Phyllis Saretta says, "Chandi told me that her sister had a butler and a chauffeur and the whole thing. . Chandi Duke Heffner net worth is $300,000. She was a cool lady. Heffner told me she had left "the farm community" and was living with Gordon Damon, a real-estate agent whose house was near Duke's Diamond Head estate. Farrah says that Duke had returned from her first visit to Manila, with Rossellini, about a week before meeting Heffner. And then he was going to A.A., and he did very well in A.A., as far as I know. ", Nonetheless, Duke seemed increasingly pleased with Lafferty. His paternal grandparents were Polish Jewish immigrants. 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. She was alarmingly fragile." So I fixed another tray and brought it upstairs. Chandi Duke Heffner, Self: Oh My God. . ", Duke had a passion for the performing arts all her life. Things escalated. Both Heffner and her lawyers emphatically deny that Nelson Peltz is financing Heffner's legal efforts. "Chandi loved animals. Alec Cunningham-Reid. 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. Sometimes he acted as the butler, others as a general assistant. [Chandi] is a monster. She has completely wired the small house on her own, and she boards horses and cows for neighbors for $15 a head per month. I used to tell her, 'You know, Doris, some people do like you for yourself. The press decided she had become an eccentric recluse. What did Disney actually lose from its Florida battle with DeSantis? Miss Duke's will went on: "I am extremely troubled by the realization that Chandi Heffner may use my 1988 adoption of her (when she was 35 years old) to attempt to benefit financially under the . She was ahead of her time. I never heard from Doris again and I could never reach her again. I usually got one of the help. ". Jay Rockefeller Net Worth. 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. Usually something came in the mail that she wanted to discuss, because Chandi was taking care of her financial affairs. The agreement removed the heiresss former butler, Bernard Lafferty, as co-executor of the estate in return for $4.5 million and $500,000 a year for life. It was clear that something adverse was going on in the latter part of 1990 in Hawaii. Chandi was into Eastern cultures and all that stuff, and so was Doris. Other people told me that Duke suspected Heffner of poisoning or drugging her, and that she credited Lafferty with saving her life. "It was really sad," Heffner said, "because Martha arrived and Doris wouldn't go see her. You don't have to go back. Why doesn't she help you?' "He wanted a settlement," says Nancy Cooke de Herrera, "but you could not get a nickel out of Doris if you came at her the wrong way." In 1968, she established the Newport Restoration Foundation, with Jacqueline Onassis as vice president. The gossip at Mortimer's was that Duke was furious with him for talking to Stephanie Mansfield. Chandi Heffner was "planted" on Doris Duke by Imelda Marcos. 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. It was a really loving daughter-mother relationship. We used to joke that she'd outlive me. 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. A stingy southern belle, Nanaline Holt Inman was a widow with one son when she married Buck Duke in 1907. "He was marvelous," says Claus von Blow, who later became Duke's neighbor in Newport. Heffner told me that Duke was annoyed with Rossellini for falling behind on the rent on the New Jersey guesthouse. I thought she was really nice, genuine.". He also said he had worked on and off for Peggy Lee for 10 years. 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. (1940 - 1940) Photos: 19. This whole thing is such a shock." ), By then the center of her social life was Franco Rossellini, the extremely amusing and gay Italian movie producer, whom she had met about 1975. The two camels were right outside the dining room on a blue tarpaulin. "Miss Duke said to me, 'I think I may have been drugged. Kids get annoyed with their parents.". 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. Chandi Heffner In 1984, Doris met a woman named Chandi Heffner in Hawaii. "Most of them didn't want to leave. 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. ", Glenn Scott Greenhouse, the president of the Pavillion Agency, confirmed that Lafferty's drinking became an issue at the Peltzes'. "She out-Leona Helmsleyed Leona Helmsley," Duffy said of Heffner. . Her telephone was not listed in the Los Angeles area. I have come to the realization that her primary motive was financial gain. After she returned to Newport later that month, Banks invited her to a concert, but she forgot the date. Keep in mind, people are entitled to a change of heart. "And believe me, she didn't get to $1.3 billion without working at it. The Sands says that Lafferty managed the theater, which headlined such stars as Bill Cosby, Joel Grey, and Rita Moreno. Duke Kahanamoku went in after her and saved her. In 1985, she met Chandi Heffner, a 32-year-old Hari Krishna devotee. After Heffner returned to Hawaii, she kept in touch with Farrah and Saretta, and in February 1983 helped them organize a Middle Eastern dance seminar in Honolulu. ", In late 1990, he said, "I detected a growing unhappiness on Doris's part. In 1987, Heffner handled the negotiations for Duke's most talked-about acquisition: two Bactrian camels, which were thrown in as a sweetener on the deal to purchase a 19-passenger Boeing 737-300 for $25 million. Franco Rossellini assured everyone that he was all for it. ". About Heffner's sister. 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. 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. In May, a New York judge approved a plan to send the bulk of her estate to charity. 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. I remember her referring to 'we dancers.' "You know, fate is strange. 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. 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. SOMERVILLE, N.J. (AP) _ Reclusive multimillionaire Doris Duke has adopted a 35-year-old conservationist as a daughter, her lawyer said Friday. 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. James Burns, now an aspiring actor in Los Angeles, says that he and Chandi "are giving each other space for a while.". And he would tell me, 'Miss Heffner's complaining.' He always seemed to be there whenever she needed him. He was later retried and acquitted. "There were clear indications of a growing trust, affection, and devotion between them. 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? . "I got a call from my sister's major-domo, Ferencz Soltesz," said Heffner, who had been living with Duke for two years at that point. We used to sit in the sunroom with these tiny bits of broken porcelain and she'd say, 'It's got to be fixed, and I can do it better than most people.' 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. She had several indiscreet affairs of her own, with Errol Flynn, Hawaiian swimming champion Duke Kahanamoku, and British M.P. Do you think you could help him out?' Lafferty served. 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. '", In 1947 she married again, but handed the groom a prenuptial agreement at the altar. He was cooking and she was serving. Demopoulos said that Duke had mentioned her suspicions that she was being poisoned. He felt deeply grateful to Doris, as I did.". He also said that she had lent $600,000 for his company, Health Maintenance Programs, Inc., in 1989; the loan is to be converted into stock, according to the will. For Industry Professionals. . An Irish-born orphan in his late 40s, Bernard Lafferty is recalled by guests at Duke's various houses mainly for his ponytail and gold ear stud, and for serving tea in full butler's uniform but barefoot. And the person who could best illuminate Doris Duke's declining days, Bernard Lafferty, refused to talk to me. In Doris's case, she had done that. I said, 'Doris, do it, I think it's a good thing.' And all around him were all these liquor bottlesGrand Marnier and sherry. Later on we would sleep together and Doris would come in most mornings and sit there on the bed with us and talk. In court papers, Heffner -- a Baltimore native -- says the two women met in Hawaii in 1981. The two exchanged their "vows" at Duke's Hawaiian mansion, but it was revealed the whole thing was a hoax. No wills! 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