Chandi's ethnicity is unknown, whose political affiliation is currently a registered Republican; and religious views are listed as unknown. "Io sono molto contento. But by the following summer she was noticeably declining again. Yet there were smaller indignities such as the ridiculous row about releasing a painting of Doris Duke which he said she disliked and had given to him when he asked for it. Upon her father's death in 1925, the 13-year-old Doris Duke -- known as "The Richest Girl in the World" -- inherited several hundred million dollars. I asked Phyllis Saretta what she thought the attraction was. She was very into the ritualistic part of Hawaiian dance. Heres a description of Chandi (seen in the picture here on the right, with Duke and Imelda Marcos) from her website. . This went on almost every meal. [33][additional citation(s) needed]. And clearly he balked at Bernard's on off relationship with alcohol - a lifelong conflict characterised by faithful attendance at AA meetings punctuated by massive binges - which in one soaring episode soon after joining Duke's staff in 1987 found him, according to one former staff member, "buck naked, bent over a chair, passed out", surrounded by a slew of (tragically empty) Grand Marnier bottles from the Duke cellars, some of so old and distinguished a vintage that the labels were hand written. In fact, it was Chandi Heffner who hired Bernard Lafferty for Doris Duke, in 1987. Finally, one of her new lawyers, Mr. Doyle, got it back on track. The tough, highly intelligent Doris Duke (who lived by her father's dying dictum "Trust no one") had seen to that. Most of Duke's friends hadn't had an inkling. One night in August, Banks dined alone with Duke at Rough Point. Contact Chandi, search articles and Tweets, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place. Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands Marketplace Lead, Benelux Uber Sep 2019 - Jun 2020 10 months. Because it was her major incapacity; there really wasn't anything else wrong with Doris. She flew Mrs. Marcos from Hawaii to New York in her lavish private jet to face federal racketeering charges. It was a long way from Creeslough, to be sure, for someone who only last year was dismissed by a US judge "as a profligate, illiterate drunk with a cavalier attitude towards money". And he would tell me, 'Miss Heffner's complaining.' Her estate, said one family member yesterday, is valued at more than $1 billion. 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 . We wouldn't sit in the main dining room. . After her death, numerous pieces were donated to The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and the Walters Art Museum of Baltimore.[60]. ", "I was not involved. 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. Chandi Heffner - $16,758 in Political Contributions for 2016, Campaign Finance, Money, American politics, American political campaign contributions, presidential campaign contributions See $$$ From Your Zip Code $10,618,476,973 in Contributions for 2020 Election Home Money Search Top 25 Candidates Election News About Data Updated on 7/11/2020 A Peltz-family friend told me that, contrary to reports in the press, "there was never any rivalry of any kind at any time between Claudia and Chandi. In the few years before her death in 1993, when she featured in the Forbes Four Hundred as the 18th richest woman in America, she revised her will no fewer than five times, each time killing off the multi million dollar dreams of yet another set of distraught, would be legatees and lawyers. [47], She reportedly had numerous love affairs, with, among others, surfing pioneer Duke Kahanamoku, film actor Errol Flynn, British politician Alec Cunningham-Reid, U.S. Army General George S. Patton, jazz pianist Joe Castro and U.S. writer Louis Bromfield. This stuff was from Miss Duke's father. Nicola has an eclectic family, worthy of a Robert Altman movie a la A Wedding. On the plus side, theres the money. 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. Duke Kahanamoku went in after her and saved her. She underwent a second knee surgery in July of that year. One of the first things she did was to caution Duke, on the advice of Nelson Peltz, against an investment proposed by her then business manager, Patrick Mahn. She was alarmingly fragile." '", 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. And then the wine was $1,000 a bottle; it came from her father's cellars. 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. She did not directly accuse Lafferty of turning Duke against her. They named them Princess and Baby. At age 46, Duke started to create Duke Gardens, an exotic public-display garden, to honor her father James Buchanan Duke. For access to this information, contact His breath almost knocked me off my feet.' . So did Imelda. Duke also owned numerous shares in big-name companies, such as General Motors, and had a large financial team of bankers and accountants to manage her holdings. 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. Ms. Heffner also strives to encourage the continued production of handicrafts, and ensures that there is a market for them by purchasing these products from their makers. In addition to providing medical care, food, and veterinary care, Ms. Heffner also devotes some of her resources to cultural preservation efforts in India. Duke was the only child of J.B. "Buck" Duke, who founded the American Tobacco Co. and later endowed Duke University in Durham, N.C. 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. She thought it was very amusing. 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. Duke was twice divorced and had no other children. By any standard, Bernard Lafferty was not a conventional choice to oversee a billion dollar legacy. 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. 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. Release Calendar Top 250 Movies Most Popular Movies Browse Movies by Genre Top Box Office Showtimes & Tickets Movie News India Movie Spotlight. This was the fifth time that Duke had rewritten or revised her will since Heffner's banishment 26 months earlier. Chandi called Steve Levyhe did security for Doristo find out what to do. Over the next few years, she bought almost an entire neighborhood of dilapidated 17th- and 18th-century houses, restored them, and rented them to town residents. 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. 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.' There was a deadly side to Doris. That was Doris. 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. He had also treated Chandi Heffner, and counted both women as friends. "He seemed depressed, and Doris thought it would give him more self-esteem. "He was so attentive," Banks says. It was perhaps her last romantic affair, and in some respects foreshadowed her relationship with Chandi Heffner. Sources at Duke's estates, however, portrayed Heffner in a different light. Her mother was another story. "She's an unusually intelligent person: perceptive, articulate, well-read, culturally alive. Roger Friedman began his Showbiz411 column in April 2009 after 10 years with Fox News, where he created the Fox411 column. Call your pilot tonight and leave immediately and go to Los Angeles and get checked up.' We would be four, six, eightOatsie Charles, Nuala Pell, Minnie Cushing, Lita McBean and her husband, and Sunny and me. There's no question that Bernard was more than just a butler. Like Doris, actually." When I go I'll be eaten by the sharks.". It was a really loving daughter-mother relationship. 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.' Chandi sued Dukes estate and wound up inheriting $65 million. "She looked great," Warnecke says. Miss Duke lives in a walled 2,700-acre estate in Hillsborough, and rarely attracted publicity in recent years until she posted bail for former Philippines first lady Imelda Marcos a week ago. 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. (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. 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. One of Heffner's lawyers says that he has 18,000 documents concerning Duke's business and legal affairs, many of which Chandi had "attended to.". 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. and I finally quit just before Labor Day. also assured Chandi that she would be the heir to Doris's estate in return for Chandi devoting herself to Doris and to the running of her affairs. Lafferty served. Until she was 10, when she started at the Brearley School, she was tutored at home. "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. She appointed her butler, Bernard Lafferty, as executor of her estate. 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. Alec Cunningham-Reid. And the whispers about Duke's last years continue. 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. "No cane. Guest introduced Duke to Leon Amar, a 30-year-old Moroccan decorator. Briefly a news correspondent in the 1940s, she also played jazz piano and learned to surf competitively. Doris Duke dumped Chandi Heffner because Heffner wanted to marry one of their bodyguards. ", By the time Duke returned to Shangri La that fall, she and Heffner were getting together on an almost daily basis, and when it was time to move back to Duke Farms in the spring of 1985, she invited Heffner to go with her. She had had several leg operations, after a riding accident, but she participated in the seminar. "He was devastated. Today, his farm is part of Malabar Farm State Park, made possible by a donation from Duke that helped purchase the property after Bromfield's death. ", "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. 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. But she had a dramatic change in her lifeand it was weird. "There was such a myth about Doris being a solitary person and not going out, so when she showed up somewhere, it was an event. The adoption proceeding took place Thursday before state Judge Wilfred Diana and went into effect immediately. Her total net worth, including all property, was valued at $5.3 billion. At her father's estate in Hillsborough Township, New Jersey, she created one of the largest indoor botanical displays in the United States. Chandi was into environmental concerns. At 250lb and living a sedentary existence, he was always a candidate for a heart attack, and the coroner's office in Los Angeles says no foul play is suspected. The next day I got a phone call from Doris to thank me. He named both his private Pullman car and his 80-foot yacht after her, and surrounded her with bodyguards. It's so hard for me still, so hard." "Chandi works very hard for Doris. When Doris died, there was a well publicized estate fight between Chandi and Doriss ex butler, Bernard Lafferty. Perhaps the judge disapproved of these and his expeditions to exotic gay clubs, dressed to dazzle in designer gowns that once belonged to Doris. [24] The collection is on public display at her former home in Honolulu, Hawaii, now the Museum of Islamic Art, Culture, & Design. Both Heffner and her lawyers emphatically deny that Nelson Peltz is financing Heffner's legal efforts. ), At Willie Nelson 90, country, rock and rap stars pay tribute, but Willie and Trigger steal the show, Congressional investigators blame airlines for most flight cancellations, First Republic Bank stock plunges to record low as rescue plan proves elusive, Fed faults Silicon Valley Bank execs and itself in bank failure, Public tirades, recall threats as Shasta County roils from decision to dump voting machines. HEFFNER, CHANDI MS. KAMUELA, HI 96743: SELF-EMPLOYED/RANCHER: $2,000: 07/23/2003: P: BUSH-CHENEY '04 (PRIMARY) INC - Republican: Search: Contributors: Individual's Name: He felt deeply grateful to Doris, as I did.". . [58][36][51] Duke was also friends with artist Andy Warhol. [36], Duke married twice, the first time in 1935 to James H. R. Cromwell, the son of Eva Stotesbury and stepson of wealthy financier Edward T. . . It would be the last time the paparazzi caught her, and, true to form, she slapped Rossellini for not telling her the photographers would be there.