In 1985, she met Chandi Heffner, a 32-year-old Hari Krishna devotee. 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. After she returned to Newport later that month, Banks invited her to a concert, but she forgot the date. "Doris had gone surfing," explains Nancy Cooke de Herrera, an old friend from Hawaii. He was the legendary Latin lover Porfirio Rubirosa, the former son-in-law of the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. 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. And he had quite a history. He has an alcohol problem, but he's a basically good person. But on Nicolas mothers side, things get more interesting. Heffner also said that Duke confided that she thought her mother had wanted to abort her. . It was at that juncture, Heffner claims, that Duke made the oral promise that is the basis of her breach-of-contract suit. Learn how your comment data is processed. The Sands says that Lafferty managed the theater, which headlined such stars as Bill Cosby, Joel Grey, and Rita Moreno. Burns said that he was also training Lafferty, to help him lose his paunch. She was having a real whirl." She had this terrible fear of fire." 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. 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. Of course, they had a very attractive life. She was even a buddy of Elvis Presley's. Her Newport artist pal Richard Banks said that that summer "Doris decided to do the whole social thing and she loved it. Heffner told me that Duke was annoyed with Rossellini for falling behind on the rent on the New Jersey guesthouse. 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. "She was told she has a pretty good case," the family member said. Nelson Peltz is financing Chandi Heffner's legal battle. Who can help student-athletes cash in? And the person who could best illuminate Doris Duke's declining days, Bernard Lafferty, refused to talk to me. Then she became pregnant and had a premature daughter named Arden, who lived only 24 hours. 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. There was lack of ostentation. And when she left, that adverse thing ceased. On October 6, it was announced that Duke had made a donation of $1 million to the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation. "They did not meet in dance class," he insists. And let me tell you that she gave a really nice dinner party for me at the nadir of my fortunes. Then [Franco and I] didn't see Doris anymore. The first one, in Hawaii, didn't work out: she wanted to make a museum out of a Thai temple that she had saved from destruction on one of her many trips to Southeast Asia. And he confirmed that he had been named an executor when Duke revised her 1987 will in March 1991. 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. "Most of them didn't want to leave. It wasn't until the following winter, however, Burns told me, that he became romantically involved with Heffner. . Duke." Shortly after Duke's 80th birthday, in November, Nelson Seabra saw her at C. Z. 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. Her second husband, Dominican playboy Porfirio Rubirosa, fared only slightly better: His divorce settlement was estimated at $1 million. Chandi called Steve Levyhe did security for Doristo find out what to do. "Io sono molto contento. . And, like Heffner, after following Duke from Duke Farms to Rough Point to Falcon's Lair to Shangri La for more than six years he was suddenly given a few hours to pack his bags and leave. I feel in danger.' 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. Incredibly, she was awarded a $65 million settlement. Lafferty served. In fact, it was Chandi Heffner who hired Bernard Lafferty for Doris Duke, in 1987. 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. ". Heffner almost broke down again. 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. 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. Id love to be a fly on the wall when David and Victoria Beckham meet their sons fiancees family. And he would tell me, 'Miss Heffner's complaining.' I remember that the captain of the helicopter was very worried and wanted her to leave early. Doris loved it. 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. This whole thing is such a shock." In Doris's case, she had done that. People get annoyed with their kids. This was the fifth time that Duke had rewritten or revised her will since Heffner's banishment 26 months earlier. Usually something came in the mail that she wanted to discuss, because Chandi was taking care of her financial affairs. On the last day of the seminar, he spent the afternoon with Duke at Shangri La. Miss Duke's will went on: "I am extremely troubled by the realization that Chandi Heffner may use my 1988 adoption of her (when she was 35 years old) to attempt to benefit financially under the . 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. . The following February, Farrah repeated the seminar, and it was apparently then that Chandi Heffner entered Doris Duke's life. He always seemed to be there whenever she needed him. Ignoring Chandi Heffner, the latter-day flower child whom she adopted in. 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. . It would come back. . 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. But she got up again, and we did our steps. ", "I'm crazy about Bernard," says Oatsie Charles. Both Heffner and her lawyers emphatically deny that Nelson Peltz is financing Heffner's legal efforts. Nelson Seabra told me, "A very close friend of Doris's said that she committed suicide. "I was not aware of his drinking problem when I placed him there, but I did inform Chandi [before sending him to Doris Duke's]. 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. He's standing on a street corner in New York right now and needs a place to go. ", James Cromwell maintained that it was not his child, and friends assumed that it was Cunningham-Reid's. Banks never saw her again. According to her New York Times obituary, the cause of death was "pulmonary edema resulting in cardiac arrest." "You know, fate is strange. When Doris died, there was a well publicized estate fight between Chandi and Doriss ex butler, Bernard Lafferty. I think this was the steroid thing happening. Doris Duke was murdered. What did Disney actually lose from its Florida battle with DeSantis? 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. I would have to reheat it. You can live in the manner that I live and have this lifestyle. On April 5, 1993, one week after Heffner had sued her, Duke signed her last will, cutting off her adopted daughter in brutally explicit terms: I am extremely troubled by the realization that Chandi Heffner may use my 1988 adoption of her to attempt to benefit financially under the terms of either of the trusts created by my father. Let them kill each other over it.' He named both his private Pullman car and his 80-foot yacht after her, and surrounded her with bodyguards. Farrah says that Duke had returned from her first visit to Manila, with Rossellini, about a week before meeting Heffner. I fumbled through an introduction. When he died in a car crash in 1965, she took to her bed for two days. This stuff was from Miss Duke's father. "He had done her hair in a pageboy, and she looked so pretty, though she was painfully thin." "He was devastated. According to the 1993 Forbes Four Hundred list, Doris Duke was the 18th-richest woman in America, not far behind cosmetics billionairess Este Lauder. She thought it was very amusing. Although polo and horse jumping are her favorite equestrian activities, Chandi Heffner currently spends the majority of her time overseeing CDHIF USA and CDHIFI. In May, a New York judge approved a plan to send the bulk of her estate to charity. 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." She also lent another $5 million to Marcos to cover her legal expenses (and asked for it back in her will). ", According to Farrah, Heffner never actually took part in a dance class, because her leg was in a cast. Demopoulos said that Duke had mentioned her suspicions that she was being poisoned. She said, 'There was nothing to do on that train.' There's no question that Bernard was more than just a butler. Heffner told me, "Doris used to call James 'Teach.' 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. 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. 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 . She told me that her parents did not approve of her lifestyle, and that they'd cut her off from everything. Until she was 10, when she started at the Brearley School, she was tutored at home. 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. Paul and his family moved to Sarasota, Florida, when he was nine years old. He received nothing. 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. Up to that point, Heffner alleges, the two women shared an extremely close relationship, enjoying not only the opulence of Duke's estates, but also trips to Russia, "fountain of youth" treatments in Romania, finding suitable maids for the ornery billionaire after she'd been "blacklisted" by employment agencies, shopping for a $25 million Boeing 737, and a shared belief that Heffner was the reincarnation of Duke's only child, a daughter who died shortly after birth in 1940. I know a lot of bull dykes. Chandi Heffner and Doris Duke were having a lesbian affair. This gives her the air of philanthropy. ", 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. Chandi sued Duke's estate. Duke's Los Angeles decorator Tony Duquette adds, "He was just marvelous to Doris, and not at all sinister. . She wasn't sure if she wanted to have a baby, but she said by the third month an incredible mother instinct took over. The billionaire believed that Chandi was the reincarnation of her dead kid. 'I loved her so much. Duke Kahanamoku went in after her and saved her. Everything good I could say about Bernard, I do. 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 . 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.". (After Duke's death, the trustees of her estate became defendants in this lawsuit.). "When we were together," Heffner continued, "when things were really great, Doris was in wonderful shape. I said, 'Doris, get out of that house. And the whispers about Duke's last years continue. "It was really sad," Heffner said, "because Martha arrived and Doris wouldn't go see her. With a love for all living things, Ms. Heffner maintains a U.S. ranch that takes in rescued horses, birds, donkeys, pigs, and many other animals. "It was unbelievable how hard she worked. Miss Duke lives in a walled 2,700-acre estate in Hillsborough, and rarely attracted . Duke believed that Heffner was the reincarnation of her daughter, Arden. It was a really loving daughter-mother relationship. 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. In 1968, she established the Newport Restoration Foundation, with Jacqueline Onassis as vice president. Doris loved animals. She was very intelligent and very together. 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. 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. He also instilled in her an almost reflexive inability to trust people. And the servants were absolutely bizarreponytailed, rings, sandals ". Los Angeles, A $150,000 executive protection dog? "But she thought everybody was after her money. One of those servants was the future executor of Doris Duke's estate. In the proceedings, Heffner formally renounced her natural parents, certified that she was not consenting to be adopted out of financial considerations, and legally changed her name from Charlene Gail Heffner to Chandi Duke Heffner. 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. 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. 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. ", "I was not involved. 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. 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. . She wasn't Barbara Hutton," says Marina Cicogna, who was a friend of both heiresses. Doris seemed very, very happy. She was very into the ritualistic part of Hawaiian dance. 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. We would be four, six, eightOatsie Charles, Nuala Pell, Minnie Cushing, Lita McBean and her husband, and Sunny and me. Years ago, she was talking about the things we all talk about nowthe environment, battered women and children, animal rights. 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. For the Beckhams, this marriage is like sinking the best goal ever. 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. It was 1982, and Heffner was taking a class at Farrah's studio near Times Square. Cary W. Goldstein, Burns lawyer, says Heffner Duke broke ``a very explicit deal she had with Burns, although it was never written down. She has completely wired the small house on her own, and she boards horses and cows for neighbors for $15 a head per month. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. That was a going-out-of-your-way gesture." ", Robert Farrah agrees: "Doris Duke was not this elusive reclusive. She told me during a break that she had studied reiki, a Japanese healing rite, and she said, 'Maybe I could help you with your knee.' 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. ", Glenn Scott Greenhouse, the president of the Pavillion Agency, confirmed that Lafferty's drinking became an issue at the Peltzes'. 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