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. 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. 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. 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.' A few hours later, when Heffner returned from a show-jumping lesson, she was informed that Doris had flown to Los Angeles. Demopoulos wasn't the only one to notice a change in Duke's attitude after Heffner was out of her life. 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 received nothing. You felt that she was going to break. So we went into the room, and Bernard was buck naked, bent over a chair, passed out. There was a deadly side to Doris. 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. "Doris did this more for the president. 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. Bernard Lafferty recently lunched in Manhattan with William Luers, president of the Metropolitan Museum, which was left $10 million by Duke. 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. ", 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. 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. She wasn't Barbara Hutton," says Marina Cicogna, who was a friend of both heiresses. 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. "Sometimes people are attracted to the thing they fear the most.". ", 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. Ferencz Soltesz [the Peltzes' majordomo] told me he's an excellent butler so long as you keep him off the bottle. 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. Born on 1940 to James Henry Roberts Cromwell and Doris Duke. ), HBOs Hit Show The Last of Us Finally Vaults Over 1 Million Viewers on Main Channel. 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. ", A few days before I interviewed Heffner, an item had appeared in Cindy Adams's gossip column: Robert Ibrahim Farrah, an instructor of Middle Eastern dance, who says he introduced Heffner to Duke in 1984, claimed that Duke had come to fear Heffner. He went to Sarasota High School. ", Duke had a passion for the performing arts all her life. 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. This only fueled rumors about his sexuality further and . ", After Thanksgiving, as she had for five decades, Duke left for Hawaii. I said, 'Doris, get out of that house. It was at this time, she said, that Duke told her that she thought her food was being poisoned. If I were Victoria Beckham, I wouldnt count on a big wedding present. "She got us our first booking, in that black church in New Jersey. She was not on steroids in the latter half of 1990, and this was not a mood swing. She formally adopted Heffner in 1988. Today, the museum features objects, furniture, and art selected, arranged, and used by Doris to make Rough Point a home. For reasons I don't understand, a curtain seemed to come down. ", Heffner wryly noted that Bernard Lafferty, accompanied by a bodyguard and chauffeur, had sat through her depositions wearing a five-carat-diamond earring, a diamond bracelet, and a diamond watch. That's not the Doris I knew. He wanted me out of there. She also asked to be buried at sea. . 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. 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. His paternal grandparents were Polish Jewish immigrants. Once a day, she meditates in her "deity room," which is filled with golden statues from India. I remember when I read his resume, I thought, This man has really been through it. And then eventually somebody else dropped back. "She moved very well for that kind of dancingwe called it Middle Eastern, or danse orientale, but essentially it's belly dancing. Sources at Duke's estates, however, portrayed Heffner in a different light. Virtually inseparable, the two women shuttled back and forth between Duke Farms, Duke's Newport estate "Rough Point" and her palatial Indo-Persian "Shangri-La" in the exclusive Diamond Head section of Oahu. Nanaline worshiped Society, and she disapproved of her tall, awkward, studious daughter. Movies. 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. 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. ", 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. Both Duke and Heffner served as close advisers to Marcos during her trial for fraud and racketeering. "He was so attentive," Banks says. "It was strange. She had this terrible fear of fire." Were there . Column: 15 minutes of fame flies by. I know a lot of bull dykes. Chandi Heffner Duke passed away on 1940. Other people told me that Duke suspected Heffner of poisoning or drugging her, and that she credited Lafferty with saving her life. We had a nice dinner with appropriate toasts, and Franco entertained us with anecdotes and imitations. 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. The baby's death profoundly affected Duke, and she even hired psychics to try to. In 1987, Heffner handled the negotiations for Duke's most talked-about acquisition: two Bactrian camels, which were thrown in as a sweetener on the deal to purchase a 19-passenger Boeing 737-300 for $25 million. Duke believed that Heffner was the reincarnation of her daughter, Arden. It would come back. They hired him on Ferencz Soltesz's recommendation. 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. Meanwhile, Heffner is holed up on her Hawaiian ranch. 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. Duke Kahanamoku went in after her and saved her. "Elvis made whites interested in black music," she once told me, "which was very important, because race is the biggest problem we have in America.". This was not a frivolous woman, either. 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. This went on almost every meal. 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. 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 . "She was told she has a pretty good case," the family member said. Chandi sued Duke's estate. One night in August, Banks dined alone with Duke at Rough Point. And then the wine was $1,000 a bottle; it came from her father's cellars. 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. She was contemplating having knee replacements. . The billionaire believed that Chandi was the reincarnation of her dead kid. One afternoon in February, the architect John Warnecke went to Shangri La for tea. Now, please understand that I'm not accusing anyone of anything.". "Chandi loved animals. Los Angeles, A $150,000 executive protection dog? 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 thought it was very amusing. . ", Heffner was sitting in the Manhattan apartment of one of her lawyers on a Saturday afternoon late last December. He felt deeply grateful to Doris, as I did.". ", Robert Farrah agrees: "Doris Duke was not this elusive reclusive. "Ferencz said, 'We had a butler who was fired. Then she became pregnant and had a premature daughter named Arden, who lived only 24 hours. There were four witnesses, including Dr. Charles Kivowitz, a fashionable Beverly Hills internist. Duke may have been infatuated, but friends of Tirella's told me that he was unabashedly gay. Claudia Heffner's Sister Has A Weird Story. He was cooking and she was serving. 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. She was taking so many pills at the end and, knowingly or not, killed herself. Do you think you could help him out?' After she returned to Newport later that month, Banks invited her to a concert, but she forgot the date. Imelda stayed for a week, I think. 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. A stingy southern belle, Nanaline Holt Inman was a widow with one son when she married Buck Duke in 1907. 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. After testy negotiations with local authorities, she finally shipped the pieces to New Jersey and installed them in her indoor tennis court. Through shrewd investments and her legendary parsimony, she managed to more than triple her holdings. . Richard Banks called Lafferty the next day. 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. The rest of the house was dark, which was odd. We used to joke that she'd outlive me. A. once a week wherever we were. Heffner is also claiming her right to inherit two trusts which Buck Duke created in 1917 and 1924, on the ground that she is his lineal descendant and grandchild. ", Oatsie Charles had a one-word explanation: "Loneliness. 'Doris Duke really was the last Chinese empress, the last of a type that doesn't exist anymore. Enzo Natale concurs: "Chandi and Bernard were twins.". ", Burns began working out with Duke on a regular basis. Because it was her major incapacity; there really wasn't anything else wrong with Doris. ", Rybak says that Lafferty got off to a good start at Duke Farms. There's no question that Bernard was more than just a butler. Meanwhile, Bernard said he wasn't feeling well and went back up to his room. 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. Nelson Peltz is financing Chandi Heffner's legal battle. I think somebody is trying to kill me.". Who can help student-athletes cash in? "There were clear indications of a growing trust, affection, and devotion between them. ", The day after the adoption, the economist Woody Brock went to lunch at Duke Farms with Duke's New Jersey neighbor Jane Engelhard. Steve comes about four, and he and I go up to Bernard's room. That was a going-out-of-your-way gesture." Doris Duke was murdered. "She forgave Rubi everything," says Reinaldo Herrera, even his subsequent marriage to Barbara Hutton. Yet it is the underlying misconception of almost everything ever written about her, including Stephanie Mansfield's 1992 biography, The Richest Girl in the World. 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