He came over here, and she died. 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 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've talked to bankers who said she knew where every last nickel was. The incredibly eccentric Duke who used to throw lawn birthday parties for her llamas complete with cake and funny hats adopted adult Chandi, after being convinced she was the reincarnation of her dead baby. Doris Duke was murdered. It would come back. 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. And all of a sudden I started hearing, 'The food is cold.' You can live in the manner that I live and have this lifestyle. . 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. Franco Rossellini assured everyone that he was all for it. Her Newport artist pal Richard Banks said that that summer "Doris decided to do the whole social thing and she loved it. One night in August, Banks dined alone with Duke at Rough Point. . The will provides Lafferty with an executor's fee of up to $5 million, a lifetime annuity of $500,000 a year, and commissions, which could run into the millions annually, as a trustee of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and of three other closely related new foundations: the Doris Duke Foundation for the Preservation of Endangered Wildlife, the Doris Duke Foundation for the Preservation of New Jersey Farmland and Farm Animals, and the Doris Duke Foundation of Islamic Art. That was a going-out-of-your-way gesture." Seemed. 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.' So I fixed another tray and brought it upstairs. ", Donald Robinson, who represented Duke in the Marcos matter, recalls going out to Duke Farms after Imelda Marcos posted bail in New York: "The group was Imelda and her lawyer, one of her daughters, Franco Rossellini, his friend Enzo Natale, Chandi, and Doris. I would have to reheat it. 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. Lafferty can appoint the bank that will serve as the estate's co-executor, and three of the four other trustees of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. 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. A few hours later, when Heffner returned from a show-jumping lesson, she was informed that Doris had flown to Los Angeles. 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. Claudia Heffner's Sister Has A Weird Story. Chandi was into Eastern cultures and all that stuff, and so was Doris. and I finally quit just before Labor Day. Doris and I used to go fairly regularly to see the president in the hospital; she would give him reiki treatments.". "She's an unusually intelligent person: perceptive, articulate, well-read, culturally alive. 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.". And then he was going to A.A., and he did very well in A.A., as far as I know. His breath almost knocked me off my feet.' "We kept it to ourselves for months, until around July 1990. . ), HBOs Hit Show The Last of Us Finally Vaults Over 1 Million Viewers on Main Channel. The last words were 'Stay in touch, Harry.' In November 1991, Duke had a new will written, naming Irwin Bloom and Chemical Bank as executors. ", In late 1990, he said, "I detected a growing unhappiness on Doris's part. 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. 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 This should be some rehearsal dinner! Inspired by this trip, they bought the most spectacular piece of property near Diamond Head in Honolulu, on which they built a Mogul-style fortress and named it Shangri La. She told me she was supposed to start hula dancing professionally at a hotel in Hawaii. He also instilled in her an almost reflexive inability to trust people. For the Beckhams, this marriage is like sinking the best goal ever. She did not directly accuse Lafferty of turning Duke against her. 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. WHAT'S POPULAR TODAY. You felt that she was going to break. 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 . ", Duke had a passion for the performing arts all her life. Heffner told me, "Doris used to call James 'Teach.' The Sands says that Lafferty managed the theater, which headlined such stars as Bill Cosby, Joel Grey, and Rita Moreno. According to financial accounts shes posted on her website, she has about $700,000 parked in CDH to help India. I think she did it to make James jealous. Despite the negative publicity, she fought her husband in the courts for five years, until he gave in. Chandi Duke Heffner, Self: Oh My God. 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. And then the wine was $1,000 a bottle; it came from her father's cellars. Her lawyer, David Keyko, said yesterday that in. Heffner spent almost six months on and off in two Honolulu hospitals, because she also developed a heart problem. When tobacco heiress Doris Duke died last October, she left a will that shocked even those who had known her best. The balance is due Wednesday. She said, 'There was nothing to do on that train.' The circumstances of Dukes death remain under investigation. Brooklyn Beckham, whos 21, has announced hes marrying Nicola Peltz, 25. ", The day after the adoption, the economist Woody Brock went to lunch at Duke Farms with Duke's New Jersey neighbor Jane Engelhard. I feel in danger.' The next day I got a phone call from Doris to thank me. I said, 'Doris, get out of that house. And last May, Surrogate Preminger accepted Miss Duke's. 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. The press decided she had become an eccentric recluse. ", 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. also assured Chandi that she would be the heir to Doris's estate in return for Chandi devoting herself to Doris and to the running of her affairs. And he would tell me, 'Miss Heffner's complaining.' They would helicopter over to Somerville from their estate in Bedford, New York.". The billionaire believed that Chandi was the reincarnation of her dead kid. sometimes I can't believe it's real. 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. She really considered herself a dancer. The rest of the house was dark, which was odd. 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. There was lack of ostentation. Cary W. Goldstein, Burns lawyer, says Heffner Duke broke ``a very explicit deal she had with Burns, although it was never written down. 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. In later years she did have problems with her hearing and with her legs, but nothing major. ", "When one of Doris's love affairs ended, there was always great drama," says her friend Consuelo Crespi. Chandi called Steve Levyhe did security for Doristo find out what to do. Heffner had asked him to have dinner with her and Gordon Damon, and he had told her to pick him up at Duke's front gate. He named both his private Pullman car and his 80-foot yacht after her, and surrounded her with bodyguards. 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. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. We were joking around, because we both had bad knees. It was clear that something adverse was going on in the latter part of 1990 in Hawaii. "Chandi works very hard for Doris. He's a sweet human being, and he seemed to be honest and fiercely defensive of Doris. Nicolas mother, Claudia, has a sister we havent forgotten about. Steve said, 'Your food has changed so suddenly Miss Duke thinks you must be on drugs.' "She got baby doses for a few weeks and that was it. "There was a rumor that she did it deliberately. . Heffner almost broke down again. The two camels were right outside the dining room on a blue tarpaulin. The baby's death profoundly affected Duke, and she even hired psychics to try to. She wasn't about being a pretty, rich American girl. 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. That led to pneumonia and she couldn't eat and it was on and off, on and off, for months.". She thought it was very amusing. Nicola has an eclectic family, worthy of a Robert Altman movie a la A Wedding. On the plus side, theres the money. He also hoped she would finance his 1940 campaign for U.S. senator from New Jersey; instead, she helped ruin his political career by snubbing Eleanor Roosevelt and putting private detectives on him to collect evidence of his extramarital affairs. ", Rybak says that Lafferty got off to a good start at Duke Farms. In May, a New York judge approved a plan to send the bulk of her estate to charity. I thought she'd live to 90 or 100. One night at dinner, Heffner told me, "Doris said to me, 'You're my daughter reincarnated. . 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. And let me tell you that she gave a really nice dinner party for me at the nadir of my fortunes. She was a cool lady. 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? "When we were together," Heffner continued, "when things were really great, Doris was in wonderful shape. 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. (The hospital said that Bernard Lafferty was a patient from July 1 to July 14, 1987.). '", In 1947 she married again, but handed the groom a prenuptial agreement at the altar. "Cromwell was quite nice," says Nelson Seabra, a rich Brazilian friend of Duke's. He was cooking and she was serving. The reason it didn't last long was she didn't want them. Ended, there was a patient from July 1 to July 14, 1987..! 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