Chandi got a couple of the housemen, and they brought him to the Somerville hospital." Wait til the Beckhams Meet the Parents: Nicola Peltzs Aunt Inherited $65 Mil from Doris Duke in Infamous Adoption, Movie Release August Schedule for "Tenet," "Mulan" Will Be Scuttled as Gov. 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. 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. "It was unbelievable how hard she worked. 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 this time, she said, that Duke told her that she thought her food was being poisoned. I came back clean as a whistle. I took her to six or seven dinner parties. Youth," says Phyllis Saretta, an instructor with the Ibrahim Farrah Near East Dance Group, which Duke funded and danced with in the early 1970s. I knew from the beginning she was a son of a bitch." Charlene Gail Heffner goes by the name Chandi Duke Heffner. "I couldn't quite keep up, so I was in the back of the class. "It was really sad," Heffner said, "because Martha arrived and Doris wouldn't go see her. Shortly after Duke's 80th birthday, in November, Nelson Seabra saw her at C. Z. . We would be four, six, eightOatsie Charles, Nuala Pell, Minnie Cushing, Lita McBean and her husband, and Sunny and me. Everything good I could say about Bernard, I do. Enzo Natale says, "Chandi had accused me of trying to rape her in Honolulu. That's not the Doris I knew. In May, a New York judge approved a plan to send the bulk of her estate to charity. 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 June 1985, Duke and Heffner traveled to Russia together. And he had quite a history. Usually something came in the mail that she wanted to discuss, because Chandi was taking care of her financial affairs. (We covered the story in Fame magazine in 1990, and New York magazine did it again in 1993.). According to a half-page biography released by Howard J. Rubenstein Associates, Bernard Lafferty was born in Ireland in 1945 and immigrated to the United States more than 20 years ago. Movies. . Marcos has said that she and Duke were friends of almost 20 years, but others say that they met in the late 1970s through Franco Rossellini. Until Doris Duke's death, this would be her principal residence. . His family all died, and he had one remaining relative, in Philadelphia. 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. I think somebody is trying to kill me.". Steve said, 'Your food has changed so suddenly Miss Duke thinks you must be on drugs.' "Buck" Duke was obsessed with his only child. Of course, they had a very attractive life. She was having a real whirl." ", Duke gave him a house in Paris for a wedding gift, and a plane before their divorce one year later. ", Sometimes, Robert Farrah recalls, "Doris would throw up her hands and say, 'No wills! "She wasn't just one of those rich women who said, 'Restore me 60 houses.' 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. Burns said that he was also training Lafferty, to help him lose his paunch. Then one day in June, Miss Duke called me and said, 'Thomas, have you seen Bernard? Jay Rockefeller Net Worth. Doris was into it, too. Heffner has a sister named Charlene Gail Heffner aka Chandi Duke Heffner. Duke left most of her money to charity and named her butler, Bernard Lafferty, co-executor of the estate. SOMERVILLE, N.J. (AP) _ Reclusive multimillionaire Doris Duke has adopted a 35-year-old conservationist as a daughter, her lawyer said Friday. 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. She was even a buddy of Elvis Presley's. He went to Sarasota High School. Before moving to Chandi's current city of New York, NY, Chandi lived in Kamuela HI and Kawaihae HI.In the past, Chandi has also been known as Duke Chandi, Chani Duke Heffner, Chani D Heffner, Chandi K Heffner and Chandi Duke Heffner. I feel unsure of myself physically. ", Donald Robinson, a New Jersey lawyer who had worked closely with Duke since the early 70s, will not comment about the lawsuit, but he speaks glowingly of Heffner's abilities. . Heffner has a sister, Charlene Gail Heffner who goes by the name Chandi Duke 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. Denise Hale recalls meeting Eduardo Tirella on the set of The Sandpiper, which was directed by her then husband, Vincente Minnelli, and having several dinners at Falcon's Lair. 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. Records: 123. '", 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. Nor was she a crazy eccentric. She was taking so many pills at the end and, knowingly or not, killed herself. She didn't like medicine in general. (1940 - 1940) Photos: 19. It's so hard for me still, so hard." "He was marvelous," says Claus von Blow, who later became Duke's neighbor in Newport. "She's an unusually intelligent person: perceptive, articulate, well-read, culturally alive. WHAT'S POPULAR TODAY. 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. ", "I was not involved. In her will, Duke requested that no funeral or memorial service be held for her. . He's a sweet human being, and he seemed to be honest and fiercely defensive of Doris. "He was devastated. Like Doris, actually." ", Rybak says that Lafferty got off to a good start at Duke Farms. . Despite the negative publicity, she fought her husband in the courts for five years, until he gave in. He had also treated Chandi Heffner, and counted both women as friends. The gate had obviously been left open. She was wearing a dark-blue turtleneck, old Levi's, cotton socks, and scruffy moccasins. There was lack of ostentation. You don't have to go back. Heffner, who lives on the Big Island of Hawaii on a ranch that Duke previously purchased for her, said in court papers that after their February 1991 breakup she learned that Duke had made changes in her will, and "the estate has not been left to Chandi as Doris had agreed." 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. According to her New York Times obituary, the cause of death was "pulmonary edema resulting in cardiac arrest." Jane Engelhard sat next to the bodyguard, and you should have seen her face. When tobacco heiress Doris Duke died last October, she left a will that shocked even those who had known her best. She also asked to be buried at sea. In 1969, socialite C. Z. After a two-week rejuvenation cure in Romania with the controversial Dr. Anna Aslan, they stopped in London. 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. Heffner Duke, adopted in 1988 when she was 38 and the heiress was in her 70s, could not be reached for comment. This went on almost every meal. . New York magazine reported after her death that she had a knee operation at U.C.L.A. 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. Heffner told me that Duke was annoyed with Rossellini for falling behind on the rent on the New Jersey guesthouse. It happened on a train to California. Born Today Most Popular Celebs Most Popular Celebs Celebrity News. ", Heffner was sitting in the Manhattan apartment of one of her lawyers on a Saturday afternoon late last December. "He had done her hair in a pageboy, and she looked so pretty, though she was painfully thin." And when she left, that adverse thing ceased. 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. Heffner also said that Duke confided that she thought her mother had wanted to abort her. 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. She had episodes of pneumonia, she had clots in her veins, and some of those clots may have traveled to her lungs. Charles became so concerned about Duke's condition that she called her and asked if Heffner had been "giving her something, I don't know what"even though Heffner had been out of the picture for a year and a half. ", Though she still would occasionally joke, "I haven't had any greens lately," which Nancy Cooke de Herrera says was Duke's code for sex, she seemed to be settling down. Heffner pleaded on his behalf and asked to speak to Duke, but Robinson told her that Duke was tired. She told me that her parents did not approve of her lifestyle, and that they'd cut her off from everything. Id love to be a fly on the wall when David and Victoria Beckham meet their sons fiancees family. Doris Duke dumped Chandi Heffner because Heffner wanted to marry one of their bodyguards. Chandi Heffner is a small, sturdy woman with thick black shoulder-length hair and bone-white skin, Thick black eyebrows set off her striking indigo-colored eyes, She was wearing a dark-blue Paradise on show: Inside the exotic retreat of tobacco More Than $65 Million For Adopted Duke Daughter BILLIONAIRE'S HEIR OUT OF PLACE ", In either March or April, Demopoulos said, he received a call from Irwin Bloom, who told him that he had been fired by Duke. . Shes the daughter of billionaire Nelson Peltz. And he called from a pay phone, and I felt so sorry for this guy, I said, 'Come to Somerville.' 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. Chandi said, 'But where do I find a man?' This should be some rehearsal dinner! 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. I suspected that it was Bernard doing thiskeeping the food cold. 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. For some reason, Doris actually came to believe that Chandi. "I don't think you're supposed to use alcohol with steroids, and she was drinking sherry in the evenings." She has also been involved in equestrian sports and was the owner of the horse Authentic, whose rider took home the Gold Medal in show jumping for Team USA at the 2004 Athens Olympics. Banks never saw her again. Nine months earlier, she had sued her adoptive mother for breach of contract, claiming that she had promised to maintain her in the Duke lifestyle for the rest of Heffner's life and to make her the principal heir of her estate. And all of a sudden I started hearing, 'The food is cold.' Her second husband, Dominican playboy Porfirio Rubirosa, fared only slightly better: His divorce settlement was estimated at $1 million. . 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. . Miss Duke lives in a walled 2,700-acre estate in Hillsborough, and rarely attracted . Couple of the class as a daughter, her lawyer said Friday Lafferty got off to a start. Reported after her death that she wanted to marry one of their bodyguards falling! To be honest and fiercely defensive of Doris that her parents did chandi heffner duke today of. 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