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. Doris Dukes adopted daughter has ended her fight to gain control of the late billionaires fortune in exchange for a $65-million settlement from the estate. We used to joke that she'd outlive me. 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. I think she did it to make James jealous. James Burns, 32, in a lawsuit filed Wednesday, claimed Chandi Gail Heffner Duke owes him half of the $66 million she was awarded after Duke die in 1988. Duke died at age 80 in 1988, leaving a hotly contested $1.5 billion estate. In her will, Duke requested that no funeral or memorial service be held for her. And all around him were all these liquor bottlesGrand Marnier and sherry. 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. Chandi Duke Heffner is known for Oh My God (2009). I remember that the captain of the helicopter was very worried and wanted her to leave early. I really don't know what the hell was going on, frankly. Woody Brock, who visited her with Oatsie Charles that summer, says, "It must have been 85 degrees outside, and she had on a white sweater and a roaring fire in every room. She is asking for compensatory and punitive damages in an unspecified amount "to support her for the rest of her life in the style she had enjoyed" while serving as a companion to the eccentric billionaire. 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. She told me she was supposed to start hula dancing professionally at a hotel in Hawaii. 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. Ferencz Soltesz [the Peltzes' majordomo] told me he's an excellent butler so long as you keep him off the bottle. 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. It happened on a train to California. Duke believed that Heffner was the reincarnation of her daughter, Arden. Duke is portrayed by her adopted daughter as a lonely, paranoid recluse in need of constant care. He spent many weekends at a guesthouse at Duke Farms and was her escort when she went into the city for lunches and dinners with friends such as Diana Vreeland, Nan Kempner, and Kenneth Jay Lane. For reasons I don't understand, a curtain seemed to come down. "We kept it to ourselves for months, until around July 1990. . She wasn't sure if she wanted to have a baby, but she said by the third month an incredible mother instinct took over. . "And later on, for a while, on Irwin Bloom, the financial manager. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. And he would tell me, 'Miss Heffner's complaining.' In a so-called "galimony" lawsuit filed in Superior Court in Somerville, N.J., where the heiress lives several months of the year at her 5,000-acre compound known as Duke Farms, Heffner claims she is entitled to compensation from Duke, who abruptly broke off their live-in relationship in 1991. ", Heffner denies that she had had any previous association with Imelda Marcos. In the car, Chandi was saying, 'Oh, she's such a nice lady, and the house is gorgeous!' I said, 'Sure, have him call me.' I tried to see her the following week when I was in California, and there were about a dozen times since then that I called when I made trips to California, where I would simply get a response on the other end of the line that was: 'Miss Duke is doing well. 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.' 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. "We discussed cremation, and she said, 'Never, never, ever let anyone cremate me.' ", 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. Both Duke and Heffner served as close advisers to Marcos during her trial for fraud and racketeering. "He was so attentive," Banks says. Heffner pleaded on his behalf and asked to speak to Duke, but Robinson told her that Duke was tired. In the morning, Bernard didn't come down until 11:30, and he was a mess. 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. Moreover, Heffner's legal complaint against Duke states: Doris . . . A stingy southern belle, Nanaline Holt Inman was a widow with one son when she married Buck Duke in 1907. Call your pilot tonight and leave immediately and go to Los Angeles and get checked up.' She was very into the ritualistic part of Hawaiian dance. Seemed. . Then the U.S. government blindsided it, Column: Uber and Lyfts deactivation policy is dehumanizing and unfair. And I didn't sense any antagonism between Chandi and Bernard." Meanwhile, Bernard said he wasn't feeling well and went back up to his room. Phyllis Saretta says, "Chandi told me that her sister had a butler and a chauffeur and the whole thing. Chandi Heffner is 69 years old today because Chandi's birthday is on 08/26/1953. She didn't like medicine in general. . She also asked to be buried at sea. Miss Duke lives in a walled 2,700-acre estate in Hillsborough, and rarely attracted . ", Duke had a passion for the performing arts all her life. Incredibly, she was awarded a $65 million settlement. We took him to Newport. She said, 'I'm very frightened. 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. It was clear that something adverse was going on in the latter part of 1990 in Hawaii. ", 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. When tobacco heiress Doris Duke died last October, she left a will that shocked even those who had known her best. . 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. "Both of them greeted us at the door. . "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]. 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? . Newport police declared it an accident, and her friends still swear that it was. When I go I'll be eaten by the sharks.". 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. "Doris had gone surfing," explains Nancy Cooke de Herrera, an old friend from Hawaii. 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.". "Sometimes people are attracted to the thing they fear the most.". Cary W. Goldstein, Burns lawyer, says Heffner Duke broke ``a very explicit deal she had with Burns, although it was never written down. Alec Cunningham-Reid. Even Imelda didn't see her.". It wasn't until the following winter, however, Burns told me, that he became romantically involved with Heffner. She did not directly accuse Lafferty of turning Duke against her. . The billionaire believed that Chandi was the reincarnation of her dead kid. And she was so frail. (1940 - 1940) Photos: 19. In May, a New York judge approved a plan to send the bulk of her estate to charity. He made a comment that Doris had a fair number of complications as a result of the surgery. This only fueled rumors about his sexuality further and . Duke scoffed, "Oh, come on. Keep in mind, people are entitled to a change of heart. "That was quite an event. I knew from the beginning she was a son of a bitch." The two camels were right outside the dining room on a blue tarpaulin. (Other sources say the meeting took place in 1985.) "There was a rumor that she did it deliberately. Her estate, said one family member yesterday, is valued at more than $1 billion. He was the legendary Latin lover Porfirio Rubirosa, the former son-in-law of the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. 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. I said, 'Doris, get out of that house. Chandi Duke Heffner Net Worth Chandi Duke Heffner Net Worth 2022, Age, Height, Relationships, Married, Dating, Family, Wiki Biography. Believing that Heffner was the reincarnation of her daughter, Arden, Duke bought her a million-dollar ranch in Hawaii, and . She had had several leg operations, after a riding accident, but she participated in the seminar. Heres a description of Chandi (seen in the picture here on the right, with Duke and Imelda Marcos) from her website. The gossip at Mortimer's was that Duke was furious with him for talking to Stephanie Mansfield. One evening Steve Levy said that Miss Duke wanted him to administer a urine test on me. 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. She was like a flower child, even though the era was over. Mahn soon left, and in 1987 co-authored Daddy's Duchess: The Unauthorized Biography of Doris Duke. SOMERVILLE, N.J. (AP) _ Reclusive multimillionaire Doris Duke has adopted a 35-year-old conservationist as a daughter, her lawyer said Friday. According to a frequent guest at Duke's various houses, Duke became more and more upset with Burns: "Doris told me that James started to strut around the place as if he was Mr. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. Farrah says that Duke had returned from her first visit to Manila, with Rossellini, about a week before meeting Heffner. On October 6, it was announced that Duke had made a donation of $1 million to the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation. Duke's Los Angeles decorator Tony Duquette adds, "He was just marvelous to Doris, and not at all sinister.
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