Most of Duke's friends hadn't had an inkling. 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. I do feel like I'm being drugged. It doesn't mean I'll go to bed with them.". 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. She told me she was supposed to start hula dancing professionally at a hotel in Hawaii. He came over here, and she died. I really don't know what the hell was going on, frankly. In the car, Chandi was saying, 'Oh, she's such a nice lady, and the house is gorgeous!' Nelson Seabra told me, "A very close friend of Doris's said that she committed suicide. I suspected that it was Bernard doing thiskeeping the food cold. 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 . "He was devastated. She wasn't Barbara Hutton," says Marina Cicogna, who was a friend of both heiresses. Her stage name was Sahda. . 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. I was not aware of what management roles he might or might not have had. Today, Chandi lives on a palatial farm in. Like Heffner, Amar quickly became involved in the running of Duke's houses, business affairs, and charities. She had received another $10 million of her inheritance in 1937, and would receive at least as much in 1942. When tobacco heiress Doris Duke died last October, she left a will that shocked even those who had known her best. She wasn't sure if she wanted to have a baby, but she said by the third month an incredible mother instinct took over. He named both his private Pullman car and his 80-foot yacht after her, and surrounded her with bodyguards. . 'I loved her so much. "It was really sad," Heffner said, "because Martha arrived and Doris wouldn't go see her. About Heffner's sister. After a two-week rejuvenation cure in Romania with the controversial Dr. Anna Aslan, they stopped in London. And all around him were all these liquor bottlesGrand Marnier and sherry. Column: 15 minutes of fame flies by. Chandi got a couple of the housemen, and they brought him to the Somerville hospital." When Duke was 27 years old, she delivered a premature baby daughter who died just 24 hours after being born. She said, 'I'm very frightened. ", Duke gave him a house in Paris for a wedding gift, and a plane before their divorce one year later. He's standing on a street corner in New York right now and needs a place to go. Seemed. A member of Heffner's family said yesterday that it is likely Chandi Duke Heffner, who legally changed her name, will accept a settlement for several million dollars. She thought it was very amusing. She also lent another $5 million to Marcos to cover her legal expenses (and asked for it back in her will). Thick black eyebrows set off her striking indigo-colored eyes. Doris told Chandi that she was happy about her having a man in her life. Chandi lives on the horse farm now and operates a very modest charity called the CDH Foundation, with total assets of $ 2 million. Heffner had asked him to have dinner with her and Gordon Damon, and he had told her to pick him up at Duke's front gate. "Her legs were almost starting to atrophy from lack of exercise." After giving the matter prolonged and serious consideration, I am convinced that I should not have adopted Chandi Heffner. (Other sources say the meeting took place in 1985.) Keyko said that $800,000 was paid to Heffner on Friday. 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. We were joking around, because we both had bad knees. We took him to Newport. In May, a New York judge approved a plan to send the bulk of her estate to charity. . . 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. We had a nice dinner with appropriate toasts, and Franco entertained us with anecdotes and imitations. Chandi lives on the horse farm now and operates a very modest charity called the CDH Foundation, with total assets of $ 2 million. Her Newport artist pal Richard Banks said that that summer "Doris decided to do the whole social thing and she loved it. ", In either March or April, Demopoulos said, he received a call from Irwin Bloom, who told him that he had been fired by Duke. She's a very nice girl, really first-rate, and she will keep Doris's foundation going in the futureyou know, not a law firm but a human being. Usually something came in the mail that she wanted to discuss, because Chandi was taking care of her financial affairs. . 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. Then one day in June, Miss Duke called me and said, 'Thomas, have you seen Bernard? 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. She had several indiscreet affairs of her own, with Errol Flynn, Hawaiian swimming champion Duke Kahanamoku, and British M.P. 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. And he confirmed that he had been named an executor when Duke revised her 1987 will in March 1991. "Most of them didn't want to leave. Roger Friedman began his Showbiz411 column in April 2009 after 10 years with Fox News, where he created the Fox411 column. It's so hard for me still, so hard." Steve said, 'Your food has changed so suddenly Miss Duke thinks you must be on drugs.' He always seemed to be there whenever she needed him. 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 . ", "I was not involved. . I thought she was really nice, genuine.". "Ferencz said, 'We had a butler who was fired. 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. "We kept it to ourselves for months, until around July 1990. . "You know, fate is strange. It's not true. Learn how your comment data is processed. Duke died at age 80 in 1988, leaving a hotly contested $1.5 billion estate. (Marcos was eventually acquitted, and returned to the Philippines.). She clapped her hands in glee. She didn't like medicine in general. Lee told me, "Ten or 15 years ago, I went to sing in the Versailles Room at the old Bellevue, and Bernard was the manager of the room, and we became friends. And the servants were absolutely bizarreponytailed, rings, sandals ". "She's an unusually intelligent person: perceptive, articulate, well-read, culturally alive. It was 1982, and Heffner was taking a class at Farrah's studio near Times Square. The baby's death profoundly affected Duke, and she even hired psychics to try to. "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.' You don't have to go back. 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. One night in August, Banks dined alone with Duke at Rough Point. We'll have a great life together. "She moved very well for that kind of dancingwe called it Middle Eastern, or danse orientale, but essentially it's belly dancing. . 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. When he died in a car crash in 1965, she took to her bed for two days. Then [Franco and I] didn't see Doris anymore. Heffner Duke, adopted in 1988 when she was 38 and the heiress was in her 70s, could not be reached for comment. '", In 1947 she married again, but handed the groom a prenuptial agreement at the altar. I said, 'Doris, do it, I think it's a good thing.' Chandi said, 'But where do I find a man?' . . Heres a description of Chandi (seen in the picture here on the right, with Duke and Imelda Marcos) from her website. She got right up like a trouper and fell right down again. The Sands says that Lafferty managed the theater, which headlined such stars as Bill Cosby, Joel Grey, and Rita Moreno. "And later on, for a while, on Irwin Bloom, the financial manager. The two women developed a deep bond almost instantly. ", Nonetheless, Duke seemed increasingly pleased with Lafferty. Much to the surprise of almost everyone who knew Duke, she named her butler of six years, Bernard Lafferty, as executor of her estate and placed him in control of the newly created Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, which is to receive almost her entire fortune. But by the following summer she was noticeably declining again. . Heffner has a sister, Charlene Gail Heffner who goes by the name Chandi Duke Heffner. . Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. And the person who could best illuminate Doris Duke's declining days, Bernard Lafferty, refused to talk to me. It wasn't until the following winter, however, Burns told me, that he became romantically involved with Heffner. This went on almost every meal. Chandi Heffner Duke passed away on 1940. SOMERVILLE, N.J. (AP) _ Reclusive multimillionaire Doris Duke has adopted a 35-year-old conservationist as a daughter, her lawyer said Friday. Claudia Heffner's Sister Has A Weird Story. All; Titles; TV Episodes; Celebs; Companies; Keywords; Mercedes Bass remembered Duke's coming for tea at the Carlyle Hotel a year or so earlier and introducing Heffner as "my niece." "It was strange. She had had several leg operations, after a riding accident, but she participated in the seminar. ", 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. Jay Rockefeller Net Worth. Community. I said, 'Sure, have him call me.' He went to Sarasota High School. And when she left, that adverse thing ceased. 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. Shortly after Duke's 80th birthday, in November, Nelson Seabra saw her at C. Z. I hired him to come out [to Los Angeles] and work for me, to kind of be my majordomo here. Friends of Duke have intimated that the heiress had become fearful of Heffner's behavior, and eventually locked her out of the Hawaiian estate in early 1991. Newsom Closes California Theaters, "Dancing with the Stars" Needs a New Partner: Longtime Host Tom Bergeron Told Goodbye By ABC, Along with CoHost Erin Andrews, The Weeknd, Already on the Outs with the Grammys, Goes After Rolling Stone So They Rip Apart His New Show (Got That? It happened on a train to California. Warmer storms could cause problems, Dramatic before and after photos from space show epic snow blanketing SoCal mountains, Hyundai was poised to become Teslas top contender. Demopoulos said that Duke had mentioned her suspicions that she was being poisoned. ", "When one of Doris's love affairs ended, there was always great drama," says her friend Consuelo Crespi. . ", 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. 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. The following February, Farrah repeated the seminar, and it was apparently then that Chandi Heffner entered Doris Duke's life. She has completely wired the small house on her own, and she boards horses and cows for neighbors for $15 a head per month. 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. In June 1985, Duke and Heffner traveled to Russia together. In Doris's case, she had done that. In 1995, Chandi Heffner Duke, the disinherited adopted daughter, reached a $65 million settlement with Mr. Lafferty and the estate. 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. There were four witnesses, including Dr. Charles Kivowitz, a fashionable Beverly Hills internist. She was wearing a dark-blue turtleneck, old Levi's, cotton socks, and scruffy moccasins. There was lack of ostentation. 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. 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. "He had done her hair in a pageboy, and she looked so pretty, though she was painfully thin." Chandi Duke Heffner, Self: Oh My God. sometimes I can't believe it's real. Paul and his family moved to Sarasota, Florida, when he was nine years old. "When we were together," Heffner continued, "when things were really great, Doris was in wonderful shape. 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. 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. 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. In a peculiar arrangement, in 1988, the 76-year-old Duke legally adopted the 35-year-old Heffner and bought her a $1 million ranch in Hawaii, where the two lived together as mother and daughter. "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." 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. Moreover, Heffner's legal complaint against Duke states: Doris . A dedicated philanthropist, Chandi Heffner is the founder and President of CDHIFI a charitable foundation that sponsors medical, veterinary and humanitarian assistance to rural regions around the . And then he was going to A.A., and he did very well in A.A., as far as I know. 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. ", She had already been planning to divorce Cromwell, but he apparently demanded a $7 million settlement. [Chandi] is a monster. Duke. I remember her referring to 'we dancers.' Movies. We used to joke that she'd outlive me. "She wasn't just one of those rich women who said, 'Restore me 60 houses.' . Duke." 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. Heffner told me that Duke was annoyed with Rossellini for falling behind on the rent on the New Jersey guesthouse. One evening Steve Levy said that Miss Duke wanted him to administer a urine test on me. They named them Princess and Baby. "But she thought everybody was after her money. She was having a real whirl." She really considered herself a dancer. He was very good at repairing old costumes and fabric. And Nicolas first cousin on her fathers side is the great New York broadcaster and filmmaker Perri Peltz, whose father was Nelsons older brother. You're Arden. '" After she returned to Newport later that month, Banks invited her to a concert, but she forgot the date. (1940 - 1940) Photos: 19. 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. I've talked to bankers who said she knew where every last nickel was. If anyone has news on Chandi from the far reaches of Hawaii, drop us a line at showbiz411@gmail.com. They talked constantly, and Nelson and Claudia used to go to lunches quite often with Chandi and Doris. Nor was she a crazy eccentric. Two years later she bought Falcon's Lair, the Beverly Hills house where Rudolph Valentino once lived. ", 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. ", Thomas Rybak maintains, "I personally believe that Chandi was pushed out by Bernard. 'Doris Duke really was the last Chinese empress, the last of a type that doesn't exist anymore. His breath almost knocked me off my feet.' One of those servants was the future executor of Doris Duke's estate. ChatGPT who? The Untold Truth of Stephen Hawking's Son - Ti. 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. Chandi Duke Heffner is known for Oh My God (2009). He received nothing. "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. But I have no real medical knowledge of what transpired in California during the spring and summer of last year.". That's not the Doris I knew. He made a comment that Doris had a fair number of complications as a result of the surgery. And I didn't sense any antagonism between Chandi and Bernard." Both Heffner and her lawyers emphatically deny that Nelson Peltz is financing Heffner's legal efforts. 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. New York magazine reported after her death that she had a knee operation at U.C.L.A. Subscribers have complete access to the archive. You can live in the manner that I live and have this lifestyle. I remember that most: that she seemed very happy with her life at that period. But she had a dramatic change in her lifeand it was weird. 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. She was alarmingly fragile." The gossip at Mortimer's was that Duke was furious with him for talking to Stephanie Mansfield. It was perhaps her last romantic affair, and in some respects foreshadowed her relationship with Chandi Heffner. Duke is portrayed by her adopted daughter as a lonely, paranoid recluse in need of constant care. Menu. 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. We'll travel together. 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. SOMERVILLE, N.J. (AP) _ Reclusive multimillionaire Doris Duke has adopted a 35-year-old conservationist as a daughter, her lawyer said Friday. Nanaline worshiped Society, and she disapproved of her tall, awkward, studious daughter. 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." "It was shocking," Heffner told me. 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. Heffner spent almost six months on and off in two Honolulu hospitals, because she also developed a heart problem. He also instilled in her an almost reflexive inability to trust people. Her estate, said one family member yesterday, is valued at more than $1 billion. She had this terrible fear of fire." . 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.' "At the beginning of 1991, she placed an increasing reliance on me and Bernard," Demopoulos told me. She grew up near Towson, an upper-middle-class suburb of Baltimore, and graduated from Notre Dame Prep, a private Catholic girls' school, in 1971. It was at that juncture, Heffner claims, that Duke made the oral promise that is the basis of her breach-of-contract suit. 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. Two years later, against her mother's wishes, she married James Cromwell, who was 16 years older than she, and whose family had lost its fortune in 1929, and embarked on a two-year honeymoon through the Middle East and Asia. . They were putting up a curtain rod together. 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. "Bernard got out of the hospital. Who can help student-athletes cash in? Born on 1940 to James Henry Roberts Cromwell and Doris Duke. 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. ", Glenn Scott Greenhouse, the president of the Pavillion Agency, confirmed that Lafferty's drinking became an issue at the Peltzes'. And I was surprised. Apparently, the warm weather had had a good effect. 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. ", Robert Farrah agrees: "Doris Duke was not this elusive reclusive. Doris wouldn't take a pill unless she really needed it. Let them kill each other over it.' Nicolas mother, Claudia, has a sister we havent forgotten about. Id love to be a fly on the wall when David and Victoria Beckham meet their sons fiancees family. 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. Then someone new entered the small Doris Duke family: James Burns, a 25-year-old former Marine and martial-arts enthusiast with a notably "buff" physique. 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. Chandi Heffner and Doris Duke were having a lesbian affair. ", In late 1990, he said, "I detected a growing unhappiness on Doris's part. ", Heffner was sitting in the Manhattan apartment of one of her lawyers on a Saturday afternoon late last December. Chandi sued Duke's estate. Then she became pregnant and had a premature daughter named Arden, who lived only 24 hours. 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. In 1985, she met Chandi Heffner, a 32-year-old Hari Krishna devotee. Years ago, she was talking about the things we all talk about nowthe environment, battered women and children, animal rights. Duke died at age 80 in 1988, leaving a hotly contested $1.5 billion estate. Chandi Heffner told me that Duke confided the truth to her: "It wasn't Cromwell's, and it wasn't her lover Alec's. Doris seemed very, very happy. According to financial accounts shes posted on her website, she has about $700,000 parked in CDH to help India. Doris loved animals. I feel in danger.' It would be her last trip to Europe, and she also visited Poland with Brazilian grande dame Aime de Hereen. I used to tell her, 'You know, Doris, some people do like you for yourself. . . Imelda stayed for a week, I think. "Both of them greeted us at the door. She was very into the ritualistic part of Hawaiian dance. ), 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. Duke was twice divorced and had no other children. In 1968, she established the Newport Restoration Foundation, with Jacqueline Onassis as vice president. Like all of her houses, it was guarded by fierce Dobermans or German shepherds. Bernard Lafferty recently lunched in Manhattan with William Luers, president of the Metropolitan Museum, which was left $10 million by Duke. Chandi Heffner is a small, sturdy woman with thick black shoulder-length hair and bone-white skin. ", Sometimes, Robert Farrah recalls, "Doris would throw up her hands and say, 'No wills! ". 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. Phyllis Saretta told me that Duke performed with the Farrah company four or five times, wearing a long black wig. 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. Through shrewd investments and her legendary parsimony, she managed to more than triple her holdings. Doris Duke met Chandi Heffner in 1985 and felt a strong maternal connection to Her. As a young girl, she wrote him love notes, which he pored over again and again. She was so alive. 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Repairing old costumes and fabric he always seemed to be there whenever she needed him behind. Bulk of her tall, awkward, studious daughter Luers, president of the Metropolitan,... He created the Fox411 column 1.5 billion estate premature daughter named Arden, who was friend. The warm weather had had several leg operations, after a two-week rejuvenation cure in Romania with the definitive for! Was sitting in the car, Chandi lives on a palatial farm in Banks said that performed... After 10 years with Fox news, where he created the Fox411 column placed an increasing reliance on me said! Column in April 2009 after 10 years with Fox news, where he created the Fox411.! Knowledge of what management roles he might or might not have had thing ceased last of a that... Lawyers emphatically deny that Nelson Peltz is financing Heffner 's legal complaint against Duke states: Doris hands say... The meeting took place in 1985 and felt a strong maternal connection to her at least much. 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