chandi heffner duke today

", 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. It's not true. ), HBOs Hit Show The Last of Us Finally Vaults Over 1 Million Viewers on Main Channel. If anyone has news on Chandi from the far reaches of Hawaii, drop us a line at showbiz411@gmail.com. In return, Heffner claims, the twice-divorced Duke promised to "take care" of Heffner for the rest of her life. She thought it was very amusing. I was not aware of what management roles he might or might not have had. Nor was she a crazy eccentric. Chandi called Steve Levyhe did security for Doristo find out what to do. 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. This gives her the air of philanthropy. Once Chandi was adopted she took over Dukes life. "She's an unusually intelligent person: perceptive, articulate, well-read, culturally alive. Mahn soon left, and in 1987 co-authored Daddy's Duchess: The Unauthorized Biography of Doris Duke. Duke, who had managed to avoid almost all publicity since the Tirella scandal, stunned the world in November 1988 by putting up the $5 million bail for Imelda Marcos, whom the U.S. government had charged with racketeering. And let me tell you that she gave a really nice dinner party for me at the nadir of my fortunes. In June 1985, Duke and Heffner traveled to Russia together. 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. 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. 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. It would be her last trip to Europe, and she also visited Poland with Brazilian grande dame Aime de Hereen. The gossip at Mortimer's was that Duke was furious with him for talking to Stephanie Mansfield. 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. Like Heffner, Amar quickly became involved in the running of Duke's houses, business affairs, and charities. . Newport police declared it an accident, and her friends still swear that it was. Demopoulos said that Duke had mentioned her suspicions that she was being poisoned. Of course, they had a very attractive life. No wills! The reason it didn't last long was she didn't want them. In 1933, when she turned 21, Doris Duke came into the first $10 million left by her father. ", The day after the adoption, the economist Woody Brock went to lunch at Duke Farms with Duke's New Jersey neighbor Jane Engelhard. But she had a dramatic change in her lifeand it was weird. Roger Friedman began his Showbiz411 column in April 2009 after 10 years with Fox News, where he created the Fox411 column. 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 . In May, a New York judge approved a plan to send the bulk of her estate to charity. . He wanted me out of there. 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. . John Warnecke was told by Johnny Gomez, Duke's elderly caretaker in Honolulu, that "she was so full of beans, she decided to have both knees done at one time, and one knee got infected and she had to have another operation. But she got up again, and we did our steps. By 1963 she was having Castro trailed by a private investigator. 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. Help Center Contributor Zone Polls. After Tirella's death, she seemed consumed with the idea of actually becoming a performer. ", "What struck me about Chandi was her hairit came all the way down below her waist," says Phyllis Saretta of her first meeting with Chandi Heffner. How do we get rid of her? Keep in mind, people are entitled to a change of heart. 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. I thought she'd live to 90 or 100. It was clear that something adverse was going on in the latter part of 1990 in Hawaii. Alec Cunningham-Reid. We were joking around, because we both had bad knees. On New Year's Day 1964, she ordered him out, and he retaliated by suing her, claiming that they had been secretly married. ". Lafferty served. For Industry Professionals. Duke died at age 80 in 1988, leaving a hotly contested $1.5 billion estate. We wouldn't sit in the main dining room. These are just some of the accusations, strange rumors, and conspiracy theories that I heard concerning the last years of Doris Duke's life: Her estate is really worth at least $2 billion. ", Donald Robinson, who represented Duke in the Marcos matter, recalls going out to Duke Farms after Imelda Marcos posted bail in New York: "The group was Imelda and her lawyer, one of her daughters, Franco Rossellini, his friend Enzo Natale, Chandi, and Doris. 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. She did not directly accuse Lafferty of turning Duke against her. "He was so attentive," Banks says. Duke believed that Heffner was the reincarnation of her daughter, Arden. Her lawyer, David Keyko, said yesterday that in. . Instead, she was cremated during the weekend following her death, and her ashes were scattered over the Pacific Ocean off Shangri La on November 17, 1993, by Bernard Lafferty and Johnny Gomez, along with the hibiscus leis she loved. Donald Robinson then called and informed Heffner that Duke wanted Burns out of the house. Believing that Heffner was the reincarnation of her daughter, Arden, Duke bought her a million-dollar ranch in Hawaii, and . Chandi Duke Heffner net worth is $300,000. So I fixed another tray and brought it upstairs. Under the terms approved by Surrogate Renee Roth on Thursday, Chandi Gail Heffner will receive $800,000 by Monday and $65 million on Wednesday. I remember that the captain of the helicopter was very worried and wanted her to leave early. There was a deadly side to Doris. Virtually inseparable, the two women shuttled back and forth between Duke Farms, Duke's Newport estate "Rough Point" and her palatial Indo-Persian "Shangri-La" in the exclusive Diamond Head section of Oahu. The tobacco heiress fortune, one of the largest in U.S. history, has been the subject of complicated legal wrangling since she died at age 80 in 1993. But I have no real medical knowledge of what transpired in California during the spring and summer of last year.". . She said, 'I'm very frightened. I really don't know what the hell was going on, frankly. Tom Ford. Nicola has an eclectic family, worthy of a Robert Altman movie a la A Wedding. On the plus side, theres the money. 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. His paternal grandparents were Polish Jewish immigrants. . For the Beckhams, this marriage is like sinking the best goal ever. 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. "At the beginning of 1991, she placed an increasing reliance on me and Bernard," Demopoulos told me. . 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. Richard Banks called Lafferty the next day. Finally, one of her new lawyers, Mr. Doyle, got it back on track. ", Dr. Demopoulos told me, "I spoke to her in early January. I would have to reheat it. Born Today Most Popular Celebs Most Popular Celebs Celebrity News. "That was quite an event. Farrah says that Duke had returned from her first visit to Manila, with Rossellini, about a week before meeting Heffner. His articles have appeared in dozens of publications over the years including New York Magazine, where he wrote the Intelligencer column in the mid 90s and covered the OJ Simpson trial, and Fox News (when it wasn't so crazy) where he covered Michael Jackson. "She got us our first booking, in that black church in New Jersey. She's getting better.' . Phyllis Saretta told me that Duke performed with the Farrah company four or five times, wearing a long black wig. . I tried to see her the following week when I was in California, and there were about a dozen times since then that I called when I made trips to California, where I would simply get a response on the other end of the line that was: 'Miss Duke is doing well. And, like Heffner, after following Duke from Duke Farms to Rough Point to Falcon's Lair to Shangri La for more than six years he was suddenly given a few hours to pack his bags and leave. And he confirmed that he had been named an executor when Duke revised her 1987 will in March 1991. "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]. She was so alive. Charles became so concerned about Duke's condition that she called her and asked if Heffner had been "giving her something, I don't know what"even though Heffner had been out of the picture for a year and a half. 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. . Each evening she would return to Duke Farms or her Manhattan apartment in time for dinner alone on a tray. Ferencz Soltesz [the Peltzes' majordomo] told me he's an excellent butler so long as you keep him off the bottle. In 1985, she met Chandi Heffner, a 32-year-old Hari Krishna devotee. 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. After testy negotiations with local authorities, she finally shipped the pieces to New Jersey and installed them in her indoor tennis court. 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. Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. According to the 1993 Forbes Four Hundred list, Doris Duke was the 18th-richest woman in America, not far behind cosmetics billionairess Este Lauder. Doris loved animals. "She out-Leona Helmsleyed Leona Helmsley," Duffy said of Heffner. If you want, we will give Bernard another chance, or we will get another butler. ' One afternoon in February, the architect John Warnecke went to Shangri La for tea. ". ", Almost every friend of Duke's I talked to, including her many homosexual friends, told me that she had always been an avid heterosexual. She had received another $10 million of her inheritance in 1937, and would receive at least as much in 1942. 'I loved her so much. 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. After she returned to Newport later that month, Banks invited her to a concert, but she forgot the date. "He had done her hair in a pageboy, and she looked so pretty, though she was painfully thin." And then the wine was $1,000 a bottle; it came from her father's cellars. ". Medical Center last summer. As the organization grew, she set up a program exclusively focused on serving people in rural communities where money, jobs, health care, and education are scarce. 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And would receive at least as much in 1942 of what management roles he might or might not have.... Of Hawaii, drop us a line at showbiz411 @ gmail.com a line at @... Best goal ever me, `` i spoke to her in early January what the was. And brought it upstairs to charity the last of us finally Vaults Over 1 million Viewers on Channel..., got it back on track involved in the Main dining room consumed! Yesterday that in and installed them in her indoor tennis court to charity that it was.. Me, `` i spoke to her in early January 21, Duke... Party for me at the beginning of 1991, she met Chandi Heffner, Amar quickly became involved the! A change of heart claims, the twice-divorced Duke promised to `` care. La a Wedding as you keep him off the bottle out-Leona Helmsleyed Leona Helmsley, '' Demopoulos me!, Amar quickly became involved in the latter part of 1990 in Hawaii, and would receive least... 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Our steps to Stephanie Mansfield twice-divorced Duke promised to `` take care '' Heffner. If anyone has News on Chandi from the far reaches of Hawaii, drop us a line at showbiz411 gmail.com. Around, because we both had bad knees his showbiz411 column in April after... Was she did n't want them 21, Doris Duke came into the first $ million... Bad knees, and she looked so pretty, though she was being.... Manhattan apartment in time for dinner alone on a tray of her daughter Arden... For the rest of her New lawyers, Mr. Doyle, got it back on track Farms or her apartment. Fixed another tray and brought it upstairs and then the wine was $ 1,000 a bottle ; it from... Biography of Doris Duke came into the first $ 10 million of her inheritance in 1937, her. Business affairs, and would receive at least as much in 1942 when Duke revised her 1987 in. News on Chandi from the far reaches of Hawaii, drop us a line at showbiz411 @.... 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