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. All. This was at 11 in the morning. Demopoulos said that Duke had mentioned her suspicions that she was being poisoned. 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. . ", Nonetheless, Duke seemed increasingly pleased with Lafferty. Talent. One evening Steve Levy said that Miss Duke wanted him to administer a urine test on me. . ", Dr. Demopoulos told me, "I spoke to her in early January. 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. 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. . And the whispers about Duke's last years continue. 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. I remember her referring to 'we dancers.' 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. (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. If I were Victoria Beckham, I wouldnt count on a big wedding present. "We kept it to ourselves for months, until around July 1990. . In a peculiar arrangement, in 1988, the 76-year-old Duke legally adopted the 35-year-old Heffner and bought her a $1 million ranch in Hawaii, where the two lived together as mother and daughter. . '", 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. I usually got one of the help. Toward the end of the summer, in Newport, Heffner told Duke that she had to return to Hawaii, because she was concerned about her horses and dogs, and had planned a trip to Bali with Gordon Damon. Franco Rossellini assured everyone that he was all for it. Enzo Natale says, "Chandi had accused me of trying to rape her in Honolulu. That's not the Doris I knew. "I couldn't quite keep up, so I was in the back of the class. SOMERVILLE, N.J. (AP) _ Reclusive multimillionaire Doris Duke has adopted a 35-year-old conservationist as a daughter, her lawyer said Friday. . "He was doing a lot of embroidery work for Doris. Chandi Duke Heffner net worth is $300,000. 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. Ferencz Soltesz [the Peltzes' majordomo] told me he's an excellent butler so long as you keep him off the bottle. 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. Meanwhile, Bernard said he wasn't feeling well and went back up to his room. On New Year's Day 1964, she ordered him out, and he retaliated by suing her, claiming that they had been secretly married. Chandi Duke Heffner Net Worth Chandi Duke Heffner Net Worth 2022, Age, Height, Relationships, Married, Dating, Family, Wiki Biography. 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. Later on we would sleep together and Doris would come in most mornings and sit there on the bed with us and talk. Heffner almost broke down again. I knew from the beginning she was a son of a bitch." "When we were together," Heffner continued, "when things were really great, Doris was in wonderful shape. Today, Chandi lives on a palatial farm in. In the car, Chandi was saying, 'Oh, she's such a nice lady, and the house is gorgeous!' Let them kill each other over it.' Ron Protas also told me that Duke had a fear of fire, and that when he told her about "the terrible experience" of scattering Martha Graham's ashes, Duke said, "It's never going to happen to me. . "Sometimes people are attracted to the thing they fear the most.". 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. She told me that her parents did not approve of her lifestyle, and that they'd cut her off from everything. 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. She had had several leg operations, after a riding accident, but she participated in the seminar. A cult member of Hare Krishna, Chandi went to Hawaii in the late 1980s and met with a billionaire, Doris Duke, a billionaire tobacco heiress, philanthropist, art collector, horticulturist, and socialite. ", Rybak says that Lafferty got off to a good start at Duke Farms. "Bernard got out of the hospital. We came out from opposite sides of the stage, and I got to the middle and she wasn't there. Miss Duke lives in a walled 2,700-acre estate in Hillsborough, and rarely attracted . It was at that juncture, Heffner claims, that Duke made the oral promise that is the basis of her breach-of-contract suit. ", A few days before I interviewed Heffner, an item had appeared in Cindy Adams's gossip column: Robert Ibrahim Farrah, an instructor of Middle Eastern dance, who says he introduced Heffner to Duke in 1984, claimed that Duke had come to fear Heffner. Heffner Duke, adopted in 1988 when she was 38 and the heiress was in her 70s, could not be reached for comment. And along about March, I sent flowers and candy to her California home. The rest of the house was dark, which was odd. Newport police declared it an accident, and her friends still swear that it was. ", Another of Duke's intimates said that the real reason her closest friends were in favor of the adoption was that "Doris had contemplated suicide, and we thought we could have some peace of mind that she wouldn't kill herself as long as Chandi was around. 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. 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. Brooklyn Beckham, whos 21, has announced hes marrying Nicola Peltz, 25. In court papers, Heffner -- a Baltimore native -- says the two women met in Hawaii in 1981. "Darling, the girl is out the door without a cent," Franco Rossellini trilled to a friend. That fall, she attended a tribute to Sophia Loren at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and a fancy party afterward at Tatou, with Imelda Marcos, Rossellini, Natale, and Lafferty, who wore a ski sweater. And Nicolas first cousin on her fathers side is the great New York broadcaster and filmmaker Perri Peltz, whose father was Nelsons older brother. 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. 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.' She was alarmingly fragile." The two exchanged their "vows" at Duke's Hawaiian mansion, but it was revealed the whole thing was a hoax. During this period, Duke also plunged into three large-scale public projects. 'I loved her so much. Doris and I used to go fairly regularly to see the president in the hospital; she would give him reiki treatments.". "Whenever she walked into your room, she made the room," recalls Mercedes Bass. Lafferty also may pay fees to and divide commissions among the trustees as he sees fit. She also lent another $5 million to Marcos to cover her legal expenses (and asked for it back in her will). 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. You felt that she was going to break. You don't have to go back. ", Duke gave him a house in Paris for a wedding gift, and a plane before their divorce one year later. . ") His family all died, and he had one remaining relative, in Philadelphia. He felt deeply grateful to Doris, as I did.". And she was so frail. Id love to be a fly on the wall when David and Victoria Beckham meet their sons fiancees family. Lafferty served. 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. She wasn't sure if she wanted to have a baby, but she said by the third month an incredible mother instinct took over. . Jay Rockefeller Net Worth. He was cooking and she was serving. Heffner was in New York for a week, visiting her sister Claudia, who had married Nelson Peltz in 1980. (Other sources say the meeting took place in 1985.) And I didn't sense any antagonism between Chandi and Bernard." ", After Thanksgiving, as she had for five decades, Duke left for Hawaii. 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. 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. Chandi was into environmental concerns. When tobacco heiress Doris Duke died last October, she left a will that shocked even those who had known her best. She continued to give him money, and friends say that their sexual relationship never really ended. One time we were performing at an Arab party at this catering hall in Brooklyn called the Venetian Manor, and Doris and I were partners. They talked constantly, and Nelson and Claudia used to go to lunches quite often with Chandi and Doris. Why doesn't she help you?' Doris wouldn't take a pill unless she really needed it. Chandi Heffner told me that Duke confided the truth to her: "It wasn't Cromwell's, and it wasn't her lover Alec's. I used to tell her, 'You know, Doris, some people do like you for yourself. Duke was spending the spring, as usual, at her 2,700-acre Duke Farms, in Somerville, New Jersey. "It was ironic that the man Doris loved the most was the greatest gigolo of all time," says Marina Cicogna. 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. Do you think you could help him out?' In May, a New York judge approved a plan to send the bulk of her estate to charity. Her lawyer, David Keyko, said yesterday that in. After a two-week rejuvenation cure in Romania with the controversial Dr. Anna Aslan, they stopped in London. Once Chandi was adopted she took over Dukes life. 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. 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. Because it was her major incapacity; there really wasn't anything else wrong with Doris. Help Center Contributor Zone Polls. 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. Surrogate Court Judge Wilfred P. Diana asked Duke if she understood that the adoption "creates a relationship between you and Miss Heffner as if she were born to you in wedlock," and Duke said yes. . He was very good at repairing old costumes and fabric. Subscribers have complete access to the archive. 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