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. . (Burns dismisses reports that he was once a Chippendales dancer: "Not that I haven't been asked. Heffner was in New York for a week, visiting her sister Claudia, who had married Nelson Peltz in 1980. I used to tell her, 'You know, Doris, some people do like you for yourself. I called the California home and the other sites many times. One night at dinner, Heffner told me, "Doris said to me, 'You're my daughter reincarnated. 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. Duke was the only child of J.B. "Buck" Duke, who founded the American Tobacco Co. and later endowed Duke University in Durham, N.C. Paul and his family moved to Sarasota, Florida, when he was nine years old. 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. They maintained a familial relationship until 1990 when Doris Duke disinherited Heffner. No wills! Burns said that he was also training Lafferty, to help him lose his paunch. and as we were leaving they exchanged telephone numbers. Lafferty served. . 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. Wait til the Beckhams Meet the Parents: Nicola Peltzs Aunt Inherited $65 Mil from Doris Duke in Infamous Adoption, Movie Release August Schedule for "Tenet," "Mulan" Will Be Scuttled as Gov. 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. And he would tell me, 'Miss Heffner's complaining.' Chandi lives on the horse farm now and operates a very modest charity called the CDH Foundation, with total assets of $ 2 million. Her second husband, Dominican playboy Porfirio Rubirosa, fared only slightly better: His divorce settlement was estimated at $1 million. ", 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. After she returned to Newport later that month, Banks invited her to a concert, but she forgot the date. SOMERVILLE, N.J. (AP) _ Reclusive multimillionaire Doris Duke has adopted a 35-year-old conservationist as a daughter, her lawyer said Friday. The rest of the house was dark, which was odd. Nanaline worshiped Society, and she disapproved of her tall, awkward, studious daughter. In a settlement signed Thursday by Manhattan Surrogate Court Judge Renee Roth, Chandi Duke Heffner, 42, dropped claims to the $1.2-billion estate and dropped a breach-of-contract suit contending that Duke reneged on a promise to support her for life, said Heffners lawyer, David Keyko. Phyllis Saretta told me that Duke performed with the Farrah company four or five times, wearing a long black wig. Last year she gave $40,000 to help people in India, $45,000 to Bronx Veterans Medical Research, and $2000 to the Hawaii Saddle Club. "Sometimes people are attracted to the thing they fear the most.". "Cromwell was quite nice," says Nelson Seabra, a rich Brazilian friend of Duke's. People get annoyed with their kids. So we went into the room, and Bernard was buck naked, bent over a chair, passed out. I think this was the steroid thing happening. For some reason, Doris actually came to believe that Chandi. Irwin Bloom had made the arrangements and then Duke called Protas from Los Angeles and joked, ''For God's sake, try to pay it back," Protas recalled. I remember that the captain of the helicopter was very worried and wanted her to leave early. It's not true. "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.' For reasons I don't understand, a curtain seemed to come down. 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. 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. Moreover, Heffner's legal complaint against Duke states: Doris . 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. "She was told she has a pretty good case," the family member said. Duke. The legal challenges flooded in, in a queue headed by Chandi Heffner (a grown woman adopted, then disowned, by Duke), a doctor named as executor in a previous will and three former Duke servants. You're Arden. '" Heffner has a sister named Charlene Gail Heffner aka Chandi Duke Heffner. And I was surprised. ", 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. We were joking around, because we both had bad knees. He was later retried and acquitted. Peggy Lee told me that she had spoken to Duke on the phone several times in her last months, and that Duke had made a donation to an AIDS charity that Lee is involved with. This gives her the air of philanthropy. His family all died, and he had one remaining relative, in Philadelphia. Duke scoffed, "Oh, come on. She was very happy doing that.". The next day Duke's lawyer called Heffner again and informed her that Duke wanted her out, too. Nelson Peltz is financing Chandi Heffner's legal battle. Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. I turned and saw her on the floor. 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. "Not at all. Column: 15 minutes of fame flies by. ", Dr. Harry Demopoulos, an early promoter of antioxidants and megavitamins, whose patients include Clint Eastwood and Sylvester Stallone, had been Doris Duke's personal physician since 1981. The 1987 will had designated Heffner executor. Records: 123. (Duke had a similar fascination with spiritualism: she gave $100,000 to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the 60s; fell under the spell of Norbu Chen, a pseudo-Tibetan lama, in the 70s; and left $500,000 to the Self-Realization Fellowship.). We had a nice dinner with appropriate toasts, and Franco entertained us with anecdotes and imitations. There was a little alcove under the stairs, and the food would be nice but ordinary. Chandi was into environmental concerns. I remember her referring to 'we dancers.' April 7, 1993 Chandi Duke Heffner, the 39-year-old former belly dancer and Hare Krishna devotee who was legally adopted by American Tobacco Co. heiress Doris Duke in 1988, now claims the. The two exchanged their "vows" at Duke's Hawaiian mansion, but it was revealed the whole thing was a hoax. This stuff was from Miss Duke's father. ", Though she still would occasionally joke, "I haven't had any greens lately," which Nancy Cooke de Herrera says was Duke's code for sex, she seemed to be settling down. Apparently, the warm weather had had a good effect. 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. It will be wonderful.' That led to pneumonia and she couldn't eat and it was on and off, on and off, for months.". It must end, Drugmaker Eli Lilly to slash insulin prices, Stocks slip as stubborn inflation raises rate expectations, TikTok to set default daily time limit of 60 minutes for minors, Column: While workers struggled during the pandemic, CEO pay went up, up, up, The chance of a lifetime: Five friends ski the tallest mountain in Los Angeles, Best coffee city in the world? The circumstances of Dukes death remain under investigation. Another time, at a college in upstate New York, Bobby [Farrah] didn't have her dancehe had her completely veiled, and she sat on the stage and played finger cymbals. 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. "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]. When Doris died, there was a well publicized estate fight between Chandi and Doriss ex butler, Bernard Lafferty. ", In either March or April, Demopoulos said, he received a call from Irwin Bloom, who told him that he had been fired by Duke. I tried repeatedly to get in contact with 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. "There was such a myth about Doris being a solitary person and not going out, so when she showed up somewhere, it was an event. 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. On the last day of the seminar, he spent the afternoon with Duke at Shangri La. I never heard from Doris again and I could never reach her again. 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. We used to joke that she'd outlive me. . He also said he had worked on and off for Peggy Lee for 10 years. I hired him to come out [to Los Angeles] and work for me, to kind of be my majordomo here. 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. The two camels were right outside the dining room on a blue tarpaulin. But she got up again, and we did our steps. I was not aware of what management roles he might or might not have had. Keyko said that $800,000 was paid to Heffner on Friday. And I didn't sense any antagonism between Chandi and Bernard." ", In late 1990, he said, "I detected a growing unhappiness on Doris's part. ", They went into Duke's fabled Islamic Room"you'd think you were in the salon of Sleyman the Magnificent" and over tea and sherry they discussed the pet boar that Heffner had nursed with a baby bottle after it had been abandoned by its mother, as well as Heffner's leg problems. After Bloom was fired, Protas was told the loan was being reviewed. Help Center Contributor Zone Polls. ", Duke had a passion for the performing arts all her life. "Rubi" was also presented with a string of polo ponies and a house in Paris. She was alarmingly fragile." She was not on steroids in the latter half of 1990, and this was not a mood swing. Thick black eyebrows set off her striking indigo-colored eyes. She has completely wired the small house on her own, and she boards horses and cows for neighbors for $15 a head per month. Like all of her houses, it was guarded by fierce Dobermans or German shepherds. The court also gave Doris title to the Fifth Avenue house, which she gave to New York University in 1957, and Rough Point, a huge Vanderbilt "cottage" in Newport. And let me tell you that she gave a really nice dinner party for me at the nadir of my fortunes. The balance is due Wednesday. Chandi Heffner is a small, sturdy woman with thick black shoulder-length hair and bone-white skin. "There was a rumor that she did it deliberately. "Io sono molto contento. . 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. Duke." Do you think you could help him out?' She really considered herself a dancer. Heffner Duke, adopted in 1988 when she was 38 and the heiress was in her 70s, could not be reached for comment. Because it was her major incapacity; there really wasn't anything else wrong with Doris. She was like a flower child, even though the era was over. . ", 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. "I looked upon Bernard as a member of the small Doris Duke family," says Donald Robinson. "We kept it to ourselves for months, until around July 1990. . After the war, she moved to Paris and wrote for the magazine Harper's Bazaar . . This was the fifth time that Duke had rewritten or revised her will since Heffner's banishment 26 months earlier. 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 clapped her hands in glee. We don't hear anything. ", "When one of Doris's love affairs ended, there was always great drama," says her friend Consuelo Crespi. Born Today Most Popular Celebs Most Popular Celebs Celebrity News. There was lack of ostentation. New York magazine reported after her death that she had a knee operation at U.C.L.A. Chandi sued Duke's estate. 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. And so I decidedthe biggest mistake of my 41 yearsto give this son of a bitch a second chance . One of those servants was the future executor of Doris Duke's estate. 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