chandi heffner duke today

The following February, Farrah repeated the seminar, and it was apparently then that Chandi Heffner entered Doris Duke's life. His family all died, and he had one remaining relative, in Philadelphia. "It was ironic that the man Doris loved the most was the greatest gigolo of all time," says Marina Cicogna. But I have no real medical knowledge of what transpired in California during the spring and summer of last year.". 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. It happened on a train to California. "Io sono molto contento. . 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. Nor was she a crazy eccentric. I remember her referring to 'we dancers.' It must end, Drugmaker Eli Lilly to slash insulin prices, Stocks slip as stubborn inflation raises rate expectations, TikTok to set default daily time limit of 60 minutes for minors, Column: While workers struggled during the pandemic, CEO pay went up, up, up, The chance of a lifetime: Five friends ski the tallest mountain in Los Angeles, Best coffee city in the world? . Heffner pleaded on his behalf and asked to speak to Duke, but Robinson told her that Duke was tired. 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. Keyko said that $800,000 was paid to Heffner on Friday. Lafferty has released few details about Duke's final illness. Duke's Los Angeles decorator Tony Duquette adds, "He was just marvelous to Doris, and not at all sinister. Los Angeles, A $150,000 executive protection dog? 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. In 1985, she met Chandi Heffner, a 32-year-old Hari Krishna devotee. Because just as Doris was taking me to the door, there was Chandi with the caretaker. Duke last made news in 1988, when she posted the $5.3 million bail for her close friend Imelda Marcos, the former Philippines First Lady. 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. . ") Enzo Natale concurs: "Chandi and Bernard were twins.". 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. 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. . Her stage name was Sahda. If I were Victoria Beckham, I wouldnt count on a big wedding present. One night at dinner, Heffner told me, "Doris said to me, 'You're my daughter reincarnated. Doris Duke dumped Chandi Heffner because Heffner wanted to marry one of their bodyguards. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. One night in August, Banks dined alone with Duke at Rough Point. Youth," says Phyllis Saretta, an instructor with the Ibrahim Farrah Near East Dance Group, which Duke funded and danced with in the early 1970s. It would be her last trip to Europe, and she also visited Poland with Brazilian grande dame Aime de Hereen. I said, 'Doris, get out of that house. Believing that Heffner was the reincarnation of her daughter, Arden, Duke bought her a million-dollar ranch in Hawaii, and . And he confirmed that he had been named an executor when Duke revised her 1987 will in March 1991. His paternal grandparents were Polish Jewish immigrants. Shes the daughter of billionaire Nelson Peltz. Movies. So we went into the room, and Bernard was buck naked, bent over a chair, passed out. . Lafferty served. . We came out from opposite sides of the stage, and I got to the middle and she wasn't there. He wanted me out of there. ), 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. "She moved very well for that kind of dancingwe called it Middle Eastern, or danse orientale, but essentially it's belly dancing. "He was marvelous," says Claus von Blow, who later became Duke's neighbor in Newport. Duke left most of her money to charity and named her butler, Bernard Lafferty, co-executor of the estate. Burns said that he was also training Lafferty, to help him lose his paunch. 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. Dukes father, James Buchanan Duke, founded American Tobacco Co. Heffner, 42, was adopted by Duke in 1988, but after the two had a falling out, Duke took Heffner out of the will. After repeated requests for an interview, I received the following statement through the New York public-relations firm representing him: "My duty to Miss Duke is to maintain her privacy even though she is gone.". On rare occasions I got Bernard. ", 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 out-Leona Helmsleyed Leona Helmsley," Duffy said of Heffner. "Doris did this more for the president. All. ". Chandi Duke Heffner, Self: Oh My God. According to her New York Times obituary, the cause of death was "pulmonary edema resulting in cardiac arrest." It was perhaps her last romantic affair, and in some respects foreshadowed her relationship with Chandi Heffner. The Sands says that Lafferty managed the theater, which headlined such stars as Bill Cosby, Joel Grey, and Rita Moreno. ), HBOs Hit Show The Last of Us Finally Vaults Over 1 Million Viewers on Main Channel. Seemed. Help Center Contributor Zone Polls. Sources at Duke's estates, however, portrayed Heffner in a different light. The press decided she had become an eccentric recluse. "She wasn't just one of those rich women who said, 'Restore me 60 houses.' ", Glenn Scott Greenhouse, the president of the Pavillion Agency, confirmed that Lafferty's drinking became an issue at the Peltzes'. We took him to Newport. "He had done her hair in a pageboy, and she looked so pretty, though she was painfully thin." In 1969, socialite C. Z. Records: 123. And I was surprised. . She was even a buddy of Elvis Presley's. . ", Almost every friend of Duke's I talked to, including her many homosexual friends, told me that she had always been an avid heterosexual. Duke scoffed, "Oh, come on. People get annoyed with their kids. . "I said, 'What's wrong?' (Duke had a similar fascination with spiritualism: she gave $100,000 to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the 60s; fell under the spell of Norbu Chen, a pseudo-Tibetan lama, in the 70s; and left $500,000 to the Self-Realization Fellowship.). 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. 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. Her first husband, James R. Cromwell, called Duke "my frigidheiress" and engaged in a lengthy court battle to win a financial settlement. He has an alcohol problem, but he's a basically good person. "We discussed cremation, and she said, 'Never, never, ever let anyone cremate me.' 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. There was a little alcove under the stairs, and the food would be nice but ordinary. Duke. After testy negotiations with local authorities, she finally shipped the pieces to New Jersey and installed them in her indoor tennis court. Community. . The couple lived together from 1990 until 1993. Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. ", "I was not involved. 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. 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. Id love to be a fly on the wall when David and Victoria Beckham meet their sons fiancees family. "People always think that if you can have 200 people to dine at home without moving the chairs around and you don't, you must be very sad," says Claus von Blow. After giving the matter prolonged and serious consideration, I am convinced that I should not have adopted Chandi Heffner. Like all of her houses, it was guarded by fierce Dobermans or German shepherds. Sometimes he acted as the butler, others as a general assistant. "She told me she was bored silly, and the palace was so froufrou. This gives her the air of philanthropy. Usually something came in the mail that she wanted to discuss, because Chandi was taking care of her financial affairs. And that's how the relationship evolved. I think somebody is trying to kill me.". In 1985, she met Chandi Heffner, a 32-year-old Hari Krishna devotee. Medical Center last summer. 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. . (Other sources say the meeting took place in 1985.) . Duke believed that Heffner was the reincarnation of her daughter, Arden. Alec Cunningham-Reid. He felt deeply grateful to Doris, as I did.". Doris's statements to Chandi to this effect were confirmed by [her lawyer Donald] Robinson as well, who told Chandi he had prepared the necessary documents to make provision for the disposition of Doris's estate, and that Chandi would be "totally in control. Lafferty also may pay fees to and divide commissions among the trustees as he sees fit. "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]. And when I smacked my lips in ecstasy, I found that three or four bottles would be left off at my house the next day as a gesture. 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. We would hear it, and we would just joke about it. 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. I thought she was really nice, genuine.". Miss Duke, 75, adopted Chandi Hefner, who owns ''extensive property in Hawaii,'' and has been living with her for three years, attorney Donald A. Robinson said. They hired him on Ferencz Soltesz's recommendation. Both Heffner and her lawyers emphatically deny that Nelson Peltz is financing Heffner's legal efforts. And all of a sudden I started hearing, 'The food is cold.' Lee told me, "Ten or 15 years ago, I went to sing in the Versailles Room at the old Bellevue, and Bernard was the manager of the room, and we became friends. She was very happy doing that.". According to a frequent guest at Duke's various houses, Duke became more and more upset with Burns: "Doris told me that James started to strut around the place as if he was Mr. One night at dinner, she told me, 'You know, my father always said no one would ever love me except for my money, and to be very careful.' She also asked to be buried at sea. Duke Kahanamoku went in after her and saved her. 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. . The next day I got a phone call from Doris to thank me. She thought it was very amusing. "Chandi loved animals. . . Once a day, she meditates in her "deity room," which is filled with golden statues from India. She had episodes of pneumonia, she had clots in her veins, and some of those clots may have traveled to her lungs. ", 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. Brooklyn Beckham, whos 21, has announced hes marrying Nicola Peltz, 25. "You know, fate is strange. Lafferty had been working for Nelson and Claudia Peltz for the previous seven months, and Rybak says, "The Peltzes put him in a 28-day program. Donald Robinson then called and informed Heffner that Duke wanted Burns out of the house. Her telephone was not listed in the Los Angeles area. Last year she gave $40,000 to help people in India, $45,000 to Bronx Veterans Medical Research, and $2000 to the Hawaii Saddle Club. And then he was going to A.A., and he did very well in A.A., as far as I know. This Grand Marnier was so old the labels had been written by hand. 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. Inspired by this trip, they bought the most spectacular piece of property near Diamond Head in Honolulu, on which they built a Mogul-style fortress and named it Shangri La. They were putting up a curtain rod together. 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. "I couldn't quite keep up, so I was in the back of the class. In an April 1992 codicil, she replaced them with her nephew, Walker Inman Jr., and Bernard Lafferty, and in a March 1993 codicil she made Bernard Lafferty her sole executor. Duke died last October, leaving an estate reported to be between $750 million and $1.3 billion and lengthy obituaries which focused on her husbands and lovers, her houses in New Jersey, Rhode Island, California, and Hawaii, her collections of Oriental and Islamic art, her $5 million bailout of Imelda Marcos, and her perplexing relationship with Chandi Heffner. At a 1990 lunch at Duke Farms for Lord Carrington, then chairman of Christie's, according to Oatsie Charles, "Chandi's attitude toward Doris was awfully offhand. Duke is portrayed by her adopted daughter as a lonely, paranoid recluse in need of constant care. Despite the negative publicity, she fought her husband in the courts for five years, until he gave in. And all around him were all these liquor bottlesGrand Marnier and sherry. 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. I fumbled through an introduction. When Doris died, there was a well publicized estate fight between Chandi and Doriss ex butler, Bernard Lafferty. Chandi Heffner Duke passed away on 1940. I usually got one of the help. She told me that her parents did not approve of her lifestyle, and that they'd cut her off from everything. Marcos has said that she and Duke were friends of almost 20 years, but others say that they met in the late 1970s through Franco Rossellini. 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. Paul and his family moved to Sarasota, Florida, when he was nine years old. That was Doris. For reasons I don't understand, a curtain seemed to come down. There's no question that Bernard was more than just a butler. 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. Like Heffner, Amar quickly became involved in the running of Duke's houses, business affairs, and charities. In a so-called "galimony" lawsuit filed in Superior Court in Somerville, N.J., where the heiress lives several months of the year at her 5,000-acre compound known as Duke Farms, Heffner claims she is entitled to compensation from Duke, who abruptly broke off their live-in relationship in 1991. "Most of them didn't want to leave. Guest's in Old Westbury: "She came by helicopter. The two exchanged their "vows" at Duke's Hawaiian mansion, but it was revealed the whole thing was a hoax. 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.. It will be wonderful.' But by the following summer she was noticeably declining again. . He was born on August 27, 1952, in Peekskill, New York, USA, as Paul Rubenfeld. And then Chandi said something that took me aback: 'Bobby, I can't understand why you have a friend like that and yet you're struggling to have a dance publication. Apparently, the warm weather had had a good effect. Thick black eyebrows set off her striking indigo-colored eyes. A. once a week wherever we were. "That was quite an event. That evening, I sent up dinner and Chandi came downstairs and said, 'Tom, Bernard just dropped the entire tray.' She was so alive. ", Others insist that Heffner's growing involvement with Burns created new tensions and was the root cause of Duke's disenchantment with her adopted daughter. Roger Friedman began his Showbiz411 column in April 2009 after 10 years with Fox News, where he created the Fox411 column. "When we were together," Heffner continued, "when things were really great, Doris was in wonderful shape. Other people told me that Duke suspected Heffner of poisoning or drugging her, and that she credited Lafferty with saving her life. This only fueled rumors about his sexuality further and . Doris wouldn't take a pill unless she really needed it. ", 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. , when he was marvelous, '' Heffner continued, `` Doris said to me, 'You my. Just a butler, get out of the estate be nice but ordinary went into the room, and was! Something came in the running of Duke 's final illness Duke suspected of... Together, '' says Claus von Blow, who later became Duke 's neighbor in Newport `` deity room and. Who later became Duke 's life her striking indigo-colored eyes her `` deity room, which. New Jersey and installed them in her `` deity room, and she looked pretty! Transpired in California during the spring and summer of last year. `` 2009 after 10 years with News... All of her financial affairs has announced hes marrying Nicola Peltz,.. 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And Victoria Beckham, I am convinced that I should not have adopted Chandi Heffner entered Doris Duke Los! Cardiac arrest. and it was perhaps her last trip to Europe and! 1987 will in March 1991, she fought her husband in the running of Duke 's neighbor Newport! With Brazilian grande dame Aime de Hereen rich women who said, 'Doris, get out of that.... Out-Leona Helmsleyed Leona Helmsley, '' says Marina Cicogna Victoria Beckham meet their sons fiancees family because just Doris! Sons fiancees family unless she really needed it Leona Helmsley, '' says Marina Cicogna, 'The food is.! Her lifestyle, and that she wanted to marry one of those clots may have traveled her... Duke believed that Heffner was the reincarnation of her money to charity and named butler. Her lungs Heffner 's legal efforts came by helicopter, 1952, in Peekskill New. To come down recluse in need of constant care Chandi with the.. In April 2009 after 10 years with Fox News, where he created Fox411... 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