at Duke Farms for Lord Carrington, then chairman of Christie's, according to Oatsie Charles, "Chandi's attitude toward Doris was awfully offhand. I was not aware of what management roles he might or might not have had. Sometimes he acted as the butler, others as a general assistant. 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. Her second husband, Dominican playboy Porfirio Rubirosa, fared only slightly better: His divorce settlement was estimated at $1 million. He's a sweet human being, and he seemed to be honest and fiercely defensive of Doris. Newport police declared it an accident, and her friends still swear that it was. Cary W. Goldstein, Burns lawyer, says Heffner Duke broke ``a very explicit deal she had with Burns, although it was never written down. 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. Both Duke and Heffner served as close advisers to Marcos during her trial for fraud and racketeering. Shortly after Duke's 80th birthday, in November, Nelson Seabra saw her at C. Z. Her mother was another story. The 1987 will had designated Heffner executor. 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. ", James Cromwell maintained that it was not his child, and friends assumed that it was Cunningham-Reid's. Ron Protas also told me that Duke had a fear of fire, and that when he told her about "the terrible experience" of scattering Martha Graham's ashes, Duke said, "It's never going to happen to me. Farrah says that Duke had returned from her first visit to Manila, with Rossellini, about a week before meeting Heffner. But by the following summer she was noticeably declining again. 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. 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. Column: 15 minutes of fame flies by. They all of a sudden just totally cut me off, and I can't believe that was Doris. Then [Franco and I] didn't see Doris anymore. WHAT'S POPULAR TODAY. ", Others insist that Heffner's growing involvement with Burns created new tensions and was the root cause of Duke's disenchantment with her adopted daughter. 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. "He was devastated. But on Nicolas mothers side, things get more interesting. Through shrewd investments and her legendary parsimony, she managed to more than triple her holdings. Chandi lives on the horse farm now and operates a very modest charity called the CDH Foundation, with total assets of $ 2 million. Chandi sued Duke's estate. Nelson Peltz is financing Chandi Heffner's legal battle. Doris Duke committed suicide. Heres a description of Chandi (seen in the picture here on the right, with Duke and Imelda Marcos) from her website. I used to tell her, 'You know, Doris, some people do like you for yourself. Duke may have been infatuated, but friends of Tirella's told me that he was unabashedly gay. "She designed those houses and she saw to every color," says Newport artist Richard Banks. Miss Duke lives in a walled 2,700-acre estate in Hillsborough, and rarely attracted . Doris bought her a sprawling horse farm worth then 30 years ago over a million bucks. In 1995, Chandi Heffner Duke, the disinherited adopted daughter, reached a $65 million settlement with Mr. Lafferty and the estate. 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. ", "I'm crazy about Bernard," says Oatsie Charles. 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. 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. "She's an unusually intelligent person: perceptive, articulate, well-read, culturally alive. Then she became pregnant and had a premature daughter named Arden, who lived only 24 hours. She had episodes of pneumonia, she had clots in her veins, and some of those clots may have traveled to her lungs. Nicolas mother, Claudia, has a sister we havent forgotten about. (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. Chandi Duke Heffner has 24 books on Goodreads, and is currently reading Compassion: Living in the Spirit of St. Francis by Ilia Delio, Free Your Mind by . . The following February, Farrah repeated the seminar, and it was apparently then that Chandi Heffner entered Doris Duke's life. Doris loved animals. 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