Column: 15 minutes of fame flies by. His family all died, and he had one remaining relative, in Philadelphia. 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. Until she was 10, when she started at the Brearley School, she was tutored at home. We used to joke that she'd outlive me. That led to pneumonia and she couldn't eat and it was on and off, on and off, for months.". Richard Banks called Lafferty the next day. They maintained a familial relationship until 1990 when Doris Duke disinherited Heffner. Quite suddenly, early in 1991, Doris called me in distress from Hawaii and said that she was leaving in an urgent way for California and she had become fearful of Chandi. ", The day after the adoption, the economist Woody Brock went to lunch at Duke Farms with Duke's New Jersey neighbor Jane Engelhard. The 1987 will had designated Heffner executor. Around Christmas, Duke rented a house in Honolulu for Martha Graham and Ron Protas. 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. "But she thought everybody was after her money. . Help Center Contributor Zone Polls. . Chandi Heffner established her organization on a small scale by undertaking humanitarian work in the field. 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. 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. Heffner Duke, adopted in 1988 when she was 38 and the heiress was in her 70s, could not be reached for comment. Then one day in June, Miss Duke called me and said, 'Thomas, have you seen Bernard? 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. 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. Duke was spending the spring, as usual, at her 2,700-acre Duke Farms, in Somerville, New Jersey. . Steve comes about four, and he and I go up to Bernard's room. "Both of them greeted us at the door. In her will, Duke requested that no funeral or memorial service be held for her. "No cane. I suspected that it was Bernard doing thiskeeping the food cold. He's standing on a street corner in New York right now and needs a place to go. One week later, Doris Duke stunned the world again by adopting Chandi Heffner at the Somerset County Court House in Somerville, to which the two women were accompanied by Donald Robinson. Once Chandi was adopted she took over Dukes life. He was born on August 27, 1952, in Peekskill, New York, USA, as Paul Rubenfeld. The rest of the house was dark, which was odd. It was 1982, and Heffner was taking a class at Farrah's studio near Times Square. He could barely speak.". For the Beckhams, this marriage is like sinking the best goal ever. 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. ", "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. "There was a rumor that she did it deliberately. ", Duke gave him a house in Paris for a wedding gift, and a plane before their divorce one year later. This was not a frivolous woman, either. The circumstances of Dukes death remain under investigation. Heffner takes credit for everything from improving the dairy herd at Duke Farms to arranging the sale of Duke's gold deposits in Switzerland. When tobacco heiress Doris Duke died last October, she left a will that shocked even those who had known her best. Nor was she a crazy eccentric. The gate had obviously been left open. ". It would come back. What did Disney actually lose from its Florida battle with DeSantis? 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. After she returned to Newport later that month, Banks invited her to a concert, but she forgot the date. 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. And last May, Surrogate Preminger accepted Miss Duke's. Surrogate Court Judge Wilfred P. Diana asked Duke if she understood that the adoption "creates a relationship between you and Miss Heffner as if she were born to you in wedlock," and Duke said yes. And the whispers about Duke's last years continue. In 1933, when she turned 21, Doris Duke came into the first $10 million left by her father. I turned and saw her on the floor. Kids get annoyed with their parents.". In 1985, she met Chandi Heffner, a 32-year-old Hari Krishna devotee. The court also gave Doris title to the Fifth Avenue house, which she gave to New York University in 1957, and Rough Point, a huge Vanderbilt "cottage" in Newport. 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. Doris seemed very, very happy. Duke turned up at the Ritz in Paris that October walking with a cane. "Sometimes people are attracted to the thing they fear the most.". We were joking around, because we both had bad knees. A few hours later, when Heffner returned from a show-jumping lesson, she was informed that Doris had flown to Los Angeles. 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. 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. . Then the U.S. government blindsided it, Column: Uber and Lyfts deactivation policy is dehumanizing and unfair. 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. Nelson Peltz is financing Chandi Heffner's legal battle. Chandi Heffner and Doris Duke were having a lesbian affair. Heres a description of Chandi (seen in the picture here on the right, with Duke and Imelda Marcos) from her website. ", In late 1990, he said, "I detected a growing unhappiness on Doris's part. And I didn't sense any antagonism between Chandi and Bernard." ", Robert Farrah agrees: "Doris Duke was not this elusive reclusive. A stingy southern belle, Nanaline Holt Inman was a widow with one son when she married Buck Duke in 1907. I think somebody is trying to kill me.". Jay Rockefeller Net Worth. "We concentrated on her leg-muscle group," he said. I was constantly arguing with Bernard . Claudia Heffner's Sister Has A Weird Story. We'll travel 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. Enzo Natale says, "Chandi had accused me of trying to rape her in Honolulu. 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. "They did not meet in dance class," he insists. Duke is portrayed by her adopted daughter as a lonely, paranoid recluse in need of constant care. . Things escalated. One afternoon in February, the architect John Warnecke went to Shangri La for tea. After Bloom was fired, Protas was told the loan was being reviewed. SOMERVILLE, N.J. (AP) _ Reclusive multimillionaire Doris Duke has adopted a 35-year-old conservationist as a daughter, her lawyer said Friday. 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. Under the terms approved by Surrogate Renee Roth on Thursday, Chandi Gail Heffner will receive $800,000 by Monday and $65 million on Wednesday. He was later retried and acquitted. . 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. Brooklyn Beckham, whos 21, has announced hes marrying Nicola Peltz, 25. 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. Chandi Heffner was "planted" on Doris Duke by Imelda Marcos. Rich L.A. homeowners are snapping them up, Column: Supreme Court conservatives may want to block student loan forgiveness. As a young girl, she wrote him love notes, which he pored over again and again. . Chandi said, 'But where do I find a man?' Duke." ", In February, a few weeks after Protas returned to New York with Graham, he received a phone call from Duke at three in the morning. Sometimes he acted as the butler, others as a general assistant. The next day Duke's lawyer called Heffner again and informed her that Duke wanted her out, too. I usually got one of the help. 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. He was cooking and she was serving. She was contemplating having knee replacements. 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. ", 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. One evening Steve Levy said that Miss Duke wanted him to administer a urine test on me. New York magazine reported after her death that she had a knee operation at U.C.L.A. About Heffner's sister. The next morning, the day after Valentine's Day, James Burns remembers, Duke told Heffner she had a dentist's appointment and left the house with Bernard Lafferty. Imelda stayed for a week, I think. Steve said, 'Your food has changed so suddenly Miss Duke thinks you must be on drugs.' His movie reviews are carried by Rotten Tomatoes, and he is a member of both the movie and TV branches of the Critics Choice Awards. "Whenever she walked into your room, she made the room," recalls Mercedes Bass. 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. She thought it was very amusing. She really had a feeling for him, and expressed annoyance with Imelda. Ignoring Chandi Heffner, the latter-day flower child whom she adopted in 1988, Duke left control of the bulk of her fortune to Bernard Lafferty, her butler of six years. 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. 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. To this day he maintains, "A lot of injustice was done to me. Tom Ford. Subscribers have complete access to the archive. 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.' "Doris did this more for the president. Id love to be a fly on the wall when David and Victoria Beckham meet their sons fiancees family. 'Doris Duke really was the last Chinese empress, the last of a type that doesn't exist anymore. The incredibly eccentric Duke who used to throw lawn birthday parties for her llamas complete with cake and funny hats adopted adult Chandi, after being convinced she was the reincarnation of her dead baby. Chandi Duke Heffner is known for Oh My God (2009). ", Almost every friend of Duke's I talked to, including her many homosexual friends, told me that she had always been an avid heterosexual. In later years she did have problems with her hearing and with her legs, but nothing major. 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. (We covered the story in Fame magazine in 1990, and New York magazine did it again in 1993.). 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 told Chandi that she was happy about her having a man in her life. You're Arden. '" Meanwhile, Bernard said he wasn't feeling well and went back up to his room. 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. "I said, 'What's wrong?' (The hospital said that Bernard Lafferty was a patient from July 1 to July 14, 1987.). On October 6, it was announced that Duke had made a donation of $1 million to the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation. The reason it didn't last long was she didn't want them. . 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. Doris Duke was murdered. I have come to the realization that her primary motive was financial gain. There was lack of ostentation. 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. 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. They had done the whole kitchen togetherthe carpentry, everything. Chandi Duke Heffner Net Worth Chandi Duke Heffner Net Worth 2022, Age, Height, Relationships, Married, Dating, Family, Wiki Biography. Most of Duke's friends hadn't had an inkling. Burns said that he was also training Lafferty, to help him lose his paunch. I think she said when she came home from the hospital she began swimming out into the ocean, just swimming and swimming, not caring whether she lived or died. 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. I said, 'Doris, get out of that house. 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. Each evening she would return to Duke Farms or her Manhattan apartment in time for dinner alone on a tray. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. Doris loved it. I remember that the captain of the helicopter was very worried and wanted her to leave early. 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