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. One repeated her response to a straight man who was reluctant to have dinner with Rock Hudson for fear that he would be molested. 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. ", The day after the adoption, the economist Woody Brock went to lunch at Duke Farms with Duke's New Jersey neighbor Jane Engelhard. Heffner Duke, adopted in 1988 when she was 38 and the heiress was in her 70s, could not be reached for comment. Doris Duke met Chandi Heffner in 1985 and felt a strong maternal connection to Her. . And all of a sudden I started hearing, 'The food is cold.' On rare occasions I got Bernard. I used to tell her, 'You know, Doris, some people do like you for yourself. 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. She clapped her hands in glee. I said, 'Doris, do it, I think it's a good thing.' 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. Chandi sued Dukes estate and wound up inheriting $65 million. . 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. Claudia Heffner's Sister Has A Weird Story. I turned and saw her on the floor. 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. Even Imelda didn't see her.". and as we were leaving they exchanged telephone numbers. I knew from the beginning she was a son of a bitch." Heres a description of Chandi (seen in the picture here on the right, with Duke and Imelda Marcos) from her website. Banks never saw her again. And when she left, that adverse thing ceased. Lafferty was accused of conspiring to kill his terminally ill employer with morphine. "O.K., I'm not going to see her, but. I really don't know what the hell was going on, frankly. Shortly after Duke's 80th birthday, in November, Nelson Seabra saw her at C. Z. ", Burns began working out with Duke on a regular basis. "She told me she was bored silly, and the palace was so froufrou. He also said he had worked on and off for Peggy Lee for 10 years. After repeated requests for an interview, I received the following statement through the New York public-relations firm representing him: "My duty to Miss Duke is to maintain her privacy even though she is gone.". Imelda stayed for a week, I think. Her telephone was not listed in the Los Angeles area. She told me that her parents did not approve of her lifestyle, and that they'd cut her off from everything. 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. 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. 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 also asked to be buried at sea. Once Chandi was adopted she took over Dukes life. After she returned to Newport later that month, Banks invited her to a concert, but she forgot the date. Thick black eyebrows set off her striking indigo-colored eyes. 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. Doris Duke was murdered. "That was quite an event. ", Duke had a passion for the performing arts all her life. We had a nice dinner with appropriate toasts, and Franco entertained us with anecdotes and imitations. She got right up like a trouper and fell right down again. One night at dinner, she told me, 'You know, my father always said no one would ever love me except for my money, and to be very careful.' . I do feel like I'm being drugged. . In 1933, when she turned 21, Doris Duke came into the first $10 million left by her father. ", 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. She wasn't sure if she wanted to have a baby, but she said by the third month an incredible mother instinct took over. Lafferty had been working for Nelson and Claudia Peltz for the previous seven months, and Rybak says, "The Peltzes put him in a 28-day program. One of those servants was the future executor of Doris Duke's estate. ", Sometimes, Robert Farrah recalls, "Doris would throw up her hands and say, 'No wills! Roger Friedman began his Showbiz411 column in April 2009 after 10 years with Fox News, where he created the Fox411 column. 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.' ", 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. 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. 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. 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. That was a going-out-of-your-way gesture." On the last day of the seminar, he spent the afternoon with Duke at Shangri La. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. She was a cool lady. In June 1985, Duke and Heffner traveled to Russia together. The two women developed a deep bond almost instantly. Although Duke was determined to produce his own heir, Nanaline was as surprised as everyone else when she became pregnant at the age of 42, and she always favored her son, Walker Inman, over Doris. Duke believed that Heffner was the reincarnation of her daughter, Arden. The only times I saw Doris really relaxed were these few times in Beverly Hills.". To this day he maintains, "A lot of injustice was done to me. Burns said that he was also training Lafferty, to help him lose his paunch. Keyko said that $800,000 was paid to Heffner on Friday. She was ahead of her time. Community. "We were sitting on the rocks, and she said, 'I will take care of you and all of your animals for the rest of your life. Heffner also said that Duke confided that she thought her mother had wanted to abort her. You're Arden. '" Two years later she bought Falcon's Lair, the Beverly Hills house where Rudolph Valentino once lived. Lafferty has released few details about Duke's final illness. She wasn't Barbara Hutton," says Marina Cicogna, who was a friend of both heiresses. Chandi was into Eastern cultures and all that stuff, and so was Doris. This went on almost every meal. 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. Heffner paints a sedate portrait of their life together, with Doris retiring to her music room, Chandi dealing with the employees and both women sharing vegetarian dinners. In her lawsuit, Heffner claims it was she who arranged this transaction, as well as the payment of $5 million of Marcos's legal bills. Demopoulos said that Duke had mentioned her suspicions that she was being poisoned. 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. Shes the daughter of billionaire Nelson Peltz. 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. . "It's very important that Doris has done this," he told me at the time. He's a sweet human being, and he seemed to be honest and fiercely defensive of Doris. But theyve hit a snag, Review: A reimagined Secret Garden fails to flower anew at the Ahmanson Theatre, Elizabeth Holmes cites her new baby as a reason she should avoid prison for Theranos scam. Newsom Closes California Theaters, "Dancing with the Stars" Needs a New Partner: Longtime Host Tom Bergeron Told Goodbye By ABC, Along with CoHost Erin Andrews, The Weeknd, Already on the Outs with the Grammys, Goes After Rolling Stone So They Rip Apart His New Show (Got That? "I don't think you're supposed to use alcohol with steroids, and she was drinking sherry in the evenings." ", Heffner was with Gary McElroy, with whom she was then living on a communal farm on the Big Island of Hawaii. '", 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. ", After Thanksgiving, as she had for five decades, Duke left for Hawaii. He made a comment that Doris had a fair number of complications as a result of the surgery. "I said, 'What's wrong?' In 1985, she met Chandi Heffner, a 32-year-old Hari Krishna devotee. Then the U.S. government blindsided it, Column: Uber and Lyfts deactivation policy is dehumanizing and unfair. The 1987 will had designated Heffner executor. In a peculiar arrangement, in 1988, the 76-year-old Duke legally adopted the 35-year-old Heffner and bought her a $1 million ranch in Hawaii, where the two lived together as mother and daughter. Nanaline worshiped Society, and she disapproved of her tall, awkward, studious daughter. 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. Youth," says Phyllis Saretta, an instructor with the Ibrahim Farrah Near East Dance Group, which Duke funded and danced with in the early 1970s. Born Today Most Popular Celebs Most Popular Celebs Celebrity News. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. He said the couple, who lived together from 1990 until 1993, agreed that Burns would be not only be her confidante-companion but ``cook, body guard, security specialist and assist in financing any claims Heffner Duke may find it necessary to bring to enforce her rights against Doris Duke.. 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 remember that most: that she seemed very happy with her life at that period. ", 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. We'll have a great life together. 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. Heffner told me she had left "the farm community" and was living with Gordon Damon, a real-estate agent whose house was near Duke's Diamond Head estate. I think she did it to make James jealous. . I almost feel . 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.". 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. "Miss Duke said to me, 'I think I may have been drugged. Her stage name was Sahda. Chandi Duke Heffner is known for Oh My God (2009). ", 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. Heffner was in New York for a week, visiting her sister Claudia, who had married Nelson Peltz in 1980. 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