chandi heffner duke today

For the Beckhams, this marriage is like sinking the best goal ever. ", Heffner was with Gary McElroy, with whom she was then living on a communal farm on the Big Island of Hawaii. I said, 'Doris, do it, I think it's a good thing.' "Cromwell was quite nice," says Nelson Seabra, a rich Brazilian friend of Duke's. . . She was not on steroids in the latter half of 1990, and this was not a mood swing. His mother was a teacher, while his father fought as a pilot during WWII. The two camels were right outside the dining room on a blue tarpaulin. "Io sono molto contento. There's no question that Bernard was more than just a butler. . Duke is portrayed by her adopted daughter as a lonely, paranoid recluse in need of constant care. According to Robert Farrah, the director of the Ibrahim Farrah company, for several months in the late 60s she took private belly-dancing classes with him every morning for two hours in New York and then flew from LaGuardia to Detroit, where she had rented a motel room near the airport and installed a piano for her afternoon singing lessons with Aretha Franklin's father. And along about March, I sent flowers and candy to her California home. Ignoring Chandi Heffner, the latter-day flower child whom she adopted in. In the car, Chandi was saying, 'Oh, she's such a nice lady, and the house is gorgeous!' . "Chandi loved animals. Records: 123. What did Disney actually lose from its Florida battle with DeSantis? "She was told she has a pretty good case," the family member said. 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. Even Imelda didn't see her.". Meanwhile, Heffner is holed up on her Hawaiian ranch. I knew from the beginning she was a son of a bitch." When Duke was 27 years old, she delivered a premature baby daughter who died just 24 hours after being born. Duke died at age 80 in 1988, leaving a hotly contested $1.5 billion estate. She was alarmingly fragile." 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. She was very intelligent and very together. In 1969, socialite C. Z. "When we were together," Heffner continued, "when things were really great, Doris was in wonderful shape. And the person who could best illuminate Doris Duke's declining days, Bernard Lafferty, refused to talk to me. "We concentrated on her leg-muscle group," he said. He went to Sarasota High School. The first one, in Hawaii, didn't work out: she wanted to make a museum out of a Thai temple that she had saved from destruction on one of her many trips to Southeast Asia. He's a sweet human being, and he seemed to be honest and fiercely defensive of Doris. In any case, their friendship ended in tragedy that October, when Duke ran him over as he was opening the gate of Rough Point. It was perhaps her last romantic affair, and in some respects foreshadowed her relationship with Chandi Heffner. Like all of her houses, it was guarded by fierce Dobermans or German shepherds. 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. You can live in the manner that I live and have this lifestyle. ", "When one of Doris's love affairs ended, there was always great drama," says her friend Consuelo Crespi. Let them kill each other over it.' ''Doris and I had been in the Gobi Desert together, and we found out they were becoming a threatened species." And last May, Surrogate Preminger accepted Miss Duke's. She was contemplating having knee replacements. She really had a feeling for him, and expressed annoyance with Imelda. When I go I'll be eaten by the sharks.". It happened on a train to California. . 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. "O.K., I'm not going to see her, but. The two exchanged their "vows" at Duke's Hawaiian mansion, but it was revealed the whole thing was a hoax. In court papers, Heffner -- a Baltimore native -- says the two women met in Hawaii in 1981. Doris Duke was murdered. Shes the daughter of billionaire Nelson Peltz. . Learn how your comment data is processed. Lee told me, "Ten or 15 years ago, I went to sing in the Versailles Room at the old Bellevue, and Bernard was the manager of the room, and we became friends. 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. She told me she was supposed to start hula dancing professionally at a hotel in Hawaii. . Who can help student-athletes cash in? 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. "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]. "There were clear indications of a growing trust, affection, and devotion between them. I asked Doris and she said, 'Yeah, it's fine.' 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. His family all died, and he had one remaining relative, in Philadelphia. Phyllis Saretta told me that Duke performed with the Farrah company four or five times, wearing a long black wig. We came out from opposite sides of the stage, and I got to the middle and she wasn't there. He was going to A. '", 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. Mercedes Bass remembered Duke's coming for tea at the Carlyle Hotel a year or so earlier and introducing Heffner as "my niece." She was so alive. She said, 'I'm very frightened. On April 5, 1993, one week after Heffner had sued her, Duke signed her last will, cutting off her adopted daughter in brutally explicit terms: I am extremely troubled by the realization that Chandi Heffner may use my 1988 adoption of her to attempt to benefit financially under the terms of either of the trusts created by my father. . Chandi Heffner was "planted" on Doris Duke by Imelda Marcos. 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. Chandi said, 'But where do I find a man?' It's not true. It was at that juncture, Heffner claims, that Duke made the oral promise that is the basis of her breach-of-contract suit. And Nicolas first cousin on her fathers side is the great New York broadcaster and filmmaker Perri Peltz, whose father was Nelsons older brother. Heffner pleaded on his behalf and asked to speak to Duke, but Robinson told her that Duke was tired. 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. The couple lived together from 1990 until 1993. She thought it was very amusing. . I remember her referring to 'we dancers.' On New Year's Day 1964, she ordered him out, and he retaliated by suing her, claiming that they had been secretly married. 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. Chandi Heffner Duke passed away on 1940. And then he was going to A.A., and he did very well in A.A., as far as I know. Help Center Contributor Zone Polls. 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. 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. She told me during a break that she had studied reiki, a Japanese healing rite, and she said, 'Maybe I could help you with your knee.' He had also treated Chandi Heffner, and counted both women as friends. Both Duke and Heffner served as close advisers to Marcos during her trial for fraud and racketeering. At a 1990 lunch at Duke Farms for Lord Carrington, then chairman of Christie's, according to Oatsie Charles, "Chandi's attitude toward Doris was awfully offhand. and I finally quit just before Labor Day. And he called from a pay phone, and I felt so sorry for this guy, I said, 'Come to Somerville.' "She out-Leona Helmsleyed Leona Helmsley," Duffy said of Heffner. Chandi Duke Heffner net worth is $300,000. She continued to give him money, and friends say that their sexual relationship never really ended. Column: 15 minutes of fame flies by. This whole thing is such a shock." ", 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. In 1933, when she turned 21, Doris Duke came into the first $10 million left by her father. "It was strange. Although polo and horse jumping are her favorite equestrian activities, Chandi Heffner currently spends the majority of her time overseeing CDHIF USA and CDHIFI. That evening, I sent up dinner and Chandi came downstairs and said, 'Tom, Bernard just dropped the entire tray.' The rest of the house was dark, which was odd. I think this was the steroid thing happening. Miss Duke lives in a walled 2,700-acre estate in Hillsborough, and rarely attracted . Chandi was into Eastern cultures and all that stuff, and so was Doris. Meanwhile, Bernard said he wasn't feeling well and went back up to his room. ", Duke gave him a house in Paris for a wedding gift, and a plane before their divorce one year later. A Peltz-family friend told me that, contrary to reports in the press, "there was never any rivalry of any kind at any time between Claudia and Chandi. And then eventually somebody else dropped back. Franco Rossellini assured everyone that he was all for it. In an April 1992 codicil, she replaced them with her nephew, Walker Inman Jr., and Bernard Lafferty, and in a March 1993 codicil she made Bernard Lafferty her sole executor. 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. (The hospital said that Bernard Lafferty was a patient from July 1 to July 14, 1987.). I suppose it was Doris's fault for never talking about what she did.". According to Heffner, Duke suffered heart palpitations in Moscow and was afraid to be alone, so for the rest of the trip they shared hotel rooms. "Bernard got out of the hospital. "We kept it to ourselves for months, until around July 1990. . We were joking around, because we both had bad knees. (Von Blow is referring to a 1982 dinner party Duke gave at '21' in New York for his friends shortly after he had been convicted of attempting to murder his wife, Sunny. "They did not meet in dance class," he insists. This only fueled rumors about his sexuality further and . On the last day of the seminar, he spent the afternoon with Duke at Shangri La. ", The day after the adoption, the economist Woody Brock went to lunch at Duke Farms with Duke's New Jersey neighbor Jane Engelhard. Nicolas mother, Claudia, has a sister we havent forgotten about. One night in August, Banks dined alone with Duke at Rough Point. And he had quite a history. And I was surprised. In November 1991, Duke had a new will written, naming Irwin Bloom and Chemical Bank as executors. 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.' Newport police declared it an accident, and her friends still swear that it was. 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. Chandi Heffner choked back tears as she talked about Doris Duke, the worldly and restless tobacco heiress who legally adopted her in 1988, when Heffner was 35 and Duke was 75, and cast. Heffner Duke, adopted in 1988 when she was 38 and the heiress was in her 70s, could not be reached for comment. ", Burns began working out with Duke on a regular basis. One repeated her response to a straight man who was reluctant to have dinner with Rock Hudson for fear that he would be molested. I feel unsure of myself physically. Her first husband, James R. Cromwell, called Duke "my frigidheiress" and engaged in a lengthy court battle to win a financial settlement. The next day I got a phone call from Doris to thank me. Farrah says that Duke had returned from her first visit to Manila, with Rossellini, about a week before meeting Heffner. "He was marvelous," says Claus von Blow, who later became Duke's neighbor in Newport. And when she left, that adverse thing ceased. 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 claims she gave up her own life to immerse herself in being a companion to the eccentric Duke: helping to manage the Duke Farms dairy, advising her on financial matters, overseeing her "disorganized and run-down estates," selling gold deposits from her myriad Swiss bank accounts and hiring a bodyguard to protect her from kidnappers. 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. According to a half-page biography released by Howard J. Rubenstein Associates, Bernard Lafferty was born in Ireland in 1945 and immigrated to the United States more than 20 years ago. In May, a New York judge approved a plan to send the bulk of her estate to charity. 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. 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. 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. I took her to six or seven dinner parties. In 1966, a few days after Duke suddenly shut down the record company she had started for Castro, he broke her jaw, according to Mansfield, and she fled to Newport with Eduardo Tirella, a handsome young set designer. I asked Phyllis Saretta what she thought the attraction was. Born on 1940 to James Henry Roberts Cromwell and Doris Duke. Nine months earlier, she had sued her adoptive mother for breach of contract, claiming that she had promised to maintain her in the Duke lifestyle for the rest of Heffner's life and to make her the principal heir of her estate. Keep in mind, people are entitled to a change of heart. (Marcos was eventually acquitted, and returned to the Philippines.). 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. 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. In fact, it was Chandi Heffner who hired Bernard Lafferty for Doris Duke, in 1987. The baby's death profoundly affected Duke, and she even hired psychics to try to. ", "I'm crazy about Bernard," says Oatsie Charles. According to the 1993 Forbes Four Hundred list, Doris Duke was the 18th-richest woman in America, not far behind cosmetics billionairess Este Lauder. I was not aware of what management roles he might or might not have had. We'll have a great life together. Duke scoffed, "Oh, come on. 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. Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. 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. According to her New York Times obituary, the cause of death was "pulmonary edema resulting in cardiac arrest."
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