He always seemed to be there whenever she needed him. Now, please understand that I'm not accusing anyone of anything.". Charlene Gail Heffner goes by the name Chandi Duke Heffner. The baby's death profoundly affected Duke, and she even hired psychics to try to. Steve said, 'Your food has changed so suddenly Miss Duke thinks you must be on drugs.' We don't hear anything. 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. Other people told me that Duke suspected Heffner of poisoning or drugging her, and that she credited Lafferty with saving her life. 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. "It's very important that Doris has done this," he told me at the time. In 1995, Chandi Heffner Duke, the disinherited adopted daughter, reached a $65 million settlement with Mr. Lafferty and the estate. ". Thick black eyebrows set off her striking indigo-colored eyes. 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. 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. He made a comment that Doris had a fair number of complications as a result of the surgery. Heffner has a sister, Charlene Gail Heffner who goes by the name Chandi Duke Heffner. And then he was going to A.A., and he did very well in A.A., as far as I know. Doris bought her a sprawling horse farm worth then 30 years ago over a million bucks. Subscribers have complete access to the archive. I almost feel . 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. Each evening she would return to Duke Farms or her Manhattan apartment in time for dinner alone on a tray. The only times I saw Doris really relaxed were these few times in Beverly Hills.". "He had done her hair in a pageboy, and she looked so pretty, though she was painfully thin." "Darling, the girl is out the door without a cent," Franco Rossellini trilled to a friend. As a young girl, she wrote him love notes, which he pored over again and again. . 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. His movie reviews are carried by Rotten Tomatoes, and he is a member of both the movie and TV branches of the Critics Choice Awards. In later years she did have problems with her hearing and with her legs, but nothing major. She said, 'I'm very frightened. He was very good at repairing old costumes and fabric. "He was devastated. You felt that she was going to break. 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. "It was really sad," Heffner said, "because Martha arrived and Doris wouldn't go see her. Her mother was another story. She wasn't about being a pretty, rich American girl. 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 her out less than three years later. "At the beginning of 1991, she placed an increasing reliance on me and Bernard," Demopoulos told me. "Both of them greeted us at the door. Help Center Contributor Zone Polls. 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. "It was unbelievable how hard she worked. I took her to six or seven dinner parties. He said the couple, who lived together from 1990 until 1993, agreed that Burns would be not only be her confidante-companion but ``cook, body guard, security specialist and assist in financing any claims Heffner Duke may find it necessary to bring to enforce her rights against Doris Duke.. After Tirella's death, she seemed consumed with the idea of actually becoming a performer. I've talked to bankers who said she knew where every last nickel was. I think she said when she came home from the hospital she began swimming out into the ocean, just swimming and swimming, not caring whether she lived or died. 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. But she had a dramatic change in her lifeand it was weird. One night in August, Banks dined alone with Duke at Rough Point. He also instilled in her an almost reflexive inability to trust people. She wasn't sure if she wanted to have a baby, but she said by the third month an incredible mother instinct took over. Cary W. Goldstein, Burns lawyer, says Heffner Duke broke ``a very explicit deal she had with Burns, although it was never written down. 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. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. 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. Heffner Duke, adopted in 1988 when she was 38 and the heiress was in her 70s, could not be reached for comment. It was at that juncture, Heffner claims, that Duke made the oral promise that is the basis of her breach-of-contract suit. She was so alive. 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. 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 In May, a New York judge approved a plan to send the bulk of her estate to charity. ", Dr. Demopoulos told me, "I spoke to her in early January. "And believe me, she didn't get to $1.3 billion without working at it. ", James Cromwell maintained that it was not his child, and friends assumed that it was Cunningham-Reid's. (Other sources say the meeting took place in 1985.) . . . "She moved very well for that kind of dancingwe called it Middle Eastern, or danse orientale, but essentially it's belly dancing. Until Doris Duke's death, this would be her principal residence. . And the person who could best illuminate Doris Duke's declining days, Bernard Lafferty, refused to talk to me. I was constantly arguing with Bernard . (1940 - 1940) Photos: 19. He was born on August 27, 1952, in Peekskill, New York, USA, as Paul Rubenfeld. Chandi Heffner was "planted" on Doris Duke by Imelda Marcos. She was very into the ritualistic part of Hawaiian dance. 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. It's so hard for me still, so hard." Believing that Heffner was the reincarnation of her daughter, Arden, Duke bought her a million-dollar ranch in Hawaii, and . 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. Brooklyn Beckham, whos 21, has announced hes marrying Nicola Peltz, 25. When Doris died, there was a well publicized estate fight between Chandi and Doriss ex butler, Bernard Lafferty. 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 . He is also the writer and co-producer of "Only the Strong Survive," a selection of the Cannes, Sundance, and Telluride Film festivals, directed by DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus. Doris loved animals. They maintained a familial relationship until 1990 when Doris Duke disinherited Heffner. His paternal grandparents were Polish Jewish immigrants. ", 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. . ", Thomas Rybak, who had been working as Doris Duke's chef for several months when Lafferty was hired in May 1987, at a salary of about $500 a week, paints a different picture. Meanwhile, Bernard said he wasn't feeling well and went back up to his room. 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. We would be four, six, eightOatsie Charles, Nuala Pell, Minnie Cushing, Lita McBean and her husband, and Sunny and me. Lafferty was accused of conspiring to kill his terminally ill employer with morphine. "We concentrated on her leg-muscle group," he said. Lafferty served. Rich L.A. homeowners are snapping them up, Column: Supreme Court conservatives may want to block student loan forgiveness. Incredibly, she was awarded a $65 million settlement. He was later retried and acquitted. This gives her the air of philanthropy. Chandi lives on the horse farm now and operates a very modest charity called the CDH Foundation, with total assets of $ 2 million. The Sands says that Lafferty managed the theater, which headlined such stars as Bill Cosby, Joel Grey, and Rita Moreno. That was a going-out-of-your-way gesture." Even Imelda didn't see her.". Records: 123. WHAT'S POPULAR TODAY. One repeated her response to a straight man who was reluctant to have dinner with Rock Hudson for fear that he would be molested. Although she was constantly compared to Hutton from the time they both had fairy-tale coming-out parties the year after the stock market crashed, Duke always hated the comparison to the much-married Woolworth heiress, who died penniless. And so I decidedthe biggest mistake of my 41 yearsto give this son of a bitch a second chance . Heffner told me that "even back in high school I began kind of a quest to see if there was more to life," and that after a trip around the world, she ended up in Hawaii, meditating, surfing, and exercising polo ponies. ", "Doris wanted the things money couldn't buy. After giving the matter prolonged and serious consideration, I am convinced that I should not have adopted Chandi Heffner. I have come to the realization that her primary motive was financial gain. Movies. Until she was 10, when she started at the Brearley School, she was tutored at home. And he called from a pay phone, and I felt so sorry for this guy, I said, 'Come to Somerville.' And she was so frail. . Her telephone was not listed in the Los Angeles area. One of Chandi's doctors thought that pregnancy might help her conditions, and Chandi was discussing this with Doris one evening in Newport while I was sitting there. He's a sweet human being, and he seemed to be honest and fiercely defensive of Doris. "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.' But I have no real medical knowledge of what transpired in California during the spring and summer of last year.". That led to pneumonia and she couldn't eat and it was on and off, on and off, for months.". Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. . Her lawyer, David Keyko, said yesterday that in. (Burns dismisses reports that he was once a Chippendales dancer: "Not that I haven't been asked. Warmer storms could cause problems, Dramatic before and after photos from space show epic snow blanketing SoCal mountains, Hyundai was poised to become Teslas top contender. I tried repeatedly to get in contact with her. Heffner also said that Duke confided that she thought her mother had wanted to abort her. ", Nonetheless, Duke seemed increasingly pleased with Lafferty. . "She got baby doses for a few weeks and that was it. Kids get annoyed with their parents.". Like all of her houses, it was guarded by fierce Dobermans or German shepherds. . Call your pilot tonight and leave immediately and go to Los Angeles and get checked up.' Then one day in June, Miss Duke called me and said, 'Thomas, have you seen Bernard? ), HBOs Hit Show The Last of Us Finally Vaults Over 1 Million Viewers on Main Channel. The two exchanged their "vows" at Duke's Hawaiian mansion, but it was revealed the whole thing was a hoax. I was not aware of what management roles he might or might not have had. After the war, she moved to Paris and wrote for the magazine Harper's Bazaar . Heffner is also claiming her right to inherit two trusts which Buck Duke created in 1917 and 1924, on the ground that she is his lineal descendant and grandchild. Chandi Duke Heffner was recognized for her outstanding support of the Marshall Legacy Institute's, landmine detection program. "We were sitting on the rocks, and she said, 'I will take care of you and all of your animals for the rest of your life. 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.' The gossip at Mortimer's was that Duke was furious with him for talking to Stephanie Mansfield. (The hospital said that Bernard Lafferty was a patient from July 1 to July 14, 1987.). 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 court papers, Heffner -- a Baltimore native -- says the two women met in Hawaii in 1981. He could barely speak.". . Were there . Heffner spent almost six months on and off in two Honolulu hospitals, because she also developed a heart problem. 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