"Elvis made whites interested in black music," she once told me, "which was very important, because race is the biggest problem we have in America.". 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 . Duke turned up at the Ritz in Paris that October walking with a cane. After giving the matter prolonged and serious consideration, I am convinced that I should not have adopted Chandi Heffner. Because just as Doris was taking me to the door, there was Chandi with the caretaker. Tom Ford. . They would helicopter over to Somerville from their estate in Bedford, New York.". . They hired him on Ferencz Soltesz's recommendation. Guest introduced Duke to Leon Amar, a 30-year-old Moroccan decorator. It's so hard for me still, so hard." In 1925, at the age of 13, she inherited an estimated $100 million in trusts from her father, James Buchanan Duke, a coarse but brilliant self-made man who founded the American Tobacco Company and the Duke Power Company, and who endowed Trinity College in North Carolina with millions, reportedly on the condition it change its name to Duke University. He went to Sarasota High School. 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. 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. I would have to reheat it. "At the beginning of 1991, she placed an increasing reliance on me and Bernard," Demopoulos told me. He was cooking and she was serving. 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. ), HBOs Hit Show The Last of Us Finally Vaults Over 1 Million Viewers on Main Channel. There were four witnesses, including Dr. Charles Kivowitz, a fashionable Beverly Hills internist. 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. And he confirmed that he had been named an executor when Duke revised her 1987 will in March 1991. I used to tell her, 'You know, Doris, some people do like you for yourself. 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. 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. Heffner takes credit for everything from improving the dairy herd at Duke Farms to arranging the sale of Duke's gold deposits in Switzerland. 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. 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. . That led to pneumonia and she couldn't eat and it was on and off, on and off, for months.". . Chandi, which means "female energy personified" in Sanskrit, was born Charlene Heffner in Baltimore on August 26, 1953, the eldest of three daughters of William Heffner, a lawyer, and his wife, "Bunny," a nurse. One evening Steve Levy said that Miss Duke wanted him to administer a urine test on me. Two years later, against her mother's wishes, she married James Cromwell, who was 16 years older than she, and whose family had lost its fortune in 1929, and embarked on a two-year honeymoon through the Middle East and Asia. (1940 - 1940) Photos: 19. In court papers, Heffner -- a Baltimore native -- says the two women met in Hawaii in 1981. When he went to pick her up, Lafferty told him, "Always keep me informed, so that I can be sure everything works." Christopher Duffy, the former manager of Duke's Hawaiian estate, has told of a volatile relationship between the billionaire and Heffner, including frequent arguments and thrown crockery. I remember her referring to 'we dancers.' . I suppose it was Doris's fault for never talking about what she did.". "He seemed depressed, and Doris thought it would give him more self-esteem. That was Doris. 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. Heffner Duke, adopted in 1988 when she was 38 and the heiress was in her 70s, could not be reached for comment. She was alarmingly fragile." On New Year's Day 1964, she ordered him out, and he retaliated by suing her, claiming that they had been secretly married. 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. This was at 11 in the morning. Each evening she would return to Duke Farms or her Manhattan apartment in time for dinner alone on a tray. 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. I remember when I read his resume, I thought, This man has really been through it. She was like a flower child, even though the era was over. I asked Doris and she said, 'Yeah, it's fine.' ", She had already been planning to divorce Cromwell, but he apparently demanded a $7 million settlement. She's getting better.' Like all of her houses, it was guarded by fierce Dobermans or German shepherds. 'I loved her so much. Chandi Heffner is a small, sturdy woman with thick black shoulder-length hair and bone-white skin. Farrah says that Duke had returned from her first visit to Manila, with Rossellini, about a week before meeting Heffner. 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.' Most of Duke's friends hadn't had an inkling. Help Center Contributor Zone Polls. ", Duke had a passion for the performing arts all her life. . 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. Demopoulos said that Duke had mentioned her suspicions that she was being poisoned. In June 1985, Duke and Heffner traveled to Russia together. We came out from opposite sides of the stage, and I got to the middle and she wasn't there. Yet it is the underlying misconception of almost everything ever written about her, including Stephanie Mansfield's 1992 biography, The Richest Girl in the World. 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. 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. Chandi sued Duke's estate. ", Nonetheless, Duke seemed increasingly pleased with Lafferty. I was constantly arguing with Bernard . That's not the Doris I knew. Earlier this year, Manhattan Surrogate Court Judge Eve Preminger removed Lafferty from that position for allegedly squandering the estates assets on lavish living but Lafferty is appealing the ruling. Meanwhile, Bernard said he wasn't feeling well and went back up to his room. "One hears all sorts of stories about how Rubi started in life, that he was Trujillo's sort of 'Press the doorbell, you answer the doorbell, and he went bang-bang.' 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. Heffner said that she had asked for them almost as a joke, and that Duke was laughing when the agent for the ownerrumored to be Adnan Khashoggi or a Kuwaiti sheikhcalled back and agreed. And then he was going to A.A., and he did very well in A.A., as far as I know. 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. 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. Until she was 10, when she started at the Brearley School, she was tutored at home. "He had done her hair in a pageboy, and she looked so pretty, though she was painfully thin." ", Rybak says that Lafferty got off to a good start at Duke Farms. Born Today Most Popular Celebs Most Popular Celebs Celebrity News. 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. 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. . 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.' 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. "Nobody gave Doris any credit for having any taste, any intelligence, any anything," says Marion Oates Charles, known as Oatsie. Talent. Nicola has an eclectic family, worthy of a Robert Altman movie a la A Wedding. On the plus side, theres the money. "But she thought everybody was after her money. ", Oatsie Charles had a one-word explanation: "Loneliness. She said, 'There was nothing to do on that train.' She took daily tap lessons from Bill "Bojangles" Robinson at the Cotton Club, and for years studied ballet under Cyd Charisse's ex-husband, Nico. It happened on a train to California. Her first husband, James R. Cromwell, called Duke "my frigidheiress" and engaged in a lengthy court battle to win a financial settlement. Also at Duke Farms, she constructed a series of 11 greenhouses containing elaborate recreations of English, French, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Persian, and other gardens, which she opened to the public. His mother was a teacher, while his father fought as a pilot during WWII. The only times I saw Doris really relaxed were these few times in Beverly Hills.". . Then one day in June, Miss Duke called me and said, 'Thomas, have you seen Bernard? Were there . "He was obviously unhappy. Steve said, 'Your food has changed so suddenly Miss Duke thinks you must be on drugs.' And that's how the relationship evolved. Youth," says Phyllis Saretta, an instructor with the Ibrahim Farrah Near East Dance Group, which Duke funded and danced with in the early 1970s. When Doris was only 14, she successfully sued her mother to stop her from selling Duke Farms, the estate her father had created out of New Jersey flatlands, including a 30-room mansion with an indoor pool and indoor tennis courts, artificial lakes, and man-made hillocks. . Claudia Heffner's Sister Has A Weird Story. She was contemplating having knee replacements. ". After Tirella's death, she seemed consumed with the idea of actually becoming a performer. '", In 1947 she married again, but handed the groom a prenuptial agreement at the altar. She told me that her parents did not approve of her lifestyle, and that they'd cut her off from everything. . Call your pilot tonight and leave immediately and go to Los Angeles and get checked up.' "They did not meet in dance class," he insists. But she had a dramatic change in her lifeand it was weird. Duke's Los Angeles decorator Tony Duquette adds, "He was just marvelous to Doris, and not at all sinister. Chandi Duke Heffner was recognized for her outstanding support of the Marshall Legacy Institute's, landmine detection program. ", In either March or April, Demopoulos said, he received a call from Irwin Bloom, who told him that he had been fired by Duke. Only one other trustee was named in the will, Marion Oates Charles, Duke's longtime summer neighbor in Newport, Rhode Island. ", 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 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. Doris Duke committed suicide. Chandi Duke Heffner net worth is $300,000. 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