A few hours later, when Heffner returned from a show-jumping lesson, she was informed that Doris had flown to Los Angeles. We'll have a great life together. Chandi Duke Heffner net worth is $300,000. Keep in mind, people are entitled to a change of heart. 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. Her telephone was not listed in the Los Angeles area. "Nobody gave Doris any credit for having any taste, any intelligence, any anything," says Marion Oates Charles, known as Oatsie. Even Imelda didn't see her.". She really considered herself a dancer. Movies. Later on we would sleep together and Doris would come in most mornings and sit there on the bed with us and talk. ", Heffner blamed Duke's altered feelings on the steroids she claims Duke was taking then. And when she left, that adverse thing ceased. Ari Emanuel lets his AI alter ego open Endeavors earnings call, Sam Bankman-Fried increasingly isolated as another associate takes a plea deal, How Black Market Flea and Everyday People brought the buzz of Black life to the Beehive. As a young girl, she wrote him love notes, which he pored over again and again. The only times I saw Doris really relaxed were these few times in Beverly Hills.". "It was unbelievable how hard she worked. 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. We don't hear anything. Why doesn't she help you?' Talent. 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. For Industry Professionals. 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. 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. "Sometimes people are attracted to the thing they fear the most.". We wouldn't sit in the main dining room. Duke Kahanamoku went in after her and saved her. "She wasn't just one of those rich women who said, 'Restore me 60 houses.' . Donald Robinson then called and informed Heffner that Duke wanted Burns out of the house. Heffner pleaded on his behalf and asked to speak to Duke, but Robinson told her that Duke was tired. . Duke was spending the spring, as usual, at her 2,700-acre Duke Farms, in Somerville, New Jersey. Call your pilot tonight and leave immediately and go to Los Angeles and get checked up.' "Rubi" was also presented with a string of polo ponies and a house in Paris. By 1963 she was having Castro trailed by a private investigator. 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. Doris told Chandi that she was happy about her having a man in her life. Contrary to Heffner's version of events, he told me that he had prescribed anabolic steroids for Duke for her knee problems in late 1989 or early 1990. . 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. Rich L.A. homeowners are snapping them up, Column: Supreme Court conservatives may want to block student loan forgiveness. Duke died at age 80 in 1988, leaving a hotly contested $1.5 billion estate. They were disciples of A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the spiritual master of the Hare Krishna movement, and they had been unofficially married in a ceremony in India in the 70s. "Cromwell was quite nice," says Nelson Seabra, a rich Brazilian friend of Duke's. 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. It wasn't until the following winter, however, Burns told me, that he became romantically involved with Heffner. Although Duke was determined to produce his own heir, Nanaline was as surprised as everyone else when she became pregnant at the age of 42, and she always favored her son, Walker Inman, over Doris. All. She wasn't sure if she wanted to have a baby, but she said by the third month an incredible mother instinct took over. "Chandi works very hard for Doris. 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. ", 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. I'll go to dinner with them. I thought she was really nice, genuine.". . Everything good I could say about Bernard, I do. ", "When one of Doris's love affairs ended, there was always great drama," says her friend Consuelo Crespi. 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. 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. When I go I'll be eaten by the sharks.". After Tirella's death, she seemed consumed with the idea of actually becoming a performer. 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. He used to take her to Gold's Gym." They were putting up a curtain rod together. I think somebody is trying to kill me.". (Other sources say the meeting took place in 1985.) The following February, Farrah repeated the seminar, and it was apparently then that Chandi Heffner entered Doris Duke's life. 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. 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. I remember that the captain of the helicopter was very worried and wanted her to leave early. "There was a rumor that she did it deliberately. Enzo Natale concurs: "Chandi and Bernard were twins.". ". One evening Steve Levy said that Miss Duke wanted him to administer a urine test on me. 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. . document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Steve comes about four, and he and I go up to Bernard's room. . Doris Duke committed suicide. The Sands says that Lafferty managed the theater, which headlined such stars as Bill Cosby, Joel Grey, and Rita Moreno. A dedicated philanthropist, Chandi Heffner is the founder and President of CDHIFI a charitable foundation that sponsors medical, veterinary and humanitarian assistance to rural regions around the . "She used to come and see me and just cry," says singer Peggy Lee, who was friendly with Tirellaand who would later employ Bernard Lafferty as a butler. Duke." Of course, they had a very attractive life. . According to financial accounts shes posted on her website, she has about $700,000 parked in CDH to help India. "It's very important that Doris has done this," he told me at the time. 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. . . He received nothing. She had just been through three days of depositions in New Jersey, where her lawsuit was filed, and had two more days to go before she could fly back to Hawaii, where she lives on an isolated 300-acre horse ranch, which Duke had bought for her on the Big Island for about $1.5 million before their rupture, and where she keeps a loaded pistol beside her bed. There's no question that Bernard was more than just a butler. I was not aware of what management roles he might or might not have had. 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. 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. In the morning, Bernard didn't come down until 11:30, and he was a mess. After Bloom was fired, Protas was told the loan was being reviewed. Once a day, she meditates in her "deity room," which is filled with golden statues from India. Doris loved animals. I feel in danger.' It would come back. In 1968, she established the Newport Restoration Foundation, with Jacqueline Onassis as vice president. 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. 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. But she got up again, and we did our steps. We had a nice dinner with appropriate toasts, and Franco entertained us with anecdotes and imitations. 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. So we went into the room, and Bernard was buck naked, bent over a chair, passed out. We knock, we bang, we yell. "You know, fate is strange. ". She never married again, and from then on the men in her life, whether they were lovers or not, were considerably younger and came from the creative world. I remember that most: that she seemed very happy with her life at that period. 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. Who can help student-athletes cash in? After the war, she moved to Paris and wrote for the magazine Harper's Bazaar . 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