doris duke adopted daughter

"It was shocking," Heffner told me. 'I loved her so much. He wanted me out of there. I tried repeatedly to get in contact with her. In 1988, at the age of 75, Duke legally adopted a woman named Chandi Heffner, then a 35-year-old Hare Krishna devotee and sister of the third wife of billionaire Nelson Peltz. Duke initially maintained that Heffner was the reincarnation of her only biological child Arden, who died soon after birth in 1940. He had also treated Chandi Heffner, and counted both women as friends. A few hours later, when Heffner returned from a show-jumping lesson, she was informed that Doris had flown to Los Angeles. She died in 1993 aged 80 having quadrupled her enormous fortune to over $1 billion, naming her butler as executor. It was perhaps her last romantic affair, and in some respects foreshadowed her relationship with Chandi Heffner. . . Doris was ahead of her time, using her vast wealth for philanthropic good, including AIDS research at Duke University and child welfare, especially in the area of race. In later years she did have problems with her hearing and with her legs, but nothing major. She was alarmingly fragile." He felt deeply grateful to Doris, as I did.". "We concentrated on her leg-muscle group," he said. Doris Duke was born November 22, 1912, in New York City. The Sands says that Lafferty managed the theater, which headlined such stars as Bill Cosby, Joel Grey, and Rita Moreno. This was not a frivolous woman, either. 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. It would come back. "They did not meet in dance class," he insists. She also asked to be buried at sea. 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. "She got baby doses for a few weeks and that was it. And the person who could best illuminate Doris Duke's declining days, Bernard Lafferty, refused to talk to me. Doris Duke committed suicide. Lafferty has released few details about Duke's final illness. ", Dr. Harry Demopoulos, an early promoter of antioxidants and megavitamins, whose patients include Clint Eastwood and Sylvester Stallone, had been Doris Duke's personal physician since 1981. Keyko said that $800,000 was paid to Heffner on Friday. If you want, we will give Bernard another chance, or we will get another butler. ' I knew from the beginning she was a son of a bitch." Heffner pleaded on his behalf and asked to speak to Duke, but Robinson told her that Duke was tired. Lafferty has been accused of using estate assets to finance lavish living. Her former physician, Harry Demopoulos, is seeking to unseat Lafferty as co-executor. Heffner spent almost six months on and off in two Honolulu hospitals, because she also developed a heart problem. Later on we would sleep together and Doris would come in most mornings and sit there on the bed with us and talk. This whole thing is such a shock." Because it was her major incapacity; there really wasn't anything else wrong with Doris. 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. Chandi Heffner told me that Duke confided the truth to her: "It wasn't Cromwell's, and it wasn't her lover Alec's. Keep in mind, people are entitled to a change of heart. There's no question that Bernard was more than just a butler. Having lost her only child to early death, she legally adopted a Hawaiian daughter who was 32 years old. ", 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. Then [Franco and I] didn't see Doris anymore. Ferencz Soltesz [the Peltzes' majordomo] told me he's an excellent butler so long as you keep him off the bottle. He made a comment that Doris had a fair number of complications as a result of the surgery. I was constantly arguing with Bernard . "She designed those houses and she saw to every color," says Newport artist Richard Banks. We don't hear anything. The press decided she had become an eccentric recluse. There were four witnesses, including Dr. Charles Kivowitz, a fashionable Beverly Hills internist. "I said, 'What's wrong?' Two years later she bought Falcon's Lair, the Beverly Hills house where Rudolph Valentino once lived. "She got us our first booking, in that black church in New Jersey. She's getting better.' Once a day, she meditates in her "deity room," which is filled with golden statues from India. ", Dr. Demopoulos told me, "I spoke to her in early January. Doris seemed very, very happy. Doris Duke's adopted daughter has ended her fight to gain control of the late billionaire's fortune, settling for $65 million. Other people told me that Duke suspected Heffner of poisoning or drugging her, and that she credited Lafferty with saving her life. (Burns dismisses reports that he was once a Chippendales dancer: "Not that I haven't been asked. She told me she was supposed to start hula dancing professionally at a hotel in Hawaii. On the last day of the seminar, he spent the afternoon with Duke at Shangri La. Doris Duke Doris Duke and Catherine Guinness. "Her legs were almost starting to atrophy from lack of exercise." And I was surprised. In 1968, she established the Newport Restoration Foundation, with Jacqueline Onassis as vice president. Doris Duke Profile - Photos of Heiress Doris Duke - Harper's BAZAAR But she got up again, and we did our steps. NEW YORK . Guest introduced Duke to Leon Amar, a 30-year-old Moroccan decorator. His breath almost knocked me off my feet.' I hired him to come out [to Los Angeles] and work for me, to kind of be my majordomo here. "When we were together," Heffner continued, "when things were really great, Doris was in wonderful shape. She had received another $10 million of her inheritance in 1937, and would receive at least as much in 1942. We used to sit in the sunroom with these tiny bits of broken porcelain and she'd say, 'It's got to be fixed, and I can do it better than most people.' 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. Duke left most of her money to charity and named her butler, Bernard Lafferty, co-executor of the estate. However, her achievements were tarnished with tragedy. . . ". According to the Mansfield biography, Cromwell asked her on their sexless wedding night what his annual income from her would be. In a settlement signed Thursday in New York, Chandi Duke Heffner dropped claims to the $1.2 billion estate, said Heffner's lawyer, David Keyko.As part of the deal, Heffner also dropped a breach of contract suit contending that Duke reneged on a promise to support her for life. "He was marvelous," says Claus von Blow, who later became Duke's neighbor in Newport. Nanaline worshiped Society, and she disapproved of her tall, awkward, studious daughter. The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke by Sallie Bingham. "Doris had gone surfing," explains Nancy Cooke de Herrera, an old friend from Hawaii. 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. 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. The tiara features old European cut diamonds in a geometric design on a tapering band with a central pearl and two pear-shaped diamonds set in platinum. In 1969, socialite C. Z. I would have to reheat it. Sources at Duke's estates, however, portrayed Heffner in a different light. 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The balance is due Wednesday. Chandi called Steve Levyhe did security for Doristo find out what to do. And she was so frail. It wasn't until the following winter, however, Burns told me, that he became romantically involved with Heffner. I'll go to dinner with them. Too Rich: The Secret Life of Doris Duke - IMDb 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. Moreover, Heffner's legal complaint against Duke states: Doris . I feel in danger.' BILLIONAIRE'S HEIR OUT OF PLACE - The Washington Post 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. Around Christmas, Duke rented a house in Honolulu for Martha Graham and Ron Protas. 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. ", Burns began working out with Duke on a regular basis. No, Duke University was named by James Buchanan Duke in honor of his father, Washington Duke. 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. 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. DUKE'S DAUGHTER GETS MILLIONS - Greensboro News and Record ", Duke gave him a house in Paris for a wedding gift, and a plane before their divorce one year later. He was later retried and acquitted. I think she did it to make James jealous. Nelson Peltz is financing Chandi Heffner's legal battle. One of Heffner's lawyers says that he has 18,000 documents concerning Duke's business and legal affairs, many of which Chandi had "attended to.". 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. . Heffner told me that Duke was annoyed with Rossellini for falling behind on the rent on the New Jersey guesthouse. ", Thomas Rybak maintains, "I personally believe that Chandi was pushed out by Bernard. She is asking for compensatory and punitive damages in an unspecified amount "to support her for the rest of her life in the style she had enjoyed" while serving as a companion to the eccentric billionaire. In 1985, Duke befriended an exHare Krishna named Chandi Heffner, whom she ended up adopting, convinced that she was the reincarnation of her baby daughter. Heffner, 40, a former belly Although she was constantly compared to Hutton from the time they both had fairy-tale coming-out parties the year after the stock market crashed, Duke always hated the comparison to the much-married Woolworth heiress, who died penniless. I really don't know what the hell was going on, frankly. . Meanwhile, Bernard said he wasn't feeling well and went back up to his room. She was even a buddy of Elvis Presley's. Burns said that he was also training Lafferty, to help him lose his paunch. She thought it was very amusing. April 11, 2020. 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. And let me tell you that she gave a really nice dinner party for me at the nadir of my fortunes. We'll travel together. . It doesn't mean I'll go to bed with them.". ", "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. Peggy Lee told me that she had spoken to Duke on the phone several times in her last months, and that Duke had made a donation to an AIDS charity that Lee is involved with. . "Bernard got out of the hospital. They had done the whole kitchen togetherthe carpentry, everything. 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. . I remember that the captain of the helicopter was very worried and wanted her to leave early. "Miss Duke said to me, 'I think I may have been drugged. ", Duke had a passion for the performing arts all her life. Mercedes Bass remembered Duke's coming for tea at the Carlyle Hotel a year or so earlier and introducing Heffner as "my niece." How Claus von Blow Became the Original True Crime Star Finally, one of her new lawyers, Mr. Doyle, got it back on track. The will provides Lafferty with an executor's fee of up to $5 million, a lifetime annuity of $500,000 a year, and commissions, which could run into the millions annually, as a trustee of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and of three other closely related new foundations: the Doris Duke Foundation for the Preservation of Endangered Wildlife, the Doris Duke Foundation for the Preservation of New Jersey Farmland and Farm Animals, and the Doris Duke Foundation of Islamic Art. Doris Duke "It's very important that Doris has done this," he told me at the time. Heffner also said that as next of kin she would have requested an autopsy, but she was never officially notified of Duke's death, and by the time she learned of the cremation, it was too late. This was the fifth time that Duke had rewritten or revised her will since Heffner's banishment 26 months earlier. 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. 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 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.). "He had done her hair in a pageboy, and she looked so pretty, though she was painfully thin." Woody Brock, who visited her with Oatsie Charles that summer, says, "It must have been 85 degrees outside, and she had on a white sweater and a roaring fire in every room. There was lack of ostentation. Doris Duke 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. We'll have a great life together. Kuh suggested that Lafferty's actions were based on the fear that Duke's estranged adopted daughter, Chandi Heffner, would interfere. . This stuff was from Miss Duke's father. ", Almost every friend of Duke's I talked to, including her many homosexual friends, told me that she had always been an avid heterosexual. Doris Duke 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. Why doesn't she help you?' 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. Fatal Crash That Plunged Doris Duke Into Scandal 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. Despite the negative publicity, she fought her husband in the courts for five years, until he gave in. He was cooking and she was serving. 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. 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. WebDuke believed that Chandi Heffner, the adult woman who she adopted, was the reincarnation of the daughter shed had in 1940 who had died shortly after birth. We had a nice dinner with appropriate toasts, and Franco entertained us with anecdotes and imitations. and I finally quit just before Labor Day. Her second husband, Dominican playboy Porfirio Rubirosa, fared only slightly better: His divorce settlement was estimated at $1 million. She continued to give him money, and friends say that their sexual relationship never really ended. "Chandi loved animals. Webadvertisement Doris Duke Art Collector November 22 , 1912 Also Known For : Family Member, Philanthropist Birth Place : New York City, New York, United states of America Died On : October 28, 1993 Zodiac Sign : Sagittarius Doris Duke Biography, Life, Interesting Facts Of course, they had a very attractive life. She was very happy doing that.". He was going to A. Doris Duke 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. "And later on, for a while, on Irwin Bloom, the financial manager. Even Imelda didn't see her.". She was having a real whirl." Doris Duke dumped Chandi Heffner because Heffner wanted to marry one of their bodyguards. . Doris Duke - Wikipedia Another time, at a college in upstate New York, Bobby [Farrah] didn't have her dancehe had her completely veiled, and she sat on the stage and played finger cymbals. He has an alcohol problem, but he's a basically good person. 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. "Not at all. It's not true. "She out-Leona Helmsleyed Leona Helmsley," Duffy said of Heffner. She had just been through three days of depositions in New Jersey, where her lawsuit was filed, and had two more days to go before she could fly back to Hawaii, where she lives on an isolated 300-acre horse ranch, which Duke had bought for her on the Big Island for about $1.5 million before their rupture, and where she keeps a loaded pistol beside her bed. Fights over Duke's will continue, however. We would be four, six, eightOatsie Charles, Nuala Pell, Minnie Cushing, Lita McBean and her husband, and Sunny and me. The last words were 'Stay in touch, Harry.' Both Heffner and her lawyers emphatically deny that Nelson Peltz is financing Heffner's legal efforts. Jane Engelhard sat next to the bodyguard, and you should have seen her face. ", She had already been planning to divorce Cromwell, but he apparently demanded a $7 million settlement. . She was worth $1.2 billion, but had no relatives or friends she particularly cared to enrich so massively when she died. And then eventually somebody else dropped back. 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. 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. '", Heffner dismissed such charges, and also told me that one day during the "steroid" period Duke had called her into her bedroom and said, "I think somebody is putting poison in my food. "No cane. ", "I was not involved. DUKES ADOPTED DAUGHTER SETTLES FOR $65 MILLION Doris Duke's father died when she was 12 years old. James Buchanan Duke, a tobacco and energy mogul, left his daughter around $100 million, which earned her the title "the richest girl in the world" and made her something of a national celebrity. This went on almost every meal. Most of Duke's friends hadn't had an inkling. Doris and I used to go fairly regularly to see the president in the hospital; she would give him reiki treatments.". . When he died in a car crash in 1965, she took to her bed for two days. For many years she sang in a black gospel choir at the First Baptist Church of Nutley, New Jersey, and left its minister, the Reverend Lawrence G. Roberts, $1 million in her will. Everything good I could say about Bernard, I do. I never heard from Doris again and I could never reach her again. Her first husband, James R. Cromwell, called Duke "my frigidheiress" and engaged in a lengthy court battle to win a financial settlement. You felt that she was going to break. Guest's in Old Westbury: "She came by helicopter. . You don't have to go back. This month, Chandi Heffner's lawyers, Ben Michel of Riker, Danzig and David Keyko of Winthrop, Stimson, will file her objections to Duke's will in New York State Surrogate Court, accusing Bernard Lafferty of "undue influence and sequestering." According to her New York Times obituary, the cause of death was "pulmonary edema resulting in cardiac arrest." Demopoulos wasn't the only one to notice a change in Duke's attitude after Heffner was out of her life. I asked Doris and she said, 'Yeah, it's fine.' Heffner was also responsible for hiring a new accountant, Irwin Bloom, and a security consultant, Steven Levy, both of whom had worked for Nelson Peltz. 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. That led to pneumonia and she couldn't eat and it was on and off, on and off, for months.". The gossip at Mortimer's was that Duke was furious with him for talking to Stephanie Mansfield. "Rubi" was also presented with a string of polo ponies and a house in Paris. We took him to Newport. 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. ", In late 1990, he said, "I detected a growing unhappiness on Doris's part. The adopted daughter of the late billionaire Doris Duke has agreed to drop several claims against the estate in return for more than $65 million, according to a settlement approved in Manhattan Surrogate's Court. She was taking so many pills at the end and, knowingly or not, killed herself. One time we were performing at an Arab party at this catering hall in Brooklyn called the Venetian Manor, and Doris and I were partners. Duke, Doris | Encyclopedia.com According to Heffner, Duke suffered heart palpitations in Moscow and was afraid to be alone, so for the rest of the trip they shared hotel rooms. WebLafferty relinquished control as co-executor of the Duke estate in a 1995 settlement with Duke's disinherited adopted daughter. I think this was the steroid thing happening. She did not directly accuse Lafferty of turning Duke against her. ", "When one of Doris's love affairs ended, there was always great drama," says her friend Consuelo Crespi. The power that this will gives Bernard Lafferty is "awesome," says one attorney. Phyllis Saretta told me that Duke performed with the Farrah company four or five times, wearing a long black wig. 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. Nelson Seabra told me, "A very close friend of Doris's said that she committed suicide. Richard Banks called Lafferty the next day. 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. . "Ferencz said, 'We had a butler who was fired. 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. . 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. We were joking around, because we both had bad knees. I asked Phyllis Saretta what she thought the attraction was. "O.K., I'm not going to see her, but. They hired him on Ferencz Soltesz's recommendation. . 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. . ") Bernard Lafferty, the Butler For Doris Duke, Dies at 51 . Chandi got a couple of the housemen, and they brought him to the Somerville hospital." And then he was going to A.A., and he did very well in A.A., as far as I know. However, within a few Seemed. Talent. She had this terrible fear of fire." "There was a rumor that she did it deliberately. I called the California home and the other sites many times. . There was a deadly side to Doris. Duke Kahanamoku went in after her and saved her. She was like a flower child, even though the era was over. He could barely speak.". Franco Rossellini assured everyone that he was all for it. On rare occasions I got Bernard. We would hear it, and we would just joke about it. So we went into the room, and Bernard was buck naked, bent over a chair, passed out. [7] Death [ edit] Lafferty purchased a $2.5 million January 22, 2015 The Butler Did It!: The Legal Battle over the Estate of Doris Duke Doris Duke This was Doris Duke's predicament. Bernard Lafferty - Wikipedia ", 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. Toward the end of the summer, in Newport, Heffner told Duke that she had to return to Hawaii, because she was concerned about her horses and dogs, and had planned a trip to Bali with Gordon Damon. 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.
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